Homsesteading Books and Homesteading adventures
• Saturday, August 5, 2006 - Gearing up for Fall and dealing with unexpected crisises
Well, this week has been a great "learning challenge" as my friends and family would say.
First: a sudden allergic reaction to an unknown substance, which landed me in the emergency room, after 2 days of home treatment just didn't do a thing. I tried everything: eliminating all possible suspects, making sure nothing perfumed was touching me, etc. In the end, the worsening hives and shortness of breath (two symptoms I'd NEVER had) were enough to get me to seek help. I simply felt that I wasn't going to be able to breathe otherwise.
Next day, groggy and itchy, I went ahead and had a root canal. Got through that fine, considering. Then, opened the mail and found the bank system had made a HUGE error, which luckily, they corrected quickly, realizing it was their error. But I discovered the error after bank hours and I confess I didn't sleep well that night. The next day? A large tree from a neighbor's yard falls across our yard, narrowly misses our house and then a friend calls, in need of help after breaking her leg and...all of a sudden, the week's schedule goes awry.
Sleep deprived, itchy but grateful to be here. If anyone reads this, I'd love advice on getting through these kinds of things. Prayer, of course, is a bedrock for me as well as taking things one step at a time and trying not to fret over the future. But I think I need to strengthen my coping skills.
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• Sunday, July 30, 2006 - The Hummingbirds are coming and a stuffed pepper recipe and sighting red foxes!
Hi
My neighbor gave me a hummingbird feeder and they are here already and, equally exciting, we saw a couple of red foxes playing in our backyard the other day. I have lived in Indiana all my life and this is the FIRST time I saw a couple of foxes together. They are a very rare sight here. I did see ONE fox years ago, but it was a quick glimpse. This time, they played for several minutes and it was a special treat to glimpse them.
The hummingbirds are fascinating and my son and I were prompted to get our our bird book and read more about them. I think he learned quite a bit, though, just by watching them, seeing how they hovered and drank from the feeder and displayed their special talent of flying backwards.
Now, a stuffed pepper recipe, one that does NOT use rice because I have a child who has problems with rice for some reason, it upsets his system. He is the child we adopted from Romania (a long story, but I' m convinced he was meant to be in our life) and, like many children, he doesn't have a LONG list of vegetables he likes but he loves stuffed peppers. It is a very simple recipe:
Take as many peppers as you want to use. I generally use between 6 and 8 peppers and I only use Green peppers most of the time.
Cut off the tops but slice the tops so they can be put BACK on top of the pepper later. Take out the seeds and the bitter (white) part of the pepper. Bring water to boil and boil peppers only a few minutes, just to soften slightly.
Take your favorite spaghetti sauce (yes, I use spaghetti sauce). Mine is usually a homemade or organic premade sauce. I add fresh oregano and basil to taste and some chopped garlic or garlic powder or a touch of garlic salt (organic) and then a touch of sweetener (sugar) to taste...but only a touch - if your tomato sauce is already on the sweet side, this isn't necessary, but it does add a special something. Mix with cooked ground beef (I use 1/2 pound only as we prefer to keep our meat content low) . I don't use much sugar at all.
Put some sauce on the bottom of a pan. Add the peppers and then fill with the meat/sauce combo. It is best if the pan is only large enough to fit in the peppers so they stand upright and don't fall over easily. Put tops back on peppers. Bake at 350 (or the equivalent if you aren't using a stove) till peppers are cooked through and filling is bubbly. With our stove that is usually about 40 minutes or so.
These can also be cooked on a grill, in a cast iron skillet. However, you do need to keep an eye on them and adjust cooking time depending on your grill and the heat of the coals, etc. They are delicious on the grill!
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• Saturday, July 29, 2006 - Getting ready for "school" and a question about HUMMINGBIRD feeders...
As we move into fall, we get even more into "School" mode. I am sorry to see the summer coming to an end but it won't feel like Fall for quite some time here in Indiana.
It has been a lovely summer! The herb garden is going full speed and my neighbor surprised me with a lovely gift, a hummingbird feeder, yesterday. She really didn't say why she was giving me the message but I think it might have been because we didn't complain about some huge tree limbs that fell from one of their trees into our yard and we didn't ask them to help pay to have the tree limbs removed because they were far too large for us to chop up ourselves and we had to hire someone.
They DID offer to pay but we didn't think there was any way to tell those tree limbs werel likely to fall - certainly WE didn't suspect that they would so I didn't feel right about accepting that offer, generous and kind-hearted as it was. Also, they gave us the name of a wonderful person who came out right away and cleaned up the branches. So everything worked out nicely all around.
And I'm so delighted with the hummingbird feeder! I look forward to putting it up and, hopefully, seeing hummingbirds soon. Which brings up the question: does it make any difference if the water is colored red or not? I'll have to do some research about that....unless anyone knows the answer and wants to chime in :)
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• Saturday, July 29, 2006 - A recent miracle or gift? An experience with a bible
I introduced myself in my last post.
But here is a recent happening that lightened my heart as a mother.
I sell books and I especially like older books, especially ones containing homemaking tips. But once in a rare while, I find an old bible, one that contains carefully written family names. It always saddens me a little to think that someone's family history has ended up in a garage sale. So I try to help those books find their way back to a related family member.
Not too long ago, I opened one of those bibles and saw the family names written so carefully, going back to the early 1800s! In very, very faint writing was a name, Emily-Elizabeth, a little girl who had live to age 9.
I searched the genealogical websites and found the family line but...Emily-Elizabeth was not there! All the other names matched but she was not there. So I contacted them and now she is back officially in the family tree and the bible is in family hands again.
I think these things are meant to be. When I sell my books, I like to think I am only hosting them for awhile until their new owners come along.
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• Friday, July 28, 2006 - INTRODUCING MYSELF
| HI
I sell books because I have always loved reading, especially books about homesteading and do it yourself projects. Living gently on the earth and not wasting resources is a passion of mine as well which is why I make my living (when I'm not cooking, cleaning, caring for my kids) by selling rare and older books. That way, these vintage treasures get "recycled" to a whole new home, instead of ending up in a dumpster...and I DO think the books find me....because once, I found an old Bible and there was the name of a young girl in there. I traced her family history and, lo and behold, even though she'd lived in the 1800s, people were doing genealogical research on her last name DID NOT KNOW about her. Now she has taken her rightbul place in the family tree and is no longer lost to history.
Anyway, my store can be seen at rareanduniquebooksonline.com. I hope you drop by sometime, or just drop me a line. I sell lots of rare homesteading books as well as homeschooling and all sorts of school books. Sometimes an old book can be a wonderful discovery and the older ways of doing things were often quite ingenious! |
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