We're Back!

We had a wonderful time.  Caution: vacation pictures ahead.  Read on at your own risk!   We really didn't go very far afield, but we did go to the North Georgia mountains which are about a 45 minute drive from here.  We left Wednesday after noon.  We went out to lunch to kill time until we could check in , we thought, at 1:30.  Unfortunately we arrived at the cabins only to find we had to wait to check in til 3 pm.  We decided to drive around a bit and ended up in a little flea market.  Not much to write home about, but it killed some time.  We also found a covered bridge my dad told me about

This bridge was built in 1890 after the original bridge was washed away.  I am sorry to say there have been quite a few people vandalizing the bridge.  If you look closely you can see the vandalism.  But we walked across the bridge and it seems so solidly built I am sure it will be here for another century.
.  By the time we got checked into our cabin there really wasn't much we could go do in Helen.  Most of the shops start to close down around 6 or so.  Instead we went to an ice cream parlor.  They serve Mayfield Ice cream and it was yummy.  Yea, I come by my weight honestly.......Anyway.  Thursday was our main gallivanting time.  We set out to breakfast at this cute, cute cute restaurant called Hofer's restaurant in Helen Ga.  Helen is a small town in White county Ga that is built to resemble a Bavarian Town in the Alps.  Hofer's lives up to the image.  It is a bakery/ restaurant.  Everything in the restaurant is Shipped over from Germany.  The waitresses all wear dresses with full skirts and a ruffled apron.  Cute.  I tried to get a picture of a gorgeous dough bowl on top of the china cabinet, but I couldn't get a good enough pic to do it justice.  I was however enamored of the coffee pot with which they brought our coffee. Here it is

And there are no coffee creamer packets.  Oh no.  They bring the cream in a little matching pitcher with cute little coffee cups.  I felt like we were having a tea party.  Oh and should you guys think I would forget about the food(you don't know me very well).  Our breakfast was great and plentiful.  We were planning on stopping back by to purchase some baked goods to take home, but never got back.  We will remedy that later.  Here are some shots of the temptations we were faced with:

I can feel my waist expanding as I look at these.  Yummy.  Now I know why fat people are jolly.  Beats the heck out of  a celery stick!  Anyway.   We also went to Habersham winery and tasted a couple of different wines.  We bought a peach one that was really good.  We went to a coffee shop called Jumpin Joe's and bought some caramel delight coffee.  It was really good.  The lady running the place was very sweet and helpful........and....uh....ENERGETIC!  I commented to my Dh that I believe the saleslady had tried a little too much of the product.   Just sayin.  My absolute favorite place is Nora Mills.  It is a water powered stone mill that still mills its grains each day to sell.  In addition to that it has all these little things like old fashioned candies, home canned goods, cast iron pots and other old timey kitchen essentials.

I have found they have the best price on wheat germ so next time I need some wheat germ that is where I am going.  They also have 50lb bags of wheat berries you can buy for $35.  These wheat berries do sprout so Kristen that is for you....and me if I can steal your bread recipe!  Went went a few other places: The Old Sautee store, lunch at the Nachoochee Grill, a two floor antique shop, a collectibles shop, and we topped it off with a hike to Dukes Creek Falls.  The trip down to the falls if fine cause you get to go down hill, and down, and down.  It is a mile down and a mile back.  The path zig zags.  You have three levels til you reach the bottom.  The middle level is deceptively "level"  When you are coming back you realize it is not level, but is still a gradual incline.  The final level before you reach the parking lot (this is one the way back up) will increase your prayer life exponentially.

So that is our mini vacation.  We came home Thursday night instead of leaving first thing in the morning Friday Morning.  Much to our sons dismay, who were loving having the run of the house.  Nice to be missed right?
So today has been an out door gardening day.  I have picked tomatoes, limas, my watermelon, pinto beans, navy beans, and a couple of peppers.  Now I am going to sit and watch something and shell beans, and more beans, and more beans.....   Fall is looking pretty good right now.  So I have to go now.  See ya round the block!

Gonna be away for a few more days

Dh and I are going away for a few days to a wonderful cabin in the mountains....  Then it will be weekends and I will work, but I promise come Monday there will be a new post here for anyone interested in my little life.  I can report my final tally for my blueberries is 32 lbs.  3 lbs less than I wanted, but the birdies got to the rest before I could get to them.  But I do have three more bushes that will start producing next year.  Very happy with the outcome.  SO everyone have a great week and I will see you come Monday.

They call me The Power Nazi!

Yes, it is amazing how proactive you become regarding power usage when you are no longer on a budget billing system through your power provider(for those of you unaware of what "budget billing" is, its where your provider averages the use for a year and the average is what you pay each month).  I had become lax in hanging clothes on the line or the kids leaving lights or a TV on because we paid the same each month.  I have been watching our bills for the past few months and we have been ahead of the game over this past year.  Way ahead.  This was due mainly to the fact that my daughter and her family found their own place last summer, but the bill wouldn't reflect it til the anniversary of the budget billing, which is in August.  So armed with the information regarding our normal monthly usage for each month, I called and cancelled the budget billing.  I feel this is going to help over the long run.  While it is nice to know what you are being billed each month, I feel it contributes to a less than committed desire to conserve electricity.  Now, I am reminiscent of my childhood and the loving nostalgic phrases like " CLOSE THE DOOR YOU'RE LETTING OUT THE HEAT!(or cold depending on the season), "WERE YA RAISED IN A BARN!", "turn the lights off we aren't made of money ya know", and other wonderful phrases which I find myself repeating to my kids.  Rubic jokes and says "mom makes us turn our lights and TV off now".  to which I reply "when you have a job and you are paying the power bill we will talk".  So I am back to being the power Nazi and proud of it.  It is making me think of different ways I can save on power usage and that can only be positive (no power charge pun intended).

Along the same lines as power conservation, but also contributing to time management, I have discovered a little trick on making tomato sauce. I think I have shared my" how to"on making the tomato sauce.  The trick comes after I have cooked the tomatoes.  I still remove them from the pot with a slotted spoon, and place them in my food mill placed over the pot to cook down the sauce.  I let the tomatoes sit in the food mill draining the rest of the juice into the pan.  I have the burner on high and it boils down the juice.  Once the juice is boiled down, I run the actual tomatoes through the mill.  Heat the sauce up and can it.  It takes a lot less time to cook down the juice that way than to let the sauce itself cook down.  I make less mess because I don't have sauce splatters, and I don't end up with some of the sauce sticking to the pan. Over all I believe a power and time saver.

I think that is all the earth shattering, mind blowing (uh right)news from my little homestead.  Work is this weekend, and so pretty sure I will have nothing to report til next week.  In the mean time I am plugging along doing my best to be a good steward of all God has entrusted to me.  I hope everyone has an awesome day.  See ya next go round.

Okay, Okay... but there is a reason I have been gone!

I know.  Hasn't been much daily raving from this frugal maven.  Huh. Seriously.  It has been a little looney tunes around here.  The garden is coming in full force and so I am going back and forth between weeding and garden maintenance and picking/canning.   Here are some examples of day before yesterday's offerings

That was the first load, then I went back out and got

That is Corn, parsley, Lima beans, pinto beans, 3 bell peppers,and a few potatoes(oh and our cat Clapton.lol).  I also picked another pound of blueberries and 6 1/2 pounds of onions.  The corn looks like this after all the shuckin and jivin

I have to say this is the first year I have been able to shuck corn and not have any(and I do mean any) bad places to remove.  Granted there were some kernels near the top of some of the pieces that didn't fill out, but they were all at the top and so easy to remove.  This was my prettiest corn ever.  This has since been blanched and stuck in the freezer.  I wish I had thought to take a picture of the Lima beans shelled.  Apparently I planted colored Limas.  While they are pretty right out of the shell(pink,purple, and white), once canned they look an awful lot like pinto beans.  I made sure to label them.  Pintos are like that too.  Really pretty out of the shell then brown when cooked.

In addition to this days offerings, I have put up 31 quarts of tomato sauce, 20 pints of salsa, a batch of peach jam, a batch of mixed berry jam, and a batch of blackberry jelly. Onions are done for the season.  Only got 6.5 lbs, but this was an experiment to see how it would do.  Haven't decided if I will do it again.  I came out on top, and they didn't take up a lot of space so I might do it again. The tomatoes, peppers, beans, Lima beans, corn, and peanuts aren't done yet for the year.  I can't wait til I can post a final tally of all my garden produced.
Now , I want to share something else with you.  Take a gander at my watermelons

See that vine climbing all over the place?  There are two watermelons in sight.  If you are wondering what is around them, those are t shirt sleeves left over from making "yarn" out of old t shirts.  I used them to make a melon hammock.  These watermelons are free.  They are volunteer plants from watermelon seeds I planted last year from a store bought watermelon purchased the year before. Very proud of these little buggers.  Well you won't believe what I have now.  I was out reclaiming one of my peanut beds.  The weeds were getting pretty tall surrounding the beds.  So off I go to pull them up.  Here is what I uncovered

Yep.  Two more volunteer watermelon plants.  So I pulled out the weeds from around them, lay some pine straw around them, gave them something to climb on and a good drink of water.  I have done all I can.  The rest is up to them.  Hmm maybe more watermelons for labor day...or Halloween.  Lol.  Last but not least I will share the progress of my little pinto bean babies that I grew from pinto beans bought at Aldi.

Their germination rate was much better than the pinto beans bought at Sams club.  So Sams club is for cooking and Aldi is for planting.  So that is why I have been off the air for so long....Well part of it.  Through in the everyday stuff and you pretty much have it.  I promise I will be better at doing this in the fall when things slow down a bit.  So until next time dear people!  Have  great day!

Well it's good news and bad news...

The good news is the canning is officially rockin.  I have put up  salsa, blackberry jam(w/o pectin), blueberries, and tomato sauce so far this season.  It is a great feeling to see the shelves begin to fill with goodness form the garden.  Feeling really good about some things, but bummed about others.  My peach trees aren't going to provide much in the way of peaches this year.  I will throw away about a bushel due to pests and fungus.  I am still hoping I can get a few jars of jams, but that is it.  I am planning on buying some from a farmers market to put up.  I still feel that is cheaper than the price of peaches at the store.  My mom used to put up frozen peaches.  Oh boy where those things good on a summer night.  Eat them slightly frozen....Ummm.  Might do that if I can get a good price on the peaches.
Yesterday I had to pull up some corn and bean plants.  I don't care who says it, you cannot use corn to support pole beans.  I read that, seriously, and I have tried for the past 2 seasons to get them to work that way.  It doesn't.  Know why?  Because pole beans aren't happy with grabbing the corn they were planted with.  Oh no, they have to grab the one two rows over.  After a bit of many pole bean plants reaching for different corn stalks, the corn just falls over.  Or I should say is pulled down.  Yes, corn and beans derive mutual benefit,but if you want to plant pole beans with corn, plant the beans against a trellis or something else they can climb on.  The good new on that front is I have more corn planted and at least I can plant still more before it gets too cold.  I am also going to plant more green beans, but not with the corn.  Lima beans... well they are going gang busters.  I should have plenty to put up this year.  Instead of drying them, I am going to can them up like last year.  Funny, I wouldn't have eaten limas as a kid, but last year I fixed some for dinner and WOW were they good.  I guess your taste buds do change as you get older.  I am keeping a tally of my gardens output this year to see what does well, what doesn't, what to change for next year, how much I saved, things like that.  I will post it when the season is over.
I did find something useful.  I had some t shirt sleeves left over from where I converted t shirts to yarn.  You can see that post http://frugalmavensdailyrave.blogspot.com/2012/06/what-to-do-with-old-ratty-t-shirts.html.  I have my watermelon(volunteers from watermelons planted last year from seeds saved from a store bought watermelon from the year before that) plants trained to a trellis, so to take the weight of the growing watermelons off the plants, I put a "shirt" on each of my three growing watermelons.  Then I attached the shirt sleeve to the trellis with a clothes pin.  Kinda like a melon hammock.  Seems to be doing well for now.
Well I am off to make more tomato sauce.  Just wanted to check in .  Hey Mama and Daddy!  love you!

Hmmm, note to self...

If I am going to buy pinto beans from the store and plant them to make more pinto beans, then I need to use Aldi pinto beans for seed rather than Sams club.  I planted my Sams club pintos twice.  I had a few sprout, but the germination rate wasn't much to write home about.  So I bought a bag of dried pintos at Aldi, planted a couple of rows(or I should say partial rows cause the rest of the bed was taken up by the Sams beans), and noticed yesterday that it looks as if all of them germinated and have poked their little heads out of the ground.  Yay Beans.
I have heard over the years that seeds saved from store bought items, saved from non heirloom varieties or in this case, used from store bought dried beans, won't germinate.  If by some weird chance they do germinate, I was told I wouldn't get a product true to the mother plant.  I have found that to not be true.  SO far in my gardening career I have planted popcorn, pintos, navy beans, cantaloupe, and watermelon from store bought items. I have also saved seeds from squash, peppers, beans, and pumpkins from non heirloom varieties and they have been successful.  Every gardening season I end up with volunteers from previous seasons garden that pop up on their own.  The main culprits are tomatoes, potatoes, squash, watermelon, and sunflowers.  I once transplanted 23 tomato volunteers that had sprouted from tomatoes I had thrown off into the brush.  We had cleared the brush in late winter and then when things started sprouting, so did they.  These tomatoes did just as well as the ones planted that year.  Produced the same amount, and same quality.  The only year I had a weird product is when I planted some cucumbers that didn't germinate(or so I thought).  I replanted and still no luck, so I decided to plant cantaloupe.  Apparently they all sprouted and since I couldn't tell who was who I let them grow together.  Uhhh don't do that with squash.  They cross pollinated and I ended up with a cucaloupe, or a cantacumber if you please.  Bad tasting thing, but a good life lesson.  Another reason I am not on the heirloom seed band wagon is the fact if I am using heirloom seeds and my neighbor isn't; bees don't know the difference and my plants get cross pollinated.  So no non hi-bred seeds anymore.  Now that is my thoughts on the subject and I am sure there are others who would disagree, but this is my blog and it was created to voice my thoughts. So Nyah(smile; kidding people no one get mad).  Now I will admit I do plant more of saved seeds than I would if I had bought them.  That way I am sure to have enough germinate.  I can afford to plant more of those seeds because a) they are free, and b) I have more of them.
The garden so far this year has been pretty good.  Bombs this year are apples(no surprise they are still young trees), peaches, beets, and maybe my green beans.  I keep thinking they will start producing soon, but the plants are taking their own sweet time.  The plants look good, I just don't see anything on them.  Replanting those today just in case.  The beauties this year are blueberries, blackberries, tomatoes, peppers(green and jalapeno), lima beans,and herbs.  The corn and peanuts are still growing so that is a wait and see.  Potatoes were average.  Not as much as before, but what was produced has been really good.
Today's agenda is bread making(in progress), and garden work.  Well that and getting ready for work tomorrow.   The boys will be cutting the grass if we can keep the mower working !@#$%^&.  Excuse ME! SO off I go until another day when I can sit down and type my thought to share with those interested in what I have to say.  Until then I hope everyone stay comfortable, cool, and safe!

Success with the Mint Extract(how to pics also)

I am so excited!  Yesterday I tried out my new(to me) Rival electric ice cream maker.  I purchased it at a thrift store for $4.  Off to a good start there.  By the way this thing is so neat.  Uses no rock salt or ice, you just freeze the base. Anyway, I digress....Where was I ?  Oh Yes, Ice cream maker.  I decided to kill two bird with one stone and try out my Mint Extract to see how it did.  I made mint chocolate chip ice cream. It worked!  It tasted like Mint choc chip ice cream.  The boys want more mint so next time I will add maybe a teaspoon instead of half teaspoon.  My Ice cream maker only makes 1 quart, but you can get one that make 1.5 quarts.  I figured the cost of my "all natural" ice cream. It comes to $1.84 for all natural mint choc chip ice cream.  Had I made just vanilla it would have been a whopping .96 for 2 quarts.  Considering the cost of 1.5 quarts of Aldi brand mint choc chip ice cream is 2.69.  I am way ahead.  Cost per ounce of homemade=.029 or 3 cents an ounce, while the Aldi brand comes out at .059 or 6 cent an ounce.  Way cool!  No pun intended.
So with that being said, since extract was successful, I wanted to share what I did:

What you will need:
Vodka (80 proof. Not for drinking now!)
Mint leaves
glass jars( I used wide mouth pint jar

First off you want to take your mint leaves off the branches and wash them well under cool water.  Let them dry completely before you start.

While you are waiting on your leaves to dry, go ahead and take your jars and have them in boiling water for 20 minutes.  I also boiled my lids and rings so everything was sterile.  It is important to keep the work area clean.

Once your leaves are dry, chop them coarsely.  This give a lot of area for the vodka to work on extracting the oils.   Once your jars are done, fill them about half full of the chopped mint.

Then you want to take the vodka and pour it over the leaves.  Leave about 1 inch head space.

Then top with your lid and store in a dark area for a week.  I dated mine so I could make sure I left it long enough.

I ended up with 20 oz of mint extract.  That is worth about 10 bottles of extract at the store.  Walmart sells the mint extract for 2.98 for 2 oz.  This cost me the cost of prep and the vodka.  So about $8.  Which compares to Walmart=.80 for 2 oz.  Nice.  I have plenty more mint where that came from.  I am thinking I will add more mint to my extract and let it steep another week just to strengthen it a little, but all in all I would say this is a good investment, and so easy to do.
Okay, I have to go get my boys out to the garden to work.  Myself as well.  I get help Yay!