Strawberry Shortcake!!

Yesterday on a whim, I picked up a few pints of strawberries from a local farm stand. It was the perfect opportunity to make Strawberry Shortcakes!

For the shortcake I made All-American Baking Powder Biscuits (A King Arthur Flour recipe):

3 cups of flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 tblsp baking powder

1-4 tblsp sugar

4-6 tblsp butter or shortening (I used Butter flavored Crisco)

1 cup milk or buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425 F

Mix together the dry ingredients. Using a pastry blender cut the butter or shortening into the flour mixture.

Add the milk, all at once, mixing quickly and gently for about 20 seconds until you have a soft dough.

Drop the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead 8-10 times. Roll out or pat out the dough to about 3/4" thickness and cut the biscuits with a round cookie cutter.

Place on tray and bake for 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned.

Prep Work:

While the biscuits cooked I cut up the strawberries and mixed them in a bowl with a little sugar.

When the biscuits where done I let them cool a few minutes. Then cut them open and spread a little butter on them. I put two halves in each bowl, spread strawberries on top, and sprayed whipped cream over the entire top.

Let's just say that they were so good!! We all devoured our Strawberry Shortcakes in no time at all!

Patriotic Cheesecake

I love cheesecake and this Patriotic Cheesecake sounds so good! Can't wait to make it.

Red, White, and Blue Cheesecake
(Credit: Farmer's Almanac)

1–1/2 pounds cream cheese, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons flour
1/2 pint heavy cream
1/2 pint sour cream
About 1 pint small, ripe strawberries or raspberries
About 1 pint fresh blueberries

Preheat oven to 325°F.

Generously butter a round 8- to 9-inch springform or rectangular pan.
In the large bowl of your electric mixer, or in a food processor, cream the softened cream cheese; gradually add the sugar and eggs, then the vanilla, flour, and heavy cream, and beat or blend just until smooth.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and set it on the middle rack in the oven.
Set a large roasting pan containing about an inch of hot water underneath the pan, on a lower rack.Note: Both the low baking temperature and the steam from the pan of water will help prevent cracking. If a crack should form, it is no disaster; simply hide it with the sour cream.
Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the center of the cheesecake jiggles slightly when you shake the pan gently.

Turn off the oven but leave the cake in it, letting the cake cool gradually (about 20 minutes), before refrigerating.

When you're ready to serve it, spread the sour cream over the top and arrange the berries, either in rings or, for the Fourth of July, make stars and stripes.

Printable Recipe

Raspberries!!

Aiden has really enjoyed picking raspberries in the play yard over the last few days. Daddy even setup a ladder for him to reach the high berries! Here he is picking, eating and delighting in his harvest!

Chicks and Food

When we got home last night I heard some peeping coming from under our front stoop. I tiptoed over and saw two little black chicks. Mama hen saw me and was not too pleased. She jumped at me twice and I shrieked! I really understood the term, "Mother hen!" Then I did the same with my brood, I protected them from the hen and quickly got us inside. Despite almost getting pecked to death I am so excited that our hens are hatching out their own chicks!

When I looked in the fridge I discovered a bowl of strawberries. Hubby had helped a coworker move a washer and he gave him a bunch of strawberries. They were so good! Aiden ate most of them! That kid loves his fruit!





Today must have been the day for attracting locally grown food. At Maine 4-H Days we spent some time helping out in the kitchen and the lady in charge gave us several bags of spinach, pea tendrils and turnips! I made Ehric and I bacon wrapped scallops and wraps made with apple slices, cheddar cheese and some pea tendrils. It was all really good! Aiden stuck to his favorite PB &J!



Today at Maine 4-H days we got to try a sample of Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp made with local maple syrup and oats. It was really good! When I got home I decided to try to make my own rhubarb crisp using maple syrup (I usually use sugar). I threw some frozen rhubarb into a glass pyrex, then added some maple syrup and a little bit of flour (figured the frozen rhubarb would get watery) to the mix. In a seperate bowl I mixed old-fashioned rolled oats, maple syrup and butter. I used a pastry blender to combine. Then I poured the oat mix on the top. I baked at 375 F for maybe 30 minutes or so. Next time I will probably look up a recipe and use fresh rhubarb because some of my pieces were not mushed up enough and were a little tart. It was pretty good though, but different!

Honey, Raspberries & Baby Birds

Hubby recently befriended a fellow beekeeper that lives up the road. All week they have been chasing swarms together, and as a thank you he gave us 5 jars of honey and 2 packages of honeycomb from his bees. We tried the honeycomb after lunch and had fun sucking the honey out. It was so floral tasting and sweet. Can't wait to try the honey out soon!

After lunch the boys went to play outside and discovered raspberries in their play yard. They were so excited and spent most of the afternoon picking berries. Hubby weeded out some butterfly bush from the raspberry patch and discovered a bird's nest that had two baby birds inside. He showed it to the boys. They were so excited to tell me about it, and Ehric said it had two little red colored birds in the nest. I will have to go inspect it tomorrow. Not a bad Thursday!

Country Living Is the Life For Me....

Down the Road a Piece--I drive by this house often and over the years it has changed hands many times. I finally decided to look it up online....pretty nice!

I fell in love!--If I could move in right now I would be a happy little lady! For now I am going to use the photos as something to aspire too. I really want to go visit this house and just breathe it all in, and say, "I'm home!"

Crock-Pot Pulled Pork

In this house BBQ is king! When we took a roadtrip this Winter we hit up quite a few bbq joints. The other day I made a Crock-Pot Pulled pork and hubby approved. That says a lot coming from him! I got the original recipe from A Southern Daydreamer, but I made a few changes...

I used our last pork shoulder (from the pigs we raised) it was probably 2 lbs at least

I added 2 cans of Coke (instead of diet soda)--I probably could have used a little less

1/2 a large onion

1 cup of Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ Sauce

I cooked in the Crock-Pot on High for about 8 hours. I actually didn't pull it all apart until we were ready to eat.

Hubby loved the taste so much he didn't add any bbq sauce or anything! We ate the pork on bulky rolls. It was so good!

Homemade Goodness

Despite the humidity, I felt like baking tonight. I seem to have a knack for timing oven cooking (which throws extra heat into the house) for the very hot, humid days...wonder why that is? Anyways, I decided to make artisan bread and the chocolate chip muffins the boys have been asking me to make for the last week or so. In between recipes I decided to make some lemonade (you know to cool down from the heat!). The warmth in my kitchen was actually a good thing, both my bread and muffins rose a lot higher than normal. Also, the lemonade seemed to make my family much more appreciative than usual. I got lots of compliments, especially when everyone was stuffing their faces with the chocolate chip muffins!













I thought I would share my resources for the recipes:

Artisan Bread-I use the basic boule recipe that was in the Five-Minutes a Day for Fresh Baked Bread article that was in Mother Earth News last year or so. I just mix up my ingredients in a large bowl, lightly cover it and let it sit for about 2 hours. I flip out the dough onto a lightly floured surface, fold in my edges to the middle, pop the dough onto a pizza stone and let it rise for about 20-40 minutes (have the over preheating while it is rising). Then I cook it for about 30 minutes. You can tell if the bread is done when you flip it over and gently tap the bottom and it sounds hollow. You could also use only half the dough and refrigerate the rest for another day. We often use the dough for pizza...so good!

Chocolate Chip Muffins- Ehric discovered this amazing recipe and other really good muffin recipes while playing Holly Hobbie "Hey Girls" Muffin Maker game on NickJr.com. To get the recipe you need to complete the game. Have your kids play the game or try it out yourself!

Lemonade- I used Real Lemon's recipe from the bottle and it was really good!
for a 2 quart container: 6 1/2 cups of water, 1 cup Real Lemon (or other bottled lemon juice), and 1 cup sugar.

Enjoy!

A Walk In the Yard

Father's Day Memories

Getting on a Budget

I absolutely love being a stay-at-home mom, and really want to continue in this amazing role for as long as possible. But lately I have been slowly becoming aware that for me to continue to stay home and help guide my children while they live and learn about their world, that I need to get my family on a budget and fast! How we have been spending is really threatening my desires to be a stay-at-home mom and if we don't make changes now I will not be able to continue staying home with my boys for much longer.

What brought about this realization? The other day I was looking at our calendar to see what we have been doing all month. I noticed that the boys and I have been indulging a little too much and too often at resteraunts. Everytime I turn around I am having to refill my car, because we have been driving here there and everywhere. I have signed us up for a lot of workshops and other events that are relatively low cost but when added together start to add up. We have been shopping like money is growing on trees. I consider myself a pretty intelligent person and able to reason but apparently I have not been paying enough attention to how much we are spending and how often. I have been letting myself and my family down by not paying attention.

So last night and most of today I have been getting serious about budgeting! I feel both spent and enlightened. I feel like I have a better grasp now on where we are at and where we need to go. I have some plans and ideas about how to make my goals a reality. But of course it will also mean that my family will have to be on board with this game plan or it will not work. They have to want me to be able to continue to stay home too!

Sometimes we are cruising along in life and don't realize that we got off on the wrong track at some point because we were not paying enough attention. We need to work on creating the reality we desire, but if we don't pay attention we will have a reality that we do not desire. If I want to be a stay-at-home mom than I can do that, but I need to sometime's reevaluate and need a good reminder of exactly the kind of life I am trying to create with my family.

I know that my family is not trying to keep up with the Jones'. We are frugal and happy living a simple country life. We are not trying to do what everyone else is doing and we don't really care what everyone else is doing. We prefer to make our own informed descisions free of someone else's control. We want to be free to pursue our passions and to learn about what is important to us. We want to raise our children to be independent free thinkers and to be happy.

This realization as it relates to my awakening means that I can be a stay-at-home mom because that is where I want and need to be right now. I have what it takes to get my family's finances back on track so that we can all continue to live this amazing life! We want our children to have the freedom to live and learn in a happy and stress-free home. I feel that my presence in their little corner of the world is the way for us all to live a good life. So if a budget is needed than bring it on!