Lollygagging in Lisa's Larder- November

The kitchen in November has seen a lot of food from the freezer and the pantry. Remember all that stuff you saw getting put into jars and into the freezer back in the summer months?  Well, we are eating it right now.  Patrick and I spent a little bit of time the other night going thru our quicken files and not surprisingly found that our lowest grocery bills occur in December, January and February.  November’s cooking pictures, or lack thereof, document that I have been concocting a lot of meals from “put up” food. So here are the photos from November.

November garden harvests:

Broccoli, carrots and lettuce. Obviously we are eating the lettuce fresh, and unfortunately it is coming to an end. We ate some of the broccoli and carrots and the rest we blanched and froze for later meals.

A meal all our own…..stuffed peppers, cranberry orange sauce and corn.

 We have really been enjoying that fast food from the freezer.  These stuffed peppers are just as good as they were when we ate them fresh thru the summer. This was the last jar of the cranberry orange sauce I made last winter. Making more is on my do list for this weekend since berries are now back in the grocery store for the holidays. I sure wish we could grow these on the property since we love them so. The corn was just thawed, heated and “doctored” with frozen peppers and dehydrated onions.

Venison and gnocchi stew......

I used the last of the venison from the freezer, mixed it with the gnocchi I made and froze a few months ago and made a terrific stew for a cold fall night. Unless Patrick is successful in the next few weeks, we won’t be seeing any more venison meals. Patrick isn’t the only one who has been unsuccessful this year.  Two very seasoned hunters he hunts with are also down on their luck this year. Keep praying for him.

Lemon Chicken…with broccoli

This is an old standby but I usually grate carrots in it. This day I cooked up some broccoli that I had just cut from the garden. Served over the lemon pepper noodles. It doesn't show up well on our plates. 

More butternut squash and apple butter……..2 things I canned this month

Desserts for the month

Apple pie- 

I really like those new leaf shaped pastry cutter Patrick got for me.  You can see I use them a lot. This was all that was left of the pie when I realized that I had not photographed it.   

Cranberry raisin pie

 Patrick was thankful that I made this for Thanksgiving and took it to the mountains with us.  We got to bring the leftovers home. Great breakfast food. 

Blueberry, chocolate chip bundt cake

A new favorite. Easy to make and it was a hit at thanksgiving. There were no leftovers to bring home.

Oatmeal bars with strawberry rhubarb filling....

I made these to put in the freezer for when Ryan and Sharee come.  I don't know if they will make it until then. 

So there you have it for the month......4 vegetable harvests, 3 meals, and 4 desserts.  Seems balanced to me?!?!?!?!?

Ready for Winter

With night time temperatures falling below freezing on a fairly regular basis, we figured it was time to fully winterize the chicken coop.When Carrie and Travis were here, we had cut and installed boards for under the coop to cut out any wind that might find its way into the coop, put down about eight inches of fresh pine chips for insulation and built new windows to fill the openings we had left open during the sumer months. Our latest project was to ensure that the birds had enough light to keep laying eggs (length of day is what determines egg laying, not temperature) and a ready supply of water that wasn't frozen. The first was easy, we ran a power cord down to the coop and hooked up a timer that ensures that they have an additional 3 hours of daylight.

The second required a little research. Thank God for Google, as that was the source of an inexpensive heat source created with one of these

and an old cookie tin which is then plugged in,

and sets directly below one of the girl's waterer.  It keeps it just warm enough to prevent freezing but doesn't put them at risk for getting burned or electrocuted.
Tonight, the temperature is supposed to get down to 24 degrees so we'll close down the door to keep them as warm as possible. We're still averaging 4-5 eggs a day so everything must be working.

Our Blog Continues

Welcome back, we've had to change our blog to this address due to the fact that Google will only allow each email account so many pictures stored without paying a monthly fee. So launching a new blog under Lisa's name is our work around. If you would like to see any of our older stuff, you'll need to go to  bartbarn.blogspot.com for past posts.  Please save this address to your favorites so you can keep up with us.