Hopeful Housewife

Besides the Cream of Wheat I had for breakfast a bit ago?

I fixed some rockin’ smoothies this morning for Art. About a 1/2 cup plain yogurt, some frozen peaches, frozen mixed berries, an entire banana and about  1/2 cup of fresh squeezed orange juice. Simply devine.

Speaking of yogurt, I made some last night!! It’s chilling in the fridge, and I’m totally impressed with myself, LOL! I think I have roughly 3 quarts of yogurt and it cost me about 1.75 to make all three, if that! I had a bit leftover that wouldnt fit in my last mason jar, so I’m currently making cream cheese to go with dinner.

I’m saving the whey to put into pancakes tomorrow.

Squeezing the orange juice was a blast. I have an electric juicer (to go with my four other manual juicers…yeah, its an addiction) and I had scored a huge sack of oranges from my Mom’s neighbor’s tree. I juiced them all up, froze half of it for “breakfast for dinner night” next week, and popped the rest in the fridge for this week’s smoothies.

As for dinner tonight, I have a ham in the oven. When shopping this week, I decided to purchase a ham and a turkey, and to make all of our meals from those two things for the next two weeks. tonight I’m going to make hame wraps w/homemade cream cheese. I think I’ll add some fresh herbs to the cheese to make it extra special. I’ll probably throw a salad together as a side. I was finally able to find my favorite salad spritzer, raspberry bliss. Awesome stuff. So yeah, wraps, salad…That and a couple Ak-Mak crackers. MMM…my favorite.

I’m making such progress…slowly but surely!

My entire yard is basically one big DIY project. It’s been an incredibly frustrating, discouraging, and sometimes simply heartbreaking task to work on it the last three years.

I have decided on a different plan of attack. I’m sectioning the yard off by what will grow well in each area. So far I have about half of one side of the fence completely weeded, and turned (by shovel, not tiller). My garden I’ve already mentioned is one section. I’ve added a potato patch, and today planted corn and bush beans. Each of these areas is fenced off with green plastic poultry fencing. Today I also started my worm pile. I have some of the biggest worms I’ve ever seen in that pile. This will be my first attempt at composting, so wish me luck. Oh! I planted sunflowers today too

 Tomorrow, I plan to get another probably 5 yards of fence line weeded and turned. I have a rosebush in there somewhere…and I’m sure it needs to be rescued.

 I have sweet pea seeds I’m going to plant tomorrow, along the fence there, which is also the back of my clothes line, so provided they grow, it should be a nice treat when I’m drying clothes this spring/summer.

I still have carrot seeds too, but I am not exactly sure where on Earth I’d put them at this point, lol…

 I am hoping the hubs can fix the flat on the lawn mower today so I can mow tomorrow morning too. I get a total kick out of riding that thing.

I’m trying to keep from feeling overwhelmed by taking it a section at a time…and designating each area a purpose. I have quite a bit of land for a person in city limits, and I’d really like to use it all to make us more self sustaining.

The trick is not getting ahead of myself.

One day at a time…One day at a time.

My “loony level” is rising on the crazy meter.

I decided to go grocery shopping last night.

At 10:45pm.

Walmart is 24 hours here, and so this supported my wild idea.

I didnt leave Walmart until 12:05pm. I hadn’t grocery shopped in 4 weeks, and spent 211.00 for the next two weeks (at least). I was a little disappointed, as I really wanted to spend about 150.00. That said, I got TP and a few other “goods” and went ahead and splurged for all of dh’s crazy beverage requests. (Vitamin water, sprite, Jamaica). I also bought more fresh fruit than I normally do this time of year, so I guess 106.00 per week isnt so bad. I am hoping to make it stretch 3 weeks though

Ok, this is only the tip of the crazy.

I always tidy my fridge when I bring home groceries. Well, I hadn’t shopped in four weeks, right? Yeah. It was gnarly.

I pulled out every single shelf, pulled everything apart…and and a result, I went to bed at 3am.

But it looks amazing. That’s all that matters, right?

Right?!?!

Both were experienced today.

I cut down my first tree.

I took my neice to see the Wiggles as well.

I now have a decent sized wood/kinling (kindling?) pile…as well as “toot, toot, chugga, chugga, big red car!” playing over and over in my head.

Just a day in the life.

What’s cookin’? The breakfast of champions.

The food that I was raised on.

The ultimate breakfast food, if executed properly.

The most dreadful, gag inducing substance if not.

Cream of Wheat. My favorite comfort food on the planet.

Fixed as per directions, its pretty nasty, bland stuff. Fixed the way my mother did, its pure heaven in a bowl. I have made a view additions to the mix…but it is basically just like my mama’s. So for those of you that are afraid of the mystery of Cream of Wheat, read on. It’s really quite simple to make a wonderful bowl of comfort.

For a double serving, first bring 1 tsp vanilla, a few shakes of cinnamon,one cup of water, and one cup of milk to *just* a boil. If you’re like me, thats two cups of water and a 1/3 cup of powdered milk.

Slowly whisk in 1/3 cup of Cream of Wheat (not the fast stuff…the normal red box type!) and just keep whisking. This will prevent lumps!  Bring it back to a boil, and then cook about 2 minutes until desired thickness is achieved.  KEEP WHISKING!

Once its cooked to your desired consistancy, add a tablespoon of brown sugar, a drizzle of maple syrup, and a pat of butter. Stir it all together, and pour into your bowl. Drizzle the top with a generous squeeze of honey. I do mine in a spiral around the bowl because I am a dork, and it makes me happy.

Stir, and eat. It’s HOT..dont burn your mouth.

Apparently we cannot be trusted at the feed store.

We headed out for more chick food…wood shavings, and for a chick waterer and feeder.

We came home with all of those things.

Yes, all of those things…and yet another chick. :O

A Brown Leghorn chick to be exact. I wish I could find my camera cable so I could show you her amazing facial markings. I think her name is Wysteria.

I think.

I’m still debating.

I really, really wanted a red chick…but I was too late, and they were gone. They’ll have more in 2 weeks, but ya know, that’s an extra 2 weeks that I have to raise chicks INSIDE. They dont smell especially wonderful you know.

So we’re done buying chickens, for sure. We’re also done rescuing random feral chicks.

That said, the guy at the feed store told me they are getting turkey’s in 2 weeks too.

It’s just SO tempting. A turkey, however, would end up on the table. No doubt about that. I dont know though…that’s an awful lot of plucking!!

Yep, its official. I’ve lost it. I’m considering a turkey. A turkey!!

Oy. Laundry. It’s killing me. It’s almost all clean, but I haven’t folded a single thing.

I need to clean my room today. NEED to. I also need to scrub the bathrooms…

I have to get into the girls’ room today and throw out half of their stuff. I’m tired of fighting with them. I’m tired of their room being a war zone. I’m tired of buying them crap and it ending up destroyed on the floor. They have books. They have dolls. They dont need anything else they have. I’m DONE.

I need to essentially fill up the trash can with anything possible.

It’s official. I’m in purge mode. Look out. Seriously!

So the original three are approximately four days old…the feed store chicks will be a week old tomorrow.

At this tender age, they’ve already begun the process of establishing a pecking order. It’s fascinating to watch, and for the record, Sweet Pea is one brutal little pullet.

She has decided she’s the boss. She yanks the food out of everyone’s mouths, bullies them away from the water, and is the only one that thinks she can fly out of the bin. Rose, (the other feed store chick) seems to be watching her from afar, planning her domination over Sweet Pea. She doesnt say or do much…that is until Sweet Pea comes around. Then she stands up, and stares her down. It’s fabulous to watch.

Speaking of Rose, she saw her reflection today in the stainless steel water bowl. She cocked her head at first, looked a little closer, then proceeded to peck at it several times. Evenutally, she gave up trying to figure out what kind of metallic chicken she was living with and moved to the other side of the bin.

Petunia is still my favorite. She’s the runt of the group…the one I thought would surely die that first morning I had them here. She didnt stand, chirp…not even move. I was so worried about her, and that afternoon she completely perked up and started acting like a proper chicken. Well, as proper as a runty little feral chicken can be.

The “Feral Chicks”, as I refer to them, are super funny to watch. They are total scavengers. They kick the feed all over the place…dig and shuffle through the ground cover. They chirp and squawk, and chase eacother around, flapping their wings. The feed store chicks are such snobs. They pay me no mind whatsoever, and Sweat Pea in particular totally thinks she’s above those dirty little field chickens. Rose apparently doesnt care what Petunia, Sunflower, and Daisy do….

She just wants to know more about that weird chicken thats living in the water bowl.

I heard the rumble from about a half a mile away at least.

I thought it might be him, but I wasnt sure.

I had a moment where I started to panic, thinking, “yeah, it really is him…and my house is destroyed.”

Then I thought, “I doubt he cares.”

He visited for a while…looked at my garden, gave me a few pointers.

He “saddled up” to ride home and drove off after an effortless conversation. He really does look pretty cool on that bike.

Sometimes a girl just needs a visit from her Pops. 

What a glorious day it has been!

I got up this morning at 6:55am with the hubs…sent him off to work with leftover stir-fry and a kiss.

Piddled around and watched the chickies play for a bit, then greeted the older two as they practically flew out of bed to join me with the wee ones.

I stayed up late finishing my book Hen and the Art of Chicken Maintenence . I really think its the best book I have read in the last 2 years at least. Had me ROLLING.

After getting dressed and getting my head straight for the day, I decided to work outside a bit. I still didnt have my garden done, and it was starting to stress me a bit. While Piper slept, the older two and I began preparing the garden location and digging rows.

I had only planned on getting my potatoes in the ground…perhaps my onions and garlic too…but once I got started, I couldnt stop!

I cleared the entire area, hoed, raked, pulled, and essentially played in the soil all morning.

I now have everything BUT the potatoes, which I decided to scrap until I get some seeded potatoes on Thursday. I just wasnt comfortable putting in taters I had sprouted on my own.

I’ve got four glorious rows of fabulousness.

Purple bell peppers

roma tomatoes

jalapeno peppers

basil

rosemary

parsley

sage

garlic

onions

squash (yellow) & zucchini (green)

strawberries

and last but not least,  a little pot of flowers Trinity won at a baby shower a couple of weeks ago.

Tatoes will happen later in the week, and I have some more herbs in seed form that need germinating.

The kids are eating soup while I take a breather. I’m going to start my next book, The Farmer’s wife Guide to Growing a great Garden & Eating from it, too! and hopefully get some pointers and gain some confidence in the area of my four rows of heaven.

After that, I’ll have to tackle the mud puddle I left behind in the shower.