What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Vince found a fruit orchard just across the state line in Kansas. It’s about 40 miles from our house so yesterday we took a trip over there and got a bunch of apples, Asian pears and regular pears. The lady gave us a taste of everything and those are the sweetest apples and pears I...

I am getting very close to running out of jars. That’s going to put a stop to my canning til I empty some jars or until my next Azure order arrives, which is the end of September. I may empty 15 or so jars per week but that’s a combination of half pints, pints and...

One thing I didn’t expect when planting three or four elderberries in 2021 was that by 2024, I would have way too many plants. While they can be invasive and I’m sure they will be at some point, this year they were such heavy producers and, while I wouldn’t call them invasive, next year may...

I have canned for many, many years and I have never used an electric kettle. For some reason, Vince bought one earlier this year. I think he was using a French Press for his coffee and that’s why he bought it but he didn’t continue to use it so I told him I would like...

 In my quilting lifetime I've heard many quilters say they don't like scrap quilts.  How is this possible?  To me they are works of art even if it's a just a bunch of squares sewn together.  The joy of a scrap quilt is seeing the different prints. 

There are a often posts I write and then decide not to publish because I feel like some are going to see it as virtue signaling or “I do better than you do” and that’s never ever what I intend. Even when I write a post like this, please know that I do sometimes buy...

Today was supposed to be a no canning day – mostly stay out of the kitchen kind of day – didn’t happen. I went outside with the dogs early this morning and noticed the Black Strawberry tomatoes were stacking up. They aren’t our favorite tomato – not bad but there are others we like better....

Recent as in yesterday!

There are so many things that happen around here that remind me of the book, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. Yesterday . . all day, I was thinking about that mouse! My main chore to get done yesterday was to juice the elderberries from the freezer. When I harvest the elderberries, I cut...

I don’t pay a lot of attention to prices – probably more than some but less than Vince would like. We eat a lot of beans because we like them, they have a lot of fiber and with pressure cookers, they’re fairly easy and quick to cook. I will almost always cook more than we...

Here are two things that came to mind the past few days that I thought were worth sharing. Heavy Cream: We don’t use as much heavy cream as you would think after reading this paragraph. Vince doesn’t drink coffee every day but when he does, he puts just a bit of heavy cream in it....

The elderberries are getting ripe so quickly. Thursday evening I picked two full grocery sacks full. I cut the stem off just behind where the berries start so a full bag has lots of stem and debris, along with the berries. Once they’re frozen, I will take one bag out of the freezer at a...

This morning I started right away working on the yellow hominy and got it all canned – 12 pints. If anyone is interested in making hominy, Red Rose Homestead has good, fairly concise instructions in this video. At about the 20:00 point, she’s talking about her jars, after canning, having no water – the corn...

In September, 2023, I wrote this blog post about canning this Chipotle Beef Soup (link to recipe is included). I followed the recipe pretty much exactly (“exactly” isn’t always *exactly* for me) except I may have double quadrupled the recipe because, according to the blog post, I ended up with 12 quarts and the recipe...

Summer is my least favorite season. It’s my own fault but there’s so much to do with the garden and with canning and putting up as much produce as I can so we’ll have homemade goodies through the winter. I got a big bag of pickling cucumbers so I’ve been making pickles. I surely don’t...

Almost 7:00 p.m. and I’m just ready to start stitching. Got the ground beef canned, sheets washed and lunch cooked, cleaned up and leftovers in the freezer. The biggest project was getting the ground beef canned. I love canning and would do it every day but . . don’t need that much canned food. We...

No preaching to me about what I should not be doing, OK? I was careful. My finger is bandaged and I wore a disposable glove AND a thicker rubber glove. Beth Ferrier (some of you may remember her from quilting) posted on FB yesterday that she had made this recipe for Rhubarb BBQ Sauce. Beth...

I mentioned that a friend had picked up two flats of strawberries for me Thursday. We were on our way home from Louisiana so I got them from her Thursday night. Friday I washed and cut up about half of them and put most of them in the fridge. Today I made 5 pints of...

Note: When making lilac jelly, make sure you’re getting blossoms from a “common lilac” as other types, such as the Persian lilac, are said to not be safe for consumption by humans or pets. Yesterday morning I started with the lilacs that had been steeping overnight and made lilac jelly. The recipe I use for...

Tuesday I pulled all the tomatoes out of the freezer. There were 11 one gallon zipper bags of tomatoes. I washed them all and was only able to fit 9 bags of them in the 18 quart roaster so two bags went back into the freezer. I had planned to make ketchup. Most of the...