Dear My Future Man

Worry not about food for I make it from scratch! You will never go hungry.

Baked chicken fingers. Flaky buttermilk biscuits. Garden fresh green beans from my garden. Can a girl ask for more?
Including buttermilk biscuits in the menu was inspired by the Mobile Home Woman when she was determined to make biscuits. They were so easy! But one BIG tip. Make sure your baking powder isn't old! My biscuits barely rose and were dense.
As for the breading for the chicken I used about four palms full of plain bread crumbs, about 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp parsley flakes, 1/4 tsp pepper, and 2 tbs parmesan cheese. Then I dredged the strips of chicken through milk, flour, milk, then the breadcrumb mixture. Don't forget to lightly grease your pan!
Edit Note: To cut my biscuits I did not use a biscuit cutter. Instead I used a glass cup dipped in a little flour to cut them.

Homesteading Fever

I've been very lazy lately. I have no idea why. Suddenly, I have no desire to cook, clean, or work in the garden. I'm calling it Homesteading Fever. It's where you stick to homesteading then slowly you begin to get tired of it then end of doing nothing. I'm trying hard to counter the effects on me. To help I made two rhubarb-strawberry pies.
It' nothing like a pie bakin' to git yer 'omesteadin' feet o gin! I'll post pictures soon. I found my camera chord!
I've been reading a lot lately, mostly trying to hid from the ugly muggy, humid weather we have been having.
I managed to plant my pumpkins and green bean but nothing else. Oh well. They say to start small anyway and after all of this year's short comings, I don't blame myself. Shit happens, right?
As much as I hate summer's mugginess, I'm going to try to keep pulling my ideas together.

It's getting hot in here!

Progress on the garden is slow. This weekend I plan to plant my crops, try to deal with the weeds between the rows, and reinforce the compost pile.
I've been busy with other things, mostly reading and books. I've been trading and buying books. It's a good addiction that really doesn't that much if you know were to look for great deals. If any of you decide to join paperbackswap.com use my username catsnbooks as a referance. I've got about 15 new books to read.
I have really done that much cooking because my mom deciedes to cook certain things on the nights that I plan to cook dinner. That needs to be worked out.
I'll update this weekend and see how far I get with my garden.
Almost forgot! Tomorrow is opening day for my town's farmer's market. I'll check it out before I go to work.

UGH! NO!

I came home from work yesterday and checked on my lettuce. The window box of lettuce that I grew from seed fell on my other lettuce plants. The box was on a sort of surdy surface and had held up nice during the really windy weather we had a little while a go. My thought are that a car had play a role in this.
Lucky, the green lettuce will survive. They're not crushed too bad. The endives in the window boxes flowered so I had to pull those. I think is actually will benifit the lettuces so they can get bigger. We'll see.
I still need to plant the garden very soon!
P.S. The farmer's market opens next Friday so maybe I'll go and get some pictures.

Join Jamie's Quest and Sign the Petition!

Come fellow food loves and join us! Show your support and love by signing Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution petition or by texting "Jamie" to 222888 to help change the way we eat. I'm not asking for money or a date to the prom, just a few moments of your time to sign it. By signing it your mind will rest, assured that the children of America will have balanced diets in the school system. Please show that you care and sign!

Beginnings of Beautiful Relationship

I believe Wednesdays are going to start to be my days to cook. To cook what ever I want for dinner. Why not? I'm itching to get in the kitchen a learn. Why stop me? I'm so much different than I was a year ago. It amazes me. Heck, I year ago I still wasn't cleaning up after myself properly. Now, dishes get done and the kitchen is cleaned. Not to mention good foo made.

Above was tonights dinner. Panko crusted chicken, oven fries, and a mixed green salad with leaf lettuce, carrots, broccoli, green peppers, cucumbers, and radishs. See? I can make a well balanced meal. The only thing that I would change is the ketchup.

I love ketchup and eat it with just about everything. Fries, hot dogs, hamburgers, almost anything chicken, meat loaf, ect. But the high fructose corn syrup in it just makes me uncomfortable. According to Dietfacts.com, Heiz ketchup has 15 calories per tablespoon. It's really not bad but the third ingrediant is HFCS (high frutose corn syrup) and then after that corn syrup. Wasn't the HFCS enough? Just pump it for of more sugar! Four grams, in fact, of it.

On one of my trips to Lancaster last year I picked up a bottle of ketchup that was made by the local Amish. It just wasn't my thing. So I'm now on the search for a good commerical ketcup. Now, Annie's Naturals ketchup sounds like a winner. No HFCS just sugar. The nutritional facts state the same 15 calories per tablespoon but only 2 grams of sugar.

Wait...so both products are 15 calories per tablespoon but the one with corn syrup is higher in sugar content than the other. Interesting. Can this be the answer to why American hinies are getting larger? I think this calls for farther investigation.

Eat More Veg

Veg. That has a nice ring to it. Better than vegetables and more trendy than veggies. Maybe if we call it 'veg' more kiddies will eat it? Doubt it. But maybe if we were different, if we thre caution to the wind and prepared it differently surely there would be more takers. Instead of boiling and steaming carrots how about roasting it. Such foreign words these are for most people.
I'm tired of the same old same old steaming corn, green beans, carrots and such. Let's take veg to the next level. Veg does not have to be boring and, honestly, we all could eat a little more of them.
Above, is a picture of what lunch was today; a ham and coleslaw sandwich on dark german wheat bread. Good? You bet! I used purple and green cabbage with carrots in a light mayonassie, dijon mustard, vinegar sauce.
In one of my recent posts I talk about the roasted chicken dinner I had made with roasted carrots, onions, and potatoes. Try coating aspargus in olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper before roasting in the oven at 350 degrees until tender.
See, veg doesn't have to be boring. It just takes a little effort to create something different.

Seedlings and Such

About two weeks ago I started my California Wonder sweet peppers. They are doing excellent! I'll have to rig a plant light for them elsewhere when I start my cabbage. I need to check my lettuce tomorrow and continue working on getting the garden in working order. There is plenty of wood to be collected and stacked. Only then will I be able to start other projects. First things first, I need to built the compost pile. Then we'll do the fence. I can't wait, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Garden Plans 2010

My garden's small mostly because my dad didn't extend the fence post past the raised beds. This year I'll be growing beets cucumbers, carrots, cabbage, pumpkins for pie, green peppers, and green beans. At the bottom is a list of things that I will need to do when the weather starts to warm up. The most important is getting that fence up! Weeding and havesting will be a lot easier once the fence is in. I'm thinking about building some cold frames as well but that wont get done until fall. The only kind of cucumbers that I will be growing will be for slicing since I can get decent pickling cucumbers from a local farm.

Happy New Year!

I was going to stay up late last night but I got tired while watching The Muppets' Letters to Santa. But I was thinking about all that I want to do in 2010. My list is long so I hope I get to most of it.
This year I want to:
Bring reusable bags to stores. Made easy by a bag that fits nicely into my purse.
Shop more locally. My alpaca socks where the best $20 I ever spent.
Get more canning done. My stock of blackberry jam is nearly depleted so I'd like to do some more jams.
Be a little less ambisious with the garden. Planting only things that we will eat and things that are not ambunant around here.
Visit local farms more often for produce. I learned that getting your produce straight from the farm is the freshest.
Get into more crafts. I would really like to try making soap.
Learn how to do basic maintance stuff such as changing spark plug in a car and changing the oil.
Also, I'd like to read more and be on the computer less.

Happy New Year Everyone!

The Garden

This morning, before it got too hot out, I took pictures of what I like to thinks is my homestead, as least is my homestead for now. As I've probably mentioned before, I'm still quite young and live with my parents. Since I live with my parents I'm restricted in what I can do with my lifestyle. In other words I'm not allowed to have chickens, can a winter supply of food, eat 95% local, or run my garden with out someone else stepping in and doing what they want with it.

With is what happened this season. I had it all planned out, carefully not over doing it, seeds bought and all. My dad and I were suppose to put a fence up around our raised beds. Three posts in and he didn't to the forth. Needless to say the fence was never finished but I was still determined to get something into the ground. I planted bush peas but they never came up. I didn't give up so I planted bush beans which yeilded about six plants that are yet producing. During the winter I didn't really feel like doing seedlings for sweet peppers so I bought six plants from Walmart and those are also still producing. Then the fence issue came up. We ended up putting scrap pieces of chicken wire up around everything which makes it hard to weed. Okay, so not a problem right? Then came the tomatoes. In my plan I didn't include tomatoes because everyone around here does tomotoes. My dad never passes up anything free so he planted as many tomato plants as he could, about eight, that covered a row and a half of potential beet and squash plots. I also see not logic in planting a blueberry bush in raised beds in the middle of the garden.

This is the back view of my green peppers. Notice how they are protected.

My only cucumber plant next to some random rot; grass clipps and such. Another thing I need to do is designate a compost pile. It's everywhere right now.One of my green bean plants. Still being choked my weeds. I need to mulch better next year.

I'll post the rest as a slideshow.