Aug 29, come take a walk with me

If you look close you can see cattle in the distance.

Curious dirty pigs, these warm days often finds them laying in the little mud hole they made from the drinking trough.

Lovely plumes 

Lovely butterfly,and there are also the ugly catapillers eating the plant.Guess I’ll let them live if them don’t destroy the plant to much.

Dragonfly

Knockout rose

Little lizard

Beautiful dead butterfly that I found.

Large fluffy clouds

And this is what I have been working on this past week ,will be finishing up the job this week. Grape juice.

Not much sewing done this week,did get three rows together on the log cabin and a little beanie crocheted. Here is grandson Brent trying it out.

Have a good week! Deb

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Aug.21…. Yogurt making,and a unwanted critter

I make yogurt ,have made a lot of yogurt in my time. When the children were all at home ,and we had a cow, I made yogurt by the quarts. I now only do it in pints. It is a good food to have on hand when Leona is having a bad day ,and her throat muscles are weak. Here is how I do it,and it is really very easy to do.

I put two qts of whole milk in a heavier pan with 1 tablespoon of unflavored gelatin . Let it set for about 3 minutes so the gelatin can  absorb the cold milk so it mixes in the milk good. Cook the milk until it reaches the temperature of 180 degrees Fahrenheit. I stir the milk often so as not to stick to the pan.

Remove pan from burner, add 3/4 cup of sugar,with 1/2 teaspoon  of vanilla . Stir well,and place pan in cool water in the sink. Bring the temperature down to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Add 3/4 cup of yogurt with live ,active cultures. Plain Greek yogurt works great. I freeze extra in 3/4 cup proportions for when I run out of my own yogurt. Just thaw out the yogurt before using. Pour into pint jars,I like to use glass as I can make sure it is a good clean jar. Then it is to be kept warm at 110 degrees Fahrenheit for 6 hrs. You can use your oven,or electric pressure cooker,or in kitchen sink with warm water which is a bit more time consuming for you have to watch the temperature of the water close. If using an oven put jars in a bowl of water it helps even the temperature around the jars. I have also used a cooler with a heating pad in it ,once again one needs to keep an eye on temperature if it gets too warm then you will have more of a custard than yogurt ,also your cultures are killed.

After 6 hrs refrigerate the yogurt… Enjoy with what ever topping you like.

And now the unwanted critter!! This was in the shed where the four wheelers and tractors are kept. Thankfully our little Jack Russell is more alert as to what is around her feet then I am! A sharp alarm bark brought the male Jack Russell mix to her aid and me scrambling out of the way!! Needless to say the dogs took care of the snake for me in short order. Which I learned later was a red belly water snake.

Meet Wiggles..who sounded the alarm

She wouldn’t stand still long enough for me to get a good picture.

The log cabin blocks are done . I was laying some down to play with how I want it to look. The first way of laying down some blocks has no reason or rhyme.it was supposed too but I needed more of a sharp contrast of colors instead of a scappy color mix.

The next layout had more of a pattern, which I like.

Have a wonderful week friends, Deb

August 14th, tech problems and a relaxing summer eve

Why is it that a computer or printer decides to go on the blink when you are in need of  them right at that moment?!

I have been working on the log cabin block with the pile adding up,when the printer decided that it no longer wanted to print newspaper foundation paper that I use. 😖 now what.. I didn’t want to wait until it was fixed or have to buy a new printer.. So how could I work with what I had? 🤔 then I had a light bulb moment when I remember reading long time ago how a quilter used her sewing machine to mark lines. If I copied off on regular printer paper which it would still print ,I could use that as a pattern guide! 

So I took and unthreaded the machine,removed the bobbin,added a size 14 needle. I added ten newspaper foundation paper to one regular printed paper.

Sewed the lines as you can see. This is how it looked when finished.

Now all I needed to do was letter or number the steps in order of which lines were to be sewn first ,also which were to be of a darker fabric or lighter fabric. Worked great!

I now have 100 blocks done.😀

This evening was warm with a soft wind, flowers ,wonderful clouds,and a moon. Oh yes,also a traveling locust.. (Sorry folks it’s a Cicada)

Can you see the little spider hiding?

And one needs to add a sunset.. Right?! This was taken several days before though.

Wishing all a lovely week, Deb

Aug.7th, Molasses cookies and log cabin blocks

Can’t you just smell the air ,filled with cinnamon,cloves,ginger,and molasses mixed with the faint smell of wood smoke?!

In my life time I have made many cookies, chocolate chip, sugar cookies,raisin filled cookies, kiffles, oatmeal cookies,and Christmas cookies with icing and sprinkles. My family has enjoyed them all but the cookie that is most loved in this home is the plain looking molasses crinkle.

In the first few years of our married life,times were a little hard,but we had enough means to raise our on meat. So lard was used a lot for baking.. The cookies got even better when we had room for a cow. She was a Guernsey,so we had lots of butter.

I have used king syrup , blackstrap,dark Karo ,and local cane syrup. They all work ,with each syrup giving their own taste to the cookie. 

The dough keeps in the frig for awhile if one wishes to only make a few cookies at a time for fresh eating. They also freeze well and keep their freshness if frozen right after they cool off. 

These cookies are also very good when half of the cookie is dipped in white chocolate.

Here is the recipe..

1 1/2 cup of shortening

2 cups of sugar 

2 eggs

2 tsp.baking soda

1 tsp of cloves

1/2 tsp ginger

2 tsp of cinnamon 

3 3/4 cups of flour .. 4 if using all butter.

1 tsp of salt

Put ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Roll into an one inch ball then roll in sugar or powder sugar 

Bake at 350 for 8 to 10 min. 

Enjoy 🙂

I have been working also on log cabin scrappy blocks. Eighty of them are finished with 40 more to go.

Have a lovely week , Deb