Pop's Greasy Spoon

This is a sign that hangs above our stove in our kitchen. Our oldest daughter bought it in recognition of all the great, greasy wonderful meals her dad prepares for us on occasion. He is a great fry cook. He was brought up in the restaurant business so he knows all the little secrets that make those greasy concoctions taste so good. He is also a retired firefighter so he has brought home some pretty tasty recipes from the fire station.

The recipe I'm posting today is one of his. Skillet baked beans. After he showed me how to make this I never again baked beans in the oven. Our family loves this recipe for baked beans and it is very easy and to me taste better than my other recipe.

Skillet Baked Beans

In a large cast iron skillet (use any type of large skillet you have)add 2-3 tablespoons of bacon grease. Melt the grease then add
1/2 diced green pepper
1/2 diced onion
Saute the green pepper and onion until close to being tender then add
3-4 cans of pork n beans (for a large group I usually cook 4 cans
Mix well then add
4 tablespoons of prepared mustard
1/4 cup ketchup
1/2 cup brown sugar
1-2 teaspoons of liquid smoke
Mix well and lower heat and simmer for 20-25 minutes.

You can fry several pieces of bacon until crispy and break the bacon over the top of the beans before serving but it is really good without the bacon.

Wonderful Day

What a day! Rainy,cloudy,cold..a fire going in the wood stove. I've got to think of something good to be simmering on the stove for dinner tonight.

Love, Love this day. It's good for my soul!

Enjoy!!!!!

Fruit Smoothie

My husband worked hard today to repair the cellar door. I can laugh at this now but at the time I didn't think it was too funny. Last year, in May, when we had the day of tornado's. We went to the cellar for the first time in probably 10 years. We got our dog and I took the family pictures off the wall and we headed to the cellar. We stood on the steps of the cellar and watched the tornado as it headed for our home. We shut the door and my husband held onto the big chain hooked onto the door and then he proceed to tell me that the hinges were no longer screwed into the frame around the door. The frame was rotten. "Are you really serious" was my response as all kinds of images went through my mind of us being sucked out of the cellar. The tornado turned and missed us by one mile but hit about 20 homes down the road from us.

This year we will have just thunderstorms with lots of rain. :)

My husband loves smoothies and they are a lot better for him than the ice cream that he loves too. So after a long day of repairing the door, we had fruit smoothies tonight. These are very easy and good.

1 1/2 cups of pineapple juice
2 frozen bananas
1/2 bag frozen peaches
1 cup Greek yogurt (you can use plain or vanilla)

Put everything in the blender and let ur rip.

You can use any fruit that you prefer. I always try to use frozen bananas because it thickens the smoothie.

Garden Project

These are some pictures of our garden project. You can see the braces that my husband put up to stabilize the fence. We also put up some old fence panels for some vertical structure for sweet peas and then green beans and cucumbers. We have to more old fence panels I'm going to put up in another section of the garden.

I love red and we had some old paint left over from a project long ago :) so I couldn't resist painting the old panels and the post. I put red in somewhere in almost everything I do. It will be a colorful garden!

I move some old concrete planters beside the fence panels. I plan on planting extra herbs in those. That's the latest on the project!

Update on Farm Project

I told you the wind comes sweeping down the plain in my neck of the woods. I could hardly believe my eyes. I went out to work on our project and our new fence had been up about a week. I went out to start working on some vertical structures in the garden. We have some old fence panels I was going to put up for sweet peas to grow on as well as green beans when I spotted one of the pickets barely holding on. I went around the fence to survey it and to my shock the fence was wobbley. I thought this couldn't be, my husband cemented all the posts in. We had experienced several different days with wind gusts in the 40's and the back and forth motion had loosened the posts. So my husband put braces all the way down the fence to stablize it. You can see why I needed a wind break for my plants. If the wind is moving a stockade fence what would it do to those delicate plants.

The longer I live, I have more and more appreciation for my ancestors and what they went through. First of all, having the courage to leave their homeland and everything familiar and then to brave the unknown. My dad's father came from England and his mother from Ireland. My grandfather was in the Oklahoma Land Run and secured 160 acres in Prague which is near Meeker. When I think of them pitching a tent and living in the elements until they could get their home built. Wow, I wonder if I could have endured all of that and then trying to raise your own food. They sure couldn't drag a water hose over to the garden and water.

I got my soil sample in for my blueberry patch and I am waiting for the results which should be in sometime this week. I hope to get the blueberries planted by mid March. I'm still looking for a fig tree for this region.

I got an e-mail from a friend entitled 25 clever ideas and one of the ideas I loved. It was guttering that was secured to a fence and they planted lettuce and onions in it. I loved the idea because if you have grown lettuce or spinach it gets gritty from the dirt getting on it and takes soaking to get all of that off. The guttering would solve that problem because the lettuce and spinach are off of the ground. I plan on planting spinach and several kinds of lettuce in mine. My husband found some guttering that is a heavy plastic (like PVC pipe) that will work great. I can't wait to get it up and see how it all works.

I have run out of red bricks for the edging around my flower beds. I really wanted to get all of that complete before spring arrived but I don't think that is going to happen.

Lots of projects going, I just need to make sure I am getting some of them complete. That's my problem, sometimes I get to many things going and nothing is getting finished.

Until next time........ :)

New Project on the Farm

My husband and I are making a new garden space. Last year I was wanting a new space for blueberries and I didn't get started in time to dig up the grass and get the space ready. I'm glad I waited. My mother-in-law passed away 2 years ago and we sold her trailer last fall and when they moved the trailer I instantly had my garden space. Five sections of good dirt with a long narrow concrete pad between each section.....perfecto! As I was thinking about what I wanted to do with the area I kept thinking about the south wind and knew all my hard work would be wiped out if I didn't have some kind of barrier. We had some old stockade fencing we were going to use but when we went to get it from behind the barn it had deteriorated so bad that we couldn't use it.

My husband found a place to buy all the supplies we needed at a really discount price. He brought it home and we built the fence and put it up one plank at a time. It really went a lot faster than we had anticipated. It will make a great wind block for the garden. I will be posting on the progress of the garden space. I will be getting soil samples this week for the blueberry section because the soil needs to be acidic. From my research, if the soil is not acidic I will be wasting my time and money.

Chicken Pot Pies

Last week I had some great friends down for lunch. I made chicken pot pies for them with spinach salad. I really like chicken pot pie but my husband doesn't so I never make it. In fact, this was my first attempt at making chicken pot pies and they turned out really good. You could make this in a pie plate, or oblong casserole dish. I had these oven proof bowls that I used. Most recipes I looked at didn't put crust inside the pot pie just on the top. But from eating frozen pot pies as a kid, I like the crust inside too and so did my friends. The pies were a success and everyone enjoyed them. We all ate too much! :(

Here's how I made them.

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken, boiled
3 stalks of celery, diced
2 carrots, diced
1/2 medium onion, diced
1-1/2-2 cups of frozen peas
1-1/2-2 cups of frozen corn
2 medium potatoes, diced
3 tablespoons of butter
4 tablespoons of flour
1 chicken bouillon cube
salt and pepper to taste
chicken broth

Cook chicken and let cool then take chicken from bone and cut into cubes. Reserve broth and add one tablespoon of butter to broth plus one chicken bouillon cube. Let these melt. Taste broth to see if you need any salt or pepper. Then set aside.

Take diced potatoes and cook in water until potatoes are tender. Don't let them overcook. You don't want them mushy. When potatoes are tender drain off water and let them set.

In a separate soup pot, melt butter then saute celery, carrots,and onions. After they are semi tender add flour and stir for about 4 minutes coating vegetables and letting flour cook. Then slowing add chicken broth and stir until slightly thickened. Add thawed peas, corn, potatoes, and chicken. Stir well and let cook on low heat for about 10 minutes. Check to see if you have enough salt and pepper.

Then make your pie crust and cover the bottom of your pan. Spoon mixture onto pie crust and then put on the top pie crust and crimp edges. Bake at 400 degrees for about 35-40 minutes or until top is golden brown.