A Busy Saturday!

Good Morning my dear friend!

 

I hope this Sunday is a blessed day of rest for you and that you will spend a little time just enjoying your Creator who loves you mightily (if you have any doubts or guilt or wondering, please feel free to contact me--I know ALLL of those feelings and can tell you that they are not for you :)  He wants you close to Him because He loves you and in Him there is no shame--no matter what you have done! :) ).

 

Rest.  What a beautiful word!  When I say "rest", I can sometimes feel a desperate exhaling deep in my spirit, a tender, almost crying feeling of gratitude. :)  Rest.  Peace.  Joy.  Such beautiful words!

 

But there is also such a wonderful feeling in the words "work", "industry", "providing from provision", "serving"!  While my spirit loves its downtime in rest, it also LOVES a purpose, a goal, a good thing done with the hands!!  Work is the sunshine while rest is the moonlight--both of them beautiful when balanced with the other :)

 

I cannot thank the Lord enough, dear friend, that He allowed us to move here.  My neighbors are some of the kindest, sweetest people.  Our next door neighbors keep bringing us provision from their massive (and slightly envy provoking ;) ) garden.  We had much that we had to put up, and I spent yesterday doing just that!  Let me walk you through my day....

 

Firstly, I have been longing for blueberry muffins like my mom used to make.  I actually have a nickname for the amount of blueberry muffins I could put away as a young child. :)  We have been blessed with an abundance of blueberries from our own bushes, so yesterday I set to work making blueberry muffins first thing.  Not only did I want them, but I thought the children would enjoy having them ready for breakfast when they awoke.

Because Precious has to eat gluten free, I made hers first.  I had bought a box of gluten free muffin mix--what a time saver!  I added the requisite butter and eggs, then also threw in a can of pumpkin.  Precious had been remarking about how dry some of the breads are...plus pumpkin is so good for you...that I thought it would help take her muffins to a higher level of moistness and nutrition.  Boy was I right!  Her muffins were SO moist from the plump fresh blueberries and the pumpkin that I thought she might not like them!  However, she informed me that "these muffins are going to be problematic" (meaning they were so good that she was having a hard time not eating them all :) ).

 

The can of pumpkin also greatly extended the batch.  It made the gluten free mix a little more cost effective (though I do need to make my own mix for her--another project for another day :) ).

 

Then I made our muffins.  I used my mom's recipe (though added a bit more sugar to balance out the pumpkin I added to ours as well). At the end of the cooking session, I had a couple dozen+ large muffins and many dozen mini muffins!

 

Then I went on to making pickles.  Our neighbors had graciously brought us some delicious cucumbers from their garden.  Truly they were different than store bought--made for pickling but tasted wonderful fresh.  I have not canned much, and never made pickles, so I opted for refrigerator pickles and used Ball's Bread and Butter spice mix.  TWS had asked for bread and butter instead of dill, and I did not mind either way.

 

Below are just some of the cucumbers.  I forgot to take a photo of all of them :).  I used my new mandolin to slice them.  TWS came in and was...curious about a)using a crinkle cut and b)the thickness of the slices (0.5 inches).  Now, at this point I was tempted to say "Y'know, I CAN actually do this without messing up..." lolol  However, I stopped and thought "He had mentioned his grandparents making them...perhaps that has something to do with it".  I explained my choice (I had always seen b and b pickles crinkle cut and that 0.5 inches is what the recipe said) then acknowledged his memories of his grandparents' pickles and asked if he would prefer me make them like his grandparents did, if his heart wanted what he remembered.  He stopped and thought a moment and then assured me that I should follow the recipe. 

I am thankful for that moment.  I usually get defensive (gah!) and sometimes react in a less than gracious way.  I am trying to stop that, though, because he a)did not mean any harm and b)he was touching a memory with his heart.  I am thankful that the Lord gave me the wisdom and ability (and that I USED it lolol) to see deeper and to ask. :)

 

 

 
The mandolin took a bit getting used to but eventually I ended up with this.  It was an incredibly easy process:  boil sugar, vinegar, and spice mix, pour over the slices, then let cool in the bowl.  Pack the jar with slices, put a rounded 1/8 tsp of the crisping granules (see below) then ladle the juice until the jar is full.  Put in fridge for up to 3 months, taste is best after developing for 3 weeks.  Easy!!

 

 

Then it was time for the tomatoes.  I diced them all up and bagged them except for this little beauty that I was going to use for BLT's for supper.

 
What a gorgeous bowl of tomato loveliness!!!

 
Bagged and marked because these look remarkably like the diced watermelon that I have in the freezer...what an unpleasant mix up that would be!  (That reminds me of the saying to tell between knowledge and wisdom :)  Knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit...Wisdom is knowing not to put it in the fruit salad :) )

 

 

Speaking of watermelon....I had bought one on sale.  For about $3 I ended up with a ton of fruit, smoothie base, and rind candy!  I will admit I was going to be lazy and just scoop out the wonderful middle fruit.  But then I saw all the left over rind and the light pink, not quite as sweet, part and just could not waste them.  It did not take long to scoop out the good stuff, slice off the light pink/white fruit, then separate the outside rind from the inside.  The light pink/white fruit makes a WONDERF base for smoothies!  It has very little flavor, but much more flavor and fiber and vitamins than using ice cubes!  Add some OJ or lemon juice or pineapple, and there is a hearty, but light, fiber packed smoothie with what would normally be thrown out.

 After cutting up the watermelon, it was time to snap some beans. Fresh green beans are my favorite food.  I used to eat them every day for lunch.  I bought these at a local farm.  They were a little tougher than I like, but still good, so I sat on the porch and snapped off the ends.  I was going to do this in the kitchen, but I wanted the charm of "sittin on the porch, snapping beans" :) 

 
All broken up and ready to be placed in the freezer for a pot of tex mex soup when the weather turns colder :)

 

 

Back to the watermelon rind.  The rest of the watermelon had been put in the freezer and fridge.  I poured off the juice and had a wonderful glass of watermelon juice to refresh me during my work.  Now I decided to try my hand at watermelon rind candy.  I keep my computer close in the kitchen--I am forever needing to google a recipe or something :). 

I found several recipes for watermelon rind candy, but many of them were "pickles"--kept in a jar in fluid.  I wanted dry candy.  I found one for a basil mint and many with anise.  Neither flavor was what I was looking for, so I made my own with key lime juice, powdered ginger, cumin, cayenne (just a dash!), and allspice.

 
Here are the strips I cut of the rind....

Here are the rind strips in water, sugar, salt, and the seasonings.  You boil them until the rinds are translucent.  This took forever!!! :)  I am sure I must have missed something, because eventually I got tired of waiting and just scooped them out onto a sugared tray to be put in the oven to dry and they became more translucent as they cooled.

My first (or maybe second?) oops!  I was going between recipes and missed the "put them on a SUGAR coated parchment".  I had no parchment, but I tumped these off onto another piece of foil that was sugared.

Much better :)

 
This....ah this....:)  This is the wonderful syrup that was left over after  boiling the rind.  It is incredible and will be wonderful over ice cream or as a flavoring or to use for basting pork.  I wish the light was better--it was such a lovely color.

You might ask how the rind candy came out....the flavor was incredible!  It had the tiniest bit of warmth and heat after you ate it, and the citrus was delicate and not overpowering.  It was delightful.  However, after trying to dry it for way too long in a 250 degree oven as a recipe said, it just became sticky, sticky goo--like raw caramel :)  Next time I will:  allow the fruit to macerate in the sugar that the syrup is eventually made of for several hours (as many of the recipes suggested!).  I will boil it for less, and make sure the syrup does not reduce too much--there is no way that I could see for the candy to dry when it was coated in a thick, thick glaze.  Also, I will turn the oven down to 170 (a much better drying temperature).  However, I will not change the flavorings at all--they were wonderful!

 

 

As I waited for the hours to pass for the candy, I googled how to fold paper boxes to deliver the muffins and blueberries in to my neighbors.  It took a few tries until I found directions that were easy to understand :).  I had purchased this pack of paper for $5 at Walmart.  It was an incredibly cute and inexpensive way to present little treats.



These are the finished boxes.  Once I got the hang of folding them, they were very easy and very quick.  I can see myself using this often in the future.  I tied ribbon around the sides to give them some stability and to doll them up a bit.

I had to figure out some dividers as my original idea of using cupcake cups was not working well.    Here they are, all filled :)  I placed these in an adorable "US Mail" basket that TWS had gotten me for my birthday this year, and placed fabric over them to keep the bugs out.  Then we got in the cart and (whilst hoping we had enough battery!) drove up and down the road delivering these to neighbors.  Two of our neighbors were not home, regrettably.

 

After we came home, I was exhausted!  It had been quite the day :).  I did not even get to the eggplant and the peaches that also need to be put up, but that was for another time.  About an hour after we came home, one of my neighbors brought over more cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, and such :)  I love living in the country!!!  I hope I can be a blessing to them like they are to us :)