Feeding the fire

I put a log on the fire last night around 11:30pm. We do not try to keep the fire going all night we do have heat in our house but I do try to keep it from coming on during the day and we have found with what we pay for firewood we save a little money using the stove with lowering our gas and electric bill. Plus if we do have an ice storm or power outage we can stay in our house and be nice and warm. Normally when I get the fire started around 8 or 9 in the mornings there is only ashes in the stove. This morning there was a decent piece of wood still in the stove and when I blew on it there was some embers or whatever the orange glow is called. I only had a few pieces of kindling in the house and I didnt really feel like going out to the wood pile so I found a piece of paper put the little pieces of bark and tiny wood chips that were in the botton of the kindling bucket and set them under the log. Then I slowly started blowing and it took off. I felt like I had won the lottery starting a fire without having to use a match. Especially since those of you who follow me on Facebook know that I caught my hair on fire the other day with a match.

As I was starting the fire and feeling like a real pioneer woman I started thinking. Do I tend to my passions like I do my fire? Well sort of I enjoy my passions but sometimes I let them die out because I know that I am not going to die.  Is that really any way to live? No its not. Every day you need to at least do a little something to tend to your passions. Some days will be easier than others and sometimes the flames will be so hot you wont know what to do. Other days there will just be smoke and you will  not get the flames to catch for nothing. When tending the real fire this is when I go outside and get Mr Ladybugs propane torch and teach the fire whose boss. In life always have a backup plan. When your passions seem to be dying down a little this is where you reach out to others who encourage you and help you fan those flames. This happened to me yesterday when I sweet friend messaged me and asked how I was doing. We messaged back and forth a little throughout the day and it was just what I needed. If they are reading this "Couldahadav8" and you are amazing!

With that I need to get off here and keep the fire going in the wood stove. I have promised Mr Ladybug baked potatoes cooked in the fire with our homemade creme fraiche from yesterdays post. I think I will cook the rest of the dinner on top of the wood stove too.

If you do nothing else today spend at least 5 minutes thinking about where your passions are and start making a plan today on how you can get those flames going. The world needs your passion.

Making Creme Fraiche

One of the things we have recently stopped buying is sour cream. Since getting into cheese making and checking out tons of books from the library we have found a few things that we really enjoy making and creme fraiche is one of them. I checked this book out but there are so many good recipes in there we had to own it for ourselves.

 Since you can get sour cream for $1 sometimes at the store its not cheaper to make but if you check on the price of creme fraiche and other higher end type things you will see its maybe a little cheaper to make and the taste is out of this world.

This is the recipe in the book and it works but we have found doing it a little different is just as good and we dont have to sit over a pan watching it to come to temp or worrying we have it up to temp or worrying about scorching the cream.

First you take a quart of heavy whipping cream , thats 32 ounces. and pour it into a jar. Then you set it in a pan of warm water to get it to 72 degrees. You will need some type of cooking thermometer for this. We have discovered in cheese making that temperature is everything. Take your two tablespoons of buttermilk and leave them out on the counter to get room temp. Once your cream get to 72 degrees add the buttermilk,stir and  put a lid on it sit it somewhere warm. The important part is thats its above 60 degrees. We had been sitting ours by a computer tower but since having the wood stove going we sit on a counter off to the side of the stove where the temp is around 72-75 degrees for most of the day and is around 65 while we sleep. In 18-24 hours you have creme fraiche. How easy is that?

To use as sour cream I just add a little salt to it before serving. If you wanted to use it on a dessert you could leave add a little powdered sugar to it before serving or leave as is and if you wanted to turn it into cultured butter just take the cream fraiche, however much you want to use, place it in a blender or food processor and in about 15 minutes it separates and you have butter. Just run cold water over the butter to get out any traces of the buttermilk or it will sour in a few days.

You can expect to see pics very soon of how we use creme fraiche. With this batch I will use half for sour cream and half for cultured butter.

Friday Fun

I have no idea why I entitled this Friday Fun since I plan on cleaning and mopping the whole house today. I just have to do a quick errand. The boy is in a Christmas Concert tonight and the cost of admission is canned food items for a local pantry. My hubby and I have been going to this concert even before our children started attending this college.

I found this website today and in has two of my favorite things mixed together, quilting and murder mystery. My sister and I are giving some serious thought to trying it out.

https://murdermysteryquilt.com/

Yesterday afternoon I was making my way across down and there was a traffic issue and no one was going anywhere. The monster truck behind me blaring his music kept blowing his horn. Yeah like that really helps. He was wanting me to pull up somehow so he could get around and turn but it wasnt going to work so he just kept blowing his horn. Then he opened his door like he was going to get out and I assume was going to approach my vehicle. This would have concerned so people but all I could think of was I am going to get to finally use my pepper spray on someone. Seriously I was a little disappointed he got back into his stupid ugly truck. I wonder if he saw my excited face in my side mirrors and thought ummm this one looks crazier than I do.  The light turned green again and everyone was able to go on their merry way. Maybe I will get to pepper spray someone soon it is after all the holiday season.

Have a great weekend and be safe and dont blow at cute little red cars with crazy ladies in them.

Quilt Blocks and easy dinner on the wood stove.

In October I made goal to learn to make a quilt in a year. I decided to do only one block per month hoping that by the time I got all 12 done I would feel confident enough to put it together. I wanted to make a black cat block for October and had a hard time finding a pattern I could cut out. Most of the ones I found wanted me to do math and figure out the angles and sides and I was a bit overwhelmed. Then I remembered that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote how she had to make a 9 patch quilt when she started so I decided to keep mine simple as well. In one of the Little House books Laura is a little jealous since Mary got to make the bears paw quilt and she had to stick with her 9 patch until she got better. Remember when setting goals to not go overboard especially if you are just learning somethin


 My squares are 1 foot square or at least as close as I can get. The orange and black one if for October, the yellow and brown for November and the red and green fabrics are for December. I think I am going to do three squares across and 4 squares down. I plan on separating the squares with a pretty blue material a am hoping to have a finished quilt of about 5 foot by 7 foot.

I was home all day yesterday so I was able to keep a fire in the stove and the furnace off all day. Its silly to use your oven if you have so much heat coming from that stove. So I made beef chunks with gravy over rice. The rice I had already cooked and it was in the freezer. I have not tried rice on the wood stove but will try one day, I will tell you that pasta is a bad idea. You have to keep water boiling which will produce lots of heat and you may have to open your windows so you dont cook yourself. The trouble I had was it wasnt boiling and my noodles turned into a mushy mess. The chickens didnt mind eating it though. Think of the top of your wood stove like a crock pot.

Easy beef chunks in gravy

1 pound of roast meat chopped into chunks
2 TBS seasoned flour
3 cups of beef broth
8 ounces of sliced mushrooms
2 TBS oil
1 teasopoon each of garlic and onion powder
salt and pepper to taste

Add oil to your pot and heat up, mix flour and beef together and then throw in pot with the oil and brown for 2-3 minutes. Add broth and mushrooms, mix and put a lid on it. Cook 3-4 hours until the beef is tender.

Rice
1 1/2 cups rice
3 cups broth, the broth I use depends on what I am cooking. Most times I use veggie.
1 TBS butter
Bring water and butter to a boil add rice turn heat down to simmer and put a lid on pot. cook 20-25 minutes.

My quest for mistletoe and an easy soup recipe.

I have always loved mistletoe. I think it started when I was a little girl watching a Christmas movie with my granny and she telling me that if you stand under it that whomever was there with you had to kiss you. At some point I learned that it grew on trees and eventually learned how to spot it. My dad would come across some on occasion and bring it to me and with his passing this year it seemed really important to me to have some. I even remember once my hubby keeping something in the car in case we came across some so he could cut to for me. I am a very lucky girl to have fellows in my life who encourage me whimsies.  So imagine my excitement when I see mistletoe growing in a tree within our reach this past weekend. Well within Mr Ladybugs reach actually. So if you happen to come to the urban farm this holiday season you better be prepared to be kissed.

I really love Mr Ladybug hes the sweetest.

Yesterday it got around 2pm and I hadnt even thought about what was for dinner. I had originally planned to heat something on the wood stove but was having a time keeping the fire going especially since I would leave the room and not tend to it,  That will not be the case today. I have it going and am going to keep it that way. I decided that I would fix an easy tortellini soup recipe and everyone was fed and the boys didnt even notice it was meatless.

Too easy tortellini soup

8 oz of dried tortellini
4 cups of veggie broth
32oz can of crushed tomatoes
1 tablespoon of italian seasoning
2-3 teaspoons of honey or sugar ( this really helps balance the acid from the tomatoes but is optional)
1 tsp each garlic and onion powder
salt and pepper to taste.

Put broth in pot and bring to a boil, add tortellin and cook according the package directions, after they are done add rest of ingredients and heat until hot. Sprinkle with parmesian cheese and serve with bread.

Can it get any easier than that?  When telling my hubby and daughter about the recipe I said you started out with 4 cups of the tears of a thousand virgins but that its a little pricey because its hard to find that many virgins these days. My daughter said that I should put that in my blog and I said I just might and she didnt think I would do it so this is to show her thats its my blog and I do what I want.

I saw this and it made me laugh. I hope to shed a few more pounds this month but if I can just stay the same without gaining while baking and making candy and eating candy others make me I think its a win.

Weekend Adventures

My hubby had to grow something so he planted me some

 lettuce under the grow lights, 

We had a 3 day weekend at our house and we enjoyed just about every minute of it. Getting the slow drain unclogged required Mr Ladybug to crawl under the house and with the creepy crickets. But besides that our weekend was perfect. Saturday we didnt even leave the house. With the temps going into the 60's on Sunday we decided to go to Locust Grove Historical Site in Louisville Ky. We had so much fun learning the history of the house and walking to grounds. After unclogging the drain on Monday and replacing a drain in the bathroom we hung out in front of the fire the rest of the day reading. I highly recommend lazy long weekends. Unfortunately we cant spend the whole winter in front of the fire well at least not during the day when there is work to be done. Here are a few pics from the weekend.....

I was surprised to see this color on the home at Locust Grove. Then knew this color was in the house because they had found the ledger with the receipt purchasing 9 gallons, I love it!

They had a beehive. We of course had to go look at it. Mr Ladybug thought I was going to try to take a bee home with me.

Bayberry candles, have you heard of them? They are my new favorite thing and I have been digging up all the info I can find on them. Very interesting.

Do use this app? We listened to a short book on Greek Mythology while driving on Sunday, Lots of older books on here and a great bargain for free.