The Simple Life

I've always been a simple person.  I don't need much to keep me happy.  Don't get me wrong, I love things as much as anyone else but I don't need them. 

We moved from Indiana on August 30, 2019, to Sebring, Florida leaving behind all the family and friends that I'd known and the town where I had been for about 60 years.  Big change!  Granted, all of our kids are grown and live elsewhere, but we left our church family, my siblings, and all of our friends behind.  Dogs and cats came in the Tahoe with us, pulling a small Uhaul trailer with some belongings that we didn't want to ship in the Pod for safety reasons.  And we were coming down in the face of potential Hurricane Dorian.  Thank goodness he changed course.  I had never been to Sebring, but my husband came ahead of our moving to search out employment and housing while I stayed home and packed.  Exciting.  Depressing....all the emotions that one could imagine.  My mom just passed away in April so I had that on my mind and heart as well.  I have survived.

Over the weekend, I showed my husband a picture of a room that I would love, one that was so peaceful.  It was labeled as Hygge Lifestyle.  My husband asked me what Hygge was and I told him it was a feeling of coziness.  Later that day, I googled it because I'd only heard the term in a yarn group that I am in...this is what it is:
 

Description

Description

Hygge is a Danish and Norwegian word for a mood of coziness and comfortable conviviality with feelings of wellness and contentment. As a cultural category with its sets of associated practices hygge has more or less the same meanings in Danish and Norwegian, but the notion is more central in Denmark than in Norway. Wikipedia

This is the picture I showed him:

Isn't it beautiful and cozy?  I love it.  Now, here would be my issue though...I don't like snakes and I know there would be snakes lurking around under some of the blankets.

I guess I've always practiced Hygge and didn't know it had a name.  I love lots of candles, and plants, and natural things.  I love quiet, cozy, and Romantic.  

Right now, I'm finding myself...my happy self has been lost for a long time.  Since moving here, I've gained almost 10 pounds, which is probably boredom, depression, new surroundings...just a lot going on.  I am finally settling into my new role here though.  I'm still not working, only at home so far, one day I will find something that I really love though and then I'll do what I love.  Until then, I'm dabbling in painting and haven't done that for years.  I'm loving that, it is so relaxing.  I'm trying to organize our home and just want to be there in the evenings when my husband comes home from work and listen all about his day while we eat a good relaxing meal.

I hope to write more here....if you join in, let me know what you think from time to time.

Taco Pizza, Chicken Breakfast, Toasty Cat and more

Remember, yesterday I mentioned my black cat Thomas who was injured but we weren't exactly sure how it happened.  Well, he is still moving slowly but has been up and down the stairs at least once today.  He loves his heater...we call it his fireplace.  He would lay with his feet underneath it and we would go move him and tell him he will spontaneously combust if he isn't careful. 

I have figured out a way to keep him from being so close to it, although we joked about putting a fence around it.....jars work just fine too.

I sure hope he has 8 lives left in him....he is a good kitty.

Supper last night.  We had not had homemade pizza for a few weeks and with our schedules I thought a cheese pizza would be good to have and enjoy the leftovers for our lunches today.  The more I thought about it, I remembered that I had some homemade salsa and chicken taco meat left over from nachos so I created our own taco pizza.  It was so good.  I used just the salsa as the base and added chopped onions, banana and jalapeno peppers with the chicken taco meat and both shredded cheddar and mozzarella cheese.  It was a very tasty treat for a late supper.

And of course, old man winter is still hanging around but at least it wasn't as cold today as it was yesterday.  It was a real heatwave when I went out to feed the chickens this morning, a whopping 14 degrees.  When it is this cold outside, I try to make the girls a hot breakfast.  Today they got oatmeal with yogurt, stale buns and roasted sunflower seeds.  They love a good special treat such as this.

I have been trying to whittle down my fiber stash, listing lots of it in my Etsy Store...but so much fiber still.  Yesterday I washed almost 8 ounces of brown fiber from our girl Boots...it is now all dry and ready to card and blend into some beautiful spinning fiber. 

And this morning, I started cleaning some beautiful Light Fawn(looks white to me) fiber from our boy Fusion.  It has been a busy day today with phone calls, company and laundry so it won't get washed today but maybe it will get to soak overnight.  

That is it for today.

Hope it has been as good for you as it was here on the farm.

-2 Degrees.....brrrr!

Yes, we got our snow.  It is pretty but dang it is cold.  -2 this morning when I went out to take the chickens some HOT oatmeal laced with sunflower seeds, scratch, and some regular feed.  I then took the dogs out to do their business and they sure didn't want to stay long enough to get that finished either...hopefully, it will warm up a little bit today and then we will go try it again.  I am quite sure they will let me know when it is time...usually about the time I warm up again. 

So, what will I do today since it is too cold to be outside?  I started off my day in the fiber room skirting some alpaca fiber, 7.8 ounces.  Next, it will get soaked/washed and then I'll set it out to dry and that will also get some needed humidity back in the house.  And while that is drying, I will find a knitting project to work on while sitting with my dogs and one of our house cats, Thomas who hasn't been feeling very well...not exactly sure why.  He loves to lay with his feet under the heater and as close as he can be to it.  One night over the weekend I observed him acting weird but then realized that his claw was stuck in the carpet.  He always comes to bed with me and snuggles as close as he can get to me, with covers on.  He has quit doing that, although one night he struggled to get onto the bed, I am a light sleeper so I could hear the struggle but when he arrived by my side I loved on him and kept him warm.  He is a little furnace.  Anyway, we feel that maybe the dog got a little bit too rambunctious with him and has hurt him somehow...or maybe he plowed into something in his rampage thru the house one time.  So, I will sit with him and help him to feel better.  He is still in the basement in the same spot on the couch as I left him last night.  He has been coming upstairs on his own but not today. 

Morning Frost on the gate.

Poor Thomas.......

Morning sun poking thru the woods...

Today the pond is all white, yesterday the water was not frozen yet.

Smokey, sleeping in the cat basket that I fixed for Thomas yesterday. Smokey and Thomas are siblings and are about 3 1/2 years old.  Smokey was our barn cat but once we sold our alpacas, she was all alone except for the parties she would throw each night when stray cats, skunks, and raccoons came to visit her.  About November, we decided that she needed to come inside and she has adjusted very well to her new warm environment.

This is 7.8 ounces of alpaca, ready for the sink for its wash and soak.  Perhaps tomorrow it will be dry enough to card into something beautiful to spin.

Popcorn

This is the very first year that we grew popcorn and it was an adventure.  We bought our seeds and planted 3 different types and according to package directions should be the best ever popcorn that we've ever tasted.  It also said to plant different varieties far enough apart so that they wouldn't cross-pollinate. with each other and with our sweet corn.  Well, we thought we did that as we had used 3 vacant alpaca pastures.  Maybe they were supposed to be like in the next county.

Well, first came the sweet corn.  We had 3 separate plantings of that to stagger the length of time that we could eat fresh corn....with that, we fought raccoons and those gardens are all inside a 5' 2" x 4" no-climb fence which should have kept critters out of the garden.  It didn't.

After the corn had tasseled, we began planting the popcorn so they wouldn't cross-pollinate.  Ha.  in the 3rd patch of sweet corn we had some colored kernels in the beautiful yellow corn.  Didn't change the taste of it, just made it prettier.

So now, the sweetcorn is done.  Here comes the popcorn.  Growing nice and tall.  I swear we had one overachiever that was most likely 8' or 9' tall.  It dwarfed me by about a mile it seemed.  Now that the ears are growing and tasseling out on the popcorn, here come the pesky birds.  They want to peck at the corn under the husks.  They were shredding them...which would mean they would be bug infested and not usable.  So, what to do.  Remember, corn is pretty tall which means anything we would hang would have to be about 2' taller to be effective...  The Farmer ordered some sort of metallic streamers that we could span across the rows if we had to.  He also ordered some popcorn bags which we did use.  Looked a little "popcorny" but it worked.  Below is a picture of one of our "picture perfect" popcorn patches.  Look how clean it looks.  Remember our rainy summer, created so many weeds that we fought them all summer long....so by the time I took this picture, I was joking that it looked like the farm on Green Acres without any weeds....remember that show.

Finally, the popcorn is ready to harvest and we did that this past Friday evening.  Date night at its finest.  

Harvesting corn brought back a flood of memories from my childhood.  When I was in high school my parents bought a 400 acre farm in Harrodsburg, Kentucky and we loaded up the car every Friday night and went to the farm, driving back each Sunday night.  Little did we know that they did this on purpose to keep us out of trouble....guess it worked, we turned out pretty good.  We have a lot of memories from our weekend farm experience and maybe I'll share some of those from time to time but this time it is about harvesting corn.....as that is what I was thinking about the whole time The Farmer and I were in our little corn patch, creating memories of our own.

I remember the farm well.  We grew tobacco, corn and hay.  Had some cows, pigs, chickens and ducks.  I remember frog gigging with my brothers, camping out, the outhouse, the well where we drew our water, the wood stove and fireplace and the heat vents in the floor that let the air rise from those heat sources to help heat the upstairs where we slept.  Good times.  My uncle lived at the farm full-time in a separate little shack with his wife so someone was there to take care of things on a daily basis.  In the fall when the corn was ready to pick, we would take a hay wagon with sides on it and all of us would go to the back and pick the corn.  Since it has been so many years (about 50) I honestly can not remember all the details.  I don't know if we shucked it in the field, or if it went into the corn crib with the shucks on it.  I am sure they probably sold some too but those are details that I don't remember.  I only remember the fun times that we all had growing up like that.  Times were simpler.

We've got the popcorn laying out in the sun to finish drying and then will remove it from the cob and put it into the freezer to preserve it for a little while and then it will get stored in mason jars awaiting those times we want to have some popcorn as a snack.  Home grown popcorn is the best.

Homemade Yogurt

I love Yogurt!

Homemade Yogurt is the absolute best and is really so easy to make.

I use about half a gallon of milk, (I prefer whole milk because the rest of it scorches in the pot).  I pour it into a saucepan large enough to hold about that much milk, put in a thermometer and use a flat whisk for stirring.  Turn the heat on high because I love cooking on high to "gitterdone".  Bring the temp up to 180 degrees then remove from the burner.  I have a heavy, large glass salad bowl that I pour the hot milk into and with the thermometer still in use, I let it sit on a trivet on top of the stove cooling down to at least 120 degrees.  When it reaches the low temp I add about 4 ounces of existing yogurt and whisk it gently into the milk and then I remove the thermometer and let it rest in the oven on 115 degrees for several hours.  Once everything has jelled....it is done.  I love it warm but of course, you can't keep it warm forever so I cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put into the fridge to chill (overnight) and then transfer it to the jars.  (my batch fills 2-quart jars)

I love it just plain and you can also use it for a sour cream replacement.  If you want flavored yogurt you should remove the "starter" of about 4 ounces for your next batch and refrigerate that.  After you've saved your starter, you can add honey or sugar and a flavoring if you like.  You can also add some fruit but I would do that in small batches.

Enjoy, and stay healthy.

Rustic Ratatouille

 

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/rustic-ratatouille-51127020

Another very delicious recipe.  

This is another recipe that I'll use again and again....a great way to use up fresh produce from the garden.  I sent the link to The Farmer and he said he would just stop and get something on his way home....hahaha.  He didn't.

The substitutions on this one were:

• I used a PattyPan Squash instead of the zucchini because they were fresh and our zucchini is done for the year and are in the freezer.
• I had 3 green bell peppers and 1 yellow one instead of the red ones.
• I used 3 sprigs of fresh thyme
• about a teaspoon of dry rosemary
• only 1 jar of chickpeas (yeah, I can my own so they are in a jar)
• tomatoes, I used ripe red and yellow ones, I'm not picky about the type they are
• and I sprinkled the dried basil onto the baking dish with the vegetables instead of on top when it was done.  

I used the balsamic vinegar on top of mine, but The Farmer opted not to do so and he said it was good.  I absolutely LOVED mine with the vinegar on it.

20 minute Garlic, Beef & Broccoli lo-mein (Chicken)

   

https://therecipecritic.com/20-minute-garlic-beef-and-broccoli-lo-mein/

I've been trying to find new ideas for using produce from our bountiful garden so I started googling some things and this is one that we used 2 nights ago and it definitely is a keeper.  

• I did substitute chicken for the beef and
• I didn't have any Hoisin Sauce but googled that recipe as well and realized the only thing I needed to add was a dollop of peanut butter. 
• I also used Whole Wheat Spaghetti instead of the noodles it called for.

 It was so good.  It will be a recipe that we will use over and over again.