Blueberries! and home grown Oregano!

I meant to post this in July, but my summer has gotten away from me!

So anyway one of the thorns in my side is

You can't grow blueberries in Utah! Something about the soil being too acid or alkaline I can never remember which.  It is very sad :-(

However my Dad was visiting my sister Paula in Nashville and They picked a bunch for me after much begging from me!

 They picked them at this Church that has tons of blueberry bushes.  You can pick as much as you want, but they encourage you leave a donation.
These blueberries were so yummy!  I made all sorts of blueberry recipes!  Blueberry muffins, blueberry waffles, blueberry syrup etc.

 Then I decided to flash freeze the rest of them so I can use them the rest of the year.  If you have never flash frozen fruit before here is how you do it.  You spread the fruit out in one single layer on a large cookie sheet.
Then stick it in the freezer and let them freeze until solid.  Then pop them off the cookie sheet and put them in a bag.  by doing this they do not stick and freeze together.  You can do this with any fruit. I do not have the patience for canning fruit so I just freeze it.  I froze my apricots and peaches last summer.  It sure beats buying expensive frozen fruit at the store and it tastes better too :-)

Another thing I did earlier this summer was pick and dry my Oregano.  I had just run out of my oregano from last years picking and so it was perfect timing :-) I have a big Oregano plant in my rock wall garden in my back yard.  I clipped the whole top of the plant.  Then I rinsed the clippings and let them drip dry on a paper towel. 

Then I tie the end together with a string and hang it from my pot rack. I let it hang until it is all dried out ( like drying flowers).

Once it is all dried out I crumble off all the  leaves from the stems and store them in an air tight container. I put mine in a zip lock bag.

 It has been nice to have a new batch of Oregano to cook with :-)

Love this Birthday idea!

 
I have two daughters having a birthday within a week of eachother.  While looking up birthday ideas I came across this one.  I think it is so clever!  Although I wont be able to use it I thought some of the rest of you might be interested. Paula I especially thought of you.  I could totally see Ben enjoying this Birthday party idea :-)  Find it here at Plucky Momo.

A million dollar pie!

A few years ago I was watching one of the morning news shows and they featured the million dollar winner of the Pillsbury bake off contest. This lady (Suzanne Conrad) won with her Oats and honey granola pie. This recipe looked so good and so easy to make I knew I had to try it! So I did!  And I loved it!  Well the recipe got lost and forgotten in my recipe card file until Monday night.  I was looking for a good family night treat and  I came across this forgotten recipe and remembered how much I liked it.  I had most of the ingredients minus a couple so I decided I could improvise with what I already had in my kitchen.

here is the original recipe from the Pillsbury website and then you will find my tweaked version below:

Oats 'n Honey Granola Pie


.INGREDIENTS:

Crust1box Pillsbury® refrigerated pie crusts, softened as directed on box

Filling1/2cup LAND O LAKES® Butter

1/2cup packed brown sugar

3/4cup corn syrup

1/8teaspoon salt

1teaspoon vanilla

3LAND O LAKES® Eggs, lightly beaten

4Nature Valley® Oats 'n Honey crunchy granola bars (2 pouches from 8.9-oz. box), crushed (3/4 cup)*

1/2cup Fisher® Chef's Naturals® chopped walnuts

1/4cup quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats

1/4cup Hershey's® semi-sweet or milk chocolate baking chips

Whipped cream or ice cream, if desired.Show Directions

Hide Directions

DIRECTIONS:

Heat oven to 350°F. Place pie crust in 9-inch glass pie plate as directed on box for One-Crust Filled Pie.

In large microwavable bowl, microwave butter on High 50 to 60 seconds or until melted. Stir in brown sugar and corn syrup until blended. Beat in salt, vanilla and eggs. Stir crushed granola bars, walnuts, oats and baking chips into brown sugar mixture. Pour into crust-lined pan.

Bake 40 to 50 minutes or until filling is set and crust is golden brown. During last 15 to 20 minutes of baking, cover crust edge with strips of foil to prevent excessive browning. Cool at least 30 minutes before serving. Serve warm, at room temperature or chilled with whipped cream or ice cream. Cover and refrigerate any remaining pie.


High Altitude (3500-6500 ft):

 
And here is my tweaked version :-)  Shh!  Don't tell anyone, but I think I might like mine better :-)
 

 Follow the above recipe, but this is what I did different.

-Instead of butter I used coconut oil.

- Instead of oat and honey bars I used 2 cups of granola with almonds in it.

- I am not a lover of walnuts so I did not add them.  I would have used pecans or almonds instead, but I did not have any on hand. So I figured I had few almonds in the granola so I called it good enough:-)

- I also added 1/2 cup of coconut flakes and about a 1/2 a tsp of Cinnamon.

- Instead of 1/8 tsp. I added 1/2 tsp. of salt.

- And for my last change instead of  fitting all the filling into one 9 inch pie crust I distributed the filling  into too pie crusts.  In the past I think having so much filling in one pie made it a little too rich.  and by putting it into two pie crusts the baking time cut to about 30-35 min.

Oh and I also used frozen crusts instead of the refrigerated crusts.  I find that they don't get to brown and overcooked as the refrigerated ones seem to do.

Ta Da! here was the result.  We served them with Vanilla ice cream, but they are good enough to hold their own without any extra ice cream or whipping cream if you want.

This pie is so yummy! And they did not last long at our house. I thought we could save the second pie for the next day, but everyone liked it so much we had to cut into the second pie also :-)

And like I predicted by dividing the filling into two pies it made them a lot less rich.  Which I liked.

I promise you that you will love, love, love this pie!

So good luck making it :-)

Fresh lettuce,spinach and peas!

The hard work is starting to pay off!  I am starting to reap the rewards of my garden!  This week the peas came on. ( My favorite veggie straight from the garden!)  I have such fond memories as a child sitting in the middle of the garden eating all the peas.  I am sure my mom never had enough to can or freeze because my siblings and I ate them all before they even made it to the house :-)  I took these pictures a few days ago.  and only a handful of peas were ready, but there are a lot more now :-)

My lettuce and spinach are ready also, but I just picked some of the spinach this day.   Notice the eggs in the upper left hand corner?  I gathered them at the same time.  Fresh peas, fresh spinach, fresh eggs, what a life!

My corn, beans and squash are coming along nicely too!  Like I said before I took these pic a few days ago so my corn is much bigger now. Remember I am going to use my corn stalks as bean poles that is why I have the corn and beans next to each other :-)

and in the mounds in between the corn and the beans I am growing squash, pumpkins and melons.

These are just babies right now, but hopefully by October we will have some cute pumpkins to carve!



My Gardens

So I thought I would update you all on my gardens :-) 
First off I will update you on my  U shaped raised Lasagna Garden.   I planted peas, spinach, beets, carrots, lettuce and onions early in the spring and they are doing well considering the fact that the sun has rarely come out all spring.  It keeps on raining and snowing .  Seriously I woke up to a sciff of snow just this morning two days before June!  I really  hope it will finally decide to warm up one of these days.  Anyway last week with a lot of faith I planted my warmer weather plants like Tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, egg plant, more carrots and herbs.

Here are some pics.

Here is close up of some of the lettuce,spinach and peas

I planted my corn in my 3 sisters garden last week also.   I hope it works out.  I have never planted a 3 sisters garden before.  Actually, I have never planted corn before either so it is a huge experiment really.
If you don't know what a 3 sisters garden is click on the link above and it can explain it much more then I can.  I will plant the pumpkins and beans and melons next week :-)  Anyway right now it just looks like a bunch of  dirt mounds.

I think I have mentioned before that I am wanting to add more edible plants to my landscaping. 

 So in my front flower garden I planted strawberries, romaine lettuce, a currant bush and a black berry bush.

So anyway there you have it! I will give you another update in a few weeks of  how everything is coming along :-)

Happy Gardening !

Finished Stitchery

I finished this stitchery a few days ago, but I have not had much of a chance to get on the computer these days so this morning I finally sat down to do it. Anyway here it is :-)  I have a picture of it just plain and one after I colored it in with crayon.  I can't decide which way I like it better. 

I love this quote and really liked how my little stitchery turned out :-)

There are 4 different types of stitches I used in this stitchery.

Basic backstitch

Lazy daisy stitch (flower petals, leaves and bee wings)

French knot (bee atenas, dots on I's and the center of orange flower, the center of purple flowers and dots around it, and the cream flower)

Satin stitch (door of  beehive, bee bodies

For more info on how to do the different stitches here is a great link.  Stitchschool.

Recipes and a Stitchery!

I am a huge fan of the "Taste of Home" and Quick Cooking Magazines! I used to have a subscription, but the magazines would stack up so I stopped getting them. With the idea that I would buy the cookbook that would come out at the end of the year with all of the years recipes. But I never did end up doing that. A couple of weeks ago I went to our local Library with my kids and while browsing I discovered that there was a whole section with cook books. I decided to check out some that caught my eye (most of them were Taste of Home). I have been going through them picking out recipes that sound good to me and trying them out.

What a great way to find recipes without having to buy the book! I don't know about you, but I usually have several favorite recipes in my recipe books and then there are a ton that I don't care much for and then all those books take up space in my cupboard. I wish I had thought of it sooner! I have been slowly copying down ones I know will be good and favorites that I have tried out on my family :-) Everything so far has been a hit with them!


On a different note!


I have been getting back into doing stitchery lately. I have not done it in several months because I have been too busy. but I got to teach a stitchery class to the 12 and 13 year old girls at my church. I wanted something with a Beehive and flowers and a good quote. I could not find anything I quite liked so I compiled several ideas from different patterns and made it my own!

here is what I have done so far.

I will reveal the finished product soon :-)



Also I will update you on how my gardening is going soon :-)