I’m A Beekeeper!

Well…..sort of. 

When I went into church yesterday, a friend waylaid me and said,”You have to go to the feed store and get some Mason bees!  They only have two packages left!”

And being the dutiful friend that I am…..I did, right after work today. I also got a Mason bee box.

The bees are currently residing in the crisper drawer of my refrigerator waiting to be released.

Mason bees don’t require a hive, they don’t make honey, but they are prolific polinators and that is exactly what I need for my garden.  We have had such a hard time growing cucumbers, squash and peppers and we really think it is because there are no bees.  So, having my own box of bees should take care of THAT problem lol.

Mason bees are also much more docile than regular honey bees and will hardly ever sting.  That’s a good thing since I’m deathly afraid of flying-stinging things.  They are also mostly immune to the mites decimating honeybee colonies and less susceptible to the pesticides that are also wiping out honeybee colonies.  Don’t even get me started on that one.

Now, as long as I provide them with plenty of things to pollinate and plenty of things to get pollen from, plus a nice little mud puddle, they should eat and pollinate and breed and fill up the breeding box and at the end of the season their babies should hibernate till next spring and start the process all over again. (Sorry for that horrible run-on sentence.)

Say a prayer for me and my bees!

Gardener’s Crack

It’s that time of year again where I live.  The garden centers are teeming with customers and I was one of them.  In fact,  I think my bank account lost ten year’s of it’s life when I walked through the front doors of the garden center this afternoon lol!

In the above picture you will find:

tomatoes – 3 kinds

peppers – 3 kinds

bush cucumbers (been looking for them FOREVER!)

crookneck squash

basil

thai basil

rosemary

thyme

marjoram

lemon balm

spearmint

peppermint

bay laurel

comfrey

vicks plant

vinca

petunias

new trowels

new garden gloves

See?  Told you my bank account rolled over and played dead.

The above does not include the seed packets I already have for carrots, beets, beans etc.  I will be very busy this weekend.

Hope you all have a great one!

Summer In A Jar

Ignore the messy counter in the background, but here is a glass of strawberry lemonade.  Yummy right?

I canned up six pints of concentrate and plan on making even more to put on the pantry shelves.  Yep, it’s summer in a jar.

Courtesy of my new Ball canning cookbook.  Sigh.  I have so many canning recipes flagged to make I may never get out of the kitchen.  Hmmmm…..I think I need more canning jars.

Have a great week!

Dehydrated Ground Meat

What?  Why?  How?

Yeah, dehydrated gound meat is my new go-to pantry item.  I love it!  I tried canning ground meat and, well, it just doesn’t taste right to me.  It’s not that it tastes bad, just not……right.  I tried, I really tried to like it.  I was really bummed about it too.  How do I store ground meat shelf-stable if I won’t eat it after I’ve stored it?  That’s not a good proposition.

Then another blogger lady suggested dehydrating it instead.  Um, ok.  So, I got this…

Cooked it up, drained it, rinsed it under hot running water really well to remove as much grease as possible.  Then put it in here….

Left it to run overnight and voila!  The next morning I had this…

Hard little rocks of dried ground meat that is shelf stable.  Then I tried cooking with it, and oh happy day, it tasted right! 

It’s really simple to use, just take 1 cup of dehydrated ground meat for every 1 pound of meat that you need.  Rehydrate it in about a half to 3/4 cup hot water til it plumps back up and softens and you’re ready to go.  If you’re making chili or spaghetti sauce you don’t really even need to presoak the meat.  Just add some extra water to the pot and add the meat right in.

I’m loving it!  Now, I’m off to dehydrate 4 more pounds of it.  Yes!

Preserving Lemons and Oranges

Have you ever wondered how to preserve citrus fruits for when they are no longer in season?  You can, of course, peel and preserve orange segments and grapefruit segments.  But, what about lemons?  There’s not really much call for canning lemon segments.  So, what do you do with them?  Well, here’s one way to preserve citrus fruits other than peeling and segmenting them for canning.

You start with your bags of fruit, wide-mouthed canning jars, and kosher salt.

Put a layer of kosher salt in the bottom of a pint canning jar.  Make the layer about 1/2 inch or so deep.

Now slice up your fruit, in this case lemons. 

Place a slice of lemon on top of the salt in the canning jar.  Sprinkle more salt on top of the slice to coat.

Repeat layers of fruit and salt until you reach the top of the jar.  Place the lid and ring on the jar and store in a cool, dark spot. 

You can store citrus fruit this way for about 2 years.  Simply open the jar, remove what you need, rinse off the salt and proceed.  Voila!

I also did some oranges.

There are some other methods of preserving citrus goodness that I will talk about soon.  For now….hope you’re having a great weekend and Happy Easter!

 

Jambalaya

Jambalaya is a quick, easy, feeds-an-army kind of meal and no, you don’t need a box mix to make it.  Here’s how I do it….

Start off with a whole onion chopped and softened in olive oil

 

Add chopped garlic to taste.  I’m making a big batch, so I need a lot of garlic.

Dice up some smoked sausage

Toss in some leftover shrimp if you have it, if not don’t worry about it

A little bit of chicken is a nice addition and you have to have the tomatoes

Next add in 1 cup of rice

Pour in 3-4 cups of water and 2 tsp of Cajun Spice. More if you want it spicier.  Once this is used up, I have a recipe to make my own.

 

Now bring everything to a boil, pop on a lid and let it simmer for 20 minutes.  Then, remove the lid, stir and let it simmer a few more minutes until it is nice and thick.  Serves a bunch.

Hope you’re having a great weekend.  Me?  I’m taking the girls to the zoo.  Yay!!

 

 

Cherry Almond Craisin Granola

In my never-ending quest to be more frugal I took a look at what we are spending on cold cereal.  Not as much as some probably, but I figured I could do better and be healthier too.  That led me to granola.  Hmmm.  I’ve made granola before and wasn’t very impressed with the results.  But, times have changed and I decided to give it another try. 

I surfed through some sites and came up with a recipe from The Food Network.  I tweaked it just a tiny bit and here’s what I came up with.

Start with 4 cups of old fashioned rolled oats

Add 2 cups of sliced almonds

Add to that 2 cups of sweetened flaked coconut

Sprinkle in two teaspoons of cinnamon and mix well.

Pour in 1/2 cup vegetable oil and 1/3 cup honey.  Stir well until everything is incorporated.  Spread out onto cookie sheets.

Bake in a 325 degree oven stirring every 5 – 10 minutes for 15 – 30 minutes.  Be careful  not to burn it.  Once it is golden brown, stir in 1 cup dried cherries and 1 cup craisins.

Let it cool and you are ready to go.

It made 2 1/2 quarts of goodness. It’s great with milk or with my homemade yogurt.  And I have plenty of ingredients for many more batches.

Hope you are having a great weekend.  I’m going to try to stay out of the snow storm in the area lol.

Linking up with: Barn Hop, The Welcoming House

What I’ve Been Up To

So this was the experimentation week.  And wow have I been busy.

I have been dehydrating loads of frozen vegies. I did 5 pounds of mixed vegies, 5 pounds of corn, 4 pounds of peas, and 2 pounds of carrots.

Then I’ve been doing yogurt in the crockpot.  In fact, I scarfed all of the batch I made at the beginning of the week so I have another gallon working in the crockpot tonight.  That’s right.  I said a GALLON!!!  For the price of a quart of store bought.  Happy dance!

And in the dehydrator I have mango chunks on the top two trays and frozen blueberries on the bottom two trays.

My poor dehydrator has been running every single day.  I’m gong to wear it out fast if I’m not careful!

It’s been a busy, fun week with all this experimenting.  I still have frozen potatoes to dehydrate and roasts in the freezer for jerky.  I think I’ll be busy for a while yet.

Hope you’re having a great weekend!

Linking up with:  The Welcoming House

Canning Roast and Freezing Cheese

Even though I desperately wanted a nap after Church today, I fortified myself with peanut m&m’s and got down to business preserving some of the extra food I picked up this past week.

First I got out the 14 pounds of roast.

Yep, that’s a lot of roast and normally would have broken the bank to buy, but one of the stores in town had a B1G1 sale going on so it made the final price only $3 a pound.  Not an outstanding price perhaps, but definately a good price for boneless cross rib roast. 

I decided to do a raw pack process for this round of canning.  It’s soooo easy.  I just cut the roasts up into about 1 inch pieces and packed them into the clean jars.  I forgot to add salt, but it’s really ok if you don’t. 

Pop the warm lids on and put on the rings finger tight.  Put them into the canner and process normally for 75 minutes for the pints.  The pints hold about a pound which is perfect for most recipes.

Here’s the finished product.

The canning process cooks the meat so it’s ready to go whenever you need it.  Now I can just open a jar and have stroganoff or stew in minutes.  Plus, this was cheaper than buying the stew meat I had been buying to make those same recipes.  A win-win situation.

Since dairy products are on the rise and may go astronomical, I stocked up a bit this last shopping trip.  I bought an extra 5 pound bag of shredded cheddar cheese and needed to get it repackaged for the freezer.  Enter my new Foodsaver!  Just seal up some bags and pop in the cheese then vacuum pack them.

Off to the freezer to wait til I need them.  I also bought extra butter and cream cheese which are also in the freezer.  Now if only milk would actually thaw properly when frozen I would have bought extra milk.  Sadly, I haven’t had much luck in that department.

Now I’m off to do a little Bible study….it is Sunday afterall.

Linking to:  Like A Mustard Seed, The Welcoming House

Merry Christmas to Me!

This was delivered to me today.

It is my Christmas present from hubby to me, found by me for an awesome price and ordered by me fast before the deal was over.

Surfing through Facebook one day I happened across a post from a blogger lady with a coupon code to get this for less than half price.  I scooted over to the website and sure enough the code was good.  Hubby said “go for it”, it’s your Christmas present.  Works for me!

I’ve already ordered extra bag rolls and the jar attachments.  Lol! 

Merry Christmas to me!  Merry Christmas to me!