Peanut Butter Chewies

(Repost from my old food blog)



These were my favorite dessert when they were in our school lunch. I got this recipe from a dear friend about 25 years ago and still love them! When I make a batch, they don't even last 24 hours here.

Peanut Butter Chewies
1 cup sugar
1 cup light Karo syrup
1 TBSP butter (or margarine)
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
7 cups corn flakes cereal

In a medium sauce pan, mix sugar and Karo together. Bring to a boil and add butter. Stir together then mix in peanut butter.

Pour mixture into large bowl. Stir in corn flakes until completely coated.

Drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper. I lightly mash mine into balls so they stick together better. Let cool and enjoy!

Makes about 30 chewies.

Steakhouse Salad

(Repost from my old food blog)

This is my interpretation of a salad from a major steakhouse restaurant chain.

Steakhouse Salad
Iceberg lettuce (I cut the head into 6 wedges)
Cherry tomatoes
Purple onion
Chunky blue cheese salad dressing
Blue cheese crumbles
and…
Balsamic Reduction Glaze

Source

I had no idea about the Balsamic Reduction Glaze, so off to google I went. I found this recipe & tutorial. Mine turned out perfectly. However, it took mine nearly 4 hours. I think I cooked it just way too low in the beginning, once I turned the heat up a tiny bit, it thickened right up. Of course you can purchase Balsamic Glaze ready-made at the grocery store.

Place the lettuce wedge on a plate. Place a few cherry tomatoes along the sides of the lettuce. Garnish with a few slivers of sliced purple onion. Drizzle chunky blue cheese dressing over everything, to your taste. Drizzle glaze over everything, lightly. Even let a few drops hit the plate for “presentation”. Sprinkle a few blue cheese crumbles on top. There you have it! Enjoy!

Food and Recipes!

I have had a food blog for quite some time, but it gets neglected so badly.

So many are successful with having a separate food blog. Not me. I have decided to combine it with this blog, so I can share food and recipes here and keep things stream-lined.

Source

All of the recipes from over there will be moved here through the course of the next week or two, so be sure to keep to keep an eye out for the goodies!

Let's go for a walk in photos

I was outside in the yard this morning taking photos and thought to myself that all these pretty photos would make a great post to show you around my yard/flowerpot garden.

Not looking great, but I still have hope. I had been neglecting all my little pretty plants and they almost died on me. A little Miracle Grow and they will look great really soon.

Pat-a-Pan squash blossoms. Never heard of it before, but the fruit is cute and edible, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Baby ears of popcorn for David! I honestly think my man can eat popcorn every single day and never tire of it.

Baby Big Bertha bell pepper.

A tiny little marigold flower trying to do it's job as a natural insecticide.

Rhubarb is something entirely new to me. Never grown it, never even eaten anything made with it. Oh the places we will go things we will do to grow food.

Baby heirloom tomato. This variety (can't remember the name) is the semi-equivalent to Roma.

Babies that I started from seeds. I know one is squash, maybe two. The other, I am not certain what it is.

Strawberries!

 

 

Harvest time for many herbs again!  Chamomile, Lemon Verbena, Oregano, Sage and Thyme.

See the baby Basil plant?!

Three different corn varieties, Okra, Cantaloupe and Watermelon(I think). Must re-pot all of this very soon!

New growth on the rose bushes that I nearly let die.

Well, that was my morning walk around the yard. Hopefully in a week or two, everything will perk up and look wonderful and provide lots of fresh food for our family.

Pure blue heaven

 I just finished up making a batch of homemade Blueberry syrup and canning it.

Wow was it a messy task to do. Then I finally decided that it was too much work and to much waste of the berries to make syrup and I just wouldn't do it again.

Wrong answer sista!!! This stuff is out-of-this-world delicious! I tasted just a tiny bit out of the pan after I filled the jars and OH MY GOODNESS! Immediately, I knew I would be going to the store tomorrow, the last day of the sale on blueberries, and get tons more!

I used about 8-9 cups of fresh blueberries (5 pints). I did a quick process in my food processor to chop them up some. Then I put them in a large pan with 2 Tablespoons of fresh squeezed lemon juice. On low/medium heat, I let this simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring often. After allowing the berry mixture to cool down some, I put them in my wire mesh strainer to drain out all of the clear juice.

{Side note here} I should have used cheesecloth, but I couldn't find mine at the time. Instead I used a paper towel to line the strainer and it.took.forever.

After draining the berries to get out all the juice possible (I got between 2.5 and 3 cups), mix in 4.5 cups of sugar and cook over low/medium heat for about 5-8 minutes or until all sugar is completely dissolved and mixture is bubbly. I ended up with 5.5 eight ounce jars of syrup.

Pour into your sterile jars and process in a hot water bath canner for 10 minutes.

I never dreamed it would be so good.

It is late and I was hungry after finishing so...I HAD to try this beautiful syrup.There was this one jar that wasn't full, so I just drizzled some on my organic yogurt.

So delicious!

I will be headed out tomorrow morning for more blueberries. I refuse to go through so much mess next time I make the syrup, though.


This recipe works for any type of berries.


Hope your week is wonderful!

It's that time again

Canning season has begun at our little homestead.

Yesterday I made 8 half-pints of apricot jam. I found this recipe online. I used it as a guide, along side the recipe in the No sugar/low sugar Sure-Jell. I used the 1/2c. lemon juice from the online recipe in place of the 3/4c of water that the Sure-Jell calls for. I also used the online recipe tip of using 20% extra Sure Jell. I had 3.5 pounds of apricots and used 4.5 cups of sugar. It made 8 half-pints of gorgeous jam!

Then, last night, I made salsa! Two years ago I purchased a mix to make kosher dill pickles, by Mrs. Wages, at the Supercenter. Those pickles were AMAZING! So I tried the salsa mix by the same company. I haven't tried any yet, but it looks and smells yummy!

This batch I made with canned, petite diced tomatoes. This was an option on the package of mix. Six cans, 1/2c vinegar and 1 packet of mix. Fresh salsa!

Over the course of the next few days, I will be making Strawberry jam, Peach jam and Grape jam. I'm loving it!

Come and see...

My almost garden!

Since it is not quite time, here in the Texas panhandle, to put the garden in, all of the plants I have bought so far are in pots. Not to mention, I haven't even gotten my raised beds ready yet. I used "Mel's Mix" in my pots, as that is what I will use in my raised beds. Mel's Mix is the growing medium used/created by Mel Bartholomew, writer of Square Foot Gardening. This is the method I am using to garden this year.

At harvest time, with just the plants above, we will have 7 types of fresh heirloom tomatoes, tomatillos, rhubarb, POPCORN!, 4 types of peppers, spaghetti squash and patty-pan squash. All of that is in the pots in the photos. This week, I plan to add pickling and slicing cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, butternut squash, watermelon, okra, cantaloupe and pumpkin...in plants.

Once the garden is in, late in May (yikes, 6 years here and I STILL cannot get used to the last frost date of Mother's Day) I will be planting seeds for lima beans, green beans, green peas, purple hull peas, black-eye peas, pinto beans, black beans, red beans, radishes, carrots, corn, mustard greens, turnip greens, collard greens and gourds. WHEW! I am so excited for harvest time already!

For the first time ever, I have an herb garden, too!

Top shelf to bottom, left to right: basil, chives, sage, thyme. cilantro, lavender, spearmint, parsley, lemon verbena, rosemary and chamomile.

I still would like to get some calendula.

That old set of stairs was here when we moved here and it is a fantastic plant stand. I bought some white spray paint this weekend and will get it painted this week.

I used marigolds for natural insect repellant.

I put one marigold plant in 3 pepper plant pots and 1 tomato pot. Hopefully it will work. I will have the marigolds interspersed within the raised beds, too.

It is a cool, mostly overcast day here today. It is also supposed to storm this afternoon/evening. I thank God for the rain...but really wanted to work outside today. That means it is indoor work for me today.


Have a wonderful Monday!

So I jumped the gun

In my previous post here, I told you that my celery and onions were not re-growing.

Obviously, I just hadn't given them enough time.

They are looking great and I am so excited!


The sourdough starter. Deader than a doornail.

Triple fail

This week I have to start over on my sourdough starter, celery and onion re-starts.

I completely forgot to feed my sourdough starter twice in a row. Gotta toss it out and start over.

The celery re-start has a few tiny leaves showing in the center, but they have done nothing in a week. I have kept it watered, its in sunlight outdoors, but just not doing anything. I will try this again, eventually.

Green onions...I was afraid they wouldn't do anything and they didn't. They have shriveled up and died. I cut them off much shorter than any of the tutorials suggest. A definitely do-over, too.

When David gets home on R&R in May, we will be making a trip back to our hometown of Leesville, LA again. I will likely wait until I return from that trip to do these projects again.

Food scraps. Flowers. Herbs.

I shared this photo on Facebook on Sunday. Quite a curious photo, eh?

I am making an attempt to regrow celery and green onions. After I cut off the end of the celery and the ends off the green onions, I put them in a bowl of water for 24 hours. Then I planted them in pots with potting soil. I probably should have used top soil, but the only bag I had was potting soil.

You can see that I buried the celery a bit in the dirt, I wanted to have a little space to add dirt if I needed to once it starts growing and needs more support.

According to all of the other places I read about this, I think I cut my onions off too short. We will see.

While I was in planting mode, I planted the Peony tuber and basil and rosemary plants that I got the other day.

I am so ready for everything to begin to grow. I am more ready for spring this year than I have been in a really long time.

Here's a few links for the celery and green onions.

Chickens in the Road
Dream State Inspiration
Garden Swag
Veggie Gardener
She Hearts It

So what about you, are you gonna give it a try with the celery and onions?

Staples in your kitchen

In my pursuit to get further and further away from processed foods and eating out too much, I am making a list of the staples I feel I need to keep in my kitchen. These are items to do as much *scratch* cooking and baking as I can.

After reading through my list, please feel free to comment with any items you include on your staples list that I haven't listed. Any tips are so welcomed, too!

all-purpose flour
whole wheat flour
granulated sugar
brown sugar
powdered sugar
white vinegar
apple cider vinegar
baking soda
baking powder
yeast
olive oil
lard (and/or shortening)
oats
evaporated milk
powdered milk
pepper corns
salt
corn starch
pasta (we use vermicelli and egg noodles the most)
ketchup
yellow mustard
mayonnaise
salad dressing (miracle whip)
bread crumbs
saltine crackers (yes, they are staples at our house)

So what have I missed?