In The Kitchen

Hillbilly Housewife Granola…

Gretchen

We love this stuff!

Peanut Butter Granola  (We triple it and “healthy” it up a smidge.)

6 T Butter

1 c Natural Peanut Butter

1 c Raw Honey

1 t Vanilla Extract

1/4 t Sea salt

9 c Rolled oats

1 c Nuts of your choice, slivered almonds, pecans, walnuts, preferabley soaked) (optional)

Melt butter and peanut butter in a 3-quart saucepan.  Add honey, vanilla, and sea salt.  Stir until smooth and hot throughout.  It doesn’t need to boil.  Add oats.  Stir until oats are completely coated.  Add nuts if using them.  Mix.  Turn the mixture into an ungreased cookie sheet or 9×13 pan.  Spread the granola out eveninly and bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes.  It will be brown and crispy.  Remove it from oven and allow to cool in pan.  Break into pieces once it has cooled and store in a sealed container.

Around the Homestead

Thanksgiving…

Gretchen

My aunt prepared a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner as always. 

This is all the guys going first….yes, our family has NO manners whatsoever.

Randy and his mom were in charge of carving the turkey….be very afraid. 

It was a hit and miss at the beginning, but in the end they did a great job and had plenty of laughs along the way.

Me and my cousins on Thanksgiving.

We had lighting issues…

so we tried a different spot…

still some issues….what good is the internet if you can’t post embarassing pictures of your family members on it.  We were in mid-pose.  Honest we were. 

We had to move inside where we had adult supervision….

sort of.

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving.

Uncategorized

Thanksgiving Preparation…

Gretchen

Thanksgiving is just around the corner.  We go to my aunt’s for the day.  She does most of the cooking, but we all bring a side and dessert.  I’m taking green bean casserole and pumpkin pies.  I usually take sweet potato pies, but I have pumpkin in the freezer I would like to use so pumpkin pies it is.  For the green bean casserole I do use the not-at-all-healthy onion strings on top, but I do make my own replacement for the canned cream of mushroom soup.  I make a Basic White Sauce (and usually double this recipe).

My aunt does the ham, turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, rolls, do you want me to continue?  She’s amazing!  How she can cook for all of us corn-fed eaters I will never know, but she does it every year.

The cousins (that’s where I come in) are in charge of the pre-dinner beverages.  Everyone brings a bottle or two of their favorite wine to share and pass around.  It is so much fun!

This year Randy and I are taking Stone Hill Concord (a recommendation from a friend) and Red Electra (our personal favorite).  Neither are expensive wines, both are fairly sweet, and neither one will make it home Thanksgiving night.  heehee!  We aren’t big drinkers….we just have a big family!

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend!

Animals

Cat Surgery…

Gretchen

Randy got home the other evening to find Cooter hurt.  So he loaded him up and took him to the vet before they closed.  He ended up having to leave him there overnight to have surgery, get stitches, and drainage tubes.

I’m headed to town with him tomorrow for his two week check up and to have the stitches and tubes removed.  He’s done really well and took his nasty medicine like a champ.  We will give him a dab of yogurt for a few days to get his good bacteria replenished since he was given an antibiotic, and he should be good as new.

The vet didn’t think it was from another cat or a dog (coyote).  We are really leaning toward a hawk.  They are really thick right now.  The location of the wound, the type of wound, the multitude of hawks in our area…..we’re thinking big bird got him.

 

In The Kitchen, Nutrition

Coconut Bark…

Gretchen

Coconut Bark:

6 T coconut oil, virgin, expeller-pressed

1 t vanilla extract

1 ½ T unsweetened cocoa powder

1-2 T pure maple syrup

2 T unsweetened shredded coconut

¼ c pecans

Melt coconut oil in a small pan over low heat.  Add vanilla extract, cocoa, and maple syrup.  Mix with wire whisk until completely dissolved. 

Add remaining ingredients and mix well.

Pour into a 9×13 pan lined with wax paper.  Place in freezer for 15 minutes to harden.

Once it hardens, break it into bite-sized pieces.  Keep in freezer.

The recommended dosage for coconut oil is 3-4 Tablespoons a day.  This is best divided and taken three times a day before each meal.  It’s best to start out with smaller doses of coconut oil to prevent die off.  Die off is the result of toxins being removed from the body.  Diarrhea may result, but this is not actually a bad things as this is a sign your body is being flushed of toxins and offending organisms.

Health Benefits of Coconut Oil  “The health benefits of coconut oil include hair care, skin care, stress relief, maintaining cholesterol levels, weight loss, increased immunity, proper digestion and metabolism, relief from kidney problems, heart diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, HIV and cancer, dental care, and bone strength. These benefits of coconut oil can be attributed to the presence of lauric acid, capric acid and caprylic acid, and its properties such as antimicrobial, antioxidant, antifungal, antibacterial, soothing, etc.”

“The human body converts lauric acid into monolaurin which is claimed to help in dealing with viruses and bacteria causing diseases such as herpes, influenza, cytomegalovirus, and even HIV.”

Here is where I buy my coconut oil and the best price I have found.

I cook our eggs in it, spread on toast or biscuits, use it as a lotion and night cream, mix into smoothies, anytime I need to oil a pan for cooking, and of course in coconut bark.

It is delicious and nutritions.  It heals cuts on hands, good for chapped lips, rub on scalp to help fight dandruff.  The list goes on and on. 

 

 

Animals

Ash…

Gretchen

Isn’t she cute!

All tucked away sleeping!

Well, this little bundle of fluff just finished off her 4th or so pillowcase this morning.  I bought organic sheets hoping to help Randy with his asthma.  Those were goners a few weeks back!  Our little darling is the ripe ol’ age of seven and still insists on being naughty.She gets on our bed (broken rule #1), licks Randy’s pillowcase (unspoken broken rule #2), and eventually devours, as in literally eats the pillowcase (broken rule #3).  Not the entire pillowcase mind you, but on any given day this beauty can put away 1/2 of a pillowcase in the time it takes Randy to take a shower in the morning. We usually baby gate off our bedroom because of this behavior, however, when the baby gate fails to get put up, pillowcases are eaten.  It’s a fact of life in our home.Now we get to monitor her to make sure she passes it, and then we get to clean up the backyard full of green cotton pillowcase debris. 

She knows she’s being naughty because the minute you walk in on her she tucks her tail, ear, and cowers.  Something inside her little speckled head cannot process the “don’t do it” message.

I always say, you just haven’t lived until you’ve owed a cattledog!

I could write a book on this puppy!  She has destroyed more things in her mere seven years than we can even begin to count.  One time she literally ate her way into our home in Alabama; screen, wood blinds, and the window trim for good measure.

 

Adoption

Adoption Update….

Gretchen

Just thought I would let those of you know who don’t already.  We are putting our adoption on hold.  There are numerous reasons for doing so, but the big one that got the ball rolling was the adoption tax credit not being renewed at the full amount.  This credit has been around for years, and even though we knew this was a possibility we forged ahead anyway.  Although we didn’t technically need it for the initial adoption, we were hoping it would help us with our second international adoption especially since we would only have one income the second time around.

Second, we really want to pay our mortgage off and become debt free.  As long as I keep working we have the possibility of making this happen in three years.  I don’t know if I can hold out three years to start our family, but we are going to give it a go.

There were little details along the way contributing to our final decision to put it on hold.  The travel time was a bit longer than we had anticipated, and my parents were not overly enthusiastic about watching our farm for that long regardless of the reason.  There were some expenses that popped up for once we were in Nepal that we hadn’t accounted for.  The vaccination list was also a huge, disturbing factor that played heavily into our decision. 

In the end, we decided to put things on hold and see where we are in a couple of years.  The economy is so scary right now.  The health care uncertainty is scary.  The list goes on and on. 

We are going over our options and patiently waiting for the answers we need to make this decision and move on to the next part of our lives. 

We would like to thank everyone for their support while we are going through this process and to our references for doing paperwork after paperwork to appease the agencies. 

Around the Homestead

Our trip to North Carolina (part 4)…

Gretchen

Once we arrived at my aunt and uncle’s in Blowing Rock it was time to relax a bit and enjoy being outside.

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Along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  The views are amazing.  My aunt and uncle took us for a drive the first evening we arrived.  The sun setting and the leaves turning made for some really pretty scenery.

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Randy, my Aunt Phyl, and her two dogs Ike (black), and Ozzie (apricot)

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Hiking through their Christmas tree farm.  It’s beautiful there.

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We also did a little hiking on our own while we were there.  It was a fun trail for the two of us flat land people.

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Our celebration photo for actually making it to the top!

We had such a good time on our trip.  We received more “roll tides” than ever before.  It started with the flight attendant on our Wichita to Atlanta flight and didn’t stop the entire trip.  You gotta love Southerners!

My aunt and uncle were great hosts to us during our stay there.  We were so grateful to get to take a vacation and at such a beautiful time of year.

Around the Homestead

Our trip to North Carolina (Part 3)…

Gretchen

Let me introduce you to the world of Nascar camping at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

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This would be a car hauler, converted, with a deck.

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Lots of tarps this rainy morning.

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Notice the ladders, the tarps, the old Winston cup sign, the pickup.  So many things to look at, so little time.

I don’t know if it gets anymore American than a Nascar race.  You have country music, marching bands, God Bless America, Prayer, the National Anthem, and of course……

FlyOver

the fly over.

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Ahh, the roar of those cars zipping past you is indescribable.

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#99 Carl Edwards….woo hoo!  It was an early woo hoo and then silence.  His engine blew and he ended up out of the race.  Jimmy Johnson won….big boo!