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!!

Etsy shop up and running

I'm still waiting to hear from the local market... sent an email to inquire for status update.... meanwhile... Nevermind, just heard and we're all set up on the local online market too. Yay.

Without a commercial kitchen we are limited to basic foods although I will be inquiring about this because I'd really like to do EggNog bites but it's technically a dairy and homebased are not allowed to do dairy -- except that people sell eggs all the time and that's dairy, so..... it's not like I'm making the EggNog, it will be Dairyland brand or whatever.... but... also we are considering buying a 2nd machine but we'll wait and see how things go first.

We have our Etsy shop set up, it still needs tweaking with the usual foofoo stuff but until then the basic site is operating with items I have ready for sale. There will be plenty more options added in the coming days and weeks so check back often to see what's in store...

Of course, I have a special promo code for my favourite blog readers.... just click here --->>TRLT20 for 20% off.   **Canada Only at the moment, I'm afraid.

Click image to see more

Election day snacks

In preparation of catfight night in the U.S, I wanted to have some munchies for the event.. 

When Brad was in Nanaimo yesterday for his massage (he gets 2/week until year end), he grabbed some Vietnamese for tonight so we don't have to cook.

I pulled out 3 small jars of my Salsa and put some dehydrated jalapenos in and left it in the fridge to marinate overnight... we have a couple of large bags of tortilla chips and I wanted some healthy veggies too. 

I prepped Zucchini with Mrs Dash, Cucumber with Salt, Lemons and Limes with Sugar and some Apples (which have to go back in to Betty). I froze the apple peels too and then powdered once Betty dried them.

L-R: Cucumber, Lemons, Apple peel powder, Limes, Zucchini

The apples which I thought were dry - when we went to have some they were soft so clearly they were not completely dry, I put them back on a tray and they are in the freezer now awaiting their turn again after the jello batch comes out.

More Skittles - done. Mmmmm

The few in front are pre- Betty Skittles for comparison

Skittles in Jar with a moisture absorber.

We're moving -- NOT.

Our neighbour Kane and our friend stacey both recommended us to their mutual friend (even though the two of them do not know each other) who is moving to Vancouver and wants someone to rent her house. After viewing the Acreage and discussing it for 3 days, we accepted the offer. It is a fantastic property with an outside (modern version of) clawfoot bathtub with hot and cold water (inside bath as well, btw)... the house is wired up to an 11000w generator for the many power outages here.... there is room for a big garden and even a 'she shed' as well as a big shop in the backyard, which i absolutely loved. However the water had an incredible stench and so we accepted the offer with the condition that a filter system was put on the well water coming into the house, which was agreed to.

The owner has recently replaced the kitchen entirely but the installers made a right cockup of it, so it was agreed that we would fix the kitchen and also paint the house prior to moving in (at no charge) and we offered to do the gardens and make the house more presentable which would help her to sell in 5-10 years when she retires, as she wants to keep the home as an investment for that time.

Anyway, we were very excited and have been a bit preoccupied with the prospect. Unfortunately, in the last week since this process began the arrangement has been altered so many times and so many inconsistencies have come up that we have opted not to take the property. We are comfortable where we are and with housing being in such short supply on this island, we felt it better for us long term to stay put given the problems which have occurred with this deal in such a short time.

Racoon at the bottom of a tree at Stacey's house

Hoping to find a baby monitor so that I can keep an eye on Betty without having to go up and down the stairs, I went to GIRO which is essentially a ReStore. Everyone drops off the things they don't want anymore and GIRO (non-profit) re-sells them, minimizing the human footprint.

Tree trunk turned fairy garden at GIRO

I did not find a baby monitor and have since ordered one from Amazon, but I did find a ton of molds. I've heard it said that Jello through the FD is Amazing.... and as I said previously, I am looking for fun and tasty stuff to do for the Grandkids - so I bought every mold they had -- for $10 and I could not be happier!! Those things are something like $10 each new... and I got 18 of them... What a coup.

New molds, plus I had a rather large one already so I'm set.

The last batch were raw steaks we put into Betty and it took a long time (27hrs) but they finally finished and today we have a $50 ham which Brad cooked that is going in - shredded. 

I have the next batch sorted already and that is Lemons, Limes, Zucchini, Cucumber, Apple slices with peels separately to be blended to powder. 

Of course, yesterday I filled the molds with 3 different colours of jello which are now ready to be popped out and the other 2 colours I picked up can be put in to cool. They will be the following batch. I also picked up 5 flavours of pudding.... so you know where that's going.

Today I think I am going to Salt Spring to visit with Dana. Its a long day though since I've been up since 3:15am and didn't get any sleep.... 

PS Rick & Kathy, I may have fixed the comment thing... we'll find out soon enough.

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.

Grapes and Lasagna then Betty moves

Freeze dry peeps are always going on about how fabulous grapes are FD'd, so we gave it a go.

Going in

After: the grapes did shrivel slightly and this is not all of them... not sure what happened to the rest :D

I should have left them in longer (they were in about 24 hrs) as they were still a bit chewy, but I figured they wouldn't last very long anyway, so I jarred them with a moisture absorber.

The next day, Brad's lasagna that he had made in smaller containers planning ahead for Betty but we then realized they were still too big so he sliced them like bread and we laid them out on the trays that way. He also cut them frozen hence the mess... Next time we will slice them fresh and then freeze them. Its all a learning process.

Going in

And all done. 

We reconstituted a piece and it worked out fantastic. I know I need to do a video.... I know. 

Originally we had Betty under the stairs

then moved her to the kitchen

Yesterday, with the neighbours help we put her upstairs in my 'old' office... 

My computer table has now been set beside Brad's desk in the upstairs livingroom. This Premier pump is quieter than the other vacuum pumps on offer but we think it might be better in its own room. Due to the move last night at 630pm, the machine was jostled quite a bit and so we have decided to allow it to rest for 24 hours just to be sure we don't mess it up. 

Tonight at 6:30..... cooked hamburger and the last of the gardens green peppers. Then we have my homemade banana loaf cut into bite size pieces and more strawberries. Strawberries are my favourite so far, although that may change after the banana loaf bits....