Card Table Rehab

My parents bought two card tables when I was a little girl. They used them for their bridge club when it was their turn to host. We inherited them when they decided to move to California. They were in pretty good shape then, but when we got into doing farmer's markets they were trashed after the third season. The frames were still good so I've kept them around thinking I'd redo them. Well, today was the day!

They went from this ...

To this in a couple of hours thanks to furniture store cardboard and duct tape!

Yesterday, I stopped in a Kraus Furniture in Nauvoo and begged for some cardboard. Mark was happy to fix me up.

Today I cut out a piece big enough to fit the top and 2 other smaller pieces to fill in where the original cardboard was sagging. I used duct tape to put them in place.

 

Then I covered the tops with duct tape to give them more strength and to protect them from water.

I have some red and white checked kitchen wall paper I'm thinking about covering them with to even out the surface, but I've decided I need some red duct tape to finish it off with. Looks like a trip to the store for me tomorrow :)


God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue 

Basil

The basil that I planted last week is coming up! I'm so excited! For some crazy reason, I didn't get any started to bring in last fall, so I have been without fresh basil all winter. I've waited to plant until now because my experience with planting indoors when the daylight hours are getting shorter and shorter is that it just produces spindly things that die. I've got these in a south window under a sun lamp so hopefully they will make it. Can't wait till I have a heated greenhouse!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue 

Crock Pot Spaghetti Sauce

Been keeping my crock pot busy lately :)

During the summer, I wash my excess tomatoes in a vinegar bath. Then I cut the stems and bad spots out of and throw them in the freezer. I used to blanch and skin them before putting them in the freezer, but a few years ago I found out that if you put them in the freezer without skinning them, the skins come right off when they start to thaw. Why should you put all that heat in your house in the summer? 

Anyway, during the winter I pull them out and make all sorts of goodies. This winter, I found a crock pot tomato sauce recipe, but since I rarely start with just a plain tomato sauce, I decided I might as well go ahead and add the ingredients to make spaghetti sauce. I've also been making ketchup ... but that's another post.

To begin with, I fill the crock pot with tomatoes and let it cook overnight so the volume is about half what I started with.

The next day I add:

one chopped onion

two handfuls of dried sweet peppers

2 tsp salt

2 cap fulls of lemon juice

a tablespoon of minced garlic

2 tbs of dried basil

one tbs dried oregano

and enough tomatoes to fill the crock pot again.

I let this cook overnight again and then puree it with my stick wand.

I hot pack the sauce in pint jars and give them a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. 

This makes about 4 pints of sauce I think, but we always have to have spaghetti or pizza or something the day it is finished, so I'm not quite sure :)

Yum, yum!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Country Snow Challenges

It is going to be a challenge getting to those chickens today! Back in November, we moved them all to the smaller white building in the center so they are all together today to keep each other warm. Grampa Tom made sure they had plenty of food and water yesterday, but we still have to get out to get the eggs. It looks like there's a big drift along the garage and through the gate into the lot. UGH!

And yes, the electric pole is leaning ... against the garage actually ... that happened last summer ... maybe the summer before? Grampa Tom says it's not going anywhere. He's got other priorities ...

Other than getting to the chicken shed, we don't have anywhere we have to be the next few days. Good thing! If this wind doesn't lie down, we could be snowed in for a few days. Our road commissioner does a great job and we have 4-wheel drive on the truck, so it's not like the old days.

Grampa Tom and I kinda like being snowed in   The first time I came here was in the winter of '78- '79. We had just started dating. There was a huge snow storm that left us both stranded in Keokuk at a friends house. After 3 days, the roads in town and the highways were finally cleared enough for us to get out, but not home. (We both lived in the country.) We went for a drive and Grampa showed me where he lived. 

He said, "See that white house over there? That's my house. There are 11 kids there right now. My folks are in Huston. They had some friends over the night it stormed so bad and their parents weren't able to come get them."

I was horrified and asked how far it was to the house. He said about a half mile so I suggested we walk over there and check on them. We got over the fence and found ourselves in waist-deep snow, but we figured it wouldn't be so deep once we got out in the field. We were wrong. It was waist-deep all the way across. Took us 2 hours and the temperature dove 20 degrees as we waded across. It was another 3 days before we were able to leave. The kids were alright. I shouldn't have been so concerned. They were all teen and pre-teen country kids who knew how to take care of themselves, We were all of 20 years old and not any more capable, but I'm glad we did it. Made for some wonderful memories!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Apple Peel Jelly

Woohoo! I seem to be among the living today :) Woke up at 10:30 this morning. Can't remember the last time I slept that late. Really needed it! Did a sleeping around job last weekend. I'm not used to it anymore and it has taken all week to recover from the jet lag.

(For those who may be new to this blog, I spend nights with elderly people who need help from time to time and I like to mess with people's minds.)

Was planning to post on apple peel jelly last weekend, but I've been in a bad brain fog. Better late than never huh? It's only been 3 weeks since I started drying apples and told you all I was planning to make apple peel jelly so here goes:

To start with I saved the peels and cores from my dried apple project.

I boiled them for about an hour and then strained them through a tea towel.

The red from the apple peels made the towel look yucky, but it made the prettiest juice!

Then I measured out 4 cups of juice and 2 cups of honey. The recipe I found called for equal parts of juice and sugar, but honey is about twice as sweet as sugar so I reduced the 1:1 ratio to 2:1. 

 

I cooked the juice/honey mixture down for about an hour because honey doesn't set up as easily as sugar. Then I brought the mixture up to 220 degrees by bringing it to a rolling boil for several minutes while stirring constantly.

 Then I poured it in jars.

And put hot lids and rims on. Yes! Those are Tattler lids there :) I finally took the plunge. This was my first time trying them out. They didn't seal with the first batch. I think I may have tipped them bringing them out of the canner so some of the jelly got under the lid, but the second batch did fine. I'm so excited to have reusable lids for my personal stash! They cost too much to use if I may not get them back, so for gifts and markets, I'll continue to use the metal one-time lids.

After a 5 minute boiling water bath, I started hearing pop, pop, pop! What a beautiful sound! 

 

Guess what people are getting for Christmas this year?

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Aloe Vera Cream

This is the mamma that started it all. Years ago, my friend Gwen gave me a tiny Aloe Vera plant from her gigantic one. This grand lady is prolific and so are her offspring. I've sold literally hundreds of babies at the markets and this winter, as usual, I've got a farm in my window waiting for the spring markets to start.

Today, as I was tending to my little Aloe farm, I pruned several leaves. I've been wanting to make some moisturizing cream forever now, so I decided this would be the day.

I looked up several sites about how to make your own creams and lotions and set to work. I was a little skeptical about how it would turn out, but I persevered! 

The first step was to harvest the Aloe gel. To do this you first cut along the side of the leaf with a sharpe knife. 

Then open the leaf to expose the soft jelly inside.

Use the back side of the knife to scrape the jelly-like substance off the green part of the leaf.

Once I had this egg white consistancy substance gathered into a container, I tried to pick out most of the green leaf that was left. It's about as easy as getting broken egg shell out of an egg white. I gave up at one point and decided just to forge ahead. It was an experiment after all!

Then I made a double broiler of sorts with an old pan and a jar. I didn't want to use anything good because I was a little afraid of the wax I'd be adding to it, but it turned out not to be a problem.

I added an equal amount of coconut oil and a little bit of shaved beeswax and boiled it all until it was all liquid. 

Once everything was melted, I removed the jar from the boiling water and used my stick wand on it as it cooled. I was a little afraid of adding to much beeswax, so I had only added a small amount. It didn't set up very well, so I added more and returned it to the boiling water. I probably ended up using a 2 or 3 tablespoons full of shaved wax by the time I was done, but I didn't measure cause that's how I roll. 

I couldn't be more pleased with the result of this "experiment". I wound up with a beautifully creamy substance that feels just awesome! It's probably a little to greasy feeling for Grampa Tom, but I love it!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue  

Dired Apples And Apple Peel Jelly

Got up at 6am on Saturday morning and started working on apples. I made applesauce, dried apples and apple peel juice for apple peel jelly. I wanted to do this on Friday because I generally need 2 days in a row to finish applesauce, but Grampa Tom got all excited because I told him I was going to get rid of the ancient desk top computer when the copier from my assessing job went bye-bye.

He asked what I was going to do with the computer desk it was on. He wanted it for his TV in the man cave. This sent me on a major excavation detour. First, I had to gather up and transport all the assessing files, equipment and supplies. Next, I had to unload the computer desk and clear out the corner in the TV room where the computer table would be going to. Then I had to clear out the hall where my grandfather's desk had been stuck years ago in order to get it out to the living room to replace the computer table ... My whole house wound up looking like this:

I left the picture blurry on purpose. It depicts my feelings about the entire mess and the clear picture would be just too scary! But I did wind up with a nice functional workspace that even has a home for my sewing machine that has been homeless for more than a year!

To bad there are still 3 big piles of stuff I need to go through! My goals for next week? Find the futon, the couch and my kitchen table and finish the apples ... Oh, apples ... that's where I was going with this wasn't it?

See how badly I can get distracted? It's all Grampa Tom's fault.

So I got my applesauce in the roaster and 3 dryers full of apple slices done. Yes, the little dryer does have duct tape on it :)

I also fixed lunch and put 6 butternut squashes in the freezer. Grampa Tom came in from his early winter nap at about 3 pm and claimed to have done the dishes that morning ... Hmft! No trace of evidence that any such thing had happened in my kitchen!

It's 9pm on Sunday as I write this. The apples have dried. The applesauce is still in the fridge waiting to be smushed. The apple peels are also there, draining their juice into a pan for jelly. There is still about a bushel of apples left to go. 

I've never heard of apple peel jelly before, but I've been running across posts about it lately, so I thought I'd try it. I'll do a post later to let you know how it turned out. I did a post on making applesauce a couple of years ago. You can check it out here: Making Applesauce

Until I can sneak in another post in the midst of this chaos! 

God Bless You All!

Grama Sue