My Version of Tomato Pie

Yeoldfurt posted on his blog recently about the Tomato Pie recipe and how much he liked it.  I had never heard of the dish until a girlfriend mentioned it a couple of weeks ago.  When I first described it to Yeoldfurt, he really didn't act too enthused.  His hesitation made me a little apprehensive, but I made it anyway and he loved it.  He raved about while he was eating and told me I should post the recipe.  Then he ate the whole thing before I got a picture of it.  I was going to wait until I made it again so I could post a picture with the recipe, but apparently KX59 emailed him the other day and is anxious.  So I here it is...

I started with the basic recipe at Simply Recipes website and tweaked it for my own purposes.  This is what it looks like when you make it according to the recipe on the website.

Ingredients

• 1 9-inch pie shell
• 1/2 yellow or red onion, chopped
• 3-4 tomatoes, cut in half horizontally, squeezed to remove excess juice, roughly chopped, to yield approximately 3 cups chopped tomatoes
• 1/4 cup sliced basil (about 8 leaves)*
• 2 cups grated cheese (combination of sharp cheddar and Monterey Jack, or Gruyere or Mozarella)
• 3/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1 teaspoon (or more to taste) of Frank's Hot Sauce (or Tabasco)
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 350°F. Place pie shell in oven and cook for 8-10 minutes or longer until lightly golden. If you are starting with a frozen crust, you'll need to cook it a little longer. If you are using a homemade crust, freeze the crust first, then line the crust with aluminum foil and pre-bake it for 20 minutes, then remove the foil and bake an additional 10 minutes. Squeeze as much moisture as you can out of the chopped tomatoes, using either paper towels, a clean dish towel, or a potato ricer. Sprinkle the bottom of the pre-cooked pie shell with chopped onion. Spread the chopped tomatoes over the onions. Sprinkle the sliced basil over the tomatoes.  In a medium bowl, mix together the grated cheese, mayonnaise, Tabasco, a sprinkling of salt and freshly ground black pepper. The mixture should be the consistency of a gooey snow ball. Spread the cheese mixture over the tomatoes.

 

Place in oven and bake until browned and bubbly, anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes. 

 

I'm a tweaker when it comes to recipes.  I've been cooking for several decades and been cooking for Yeoldfurt for over 12 years now.  I know what I like and I know what Yeoldfurt likes, so I'm not afraid to tweak.  When I made this recipe, I used a 6x10-inch pyrex baking dish.  Instead of making a pastry pie shell, I sprayed the pan with olive oil cooking spray and layered the bottom with crushed Ritz crackers, about 1/4-inch deep.  I doubled the onions (one whole onion) and caramelized it in four tablespoons of butter.  I poured the caramelized onions and butter evenly over the crushed crackers.  I sprinkled this layer lightly with Parmesan Cheese.  I spread my three cups of chopped, drained fresh Roma tomatoes over the onions.  Yeoldfurt likes anything hot and spicy so I added a well-drained can of Rotel on top of the fresh tomatoes.  Instead of basil, I used dried crushed red peppers (the kind they serve with pizza) on top of the tomatoes.  I used about four tablespoons.  I followed the crushed red peppers with another light dusting of Parmesan cheese.  For the top layer, I mixed one cup shredded Cheddar with one cup shredded Monterrey Jack plus 3/4 cup generic Miracle Whip.  I finished with about 1/2 cup crushed Ritz crackers sprinkled on top of the cheese.  

I'm sure the dish would be good with a pastry pie crust shell on the bottom too.  I was just making it as a side dish and wanted to make it a little lighter.   

Christmas Wishes and a New Recipe

This will be an especially joyous Christmas for us because we will have all three of our grandchildren here at the same time, for the first time ever.  With one more on the way, next Christmas promises to be even more special.

I'm sharing below a poem written in 1976 by Norman Wesley Brooks.  A friend posted it on Facebook.  Thirty-five years after it was written, it's still a good message. 

Let Every Day Be Christmas

Christmas is forever, not for just one day, 

for loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away 

like bells and lights and tinsel, in some box upon a shelf. 

The good you do for others is good you do yourself. 

Let us always remember the reason for the season, 

and let us each do our best to let every day be Christmas. 

Photo credit to Dan at 

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=587

~~~ 

I seldom make desserts except at the holidays or on special occasions, so it's fun to try something new once in a while.  Yeoldfurt came home with a recipe for Caramel Apple Cheesecake the other day.  He got it from a co-worker who just raved about it.  Since we will have a full house for Christmas this year, I decided this would be a good time to give it a try.  It's in the oven now and smells wonderful.

Graham Cracker Crust

1-1/2 cups graham crackers, finely crushed

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup melted butter

The recipe called for regular graham crackers but I used cinnamon grahams.  Combine crushed graham cracker crumbs and sugar, add melted butter and blend well.  Press evenly into a 9-inch pie pan, using the back of a spoon to press the crumbs up the sides of the pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes or until lightly browned.  Set aside to cool. 

Cheesecake Filling & Caramel Topping

1 21-ounce can apple pie filling

2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, softened 

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 eggs

1/4 cup caramel topping

Reserve and set aside 3/4 cup of the apple pie filling.  Spoon the remaining filling evenly into the cooled pie crust.  Combine the softened cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and lemon juice in a large mixing bowl and beat until creamy and smooth.  Add eggs one at a time and continue beating until well blended.  Pour cream cheese mixture into the pie crust and spread evenly over the apple pie filling.  Bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees or until center is set.  Cool to room temperature. 

Mix the reserved apple pie filling with the caramel topping.  Next time I make it, I will dice the apple slices to make it easier to spread them evenly over the top.  If the mixture is too thick to spread evenly, heat in a saucepan or microwaveable dish for approximately one minute.  When smooth and spreadable consistency, pour evenly over the top of the cooled cheesecake. Refrigerate until ready to serve. 

The above is the original recipe, which fills a 9-inch pie pan and supposedly serves eight.  Whoever wrote the recipe obviously doesn't know how much my husband and son-in-law like cheesecake.  I doubled the ingredients and made it in a 9x13 pan. It still looks yummy, don't you think?

New Ventures

Purging was pretty high on the list of goals for this year and I think I may have found a fun way to go about it.  Some friends of mine own a little antique store called Yesteryears located just off the town square.  It's one of my favorite stops when we have errands to run ...kind of like H&H Guns is Yeoldfurt's favorite stop.  We are usually together when we go either place, but I can be entertained at Yesteryears a lot longer than he can ...just as he can be entertained at H&H a lot longer than I can.  Possibly, the Venus/Mars phenomenon again.

A couple of years ago, Yeoldfurt and I discussed the possibility of consigning some of the things we want to sell to Yesteryears.  But we found out the owner doesn't do consignment, just rents booths to vendors with part of the 'rent' being a few hours a week of minding the store.  That was not an option for us because of our 40-week jobs so we didn't pursue it.  But recently I found out that the owner is now renting shelf space by the unit. One unit is a bookcase, approximately 3' x 6' with up to six adjustable shelves. The rent is $35/month, no requirement to put in hours at the store ...just a simple lease outlining acceptable items for sale and the terms of payment for sales made.  Very little is required of the seller other than to keep the shelves reasonably well-stocked.  Most of the things we want to purge around here are suitable to being displaying on a shelf so I think it's a win-win.    

After I got home with the vendor agreement, I started wondering how hard it was going to be to keep the shelves stocked.  I only have an hour or so of 'free time' in the evenings and Saturdays are already pretty full with odd chores and projects around here.  I wanted to come up with something I could make ahead and keep in quantity to fill space in between things I was purging.  I will be making some Cookie-in-a-Jar type recipes to give as gifts this Christmas and wondered if the owner of Yesteryears would consider letting me sell them on my shelf.  I sent her an email with a picture to show her what would be on the shelf and she loved the idea.  Oh, boy!  Cheap, easy, and fun to make ...I can get creative with the recipes and decorating the jars according to the season.  

I'm on vacation (I know ...again ...right?) on Friday this week so that Yeoldfurt can give me a ride to the paint shop to pick up my car.  He's on vacation until Sunday and I think he plans to head back home after he drops me off at the shop.  But while I'm out and about and have time on my hands, I think I'll go to the hobby store and maybe the fabric store for ideas and supplies.  I really think this is going to be fun.  If it turns out to be profitable too, all the better!

Holy Guacamole!

I've had flower and vegetable gardens most of my adult life, so I'm not exactly a newbie when it comes to growing things.  But I have never grown an avocado tree.  There is a first time for everything though and thank goodness for the Internet where practically anything you want to research is right there at your fingertips! 

When I was on vacation last week, my friend, Teresa, gave me a tiny avocado seedling.  She said it came from an avocado plucked from a tree on her brother's dairy farm in California.  It was well started in rich potting soil when she gave it to me and seemed to be thriving.  Teresa promised she would come up for a visit one day soon so I'm just hoping I can keep this little seedling happy and thriving at least until she gets up here! 

Yeoldfurt loves guacamole so it would be  nice to be able to grow our own.  But everything I've read so far says that trees started from seed produce rarely fruit.  It seems the best fruit-producing avocado trees are grafted as seedlings.  That's a very tedious process with only about a 50 percent success rate even for professional growers.  So this little seedling, if it matures into a tree, will most likely just have to be appreciated for it's beauty and not so much it's fruit.  If I am successful in growing it though, I might look into buying a grafted seedling so Yeoldfurt could have his home grown avocados. 

Any advice from those of you who have grown avocados from seed would be most welcome!

Cute Little Devils, Aren't They?

At least two of the four new hens are beginning to lay eggs now. When a hen first starts to lay, her eggs are smaller than they eventually will be ...possibly nature's way of easing her into called purpose in life. As she matures, her eggs will gradually get larger until they are full-sized.

This is only our second batch of hens. We bought our first hens as day old chicks in 2009 and when they first started laying eggs, we had nothing except store-bought eggs to compare them to. So the size difference didn't seem that noticeable. One of those three hens lays HUGE eggs that will only comfortably fit into a Jumbo size egg carton. They will fit into a Large or Extra Large carton, but forget being able to close the lid. At least two of those three original hens are still laying, including Dora who lays the HUGE eggs. But production is way down, partly due to their age and partly due to this oppressive heat, I'm sure.

This spring, we bought some new chicks. Hens don't lay eggs forever and we figured we needed to start phasing in replacements for the older birds. We started out with five Barred Rock chicks, but lost three to chicken snakes. It was the Last Supper for all but one of those chicken snakes. The third one was sporting a couple of 22 caliber holes when it slithered away ...hopefully it didn't survive the trauma. A few weeks later, we found a guy down the road that was selling some two month old Production Reds and we brought two of those home as well. Now we have seven chickens in the coop. That's really more than we need for eggs for just the two of us. It's also possibly more than we want unless we pick up a couple more egg customers. We're not really (and don't want to be) officially in the egg business. But for now, the seven hens are producing three to four eggs per day.

Since the new hens are so young and have only been laying for a week or two, their eggs are still really small. I used a carton marked 'Grade A Large' because it was the biggest I happened to have on hand today.  The HUGE eggs that Dora lays barely fit into a carton marked Jumbo.  If I put what I refer to as our 'normal' eggs from our other two mature hens in a carton marked Extra Large, I can close the lid but it's tight.  They will fit into a carton marked Large, but forget closing the lid.  All this is for reference so you know what you're looking at here.  I put six of the little bitty eggs in one side and six of the normal eggs on the other side. I laid two of the HUGE eggs and two more of the little bitty eggs on the open lid as a visual reference for size. Aren't the little bitty eggs cute?!

Sweet red bell peppers were on sale for 50 cents each at the grocery store last week so I bought six. We love bell peppers. Sometimes I stuff them and sometimes I slice them up to steam with kielbasa or grilled chicken tenders. I bought six peppers and made stuffed peppers that night. I make the filling with one pound of ground beef, one egg for binder, about 1/3 cup fine seasoned bread crumbs, some spices and a bit of tomato sauce. The one pound of ground beef is enough to generously stuff six halved bell peppers. I slice them the long way and Yeoldfurt eats two halves for his supper and takes two halves for his lunch the next day. I eat half a pepper for supper and take the other half for my lunch the next day. Normally when I make these, I use one of the normal sized eggs. That time, I used two of the little bitty eggs. I was curious to see the quality of the egg itself since it was so tiny. But they were excellent quality.  The yolks were dark yellow and, if anything, disproportionately larger than the whites. The two little eggs were perfect to replace the one normal sized egg I usually used to make this recipe.
Tonight we're having a chef salad for dinner and I decided to make some deviled eggs to go with it. I usually use two of the HUGE eggs when I make deviled eggs but decided today to use the little bitty eggs.

 

Now who would have thought you could fit a dozen deviled eggs on one 6-inch dessert plate?  Tell me these aren't the cutest 'little devils' you've ever seen!

Maultaschen, a Family Tradition

On my mother's side, our roots are English, German and Russian.  On my dad's side, we were mostly Irish. On both sides, we were all about family traditions.  My mother loved to cook and she loved most of all to make the traditional dishes that had already been handed down from generation to generation in her family before her.  My grandmother learned to make a couple of traditional dishes from her mother-in-law who immigrated to this country with her parents when she was still a small child.  One of these dishes is what we grew up calling 'Maldasha' and it was a springtime favorite.  It is a simple dish but works best if made in an assembly line with a couple of helpers.

It is basically large strawberry dumplings, swimming in warm cream and garnished with cubed bread that has been sauteed and toasted in butter.  Don't let the description fool you.  This is a meal, not a dessert.  It is a traditional dish in parts of Russia and Germany.  Even my dad who was almost pure Irish and strictly a meat-n-potatoes kinda guy loved it.  Since it is only made with fresh strawberries, it was a springtime tradition and occasionally again in the summer if we could talk Mom into it. 

I recently learned that our name for the dish is a horrible mispronunciation of the word 'maultaschen' which is Volga German.  Loosely translated, it means pocket ...which, loosely interpreted, would be a dumpling.  In other parts of Germany, it was known as Eben Gläce or Eben Kloese, which means strawberry dumplings.  Volga is a part of Russia that was settled by Germans and that's where my great grandmother's parents were when she was a small child.  So she grew up calling it Maultaschen.  By the time my sisters and I were born and the recipe had been passed down through several generations, the name had been Americanized to Maldasha. If you love strawberries and have an adventurous pallet, please try this.  You'll love it!

You will need the following:
Deep kettle to boil water (a water bath canner is perfect)
A large cast iron skillet
A long-handled slotted spoon
Two large serving bowls

4 cups of flour
2 eggs  plus 6 egg yolks 
1/2 to 2/3 cup hot water.
4 tsp salt (*if using self-rising flour, omit salt)
6-8 cups of strawberries,  stemmed and sliced
1/4 cup of sugar
1 cube butter (not margarine or butter substitute)
2 cups of stale bread, cut into cubes
2 pints whole cream

Wash, stem and slice the fresh strawberries.  If they are very large, cut them into quarters. Mom used to add a teaspoon of sugar to each dumpling as she made them, but I sweeten the berries before I assemble the dumplings.  Just sprinkle about a quarter cup of sugar on top of the strawberries after they're cleaned and toss lightly.

When the berries have been prepared and before you start making the noodle dough, begin heating the water in the kettle.  You will need a deep kettle such as your water bath canner.  The water should be at least 6-8 inches deep so the dumplings have room to cook and float up, but no closer than 3 inches from the top so the water doesn't spill over as you add and remove dumplings.  While the water is heating up, make your noodle dough.  My mother doubled the Noodle Dough in her Betty Crocker Cookbook.  The ingredients (already doubled) and directions are below. 

4 cups of flour
2 eggs  plus 6 egg yolks
1/2 to 2/3 cup hot water.
4 tsp salt (*if using self-rising flour, omit salt)

Sift the flour into a large bowl and use the back of a large serving spoon to form a shallow well in the top.  Combine the eggs, egg yolks and salt and whip with a fork until just blended.  Add the egg/salt mixture to the flour and mix well.  Add the water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until all flour is incorporated.  Dough should be stiff but easy to roll.  It will look very yellow because of all the yolks. Cover with a dishtowel and let it rest for 10 minutes.

After the dough has rested, divide it into four equal parts.  Flour your hands, rolling pin and surface generously and roll each of the four parts into a rectangle. You want each rolled out piece to be slightly thicker than a pie crust.  If it is too thin, the dumplings will break open during boiling.  Too thick and it throws the ratio off ...too much dough, not enough strawberry.  The four rolled out rectangles can be laid on a floured surface and covered with a dishtowel to keep from drying out.  Take one of the rolled out pieces and cut it into four inch squares.    Use a spoon to put strawberries in the middle of square.  Try not to handle the strawberries with your fingers ...if your fingers are damp, you won't be able to pinch the dough together to form a dumpling.  Each dumpling should hold two or three tablespoons of strawberries. 


Check on your water.  It needs to be at a full rolling boil when you put the dumplings in, so adjust the heat up or down as necessary.  Put the cube of butter in your cast iron skillet on another burner.  Don't turn on the burner yet, you're just getting everything ready before you start cooking the dumplings.   Set the stale bread that has been cut into cubes next to the skillet.

By the time you have all the dumplings made from one section of the noodle dough, the water should be ready.  Use a slotted spoon to lower five or six of the filled dumpling into the boiling water, one at a time.  The dumplings will sink when you put them in the water and float to the top when they are done, usually 5 or 6 minutes.  Sometimes, a dumpling will float immediately but I leave it in the water for at least 3 or 4 minutes.  As the dumplings come out of the kettle, they are placed in one of the large serving bowls.

When half of the dumplings are done, begin melting a cube of butter in a large cast iron skillet over low heat.  While the butter is melting, cut the last two pieces of dough into four inch squares and continue making dumplings.

After the butter is completely melted, put the cubed bread into the skillet and toss to coat each piece.  Turn the heat up slightly and toast the bread cubes in the butter.  Stir them frequently so they will brown evenly.  After the bread cubes are done, put them back in the bowl they came from and set them aside.  Turn the heat back down to low on the burner and pour the two pints of whole cream into the hot skillet.  Stir frequently to prevent scorching.  If the cream is warm and steaming before the last of the dumplings are done, remove the skillet from the burner and put a lid on it to keep the cream warm.

When all of the dumplings are ready, pour the warm cream over the top and garnish with the toasted bread cubes. 

Making this dish was a family affair when I was growing up.  Mom would set us three girls up in a sort of assembly line to help her in the process.  She would make the noodle dough and cut it into squares, then have one of us in charge of adding the sweetened strawberries.  Another of us would be pulling the dough over the berries and pinching the edges together to form the dumpling.  Mom would lower the dumplings into the boiling water, but one of us girls got the cool job of standing on the wooden three step stool waiting for dumplings to float to the top.   Once we had a little momentum going, Mom would melt the butter, brown the stale bread cubes and start warming the cream.  The whole process took about an hour but it was so worth the wait.  

Our mom passed away in 1989 and, as far as I know, I am the only one in our family who has made this dish since she's been gone.  My sisters love it too and have helped me make it once or twice when they were visiting.  But I don't think either of them has tried it on their own.  All of our children and grandchildren love it too, so I hope one of them will learn to make it and carry on the tradition.    

Update on Vacuum Sealing

I brought all my beans and rice up from food storage this afternoon, divided them into meal-sized portions and vacuum sealed them in clean canning jars.    It was a little work washing and drying all the jars but it was worth it because now instead of knowing I have so many pounds of whatever kind of dried beans or so many pounds of rice in storage, I now know how many meals I have of those things in storage. 

Whether quarts or pints, I only filled each jar half full of whatever I was putting in it because when I cook them this fall and winter, the amount that's in the jar now will still fit in the jar after it's cooked.   It was suggested to me to fill the jars completely before sealing to minimize how many jars I had to wash and dry and make more efficient use of the storage space in the jar.  But right now it's more important to me to know how many meals I can get out of what I have stored.  Filling the jars with only as much as they would hold after the contents are cooked gives me a better idea of whether my stores are adequate.

I lost a whole 8-pound bag of pinto beans in this process.  A good number of the beans in the bag were visibly moldy and they smelled 'off' ...so they all went to the compost pile.  Losing 8 pounds of anything is a shame, but it just convinces me all the more that vacuum sealed in glass containers is the way to go.  

It's just the two of us here most of the time, so a quart jar of red beans & rice is a meal.  Filling the quart jar only half-full, each one ended up with 1-1/3 cups of Red Beans and 2/3 cup of rice.  I ended up with 19 quarts which translates to 19 meals for us.  Fresh chopped onion and Cajun spices will be added when I cook the red beans and rice so that when I pressure can them, they will be ready to eat.  When I serve one for dinner, I'll only need to cook a little sausage and cornbread and Yeoldfurt will be happy.

Pintos and great northern beans were sealed in pint jars because they will be consumed as side dishes more than full meals.  I ended up with 24 pints of those or 24 meals worth.  Once all the beans were in jars, I filled quart and pint jars all the way to the top with what was left of the rice.  I ended up with 7 quarts and 16 pints.  Served as a side dish, that much rice translates to 60 meals worth for us.    

The vacuum sealer attachment to the Foodsaver worked very well with the wide-mouth jars ...a success every time.  When I ran out of clean wide-mouth jars and tried to seal the regular-mouth jars, I had a little trouble at first but not that much.  I had one jar that seemed to seal but then 'popped' a few minutes later and was a failure.  When I removed the loose lid, I could see rice powder residue on the gasket ...so it was my own fault.  I got a clean lid and it sealed, no problem.  I did have to double-load when doing the regular-mouth jars.  I put one lid on the jar and then set a second lid on top of it, then put the vacuum sealer over the jar.  Double-loaded like that, when I removed the vacuum sealer, the bottom lid stayed with the jar and the second lid was still in the vacuum sealer.  Not a big deal. 

This method of storage won't be for everyone but considering the 8 pounds of Pinto Beans I had to throw in the compost pile today, I would say it's an improvement for us.  It was worth the effort as far as I'm concerned.  When I'm ready to start pressure canning again this fall, I can bring up only as many jars as I want to do that day.   My pressure canner will hold 7 quarts, so if I only want to process one batch, that's all I will be bringing up from storage. 

Manisagna is Born!

Yeoldfurt has been under the weather since Saturday and has mostly had just chicken noodle soup for supper these past few days.  He's finally on the mend and ready for some real food again, so I asked him this morning if he'd like me to make manicotti.  He loves manicotti so I got an enthusiastic thumbs up at the suggestion.   After all, it's comprised of his three all time favorite food groups ...meat, cheese and pasta!

When I got home this afternoon, I started digging through the kitchen.  Other than angel hair, spaghetti, flat noodles and elbow macaroni, we don't stock a twelve-month supply of pastas.  I could have sworn I bought a box of manicotti pasta last week but it was nowhere to be found.  All I had were four manicotti shells.  What to do??

While I was digging for the missing box of manicotti, I came across a few extra lasagna noodles in a ziploc bag.  Then I had an idea.  Manicotti (the way I make it) and lasagna are SO similar ...why not combine them into one dish?  And that's how Manisagna came to be ....

I put a layer of meat sauce in the bottom of a 7 x 12 rectangular baking dish.  At one end, I put my four little manicotti shells stuffed with the soft cheese, parmesan and egg mixture.   At the other end, I layered lasagna noodles over the sauce, followed by the soft cheese/egg mixture, followed by shredded mozzarella.  It took three layers on the lasagna side to make it the same height as the manicotti side.  Then I poured the remaining sauce evenly over the top and covered the whole thing with a final layer of shredded mozzarella.  It's been in the oven at 350 degrees for about ten minutes now and it's already smelling good.  I'll make a tossed salad and in another hour or so, we'll sit down to a nice supper.

While we're on the subject of baked pasta dishes, I never boil my pasta before assembling the dish.  I used to and I remember what a headache it was to get the pasta cooked perfectly, then get it cool enough to handle but still hot enough not to stick together.  Not easy.

I don't remember how I discovered this, but somewhere along the way I started assembling lasagna with uncooked pasta.  It was SO much easier to spread the soft cheese/egg mixture evenly on the dry lasagna noodles.  Literally every aspect of the assembly process was easier.  The first time I did it, I assembled the layers to make lasagna, then covered it and left it in the refrigerator over night.  I thought the pasta would absorb some of the juices overnight and soften up.  Then I set it on the counter for 30 minutes the next day to come to room temperature, then baked it at 350 degrees for 50 minutes, as normal.  It was wonderful.  Later on, I discovered leaving it overnight in the refrigerator was not a necessary step.  So now I just assemble and put it in the oven and it always comes out fine.

These days you can buy 'oven ready' lasagna noodles in the grocery stores.  They are shaped slightly different and have shallow ridges (like Ruffles) running the long way on the noodles and they are about twice the price of 'normal' lasagna noodles.  But the ingredients lists are exactly the same.   What a rip-off, huh?

So if you're still boiling the noodles when you make lasagna, please try this method next time you make lasagna.  You may be skeptical the first time, but you'll be a believer after you try it.  And if you think spreading soft cheese/egg mixture is easier on unboiled lasagna noodles, just wait until you see how much easier it is to stuff the manicotti when it's not pre-boiled. 

Deluxe Compost Box ...Free!

One of the perks to Yeoldfurt's job is access to a lot of free material.  Every week, the company discards several heavy wooden crates and pallets.  The materials to be thrown away are left in a designated area near the loading dock and anyone who wants them is welcome to take them.  Yeoldfurt hauls something useful home almost every week. 

He has been disassembling the crates and pallets and stacking the lumber according to size and thickness.  A couple of weeks ago, he used some of this free material to build us a really nice compost box.  Before he started building it, we talked about what size it should be and where we should put it.  We've had it for about two weeks now and, so far, I think we made some good choices.  It's four feet square and the sides are about three feet tall.  He set it up against the chainlink fence between the garden and the chicken coop.  We figured that would be a convenient location both for putting new material in the box, and for getting material out of the box when it was time to build up the garden.  

This is what it looks like.  Notice that the four corner posts extend about two feet higher than the walls.  He did that on purpose so that it would be easily expandable.  If we run out of room, more boards can be added to the walls without him having to disassemble and reconstruct the whole box. 

But then he got fancy.  He built the front so that only the bottom board on that wall is permanently affixed.  All the boards above it can be removed to lower the side.  That will make shoveling material out of the box a whole lot easier on our backs. 

Fire ants are a constant problem here, so the first thing we put in the bin was a thick layer of cedar mulch.  Most bugs, including fire ants, don't like cedar.  I don't think it's poisonous but it's not inviting to them either, so hopefully it will minimize their presence.  After the layer of cedar mulch was in, Yeoldfurt pulled all of the old hay out of the chicken coop and piled it on top of the cedar.  We put the hay in the coop in December to help the chickens stay warm through the winter.  It was 'well-seasoned' and should be a bonus to our composting efforts. 

My next problem was figuring out how to easily and efficiently gather household scraps on a daily basis to add to the compost.  It's only the two of us and we only eat one meal at home on week days, so there isn't much to gather on a day to day basis.  I didn't want to make too much of a chore out of  'feeding' the compost.  I'm not looking for any new chores and if it's not convenient, it might not happen regularly.  I also didn't want to deal with odors or a potential accidental spill if I accumulated too much before dumping the scraps.  So here's what  I came up with ...

I got one of the plastic coffee containers out of storage, the kind with the handle molded into one corner and a tight-fitting lid.  I labeled it on the handle and the front and the lid 'COMPOST' and I keep it under the sink in my kitchen.  Every night when I wash the coffee pot, I dump the old grounds in the can.  When I crack an egg, the shell goes in the can.  When I trim vegetables, the trimmings go in the can.  Left over vegetables go in the can.  Pretty much everything except meat goes in the can. 

The coffee can is heavy plastic, very sturdy and easy to handle and has a tight-fitting lid so I don't have to worry about odor or spills.  A bonus that I realized after the first week is that coffee grounds are a natural odor deterrent.  I guess I knew that at one time but now it has real relevance.  The last time I emptied the can, it had four days worth of coffee grounds, some bell pepper and onion trimmings, leftover corn and green beans and three egg shells.  But the only thing I could smell when I opened the lid was the coffee grounds.  What a plus! 

Since keeping a compost pile wet is necessary for it to do it's job, I also started adding a little water to the can each time I put something in it.  When I empty the can, I add water to within two inches of the top before I take it out to the compost bin.  I give it a good swirl before I dump it which helps rinse the can.  The added water with each deposit of scraps is good for the composting process so it's a win-win. 

Leather Cookies!

No, not the rawhide variety.  Today had my first experiment adventure with making fruit leather.  I cheated a little ...bought a jar of all natural applesauce, no sugar added.  I know, I know ...much cheaper to buy the apples and make my own sauce.  But my time is limited and at $1.29 for the jar, I think I made a wise decision.  Until homesteading and prepping are my fulltime and only occupation, I have to make these choices sometimes. 

Instead of making one big sheet of leather, I made 'cookies' approximately three inches in diameter.  I used a tablespoon to dip the applesauce out of the jar, then spread it as evenly as possible with the back of the spoon.   This is the before picture.  I'll post an after picture this evening ...along with a taste test review.

They look a little uneven in thickness here, but the applesauce was cold from the refrigerator when I spooned it onto the tray.  The thicker parts will flatten a little as it warms up in the dehydrator, just as cookies flatten and spread in the oven.  The instructions in the book that came with my dehydrator said to aim for 1/8-inch thickness in the center and 1/4-inch thickness on the edges when making fruit leathers.  This is my first try, so we'll see how it turns out.  The 'cookie' in the top right corner has a bit of homemade plum jelly stirred in.  This is, after all, an experiment ...might as well try a couple variations!  They should be ready in 4-6 hours.  I set the timer for 5 hours and we'll see how they turn out. 

In the meantime,  Yeoldfurt and I have some saddle time planned for this morning.  We've learned from experience to prioritize carefully on our days off.  The first thing on the to-do list always gets accomplished ...the second thing usually gets accomplished.  Anything further down the list has a fifty-fifty chance of not happening for one reason or another.  Number One on the list today is some long overdue time in the saddle.  Number Two (not as much fun) is the never-ending chore of fence maintenance.  The leather cookies were just a wild hair I had while I was waiting for the sun to come up.  It took five minutes to set them up in the dehydrator and now they're on auto-pilot.  An easy bonus to whatever else we manage to accomplish today.

Warm Fuzzies

These are the four newest members of the flock.  

Yes, there are really four of them.  

One is being shy and hiding behind the others.  

We currently have three Rhode Island Reds that we bought in the spring of 2009.  Their first eighteen months of production was great.  They barely even slacked off during winter, producing 18 to 20 eggs every week.  But for the past three or four months, we've been lucky to get 12 eggs in a week.  

So we decided to try a different breed this time and bought these four Barred Plymouth Rock chicks.  They are a dual purpose breed and have an excellent reputation for producing large brown eggs.  

The chicks are staying cozy in the brood box in the garage for the next several weeks, 

until they feather out and the nights get warmer.

In the meantime down at the coop, the rumor is slowly spreading that there are some new chicks in town.

So far, none of the incumbents seem to feel threatened ...at least they're not letting on if they are.

Do they look worried to you? 

Reba

Red

Dora

 

 

 

If hens can be cocky, these three surely qualify.  

As far as they're concerned, the good life they're enjoying will go on forever. 

Gee, that sounds like most of the politicians 

we have these days!

Monkey Bread and Cinnamon Rolls

I discovered Monkey Bread when I was in my early twenties.  Someone brought some to an office Christmas Party, I got the recipe and it has been a holiday tradition in our home ever since.  Over the years, I've found the same recipe by different names ...Cinnamon Bubble Ring, Cobblestone Cake.  It's all Monkey Bread with a fancier name.  I like to bake it in a fluted bundt pan because I think it's prettier but you can use a 9x13 rectangular pan or two 8-inch round or square pans.  I've even seen it baked in a 2-pound coffee can.  Just spray whatever pan you will use with Pam (or similar) nonstick cooking spray before you add the dough.
The recipe is very simple.  You need:

4 cans refrigerator biscuits
(Pillsbury or store-brand, doesn't matter)
1 cup sugar plus 2 Tbsps cinnamon
1 cup brown sugar
1 cube butter, melted (not margarine or butter substitute)
 
Put the sugar & cinnamon in a large ziplock bag
Open the canned biscuits, cut into fourths
Drop the dough pieces a few at a time in the ziplock bag
Shake to coat, then put them in pre-sprayed baking pan
When all the dough pieces are in the pan,
Combine the brown sugar & melted butter
Pour evenly over the top of the dough

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, then cover top with foil and back an additional 10-15 minutes

To serve, place an appropriate sized/shaped platter over the baking pan and invert.  Can be served warm or cold and makes a good breakfast bread.  

I have been making cinnamon rolls for several family members and friends at Christmas for almost 20 years.  I usually half the dough and make two 8-inch pans (approximately 12 rolls in each pan) from one recipe of dough.  I also make a Monkey Bread or two, usually at my daughter's request and usually using my fluted bundt pan for the Monkey Bread.  While I was thinking about Monkey Bread the other day, it occurred to me that I could stack the rolls on their sides in a bundt pan and I would have pull apart cinnamon rolls!   A cinnamon roll ring!  When it was done baking, it would fit on a normal 8-inch dinner plate or round serving platter and it would be easy to use a fork to pull one (or two) rolls off at a time. Ahh, decadence and convenience all in one pan!

I was had a day off a few weeks ago and Yeoldfurt was at work, so I decided to give it a try.  My fluted bundt pan that I use to make Monkey Bread held all but five of the rolls.  So I used a small rectangular Pyrex dish to stack the remaining rolls. The result, I hoped, would be a pretty and easy to serve Cinnamon Roll Ring and (mini) Cinnamon Roll Log. 

This is what the rolls looked like after 45 minutes raising time in my Excalibur dehydrator...

As you can see, there was not much 'head space' remaining for the rolls in the pyrex dish.  These rolls always rise a bit more during baking so next time, I will use one of my 1-pound loaf pans instead to give them a little more room. 

 

After they're raised, I always sprinkle the tops of the rolls with cinnamon and sugar, then cover with a generous layer of brown sugar.  The last step before baking is to melt a cube of butter (not margarine or spread) and pour over the top of the rolls.  When I was making the recipe in two 8-inch square pans, I would use 1/2 cup melted butter on each.  Since the bundt pan held considerably more rolls than the pyrex, I poured approximately 3/4 cup butter over the bundt pan and the remaining 1/4 cup over the pyrex. 

I was able to bake them together in the same oven, but since the rolls in the pyrex were already so close to the top of the dish, I had a lot of bubble-over during the baking process.  A waste of buttery goodness and a mess in the oven!  Using the 1-pound loaf pan next time should eliminate that problem.   This is what they looked like after baking.  We haven't sampled them yet, but I've been making these rolls for so many years, I can tell by looking if a batch came out good.  These will be good!  

Using the bundt pan and 1-pound loaf pan will streamline my holiday baking from now and I think it makes a prettier end product as well.  

This batch went to my office with me the following week and when the email came around two weeks after that announcing an upcoming Breakfast Staff Meeting I was asked by several co-workers if I was planning to bring another batch to the meeting.  I guess they were a hit!  I'm happy because it's so much faster and easier to bake them this way and I think the end product is pretty.

Yes, pretty matters at least to me  ...if I can't make it pretty, I won't want to make it.  If I don't make it, nobody gets to eat it.  So pretty matters.  Yeoldfurt was a quick study on that one.  Ha! 

Comfort Foods

Most of us have memories centered around a special dish or food that we enjoyed when we were growing up. A special dessert your grandmother used to make, a supper dish that was a family favorite, even something special your mom used to make for you when you'd been under the weather. Comfort foods. As good for the soul as they are for the tummy! Baked Macaroni and Cheese is one of those dishes for me. I worked full time the whole time my kids were growing up and I am ashamed to admit when I served them Macaroni and Cheese, it almost always came from a box. They loved it, but they didn't know any different. If I had started them out on Macaroni and Cheese the way my mom made it and then introduced them to Kraft Shells N Cheese in a box, they would have thought I have complained loudly. There is just no comparison.

Since both CHEESE and PASTA (any shape will do) are pretty high on Yeoldfurt's list of favorite foods, this dish is one of his favorites. When my mother made this, she didn't put meat in it because she generally served it as a side dish to meat, and she started with a thick White Sauce made from scratch, then melted cubes of cheddar cheese into it. I've added meat to it as a matter of convenience (one dish meals mean less work and less clean up!) and I usually melt some of the spicy Mexican Cheese version of Velveeta for the sauce ...also as a matter of convenience. If I didn't have a full time job that kept me away from home 10 hours of the day, I would make my cheese sauce from scratch too, but even with Velveeta, it's still really good.

There was one thing my mom did as a garnish that I have never done for Yeoldfurt. She would beat an egg with about two tablespoons of water and a little salt & pepper to make an egg wash. She would set that aside in a pie plate. Then she would put about a cup of crushed saltine crackers as a coating in a separate pie plate. In the meantime, she was melting a cube of butter in a small skillet. She would slice one good sized tomato in five slices (there were five of us), dip the slices in the egg wash, dredge them in the crackers and then fry them in the melted butter until they were golden brown on both sides. Just before she put her macaroni and cheese in the oven to bake, she would put these fried tomatoes on top as a garnish. It was a pretty garnish and oh so good!

When Yeoldfurt was leaving for work today, he mentioned that he'd like some Macaroni and Cheese for tomorrow's supper and I told him about the fried tomato garnish my mom used to do. His eyes lit up so we'll find out tomorrow night if he likes it as much as he thinks he will.

As I said, my Macaroni and Cheese is based on the way my mom made it, but tweaked to accommodate our busier lifestyle and Yeoldfurt's penchant for spicy. Yeoldfurt asked me to share the recipe, so here you go:

Meaty Macaroni & Cheese

2 cups uncooked elbow macaroni

4 slices bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled

(save the drippings!)

1/2 cup diced fresh onion

2 cups sausage links, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

1 lb Mexican Velveeta, cubed and melted

1 cup milk (add 1/4 cup at a time, mix well after each addition)

4 Tbsps butter

Fried Tomato Garnish (optional)

1 large firm tomato, evenly sliced

1 egg plus two tablespoons water, well beaten

1 cup Saltine cracker crumbs

Salt/Pepper to taste

1 cube butter, melted

This is what it will look like assembled & ready to bake:

Spray sides and bottom of a 9x13 deep baking dish with nonstick cooking spray, set aside. Cook pasta, drain and set aside. Cook bacon slices in oven at 375 degrees until crisp, approximately 20 minutes. Set bacon on paper towel to drain and pour drippings into a medium sized skillet. Add sausage and diced onion in skillet over medium heat until sausage is slightly seared and onions are translucent. Melt cheese cubes and 4 tablespoons of butter in the microwave, add 1/2 cup milk and blend well. Put cooled pasta in the 9x13 baking dish. Add sausage and onions and mix well. Pour melted cheese over top and stir to coat all of the pasta. Set aside while you make the fried tomatoes.

When you start frying the tomatoes, you want to set up an assembly line because they will cook very quickly. Melt the butter in the same skillet you used when you cooked the sausage and diced onion. Crack a raw egg into a shallow dish, add two tablespoons of cold water, and beat well. Add salt & pepper to taste. Crush the saltines and put them in shallow dish ...a pie plate works well. You need to have a couple of layers of paper towel on a plate next to the skillet to drain the fried tomatoes when they're done. Once everything is ready, set up your assembly line ...tomato slices, the egg wash, the pie plate of saltine crumbs, the melted butter in the skillet and the paper towel to drain ...in that order. The tomatoes will only take a few minutes to cook once you get started, so now would be a good time to preheat the oven to 350 degrees. After all the tomatoes are fried and drained, arrange them on top of the macaroni and cheese.  What the heck, if you're feeling decadent, pour the melted butter from the fried tomatoes over the top too.  Everything is better with butter, right?  If that feels a little too decadent, you're just kidding yourself ...it's not like this recipe would ever make it into the Heart Healthy magazines!  Now sprinkle the crumbled bacon evenly over the top and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes before serving. A nice tossed salad and some fresh or canned fruit for dessert and you have a complete, well-balanced meal.

If you want to make this ahead, you can cover it with plastic wrap and it will keep for several days in the refrigerator, or can be frozen for several months. If you plan to freeze it but want to use the fried tomato garnish, I would freeze it without the fried tomatoes and make them fresh before you bake it.

Where to Begin

I don't think that either Yeoldfurt or I consider ourselves experts necessarily on prepping or long-term food storage. But since we started down this path a couple of years ago, we've learned a thing or two ...most of it the hard way. We've also accomplished a thing or two during that time. So since the real purpose of this blog is to share information, I'm going to try to share what we've learned. This post is my first installment on that effort.

Food and water are the most basic of necessities. Stockpiling these necessities is not a new concept but, in light of our floundering economy and rising costs, it is fast becoming a very popular one. There is so much to take into consideration when you decide to embrace this lifestyle. How many people are you planning to take care of ...for how long in a worst case scenario? Are you preparing for temporary hard times, or a full blown collapse of this economy? No one has a crystal ball and no can really prepare for every single contingency. You just have to take an objective look at your own situation, your own needs, and your own limitations and then do the best you can.

You will need space for your long-term storage. How many people you intend to take care of and for how long will determine how much space you need. Underestimating the space can be a serious pitfall. So calculate carefully and then round up on your estimations. I had a boss once that used to say, 'It always takes a third longer than you expect.' He was talking about estimating labor costs when bidding a contract, but I've found that 'a third longer' is a pretty good rule of thumb. So when you round up, round up by a third. It's much easier to find out you didn't need quite as much of a particular prep item, or didn't need quite as much storage space overall than it is to find out you needed much more.

There are two basic things you need to know before you can determine how much you need in terms of preps or storage space. You need to know how many people you are planning to support and for how long. Obviously you know how many people live in your household, but do you have extended family that you will accommodate if they show up on your doorstep? If so, it's much better to plan for them and have them not show up than to not plan for them and run short in a crisis. So decide how many people you want to accommodate in a worst case scenario. Next decide how many months worth you want to store. We decided on 12 months. The LDS church has always advocated a 12 month supply. It's long-term enough for you to get through most temporary personal crises and short-term enough to be manageable in terms of rotation. But I have known families who just keep a month or two ahead and other families that have literally years worth of staples. Decide what YOU are preparing for and plan accordingly.

Now that you know how many people you expect to accommodate and how long you expect to accommodate them in a worst case scenario, you can start your itemized list of what you will be storing. It can be mind-boggling at first. Somehow the hardest things to estimate for 12 month supply are the very things that are the most fundamentally essential to our daily life. Toilet paper is a good example. It's something we ALL use daily and would all miss dearly if it wasn't there. Yeoldfurt and I jokingly refer to it as 'rolled gold.' I say jokingly, but we take it very seriously. Off the top of your head, if you were new to prepping, would you KNOW how much toilet paper you would need per person for a 12 month supply? Before last year, I wouldn't have. For most people, their initial estimate would tend to be high because their estimate would be influenced by their keen desire not to be caught short. But investing more than you need of one item at some point robs you of the ability to invest enough in some other need. So it's important to be as realistic as possible in your estimation of quantities for all things. Breaking everything down into a one week or even a one day supply will simplify the task.

When we were just starting out, Yeoldfurt found a list online somewhere and built our list from that using Excel spreadsheet software. If you're building the list on the computer, any software will do ...but I highly recommend using a spreadsheet so you can easily sort. Most wordprocessing softwares will sort also if you set them up correctly, but it's not as user friendly. If you have spreadsheet software, that's definitely the best way to go.

Every item on Yeoldfurt's initial list was in alphabetical order. I decided early on that I needed to reorganize it into categories if I was going to be able to use it week to week. I also found that it included a lot of things that we didn't really use. Every family is different and has different needs. I'm the shopper and the cook in our household, so the list had to make sense to ME if I was going to be able to use it efficiently. Every person is different. Every family is different. You have to make sure the list fits your situation.

These are the eight categories that I used to organize our list:

Beverages & Related Condiments
Canned/Dried Goods
Cereals/Grains/Pastas/Stuffing
Cleaning Products/Chemicals
Condiments/Sauces/Salad Dressings
Cooking/Staples & Mixes
Personal Hygiene
Paper/Plastics/Foil

An inventory list is only useful if it's kept current. When I pull something out of storage, I write it down on my grocery list for the following week. Then a day or two before I plan to shop, I add any items from the inventory list that we're short of goal on. When I get home from shopping, I update the quantities on the spreadsheet. It's really very easy once you get in the habit.

Hope, for a Change

There is such a glut of bad news around the world and still so much wrong in this country.  But our personal situation has improved so dramatically over the past few months that I can't help but feel a little optimistic as we approach the New Year.  It's been so long since I felt anything even remotely resembling optimism that I'm reveling in it.  That doesn't mean I think we should slow down on prepping.  Quite the opposite.  I'm more committed than ever to being prepared in every way possible ... for whatever may come. 

We had barely begun our prepper lifestyle in 2008 when our personal situation took a nosedive.  Tragedy seemed to be followed by one crisis after another.  Little did we know at the time, it would be a full sixteen months before things would turn around for us.  If we had not been prepping in earnest for those few months before the first crisis, we would not have come through as well as we have.   But even during the long hard months, we added substantially to our skills and knowledge.  During all but two or three of those months, we continually added to our preps as well.  Last month, we finally reached our goal of a full 12-month supply of food and personal necessities. Now if we can just keep it organized!  So this is my list for 2011. 

First, my Challenge Goals ...things I hope to accomplish, believe I can accomplish, but know I will have to dog myself to get them all done.

PURGE
This will be my biggest challenge goal for the coming year.  I want to purge, purge, purge, and then purge some more.  I have accumulated a lot of STUFF over the years that has just followed me from place to place but never gets used or appreciated.  These are things that are useful, just not being used.  I keep them because they are sentimental ...they were my mother's or my grandmother's or my dad's ...all of whom are no longer in this world.  I still have two sisters and as I sort through these things, I will give them first dibs on anything they want.  What they don't want, I will find new homes for or give to charity.  It is ridiculous and selfish to hang onto that much stuff if you are never going to use it. My mother, my grandmother and my dad would all heartily approve. 

GET ORGANIZED
Once I whittle things down, I want to get what I keep ORGANIZED.  I have a wonderful insulated, air conditioned storage shed that's subdivided into four rooms.  All of the doorways between the rooms are open but the visual separation of the walls lends organization to the space and gives me plenty of room for shelves.  The smallest of the rooms is approximately 10x10 and the slab in this room is about 8 inches lower than the other rooms.  We call it the Step Down and it's where we have our food stores.  Between the air conditioner and the insulation, everything stays dark and cool year 'round.  It's as close to 'root cellar' conditions as you can get in central Texas, and is ideal for long-term food storage.  The rest of the space is approximately 20x20, divided into three rooms.  Those three rooms are half to three-quarter full now, but everything is just piled in there in no apparent order.  The only reason I  have any clue as to what's in there is because I had to shuffle things around when we prepared the Step Down  for food storage earlier this year.  The food storage room looks great.  Now it's time to organize the rest of the space. 

MINIMIZE (me)
On a personal level, I want to shed some weight this coming year.  Besides the obvious health benefits, I have the motivation of a closet full of clothes that I used to be able to wear!   I started working on this back in June and am nearing the halfway mark.  I've lost enough to feel motivated and encouraged to continue.  And now that the two big EATING and COOKING holidays are behind us ...I'm hoping the last half of this goal will be easier than the first half! 

So much for my Challenge Goals, now for my Standard Goals.  These are the ones that will pretty much stay on the list year after year in one form or another because ...well,  because we are preppers.   That's what we do. 

RECONFIGURE RAISED BED GARDEN
It's currently arranged as one 16x16 bed with 'walk boards (1x12's) dividing it into eight sections.  Yeoldfurt wants to dismantle it and set it up as four separate beds with wider walkways between them.  He has some wonderful salvage goods from his work that will be used to line the walkways.  We are discussing ways to build them up (deeper) as well.  They are currently 8 inches deep, and I would like to get them to 12 or even 16 inches deep.  More 'leg room' for the veggies but also not as far to bend down for me!   Always thinkin'....

Our first year with the raised beds was 2009 and we had a nice harvest in spite of a delay in planting and all the emotional turmoil we had that year.  We had high hopes for the harvest in 2010, but were somewhat disappointed in the outcome.  The crops that did great the year before were so-so this year and the only thing that did really spectacular was the cucumbers.  I now have almost 40 pints of pickles from one 3x7 bed.  The weeds, the ants, and the grasshoppers were all a constant battle last year. We are hoping to improve the odds in our favor by reconfiguring the beds and improving accessibility while minimizing backstrain.  Yeoldfurt has been talking about a mobile dripline watering system and we also have a possible solution for the ants and weeds that is cheap, eco-friendly and recyclable. 

IMPROVE CHICKEN COOP
I'm still in the thinking stages about this one so Yeoldfurt might raise an eyebrow when he reads about it here.  My ideas are usually born half-baked and go through a gazillion or so gyrations before they finally evolve into a real plan.  I'm used to the way I think, so it doesn't bother me to start out with Plan A and finally end up doing Plan Q.  It's a woman's perrogative to change her mind, right?  It's another one of those Venus things.  But I've learned it's best to think on them for a long time before I approach Yeoldfurt.  The first few years of marriage taught me pretty quick that he stresses out way too much on these kinds of mental journeys.  So I try not to even mention my ideas to him until I'm a good ways into the alphabet and am pretty sure I'm done changing my mind about things. 

My ideas for the coop are not labor intensive or expensive, and nothing I can't do all by myself if Yeoldfurt wants to turn me loose on it.  I think we're both happy with the structure and design of the existing coop.  But we have had two chicken snakes stealing eggs so far this year.  There may have been more, we just didn't happen to catch them.  We know how they got into the coop and Yeoldfurt has taken some steps to rectify that.  But since I'm the one that's squeamish about snakes and really not wanting to deal with that again, I've got a few more ideas on the subject.  I also want to fix a 'nursery' in one end of the coop.  There's a section at one end that the previous owners here used to raise parakeets.  It's about 4x4 with a walk-through door leading into the main coop.  We have a free-standing broodbox that we bought as a kit from Tractor Supply (half price because the box was damaged ...only paid $25) and I want to modify it to mount to the wall in the small room in the coop.  Being a relatively small area, if I cover the walls with insulating material, it would be easy to keep warm as a nursery area for young chicks.  Just some ideas.  I also want to break up the floor in the coop, bring in new sand and just generally clean things up.  See?  Nothing real major! 

DEBT
Get rid of it.  That's the goal. We don't have any other than the mortgage and we want to get rid of that as soon as possible.  We have a 30 year fixed rate mortgage with a decent rate, but I would have loved to have refinanced when rates were at their lowest last summer.  We pay extra every month and are on track to pay off the 30 year mortgage in less than 20 years ...but being able to refinance at an even lower rate would have made the pay off that much quicker.  Now that Yeoldfurt is employed again, we will talk to a local bank (locally owned and on the 'good bank' list) about refinancing.  Even if we only drop a fraction of a percent on the interest rate, it will be worth it to get away from the BIG BANK. 

INCREASE
I'm happy with where our food stores are now.  A 12-month supply is as much as I want to try to keep track of to ensure nothing gets wasted.  But I would like to add to our cash reserves and increase any nonperishable non-foodstuffs ...oh, say ammo and reloading supplies, for instance?  Now I know Yeoldfurt's eyes will light up at that!   Ha! 

NEW SKILLS / KNOWLEDGE
You can never have enough of either of these things, in my opinion.  Last year, we learned to make our own laundry soap.  This year, I hope to add shampoo, conditioner and liquid body wash to our soap making repertoire.  We still have a dozen or so dead trees from last year's drought that need to be felled and Yeoldfurt has promised to let me give it a whirl.  Not that cutting a tree down is rocket science, but having it land where you want it ...or not land where you don't want it requires some knowledge and skill and I think it would be something useful for me to learn.  But I'm pretty sure he'll want me to practice on the ones farthest from the house and fences though ...yeah, I'm pretty sure.

So that's it, my formal list for the coming year.  I decided to post it partly to help me think it through and partly in hopes it will keep me honest.  I've never been much more than haphazard about New Year's Resolutions ...either setting them or following up when I do set them.  But maybe if I get serious about setting some goals ...publicly committing to my goals ...just maybe I'll be more serious about the 'following up' part as well. 

So for 2011, let's prepare for the worst but hope for the best.  May we all have a blessed New Year! 

The Devil is in the Details

Yeoldfurt and I are 'list people' in just about every aspect of our lives.  We have Grocery lists, To Do lists, and Wish lists so something as important as food storage, of course, had to have a list too.  Yeoldfurt set up our original inventory list on a spreadsheet almost two years ago.  He gave every item its own row with five columns.  The first column gives a detailed description of the item and units of measure (i.e., pinto beans / lbs or tea bags / total).  The second column is the amount of that item we estimate we would use in one year's time.  The third column is the quantity we have on-hand of that item, and the fourth column is the difference between the two.  The fourth column is the one we refer to most when we make our shopping list.  The last column is the date that item was updated.  He alphabetized the whole list by the first column.  Alphabetized by item has worked okay.  But since I'm usually the shopper and almost always the cook, I thought it would be more user-friendly for me if I categorized the items similar to the way a grocery store is set up and Yeoldfurt let me do my thing.  So I revamped his spreadsheet, putting each item into a  category ...similar to the way the aisles are categorized in a grocery store ...then alphabetized the items within that category.  I like this set up much better.

Since our food storage is in a separate building on our property and I'm usually making my grocery list late at night or in the pre-dawn hours, it's important to me that I can trust our inventory list.  So when we moved all of our food storage to the new location a few weeks ago, I did a complete count after everything was set up and now am totally confident that our inventory list is accurate.  It's a great feeling to really know what you have and what you still need to get more of. 

This weekend, we are going to make a run to Sam's and complete our inventory ...or try.  Hopefully we won't break the bank.  We are up to goal on more than half of the items on the list and not too far short on others.  So I'm hopeful.  Knowing a twelve month supply of food and all essentials are safely in storage would sure be a great way to start the new year. 

They say the devil is in the details, so if you have food stored, I urge you to keep it well organized and maintain an accurate, up to date inventory.  Once the crisis is upon you, it's too late to get organized.  You can try ...you probably would try ...but you won't be clear-headed and you won't make decisions as well as you would if you weren't under stress.  Whether you're faced with a personal set back like the loss of an income or a much bigger crisis like regional interruptions of goods and services, the better you are organized and prepared, the better you will fare. 

Baked Fresh from the Freezer

About a year ago, I started making my own bread to save money.  I found a couple of recipes I liked and would make one or two batches every other weekend or so, baking the loaves and putting them in the freezer.  But we have limited freezer space and bread takes up considerable room.  Since bread dough before the final rise is only approximately half the volume of a baked loaf, I started trying to figure out how to freeze bread dough that could be baked as needed.

My first resource is always my network prepper friends, but no one had any advice to offer on the subject.  My research online was somewhat successful, but a few sites said any bread dough could be frozen before the final rise and others said you had to double the yeast in the recipe as some of the yeast would die off in the freezing process.  Yeast is relatively expensive and doubling any ingredient in a recipe increases the cost of the final product.  Since I was making my own bread in the first place as a money saving measure, increasing my cost didn't appeal to me.  So I decided I would experiment with my usual recipe, using just the normal amount of yeast.

For my first experiment, I made a batch of Pepper Bread dough just as I always do and, before the final rise, I put the dough in a loaf-size baggie and placed it a loaf pan, then put the pan in the freezer.  I patted the bagged dough flat after it was in the pan so it was no more than an inch thick as some websites suggested it would freeze and thaw more evenly at that thickness.  About three hours later, the bread dough was frozen solid so I removed the loaf pans and just left the frozen dough in baggies in the freezer.  The baggies of frozen dough took up only half as much freezer space as one loaf of baked bread ...my first objective of saving freezer space was looking successful!

At 6:00am the next morning when I was ready to leave for work, I put one of the baggie of the dough in the refrigerator to begin thawing.  When I got home from work at 4:30, the dough was soft and pliable.  I placed it in a greased loaf pan in my dehydrator to begin the final rise.  An hour and a half later, it had doubled in size and was ready to bake.  When Yeoldfurt got home that night, he had fresh-baked bread with his supper.

For my second experiment, I decided to try freezing the dough in two- to four-inch balls so I could make individual or cloverleaf rolls.  I froze the two-inch dough balls two to a sandwich-size baggie and the four-inch balls one to a sandwich-size baggie.  Then I put all of the sandwich baggies of dough balls in a larger loaf-size baggie.  When I wanted hot rolls for a meal, I put however many sandwich-size baggies I needed in the refrigerator overnight to thaw, then let them rise and baked them fresh the day I was serving them.  I used a muffin tin to bake the four-inch balls and a mini-loaf tin to bake the two-inch balls (two balls per mini-loaf slot).  If you want cloverleaf dinner rolls, place three two-inch balls to a muffin slot. 

Use your imagination.  Remember pull-apart loaves of bread?  Just use the four-inch balls, pat them flat and stack them vertically in a greased loaf pan.  When the loaf is baked, the individual segments will pull apart easily into slices. 

Making bread dough can get messy, especially in a small kitchen.  Being able to make a double or triple batch and just freeze the dough for when you need it means you only make and clean up one mess instead of two or three.  I'm all for saving clean up time!

Catching Up

I'm not sure if anyone noticed but I haven't posted in about three weeks now.  We decided to take some time off and catch up on a lot of little things around here that have needed attention.  We finished preparing the new food storage area finally and will begin moving our food stores there next weekend.   It will take us the better part of a day to get it all of it moved and set up in the new storage area, but there are benefits for both of us in making the change.  For me, the new location is at least twice as much space and solely dedicated to the preps and food storage.  It's also about fifty steps closer and over time, those fifty steps can really add up.  For Yeoldfurt, the biggest bonus is getting full use of his shop again.  Every man should have his own shop and he should not have to share the space with non-shop items.  That's my philosophy anyway and I'm pretty sure he agrees.

We're still chipping away at all the downed brush and limbs scattered along the driveway from the ten pine trees that died in last year's drought.  They were 60-70 feet tall and were only topped about 30 feet up the trunk.  So after all the brush is cleared, the trunks will have to be cut down, cut up and hauled to the burn pile as well.   It may take us all winter to finish completely but it will eventually get done. 

Last week was a little rough for Yeoldfurt because I was out of town all week taking care of our new granddaughter.  Her parents have both gone back to work and they let me come and stay with her so we could delay her debut at daycare by one more week.  I had a wonderful time with all of them and will cherish the memories, but I sure was happy to see Yeoldfurt when I got back home.  I think he was happy to see me too.  We share the chores around this place and when one or the other of us is gone for more than a day or two, it gets to be quite a load on the one that's left behind.  I got home Friday night and we took it pretty easy on Saturday ...just spent the day together and enjoyed each other's company.  Yeoldfurt did manage to get some maintenance and repair work done on the electric fence in the front paddock Saturday afternoon.   We need to do the same in the big pasture too.  That's another job that will require several weekends to finish up. 

When you live out in the country, there is never a shortage of projects waiting for your attention.  On the agenda for the next few weekends is turning and mulching the raised bed garden, making some minor improvements to the chicken coop, and a final mow and cleanup of the yard.  We have a very short 'winter' in this part of Texas.  The cold weather doesn't last that long or get that cold and snow is a real rarity here.  But you can always tell it's winter because the lawn doesn't grow, so you don't have to mow!  It's a good thing too since that leaves more time for all the holiday baking and festivities.

Today was my first day back at work after the week long vacation.  My desk was in better shape than I was expecting, but then maybe my co-workers were just hiding the REAL PILES from me so I wouldn't panic on my first day back.  Hopefully not.   We eat a cold salad for supper several times a week and that's all Yeoldfurt is expecting today.  But I think I'll make him a grilled cheese on some of the homemade pepper bread as a surprise.  He loves grilled cheese and I think it will make him smile.  

Balanced Prepping

You can have years of food stored up and die within a few days if you don't also have clean, drinkable water.  If you have access to good water, you will ultimately starve to death without food ...but it will take much longer.  So which is more important, food or water?  They both are.  One is just a band-aid without the other.

The initial obvious challenge to prepping is finding the financial resources to accumulate more than you actually need right now.  Definitely a challenge in this depressed economy.  The next obvious challenge is working out a storage and rotation system for your stored goods so you don't waste anything.  But possibly the biggest challenge is finding a balance in the things that you store.  Obviously, we need food to survive.  Most of us want/need firearms and ammunition both for hunting and self-defense and quite a few other tools such as mills, dehydrators and hand tools that would allow us to be self-sufficient in a shtf situation.  One thing many people recognize but neglect to store, however, is water.  Water is essential to all life ...plant or animal.  It doesn't take a shtf situation to drive that point home either.  A few days of  interrupted power and essential services will convince you pretty quickly of the value of good, clean water. 

In spite of personal challenges, we have made some serious headway in our food storage.  Our personal situation is improving so we will, hopefully, be able to do a lot more in that regard.  But now I want to give some serious thought to long-term water storage as well.

We are fortunate to live out in the country and have two stock tanks on our land.  The larger one is a catch pond, meaning it is not spring-fed but is situated so that it catches run-off when it rains.  Except during prolonged drought situations like last year, it always has some water in it.  The smaller pond ...really small ...maybe 30 x 40-foot surface area when it's full ...seems to be spring-fed as it has never gone completely dry.  Our neighbor whose family has lived here for generations says his dad had a shallow well for watering his garden just across the fence from that smaller pond.  It is possible that the water from that old well is feeding the pond.

We are members of a rural water company here that provides our household water.  It's cheap, usually less than $30/month, though it's always smart to have a backup water resource.  But it would take a lot to make either of our ponds a safe source of drinking water.  The water in those ponds would best be described as green slime-aid.  That quality must somehow enhance it's appeal to the horses because, although we keep a 100-gallon trough of clean water available for the horses 24/7, they seem to prefer drinking from the ponds.

I have started researching water storage and find it a little frustrating that the recommended amount per person per year varies so much.  Most sites claim that a person needs a minimum of one-half to one gallon of water per day just to stay hydrated.  Let's err on the side of abundance and say one gallon per person per day for drinking. More than that will be needed though because some water is required for cooking and cleaning up after we cook and, even in a shtf situation, we will want to take care of at least minimal personal hygiene needs.  So, for simplicity sake, I will use a goal of 1000 gallons per person per year ...just under three gallons per person per day.   Of course, in a shtf situation, water conservation will be taken to a whole new standard.  Or maybe it would be more accurate to say an 'old standard' ...as the water conservation practices of a few centuries ago would put even the most frugal among us to shame. 

The old saying 'don't throw out the baby with the bath water' has historical roots.  Centuries before indoor plumbing was the norm, the concept of bathing on a regular basis was slightly different than it is today.  Most of us think nothing of bathing daily and even more than once in a day if the need arises.  But in the olden days, baths were a luxury reserved for warmer weather and special occasions.  It is why weddings in June were so popular, because it was almost always warm enough by June for everyone to have a bath!  But even aside from less frequent bathing, bathwater was shared.  It had to be hauled from it's source ...river, well, pond, whatever the source was ...and in large enough quantities to fill a small tub.  Once indoors, it had to be heated and since it would cool down quickly, being the first one in the tub was a privilege usually reserved for the man of the house.  I think generally the mother followed her husband in the bath line and then the children with the oldest going first.  When the last member of the family had bathed, the baby being the youngest ...the tub of water had to be hauled outside and dumped.  By the time several had bathed in succession, the water was presumably a bit murky with soap and whatever had been washed off the previous bathers ...hence the saying 'don't throw out the baby with the bath water!'  All of this to make a point that if we are in a situation that requires us to live off of our stores, we would be wise to ration them very carefully. 

The way I look at it, water supply is a three-sided problem.  We need a source, preferably several sources and a way to safely store what we have and a yardstick with which to determine proper rationing.  The sources will vary for everyone, depending on their geographical and societal location.  But nearly everyone in this country these days has access to municipal water or a private well.  So start thinking about ways to store up for tomorrow what you have such ready access to today.  Depending on climate, all of us have access to a significant amount of rainwater as well.  Start looking at rainwater collection and purification methods.  They don't have to be fancy or be a high dollar investment to be functional.  Think outside of the box.  As far as guidelines for how much to store and how much to allot per person in a shtf situation, I think the Mormons are ahead of us.  They are generally very willing to share what they know, even offering workshops and seminars in some areas on this and similar subjects.  Sure, they would be happy to share their beliefs and convictions with you too.  But, in my experience, they don't push anything except the information you came to them to learn.  So look around your area and learn what you can from them. 

Back to my current premise that 1000 gallons per year per person is a reasonable assumption, how many month's supply is a reasonable amount to store?  Most of the websites I've researched so far recommend a three to six month supply.  How much you decide to store will depend on several factors, one of the most important of which is the probability of your being able to replenish what you use in a shtf situation.  If you live in a remote area of the desert, you might want/need to store more than if you live in a rural area with access to lakes, ponds or streams.  Evaluate your situation and plan accordingly.

For us, I think a three month supply ...approximately 500 gallons is both feasible and reasonable.  We are blessed to have a secure cool storage area in the form of a concrete slab, well-insulated, air-conditioned shed.  This is the same shed we are revamping for our food storage.  It just makes practical sense to store the water in the same area.  Another recent development in our favor is that Yeoldfurt's new employer is a commercial bakery that literally discards 55-gallon drums on a regular basis.  These drums are food-grade plastic with two-inch fill drains in one end and they are free for the asking to the employees.  What a perk!  To store 500 gallons, we would need ten drums.  The plan at this point is to set the drums on their sides on a low workbench in the shop.  Setting them up on the bench makes them easier to access to draw from or fill.  I have an idea for 'plumbing' them together in sequence too so that we would fill from the drum on one end and draw from the drum at the other end.  Not having measured anything yet, I'm estimating the bench will hold at least six drums and we would have four additional drums stacked upright along the wall for additional storage.  These ten drums, for as long as we could keep them full, would be our sole source for drinking and cooking water and a supplemental source for wash water. 

Rainwater will hopefully supply our pets and gardening needs and, hopefully, our washing needs as well.  This area has been in some stage of drought for the past five years at least, last year being the worst of the five.  But in a 'normal' rainfall year, a good collection system should be sufficient to take care of the vegetable garden and the pets.  We have one dog which, especially in a shtf situation, will be pretty important to our preps and security so we need to plan for her needs.  There are two outside cats that do a decent job of keeping the small vermin in check so we will keep them watered if we can too.  Rainwater should be sufficient for all that.   If we are able to accumulate and store enough rainwater, it will be our primary source for wash water ...selves and laundry.  The horses though are a whole 'nother problem.

Our six horses are confined to a small paddock about 12 hours out of the day with free access to hay and water.  In the winter, they only drink about 25 gallons from the trough in a 12-hour period.  In the hotter months, they drink 50-75 gallons in the same time period.  In a shtf situation, we may have to amend our routine so they are confined to the paddock with the small pond overnight ...all the green slime-aid they can drink but filling a 100-gallon trough on a daily basis would be a practical impossibility and downright foolhardy if we were filling it from our stores.

What's your water situation?