Little Homestead In Boise

Aug 4, 2018

Blue Skies & Cooler, Homemade Chokecherry Syrup, 1st Home Grown Salad, Hello Fresh Delivery, New Chickens Update

Squirrel cooling off near mister in 100+ degree weather

Blue Skies and Cooler!
Weather that was forecast a day or two ago turned out to be right! We had a nice cool front that came in off the Pacific Ocean and seem to move almost all the smoke out of the area and cool us down. Whenever I hear low pressure this time of year I do a happy dance. Low means cooler and sometimes wind which can be great in this kind of situation. We've been watering and watering to keep everything alive and the triple temperatures. Anya still loves laying in the sun, even with the heat, the weirdo-

It was a really nice to be in, and out, of the house and do little projects. Here's some random projects I tackled....

Dave and I wound up having the same identical eyeglasses cases from Costco, which caused some confusion. I started thinking of a way I could put something colorful on mine. I decided not to buy anything, but instead pulled out some nice blue and white French plaid ribbon. A few cuts, a little liquid nails and I can certainly tell now which one is mine!

I also made some chokecherry jelly today syrup, see below. Hard boiled some fresh eggs in my little Egglette cups, works brilliant! Time for deviled eggs, yum. We went out to a late lunch at Kilted Kod, a food truck that has the best fish and chips I've ever had anywhere. They use big, juicy chunks of Cod, handmade and cooked to order. Very light and crunchy batter, just incredible. According to local people from the U.K. it's very authentic. After lunch we stopped at Goodwill and found an amazing gift for one of our grandchildren. While I don't think my kids usually read this blog I'm not going to post what it is until after we give it to him. But it was an amazing score!

Tonight we sat on the back porch and just enjoyed the cooler weather. We have a couple of hummingbirds that come to our feeders on a regular basis. We have two and every three to four days I mix up new hummingbird food. Basically it's three parts water and one part sugar dissolved well and cooled. We have lots of plants that are blooming now to also provide natural food. The smoke started rolling in a bit this afternoon, but at least it's cooler, breezy and the smoke is much less than it was. Forecast for some possible rain tonight! Praying for NO lightning! We have enough fires as it is.

Homemade Chokecherry Syrup-
I was thinking we would have a really nice harvest of Chokecherries this year to make more jelly with. In the past we've had a Qt or more. I have made some jelly before and it has a wonderful citrus type flavor and beautiful color. Dave picked everything off the shrub and sadly there was only about one cup total of chokecherries.

With that small amount I decided to just make a very small batch of syrup for pancakes and waffles. Basically you clean the choke cherries, cover with a little bit of water and bring to a boil and simmer until they're soft. I was lucky these chokecherries were actually very juicy!

After you boil them you pour the liquid and chokecherries through a sieve. I took a big, flat metal spoon and pushed the chokecherries and the juice through the strainer into a bowl-

I worked on that for about a good 5 to 10 minutes until there was some juice in the bottom along with some pulp. I had a little trouble deciphering how much sugar to put into such a small amount of juice. I wound up with it a little bit too sweet so I added some store-bought boysenberry syrup. I brought that to a boil as well with the sugar. Then I poured that back through the strainer another time and was able to get more chokecherry juice out of the mix. I wound up with a half small jelly batch-

It's a tart version of boysenberry syrup, but hey it does have a lot of vitamin C! We'll hope for a better harvest next year. I'm really happy at least we have lots and lots of apples and pears on the trees.
Recipe here Mennonitegirlscancook

1st Home Grown Salad-
We had our first nice summer garden salad with homegrown tomatoes, Lemon and slicing cukes and basil, added some chunks of avocado, red wine vinegar and olive oil, above. Our daughter Angie stopped by, gifting us with three HUG yellow squash and one big cuke. We'll be eating those!

We have some small zuccini almost ready. Looking forward to more fresh tomatoes to make some salsa.

Hello Fresh Delivery-
Today I got the test order from Hello Fresh in the mail. I haven't cooked the two meals yet but here's a preview of what I got and how they shipped it-

The box came very well insulated with cellulose packing material as well as two small and two very large ice bags-

The upper two bags of food whole nice and cold-

The two meat packages were down in the bottom next to a frozen ice bag also very very cold.

There were materials inside on how to cook each of the meals as well as photos of the finished product-

Great directions if you don't know how to cook

I'm cooking this first!

I bought these with a $50 off coupon so the total for two meals for two people was $15. $15.00 for four meals, not bad! I can cook from scratch cheaper, but this was a treat/experiement. We will definitely reuse the four ice bags, especially the two really large ones. We're going on a road trip soon and those will be great to put in the cooler since they are huge. As soon as I cook those meals I will post a review, but the ingredients look really great! Watch for more updates!

New Chickens Update-
The three new chickens are working out really. They got to free-range with the 2 big hens tonight and they all had a great time. All very healthy and curious and the flock pecking order seems to be settled in. While they do tend to run away from the two big hens, for no particular reason, probably just from sheer size. Annie, the white hen is definitely the braver of the three and seems to be the natural leader. It will be interesting over time to see if she butts heads with Rosie, the big Red Rhode Island Red. She's been the dominant hen for quite a while now, so time will tell.

Jul 31, 2018

Hot And Smoky, Peach Fail, Independence Days Challenge

Hot And Smoky-

Like the rest of the West it's been very hot, with triple digits and smoke from various wildfires. We're fortunate that the smoke isn't any worse. The sunsets have been really spectacular, but I've been sneezing a lot more, congested, with all of the crud in the air. There's no relief in sight for the heat right now but the good news the vegetables are going great! I mostly just trying to keep the chickens cool and we're trying to stay on top of the watering. This is the time of year I'm really grateful for air conditioning in our home, my car, and my job. Could be much much worse. I feel really sad with people losing their homes, businesses and the forests. It's a terrible sight to see the Shasta area fire, huge and such a gorgeous area. I visited there a long time ago and Mt. Shasta was breaktaking.

Morning commute 2 days ago, much worse today

Yep, that's it

Peach Fail-
This is our second year to have peaches off our little peach tree and it was doing great this spring. We had lots of fruit and then a few storms blew through. I had noticed that there weren't a whole lot of peaches on the side facing the street, but didn't think much of it until this weekend. Dave told me that a lot of the peaches were ripe and he was going to pick them. I asked him how much he thought there was on the tree and he thought a couple of crates. In reality we had a pretty tiny harvest as you can see from the photo. Pretty sad, but I guess it's better than nothing. We had lots of one gallon bags in the freezer from last year's harvest in comparison. I took the worst of the peaches that were bruised and have some bruises, sliced those up and made a peach and blueberry cobbler. I saved the better more perfect peaches for us to just eat fresh. We gave a small bag to our two daughters last night and her one grand baby was asking for more peaches! Glad that he likes them. So unlike last winter we won't have lots of frozen peaches. Oh well, what can you do?

Independence Days Challenge-
Here's a rundown of what we've been up to lately...

1. Plant Something-

I was able to find some half price Italian parsley since mine died and planted some fresh. This is not the time of year for planting for us since it's so hot and we don't do a fall garden due to the climate.

2. Harvest Something-
Right now we're harvesting the start of our tomatoes, lemon/slicing cucumbers, blackberries, and sweet Gypsy peppers. We got about 1 cup of Choke Cherries, that's it. I'll make some syrup for breakfast and stick it in the fridge. Our two older hens are still laying about 1 egg every day or so probably due to the excessive heat. We're doing a lot to keep them cool, but I think that their production will pick up a little bit as it cools down some over time. Interestingly enough the three half-size hens seem to tolerate the heat better probably because they're smaller.

3. Preserve/Store Something-
We harvested our neighbor's rhubarb (she doesn't use it) and we got about four 1-gallon bags in the freezer. I also made a huge strawberry rhubarb apple cobbler last weekend! Yummy. No peaches this year, read below. Looking forward to harvesting apples and pears, the trees are loaded! I think we'll have enough tomatoes to freeze as well.

4. Manage Reserves- Get a Good Deal/Barter/Stock Up/Prep-
Bought grilling chicken on sale for roasting. Going to Costco soon for some supplements, cat litter etc. We get lots of great deals there, but we're careful what we buy.

5. Eat the Food- Try New Foods/Recipe-
After I read a little article on how the English royal family stays healthy I discovered barley water! I never heard of it before and did a little research. It's made out of water left over from cooking with barley and added fruit juices for flavoring. And guess what I stumbled upon at a local grocery store? Yes lemon flavored barley water. Always ready for a culinary adventure I decided to buy a bottle. It was $7 for the concentrate of 28 Oz. Basically you use about 80% water in about 20% of the concentrate, so it makes a lot of glasses. I tried it and really liked it since it was tart and didn't have much sugar compared to other drinks. Dave even liked it! I bought Robinson's brand lemon flavor and may try some other flavors if I can find them. While this isn't something I would have ordered online, I did find it locally. I may buy some more or make my own. There are tons of recipes online. You basically cook barley, reserve the water and then add your own fruit flavorings. Fascinating stuff!

6. Build Community Food Systems-

Rhubarb from her neighbor, Dave nicely sliced it up in cubes, froze it bagged. We gave her a dozen of our fresh eggs which she greatly appreciated.

7. Recycle/Re-Use-
Mostly doing more donations and I have bought a few used things recently. I picked up a few inexpensive summer clothes for work and some bamboo silicone utensils for pots.

In a recent order from Amazon I received a $50 off coupon for Hellofresh, a new meal delivery system. After going online and doing a little research I went ahead and ordered two two-person dinners. The total will be $15 which would certainly be less than the two of us eating out. All the ingredients are provided except for simple additions like oil, butter or something else that you would usually have on hand. We should be receiving the order this weekend and I will do a review. I ordered a Hawaiian Poke Bowl meal and Pork Tacos. I will certainly let you know what I think after we try this if anyone is interested. While I think they target affluent families that don't know how to cook, maybe they'll learn something! I guess no one buys cook books any more.

8. Skill Up-
I did learn recently how to air out a perfume a smelly used leather purse. My one main leather purse that I use mostly for work was partially broken. It was a used leather Fossil bag that I bought on eBay a few years ago. I wasn't able to fix part of the metal that broke. I found another good deal on eBay for another Fossil bag that was basically brand-new, much cheaper than retail. I was really excited then I opened up the box and about fell over from the perfume odor. Since I am sensitive to odors it might not have been as bad for somebody else, but it was bad enough for me. The bag came in a cloth storage bag which I immediately threw out since I really didn't want it. I was happy to see that simply airing out the purse in another bedroom by hanging it on a closet knob seems to have fixed the problem. Interestingly enough there are tons of DIY ideas online on how to do this.

9. Regenerate What is Lost/Salvage Something-
I can't really think of something that we salvaged recently although we do little things all the time. Dave did pull out the dishwasher arm and I cleaned it out so maybe that qualifies? As much as we scrape dishes it seems like little bits of food are always getting clogged in the spinning wands. I told Dave if he dies first I'm having the dishwasher removed, recycled, then I will have someone build some nice shelving there and fill it with baskets. With two of us (unless we have company) we really only run the dishwasher every two days.

Jul 20, 2018

DIY Upcycled Thrifted Camping & Summer Decor

DIY Upcycled Thrifted Camping & Summer Decor-

Lately I had been seeing a ton of camping related decor on Pinterest. Some were decked out trailers, tents or porches. I also spotted a few inside home camping decor ideas (see my Pinterest folder). We haven't had a real vacation for a few years and I remembered how much we used to love tents camping with the girls. I took some items I already had (except the sign) and decked out my dining room shelf! I started with the Thermos which previously had flags for 4th of July. I went around the house and gathered the other things-

A mini red oil lantern (that works!), a small white enameled basin with a blue edge, a blue coffee kettle (added fake flowers), a Brownie camera, a fish print from one of our girls (turned side ways), a tree branch I collected from McCall with moss, and an old camping mug that had a candle inside. I thought about aading a compass, but it's buried in the garage. I've also seen a string of wood fake fish, you could do all kinds of things! I liked it! I did splurge and spend about $6.00 on the Relax You're At The Lake sign from Hobby Lobby (with coupon). I felt it tied it together and here's a closer look-

Reminiscing Dave and I decided to go to the lake area we love outside Bend, Oregon next summer and stay at the lodge. Looking forward to it, and a bed and a shower sounds great!

For the main part of the house I always put out some season decor, now it's beach and summer items. Many of these items are thrifted or handmade!