Betty saved the day

Christmas morning began like any other, Robbie & I piled onto Brad at 6:15am screaming that Santa had been and left presents! Time to get up!! Robbie is very patient but sure does love Xmas morning and opening presents. I bought a stocking from Walmart with a bunch of toys in it and wrapped each toy individually so he had a lot of presents to unwrap. He just loves it so much!

A gift from my Mum

Robbie opening one of his presents, we just hold it and he pulls the paper off. He gets soooo excited.

A gift from Brad's Mum, a letter opener from his Father's desk

Excitement 101

Opening another gift

Psycho Xmas morning dog

Elephant gift from Stacey

Robbie had about 8 gifts under the tree, including cookies from Grandma, which he looooooves

By the end of it, he was worn out from the excitement

On to making our Christmas dinner....

Brad always makes Christmas dinner so he was in the kitchen having just put the turkey into the preheated oven, we were talking through the pass through when something went bang.

The cooktop and oven are each on their own and separate individual breaker boxes which are in the cupboards below them and they are each about 6 feet apart.

The cooktop flipped a breaker -- except it wasn't even on! I flipped it back on and it started sparking. I quickly reached in to turn it back off while Brad was yelling at me not to touch it.... I didn't think we should leave it on given it was sparking and smoke was billowing out of the knob which is missing (we have to use needle nose pliers to turn it because the knobs are made of plastic and the stove is often hot - go figure, so they have all to some degree melted and split making them hard or impossible to turn anymore)....  Man, the electrics in this house are certainly questionable, this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened since we moved in.

Cooktop in question

Flipped breaker

Oven stayed on.... 

Since the oven remained working, and the potatoes were in with the Turkey, we decided (since we can no longer use the cooktop) we could boil the kettle and finish our meal that way. We had Stove top stuffing (in a box), and plenty of freeze dried food so I went downstairs and found some freeze dried gravy I made last year and corn. We just boiled the kettle, added the hot water to the gravy and corn and managed to salvage a smaller but wonderful Christmas meal regardless of the cooktop. 

I messaged our Landlord and advised her of the situation and she is having someone come and fix it after the holiday. We don't have a operational woodstove either, she has been sending someone to fix that for the last couple of months. Hope the cooktop gets fixed faster.

Turkey out of the oven

Freeze dried foods soaking in hot water

A lovely dinner in spite of it all

Robbie with his new toys

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas with as many friends and family as possible given the state of the world today. 

PS Betty is the name of our Freeze Dryer.

Busy day on the homestead

Thursday Dec 23rd

Having 1.5 Gallons of raw milk in the fridge, I decided to skim the cream off the top and make butter...

Churning cream to butter

Finished butter (spoon for scale)

I pulled out a load from Betty. 

1 tray of 18 farm eggs, 1 tray of lemon peel, 2 trays with 1 Liter of raw milk on each.

Egg load

I also had over 60 eggs on standby and so I prepped 3 trays (18 eggs per tray) and 1 tray of crushed egg shells which I feed back to the chickens to return the calcium to them. This load will go in first thing in the morning.

While I was waiting for the butter to finish, I figured I'd start a quick loaf of bread.

Voila, soft, chewy and delicious

My ever faithful assistant was at the ready to clean up any mess

Brad found a great deal on chicken breast and turkeys at Superstore yesterday. I threw the chicken in a crockpot with chicken broth, garlic, salt & pepper and put them in the oven for an hour and 15 min.

First load of 7 chicken breasts

Added a second load of 8 chicken breasts for a total of 15

I then split the breasts to thin them slightly (with Brad's help) and put them on 3 trays to feed to Betty along with 1 tray of the chicken broth I cooked it all in (waste not want not). 

I had time to kill while waiting on the second batch of chicken breast so I made some Lemon & Lavender body lotion. 

Once cooled

1 for my Mother

1 for Brad's Mother

1 for me

To be perfectly clear, this is not a normal day around here. It was a day when I had no need to leave the house and so I was able to get some stuff done. 

Tomorrow -- ordinary laundry day.... 

But Saturday...

Merry Christmas one and all!!

Meant to be a rainy day.... not so much.

As it was meant to be a rainy day yesterday I decided to do some stuff around the house. I've had 12 lbs of butter taking up valuable real estate in our fridge so it was a good day to deal with it... Time to clarify some butter ( also called Ghee)

 

Literally just put the butter in a pot on medium.

Once completely melted turn heat to medium-low and leave for ~ 10 minutes...

... until you can see clear through to the bottom when you draw back the fuzz on top (do not scrape bottom at any point in this recipe - the stuff on bottom will wipe out easily at the end)

Run through cheesecloth

Pour into 1/2 pint jars (or whatever you have). This is from 1 lb of butter. I managed to get 6 lbs done throughout the day yesterday.

I also decided to try making laundry soap. That was even easier than the butter! 

Chop 1 bar of soap into 'bite size' pieces and put in blender with 2C washing soda (health food store), then blend until completely mixed.

Put in package. Use: 2 tsp / Load

I haven't tried this yet but will wash the bedding today and let you know what we think of it tomorrow.

Next up, body wash. 

Also super easy. 1/3C Castille Soap, 1/3C Honey, 1/3C Oil (Olive, Almond or fractionated Coconut) and ~ 30 drops of any essential oil you like. Brad likes peppermint, so I went with that this time. I did lavender last time - too much lavender, so its a tad too girly, I think...

At that point (Noon) it still wasn't raining, so.... I grabbed my handy basket carrier guy and off we went foraging in the woods of our property.

Sisal, Dandelion heads, Plantain and Gypsy flower

Also grabbed a separate basket of Bracken fiddleheads.

I know what I said the other day... but its there and it IS edible so we got some more. I'm just trying to get these plants set into my brain so I can learn them and gathering them will help me remember what is edible and what is not. (Remember I had a stroke at 32 (gheeze 20 years ago already!) and my memory leaves a lot to be desired.

I also found - though not in season yet: 

Salmonberry

Cascade Barberry

Cherry Plum

Red Huckleberry

Bigleaf Maple (for honey)

Creambush

Red Elderberry

Pink Honeysuckle

Pacific Blacksnakeroot

Brad made lasagna for supper.... many suppers...

We gave some to neighbours and still have 15 left... 

While I absolutely hate the mess he makes doing this, I do like having them handy since we can cook them from frozen... considering how often I forget to take something out.... Oh snap... better do that now for tonight's supper!

For the record, we had a heavy mist about 10pm last night and it clearly rained a tad overnight but I can't see inside my catchment bucket outside until I'm beautified and out there. According to 'those who have no clue' we got 0.4mm (0.015 in) yesterday and 1.6mm (0.06 in) today so far.... 

Pork roast, taters and Yorkies

I made a Sunday dinner -- well, on Sunday. It was delicious and for the first time I actually got the English Baked potatoes right! 52 and finally twigged to the secret, okay I finally remembered the trick. Anyway, it was fabulous!

Pork roast, roast potatoes and Yorkshires

I had another recipe which required a lot of lemons - peeled... I saved the peel, it is in the freezer now and I will FD it and make a powder.

Peas are doing fantastic. I transplanted them to the deck pots and brought the pots inside (too cold outside). I have them in the window for now, once they get bigger and stronger and the outside temp warms up, I will move them to the floor.

The broccoli microgreens were ready to harvest yesterday but I just didn't get to them so I hope to do them today and get another batch started. Pics of that to follow.

 

A bit of cooking and Liver Spots

While Brad was finishing up his project (Thank God he's done) I have been busying myself with - well, cooking! I'm not what one would call Julia Childs by any stretch and my poor kids lived at home when I had even less culinary skill but I've been having pretty good success.

The other day I saw a couple of videos on FaceBook and thought I'd give them a try...

Zucchini rollup.

Cover cookie sheet with zucchini, cover with beaten eggs and cook 20min at 350F

Coat with cooked ground beef/veg or anything and cheese, cook 20min at 350F again.

Love it!

Again, same idea really.

Omelette Pizza.

Place bread in pan, cover with beaten eggs, bake at 350F for 20 min.

Add toppings of your choice. Bake at 350F for 20 min.

Liver Spots

I finally got around to preparing some liver for dog treats to sell on the online market. When I make them for Robbie we call them Liver Spots so that is the name I went with. My Mother-in-Law isn't convinced the name will fly but I don't really care, if no one buys them there will be more for Robbie.

Haven't heard anything more from Brother Sewing Machines, they are supposed to be sending me the postage label, I assume in an email and not physically, and I'm still waiting. If no word by Tuesday I will contact them again.

Hoping my seeds will arrive on Monday, the app on my phone (Shop) which tracks all my purchases says they will arrive on Wednesday but they were in Victoria on Friday so I fully expect them tomorrow.

Excited to get my seeds cracking, pardon the pun.

We are expecting a BC version of a Polar Vortex, temperatures are expected to get as low as -4C (25F)

so this will be a quiet week around here but with the beginning of Spring, seeds starting and Brad finished his project - I hope to have more to write about and more often.

All this food requires more walking

I'm sure you've all become fed up (pardon the pun) with my betty feedings so I haven't been bothering to take pictures of anything going in or coming out.

So just briefly:

The pork chops are out and packaged, then Chicken Green Curry. Right now I have Indian Butter Chicken in and tomorrow is Tandoori Chicken, cooked Ground Beef and more Indian Butter Chicken. 

Oh, and also somewhere in there I did Skittles and Gummy Bears. The Skittles blow up to the size of marbles and kind of have a 'Pop Rocks' thing going on and the Gummy Bears blow up to Fuzzy bears. Pretty neat. Great gifts for the Grandkids... I'm thinking Skittles, Ice Cream scoops, Taffy and something else their parents will hate....... I'm mean that the kids will really enjoy.  😁😁😁

Dealing with Betty doesn't take much at all - just put stuff on the trays and put the trays in the freezer to await their turn. Granted, Brad has been cooking -- which naturally takes effort but the actual Betty part is pretty simple. Put them in and turn her on, wait anywhere between 12-40 hours depending on the water level of what your doing and then take it out and put it in a bag with an oxygen absorber or put it in a jar with a moisture absorber. We've had her 4 weeks and even with Brad coming home all the time with more food, we've managed to empty the fridge freezer and made a dent in the deepfreeze too.

Other than that I've just been playing pickleball, cleaning the house and nagging Stacey to get out walking... we went through about a week there where we were both busy with other things and we've just got back to the walking. The orchard is on a pretty significant sized block and with a trail on one end we are able to walk the whole 'block' which takes half hour at a pretty good clip and has substantial grades going both down and up, today we went the hard way with the steepest grade on the up, I have yet to forgive her - hahaha. We haven't been to do a proper hike for awhile but we'll get to it.

I sent some samples of candy, bananas, strawberries, grapes and banana loaf to Brad's brother in England and all of the above with an addition of Thanksgiving leftover ham and turkey to his Mum in SK and my Dad and his new wife in ON so they can all get an idea of what this is all about.

I actually saw someone today on a FaceBook group say that because they wouldn't be able to spend time with their family as usual this Thanksgiving (in the U.S), that they were making thanksgiving dinner which they would freeze dry and send it out to family members. They could all then have the same Thanksgiving meal together via Zoom or the like. I thought this was pretty ingenious idea. 

Feeding betty and 2 Birthdays

I have a banana loaf recipe that everyone loves, it is soft and moist and delicious which is very odd for my cooking -but anyway, I decided to feed some to Betty. It turned out good, more like biscotti which is expected. It is certainly tasty and rehydrates well but I probably won't do it again, we prefer my banana loaf fresh.

Banana loaf bites

After the banana loaf bites, I did 2 full loads of strawberries which I didn't bother taking pictures of since I've shown that here previously.

Friday was my birthday, I've decided to start counting backwards (MIL taught us this trick) so I am now officially 50. Yup, the big 50.

I had a fabulous day, it was massage day so Brad went to Nanaimo in the morning. I made porridge for breakfast, then had Pickleball at noon, Big Brother was on that night, we went out for supper to a local restaurant and I finished the night off (after cake, that is) with one of my favourite things -- a hot bath. Perfect day.

Our reservation was at 6:20, we were seated right away and not 5 minutes later, the power went out. We had a candle lit dinner at the restaurant (I didn't get a pic apparently). Pretty good meal, but knowing the power was out and betty was eating had us a bit concerned. Power was out for 1.5 hours.... well...

Without power, the ice (moisture removed from product) inside betty began to melt. When we returned home we cranked up the generator and got betty eating again - except she started over in freeze mode. I didn't think anything of it at the moment but then realized it wasn't right. I pushed cancel (10 or 15 min later) and it went to the main screen which showed the product was finished.

I released the pressure valve and nothing came out.... screen advised the vacuum pressure sensor was broken... "Oh, that's just great!". I released the pressure by loosening the hose on the vacuum pump... Then I checked online and thought through what had happened... 

At home eating bday cake in the dark. We played crib until the power came on.

Stuffing my gob as usual

Inside betty's stomach

Cutting a long story short, I realized that because betty had sat for 1.5 hrs without power, that the ice had begun to melt, pooling at the drain and then the freeze cycle started. This clogged the drain with ice and would not allow the pressure to release. Whew. I allowed her to defrost naturally overnight and then in the morning I ran the original from factory tests to ensure everything was working properly - and it was! Beautiful.

Chicken Thai Green Curry that Brad made yesterday to feed Betty, it is packaged into serving sizes and freezing in preparation for its turn in the machine.

At the moment Betty is eating 7 double servings of soup and a small leftover porridge, I expect this to finish early afternoon today, then....

Pork Chops, prepped, cooked and ready for Betty

We will mostly do pre-cooked foods as it just makes sense to have them ready to go, although you can - and we probably will - do some raw meats as well. Just add water.

Today is my good son's bday (I have 2 good sons, btw)... Happy 32nd birthday little man! (He is a father to 3 now and 6'3 at about 225lbs but he used to be 8 lbs 5.9oz.) Those were the days.

Here with my grandson Royce

Yes I was 20 and 2 days when my youngest was born - he's a Scorpio too. Yikes.