Economic Perspective

Watch the video at this link which compares borrowing from 1919-1969 and then that of the last three years http://www.garynorth.com/public/4527.cfm

Orange Marmalade

Ok after an agonizing hour of boiling it all down I forgot, yes I forgot, to photograph the final result before we put it in the jars. Trust me when I say it was much darker than the photos below and looked like orange Marmalade!

Orange Marmalade

My Sweetie

John peeling lemons for the orange marmalade and just a little distracted by what's on tv.

Orange Marmalade

The mixture is covered in water, brought to a boil and then simmered for 5 minutes. It then sits for 12-18 hours and you add the sugar and boil again.

Lemon peels sans the pith and lemon sections on top of the orange sections and orange peels.

Here's a lemon that has been peeled and the pith removed from the sections, I'd never seen a peeled lemon before. Yes I really do need to get out more!!! Dh said the acid from the lemons made his hands burn so you may wish to wear gloves if you are sensitive to these sorts of things.

Oranges cut into sections and the pith removed from the peels.

These oranges came from Texas and were very good! Rio Queen is the variety.

Orange Marmalade in Progress~! This recipe is in the Ball Blue Book.

We stopped at HyVee this afternoon and they had a very good price on oranges 18 pounds for $5.48 I've been wanting to make some for a really long time now but it's hard to find oranges that are not all pith. These oranges were superb in tangyness and in sweetness. We've decided to go back and get another bag tomorrow for juicing. I have plans to make a batch of cranberry orange marmalade as well.

Oven Fried Chicken

Here they are after backing, ignore the white part on the one chicken thigh John said he ran out of flour and I'm STILL NOT CERTAIN what happened!

Coated with corn flakes, flour and spices and ready to be baked in a 375F oven. Below chicken parts awaiting a coating of goodies.

Well it all started on Thursday night, after a very harried day of bookwork etc., and dh's coming home late I decided at the last minute to go to HyVee and buy some chicken already fried up from the deli. And it was really good and we got to talking about it during dinner and the point that it was a dollar per piece of chicken did not go unnoticed!

Soooo John and I decided that it would benefit us more if we made up some chicken this weekend and froze it for those evenings when I"m really tired and REALLY don't feel like cooking but still want something super tasty to eat. We picked up 10 pounds of chicken hind quarters and John made oven fried chicken for us! It's all cooked, they are out in the garage freezing as I write and tomorrow they will go into the freezer. There's several meals worth here!

Learning to Can

For those of you wanting to know more about canning check out this yahoo group here Canning2

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Canning2/?yguid=129581707

French Onion Soup

I forgot to put the sherry in the soup - oh well makes it less calories this way ;-) It doesn't look all that appetizing in the pan this way does it? Good thing it tastes much better than it looks.

French Onion Soup

We didn't have any of the fancy cheese so we used the three cheese pizza cheese on top of the soup - it turned out to be a most excellent choice! That's a slice of toasted whole wheat baguette you seen in my bowl.

A close up.

Six pints of French Onion Soup for future dinners~!

Frosty the Nomad

It's been very cold here with lots of new snow almost every day! John wasn't exactly amused with my need to take his picture in the freezing cold. The temp outside was +2 and the windchill was negative something.

Dinner

John made home made spagetti sauce with meat balls - delicious. I made the salad big whoop right.

I'm Back

Currently I'm getting a custom order ready for a customer and dh is making homemade spagetti sauce!

If you look around you will see that I've been doing some new year cleaning and have added some new blog links - check out the ever growing herbal and plant list section.