Littlesister

Been cloudy all day, but they finished pouring the cement for driveway. Tomorrow they come back to do the cut and then clean up. I am so glad it will be finished. But still have to wait 10 days before being able to drive on it. Though we can walk on all but the abron. Took DH to store this morning as they had can veggies on sale for .27 but had a limit of 15 cans. We wanted the corn for the food ministrey at church as we had none to give out for Nov. and we feed anywhere from 28 to 35 families. So DH has his Vic card and I have one so we each got 15 cans of corn. Where there's a way around those limits on sales, we both go to store. I am up to my neck in cement dust all over everything in garage and on everything on back porch. I am going to finish working on garage and going through things as to what to keep and what will go. Try to clean up and organize as I clean off all the cement dust from everywhere. Got a lot done yesterday and a bit more this morning. Had taken down bedroom curtains and got them washed and because it took 4 panels to go across windows, I was going to redo them to make 2 panels. But with the garage situation and Thanksgiving and Christmas around the corner, I am just going to hang them back up and wait till next time I take them down in spring to do it. Hard to believe some of you are starting to have snow. We have had low 50's at night and warm days though it is cloudy. No rain expected until Sat. So we are still going through where we don't need heat nor air conditioner. That is a good thing with what the cost of this driveway, porch and walkway will be. But think goodness for our neighbor. He really does a great job and gives us as he calls it the neighborhood discount. Still will be several thousand dollars though. But had to be done. Driveway was in really bad shape and ready to cave in. Two very large holes with one being 9 inches and the other 5 inches deep. The 9 inch hole was a disaster waiting to happen under that crumbling cement. But I will never have to deal with it again. Need to go get the larger garden in shape before our yard man brings the mulch. Need to get that started tomorrow. Going to call son in law to run tiller for me. Annarchy: Glad to hear Luna is doing better. My granddaughter's dog is named Luna.. She does rescue dogs and trains dogs as well. She has trained some police dogs as well. Something she had to go to school for and be licenced for. With having to move around for militarty, it makes it easy for her to find a job. Snapshotmiki, Making bookmarks from old Christmas cards is a neat idea. I like the idea of the Christmas ornaments from canning lids as well. Nice to get back to making things like that instead of buying them. I want to get caught up around here and maybe start doing some DIY projects again. It has been a while since I have had anytime do some of those things.

Got DH out to car at 5:45 this morning to head to market to cook the collards. So I started in cleaning some in the house, then by 7 am here comes the trucks to work on driveway. they got the apron ready to go and the cuts in the cement for the expansion. It's really coming along. So Tomorrow morning they pour the cement for apron, then come back next day to do the epansion cuts. Then the clean up and then a 10 day wait before driving on it. It takes 7 to 10 days to cure. I have white cement dust on the house, windows, chairs, grill cover and everything else that is on the deck. So when they finish out comes the hose and I need to clean up everything. I have already cleaned front of house and hosed down the brick to get the dust off. So now for the rest of house in a few days. Just hope the weather holds out. Next spring I will have to get house and patio power washed. The dust is on everything in garage as well. That's going to be fun to clean up. Got some of it today though. Winterized the big garage door after getting the dust off of that. Hope everyone has had a great week with no issues of illness nor bad weather.

Mt__Rider, You use plenty of water for boiling the collards. You need to put the jowl meat in to cook first. Once that is cooked add your collards. Do not put any other ingredents in untill the collards are starting to get tender. Add water if needed. Once collards are starting to get tender add everything except the salt. When they are fully tender then add salt to taste. Hope this helps.

Mt__Rider, The way we cook the collards: We use jowl meat, chicken base, salt, ving. and just a tad bid of texes pete. You do not use much as you just want that kick but not to be able to taste it. I can't really tell you how much of everything as I will have to figure it out. We always do 6 bushels at a time. We use a 35 gal. pot. That is a lot of collards.

Up again at 6 am as the cement trucks came rolling in. They got the cement pured in driveway all the way down to the apron.. Waiting for city inspector for the apron to get done. Then to wait a week, maybe a bit more depending on weather,, for it to cure. Then I can get car back in garage. We are parking on street in front of house right now and the sidewalk goes down into a slope so having to hold on to DH to get him to car. I will be glad when it is over. Scrubbed down the front of house this morning as cement dust is all over the brick, windows and everywhere else you can think of. So cleaned glass on door and cleaned the front door down and hosed off everything. When this is over, I will have to have the house pressure washed. What a mess. Windows will really need a good cleaning. Went to chuch supper and Bible study, so at least i didn't have to cook. I did take a pan of collards though. They won't let us forget to bring those as they seem to be the big hit at church. I am so tired right now so going to head to bed early. Got to get up at 5 am to get DH to the car and off to farmers market for him to cook collards for the market.

Jeepers, I am going to make some of the meals in a jar up and do like you said. Make in jar and then transfer to mylar bags. Defintly saves on jars. Snapshotmiki, we have general dollars here but have not seen any canning jars in any of them. But will check again. I have a lot of the golden harvest brand jars as well. Got a lot of them from yard sales for like 10 to 25 cents each. Haven't had any issues with them.

Going to Harris Teeter tomorrow, so will be picking up some coconut oil to try.. Would like to keep this in my pantry. They have canned veggies on sale for .27 a can, I want to get some for our food ministery. They will only allow you to get 15 so will have to take DH with me to also get 15 with our vic cards.

Another good one. This is a lot of good info on coconut oil. I saw the one about it being good fo thyroid and more energy. But this really has great info. So I am going to incorparate this into my food storage and start using it. I do use Ghee for cooking and like it. It has a very long shelf life. So I am hoping the coconut oil has a good shelf life as well. Will be checking into it for storage purposes as well as for using now.

Bringing this one up because of flu season getting ready to start. Yes I do see a lot of these are old post and need to be bought up as reminders for everyone that may have forgotten about them over the years. It really is hard to stay on top of all we need to do to stay prepared.

I am so glad to see this. I take synthroid and though I do have a small extra 90 day supply, It will not last. So I am so going to order the Bovine thyroid. I am familar with it from working in a doctor's office, but most doctors won't use it because they say it is to hard to regulate. Working in a doctor's office, I can say it is all about the use my drug and I will give you a kickback. Gotta love big pharma.

Wow! I have never heard of using coconut oil for low thyroid. I have low thyroid. I am so going to give this a try. I take synthroid and of course will have to take it the rest of my life. So any extra energy I can get will make me very happy. I love finding things that will help me.

Posting this oldie as now is the time for flu season to start. So time to get prepared.

Well, I didn't do some of the things i needed to do as to cleaning house. But did finish off the rest of the roma tomatoes that took forever to riping. So made pizza sauce and canned it. I can it in 1/2 pint jars as one makes a 12 inch pizza. For the 2 of us that is plenty. So now that that is out of the way, I can get back to getting the house cleaned up. I had started washing windows and never got around to finishing them. Now I am glad I didn''t because the whole outside of the house is covered with cement dust. That was one big mess and they still have to pour the cement if the weather will hold up. Looks like house is in for a pressure wash when all is done. but for now I will just hose down the house and wash off as much as I can and get the windows washed. Time is flying and I have so much to get done. Still have to get curtains back on bedroom window and a bathroom window. Washed them over a month ago. That is how far behind I am on everything. I'm tired just thinking about it.

Hi Jeepers, I like the idea of using the mylar bags for the meals in a jar. It's great to be practical. Saves on the jars for garden stuff. So when I can get the time to start doing those, I will be pulling out my mylar bags. Need to hit the market up for more 5 gal. buckets.

Ambergris, He strips the large stem from the leaf but keeps the small stem on them. Then he chops them. Not real small but small enough to be able to get as much into a quart container as possible with the juice. We made the mistake of taking some to our church dinner and now we are stuck with having to take them for every church dinner. They love them. The market sells them at 9.99 a quart and they can't keep them in stock. And now with Thanksgiving coming up he will be cooking at least 3 or 4 times a week. They freeze them for the Thanksgiven orders coming up soon. Time is flying and it will be here before we know it. I for one am not ready. Annarchy, I don't really care for beets. So have not tried the beet greens. Maybe If I can find some I will try them. You never know. I might like them.

Ambergris, Praying for your friend's pressure sore to be healed. I have had friends that had those problems. Not an easy thing to deal with.. We still need to be in prayer for both our president and vice presdent. Things are looking worse and worse for this country. The list of what if's are no longer all what if but how long before these things start to happen. EMP, pandemics, mass shootings, nuclear disasters, weather patterens, possibility of war here in the USA, bank closures, collaspe of this country, 401K's, stock market crash, recession, depression. And so much more that can go wrong. I believe that Donald Trump was put in office through God to give us another chance to repent as a country. It is not happening. Our Churches are falling away. I believe that God is using Trump for things that need to happen. I have studied revelation and watch close as to things going on in the world as much as I can. Very depressing to say the least. So I thank everyone that is praying for things to turn around and the possibility ( though I don't and am sure others don't agree with all that Trump is doing) But our choices are not going to be good. Just look at Venezuela to see what socializem has done to that country. I for one am praying that Trump wins the 2020 election and then brings out the real corruption going on in our gov. Soros for one needs to go. He has done a lot of damage and I heard tell that he is getting involved in the school system. That will be very bad for our children and grandchildren that go to public schools. I by no means want to offend anyone with anything. But to know that everyone is aware of the things that can and will happen. I don't know everyone on here and am very new to this forum. One of the things that got me to join is that you guys and gals do not seem afraid to stand up to your christian rights and talk about the Bible and God. Though I also know we need to be careful with what we say and do where politics and God are concerned so not to offend anyone with other view. That is why I am just saying to keep on praying daily about this country.

The CG, I have been checking into Butcher box. You are the first one that I have heard that uses it. That is good to know. I have been trying to get my freezer emptied so I can order from them to try it out. Right now I have no room in freezer for anything else. As soon as freezer has gotten down low, I will place an order.

So many folks with special needs for food variations. Only thing we have is that with my hypothyroid, I cannot have soy and DH with his heart issues cannot have salt. I do not can with salt and also is one of the reason I can my own soups, stews, and veggies. I also can my meats. I try to buy organic when I can as well as grass fed meats. I have been looking into buying from a company that sells all grass fed meat but I need to get my freezer empied first as you have to buy a certain amount at a time to get the prices. It would be cheaper than buying in the store. Wish we still had more farms around here, but they are being sold off and houses, apartments and any thing else they can think of to build are taken it's place. Might be heading to N. Carolina to some of the farms there. I know of a couple that would only be about an hours ride. Just need to remember to pack a cooler with ice.

More great ideas. We love radishes, but the white ones are a bit hot. So I don't plant them anymore. Just the red and red and white ones. We haven't been doing to much on winter gardening as DH has not been able. About the only thing he does now is to cook collards at the farmers market his cousin owns. He does 6 bushels at a time. They can't cook enough of them. They sale faster than he can get them cooked. They sale them by the quart. We took them to one of our church suppers and now they want us to bring collards everytime. DH is known as the collard man around these parts.

another old post and a good one. I have a book on meals in a jar. Another project I need to get done but need to find the space and to buy more canning jars as well. I was disapointed that at the end of the season no one around here put them on sale. Not even the lids were on sale. The prices have been steady going up on them. So I always wait till end of season to buy them. I think I am going to have to pay the piper come spring if I run out of jars and pay the full price. Ouch!

I have never used parboiled rice. Will have to give it a try. I buy my rice in 25 lb bags and put in mylar bags with 02 obsorbers and into a food grade 5 lb bucket. The rice will last for years like that. Though I rotate it out as we use it. I keep about 2 buckets of rice at all times in storage and date it for the rotation. never had a problem. I have never rinsed my rice as that is the first time I have heard of anyone doing that.

Some good receipes on here. I will have to try some of these. The most I have ever cooked for was 27 people at Thanksgiven and Christmas. I hope I can still do it. It has been a long time since I have had that many over for holidays. All family members as some have passed on and a couple have moved away do to job location. They try to come in when they can but one is from CA and now married almost a year now. She was down a few months ago, so we were able to meet her new husband. He is a really great guy. So I know she is happy.

I will have to go thorough my receipes to see if I have the pudding receipe that my mother used to make. It was butterscotch. I don't remember her using clear gel. So I am going to try to find it. I have a load of receipes sitting on my dining room table that I have been going through and trying to get them into a binder in order of breafast, lunch, dinner, deserts, breads, etc. That will make it so much easier for me to find what I am looking for. I have a habit of cutting out receipes that I want to try from newspapers, family receipes, and some I have tried from pinterest that I wanted to keep to use again. Just one of my DIY projects that is taken me forever to get finished with everything else going on right now. But I will get there.

Wow! I never knew you could use a canning jar with your blender. That is great. And I will be giving that a trial run. I have the ninja blender and that thing is a beast. Works really great, and if I can use the canning jars that would make it even better.

Really love the doggies. Ours are in doggie heaven as well as our kitties. So we have no more animals at this time. Went to church this morning and planning to go again tonight for evening Bible study. DH is sound asleep right now. So just chilling out as it has been raining all morning and looking like we might get a break from it now. Though we really needed the rain after 28 days of no rain. I really wish it had held off another week so they could get the concrete poured for the driveway. Right now the driveway is torn up but almost ready to pour the concrete as soon as city inspector oks the apron. Sidewalk and porch is already done. But having to park on street at front of house for a while. It's a long walk down walkway for DH with his issues, but we are making it ok. Tomorrow will be another day and I will get back to getting things done. Just enjoying the quiet time right now and thinking of reading a book I have started.