Happy 4th of July!

 

Happy 4th of July!

We're having our family over tonight for dinner, nice and cool inside, 100 degrees outside. I planned a summer feast! I'm making my fave New Orleans Muffuletta Sandwiches (I don't make the bread) -

Kids are bringing veggies, fruits and dessert. I'm also doing watermelon, orange Italian cream sodas, lemonade, two kinds of ice creams and we'll have a sprinkler for the grandkids! Tomorrow we're doing a day trip to the mountains, to Stanley, then the Sun Valley/Ketchum area. We'll have lunch in the mountains by a lake and get in some gorgeous scenery! I'm off work Monday and Dave took the rest of the week for vacation. Happy 4th to you! Here's some of our holiday decor!

Hot! / Freezing Fresh Raw Eggs, Frugal Homemade Baking Mix 2.0 and Biscuits, Stocking Up Wisely

Hot! /Freezing Fresh Raw Eggs-

We are getting hot here, or I should say, still HOT!!! 100+ weather is the norm in the week to come. We water, water, water everyday. We mulch heavily too, of course. Mulching conserves moisture and keeps weeds down. We haven't had this kind of 100+ ongoing heat for quite a few years! Here's our forecast-

We are in a full-scale production of fresh eggs! We've been averaging 3-4 eggs a day. We have been giving our adult kids some of our eggs and using up some ourselves. I recently found we had five dozen eggs in our fridge, which is a bit too much! I had recently done some research on how to freeze fresh, raw eggs and decided to try it. There's a few different versions out there, so if you're interested you can do your own research. Basically there are people who basically scramble the eggs with a pinch of salt as a stabilizer. Then there are people who simply freeze the eggs (out of the shell) as is. Most people freeze them in ice cube trays. I decided to give that a try! I found a large ice cube tray made out of food grade silicone that I bought. Some of our eggs are very, very large and some of them tend to run smaller. It seems to vary every week. So basically the really large eggs I put one in a cube. The smaller ones I put two in a cube. When I was able to I put two in a cube combining maybe one medium egg and one small egg-

I went ahead and put them in the freezer, levelled them to freeze up completely-

 After they were frozen I pop them out of the ice cube tray and put them in Ziploc bags labeled with the date-

I will probably go ahead and take them out of those bags and use my vacuum sealer for better protection. They kind of look like popsicles! I did read that you should thaw gently in the refrigerator before using or the eggs will be rubbery. These would either be eating scrambled or used in baked goods. What's good to know is we'll have eggs in the winter when our hens slow down their production with the short days. In the near future I will thaw some, scramble and report back on how they came out!

Photo from Mennonite Girls

Frugal Homemade Baking Mix 2.0 and Biscuits-

I posted Mother Earth News Baking Mix last week, here's another version from the amazing website Mennonite Girls Can Cook . They have so many amazing recipes, some gluten free. While some of the dishes are pretty heavy on the fat (think feeding hard working farmers) their baking recipe database is huge! Many you can make more healthy by using whole grains, like WW Pastry flour. Additionally there's a section here Variations On Biscuit Theme with tons and tons of different kinds of biscuits you can make! Too hot to bake right now, but will come in handy in the fall/winter with soups, etc. Browse thru their website, tons there! They also have some cook books online for sale as well.

Stocking Up Wisely-

With food prices steadily rising I decided to buy some things to freeze for the winter. Yes, winter! In the cold winter months once in a while I like to roast a chunk of beef, with veggies and herbs. I decided to buy some meats at Costco specifically to freeze. I bought a Nutrichef sealer vacuum sealer last year, works great! I bought two beef roasts and one big pack of pork country style boneless ribs. Split them up, sealed and labelled. All done! I have also double-bagged using freezer bags and sucked out most of the air, labelled, also worked well. 

I also bought a few other things- chicken breast with ribs (50% off) as this time of year chicken parts to BBQ are priced low. Also butter to freeze, organic raisins (great for holiday baking!), extra artisan breads and cheese. It's easy to think ahead- what do I usually buy later that I can store NOW? Grains, beans, etc. all store so easily in bags, jars or cans. We have a bumper crop coming of apples and peaches, less with the pears. I will be canning/freezing those too. Veggies are planted, will store dried herbs and make pesto. I'm hoping our local farmstead will have the same HUGE organic chickens for sale that I got last year! I bought two last fall and they were great. Supports local farmers, good price and stores very well. Like last year I am working on this (made my little sign)-

Idea from the Retrosuburbia Facebook Group

Favorite Frugal, Easy Baking Mix & Biscuit Recipes, Home Office Re-Boot/New Job! Fun Summer/ 4th of July Decor

 

 Recipe here Mother Earth News Baking Mix

Favorite Frugal/ Easy Baking Mix & Biscuit Recipes-

Given food prices going up and the need for simpler foods, (that you can modify) here a couple things I've used! In the course of my reorganizing some of my office things I was looking at my cookbooks. I also had a few printouts from some older blogs, one that is now defunct, Lazy J Bar C Farm. Years ago I printed out her Baking Mix, which was basically the recipe above posted on Mother Earth News. I did modify the recipe using half whole wheat pastry flour so it wasn't all unbleached, for a little bit more nutritional value. It's basically like Bisquick but cheaper, homemade and fresher.  You can use this in all kinds of recipes! You can make biscuits, cookies etc. Sadly Candy's blog is no longer accessible, as had a huge Norton block that red flagged it as a dangerous website. I very rarely see that with Norton so I did not open the site. Here's few recipes from the author Candy that you can make with the mix, ones I had printed and kept-

Cheesy Biscuit Sticks-

2 cup Baking Mix, 1/4 cup cold butter cut into small pieces, 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper, 3/4 cup grated cheese (I liked Cheddar) , three quarter cup buttermilk. Preheat oven to 425°, place baking mix, butter and cayenne pepper in a bowl and cut in butter. Stir in grated cheese. Make a well in the center and add buttermilk all at once. Stir together until a soft dough forms. Turned out onto a well floured surface. Dust the top with additional flour. Need gently 8 to 10 times. Pat dough into a rectangle about 12"by 8" and about half and inch thick. Cut into sticks separate and place on an ungreased baking sheet and bake for 10 to 20 minutes or until golden brown.

And another one-

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies.

2 cups Baking Mix,, half a pound (two sticks butter) softened, one and a half cups of granulated sugar, 1 tablespoon of molasses, two eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla,  one teaspoon cinnamon, three cups old fashioned oats, 1 cup raisins. Heat oven to 350 degrees, be together wet ingredients and butter, add eggs and vanilla beat well. Add baking mix and cinnamon, mix well. Stir in oats and raisins mix well. Drop by rounded tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheet, bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown. Cool for 1 minute on cookie sheet, remove to wire rack to cool completely, makes about 4 dozen cookies.

You can really play around with that basic recipe! 

And another fave are these amazing biscuits! 

Recipe Pioneer Woman at Heart Biscuits

Again you can modify with WW pastry flour, tender and oh so flaky! Another great recipe here Beyond Easy Beer Bread, great with soup or leftovers! 

Home Office Re-Boot/New Job!

Well, I quit my job! I am so happy! I was bored to the extreme, in a great job market (huge shortage of workers here) and I had a great tool belt so to speak. I decided to target an industry that I already had a lot of experience in. I applied with a couple very large organizations and did a Zoom job interview, a first. I accepted an offer with a group whose vibe I really like. Thursday was my last day on my old job (was told to work in the office) and ironically the A/C was glitchy, again. I kept thinking I was the only one who was HOT until I started seeing all the IM's, "I'm melting!", etc.  It was 80 degrees inside and dead air. Glad I won't be working there again! It was an old retrofitted building, always had AC/heating issues. Ant then there was leadership, no comment. Will simply say I found myself in a dead end job after promises of growth were made. I took Friday off since my PTO is getting cashed out. Time for a 3 day weekend!!!

I decided to deep clean the home office and reorganize a bit with the new job starting. When I started working from home last year I never thought it would last this long! My new job will start off working from home and may start working in the office in the fall. They have pushed that out a couple times already, so time will tell. First thing I did, of course, was turn in all my old equipment to my previous employer. After that I decided to get everything up on the desk. Dave and I pulled it out and vacuumed-

 I had a printer on a canning rack that I decided to move. That went onto the top of our little cabinet-

We had a file tote in the corner for paperwork. I decided to get it out. When we moved the file tote out I was able to put the two space heaters we had in that corner. One was one that I bought for the office for the winter, since I'm on two outside walls. The other was one we bought for a grandson River, but his parents have a new furnace so they didn't need it. They were going to donate it so I asked for it! I figured it would be nice in our kitchen in place of our noisy space fan heater-

Nice parking space, clean 

We had a filing tote in the corner of the room, which I realize we could put the contents of in the kitchen. Basically I had a filing drawer full of cookbooks in the kitchen at our desk. I realized that I can put my cookbooks under the kitchen counter I can get to them and see them. This cart previously had Covid supplies, masks, sanitizer, etc. Then I filed the paperwork in the kitchen cabinet drawer-

Cookbooks, many thrifted, some homemade, on wheels! 

New home for files, good location! 

All better, space for new canned goods coming soon! 

Some fun decor, love my faux barn door

Fun calendar

I wiped off the desk really well, now nice and clean. I'll be bringing home new equipment Monday. Still have my fun decorative stuff on the walls. The space is much more organized, clean and less cluttered. A nice space to start a new job in! Excited!!!

Fun Summer/ 4th of July Decor-

With all the job hunting changes I didn't get much up til this week! Here's a look around!

Dining room shelf

Nice pops of yellow! I made the topiary

Made the chunky flag

My fave basin on the coffee table, easy! 

I added a few flags outside, that's it! Off to the mountains tomorrow for the day, for Father's Day!