Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Food

Around here macaroni and cheese is never just that. Tonight it's got a Mexican flair with tomatoes, green onions, cilantro, green chilies, sour cream and two cheeses.

Earlier we started freezing strawberries. Wish I could say they were from our garden but since we didn't plant any I can't do that. Wish I could say they were organic, but all I can say is they were free! I'm sure they'll be good in smoothies.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

My First Pressure Canning Experience

 I've been wanting to try pressure canning, but not wanting to invest in the canner if I wasn't going to use it.  Turns out a friend had one that she wasn't using and she let me borrow it to try.  I've had it in my closet for months, waiting for the right alignment of my energy level and something to can, oh and time to try it out AFTER testing the seals, etc.  We've been getting an abundance of tomatoes at the produce rescue, so I've been making sauce and freezing it.  Running out of room in the freezer is what motivated me to give pressure canning a try.  I just heard the pressure lock unlock on this first batch, that means I take off the pressure regulator and wait 10 more minutes before I take off the lid and start on round two.  It holds 5 pints or 7 half pints at a time.  I have 6 quarts of sauce, so if my math is right, that's 3 rounds of canning.
 
While reading through the instruction and recipe book I see that I can cook in this too, so maybe I'll try cooking beans to can my own refried beans?!  Do you have a pressure canner?  How often do you use it and what do you can?

Surprise!

Look what we found when we left for a walk!  This little duck must have hatched during the night, or maybe even yesterday and found it's "mom" this morning.  Buddy the tom turkey did not seem to appreciate this little thing following him around.  The eggs are under a broody chicken, we went into the hen house and there were 3 more babies outside the nesting box.  They are too darn cute, but these pictures don't show that.  They are two weeks younger than the first round that hatched, maybe sometime today I can get good pictures of both batches and share.  They grow really quickly-I'm amazed at how large the two week old ducklings are.

Monday, May 6, 2013

Ick!

Killed this just inside the house. Why aren't my chickens getting them? A couple of weeks ago it was a centipede in my bedroom!