Cabin Fever

If you can just imagine a grizzly bear in a small cage, pacing back and forth while muttering and moaning for freedom, then you've imagined how I've been feeling lately!  Winter is dragging on with low temps and high winds so I don't have much to do outdoors to keep myself very active.  I go crazy if I become too sedentary! So just a few days ago, when the weather was nice, I took a walk around and explored the terrain above the house.

 

That's my dirty truck.  Our vehicles don't get much contact with water unless it falls from the sky.  I call the infrequent rain truck washing weather.  My hubby will drive right through very large fresh puddles of water and tell me I should thank him for washing my truck!

Exciting views await discovery for anyone willing to go for a ride or a walk through the desert.  One would think that it's a boring, ugly, desolate place, but it's really full of hidden gems of intrigue.  This view of the house sets our location into the large open perspective of the desert.

This is just one of quite a few groupings of cacti I discovered on my little walk-about.  Can't wait to come back and take their portraits in their Spring-time glory!

 
It's great to let the kids run around among the rocks.  Good time to do so without any worries of marauding rattlesnakes.  Notice another pocket of cacti!  Spring is going to be beautiful!  I can almost taste it!

When you don't have access to a play ground, but live in the wilderness, this becomes just the ticket - Rock Climbing!!!  What kid or kid-at-heart doesn't love to climb rocks?!  Speaking of wonderful rocks, this leads me to remember one of my all-time favorite movies, Tremors!  Yeah, I'm a little strange.  But that movie is so much fun!  I love all the characters, the geographical setting, and the unusual foe they must outsmart...like pole vaulting!  If you've seen the movie you know what I'm talking about!

Here's living proof the desert is alive and well even in the winter.  This is my favorite prickly pear, the Santa Rosa.  Gorgeous.  And when it blooms, all decked out in yellow flowers!  Perfect contrast!

And as an artist, I just have this love affair with the agave.  It's a star-burst of spines, but unfolding ever so slowly with imprints of other leaves and spines on each leaf.  It's loaded with subtle colors: soft gray greens, blue greens, purples, blues and reds.  And all the colors change with every nuance of light.  It's something else.  Always worth an attempt at rendering in a perfect painting.

Cabin fever is getting harder to bear! 

My Gardening Goal

As we struggle to feed our family on a monthly, sometimes weekly basis, I am forced to remind myself of reality. Like everyone else it seems, we are forced to tighten our belts even further.  I don't honestly know how much more we can go, but I fear we may find out soon.  We go through mini feasts with prolonged famines.  Which, brings me to my goal for gardening.  The main reason for gardening is for fresh clean food.  Now the more recent realization is simply to help us survive.

No longer will I think it necessary to plant only a couple of zucchini, a few yellow squash, half a dozen tomatoes, easy on the winter squash or scrimp on peppers!  No more.  Now my goal is to plant lots of 'em!  It's time to let the zucchini come out our ears.  Let the tomatoes 'over-produce.'  I plan on freezing as much as possible, while doing some drying, and if I'm ambitious enough, some canning.  We'll see...

I figure, let the heavy producers like summer squash and tomatoes do their jobs and reap the bounty.  Use that to feed the family through as much of the winter as possible.  It's worth a try.  Definitely another learning experience waiting to be explored.

Here's another brainstorm, Edamame.

Judging from my research, I can actually grow several varieties.  These soybeans are so good for you.  My sister turned me on to them because they are tasty, the kids like popping them out of the pods into their mouths, and they are filling.  The plants are about two feet tall, and the pods apparently all ripen at the same time.  So all you do is pull up the whole plant and strip off the pods to harvest them!

 

English Thyme, Marjoram, and a struggling Lavender were all rescued from my old garden.

I have no root-cellar, so I am probably unable to keep carrots long, but I'll grow them anyway.  Winter squash, Butternut is my favorite, is on the list for this summer.

As you can see here, I don't dream on paper much, I scratch around in the dirt instead.

Perhaps I'll have to place nothing but cinder-blocks for garden beds.  Whatever we have, because we cannot afford to buy anything for planters...all way too over-priced.  These lines in the dirt are the tentative plans for this year's garden.  If I can get these done and filled up with good soil (another challenge), I should have a generous space for vegies.  Either way, my plan is to pack in as much as possible for the maximum harvest.

Tomatoes, Peppers, Squashes, Cucumbers, Carrots, Onions (never enough space for them), Green Beans, Tomatillos, Corn, Potatoes, Artichokes, Edamame, and whatever else I can dream up.  I still plan on growing Cabbage, Lettuce, and Spinach.  Along with all this, hopefully a healthy variety of herbs.

My garlic is making an appearance!

All my boys helped with the planting, and are thrilled with the green shoots.

Something else making an appearance, the sun!  It's staying up longer!  It's rising higher in the sky!

Soon after Christmas the hens began laying.  Since they were relatively new to the barn, they began laying in the corners or the horse's feed bins.  Never mind that we laid down buckets for them and even a couple of cat carriers to lay in.  No, too easy.  Now recently, they have taken to laying under a favorite bush outside the barnyard fencing.  Dismayed, I did a little research and found that chickens are a lot like cats, they come and go as they please.  I figure if I want to let them free range for maximum happiness and health, I need to take this in stride.  We could build something special for them, but research tells me they wouldn't take to it any more readily.  The only hens I want to eventually keep penned up will be some brooders.  Hopefully we can begin producing our own chicken this way.

By some miracle, or a constant series of miracles, we're still here in God's beautiful country.  I'm becoming more and more aware of the reality that I am truly, merely, a pilgrim, no matter where, or if, I end up 'settling down.'

Heb. 11:13-16

Eph. 2:19-22

Truffle Experiment

I've always been interested in the process of making chocolate treats.  Until now, I've never had the nice big kitchen to try it in.  Now that I do, I decided to try one of Ree Drummond's recipes over at The Pioneer Woman for easy truffles.  Check out her recipe Chocolate Truffles with Sea Salt.  You won't be sorry.  And you'll be in heaven if you actually make these sinful delights!  The best part is, they're so easy to make!

Thank you Ree!  Thank you!

 If you check out her recipe you'll see you need a pound of chocolate.  Like she said, the combination of semi-sweet and bittersweet is, well, awesome.  She said it makes a great deep chocolate flavor without going too far with the dark chocolate flavor.  I agree, it was scrumptiously rich.

Dump in the sweetened condensed milk and heat it all over boiling water.  I am thankful for her suggestion, I won't be buying a double boiler, this worked out just perfectly!  But what I do want to do is get a nice set of Pyrex glass mixing bowls someday soon.

Get it all nice and melty...

And just like she said, it was about the same consistency as marshmallows!  Adding the vanilla added a beautiful gloss to the mixture!  Very difficult not to take some samplings, but I did....don't hate me.  But at least I shared some samplings with my eager boys!

We had a lot of fun! 

Thankfully Ree mentioned she refrigerated the mixture over night.  I needed to know that, since I was drafted by my husband to help load up and relocate equipment for an upcoming job.

So, today I shaped the truffle guts (forgive the goofiness, I live with boys...and we call honey "bee-barf"... just so you know) into balls.  I let it warm up close to room temperature until it was the consistency of firm clay.

This is how easy it is to shape them.

Then I popped them into the freezer to stiffen up and guarantee they wouldn't melt while rolling them in the milk chocolate.  Probably not a necessary step, but I wanted to assure myself as best I could, of some success.

Notice this is only one package of 3oz. milk chocolate....  If you note the recipe, unlike me, you really need 8oz. of this decadence.

Yep, very lacking in the milk chocolate department....

Now here's the surprise, for me at least.  I've never had salt on sweets.  My brother-in-law apparently loves salt on things like watermelon and strawberries.  So I thought, hey, he can't be totally nuts (yes, he can, but that's beside the point...never mind we're both Aquarians, and so is my husband, oh and my nephew... my poor dear sister...).  And since this is chocolate we're talking about, I gotta see what all the fuss is about.

Roll the truffle in the milk chocolate then sprinkle a bit of sea salt as soon as you place it on the wax paper.

Isn't this sad?  Only 15 truffles were coated.  That's how far the 3 ounces went.  The rest will have to await their fate, either go into the freezer until more milk chocolate can be acquired, or eaten with abandon.  I have a strong suspicion the later will be true.

Despite my not reading the recipe carefully enough to note the amount of milk chocolate needed, the experiment was obviously a success!

These are so easy to make, the recipe flexible enough to make on separate days that there is no reason for anyone not to try this out!  Unless you don't like chocolate!  Even though I waited for a large kitchen to do this, I didn't need to.

And here's to you Rick, you're not so weird after all (wink, wink), salt is very good on chocolate!  So you must be on to something with your salt and fruit!  Love you bro!

Thanks Ree!  I'll be back for more recipes, you can count on it!

A Little Gardening Inspiration

As I was visiting Lorie over at Gotta Dig It I was inspired by this photo of carrots in a clay pot.

Don't these look wonderful?

You can find more inspiration here at Reasons for Building Your Own Container Garden

What inspired me the most about this was how this may actually prevent the bunnies from just hoping over and nibbling at anything their furry noses come in contact with at ground level.  Maybe I'm just exercising wishful thinking, but I want to think that it might mean too much work for them to rear-up and nose around in the pot.  The reason I was thinking this was that last time I grew carrots, they simply gnawed at the carrot shoulders.  They didn't seem to bother with the greenery and they seem to me to be lazy foragers, going for delicacies that entice them at nose level.  I don't know, but it's worth a try!  Not only that, but I can start the seeds indoors and simply place the pot outside when the weather permits!

Yeah, I'm inspired!