LindaLou

Happy, happy birthday. More so because we share a birthday because it's my birthday too.

I think I already know the answer to this but here goes, say you are going to can your favorite recipe of spaghetti sauce, can you use the canned tomato sauce from the store or do you have to make your own tomato sauce?

I just got delivery of half of a half, in other words a quarter. My steer was 1400 pounds standing weight and dressed out for my quarter at 232 pounds. I have an upright chest freezer and I thought it would fill it totally (I was a bit worried because I had just butchered chickens) but in the end with all the beef I still had room for chickens and loads of other stuff. When you order your beef in bulk you can give your cutting instructions such as how thick you want your steaks, how many pounds your roasts, what percentage hamburger and fat, if you want soup bones, etc. Where I order from it is picked up wrapped and flash frozen. It is a great way to get quality meat with no hormones.

Welcome. I lived in Iquitos, Peru in a boat on the Amazon doing what you are doing and, as you say, the whole trying to prep thing is way more expensive and harder to get. I look forward to your posts.

You might try hydrogen peroxide. I know it is the best for getting blood out.

Thank you so much. It is good to know you have our backs.

Just wanted to let everybody know, per Christy's request, that she is going to be AWOL for a bit dealing with some stuff. She loves everyone at Mrs S and will be back as soon as she can. Don't worry if you don't hear from her. I stay in phone and email contact with her.

Hope nobody cringes here but...I had left over veggies and bean soup, and to go with the leftovers I cooked up onions, garlic, and red and green peppers in olive oil (okay, with just a little butter for flavor) and then (since we stocked up on a ton of it while it was cheap) sliced 2 cans of Spam and grilled the Spam on the barbecue. It was delicious. (Okay, in reality I could only kind of mash it up to taste it). Of course, I grew up on fried Spam sandwiches and Spam and eggs so I love the stuff. DH will eat it but it is not his favorite until he tasted the barbecued stuff.

Ambergris, we are living the same life right now. I had dental surgery months and months ago, got my jaw broken in the process and lived on nothing but liquid stuff for a couple of months. Jaw is healed now and going back for a second surgery tomorrow. Ergo, I am making bean soup today. Looking toward a couple of months of nothing but liquids. Luckily we juice a lot.

Had some apples I needed to use or lose so I made 5 pints of cinnamon red hot apples. I haven't tried them before but they smelled great when they went into the jars.

Adding white vinegar to the dishwasher will help with hard water deposits in the dishwasher and prevent spotting on things in the dishwasher. Adding white vinegar to the washer will prevent hard water deposits there too and help soften clothes. Also baking soda is a great additive for the washer as a clothes softener.

I love my breadmaker I love my juicer I love my food dehydrator I love my rice maker/steamer I love my Food Saver I want one of those apple peeler things. I like my dehydrated apples with the peels but the DH doesn't. I want an industrial Food Saver type thing. And, Deerslayer, I want to know what a doggie grass pee thing is

Oops. One thing I forgot is a portion of what I dehydrate I keep Mason jars with oxygen absorbers in the cupboard to use in everyday cooking. A lot of I powder too after dehydrating...tomato powder, garlic powder, onion powder, carrot powder, celery powder. After dehydrating just throw it in the blender or food processor. I keep my powders in Mason jar with oxygen absorbers. I find it really handy to just be able to grab some dried vegetable to add to a soup or stew or whatever and not have to worry about having the fresh stuff in the fridge.

I have been dehydrating a ton of frozen vegetables that had been on sale. Never done asparagus until now and rehydrated some for dinner tonight to see how it worked. Think I need to rehydrate a little longer with hotter water. The flavor was great but the texture was a little off. (Maybe it was because DH did the rehydrating to surprise me with dinner when I got home from work so I'm not going to complain). As for storing my dehydrated stuff when it comes to fruits and vegetables I use my Food Saver and include (depending on the size of the bag) at least one oxygen absorber. I then store it all in 5 gallon buckets. The big thing to me for anything that you dehydrate, can, have in food storage, etc. is that you want to try to keep it away from the light. Reference dehydrating meat, most all of what I have done has been jerky. I prefer to store my dehydrated jerky in the refrigerator although I have stored it in the pantry too. A far as leather, boy, oh, boy, do I make a lot of leather. Not only fruit but when tomato sauce goes on sale for 10 cents a piece I make lots of tomato leather. Fruit leather I just put in Ziplock bags as it doesn't last long around my house. Tomato leather I package with the Food Saver and oxygen absorbers. I have been experimenting with fruit leather recipe too. For a long while I bought canned applesauce for apple leather but now am making my own applesauce in the fruit processor and adding some fresh orange, tangerine, lemon or other fruit juice. Somebody put an awesome link about dehydrating food here a short time ago and it is a wealth of information. I have been dehydrating for a long time but I learned some important tips.

This website give step by step instructions on how to prepare you bales which is very important and this guy is the consumate staw bale gardener. http://www.carolinacountry.com/cgardens/th...uide/straw.html We had a straw bale garden 2 years ago. Had lots of success with tomatoes, jalapenos, peppers, cantelope. We found that buying plants from the nursery was better. The seeds I sprouted seemed to be less hardy. We put our bales on visqueen to deter pests although since we have a huge problem with grubs the bales were full of grubs at the end of the season.