Britesea - Living the good life in rural Oregon

Britesea

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We are finally done with prepping the plums! Got second loads going in the freeze dryer and the dehydrator, and a second batch of what turned into plum butter on the stove. I will be so glad to have this all out of the way. Then I need to freeze-dry some more tomatoes and peppers, and make some more dill pickles, and pepper relish, and kombucha, and and and.

I have been dragged into the Century of the Fruit Bat... kicking and screaming. I finally broke down and bought a "smart phone" which I'm afraid will turn out to be smarter than I am, but we will see. I have a feeling I will be missing the simplicity of my old flip phone for a while.

Making Buffalo Thighs (same as wings, but using what I had in the freezer) for dinner tonight, and pulled out a big chunk of pork roast to make Chile Verde tomorrow. I also have a hankering for some macaroons, so I may bake some either tonight or tomorrow.
 

Britesea

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Short hiatus this weekend. We spent half the day helping with traffic control for a Safety Extravaganza event (tables and exhibits for Fire Department, Police and Sheriff, Forestry, Search and Rescue, CERT, and Amateur Radio among others) So I'm finally home, fed, rested and decompressed. Now I have tomatoes to cut up for the freeze dryer, herbs to hang for drying, more fermented pickles to start, and the last of the green beans to process.

We pulled the last of the veggies that we could from the garden and then opened it up to the chickens. They are busily scratching at the wood chips and grabbing insects and worms and tender green stuff just as fast as they can stuff them in. I hope that translates to lots of tasty eggs. Right now they are molting and we are only averaging 1-3 eggs a day
 

Britesea

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Got a bunch of tulips and dutch iris planted today. I put hardware cloth down on top of the soil to keep the chickens from scratching in the nice, soft dirt. I'll pull it off in a week or two, when they have forgotten about it (I hope).

I dehydrated several trays of comfrey and garbled it (love that word; it means crumbling the dried leaves away from the tough stems)- it filled half of a gallon sized ziplock. I still have tons more, as well as a small mountain of catnip, horehound, peppermint, bergamot, sage, thyme, tarragon, dill seed heads, and parsley. Most of the herbs will be dried, but I'll be making chimichurri sauce with the parsley. I also have the larger green beans that were too big to be tender in the dehydrator on very low heat (about 95F); I hope to be able to harvest the seeds for planting next year. This is only the second time I've tried saving seed, so I hope it works. I also need to get the seeds from the melons I have in the fridge (I sure hope keeping them cold won't hurt the seeds) as this variety is the first one I've been able to get fruit in my very short season

After going through the freezer, I found a full month's worth of various meats in there. So I made up a month's worth of menus to use them up. Tonight is Shrimp Creole, looking forward to it!
 
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baymule

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Amazing what a freezer clean up can find! I recently found a package of home smoked bacon from 3 years ago. I'm saving it for a cold, rainy morning when all we want to do is laze around the house in PJ's.
 
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