Loving Home

Today I did the first canning of the year. I made dill pickles. 10 pints and 1 half pints. This is a new recipe so I hope that we will like them. It calls for dill seed so I went and bought a little tin and it only did nine of the jars so I remembered that our dill from last year came back in and I had just enough fresh dill for the other two jars. I need to find a bigger container of dill seed next time. Pickles wise I am only making dill this year as I still have a lot of bread and butter and relish. Tomorrow I will turn my attention to the zucchini and yellow squash. I am looking at zucchini relish and use the yellow for part of it. Yesterday I baked a zucchini cake and two loaves of zucchini bread. Yummy. The cake was soooo moist it was amazing. I will make it again.

for my son. His fiancee, his high school sweetheart, has broken up with him and would like him to come and get the ring. They had dated four years and been engaged for 18 months of that time. He is beyond sad. He needs our prayers. Thanks.

I have put a lot of thought into encouraging the next generation of young people to garden, canning and preserve. These are among topics (with needlepoint, tatting and sewing) that if we don't teach these skills they will be lost. Last summer I concentrated on the daughter and she loved it. It made this momma proud. She did entire batches by herself and saved me a lot of time in our very warm kitchen. Yes she was 19 almost 20 but still, she had not shown any desire to learn so when she wanted to learn I struck while the iron was still hot. She has already told me that she wants to help this summer also, I was hoping she would, but that she wants me to teach a friend of hers who is a newlywed. Sure I said and then I seconded guessed myself, can I teach someone who isn't my child? I am disappointed that my future daughter in law is not interested in helping just the eating part. Oh well maybe with time. First of all, it seems like I am not going to have one student but u...

Well we are still sweating away in Middle Tennessee. The next seven days the "coolest" day will be 93. Not my idea of cool. With the heat index we will be at or above 100 still. My garden is happy to have the heat, they just want a little bit more rain. We lucked out this morning and we had a good rain that cooled us for about two hours before it got really humid again. We have been picking zucchini, yellow squash and cucumbers. We have gotten a few green peppers and banana peppers. Our hot pepper plant is not the kind we thought it was. Oh well. I will be making my first batch of dill pickles this weekend. We finally have enough. I have one large zucchini that I am going to shred to make bread. The rest will be eaten or frozen. We are trying very hard to eat instead of freeze as we have not had a lot of luck remembering the frozen squash. I am going through my deep freeze as we are looking at buying an upright freezer. I have been fighting it put I am having di...

We are in our third day of heat with a heat index above 100. I can not handle normal summer heat but couple it with high humid and I must stay inside. It looks like the entire week will be the same or very close. I will leave for swim class and grocery shopping but if I can help it that is it. Staying inside means more time to craft. Yeah !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am working on a Christmas gift and a cute piece for me that I think I am going to stitch again for Christmas. My bff will be here to stitch the entire week so I should get a lot done. I don't think she has plans for us to travel somewhere. We will have to see what the weather is like. ~smile~

Menu for June 13 - June 19 Breakfasts: boiled eggs and toast eggs, bacon and toast waffles pancakes Lunches: left overs hot dogs and slaw hamburger helper burgers and mac salad soup tuna sandwiches Dinners: chicken lo mein chicken fajitas salad with grilled chicken spaghetti with meatballs baked chicken thighs, corn, zucchini and summer squash fish, peas and carrots barbecue chicken leg quarters, corn and zucchini and summer squash The garden is giving us: kale, broccoli, zucchini and summer squash. We harvested a huge bunch of rosemary that I am going to dry and store.