My To Do's

I like to make to do lists to help me stay organized, and as I said before I usually loose them. This will be my first to do list that I CANNOT loose! Yay. You can consider this list a preview of what is to come. I have so many project roaming around in my head for the upcoming holiday season that I just need to get them written down. Here goes...

Thanksgiving:

• Name card project with kids
• Turkey Marinade
• Activity for Thanksgiving day
• Tablescape ideas
• Pumpkin Pie

Christmas:

• Elf on the shelf plan
• Gifts
• Quiet book
• Paper dolls
• Finger paint
• Child ties
• Head bands
• Maxi skirt
• Hubby's gift (not saying much here yet, I want him to be totally surprised!)
• The stockings were hung sign
• Felt food
• Ball wreath
• Apron
• TP art
• Cereal box notebooks
• Kids' gifts to day care provider
• Meal plan
• Snacks plan
• Christmas Eve traditions
• Bake, bake, bake
• pfeffernusse cookies
• mint cake
• snickerdoodles
• rosettes 
• spice cookies

Baby Boy's birthday:

• Car track
• Activities

Wow, my list looks ambitious! I hope I can get it all done. 

Green Tomato Salsa

So, this was done quite a while ago, but since I'm iced in my house--okay, not literally, but it is pretty icy outside and there is no way I'm going out there today--why not get caught up. Besides, earlier I promised that once I posted about this green tomato salsa, I would get started with holiday crafts! I have so many cute things in mind. Now, with this one done, I can get started on some crafty things. 

I have made this salsa for two years now. Last year, the growing season left me with tons of unripe tomatoes and they were going bad inside before they ripened. I did not want to waste them, thus one of my favorite recipes came to life. Actually, I just found it. But I usually make it slightly different. Here is the original recipe. I made it the first time with green peppers from my garden since that is all I had. I'm pretty sure I also used lemon juice instead of lime juice.

It was so good that I had to plan to make it this year. We planned for green tomatoes. When the time came, my wonderful husband stopped by the store after work to pick up the ingredients. Unfortunately, he bought out all of the red peppers before we had enough, so he picked up some yellow ones too. This year the only change I made was the peppers. We had red, yellow and green. I did different batches with each of these to see which we like best. I'll have to let you know...

                                     

We had so much that it took me all day. When the boys came back from hunting, they even sat down to help. I had tons of helping hands that you will see. It really helped!

First batch with red peppers.

Onions, jalapeños, and cilantro. We cut them first, then used a chopper to make them chopped. 

We had quite the system going. Washing, cutting, chopping, weighing, cooking. It was a huge process.

Yellow peppers.

 You can see there is a difference between red and yellow peppers.

Again, here is the link for this recipe. It is so good and quite different. It is not like regular salsa, it's much better!

Enjoy!

Cake Balls

Okay so a crazy long time ago when it was my daughter's birthday in way back in September, she wanted to take something special in to her classmates at school. We thought about cookies or cupcakes, but that's done quite a bit. I wanted to try something different and did not want to hand out so much sugar to a classroom full of kindergarteners. I suggested cake pops.

I had heard about these for awhile, and wanted to try them. Not being a huge fan of cake myself, I thought these would be great. a few bites of cake and then done. Plus there are some really, really cute ideas out there for decorating these things. Mine didn't turn out as cute as some, but it was my first time... give me a break.

I found a great tutorial here. I even watched a video with it. Here's how mine turned out.

Crumble the baked cake mix and add frosting. I used canned cream cheese frosting. Please, please, please follow the Diva's Can Cook suggestion and DO NOT add too much frosting. I seriously hardly added any frosting.

I put these in the freezer to chill while I cleaned up my cake baking stuff.

Then, I got my brown chocolate melts out and set everything up to stick the sticks in the cake balls. I refrigerated these overnight, as I only had evenings to work on these. This part I must have messed up because throughout the next step, these silly sticks would not stay put. They kept coming out of the cake balls even though they were dipped in candy melts before I stuck them in the balls. 

Dip in more candy melts. Like I said, many of the sticks came out of the cake balls while I was dipping.

Little miss wanted brown and pink. Too cute together.

I used two boxes with holes poked into them to decorate, store, and serve these cuties. 

Add decoration. Some are much cuter than others, but they all tasted the same. And kindergarteners really couldn't care less, right?

I put plastic bags over them and tied them with pink ribbon to keep them "sanitary."

Final product.

I think they enjoyed them. No, I'm sure about it. It is sugar and oh so cute who wouldn't enjoy them?

We Had a Birthday

Last month we got to celebrate my not-so-baby baby's birthday. She is now 6. I keep telling her she can't have anymore birthdays because she has to stay my little girl forever! She just laughs and says she has to grow up to have babies. Ha! I love her.

So, she has been asking for doll clothes for her baby doll. Her doll happens to be a cabbage patch kid from my days- 20 some years ago. And, to my utter disbelievement they just don't make them like that anymore (yes, sense the sarcasm as this is a frequent phrase said in our house as newer things constantly crumble apart before our very eyes. It wouldn't have anything to do with the 3 young and rambunctious children we have would it?). Anyway, there are no clothes for this doll who has one dress she wears for bed, to work outside with dad (messy, messy), to cook, to clean, take care of the kids, and to go to school in. This poor dress never has time to be cleaned by my little mother in training. 

Still in complete shock at the lack of clothes to fit the best cabbage patch doll I ever played with and determined to make something work, I hit the newborn clothing section and picked up one of those newborn packs that comes with pants and a onesie. 

Knowing this needed to be done soon-like the next day, I sat in front of the sewing machine, and my gaze went from the machine to the clothes to the doll and back again. Over and over and over until I just did it. What did I do you ask, well... 

See, the poor thing has no legs with the newborn clothes. This just wouldn't do.

Look at all that leg that was hiding!

While the top was on the doll, I cut a notch on each side a little lower than where I wanted the shirt to fall on the doll.

Then I took it off and snip, snip, snip.

I sewed up the bottom with a zig-zag stitch.

On to the bottoms: again, way to big! I simply cut off the legs at the length I wanted.

See how much extra crotchage we've got going on? I pinned around where I wanted the new crotch of the pants to be, sewed it up, and...

Cut off the excess. I could have sewn a hem on the bottom of the pant legs, but with the type of fabric it was it worked without it. 

Here is the final shirt and pants set. Look at that smile! She's so happy.

I didn't want to leave the bottom of the shirt to go to waste, so I made some shorts out of them. 

This was just too wide on that tiny doll.

I pinned the excess on both sides and sewed it up. I wanted it just a little snug so they wouldn't fall off.

I added an elestic waist band. I had to google search a video for this. But found one that was really fast and simple.

And, here they are. 

Now, I'm not an expert seamstress, nor would I consider myself a regular seamstress; but, it worked for me, and as my daughter opened the gifts, she was so excited! 

A month later, as I look at that doll sitting in the shopping cart waiting to go shopping, in our basement store by our little mother-in-training, I am so glad that I made clothes for the doll that apparently prefers to be naked most of the time!

Salsa Recipe

So, I promise that the canning recipes will come to an end soon as the season is almost over. Then you all get to see my holiday crafts. I have some fun ideas for the upcoming holidays; but for now, I've got to get this canning stuff done before it freezes too hard to ruin my garden. My last canning post will be a green tomato salsa because when it freezes, I have to take the rest of my tomatoes off the vines whether they are done or not. That's when I know canning season has come to an end. And that can be your clue too that all these canning posts will end. Soon, folks, soon. I promise. But for now, you get another canning recipe:

*!SaLsA!*
I got this recipe from a friend awhile ago, so thanks for the recipe! It's the one we use each year because it is the easiest and turns out the best for us. It looks so good when it starts to cook! It really gets me in the mood for some good tacos.

Just put into the pot.

Starting to cook down a bit if you look at the sides.

Some finished jars. Sorry the pic is blurry. But you get the idea. 

Salsa Recipe:

20 cups tomatoes, blanched, and quartered

2 (or more) fresh jalapeño peppers

2 cups chopped green peppers

8 cloves minced garlic

5 Tbs. canning salt

4 6oz cans tomato paste

1 1/4 cup vinegar

3 Tbs. sugar

4 tsp. ground cumin

4 tsp. ground oregano

Simmer 1 hour stirring occasionally. Pour into hot jars. Place jars in canner filled with hot water, bring to a boil, and boil for 10 minutes. Remove jars and allow to cool. Makes 12-15 pints.

See, pretty easy. We doubled the recipe, just used two different pans. Instead of blanching the tomatoes we did it in the oven. See this post for directions on what I think is so much easier than blanching the tomatoes. My hubby likes smooth salsa, so we put the cooked salsa in a blender before transferring to hot jars. 

The smell of this stuff cooking is AMAZING! Those spices, the fresh produce from our garden--YUM! Our house smelled salsa-y for a few days. It was great. I hope this makes you all hungry. Go have some good salsa, or for my friends and family, come visit me and you can have some of mine. :) 

Tomato Stuff

The past few weeks have been crazy busy getting used to a school schedule. Even so, my husband and I have found some time to get some more canning done. We have to get it done so all the hard work in the garden over the summer (thanks mom! she came and helped out for several weeks) would not be wasted. We have canned so many things that I've lost count. We have more than enough pickles to last us a couple of years. Our tomatoes have finally started to turn so we've been able to stock up on our fresh canned tomato sauce which we use all the time. We also got all of our corn out of the garden before too many insects got to it. I think we could have opened our own farmers market!

Last batch of pickles with some pickled green beans in there too.

See our farmers market counter? Funny thing is that it looks like this again--a week later! 

So, for any type of tomato canning, you want to blanch the tomatoes to get the skin off because the skin is just not that fun to chew on when you are eating salsa, tomato sauce, or any other tomato thing. After a couple years of blanching the real way standing over a pot of boiling water with 3-4 tomatoes in the water for a minute or so then submerging it into a bowl of icy cold water and having to change both waters after about ten minutes. I found a way to do it in the oven. So much faster and easier.

Core tomatoes. If they are really big, cut them in half. put them in a pan--not touching I learned after the first time I tried it. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes at 400 degrees. The skins should come off pretty easily after the tomatoes have cooled enough to touch them.

After peeling the tomatoes, I squeezed out the extra watery juicy stuff because I have yet to make a thick enough tomato sauce. Then, put the squeezed and squashed tomato into a heavy pot. I filled mine up to the brim because it will cook down. You can see the sauce lines going down the sides of the pot. I reduced mine about half way. Every so often, I took a soup ladle and took out some more water. My goal was to try for thick sauce this time. It took about an hour to simmer it down.

Once as thick as I think I can possibly get it, I blended it to create a smooth sauce. 

 Processed and finished. I don't mind the seeds in there. If you don't like the seeds you can always use a sieve to get few to no seeds. 

I had to post a picture of this. This poor pot has been through so much with me. There is never a time when I fail to burn the bottom. I am not a good example of staying close to my cooking items to keep them from burning the bottom. A little soap and water and back on the oven to get the burnt stuff up. It works, and year after year this pot and I go through the same love/hate relationship. 

Did I inspire you? If so, here are some recipes. Enjoy!

Tomato Sauce

Core tomatoes and put in a pan. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 min. Peel and place in pot. Smash, cook, and stir frequently until desired thickness. Put 1 tablespoon lemon juice in jars. Fill to 1/4 inch headspace. Process for 30 minutes in boiling water bath.

NOTE: 24 pounds tomatoes = approximately 6 pints

Cream Style Corn

9 cups corn

1 cup sugar

2 tsp salt

2 cups water

Thickening sauce:

1 cup flour

1 1/2 cups water

Mix together before adding to corn.

Husk corn. Cut the tips of the kernels off of the corn cob. Scrape the rest of the kernels off with the back of the knife or a spoon. Cook in a heavy pot. Add sugar, salt and water. Bring to boil. Add thickening sauce. Cook additional 10 min. Stir constantly. Remove from heat, cool, transfer to freezer safe containers (I use freezer bags), freeze. 

Yes, I did burn the pan with cream corn too. I told you this pan and I... :)

Monthly Meal Plan

In the midst of the craziness that is my life, I have found that I MUST plan for meals ahead of time so my family is saved from my go to frozen pizza or mac and cheese meals every single night. I started out using this meal planning organization which I love from Bold Turquoise. She has organized an entire binder of months and shopping lists and recipe sheets with tabs and labels and everything (so right up my ally!). I even gave my a copy of my monthly plan and recipes to a friend one time. I still love the idea, but I don't have the time at this point to find recipes, create large shopping lists, write down my recipes, and plan meals for every single day. When I have more time I'd like to re-vamp her ideas to make them more workable for my family. I'd even love to plan a year long recipe binder like she does. If I do a year at a time, I wouldn't have to change too much. AND, if I take good care of it, I could just reuse it year after year. That'd be nice!

But, for my now, I found this great monthly meal plan on Pinterest that already has the meals included from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Bonus for me... no sea food. :) This one is for the month of August, but I figured I'd just start at the beginning and work my way through no matter what day it really is. She also has other months for you to choose from. I will only be using the dinners as I am rushed for time in the mornings-so cereal and fruit here we come.

The downloadable calendar includes links to some of her recipes. To save time each day for me, I copied and pasted those recipes into one document. The recipes are in order of when they will be used. I included a link for those who would like it: Recipe List. Please remember that these are not my recipes, and I give full credit to Confessions of a Homeschooler. Again, I only have the dinners in this list.

Lastly, I wanted to make shopping as easy as possible so I created a weekly Shopping List to go with the monthly plan. Many items are staples that I try to keep on hand so I didn't include those in the shopping lists. If you utilize these, be sure to double check that you have all the items needed before trying to make something. Remember: dinner ingredients only are on these lists.

For those who are thinking that if you start this you have to stick with the plan-you don't. When I started mine from Bold Turquoise I was pretty lenient on when I cooked each meal. Some nights you really won't feel like cooking and that's okay. This is just a way to prepare ahead of time for something to eat. When I get home from school, I have about an hour or two before it is supper time. The last thing I want to do when I get home is try to figure out what to make and try to see if we have all the ingredients only to find that we don't. These meal plans help me know what is coming so I know that we have the ingredients needed, and I don't have to feed my kids junk all the time. Besides, if you don't like something, it is so easy to add in your own family favorite recipes.

Happy Eating!