Busy Hands Homestead

Dinner is in the oven.  (By oven I mean the toaster oven I have had set up on the porch all summer to avoid heating up the kitchen when baking smaller items.)   We are having a zucchini dip that tastes similar to spinach artichoke dip and was a raving success with the whole family a few days ago.  So I am making it again.  The kids are at the park with Adam.  I am supposed to be working on this:  I am trying to finish this small quilt for Ivory's first day of school tomorrow. Between our morning WIC appointment and our dentist appointments this afternoon, I have been stitching the details onto the little girl walking a path of hearts to her home. My baby is going to school and I want her to know that my heart will be with her, wherever she may be. The little girl on the quilt is almost done. All she needs are eyes. Then the batting needs to be cut, the layers pinned and quilted and binding stitched all around the edges. Crazy, I ...

Over our Sunday morning cups of coffee Adam and I penciled a list for the day.  Our list had a few chores around the house, but was mostly comprised of delicious food things to make and bake.  The weather is cool and wet and it is planting season again.  This means our Sundays are full of food preparations and our week days are spent apart.   I ran off to the grocery store to pick up a few things while Adam tackled the first food item: Caramel Rolls.  While Adam picked up things around the yard, I rolled up  my sleeves and crumbled together butter and flour to make pie crusts.  I picked the meat off of the bones of last night's roasted chicken , baked butternut squash, boiled sweet potatoes, sauteed mushrooms and broccoli, wilted kale, crumbled up bacon to make my version of the Big Sky Pie that I found in the Missoula Magazine (Page 10) last winter.     Adam started the Braided Swish Cheese Loaves ...

September is flying past.   I am trying to soak up the last few days of summer and the first of fall.  This involves pulling things out of the garden, into my kitchen and preserving food in jars.  I pulled the largest of my second and third planting of beets, (they were so small, sigh, in spite of the watering), scrubbed them, boiled them and pickled them.  I am trying out a few new canning recipes and using a few of my old standbys.    Really, this process should not have taken more than a few hours, but some how it took me all day.  By nighttime four ruby red pint jars stood on my kitchen table. This new recipe only contains half a cup of honey..  although, I will admit, that I am going to make a second batch of pickled beets using my old sugar laden recipe because I don't think the kids will be chowing these down with quite as much enthusiasm.  I picked arm fulls of my blue curly leaf kale.  Running back and fort...