Busy days...

With four children, 3 taking classes outside the home a few days of the week, hubby working outside of the home and a house full of animals, piles of laundry, many extracurricular activities, we have our hands full. Many days I find that I don't have time to cook. For days that are on the run like that I have our freezer full of goodies to help us through the week until I can cook. We can reach in grab something, thaw it and go. One of our quick meals are mini omelettes! Everyone loves them, especially in an english muffin.

I do this in the oven, preheat to 350º and I scramble about 18 eggs from our hens in a bowl and put it aside. I chop up anything I'm going to add to them like ham, greens, cheese, bell peppers, garlic... I spray the muffin tin with olive oil spray so they don't stick. I add the chopped up extras on the bottom of the just-sprayed tins. I make all of ours different, some just cheese, some meat and cheese, some meat cheese and greens... Then I pour the scrambled eggs into the muffin tins about 3/4 of the way up. Put them in the oven for about 15 minutes (yes! that quick!) and they are done. I pop them out onto a cooling rack and let them cool. I put them on parchment paper on a cookie tray (not touching so they don't stick to each other) and freeze them for a few hours. When they are good and frozen I take them and put them in a freezer container that we can access throughout the week. They take about 20 seconds to thaw in the microwave but you can always think ahead and take it out the night before to that in the fridge.

Super easy!

These just came out of the oven, the house smells delicious. These have collard greens from the garden (I boiled them for about 6 minutes before using them-to soften them up), ham and cheese. Each is different for the different likes of the members of my family.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jen

Dehydrating...

This year we have one raised bed that has had some kitchen herbs growing in it (parsley, basil, oregano, thyme, sage...), and right now the parsley is growing like mad. I hate to water it and water it just to see it grow and die, so I have been dehydrating it and storing it in jars when I don't have anything to use it in. Storing it for when I need it is awesome. I don't have to run to the store for 2 Tbsp of parsley, I just open the cabinet and there it is. I have found the canning jars to be the best place to store our homegrown herbs because they seal out the moisture very nicely.

Someday I will have a beautiful large-scale dehydrator (like the Excalibur) but for now I have our Snackmaster (that actually dehydrates quite a bit!). It has 5 trays and is about 15 years old and plastic. I'm not happy with the plastic part and the fact that it is so old but someday I'll have a much safer one for my family. It is a little awkward being round and I am sure a square or rectangle would fit more but for now, this is what we have.

Our Snackmaster loaded up with parsley.

Here are 2 of my dehydrated homegrown herbs, rosemary and parsley. And yes, those are pint jars!

We have plans to try dehydrating tomato sauce and making fruit leather this year. The boys are going backpacking quite a bit now so they want to start taking dehydrated foods to lighten their load. Stay tune for that!

Thanks for stopping in!

Jen

Reusable bags...

I sew reusable bags.

Of all kinds.

We have beach bags, gift bags, grocery bags, produce bags, bags for dry bulk goods, snack bags, bread bags, hand bags, mobile phone clutch bags...

The ones we use the most are our bread bags (mentioned in this post) and our snack bags. One day I got tired of buying Ziplock bags of different sizes, they spill everywhere when the kids try to get 'one' out of the box and no one picks them up. They are wasteful being used once (although we have washed them till they become holey) and we end up have 5 boxes open at different stages because some people in my house don't bother to make sure there is a box open already for the size they need. I'm not pointing fingers at any one in particular...

Enter reusable bags. I have a ton of fabric for cloth diaper-making and don't have anyone in diapers any more and I don't want to give it to the Goodwill because it's pretty expensive stuff. So I have been holding on to it. One day I thought of this snack bag idea and pulled it out. I don't like plastic touching our food (I don't know what kind of plastic it is) so I line the plastic side with cotton fabric and add some velcro or snaps for the opening and voila! A cute little bag to carry nuts, raisins, crackers or whatever snack your little heart desires!

I sell these bags, so contact me if you'd like one...or more! I can customize them too!

Cookies...

Hannah and Rebekah are busy selling Girl Scout cookies this week, we are being overtaken by cases and boxes of cookies! If anyone wants any, please let us know because then maybe I'll be able to start seeing the floor in the hallway again!

This year we have the 5 mainstays: Thin Mints (of course!), Samoas, Tagalongs, Trefoils and Do-Si-Dos. We have a NEW cookie called Rah-Rah Raisins which are delicious. They have little bits of toffee and yogurt nibs inside. And we have a few boxes of a NEW gluten-free cookies called Toffee-tastics. They are proving to be pretty popular...we were only allowed to do a one-time order for these cookies, we ordered as many as we were allowed and we've almost sold out!

Booth sales are coming up, yep, we will be invading the grocery stores entrances and exits next week! My girls and I decided to make itty bitty cookies to give as SWAPS (Special Whatchamacallit Appropriately Pinned-or Placed Somewhere) at the booths. We made some miniature Samoas, Thin Mints and Tagalongs. They are so darn cute! A little something to give to our customers that is truly a Girl Scout tradition just as Girl Scout cookies are!

Please contact us if you need a Girl Scout cookie fix! If you are local we will deliver and if you live far far away the girls have websites that you can order from to support them.

Soccer...

Last weekend, Ben's team played their last games in the AYSO All-Stars tournament. They played some tough teams and fought hard but didn't come out on top. His team was his regular AYSO season team, there was only one U14 team this year in Jamul so they automatically qualified for All-Stars. So they had a really long season together and no one had to be excluded from any of the games and tournaments. He had such a fun time this year.

Team Barcelona Blues - this uniform was the All-Stars uniform, we joked that they were the "Highlighters"...most of the boys didn't like that name though. 

Ben and his gigantic trophy and his terrific coach-who coached him for the last 2 years!

The trophies for the boys

After the last game, one of the parents gave them Martinellis to celebrate with. They shook their bottles and sprayed the parents and each other. They had so much fun! That is Ben running away on the left. He managed to not get sprayed and get all sticky!

Bread...

Just about every day I make a loaf of bread for our family. Most of the time I make it in my handy dandy bread machine. I add ingredients to the pan, put the pan in the machine, push the "go" button and in 3 hours and 18 minutes we have a fresh loaf of bread. Super, super easy! I got a new Pullman loaf pan for Christmas and have made bread in there as well, it's the 'old fashioned way' kneading the dough and baking it in the oven. I love that way too but I'm still in the experimental stages to find the right dough recipe for the type of bread we like.

Some of our favorite bread are buttermilk, oat bread, light whole wheat, milk and a farmhouse loaf. This one is a buttermilk loaf. 

Making bread is definitely fun and different! I made a commitment to my family to provide food items where I knew what was in our food last year and I have only bought about 5 loaves of bread in the last year, and that was only because I was ill or because we were having a crazy busy week and I couldn't fit it in. We store our bread on the counter in homemade bags like this one -no plastic! More on those bags and how to make them coming up soon!

Beans...

Since I'm eternally on a quest to make things easier at dinnertime and cheaper -but healthy- for my family, I decided to try my hand at canning beans today. Beans can only be canned in a pressure canner, NEVER a water bath.

I did 3 kinds of beans in 7 pint jars today. It was super easy! I decided to can 2 jars of kidney beans and 2 jars of black beans. My kids love kidney beans right out of the can so I hope they are a hit! I also did black beans because I'm always running to the store for 2 cans of black beans for whatever recipe I'm working on. The last 3 jars are pinto beans which I did season with garlic and onion powders and cumin and coriander. They will be ready to heat and mash -or not mash- for burritos, yum!

I'm going to need this canning rack so that I can double the amount of pint jars that I can can at once because the whole process was so easy. Here is the pressure canner that I have, the Presto Pressure Canner. It is a pretty popular canner because it's affordable for most. It is super easy to use once you've gone through the process once or twice. It is not recommended to can in a regular pressure cooker. Do your research!

So here they are! 7 jars of beans and they look good! They just have to sit for 24 hours, untouched and then they can sit on the shelf until they are needed! It was such an easy process that I will be doing it again very soon!

Thanks for stopping by!

Revive!

I am reviving this neglected blog! I will continue to put our family happenings but will include more about what we do around our house to keep a natural, home made, home grown, mostly organic home. So I hope you'll stick around and share my blog around if you like what you read! Also, please do click on the ads, they help support my blogging!
Thanks!