I have divided our home into 5 zones:
- Living Room/Dining Area
- Kitchen
- Library/Playroom
- Bedrooms
- Big Room (This room is our Entry Way, Family Room & School Area)
Amp
Thanksgiving 2011
This year I am so thankful that my girls are getting big enough to be a great help preparing our Thanksgiving Feast!
Here is this year’s menu (partially for my own reference):
Roasted Turkey from Smockity Frocks
This is similar to the Alton Brown version I usually make except you cook it at 500 degrees the whole time but put water in the pan underneath. I put an onion, apple and fresh herbs (sage, thyme, & rosemary) in the cavity. We roasted a 23 pound bird in 1 1/2 hours & it was so yummy! Crispy skin on the outside & juicy but cooked on the inside!
Cranberry Apple Sausage Dressing from Allrecipes.com
Everyone enjoyed this but it was a little dry. I think next time I will double the broth.
Mashed Potatoes (10lbs)
Sweet Potatoes with Roasted Marshmallows
I cook the sweet p
otatoes then mash them with butter, a little orange juice and pumpkin pie spices. We then put the mixture in a 9 x 13 pan and top with mini marshmallows. Bake for 30 minutes at 350.
Green Bean Casserole
1potato made this recipe this year. We made our own white sauce instead of using cream soup and added some sour cream to thicken it up. Then we mixed in greens beans that we boiled for 5 minutes and some fried onions. Baked for 30 minutes at 350.
Butterhorn Rolls from Balancing Bedlam and Beauty
These are a family favorite. We baked 4 dozen rolls and saved the rest to make cinnamon rolls later.
Grandma brought the applesauce and cranberry sauce.
Pumpkin Pie
We roasted a pumpkin we grew this year but it didn’t taste very pumpkiny.
Apple Pie
I’ll have to post this recipe separately sometime. It is a wonderful recipe that uses 4 pounds of apples in 1 pie. It’s a little extra effort but so worth it!
Apple Cider from my uncle’s apples and my cousin’s apple cider press. YUM!
We had a wonderful day as a family and enjoying the fruits of our labor. We were able to incorporate many things that we grew ourselves and made ourselves!
Thank you Lord for the abundance you have provided for us and the time we had to spend as a family working and enjoying the day together!
Meatballs
Ingredients
6 lbs ground beef (or a mixture I like to use 1 part beef, 1 part pork & 1 part venison)
2 cups bread crumbs
1 cup finely diced onions
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2 cups tomato sauce
6 eggs
Mix the ingredients together. Using a small scoop make meatballs and place them on a cookie sheet. (It is really important not to handle the meatballs very much as it makes the fat melt on your hands & thus dries out the meat.) Bake for 15 minutes at 400 degrees until cooked through. Remove to another clean pan and after cooling place in the freezer to flash freeze. (This takes an hour or so but it can wait on you.) After they are individually frozen put meatballs into bag.
These work great by themselves, served with BBQ Sauce, Sweet & Sour Sauce, in Stroganoff or with Spaghetti.
Makes approximately 120 meatballs
1000 Gifts – Made it!
After beginning my list of 1000 Gifts (inspired by Ann Voskamp) in November of 2006 I actually completed my list. (I have been ever so much more diligent in adding to my list over the last year.)
Here are some of my final entries:
957. A beautiful harvest yesterday: tomatoes of all kinds, cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, & lemon cucumbers
964. Apples ripening on the tree
967. Waking from a nap to a cool breeze blowing in the window
977. Great Grandma celebrating birthdays with us
988. Van is paid off!
991. Homemade Apple Cider
994. Circle Time Restored
999. Sharing Ann Voskamp’s book One Thousand Gifts with the ladies at church
1000. Made it to 1000!
I am only beginning. I already have a new journal for my next 1000 gifts.
I will praise you, O LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders.
Psalm 9:1
Homesteading
We moved to Montana last January with plans to homestead. After much work and many false starts we settled on a nice piece of property just outside of town with no restrictions. We have 1.33 acres. The property came with several trees including 6 large cottonwoods, 1 pine tree, 4 plum trees, 2 apple trees and 1 unknown tree :). We have a pasture with 3 irrigation ditches running through it. There is a small barn of sorts as well. We also have a well.
Our goal is to have a sustainable homestead that will provide food enough to feed our family with exception to a few things we can’t grow (i.e. wheat, coffee, some fruits, oils, etc…) and have enough to sell to support our family. We intend to use as many permaculture ideas as we can and to use intensive grazing using multiple animals. So far we have 50 chickens (half for meat & half for eggs), 3 rabbits (for breeding, possible eating & for fertilizer), a dog for herding, watching & playing and 2 kittens for mousers. We plan on adding sheep, a cow for meat, dairy cow and maybe a goat.
While in Arizona we planted several raised bed gardens and last year we used Grandma’s 20 x 40 ft row garden. This year we have greatly expanded our gardening. Several things are experiments and we had to break lots of new ground so we will be fighting grass all summer.
Here is a list of what we’ve planted:
Potatoes: Yukon Gold, Red, & Russets in potato bins
6 crowns of rhubarb
25 raspberry canes (thanks to a friend who gave us her thinings)
2 blackberry canes
2 blueberry canes
75 strawberry plants (again thanks to a friend) planted in mound planters
8 crowns of asparagus
Herb Mound: Chives, Lavender, Basil, Thyme (English, German, Orange & Lemon), Parsley, Mint, Echinecea, Yarrow, Chamomille, Rosemary
Onions: (some for storage & some for green onions) white, yellow, red and Walla Walla
In our backyard beds we have:
Lettuce (multiple kinds)
Beets
Broccoli
Peas
Kale
Swiss Chard
More Onions
Acorn Squash
Carrots
Spinach
Lemon Cucumbers
Zucchini
Sweet Peppers
We also have tomatoes planted in Topsy Turvey Planters & some in the garden
Out the other garden plot we have:
A 3 Sisters Plot with Corn, Pole Beans and Butternut Squash
A Pumpkin patch
Zucchini
Yellow Summer Squash
Watermelon
Cantaloupe
Rows of Carrots, Peas, Green Beans & Yellow Wax Beans
We also have planted a patch of Sunflowers in front of the fence.
I hope to keep this blog updated regularly this summer as things grow and we take dominion over this plot of land that the Lord has given us dominion over.
Link here to see more gardening posts:
2/25/11 Blessings from Above
We had a wonderful week in Arizona albeit crazy trying to see so many people and get so much accomplished in one week.
Here are some of my gifts from the last couple weeks (#456-511)
457. A fresh blanket of snow.
458. Laundry: 10 loads in just one hour.
465. A trip to Arizona
466. Spending good time with my mom.
465. Getting together with friends that I haven’t seen in over a year and having it feel just like normal…
466. Enjoying a sky ride over the zoo with 4potato
471. Feeling loved and missed.
477. French onion soup with a friend!
478. Sweet potato fries – yum!
479. Bringing home a bucket of lemons picked right off the tree.
480. Shopping at Fresh & Easy
481. Shopping at Sprouts
482. Getting my haircut
483. Getting contacts!
485. Safe Travels
486. Time to talk & dream with my dh.
490. Hope of friends visiting us here.
491. Feeling good about moving to Montana
492. Bringing home the rest of our stuff
493. Washer is fixed!
494. Furnace is fixed!
497. Having multiple sources of heat in this house!
502. The sun shining and making the snow sparkle.
503. Taxes completed!
507. The smell of fresh bread coming out of the oven.
509. A husband that works so hard to provide for us.
511. Grace!
