All Tucked In

It took me a couple of days to get to them, but I finally got the tomatoes all wrapped in newspaper and tucked in for the winter.  I'm really hoping this works as well here as it did in NM, because I'd love to be getting ripened, wonderful, out of our own garden, tomatoes in the middle of the winter.

Wish me luck!  I'll let you know how it goes.

Oh, they are going to live in the garage, I just took the picture in the house before I took them out there.  :)

Baked Jalapeno Poppers

I usually do bacon wrapped jalapeno poppers on the grill but decided to try something different last week.

I cut them in half and stuffed them with a mixture of cream cheese and some cheddar cheese I had.

Then I dredged them in seasoned flour.

Then into a mixture of a beaten egg and some milk and more seasonings.

Then into panko crumbs.

Onto a baking sheet and in the oven at 375 degrees.  

After they'd been cooking a while.

Done.
YUMMY!

Replenishing the freezer

The good Lord blessed us with deer this weekend.  It made or a busy, productive and thankful weekend.
I package things in pretty big packages since there are six of us in this house.

Here is the breakdown so far:

Deer 1:
Roasts - 4 packages, 7 pounds
Jerky meat - 1 package, 2 pounds
Back strap - 2 packages, 3 pounds
Stew meat - 4 packages, 5 pounds
Grinder meat 1 package, 2 pounds
(This will be made into sausage/summer sausage/ground venison later on.)

Deer 2:

Roasts - 2 packages, 4 pounds
Backstrap - 3 packages, 5 pounds
Steaks - 1 package, 2 pounds
Stew meat - 8 packages, 8 pounds
Grinder meat - 1 package, 6 pounds
Jerky strips ready to marinade - 1 package, 2 pounds

The guys field dress them before they bring them home and then skin and quarter them and then I take over processing and packaging.  They kept me busy this weekend!

Not counting left overs, that's 28 meals in the freezer, almost 50 pounds of meat.  It's a GREAT start to refilling the freezer and while I'm tired, I'm very happily tired.

Pulled the tomatoes today

It's supposed to get down into the mid 30s tonight, so I went ahead and pulled the tomatoes.  I know I could have covered them, but since it's predicted to stay cool for a bit, I was afraid I'd forget one night and lose them all.  I still had a lot of barely getting red and completely green tomatoes out there, so I didn't want to risk it.  

Plus, the plants are starting to die back.  They are starting to look like this:

See?  Green tomatoes.  I know, I know, someone's going to say fried green tomatoes.
1.  I don't like them.
2.  That would be a LOT of fried green tomatoes.

I actually did leave most of one plant (after I pulled the tomatoes off) out there because I discovered that my buddy is still living in there.  I like him and like having him in my garden.  He's BIG and he doesn't seem to mind my messing around in there.  He usually doesn't even move from where he is while I'm in there pulling stuff.  So I'll let the one tomato plant in there until he relocates.  

This is box one of green tomatoes.

This is box two.

I'm going to wrap them in newspaper in boxes and put them in the garage.  I did this before in a different state and it worked well.  I just have to remember to check them once a week to get the ripe ones out and use them.

Oh my gosh, what a ride it's been!

I'm so sorry I haven't been here in so long.  Life got ridiculous there for a bit!

Scouts started back up, Awana started back up, 4H started back up and we had some other church and school stuff going on.  Was hard to find time to sleep there for a bit.

OK, lots to fill you in on!

Having a blast with my Scout den.  Small group of great boys and man, are we having fun!  My oldest son's den is going camping in the next month and it's looking like it might be pretty cool weather by then.  That would be nice for them instead of baking in the tents like potatoes in an oven.

I broke a tooth.  Well, it broke is probably a better description.  Best guess by the dentist is that it had a fault, wasn't formed correctly to begin with and it just took this long for it to get bad enough to break.  I wasn't even eating anything hard!  I took a bite of  a ham sandwich!  So I spent a few days with them filing it and figuring out what to do with it and then getting it fixed and they used one of those ring things that go around it while they were working on it and man, did it tear up my gums.  Not to mention they are a bit shot happy at this office!  lol.  They gave me the numbing stuff and then told me they were going to do it again to be sure it didn't wear off.   I'd have rather just had the first set, but, whatever.  The good news is that they did fix it, it's smooth and looks good and I'm happy with it.

I have a relative who was pregnant with twins and she went into premature labor this week and they tried to stop it but ended up delivering her because they couldn't get the contractions stopped and then her water broke.  Both babies are small but are doing OK right now.  One is not quite 4 pounds and one is a teeny bit over 4 pounds, so pretty good weights.  She did get the steroid shots for their lung development, I know that helps tremendously.  As of my last update one was still on cpap but they thought would come off it today some time.  Twin girls!  No names yet, but hopefully soon.

The weather is cooling off here quite nicely.  To the point where I need to check the 10 day forecast today.  I think I may need to pull my green tomatoes and get them in the house pretty soon.

I'm making a small batch of tomato sauce today.  Yay.

I need to do some more reading and researching about making dishwasher soap.  I could not find liquid castile soap around here, only bar castile soap, so I guess I'm back to making powder dishwasher detergent. Will keep you updated on that.

OK, have to get back in the kitchen and check on my sauce.  I hope everyone has been doing well.

What would you do with it?

We have this in the garage.

It's a deer hide from one of the does DH got last year.  It's not a pretty shape as they were already working on her when I went out there and asked them to save the hide because she was so big, body-wise.

It's been salted and tanned but it didn't get 'worked' as well as it should because the guy (a friend who wanted to do it for practice) let it dry too much in that stage.  So it's semi-soft, but not super pliable soft, if that makes any sense.

We are in a rental, so I can't tack it to the wall (and it is an odd shape because two guys were skinning her and they didn't cut the front quarters parts at the same place).

So.

What would you do with it?

Good to know

Apparently the honey bees consider the tomatoes to be theirs.  They do not want to share.

(This is the top of my hand, so I know I didn't squeeze or grab it accidentally.)

(The good side of this is that I haven't been stung by a bee in years and years.  My reaction was:  Oh, will you get Off and I scraped it off.  I know it will die, poor thing.  I want some hives in the future, so good to know it didn't hurt that bad since I really couldn't remember.)