#everybitsountschallenge!

There is a great challenge taking place in the month of August for all who want to preserve their bounty, be prepared for whatever is coming, or who just love to can, freeze, dehydrate, etc. Jessica, from the threerivershomestead.blog has challenged everyone interested to preserve food, whether from the garden or the store each and every day!

I am taking Sundays off, personal preference, but I am going to try to put some food aside every day in August. So far, I have pressure canned hamburger, hamburger soup and chicken, frozen kale and cabbage and today I will be dehydrating zucchini chips. 

I'm not perfect at the challenge but I'm going to try hard to preserve something every day.

I also want to share Grace Zimmer's corn bread recipe with all of you. It's so amazing and for those of you who have tried it, you know that it should be called 'corn cake'. Yep, it's that good. 

Corn Cake

3 cups Bisquik                             1 1/2 cup milk                        1 cup sugar            1 tsp baking powder

3 eggs                                           3 Tbls cornmeal                     1 cup butter

Melt the butter. Combine the dry ingredients. Add eggs, milk and melted butter. Pour into an ungreased 9x13 pan and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. I have halved this recipe and put it into an 8x8 pan.

This recipe will prevent you from having to buy Bisquik. The ingredients are items most people have in their pantry. 

Homemade Bisquik

6 cups flour            3 Tbls baking powder            1 Tbls salt            1 cup cubed shortening 

• Pulse flour, baking powder and salt in food processer for 15 seconds
• Add shortening and pulse until it looks like cornmeal
• Put in airtight container. I recommend putting the date on the container
• Lasts for 3 months

 

     

We've been busy!

Easter Eggs filled with candy for the grandchildren! We made 17 total! The grandchildren love all the candy inside!

I began planting seedlings and putting them under my grow lights! They are all doing phenomenal and I can't wait to put them outside when it warms up. I did plant my over 70 pea seedlings outside and they are already starting to climb the back fence! I hear that stores are charging more this year for seed starts and I am so glad I do this from home. I calculated that if the stores charged me $3.00 per seed start, (and I hear that's low for what most stores are charging) then I have over $1100.00 worth of seed starts growing in my home! 

And we're getting a new bathtub put in! And yes, the pink one was the original from when the house was built in 1961! The 60's were full of bathroom choices. One of my neighbors has a completely blue bathroom and another neighbor replaced her yellow bathroom fixtures recently. We had replaced the sinks and toilet quite a few years ago but we waited until we could pay cash to get the new tub installed! It's going to look wonderful!

Lots of work and lots of fun going on over here!

 

A Blast From the Past!

Taking a trip down memory lane with this photo from about 14 years ago! Our family has really grown in those years and I am thankful for each member of our family!

As the world gets a little more off kilter with each passing day, I am grateful for those things that are the most important: faith, family, friends and knowledge! 

 

Why I Prepare!

These people are just some of the reasons why I prepare for whatever may be ahead. They are the reasons I shop wisely, store for the future and preserve each harvest season. They are the reasons we grow a garden every year and why we have chickens. They are the reason I read all I can about storing food and non-food items. In case of an emergency I want to be prepared to feed an army, my family!

A great resource for learning how to shop, store, plan and prepare is the Food Storage Organizer website. She has ideas, recipes and free printables to get you started on your journey to self-sufficiency! I have been doing this for years but I am always up for learning something new! Check out her website soon. You won't be disappointed.

 

Making Broth

This is what broth looks like after being in the crockpot on low overnight. In it you will find a chicken carcass and vegetable scraps that I've saved in the freezer.

Then it's time to get out the jars and lids.

And after processing for 20 minutes in the pressure canner I have jars of tasty broth. From a Costco rotisserie chicken I can make 5-6 meals and also produce 7 jars of delicious homemade chicken broth. Not bad for $4.99! 

 

Leftover Win!

We bought 3 Barred Rock and 4 Rhode Island Reds to replace the 5 chickens we have. Egg production is definitely slowing down and it's time to bring in new layers. They are the cutest balls of fluff!

Yesterday for dinner I realized that I still had some of the freezer items I had pulled out earlier in the week and I definitely needed to use them. I googled soup recipes using spaghetti squash and tomato sauce  and found a great recipe that I modified on what was in my fridge. It called for a lot of Italian sausage, (I had none) and zucchini, (I used Hubbard squash that I had also pulled out). I threw in some leftover breakfast sausages and a little bit of ham and instead of using diced tomatoes I used my unfrozen tomato sauce. You can find the original recipe on kudos Kitchen by Renee. I love that we still have lots of onions and garlic to use up and they and the spices totally made this recipe delicious. 

It was certainly a win-win recipe that used up items from my freezer and turned out to be very tasty! 

 

Prices are Definitely Going Up!

 

                                                                                

                                            

Because I bulk shop, I don't have to buy flour very often. But I noticed the other day that I was down to 2 plastic buckets of flour. I have been baking all our breads, rolls and buns and that has caused our supply to go down rather rapidly. So this morning on my way to buy some chicks, I stopped off and bought a 50 pound bag of flour. I had checked in my price book before I left and I knew that Cash & Carry typically had the best price so I went there. I discovered that the same bag of flour that I bought back in May of 2020 has gone up by $4.80! I knew prices were going up but this is crazy! I also picked up a #10 can of ketchup which has gone up by $1.00. So I will be using much more wheat flour in my recipes in order to stretch my all-purpose flour and I will be processing ketchup this fall from the tomatoes we will grow. This was definitely a wake up call for me at how much food prices are increasing. We all need to do all we can to grow and preserve our foods and keep an eye on what's in our food storage!