Bringing the Heat

Last week we did a cold post, this week we bring the heat. The jalapeno peppers are coming in every day now so that means "Lawman jelly" and "Lawman Candy" time. This week we did jelly.
Our jalapeno peppers are so strong, they flex.

Flex

Big Man doing his pepper impression

We weigh out twelve ounces at a time, and blend them up smooth with a cup of vinegar, then the magic happens.

We also have a few tomatoes coming in each day. We would can them up, but we put up over 100 quarts last year. Since we are still using on them, we have been taking the ones that come in this year and have them during each meal. A sliced tomato goes very well with fresh scrambled eggs or sausage gravy. Sandwiches at lunch, sliced for dinner. They never get old. But even eating on them every meal, they still stack up on us. We took a few extra and made a small batch of tomato soup and canned it on a rainy day.

This batch made two quarts. It may not seem like a lot, but every couple of quarts will come in handy when it's snowing butthole deep to a ten foot Indian later this year.
We took a picture of some of our guinea birds on the hot tub this week, because they discovered that they have a voice. So to let us know they know they can "talk" they came and sat outside of the door and had a long chat with themselves. We eventually had to run them off. Every animal on the place is nuts.

And while we're on the topic of crazy birds, we had a couple of eggs that we photographed this week. One was a huge egg, it tipped the scales over. The other is a dud egg, but it's really dark brown. Our Maran birds will lay this deep brown colored egg when they mature, we don't think this is from them yet because they are only about ten weeks old. But we look forward to adding this deep brown to our sales very soon.

We used some of the fresh eggs in a brown sugar pie this week. This recipe needs a whole lot of tinkering, we just can't seem to get it down. It will keep us busy in the coming few months.

Always home made crust

Our last picture this week is wing sauce. We always end the week with wings, so we need wing sauce to make that happen. We used up the last jar last weekend, which worked out well because we had rain almost every day this past week. When it rains, we like to stay in and cook and can. This played right into our wheelhouse.

We put this to use as we ended the week with wings.
K&K

Baby It's Cold Outside

No, we're not nuts. We discovered "Frosty Paws" ice cream for fraidy mutt. She's always been a scraps after dinner kind of mutt, but in the evenings we have been on the back porch with an ice cream for ourselves. Now she can enjoy the shade and quiet with us.

We also enjoy watching the new chicks peck around and chase bugs. Our Maran birds are two different colors, some are black and speckled while some are gray and speckled. We look forward to having a little variety in the coop soon.

"The twins" as we now call them stop by to check out the back porch goings on most evenings. We are pretty sure they are male/female twins. We hope so anyway.

We need some quiet time in the evenings, because we've been harvesting garden goodies every day.

And we've started Cupcake a dried pepper string to decorate/hold our peppers

Pickle production is in full swing. We put away 18 pints one afternoon, mostly dill, but we've started getting the yellow cucumbers on a regular basis, that means "them yellow pickles." A big shout out to Pops for supplying us with two cases of jars just prior.

First we wash

Slice and lime in our crock

Next day, rinse again

Bottle and bath

We also got a request for some of our Christmas pickles that we mentioned last week. We let our cucumbers get extra big before we picked them, then did another batch. This week we went green to go with last week's red.

Slice and de seed

Dyed and soaked

In jar with syrup, soak overnight

Water bath. Three day process

We've been getting creative with our garden bounty. Of course we have fried green tomatoes and fried squash. We've been tinkering with fried dill pickles to use up the extra batter we have when we fry veggies. They are not up to standard just yet, but we have plenty of time to practice.

We also made a batch of salsa. There is nothing like taking vegetables straight from the vine and putting them in the pot to make a dish.

We even used fresh basil from Cupcake's herb garden on the deck boxes. We got six pints of salsa from this batch, and we're pretty sure we will be making more. When the zombies come we will still be able to enjoy chips while the hoards pass by.
We made our first attempt at a family recipe for brown sugar pie. Big Man's grandmother made brown sugar pies, and it seems they were gooey. This one had more of the consistency of our buttermilk pie. We may need to tinker with this one a bit more before we unleash it on the family reunion.

Cupcake had to work late Friday, so we stayed in and made another pizza.

Between working in the garden and making pickles, we still found time for a couple of projects. We made another batch of mint toothpaste, that should last us another three months or so. We also made another gallon of laundry detergent.

And while we were cutting mint, we cut enough for another round of lye soap. We either used or gave away our last batch.

Nineteen new bars of mint soap

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Christmas in July

This week it was a little warm, so we thought we would bring a little Christmas to July. This is the first week we've gone with no rain at all in quite some time, then it got hot. Our garden and pumpkin patch are holding their own so far. Joys of gardening, it's a shame more people don't know the feeling.

We start the pictures this week with Christmas pickles. The cucumbers have been coming in every day so we are trying to get creative with how we use them. Cupcake found this recipe and we gave it a go. We are excited about this one.

Straight from the garden to the kitchen

Sliced and seeded

Simmer in sauce

Then we add the "magic"

Time to make the syrup

Then they soak for one day in the jars

These pickles took all weekend to make. They are a little more labor intensive than the ones we usually make, but we're not afraid to try new things. We started by quartering the cucumbers length wise, then use a spoon to cut the seeds out of the middle. Once the cucumbers are seeded, we simmered them in a brine of water and alum. While the cucumbers were simmering, we made the syrup with water, sugar and red hots candy. We packed the cucumbers in jars and poured the syrup over the cucumbers and let them sit for twenty four hours. After a day, we sealed them up and hot bath canned the pickles along with a few extras.

Sliced pears

Leftover syrup put to good use

We had about one quart of syrup left over from the pickles, and it tasted so good we hated to waste it. Cupcake hit on the idea of canning pears in the syrup for an extra winter treat. We picked up about a half dozen pears and sliced them. We hot packed them in the syrup then water bath canned them along with the pickles. Now all we have to do is wait until Christmas to eat them.
Like we said, the cucumbers have been coming in every day, this is our best year for cucumbers since we started a garden.

This is only half, the yellow cucumbers have not started yet

We have a volunteer gourd vine that came up at the wood pile, we are letting it run because gourds are fun to decorate with in the fall.

And Cupcake's Tennessee sweet potato vines have started producing fruit.

We never get tired of having fresh veggies on hand every day. It counter balances the heat.

One great thing about fresh veggies is meal time. We enjoy BLT biscuits every morning during the summer.

And we use the veggies in dinner dishes as well. Cupcake made a macaroni salad Saturday night that was the best one she's ever made. She really knocked this one out of the park.

And since Dude's Drive In was closed this week, we smoked a whole pig leg for dinner.

And our last picture this week is Nephew Henry. He got to spend the night with Pops Friday night, so that means Saturday morning pancakes. Little Henry put a hurt on some chow.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K