Coffee break

I'm back to being a housewife as you all know. You would think that I would get bored easily, but in all honesty, there is always a lot to do, especially if you have an older house. They seem to need to be dusted more. Of course add in the puppy with 3 older dogs, and there are extra walks, and messes to clean up.
I thought I would share some more pics of Mishka and the others so that you all can watch her grow up with us.

Bacon Cheeseburger Casserole

So, Frank, as you all may know, is a type 1 diabetic, he has been since he was 6 years old. Luckily things are a lot better for people living with this disease over the years. There is no cure, and there probably never will be no matter how much money we dump into research. Happily, so many new recipes have come about, some are great, and some are...well we won't be fixing those again. I plan on sharing the good recipes with you all in hopes that you all may enjoy them as much as we do. I still plan on sharing the dessert recipes that I fix for the family gatherings, and holidays and such. Frank can enjoy these desserts as long as he 1 remembers that you can have them within reason, and 2 he remembers to take his bolus shot.

I've made this recipe a couple of times now and can tell you it easily doubles to take to a family meal or pot luck dinner. It's not overly expensive and has all of the flavors of a bacon cheeseburger that you love. Unfortunately, I lost the calorie/carb count, and haven't found a program I like to run all of the ingredients through to get the calorie count. This is one of our most favorite recipes out of the ones I've found.

Ingredients
1/2 pound of bacon
1 pound ground beef
1/2 sweet onion
1 clove garlic
4 tablespoons cream cheese
2 tablespoons reduced sugar ketchup
1 tablespoon yellow mustard
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon seasoned salt
4 large eggs
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon ground pepper
1 teaspoon hot sauce
8 ounces grated cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon fresh dill

Instructions
Dice the bacon into small pieces and fry until crispy over medium heat.  Remove bacon from pan and set aside. Drain grease from the pan.

Add the ground beef to the skillet and cook until browned, crumbling as it cooks. Then drain the fat. Then add in the onion and garlic, with the beef and cook until translucent, about 5 minutes.

Add the cream cheese, ketchup, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and seasoned salt to the skillet and cook over low heat, stirring constantly until combined.

Spread the beef mixture into a greased 8x8 baking dish, and top with the cooked bacon.

Crack the eggs into a medium bowl, and whisk together with the heavy cream until combined. Stir in the pepper and hot sauce.

Pour the egg mixture over the beef and bacon evenly.

Top with the cheddar cheese.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until set and golden on top. Sprinkle with dill before serving.

I fixed 2 side dishes of veggies to go with this, mostly because I suppose you cannot have too many veggies.

On a side note, I'm still totally working on that crochet pattern. It turns out that I'm a little bit rusty, but I think once I get through this one, I should be able to get back in the swing. I really hope that you all enjoy the pattern that I'm writing!!!!

Mud Hen Bars

As funny as the name of this delicious dessert sounds, there is nothing funny about just how tasty it is!!! I'm one of those that can only repeat a dish so many times when it comes to going to family meals and enjoys trying new things to share with the family. I can spend hours searching for new recipes, accepting and rejecting. So this week, I have this delicious dessert recipe to share with you all!!!!

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, room temp
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 Whole egg plus 2 eggs separated
1 and 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup mini marshmallows
1 cup semi-sweet choc chips
1 cup light brown sugar, packed

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Spray a 9x13 baking pan lightly with cooking spray

In a large bowl, cream together butter, granulated sugar, 1 whole egg plus 2 yolks and vanilla until smooth.

Add in flour, baking powder, and salt and mix until just combined, and then spread in prepared pan.

Top with Chocolate Chips and mini marshmallows

In a clean mixing bowl with the whisk attachment on mixer, beat the 2 egg whites until stiff peaks form, about 2 minutes on high. Then fold in the light brown sugar, and stir it gently until its completely combined and there are no lumps.

Spread this mixture on top of the chocolate chips and marshmallows.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until top is golden brown.

Allow to cool completely before cutting into squares.

Note: you can store this in an airtight container on your counter for up to 3 days.

as you can see, I love my Pyrex Mixing bowls!!! I use a combination of both new and vintage. It just goes to prove that this stuff is made to stand the test of time!!!!

changes

Hello there again. Yes, I know I just posted some pics of the puppers, but this blog post doesn't go along with that particular post. So, I thought that I would just do two different posts today.

We're planning on making some changes here on the farm. Frank is still in the same line of work, however, he's Monday through Friday, mostly day shift, but I never know when he will be home. It's not a bad thing, and I"m not complaining one bit. I enjoy knowing that we can have the weekends together for the most part. His new position allows me to be home, and to be a full-time dog mom, and quilter. (I'm going to be making t-shirt quilts)

I'm going to be getting out of chickens for a while. The raccoons have been such a huge problem for us. They have been a heartbreakingly huge problem. I'll admit that I get attached to my hens, and my roosters, and when these attacks happen it makes things hard. We won't be out of them permanently though. We are going to completely redo the housing, and the run. We will be putting a roof over the top of the run, with a slant to deal with the snow and the rain. Then we will reinforce everything around the bottom to ensure that nothing will be able to dig in. I'm also planning on adding some barbed wire along the top, and electric wire at various points. The electric wire will only need to be on at night, so I'll probably make it solar powered and have it plugged in as well in case its an overly cloudy day. Basically, I'm going to dump everything I have into protecting my hens.

I want to look into changing rabbit breeds. I'm thinking along the lines of New Zealand. They grow out faster, which is what we need. I'm not worried about being able to breed more. I worry about over breeding. Some people will say you can't over breed rabbits, but I don't believe that's true. I like to know that my girls are well rested and can be the best moms they can be.

Frank wants to get into raising quail. I'm all for that and think it could be fun, and exciting. We've been watching tons of youtube videos. We also found some pickled quail eggs at Rural King, and they are really good!!!! They definitely don't taste like pickled chicken eggs. I think I could raise them just for the pickled eggs!!!! However, we have a lot to do around here before we can start in on the quail.

Well, that's about it for this day. I have lots to do and little time to do it, because I've spent more time playing on the computer today than I normally would.

Pictures

/Sorry there are no pics of the hound, but she's rather hard to get a pic of if she's not sleeping. She's always on the go. As you can see, we love our Huskies, and having 3 again is quite the treat. They interact like no other breed on the planet.

I wanted to post this yesterday but started cleaning out one of my kitchen cabinets and that ended up taking up more of the day than I thought it would. However it's a rainy day today, and that means all 4 of the pups are in the house, and getting stuff done isn't as easy as when they can just go in and out as they please. Plus we're still working on being able to have Mishka and Bella in the house together. Right now, Sam and Jasper and Mishka are good together inside, outside all 4 are fine, but that's outside. We know not to rush things, and that it's going to take a little time. Time, however, is on our side.

I've been looking at some new recipes, and can't decide what I'm going to try first. I know with Autumn just around the corner, I'm looking at some yummy cold-weather recipes. There is nothing like comfort food this time of the year.

August more than a year since my last post

Hello there...It's been an insane year, full of ups and downs. I don't know if anyone even still reads my blog, or even wants to. I suppose I'll fill everyone in on everything. I need to get back into the blog universe.

So just over a year ago, I went back to work. I went to work for Tractor Supply here in Woodstock. I absolutely loved it there. Yes, Loved.  I had to give it up for multiple reasons. First Frank got a promotion at work, and it keeps him from home a lot more, and he requested that perhaps I could go back to staying at home. Our schedules meant that we weren't seeing each other as much, and we were getting behind on a lot here at home. Then, there was the damage that I did to my right hip, the one that still needs to be replaced. So...I reluctantly agreed that perhaps staying at home wouldn't be such a bad thing.  I am however teaching a class once a week at the Sew and Vac in quilting.

I'll catch you all up on the Dogs because I know you all love my dogs. Jasper is doing great, he needs to go on a small diet, but he's great. Sam had to go on meds because he's been diagnosed with autoimmune disease. Thankfully it only affects the skin on his nose, under his eyes, and his anal glands. He's been on his meds for just over a month now, and so far, everything is looking great. The skin on his nose is growing back perfectly. Bella is doing well, I'm having a hard time controlling her eating,  So I bought some diet food that I'm about to switch them too....in all honesty even Sam could use a few pounds off. Now for the big pet announcement...drum roll, please!!!! Last month we brought home a female Siberian Husky puppy that we named Mishka. She's a brownish reddish color with blue eyes. I promise I will have pictures in the near future.

I'm hoping to have lots more recipes to share, we got an Instant Pot, and I'm seriously in love with it. It's made my kitchen life so much easier, and I love how tender it makes the meat. I'm planning on sharing some of the recipes that we love.

In the spring, we have to start over with all of our chickens. We had another bad year with raccoons. We need to drop a bunch of money into completely redoing all of the housing and run area. We plan on trying to raccoon-proof our chicken run. I'm hoping we don't lose anymore this year, even though I'm not getting any eggs.  Having a farm is as much heartache as it is work and dedication.

Well, I will end this here. I fully intend to try to get back to posting on a regular basis now that I'm home again, and hopefully, I'll have lots of pictures, recipes, and maybe even some new crochet patterns.

Fresh Strawberry muffins

Hello all!!!! I know it's been far too long (again) since my last blog post. I swear I don't do it on purpose, life just kind of gets a lot busy. Although, that's really not that great of an excuse, especially since that was one of the reasons I bought that tablet. That way I could just sort of blog in bed, or when we settle in for the evening.  I'm going to try to do 1 to 2 blogs a week...TRY being the operative word.


So its that time of the year when the FFA sells their Strawberries, and they are beyond tasty!!!! This year though, I wanted to try something a little different other than just cutting them up and throwing them in the freezer until I had time to make jam or smoothes. I felt the urge to bake, so I sorted through my stack of recipes that I've been holding onto forever to try, and this is what I found, and it was a huge hit!!!! I did change 2 little things, but I'll put those things in parenthesis next to the original recipe ingredient.

RECIPE:
1/4 cup canola oil\
1/2 cup milk (almond milk)
1 egg (duck egg)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup white sugar
1 and 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup chopped strawberries

DIRECTIONS:
1) preheat oven to 375 degrees F. and line the muffin pans with liners, or grease it if you would rather.

2)In a small bowl, combine oil, milk, and eggs, and beat lightly. In a large bowl mix all dry ing, and slowly mix in the wet ingredients from the first bowl. When well mixed, fold in strawberries.

3) Fill 8-12 muffin cups with the batter and bake for 25 minutes or until the tops bounce back from the touch. Cool 10 minutes in the muffin pan, and then remove.

That's it, pretty simple huh????

Enjoy!!!!