Productive Day

My mother came over and we had quite a productive four hours! We canned 2 1/2 pints of tomato sauce, made pumpkin pie (from scratch!!!), and sampled her Roasted Tomato Soup that she'd made from a recipe printed in our local newspaper.

In total that makes 5 1/2 pints of tomato sauce that I have canned. I gave one pint to my mother as thanks for letting me use her canner all summer. I also dehydrated a batch of tomatoes, but honestly I will never do that again. What a waste of time. So much cutting, gutting, and the result is less than satisfactory. I still have more tomatoes but those will be made into omelettes, sandwiches, and soup.

Free Stuff

I have started a new page (see the right-hand side) called "Free Stuff" - a place to connect with people who want your "junk" and a place to see if others have something you've been looking for. Please note it's entirely for south-western Manitoba, however if you're from further away and willing to ship at no cost to the other party, by all means, post your item :)

Solar Cells

Just updated the "Alternative Energy" page... that page will definetely be one that you want to keep your eye on through the winter. Since I can't do any gardening, my solar panels are going to be my winter project. Step One is finished, now on to Step Two!

Maple Syrup

While taking baby for a walk, I discovered the most amazing thing....... our house is surrounded by Manitoba Maple trees! When I told my husband of my discovery, he didn't know that it meant sweet, homemade syrup, since he's not from Canada. His country does not have Maple trees, and his language does not even have a word for syrup, calling it "honey" instead.
So this winter/spring he is in for a sticky surprise when I try my hand at tree-tapping!
Just a note to everyone: I live in a small town, not in the country. So if you are a "town homesteader" like I am, take a look around the neighbourhood to see if you or any of your neighbours have trees that can be harvested, that nobody ever noticed!

TEOTWAWKI

So you're probably wondering "What the heck is TEOTWAWKI?" - this means "The End Of The World As We Know It". I did not coin the phrase, it's been hovering around for years. However I wanted to use it as something to make you think. I'm not talking about a big catastrophical world collapse right now, just the end of YOUR little world. Obviously you use a computer, or you couldn't see this blog. But what if *gasp* there was no more electricity ever? All your survival info, recipes, and other handy information is probably on your computer.

The reason I haven't posted in a couple weeks is because I have been printing off all my "handy info" to store in a binder in case of emergency. Some of you might print off "what to do in an earthquake" and some of you might print off "how to shoot zombies with an AK47" and all of it is fine, but it will do you no good if you can't access it.

So go print it off.

Right now.

Go.

Tomatoes in Abundance

Well we picked another two grocery bags of tomatoes from the garden and didn't even make a dent. They are quite abundant. I can see myself making a million cans of pasta sauce this fall once everything is picked yummmmm.... My husband also picked all the green onions for me (well... not all. They are spread over everywhere) so really there's not much left to harvest except the rest of the tomatoes and the couple muskmelons that might not be big enough by the time frost hits. It's getting pretty close... probably within the next week we'll have our first frost, so we have to hustle getting the veggies picked.

Click here for a picture of my tomatoes

Peck of Pickled Peppers

Had a very productive day - even before lunch I was doing some canning! I picked a heavy plastic bagful of tomatoes from the garden (it went down to only +6 Celsius last night, so it's getting close to freezing), I managed to get enough peppers to make one small jar of pimentos, and the cucumbers I got from my aunt went towards another cucumber salad and three jars of pickles.

The pickle recipe is on the "Recipes" page, head on over. As for the pimentos, that's easy:
1) Chop and take out the seeds of your hot peppers (I used mostly banana peppers with some red chiles for colour)
2) Fry the peppers in a bit of butter
3) Meanwhile, heat up a cup of oil.
4) Once the peppers are soft, put them into your jar.
5) Pour the hot oil overtop (don't burn yourself!), cover, and tighten lid.
There is no need to process this in a canner - the heat will seal it and you will hear the lid pop quickly.

Liquid Laundry Soap

Please check out the "Make Your Own" page for a new update (actually 2): how to make your own washing soda, and how to make your own liquid laundry detergent. I am currently in the process of making it myself as you can see below!

Dill Pickles

Check out the recipes pages for a new recipe - how to make dill pickles, super-easy! This is the kind where canning is optional, although I certainly plan on canning mine to extend the shelf-life.

New Topics

As you can see, on the right-hand side there are several new topics and subjects. I hope to have all these pages full of information before the end of September, so keep an eye out!
UPDATE: About Me, Manitoba Markets, Gardening, and Recipes pages are all completed so far.

In other news, I pulled up all my carrots today and had a busy day making a double-batch of carrot soup, chopping up a single container of carrots to boil for another meal, and scrubbing another two large bowls of carrots, because I haven't decided what else to do. There were also a couple tomatoes (they went onto a pizza), some peppers, and the very last bit of rhubarb.