Why fruit flies will probably keep me from getting to heaven.

I will be 49 years old in a few days and I am at a stage in my life called perimenopause. If you dont know what that means it boils down to my hormones are all over the place ad I am fine one minute. mad as a wet hen the next and can cry for no apparent reason. Its great and fun and its like Mr Ladybug is married to three different women sometimes in a matter of 30 seconds. I should probably have a warning label on me.

 One of my favorite authors and comedians is Anita Renfroe. Several years ago she wrote a book called If You Cant Lose It Decorate It. There is a picture of a shiny belt buckle on the cover. I can not control my craziness these days, well I guess I could try to use medication but where would the fun in that be? I thought I would share some things that make me laugh and insane all at the same time for those if you who may be in the same boat as me or for those who wont think you are going crazy when it starts happening to you. Since I can not get rid of these feelings I might as well get a laugh and I hope you do too.

Fruit Flies! Those things drive be bonkers. I like to control things as naturally as possible and saw a few recipes online that swore they were best things to get rid of these pesky things. One was pretty simple. You take a bowl fill it with apple cider vinegar and then add a little dish soap and stir with a fork to have bubbles from on the top. The flies land in the bubbles. get stuck and drown. They said that with in 30 minutes they had several in their bowl. This is my bowl after 5 hours. I am not amused.

So the second one held a little more promise, You made your own sticky fly paper. Boil equal parts honey and sugar, add a little water and heat until sugar dissolves. You soak paper, I used index card, let then drain onto a plate and once done dripping hang. As you can see it worked like a charm, or thats what they like you to think.

.


When I approached the paper they all flew away but this one.

Are you serious? Maybe in Kentucky we breed the thoroughbred of fruit flies and they will stick to nothing. I stepped away from the strip and with in 15 minutes they were all back and this is where it gets crazy. I actually started talking to them. I was like are you serious? Y'all need Jesus and the flies replied ummm your the ones using the terrible language at us. I repled that they were right and then I grabbed the foaming bleach and sprayed them and screamed die you stupid flying__________, insert whatever word you like.

You know what really works? Leave a ketchup bottle out and open. Those little monsters crawl right in and cant get out and you have to throw away the whole bottle. I GIVE UP!

Dandelions, honeysuckle and stevia experiment and a few things I forgot yesterday.

Last year I harvested some dandelion flowers. I read you could dry them and use them as a tea. I cut the green part off and only had the yellow strings, I laid them out on my drying screen and left them for a few days, I then placed them in a mason jar and a week later I had a jar full of the white flower parts that you normally blow. I dont know why I didnt think about them doing that. I think its safe to assume the blog I read did not do an update or I did something wrong.

Last year I harvested all the heirloom roses off of my rosebush and dried most of them and some turned into a tincture. A tincture is just where you place all the parts of a plant into a jar and soak them in alcohol, normally vodka, for about 4 weeks. After the first batch sat for 4 weeks I drained off the liquid, discarded the petals, put new petals in and poured the liquid over the petals and let it set for another 4 weeks. What I ended up with is the most amazing smelling rose perfume. I dab a little on my wrists and I am smelling like roses all day long. I can also add some to a bath. or put a few drops in water to drink or into my hot tea for a little extra flavor.

So I decided to try the tincture method with the dandelion and the honeysuckle this year as well. The picture at the top is of the dandelions from last weekend. The honeysuckle isnt blooming yet in my backyard but I check on them every single day. I dont want to miss one one little bloom!

stevia plant

Last week when Mr Ladybug and I stopped at the plant nursery they had a stevia plant. I had to have one. I normally buy one every year because I have not had much success in growing it but this year we have some sprouts.

Its hard to tell but theses are soooo teeny tiny. The seeds are so little and light its hard to plant and you only get 12 little seeds in a pack.  So far we have 4 out of 12 sprouting. If all goes well I will make a tincture to use to sweeten my teas and will try drying some. I saw on another website where they dry the leaves and then grind them into a powder to use.

We planted so many different squash seeds last week and most have come up. I love the bigger seeded plants and how you can see the ground breaking open as the seeds sprout.

These are raspberries that we planted last year. We found a patch at the community garden and the ground keepers kept mowing over them. Yay for free plants.

The pea plants are coming along nicely. We are planting about a four foot row every 2 weeks to not get a crop all at once. It doesnt really matter because most dont make it into the house because we eat while we pick. 

Mr Ladybug and I are headed out early in the morning to visit my sister and brother in law and then headed to pick up the bees early on Saturday morning. We hope to be back home by lunch time on Saturday. I think its suppose to rain so we will not be able to put the bees in their new hive until Sunday. On Sunday we have a birthday celebration someones not only graduating from college this year they are turning 22. Goodness we are getting old. It should be a fun weekend and I hope to have a bee update and some honeysuckle blooms on Monday.

April Garden Update

Its a very busy morning on the urban farm. Our youngest doggie is getting neutered this morning and I have grocery shopping today since Mr Ladybug and I will be out of town on Friday. I have already been outside watering the garden. When I get done grocery shopping I will have clothes to hang on the line so I thought I would just do a quick garden update this morning.

I asked Mr Ladybug if we needed to cover the potato bed since our cat likes to be a jerk most of the time. We planted the potatoes over the weekend and this morning Socks was taking nice little dirt bath in it. I sent him this picture and he said we would put fencing over it when he got home. Oh the joys of being a cat mom.

As you can see there is a big gap in the lettuce. For some reason that seed did not come up. I have some seeds I saved from last year and am going to see how well they come up.

This native mint plant makes me smile every time I pull a leave and pop it into my mouth. I am going to start drying some if it for teas.

The radishes are doing pretty well even though a dog ran through them when we were planting so some of them are out of order.

I can not wait until June and see how these garlic bulbs are doing. I love growing garlic and making garlic scape pesto.

The onions are coming along nicely. I think I can start pulling a few for salads.

The lemon balm never disappoints. I will be drying some of this too soon for teas.

These are some volunteer tomato plants I need to transplant. I think they are cherry.

What I never pay full price for and a few other money saving tips.

I read lots and lots of blogs. I also dislike lots and lots of blogs. I get all bent out of shape when people say "anyone can do this' and then proceed to say the way we save so much on meat is they raise their own cattle. I think thats great but not all of us have a cattle farm or want one. I hope my ideae are not as far fetched as the cattle peoples.

1.Make a list of things that you will refuse to pay full price for and stick to that rule.  Here are a few of     mine.

   Toilet paper, I like name brand and I stock up when its on sale. I will buy several months worth.

   Potato chips or any kind of chips, I set my limit at nothing over $2 a bag. 

   Cereal and once again I do not pay over $2 a box. I have had as many as 20 boxes of cereal at home.

    Meat, I wish I could get buy with not paying over $2 a pound for most meat but that doesnt happen        that often. Chicken and pork can be found at that price or lower but most beef I stick with around          $3.50lb. If you pay attention most stores do a 4-6 week rotation on meats and most anything in the        store and you just buy enough to get you through until the next time its on sale. Fish is something          that hards to find below $6 a pound and we do love our fish around here. I try to get a good deal but      if we are craving it thats one thing we will pay full price for.

    Coffee, its not fair that I can not drink this stuff but I am always buying it and making it for a certain      man in my life. We do like to buy coffee from local roasteries and he drinks a cup or two on the              weekends but mostly we grab whats on sale. I have actually been pretty lucky for the past few                months to grab it for $3-4 a large can like in the picture. Kroger had it as a Friday/Saturday only deal      this past weekend so when we were out running errands I made sure we stopped by and grabbed the       limit of 5. Lets cross our fingers it goes on sale again in the next 5 months.

I have a few other things on my list but I will save it for later. Long winded blogs get on my nerves too!

So in the picture above you see lots of things. Its Tuesday and the sales at Kroger and Aldis end today and there were a few things I needed to get. We only use butter and it was $1.99 I think with the 6 I bought today and the few I have in the fridge I will be good for 2 months unless I go on a cooking making spree and I very well may. I saved $8 this week on butter

I found these double bottles of ranch dress for 99 cents! I grabbed 5 of those babies. Its the college kiddos that really love the ranch and I do use it on wraps that I make them for lunch. I saved $10 on ranch dressing.

They had Panera and generic Panera soups for sale. I know I can make soups cheaper but lets be honest sometimes its worth paying a little more for convenience. Isnt that why we love our drive thru fast food?

All the pasta sides and instant potatoes. These will last us forever and they were 79 cents for the pasta and 99 cents for the potatoes. We are getting lazy in our old age and sometimes we will have something like this for lunch or even dinner. Over the weekend I took some pasta, added cooked chicken I had in the freezer and a cup of frozen peas and it fed three of us for less than $3 and took 15 minutes to make.

A very important thing when you start stocking up on things is to have room to store it and keep up with what you have. I have a very small kitchen with very limited cabinet space. Mr Ladybug and I have started to become minimalists when it comes to clothing and I think he and I can get all our clothes in one small closet and use his closet with was in our hallway as a pantry. So on todays agenda is to clean off the top shelf of the closet to store most of this stuff and get the clothes he doesnt wear anymore to Goodwill. I have used our coffee table which is an old trunk to store kleenex and paper towels. I talked to a mom in the grocery line who only got paid once a month so she shopped once a month. She kid cereal and cookies under her bed in totes so they would last all month with her kiddos. I thought that was pretty smart!

I hope you found this helpful and not terribly long winded.

Free Seeds and Busy Busy Bees

One of the things that we did over the weekend was go to a seed swap. I had packaged and saved some of my onion. marigold and purple bell pepper seeds from last year but had no idea what I was going to do with them. Then I saw the seed swap and took them to share with others. We were super excited to get a few cone flower colors we didnt have and Bakers Creek seed company donated lots of seeds for this event and we were able to snag some that we hadnt ever tried.

Time is flying by and we are as busy as our bees on the urban farm. Speaking of bees I can not wait until this Saturday when we pick up our second hive. Since getting stung on the face over the weekend I am a bit nervous about the 2.5 hour drive home with the bees. I am guessing with Mr Ladybugs allergic reaction to bee stings being much worse than mine he is very nervous. If you spot 2 people in a little red car wearing full bee suits just honk and wave its probably us.

The bees are looking awesome and we are hoping to be well on our way to that first honey flow in June just like last year. I can not wait to taste that amazing floral honey like last year. The honey we harvested later in the year was good but oh how we love that first harvest and so do my customers!

Mr Ladybug signed us up for an air plant terrarium class a few weeks ago and we had so much fun. He loved the air plants from Plants for Pets so much be ordered some and make me this nifty planter for them. We saw a frame sort of like this on amazon for $20. I ran to Goodwill and got mine for $4. We just took it apart and added chicken wire. The air plants were $14 but if you have ever priced them at Lowes or a plant nursery you will find they are normally $5-$7 and these are much bigger. So what would have cost us $55 to buy somewhere only cost us $18.

I was actually wearing that bonnet in the above picture when I got stung by the bee. Another bee had gotten into my bonnet and I now understand that old saying "bee in her bonnet". If you have a bee in your bonnet you are a hot mess and people should stay out of your way.

Notice the difference in these two plants? They are actually both tomato plants. The one on the left is called a potato leaf. Since this tray is full of Glacier tomatoes they obviously got a stray seed mixed in with this pack. Its like Christmas to us, we can not wait to see what kind of tomato plant it turns into. I think I will email Territorial Seeds where we got the seeds from and see what variety of potato leaf tomatoes they carry. We are pretty excited about the Glacier tomato. Its a new one for us too and it suppose to be cooler weather hardy. I am hoping to plant a few later in the season and see how late we can harvest tomatoes outside.

Dont let this cute face fool you. This guy has not only torn a huge hole in the screen of my sons room and has been leaving and coming in through it at night he also tore off the coffee filtered top of my sourdough starter and allowed fruit flies to fly in it. I guess we need to start a new one and cat proof it.  He does have his good qualities too though. When Mr Ladybug let the chickens out to forage around the yard yesterday he stays right back there with them to protect them from anything that might try to do them harm. He doesnt even try to attack them. I guess he just attacks screens and sourdough.

How do you start your day?

Our normal weekday starts with Mr Ladybugs alarm going off and he getting right up. I usually wait a few minutes since we are a one bathroom household and that one bathroom is very small. So while I am waiting a few minutes I am usually snuggling with the worlds cutest beagle. Our Balder Beagle loves to sleep in. Mondays are so funny because hes had the weekend and no morning alarms. So when that alarm goes off on Monday morning he almost always groans like "not again". Hes even worse on long weekends or when Mr Ladybug is on vacation. So this morning he didnt groan but he wasnt amused either. After Mr Ladybug shuts off his alarm Alexa comes on with NPR news. This the thing I need to change. The news is normally not happy and though I do believe we should know whats going on in the world its not the best way to start your day out on a positive note.  I guess I need to figure out how to have Alexa wake me up with fun facts. I will tell you that if you say " Alexa just shoot me". She usually says that she doesnt know what that means. Hopefully tomorrow I will have a fun fact to share with you.

A while back I purchased a Smithfied ham marked down at Walmart. I like Smithfield brand because their spiral hams are usually spiraled through the whole ham. That makes it easy to get most of it off the bone without having to cut it yourself. So as you can see this ham started out at $23.48 and was almost 12 pounds. which made it $1.83 a pound. But when I cut into the package there was so much water, plus the sugar coating package and the bone that I only got about 9.5 pound of product. I am not saying I was ripped off but when you are figuring out how much things cost you have to take these kind of things into consideration.

I only paid $18.08 for the ham and will get 9.5 meals out of it that comes to $1.91 per pound. Which is a really good deal. I saved probably a pound of meat on the bone to cook some beans in too which is included in that 9.5 meals. With the half pound of ham I make homemade hotpockets with extra pizza dough I had in the fridge from over the weekend. I calculated that it cost around $1.75 to make 2 hotpockets and looked up to see that Hotpockets were on sale at the grocery for $2 for 2 in a box. I am sure mine had more meat and better cheese. I think some philly chesse steak hotpockets are in our future. I may even try to freeze some and see how they reheat.

I was reading that you could take egg shells, soak them in apple cider vinegar, place a lid on container, leave it sitting for 3 days and it makes a great anti itch remedy. It does need to be stored in the fridge and is good for about a month. Since I have good supply of egg shells from my chickens and I made 2 gallons of apple cider vinegar in the fall with the peels and cores of the apples we froze I thought I would give it a try. As soon as someone gets bit by something I will let you know how it works. I did it at the beginning of the month so I will try to discard old batch and make a new one each month to always have it on hand. If it works you are looking at less than a penny to make this stuff.

See how its bubbling a little? It will bubble over a bit with a lid on. So sit it on a saucer for those 3 days its out.

Sour Dough Starter

At the beginning of this year I kept talking about making a sourdough starter. I looked at several recipes and I just couldnt find one that had really good instructions. For Valentines Day Mr Ladybug ordered me a San Francisco Sourdough starter from Cultures of Health. It was a great surprise. It came with great instructions and their website is very helpful and they have lots of Youtube tutorials as well. One f the things I was a little worried about was what to do with the discarded starter if I didnt want to bake after I had fed the starter. That has not been a problem.

Your starter comes as a powder in a little envelope and you add spring water and flour. You do this for about 10 days adding more amounts as you go until you end up with about 1 1/2 cups of starter. Then you feed your starter every day or every other day depending on the warmth of your kitchen. Trust me you know when its growing. So then every two days you have around a cup of starter that you dont need. You can stick it in the fridge and use it later.

If you have been on the fence about starting your own sourdough and just dont want to make bread with it here are a few of my favorite recipes I found online, Just click on the name and the link should appear for you.

https://www.tastesoflizzyt.com/sourdough-pancakes/

I honestly am not a huge fan of pancakes but my hubby and son love these.

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/sourdough-pizza-crust-recipe

This pizza dough is really good and if you roll it out thin its pretty crispy



https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/basic-sourdough-bread-recipe

The bread machine bread is one of our absolute favorite for sandwiches. The outside is crusty and the inside is like fluffy clouds.

https://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/grandmas-sourdough-biscuits-18995

These biscuits were really good and rose nicely.

Here are a few recipes I intend to try in the future.

https://www.piesandtacos.com/sourdough-tortillas/

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/sourdough-english-muffins-recipe

I think its safe to assume that if I keep on using my starter for these things I will not have to worry about throwing any of it away.  Mr Ladybug and I do intend on making a nice rounded loaf of sourdough it just seems that whenever we think about doing it we dont have the time to start it and let it rise twice and bake it without being up past our bedtime. We do finally get around to doing I will post a picture and that recipe as well.

I had to get a closeup of all those bubbles.

Hello April

I really want an electirc kettle that looks like this one!

This morning we woke up to a house that was only 57 degrees. I am not going to name names but the person who turned off the heat a few days ago name starts with Mr. Thankfully thats an easy fix and the house is warmer now. Mr plugged in our vintage 1970's kettle and then came into our bedroom and told me it caught on fire. Let me tell you that news like that makes one wake up pretty darn fast. I did go into the kitchen and smell something but am happy to report nothing was on fire. Maybe that was an attempt at an April Fools Day joke. Who knows? Now I get to start searching for a new tea kettle. I have a few that go on the stove and they will do the trick until I find the perfect one. Mondays, you gotta love them.

We used the sausage grinder over the weekend. That is an experience. We should have made a video because all the videos you find on it show people making these beautiful sausages with ease.  We may have created new profanity while learning to do ours. It was fun and we can not wait to give them a try but after making them yesterday we were not ready to cook them for dinner last night.

We made some venison beer brats and mixed in two pounds of pork roast to add some fat to the meat. The venison was free and the pork cost around $2. The dark beer we used cost around 75 cents. It cost more than that but Mr Ladybug got drink the half we didnt use. The spices were things we already had and were a few pennies at the most. The casings we used were maybe $3 at the most. A little less than $6 for the total cost of making them. When you price homemade brats at the store you are looking at the very least $6 per pound. We made 5 pounds so thats a saving of $24 total after taking off what it cost to make. I will subtract this from the cost of our kitchenaid.

We also make turkey brats and the cost of the turkey breast was $7.50 I did get a little over 4 cups of broth plus some small pieces of turkey we can use in soup or a potpie so I will subtact $1.50 off the cost and use $6 for the brats plus the cost of casings which was round $2. We got 3 lbs off brats so thats a savings of around $10.

 It wont take long for the $421 we have paid for the mixer and attatchements to pay for themselves. This is really important for me because I didnt want to just buy something that was going to sit on my counter taking up space and collecting dust. I do enjoy baking but having the mixer has not made be bake any more or saved me money. I could say the pasta maker has saved me money but I have never purchased homemade pasta at $8, which is the cost of it at our local farmers market. It costs me around 50 cents per pound to make so I am getting better quality than purchasing the boxed stuff at the grocery. But if I were keeping tabs on the pasta thats like $22.50 saved. Seriously I have goosebumps!

Besides sausage making we binge watched season 3 of The Santa Clarita Diet. This show is crazy and if you like funny zombie shows its for you. I love Shelia played by Drew Barrymore and her husband Joel played by Timothy Olyphant.

Last week I made a new all purpose cleaner and its my favorite one so far. It cuts through grease and does great on simple things like wiping off the counters after cooking.

2 Tablespoons white vinegar
1 teaspoon washing soda , not the same as baking soda
2 teaspoons of blue Dawn, not the concentrated stuff this is the old cheaper Dawn
1 1/4 cup hot tap water

Pour all ingredients into a spray bottle and swirl to dissolve the washing soda. Dont shake because they Dawn will bubble up. It wont explode or anything.

Dont judge but this was a bowl in the top of a cabinet I hadnt used in forever. I have since decluttered the cabinet and gotten rid of anything I hadnt touched in over a year. I just used the spray and a towel. I would not suggest washing dishes this way but was wanting to show how well it cut through the grime.