Chicken Noodle Soup

1 stewing hen
2-1/2 qt. water
3 tsp. salt
2 tsp. chicken bouillon granules
1/2 of a medium onion, chopped
1/8 tsp, pepper
1/4 tsp. dried marjoram
1/4 tsp. dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1c. chopped carrots
1c. chopped celery or 3tsp.Parcel, fresh
( my own substitute)
1-1/2 c. dried egg noodles or desired
amount

In large kettle, combine first 11 ingredients
Cover and bring to a boil, reduce heat
And simmer for1-1/2 hours.

Remove chicken from broth and allow to
cool. De bone chicken and cut into chunks.
if desired skim fat from broth, bring to a
boil. Add noodles and cook until tender.
Return meat to kettle, adjust
seasonings to taste, remove bay leaf
before serving.
ENJOY!

Yep, today was the day to pick up our pigs! This is our gilt, Ruby.

She feel right at home, rutting around their new pen.

This is the barrow, Rudy. He seems quite at home, already taking a nap in the sunshine.
Ruby needs a drink after rutting around. They both seem to be very easy going. We've had some that were very high strung and skittish.
Mo checking out the trailer, he loves to GO, anywhere. His winter coat is almost all in and does he ever look like a teddy bear.
Sorry, dupe, it was so good I posted it twice*wink*
This is the mama hen who hatched and is raising a baby turkey. The funny thing is when we put her in with the turkey mamas I thought the baby may go with them, but no- way the poor little guy looked at them and said NOT THE MAMA! and went running to his chicken mama.
The bronze tom is our guest for supper on Thanksgiving. We have 7 total we've slated to be butchered, one for us and six to sell. We've sold all of them plus we sold an additional young hen and tom(Narragansett) to some people for breeding and starting their own flock.

Not much else new here, still working on cleaning up yard and flowerbeds and mulching tender items. The weather is nice, no coat needed, only a sweatshirt today. We've canned 30qt. and pt. of apples. There are still 3/4 bushel of apples, half of which we're going to dehydrate and the other half we'll make juice and can for drinking as well as jelly.

Hello sunshine!

I just love to wake up to sunshine, although that doesn't happen now, as Fall wains into Winter. It's almost after 7 am before we detect daylight now*sigh* I have never understood the theory behind the time change and when it "Falls" back next month, it only makes it later in the morning before daylight shows itself. I, personally would rather have it daylight earlier in the day, rather than staying light later into the evening. When we were milking ( and hope to be again by the end of April, beginning of May) we milked and did chores in the dark morning and night, that gets old really quick. Okay Cortney and I sat down yesterday morning and calculated up Addy's due date. When we hauled her over to the Bull, I thought the people would pay a bit closer attention to when they'd mated, but however they didn't and the only bit of info I finally dragged out of them was that they'd seen Abe mounting her on the 25th. So.... If we go off the date I had down for her heat cycle her due date would be around April 24-26, if I go off the info they shared it would be May4-6th. We'll be watching her close anyway, so with just a few days in between the dates we should be okay. I'm just looking forward to an easy birth, a healthy calf and the added bonus of milk! We've been dry for over a year now. For me it's not such a big deal,because I only use the cream in tea or coffee. I'm not much of a milk drinker, but..... I really miss fresh yogurt, cottage cheese, butter and a few other soft cheeses we make. Poor Mo, a week and a half ago, had a swollen sheath. We ended up hauling him to the vet the following morning. I knew it wasn't due to his sheath being dirty, as my Mom had cleaned it just a few weeks earlier. I checked to see if he had a stone, sawdust or something causing the irritation the afternoon we noticed the swelling, and found nothing, he was clean. The the next morning the vet found a tiny nick on the outside of his sheath, and it was infected. She administered antibiotics IM and then also sent us home with a sulfur antibiotic powder to be mixed with some grain and fed twice daily. The vet also shared that the swelling would take time to come down but to keep an eye on it. He finished his sulfur powder a week ago and things were looking good,some swelling was still there, but no heat and it was decreasing. Last night I checked it and he was sore, not wanting me to touch, although there is no heat and the swelling has not increased. I'll be making a call to the vet to see where we need to go with his treatment from here. Poor fella, that isn't a good place to have swelling and tenderness. Not much else going on around here, still working on apples, I'm sick of them but know what a blessing they'll be this winter. We also will be trying to get some of the flowerbeds areas semi cleaned up. I don't want to totally clean them as they might get damaged during the winter, but the hollyhock stems, sun chokes stems( need to harvest some tubers), gladiolas( need to be dug and stored in the cellar), irises, thinned and replant the ones thinned elsewhere and window boxes and other pots cleaned out and put in the garage. I tend to leave the wildflower dead stalks and pods until Spring, as a sort of mulch, and then shake off the seeds and clean the beds out thoroughly. I admit I'm a lazy flower gardener, I'd rather put my efforts into our produce gardens, but still love the flowers and range of colors and styles. I better get the call into the vet and hang some clothes, on the line while the sun is shining. Blessing for your day.

Gifts shared!

Yesterday we received a package from dear friends from TX. In a recent phone conversation, she'd shared that their orange crop was about ready for harvest. I told how the oranges we get here in MT are tough, tasteless and pithy, but that Mike's mom had brought fresh oranges, once from CA and they were so juicy they just melted in your mouth. See below, what our gifts were, yes, gifts, not just oranges.........




but pecans from their trees and two Taste of Home Cookbooks for Cortney. In the photo is just a sample of the oranges, we've eaten 5-6 already and there are still 14-15 for our mouths to savory, Ummm, Ummm

Thank you Tom and Irene, you certainly hit the spot!

Our weekend happenings, nothing exciting but.....

Look who was relaxing beside the stove!

On Saturday it was chilly in the morning so we lit a fire to take off the chill and since the stove was going we thought we'd better make good use of it. Cortney milled the last of the tomatoes, the we cooked the sauce down until thick enough and I canned it, yielding us 6 more pints. We'd been wanting to try a new dessert recipe Cortney found but hadn't found the time,until this afternoon. We had to modify it some, as it calls for brownie mix and we don't use those, ever! Here is what we did:

Brownies for a crowd

We cut this recipe in half to make the 2- 8" round pans full, otherwise it makes a 15x10x2" pan full. The recipe is as follows;

2c. butter( no substitutes)

8 eggs

4c. sugar

1-1/2 c. cocoa powder

2c. flour

2 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

2c. chopped nuts( optional)

Melt butter, over low heat, in large sauce pan, add cocoa powder and mix well, remove from heat. Add sugar, mixing well. Add one egg at a time, beating in well.

Add flour, vanilla, salt and nuts, mix thoroughly. Turn into greased and floured pan and bake @ 325-350F for 40 minutes.

Now remember we cut this recipe in half for the new recipe called;

Maple- Mocha Brownie Torte

Mix and bake the above recipe or follow a boxed brownie recipe.

Cool the 2-8" rounds on cooling racks, in the meanwhile mix 2c. heavy whipping cream and 2tsp instant coffee granules, into stiff peaks. Add 1-1/2 tsp maple flavoring, 1 tsp. vanilla and 1/2 c. packed brown sugar and blend in well until thickness desired for frosting. Spread a generous amount of frosting between the layers and use remaining frosting for top and sides. Refrigerate.

This is a VERY rich and NOT a fat free dessert, but taken in little wedges, for a family of three, we've had it for dessert now 3 day and will finish it tonight. ENJOY, we sure did*wink*

This is our end result, isn't it pretty? Wait until you taste it!
Yesterday it was decided because of the fore cast this coming week we needed to expedite getting the garden cleaned up and tilled under. Here I'm burning off weeds that got away from us while we were busy harvesting and canning. I sure hope this keeps the weeds down next season.
Mike tilling, first this way, then.....
that way, until the entire garden was tilled. He enjoys tilling, it seems to spurn his creativity and thinking/planning. He came up with some really great ideas on future projects, which I'll share when we begin them*wink*
The main garden is all tilled and simply awaiting a good healthy top dressing of composted manure, then a long winter's rest.
One more load of straw/ manure and the garlic will be thoroughly mulched for winter.
Three rows of garlic, YEAH! Blond moment though, I forgot to count how many cloves I planted. Anyway, it was a bunch, so pray for a good crop, won't you.
The salad garden is still a mess and most likely won't be cleaned up this Fall. There are parsnips in the middle rows that will be mulched and overwintered, so it isn't worth tilling around them and then re- tilling in the spring. Sounds good anyhow,LOL!

Today Cortney and I decided we'd get more accomplished if we worked separately so... she's going to cut back the sun chokes and hollyhocks along the end of the main garden and then get straw hauled into the pig hut, in prep for our feeder pigs. We were going to get them yesterday, but the farmer and his family have all been sick and he didn't feel like doing it and we don't blame him, nor do we want to be exposed to their illness. So we made tentative plans to pick them up this coming Sat. morning.

I will be working on apples and if I find the time I really need to work on mudding, taping, sanding, priming and painting around the mud/laundry room window, a corner and the wall behind the washer, so that this coming weekend we can get the cedar wainscoting up and the clothes dryer back in the house. Yes, we do have a dryer, but I only use it in emergency situations, like when the jeans have been on the drying racks for days and are still damp and someone NEEDS a pair. Okay It's now windy as all get out and we need to get barn chores done, Mo put out for his 2 hour grazing period and then back inside to accomplish today's list of things to do.

Take care and blessings for your week

The sun DID shine and it felt like Fall....

but... our sky looked like this yesterday morning. Yes, that is our garden and it's a mess, soon to be rectified. Mike is going to burn the last of the corn stalks( they froze and the cows won't eat them, so we'll pull and pile them for burning) as well as some weeds before we till it under for winter.


This picture is blurred but we liked it anyway. You can see the hills in the foreground and behind( beyond the hills and behind the trees) is a view of the Pryor Mountains
Yes, this is me, don't you like my style? My only intention was to till this area, where we had squash and mangle beets planted, and then plant our garlic rows. Then it turned into such a beautiful Fall day I just moved into the main garden and began tilling different areas( where the weeds weren't so bad) I managed to get the area that the bush beans and cukes where planted tilled, as well as where the early sweetcorn was planted. Then I moved onto the potato and cabbage patch and began tilling there. Mike came home when I was on my 4th round there and he wasn't to pleased to see me tilling, because he said he'd do it. I just got on a roll and I'd had a hard time getting the tiller started and figured better make the best of it. He is going to burn and then till the remainder of the garden, then we'll spread composted manure over the top and let it rest for the winter.
Cortney did video me tilling and she was giggling because the tiller bucks when it hits a hard spot and I really have to hold it down to keep it digging. We try to only till in the Spring, possibly in between rows, about mid season and then the final till in late Fall, so the ground does get compacted where we walk. You can see some of the apples we missed, the foliage was so heavy and thick and remember it was snowing and cold. I just can't believe we missed so many down low*sigh*

No news is good news, right?

Well..... not much new happening here. We're still canning, carrots( into pickled sticks)and grating them to freeze for future breads and desserts. Today was fore casted to be into the mid 50's with sunshine. Nope, so far it's again a dreary, grey sky. On days like this, my get up and go seems to have gotten up and left. I function better when there is sunshine. On our list of "to do's"( which doesn't mean we'll get them all accomplished) is to finish up 4 loads of laundry and hang outside to dry, clean up in the garden, collect seed and get our garlic planted and mulched for winter. If we have any spare time there are still more carrots awaiting grating and pickling, 6 heads of cabbage waiting to be made into freezer slaw and 3-1/2 bushel of apples in need of some form of canning, dehydrating or freezing. We may very well have all of this wrapped up by Thanksgiving and then we have all the beautiful berries in the freezer, some of which we need to make into jam and jelly. One thing is for certain, we do not suffer from idle hands around here. There is ALWAYS something to do. It would be pretty boring if that weren't true, so for this we are thankful. Okay off to get something checked off that list. Bless you and your day, may it be constructive as well as productive.

Today is an important Birthday

Our Ds, Jon is 21 yrs old today! Wow I can't believe my first born is that old and yet I feel so young, well..... most days that is*wink*


Yes, this is what you think, but..... before you jump to any conclusions...
it's our grand baby. Yes, we're going to be grandparents in April.

This is our Ds, Jon, his fiance', Bobbie and her little boy, Jaymes.
Jon and Jaymes enjoying the nice weather and taking a SLOW spin on

Great Grandpa Ty's three wheeler. Jaymes love it!

I think someone( Beth) missed us over the weekend, hee! hee!

We did manage to get the last 5 rows of spuds dug, and a few odds

and ends projects finished but we also has company on Sat., my Aunt

Linda and her Mom came for a nice visit, mid morning Sat. Linda was

was gracious enough to offer to pick up a couple 50# bags of a 7 grain

rolled cereal mix from Wheat Montana on her way through Three Forks.

The rest of the weekend we did rest, well.... view the photo above!

Just a picture of Addy( on the right) and Button working their way out

into the back pasture. Behind them is the granary and the A-frame we

use when butchering the pigs.

I almost forgot to tell you our exciting news on Friday evening. Mike had just gotten home from work, Cortney and I were finishing up evening chores and getting the turkeys and chickens locked up for the night. We came inside and Mike was in the bedroom changing out his battery on his emergency radio because he was on-call this week for ambulance, when he turned around and saw....... Okay he quietly yelled for Cortney and myself to come slowly toward the window. When we looked out the window we simply couldn't believe our eyes it was a bear cub, no regular bear cub but rather a grizzly cub! He was at the end of our neighbors driveway and then crossed the road into our front yard, down the side of our house right past the back door and then behind the garage. I called my folks and told them to look out back at the bear cub, just then Mike says it's come up between their house and our garage and is going across the front of their porch. I looked and sure enough it was, so I called back to tell them to look out front now. The cub paused, looking at our horse, Mo, as he snorted and ran around his corral and then looked at the turkey, which made me say," Oh! no you don't, those are already sold!" Then he moved at a brisk gait across the back pasture, down over the edge to the river and swam across the river and then into the bushes on the other side. It all happened so quickly and being it was a grizzly cub we didn't follow to closely and poor Cortney didn't get a picture*sigh* After all the hoopla, neighbors calling and asking if we saw the grizzly cub it dawned on us..... where there is a cub their is typically a Mama, then I was really scared. I'm praying the cub was an orphan and was just traveling through. We told Cortney to keep the dogs with her whenever outside from now on, they'd be her first warning.

So technically we live in the city's limits, in a rural area and we've seen coyotes, fox, raccoons, skunk, a young bull moose and now a grizzly bear cub plus we've heard tell of a cougar in the area, although we've never seen it and hope never to see it either.

That about sums up our weekend!

Have a wonderful week, we'll be grating, slicing for the freezer and pickling carrots, plus milling the last of the tomatoes to can and getting canning stuff cleaned and ready for storage.

This and That, rambling and enjoying our warmer weather

Typically we don't buy these sort of things, but it was a fundraiser for Cortney's youth group, so...... Surprisingly, this blueberry/ cream cheese braid was quite good! I tried not to think about all the preservatives, sweeteners and saturated fat in it though.
You guessed it! Yes, we're still cooking down tomatoes, PTL! Yesterday we canned 6 qt and 3 pts of tomato sauce. We also made applesauce and have that to can today.

We did make our way through the mud and weeds(grimace) out to the potatoes. It was easy diggin', but I was ever so worried about if the spuds had frozen during this cold snap, happily they had NOT *smile*! Although,...... I can't manage to dig spuds without forking a few*sigh* Not to bad, we dug 3 rows and this is all I managed to fork.( above picture)
This bucket of spuds was from 3 rows( 15 ft long). It's not as nice a crop as we've had in previous years but it will certainly be plenty, when we finish digging the 5 remaining rows. I also dug a few carrots, to check to see if they froze and all were in good shape and are they ever crisp and sweet! You can spy the last of the tomatoes we have to preserve, less than a bushel.
We basically had no Summer, more like Fall temps. from June until end of Sept, then old man winter set in! The poor trees didn't even stand a chance of changing color, let alone drop them to the ground. They are now frozen, crisp and still hanging on the trees.
Look at our poor elderberry trees, they'll need some serious trimming next Spring.
Okay it needs a paint job, but this is our new wood box. Our old one was hauled back to the wood pile, to hold the scrap wood/ pieces from splitting the firewood. I save these for fire starter/ kindling. Mike gives me grief about scrounging these scraps but you know me, "Waste not ,want not" LOL!!!! The new wood box is much sturdier but doesn't hold as much wood, so in the severe cold temps we may end up hauling wood in the morning and evening, which is okay, because we always NEED the exercise in the winter months anyway*grin* Now to decide on a color, maybe green to match the trim? Any suggestions?????, It will have to be outdoor paint and I have a limited window to get his done, as Saturday is fore casted to be in the low 70's and dry. I can possibly primer it on Friday. Thanks for your suggestions.

Shhhh, I didn't tell you but.....

for those of you who didn't read in the comments, here is our secret....... Hopefully by months end( providing all dots connect) we'll have our mortgage PAID in FULL. We'll be debt free, it's a dream come true. We've been prepaying on our original 15 yr. mortgage and with the help of an investment we'll have enough to pay off the balance. It's been our dream to be debt free for about 10 yrs now. We started by paying down our personal debt and cancelled our one credit card. The last major debt was our mortgage, this is why we only financed for 15 yrs on a conventional loan. We'll be posting pictures of the mortgage burning, YEAH!!!!

I have a secret I'm dying to share but.....

It will have to wait for a few more days, until all the details are worked out. This is something we've been planning for almost 7 yrs. Another hint is it has to do with........

the picture. Anyone care to make a guess to what the surprise is???? Leave your guess here and we'll see if anyone guesses correctly. If someone guesses, I'll let you know. If not we'll share the our secret hopefully by the weeks end. This is so exciting!

Okay, this morning we had......

3/4 " thick ice on all the animal troughs, now that's scary! The hoses are also frozen as well as one outside faucet, so back to hauling water in 5 gallon buckets already*sigh* The temp. this morning at 6:30am was 18F, Brrrrr..... The chili sauce turned out great with some tweaking, we don't like it to hot( spicy) and we made a huge pot of chili and still canned 8 pints of sauce, YEAH! As Mike was heading out the door to work this morning, it's his weekend, he quietly said, "Come here." Out in the garden were two deer, I thought one looked like it was a spike( buck), but as they both trotted off, we saw that they both were spikes. This triggered a memory from a few summers ago of a skinny, scruffy looking doe who came and ate lettuce from our garden. She NEVER bothered anything else, so feeling a bit sorry for her condition let her graze on the 50ft row of lettuce, besides it grows right back*wink* Several weeks went by and she got accustom to our comings and goings and would eat with us as close as 25 ft. I thought she probably had a fawn hidden close by and later in the summer we finally saw her in the bottom of our pasture( she'd hid them in the brush and small trees down there) with not one, but twin fawns. Now after this morning I wonder if maybe these aren't those fawns? It's nice to have these memories to ponder, and especially enjoy the wildlife, now that gardening is over, LOL! On today's schedule apples! We have a bushel basket of apples picked off the ground and some that were damaged are getting soft, so.... we NEED to take care of them promptly. I'm thinking sauce and a crock pot of butter from these apples. We'll can more pie filling from the good apples picked off the trees. I'm running low on quart jars and down to the last 3 dozen pint jars as well. A few years back we'd roughly counted our jar supply and all total( qts. and pts.) we had a little over 1,000 and last season our neighbor gave us several boxes of pints. I do have a few boxes in the loft of the garage, but many of those are mayonaise jars and such, so not good for pressure canning. They do work okay for water bathing though. Since this head cold hit, I've been somewhat sluggish and today I'm just feeling plain ole' lazy, LOL! I do feel better and even my nose has cleared but...... Do you ever have those days where you'd just like to curl up with a book, write a few letters or just take a nap? That is how I've been feeling and even though Mike has encouraged me to take it easy, the produce won't wait until I'm feeling 100%, so we whittle away at it each day. The tomatoes( remember we had 2 bushel baskets and a milk crate full of green maters) they are down to 1 bushel basket and ripening at a nice pace. We find enough ripened for a big enough batch, every other day. We still have 6 heads of cabbage on the front porch to make into freezer slaw, but alas have to wait to dig carrots to finish that job. Once all this produce is taken care of, then Cortney and I have plans to get Jon's old bedroom converted to a spare/ craft/ sewing room. We each have projects planned for Christmas gifts, but need a place where we can work and then just leave it, without having to clean it up and put it away to eat supper. This is going to be so nice to have, but it is going to require cleaning up a bit, getting rid of an old computer desk( was Jon's but he didn't need it) and repainting, over his camouflaged wall. Okay this is turning into a rambling, I think I'll fetch myself a cup of hot tea and read for a bit in my book, The Diary of Mattie Spenser by Sandra Dallas. I was in search of a new author, I get in ruts, and found this ladies books. I bought two, the first was entitled; The Persian Pickle Club and it was pretty good for fiction. The Diary of Mattie Spenser is not a fiction, but rather taken from a real diary of a woman who traveled to CO via wagon and her experiences on the new frontier. There are portions of the book not appropriate enough for Cortney to read, referring to marital duties, U-hum, otherwise it is a delightful book. Thanks for stopping in and may your weekend be wonderful!

An easy healthy snack/ appetizer and some pictures of the Victorio mill at work

This is called Sirniki, it's an wonderful appetizer or healthy snack.
First you combine 3c. dry curd cottage cheese, 2 eggs, 2Tbsp yogurt or sour cream, 2/3 c. flour and a healthy pinch of salt in a medium sized bowl. Heat a pan with 2Tbsp butter or 1Tbsp butter and 1Tbsp olive oil over med. heat. Shape into ball( golf ball size), roll in additional flour in a separate bowl( see to the left in the above picture), now flatten in your hands to between 1/4" and 1/2" thickness.
(Continue below)

Cook until lightly browned, flip and repeat.
These are good alone or dipped in ranch dressing,sour cream, salsa etc... They taste a bit like fried mozzarella sticks. We've also added Parmesan cheese( to your taste) as well as 1/4c.grated sharp cheddar, to the mix for variations. This recipe is found in the 9th edition of Carla Emery's, The Encyclopedia of Country Living pg. 749
Our mill in action today doing tomatoes. Cortney is the mill operator today.
Sauce down the shoot into the bowl and seeds and skins on the plate, it's that simple.
The bowl of tomatoes netted us the saucepan about 3/4 full today, chili sauce here we come!

Cortney's cup of hot cocoa this morning.( the list to the left is her church youth groups fundraiser sheet, they sold frozen braided sweet bread)
The snow we received a few days ago melted, but this morning we woke to more and it's still snowing.
Beyond the BBQ, in the garden are our carrots and potatoes, still in the ground. It's fore casted to be cold tonight and then a warm front is headed our way. Praying it helps to dry our soil enough to get our spuds and carrots out of the ground and into the cellar.
Cortney loves the snow, without dog prints through it, so quick snapped this before they'd had the chance to race all over it.( this is our front yard)
The stock pot is half full( cooked down tomato sauce, from a full pan) of now enchilada sauce. The side it's setting on is the simmering spot, to the left directly over the firebox closest to the back splash is the hottest spot. When you have a wood cookstove you learn quickly all the temp. zones*wink*

After using some of the sauce for our enchiladas the other night, we still ended up with 10 pints of sauce canned. The mill is a Victorio mill and I've had it for over 13 yrs.( ordered in 1996) It was a big purchase back then, and my original sales receipt from Lehman's total was $77.85( that included the extra cost of a salsa screen). It was worth every penny! If you've never had the opportunity to use one it's well worth the $55+ s/h today. The berry screen takes out even 90% of the strawberry seeds. It is one of our favorite kitchen tools, manual, but makes life so much easier. The design has changed and it is no longer called the Victorio, but it still works the same. Some tools are an expensive investment, but in our experience they are worth it.

Today Cortney has already sorted through the tomatoes for the ripe and ready ones. We'll be running these through the mill, cooking down the sauce and making Chili Sauce for you guessed it a pot of chili as well as canned pint jars for later use.

Chili Sauce from Stocking Up

4 qt tomato sauce( if you like your sauce chunky add chopped peeled and chopped tomatoes)

2c. chopped sweet red pepper

2c. chopped onion

2 cloves garlic; minced

2 dried hot chili peppers finely chopped( we substitute 1-1/2 Tbsp chili powder)

1 tsp. ground ginger

1 tsp. ground nutmeg

2 Tbsp. celery seeds

1 Tbsp. mustard seeds

1 whole bay leaf

2 sticks cinnamon( 3" long)

1 tsp. whole cloves

1/2 c, honey

3c. cider vinegar

combine tomato sauce, sweet peppers, onions, garlic, hot peppers, ginger and nutmeg in a large stainless steel stock pot

Tie; celery seed, mustard seed, bay leaf, cloves, and cinnamon in a cheese cloth bag, add to tomato mixture. Bring to a boil, uncovered until volume is reduced to half.(2-3 hours) Stir frequently to prevent sticking. Remove spice bag, add honey and vinegar, return to a full rolling boil, stirring constantly. Simmer for 5 minutes

Can or freeze. Pour hot into sterilized pint jars, leaving 1/4" head space. Seal and process 35 minutes in a boiling water bath.

This is so handy to have, along with canned beans, all you need to do is fry some burger, add ingredients together and heat thoroughly, serve up with a fresh pan of homemade cornbread or corn muffins.

Cortney is signed up for a beading class(wire wrapping an pendant) in the city for tonight( 6-8:30 pm), but.... we'll have to see what the roads are like( BIG chicken here*gulp*) and we've been listening to the emergency radio all morning and there have been several wrecks in our area, so roads are most likely slick. The sun is coming out, so we'll watch and see if they dry off, it's stopped snowing as of now. If they are dry I'll chance it, but if wet, forget it because they'll surely freeze by nightfall and be black ice.

Well.... I'd better get to work on the next batch of sauce,Cortney's run it through the mill and has it simmering on the wood stove, the stove is just the right temp to simmer it down.

May your day be blessed and pray for good roads for us, will ya?