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“Mondays in My Garden”: Four Easy Ways to Save Money when starting your Garden
There are a few blogs that I just love. Household 6 Diva is one of them. Ann Marie is a down to earth Army spouse recently relocated from Germany to Texas and there are so many times that I think, “Wow, would we be good friends if our lives had ever crossed.” She started a series called “Mondays in My Garden”. Be sure to read her inaugural post here: Welcome to “Mondays in My Garden” Ah… my garden. Just the thought of it has my heart smiling. Yesterday it was 72 degrees out in NE Ohio. The back door was open all day. The front door was filled with sunshine. Smiles, laughs, giggles…
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A Slice of Summer
Ahhhh Summer Fare. There are so many good, fresh, healthy foods out there this time of year. It is my favorite time for munching and crunching! Fresh, healthy foods are an investment in your health as well as your wallet. Before we dive into some of my favorite recipes I want to share just a couple of money saving tips for your eating pleasure: The Garden, my passion, on so many fronts. It embodies good health, good stewardship, and good eats! According to USAA: “A National Gardening Association study found that families with gardens spent an average of $70 on supplies and reaped $600 of food a year.” Grow Money in Your…
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Tasty Tuesday: Italian Sausage and Mixed Peppers
The garden has been gleaned… cleaned and is sitting rather stark out there. However, my counter top and refrigerator drawers are full of red and green: Peppers galore. The bell peppers had a bumper crop. I thought they were taking over west Michigan! Jalapenos, banana and Hungarian wax went wild too… There was no way that I would allow them to go fallow in the field. So in they came.Jalapenos seem to grow fire glands when nestled in the refrigerator, therefore they are sitting in baskets on the counter top. Greens and reds in brown woven squares. Sweet!But looks are not everything in this world, I think every mother has…
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Creamy Pepper Pot Soup – Tasty Tuesday
Magic ingredients can turn a overflow of peppers into a tasty filling lunch that can be cooked up from scratch in 30 minutes. The magic isn’t quite Disney, or David Copperfield, but still transforming from counter top or refrigerator extras to steamy bowl full of goodness! And, this soup is for two, not twenty! Substitutions are allowed and encouraged when making your very own homemade from scratch: as you know where the senses are! Should you have the urge for some extra heat, use hotter peppers. A child sharing that pot with you… mild jalapenos and NO Hungarian Wax peppers are the key. I like to walk the fence… just…
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Tasty Tuesday Banana Pepper Gratin
Summer is so over… so very over. Temperature dipped to the twenties; leaves are brilliant red, orange with faded yellow edges; sunshine hours have slipped to dark morning and evenings. Autumn is here.. no doubt. The gleaner in me came out this weekend when I heard of the temperature forecast. Dale and I picked anything living out there that could be touched by a freeze. Whoa, I already have packed a peck of pickled peppers into the pressure cooker. My imagination has been running overtime as to how to use plant after plant that over produced this year. Yeah for that… but I can’t let them die on the plant.…
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Pan Seared Steak with Horseradish Mashed Spuds
I was never sure about horseradish. It is oh so strong. I like hot peppers, but there really is nothing similar other than a strong taste. I love zippy salad dressings… again the strong taste. Then we were in Nashville and I had an order of fried green tomatoes with a horseradish dip. Whoa! Oh so good! So, I began to experiment with this new taste sensation. Mashed potatoes was the perfect playground. And with potatoes comes steak… my man is a fan!This menu is for two… a beautiful night if you can manage adds so much to the event. 🙂3 large potatoes (I prefer Yukon gold, but any large…
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Tasty Tuesday Dress Me Up Salsa Pico De Gallo
Salsa is a staple at our house, and has been for years. Tell me… WHO can live without tortilla chips and salsa? Or quesadillas with salsa? The occasional late night nachos with salsa? You get the picture. I used to have a truck load pumped into the house… back ‘er up and fill the tank. Well, not really, but if felt like that. I would wipe out a whole shelf in the commissary each time I went.So, naturally after canning a gazillion tomatoes the light bulb went off as to how to use these red beauties and the first thought: Salsa.There are several recipes for this mainstay, here is my…
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Peppers, Green, Banana, Hungarian Wax A’Plenty!
The garden just didn’t appear out there over night. And to my recollection, little gnomes haven’t been out there weeding, hoeing, rotor tilling, etc…. Especially the rotor tilling part… that machine is a monster that wants to go anywhere but where I feel is straight. (Yeah for Dale on this and so many parts of the pre-harvest work.) At the sound of our behemoth, those little gnomes would have jumped straight out of their gourds and be headed so far out of Michigan as to be fictional memories. So, maybe that’s the story!The beauty of a vegetable garden is that crops sweep in at their own pace and then demand…
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Tasty Tuesday From Pickled Hot Peppers
Packing pickled peppers, and these babies are hot ones! Isn’t it funny how in the heat of the summer, it is time to put the heat in the kitchen and fire up the canner. Our pressure cooker is steaming, rattling, cranking out pints and quarts of the best our land has to offer.We planted jalapenos, yellow banana peppers and Hungarian wax peppers. Our peppers with heat are the latter: the Hungarian ones. Glad that we have that, as I want to taste that zip when I crunch on a nacho!Putting up these three varieties melds the taste together. We enjoy the fruits of the summer all year long. But the…
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Earth Day 2010
I will tell you I’m not a ‘tree-hugger’. I spend probably too much money on pre-packaged foods. I always seem to forget to bring my own environmentally-friendly bags to stores – even though I do have a few of them. I don’t drive an oversized-SUV but my smaller size mini-van isn’t exactly the most economical vehicle out there. But I do care. I do know that I can make a difference. I am not going to change the hole in our ozone layer. I’m not going to save the world with some major campaign about how we are all doomed if we don’t make a change. I can hardly say…
