My Fairy Tale Weekends (Getting Caught Up)

A little garden science experiment 

Baking Cookies

Potato Head Fun 

Sonya's Potato Head Family

Sonya Shadow Dancing

Little Bit's Swimming Lessons

Splashing Fun

Humpty Dumpty Jump Off the Wall

 Getting back into the follow after brief absence. Baby stepping it back into a good practice.

Preserving: Oven Roasted Bell Pepper

Now to preserve those wonderful bell peppers that are so bountiful during the summer heat. So here is how I oven roast my bell peppers, first remove the core and dump all the seeds out.

Them cut the peppers into either halves or quarters.

Place the peppers skin up on a large cookie sheet, arranging to fit as many as possible.

Now move the oven rack to the highest level, and turn the broiler on high. Place the peppers on the rack.

Now, this is when the house starts to smell like roasting peppers, which is very nice. The time depends on your oven, so check on the peppers every five minutes or so. You want the pepper skin to be black and blistered. The skin will bubble up due to the extreme heat.

When the skinned is roasted, remove the rack from the oven. Allow the peppers to cool before handling. Once cool, remove the pepper's skin. This process is fairly easy, the skin has for the most part separated and will come off with ease. 

 Then lay the peppers out on a cookie sheet and place in the freezer. Then after 24 hours, remove the tray and place the peppers into a freezer bag and back into the freezer.

Then when your ready to use the peppers, grab the amount you need and dice up. Then you can throw them into a soup or into a skillet to prepare for you meal. This evening, I made tacos. Frozen peppers with chopped and added to my onions to cool. The peppers turned out great. Hopefully this has shown that preserving doesn't have to be complicated or time consuming. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to ask away.

Preserving: Blanching and Freezing Corn

Trying to eat local during the late fall and winter months can be tough, especially when the last of the tomatoes, green beans and corn slowly come to a halt. But you can enjoy a menu of local corn with an easy process call blanching and freezing. Blanching is when you cook a produce such as corn, broccoli, green beans and greens in boiling water, then stop the cooking process by putting directly into freezing water.  Then the veggie is bagged and popped into the freezer. See below for some easy steps and tips.

Above is the local farmers' market corn on the cob with the husk removed and rinsed, lovely right.

Boil a large pot of water. To speed up this process, put a lid on the pot. Then once boiling put the veggies in, for corn let it cook for 7-8 minutes. There are great web sites that will provide blanching time for each vegetable.

Then from the hot bath to the cold bath. This stops the cooking process. I add ice the bowl to make the water good and cold.

Once the cob is cool enough to handle, use a knife to cut the corn off the cob.

Then you put the corn into a freezer bag and pop it into the freezer, until you need it another day.

Tip 1: To get a close to vacuum seal, try this. Get a straw, with the bag full seal the bag with the straw in the opening. Then using your mouth to suck the air out of the bag. Then while still sucking the air out, slip the straw out and seal the rest of the way.

Tip 2: During another corn freezing day, I had a great idea. Recipes vary for the amount of corn needed, right? So I had some small "snack" ziplock bags and it hit me... Put one cob of corn into each snack bag then place three to four of those bags into a quart size bag and freeze.

If you have any tips, please leave a comment below. I love to learn from others.

My Fairy Tale Past 3 Weekends.....

 Better late then, never. Busy trying to play catch-up.

Someone is turning 3!!!!

Homemade Cookie Cake, it was yummy

Tongue sticking out concentration!! hee hee

Trip the park

Ice cream Man delight

Even Sissy enjoyed the rare treat!

She loves her new bday umbrella, even with no rain.

Festive Pumpkin photo

Degutting the pumpkins

Getting to crave on her own!!!

Getting her paint on!!!

My Productive Sunday

Since during the week, I'm busy with working, making dinner, taking care of animals, and occasional laundry. The weekend is when I really rock n roll in the kitchen. It is amazing what a girl can get done in one day.....

So this past Sunday, I got the following complete:

The night before, I soaked 1 and a half pounds of dry black beans in the crock pot over night. In the morning, I filled the crockpot up to just below the rim. Put the lid on and turned it onto low. They will cook for about 6 hours. Once they finished cooking I turn off the crock pot and let them cool some. Then using freezer bags, I fill them with 10 ounces of black beans. Leaving the bag open, let them cool to room temperature. Seal the bag and pop them into the freezer. 1 and a half pounds made 5 bags.

cooking black beans

Checked on lil bit and she was busy searching for the missing mitten.....

Back in the kitchen, using my bread machine, I made to batches of pizza dough. Each batch takes 1.5 hours. Once done, I knead the dough on a floured surface, than wrap in plastic wrap. Then pop into a gallon freezer bag and into the freezer it goes. Then repeat with the second batch. Now I have pizza dough that will last two weeks, Friday night pizza!!

Pizza dough mixing

From the farmers' market I bought 8lbs of beef and 2lbs of sausage, most of the beef was popped into the freezer for later meals. I thawed 2 pounds of beef and 1 pound of sausage. Then made a big batch of meatballs. With meatballs rolled and placed on the cookie sheet, pop into the oven for 10 minutes, then pull out and let cool. Once the meatballs have cooled, place on another cookie sheet and place in the freezer. I freeze them like I do berries, separate so they don't become one monster mush meatball. Leave them overnight then transfer to gallon freezer bag. 

Meatballs!!!

While making the meatballs, I was oven roasting bell peppers, tomatoes and onions to make roasted pepper spread. 

Roasted peppers, tomatoes and onio

Blueberry snack time turned into a cute mini photo shoot...she is too cute for words, most of the time.

Roasted pepper spread continued on to simmer, blended and canned for a fall and winter treat.

Canned roasted pepper spread

While the roasted red pepper spread simmered I made and baked two loaves of summer squash bread. One for now and one went into the freezer for this winter.

It was a busy, but not to busy day and at the end of the day I got a lot completed. Not bad for a working mom. Next weekend I foresee making granola, squash muffins and who knows what else. 

a little sass

My Fairy Tale Weekend

Ice Cream Sundae Bar

Ice Cream on a summer night

Clapping for sissy catching fireflies

Catching Fireflies

A glowing jar of fireflies

Deck Pool Time

Getting Toes!!!