Yummm...

If you happen to get a beautiful Saturday morning like this, it is time to make pancakes.

We love our cast iron skillet, and are getting better at using it.  Anything cooked on it just tastes better, but it could also be the fact that we use bacon grease to season it.

Here is a triple batch of pancake batter ready to go, along with my coffee!

When Jennie was in the hospital with Grace you get odd looking meals like this one.  I took some of the blue potatoes we grew and cooked them up and then added scrambled eggs to make a kind of skillet meal.  Unfortunately the blue potatoes make it look funny, but it was still yummy. 

With the long summer we actually had some of tomatoes ripen in time to be eaten.  One of my favorite sandwich's is tomato and cheese.  Here we have Jennie's homemade bread with a liberal helping of homemade mayo, fresh homegrown tomato and cheese from Costco.  So close to being a 100% homemade/homegrown sandwich.

This is making me hungry, I better go....

Homemade Pickles, almost

For two years now I have planted cucumbers for making dill pickles and they have completely failed both times.  Even though mine failed I was able to buy a 20 lb box of pickle cucumbers from Wilco late in the summer when they had them for sale.  This was just something I wanted to try.

It was quite an operation to get 20 lb washed and cut up.  Evan and Mia were washing them, while Ethan and Momma were slicing and dicing.

I think Lily was just in charge of looking cute, or she might have been transporting pickles over to Momma.

I learned that you want to fit the pickles into the jars tightly so that you don't have to use too much pickling mix.

We successfully canned some, and then others were just put right into the fridge.  We have tried the ones in the fridge and much to my surprise they turned out great, and have a nice crunch.

Eggs, Eggs, more Eggs, and Toad in the Hole

As more of our chicks from this spring start to lay eggs our daily egg count is slowly climbing up.  The last two days we got 19 each day, but today we got 21.  We do love our eggs, but it may start to get out of hand, so we will see if we can peddle some to friends, family, or neighbors.

Sure glad we saved the cartons from Costco.

Ethan has been put in charge of helping to prepare breakfast during the week.  He has always like to cook, or bake.

Here he is cooking up some Toad in the Hole.  That is what we call it when you cut a hole out of your bread and cook the egg in the middle.  Super yummy!

Since we are talking about food, here is another one of our favorite breakfast treats.

Dutch Baby Pancakes

We have enjoyed these for years.  However with Jennie and Mia staying away from dairy, we now make a non-dairy and a dairy, hence the slightly different look to them.  Jennie can usually throw these together pretty quickly and they taste great with maple syrup, or a mixture of lemon juice and powdered sugar.

This is making me hungry, I am going to have to cut it off here and have some popcorn.

Cinnamon Rolls with Pioneer Woman

I can not remember how we found out about Pioneer Woman, but some time ago I got her cookbook for my wife as a gift.  It is a gorgeous cookbook with lots of beautiful pictures depicting their life on a ranch, and yummy recipes.  So far our favorite recipe has got to be the Cinnamon Rolls, which you can also find on her website.  Jennie made some just before Christmas.

I was helping by reading the directions, here she is rolling out the dough.

Add a little butter.  Bear in mind, nothing that Pioneer Woman does is low fat, but then again if you are going to eat Cinnamon Rolls you should just go all out.

Ready to bake!

Adding the maple frosting.  We have found that the recipe makes a ton of frosting, so we have now cut it back some.  We then usually freeze them and save them for a special weekend treat.

Girls in the kitchen

I'm loving all the help these two sweet girls are bringing to our family. Teaching them to love baking/cooking for our family is one of our goals for them. I'm sure they will have lots more practice as the boys get older and eat more.

Lily doesn't do much at 18 months but loves to try everything, including eating flour.

Mia is becoming very helpful now with meal prep. She loves making biscuits with our soups.

Making Vanilla

So a blog that I enjoy had a recipe for making homemade vanilla. That was something that I have been wanting to try this year. So we got the two items that are needed and voila. It was so easy. And in a few months I will be able to enjoy some yummy REAL vanilla.

Strawberry jam

So after our strawberry picking day I wanted to try making strawberry jam again. Although unlike the kind I have done in the past, full of sugar, I tried an all fruit recipe. We have yet to try it since we are using up the other jam we have in the fridge, but it looked like it jelled nicely and it was fairly easy too. I had 6 cups of blended berries, 2 cups of white grape juice concentrate, some pectin and calcium powder. I cooked everything first to a boil. After I got it in the pint jars, I water bathed them for 5 minutes. And done. It was a lot faster then I thought. Maybe an hour from beginning to end. We love jam on toast or biscuits and of course the old stand by, p.b.j. But we don't go through a ton of it so we will see how long 5 jars gets us. I might do some peach jelly too. We received some as a gift once and boy did the kids love that.