Pepper plant, take two...

We went to the farmer's market a few weeks back, and bought the above jalapeno plant. It has to this point survived much better than our pepper plant last year, which I blogged about on my other blog. It has been named Peter, and it has lived inside since we got it, and thus has missed the typical changes in Idaho weather, which included recent hail. It even has a bloom:

There was a mad rush by everyone to see the bloom when its existence was announced...have I mentioned that I really, really, really, really want to successfully grow jalapeno peppers? Yeah, I do. When we bought Peter, he was not in a pot, he was in some kind of netting or something--forgive my ignorance of what it was called-- but we transplanted him in the above pot and hopefully the transfer to the garden will go well. I am looking forward to eating jalapenos fresh from my garden, but meanwhile I will settle for the jar I have in the refrigerator...

We have not yet planted our garden yet, but will have it in soon. We are hoping that we will wait past any garden -ruining weather, but really, one never knows. I know someone who swore off planting a garden this year because what takes so long to put in can be ruined in an hour, and that is what happened to their garden, if I understood correctly, more than once. I figure we'll keep trying, even when we haven't always had spectacular results, and hope is always a great thing. Among the seeds chosen by my children this year were once again, watermelon. And we are always trying to grow corn, with mixed results. If you don't try, you for sure won't get a harvest...

I hope that all of your gardens are doing well (as well as any pampered and worried over plants that you may be keeping in your house because you are delaying a transfer to the garden... :)

Happy Memorial Day

With gratitude to all those we commemorate today--we will never forget.

Idaho--and a Bingham County election...

Some things speak for themselves. Thanks to J.H., who posted the following elsewhere, but gave me permission to post it on my blog:

"Just before the Idaho primaries this past Tuesday, there was a forum where people were asking questions of the candidates for sheriff of Bingham County. When incumbent sheriff Dave Johnson was asked what he would do if the Federal Government mandated to take all firearms away from private citizens, he responded that he would have to comply with the feds. When candidate Craig Rowland was asked the same question, he responded that he would deputize every citizen who owned a firearm. Rowland got an applause and was elected Bingham County Sheriff this last Tuesday. Congratulations to Craig Rowland!"

Yeah. Gotta love Idaho.... :) And the Second Amendment. And the Constitution.

If any other sheriffs out there hadn't thought of this, I think that it's brilliant. After all, if a firearm is a part of your emergency preparation, you may find yourself in trouble if someone takes it away. There are many emergency situations where a firearm may be needed. In any case, if you are personally against firearms, please work out a plan where you have what you need for food procurement, etc. in case of such emergencies.

And hopefully, no matter what one thinks personally about firearms, they will vote for people who will uphold the Constitution and the freedoms we hold dear--and the right to bear arms is one of them.

Thanks again, J. H.!

A great recipe shared

Thanks to Polly, who left the following recipe in a comment under my last bread recipe--I was afraid that due to the fact that it took me so long to get back to blogging ( among, other things, after a computer breakdown--twice--and subsequent needed repair) that few people would see it. It looks wonderful, and I am looking forward to trying it. Thanks again, and without further ado, her comment in its entirety:         

My Aunt used to make soda bread along with corn bread in her wood stove. For the Irish Soda Bread -

3.5 cups of stone ground whole wheat flour,
0.5 cup of whole oats,
2 cups of unbleached flour,
1.5 teas. salt & soda, and
2 cups of real buttermilk.

Mix all dry ingredients well with your hands, slowly stir in buttermilk with a wooden spoon. Roll into a round ball and put a dish towel over it for about 45 minutes. This lets the soda & buttermilk mix together.

Take a cast iron pot with a lid and dust it with flour. After the 45 minutes put the dough into the pot and press it down to about 2 inches thick with your fingers. Cut an X all the way through the top of the dough. Put the lid on it and put into a hot oven (45 degrees) for 30 minutes. Take the lid off and turn the oven down to 350 and bake another 15 minutes.

As soon as you take it out of the oven, take it out of the pan. Or else it will stick. Cool the bread and don't eat it yet. Wrap it in foil for at least 6 hours. It needs this time to season. It really makes the difference in the taste. After at least 6 hours unwrap the bread and cut it into the 4 pieces from the x cut. Now slice your bread and put real butter on it. Nothing is better.

No eggs, no suger, no yeast... Just real simple, great tasting and very filling bread. Really one piece with soup or stew and you are full for at least four hours!!! :) "

End of recipe

I love that this is made with basic ingredients, and also that there are specific instructions on how to make it with a cast iron pot. Thanks again, Polly!

Sometimes it takes more than ingredients...

...to make a successful recipe. For a project one of my children was doing, we tried to make Swedish pancakes, an example of which is seen above. The recipe we used is found here.  Pretty straight forward in terms of ingredients--not very many, and while it calls for eggs, milk, and butter,  if you have them in powdered form, it can be food-storage friendly. (I don't recall having tried any other form of butter than actual butter, so those of you who have it in powdered form are ahead of me...)

At any rate, I share this particular recipe not necessarily for the ingredients involved, but because of how difficult it turned out to be to make these enough to get the picture above, which we wanted for the aforementioned project. There are only two steps in terms of directions, so how hard could it be?

Turns out: pretty hard, actually.

When the recipe directions say to pour it out in a thin layer, the easy part is over--at least it was for me. These are very, very thin pancakes, and I had one mangled pancake after another leaving the pan. Hard to remember now, but what looks (if one is being extremely kind about it) like a divided pancake above, was actually a conglomeration of, if not two pancakes, more than two pancakes, which makes it mostly look like one of my pancakes actually worked out in its entirety. Not so. While we got a piece here and there that looked kinda sorta like the pancakes pictured in the original recipe, it was, as memory served, only the occasional piece that worked out that way...

This is not to say that this is not a good recipe--my husband really liked them, actually. This is to say that if I want a pancake recipe that has few ingredients and that makes wonderfully thin pancakes, thus hopefully making more pancakes to go around,  I will have to practice a lot more than once to be able to make my ingredients stretch. It's hard not to imagine, when I am making a recipe that I think may be food storage friendly, how frustrated I would be if I had limited resources, little to no way to replace said resources, and hungry mouths to feed, and my recipe turned out the way this one did.

Bottom line--variety is good when collecting recipes that use basic ingredients, but make sure that you have the skill to successfully make those recipes before adding them to your emergency notebook. This one has not yet made it there, because sometimes you need more than ingredients to have a successful recipe experience...

Hope you have more luck with these than I did, if you try them...I actually hope to have more luck with them next time I try them myself... :) 

Water, water (issues) everywhere

Well, maybe not everywhere, but came across a couple of informative articles I thought I'd share:

--In the United Kingdom, there are new bans going out on hoses due to water issues, according to this article. It is interesting to note that there isn't actually a ban on watering your garden per se,  you just can't use a hose to do it. Also, there is a video at the top of the article, but I wasn't able to view the entire thing--it kept stopping at a certain point no matter how many times I tried to replay it, so there may be even more information involved than I know about. ( Hard to know if the problem with the video is due to the video or my computer--could go either way. :) While it would also affect peoples' opportunities to wash cars and the like, the thing that I would worry about would be the gardens, which is what is mentioned specifically in the article. Here's my question--if you want to limit the watering of gardens, doesn't that in theory leave you with a double problem? If you don't water your garden, you stand to be short of both food and water, the way I look at it...

--In Idaho, there is an article about a proposed rate hike on water that can be found here. There is a link included in the article if you wish to comment on this issue. More money for less water is one of the issues mentioned in the fourth paragraph of the linked article, and points out clearly just how much of a hike is being proposed. More money spent on water means less money for other needed items...

Water will always be needed, and it's a good idea to have some put away in your supplies. Rules are different everywhere, but do what you can---for drinking, sanitation, and watering those gardens...

A thank you, a bread recipe, and water links

First, I would like to thank those who have commented and/or e-mailed  information. I don't check the e-mail connected to my blogs all that often, so I don't always see things right away. I do need to say that if you send me an attachment, I won't open it (computer issues, etc.) so please just cut and paste anything you would like me to see. Sorry--I really do want to see what you have to say, and I appreciate your efforts. Also, since I am rather not technologically inclined, please excuse me if it takes me more time than expected to figure out how to use pictures and further explanations sent recently with what will be an awesome post--given that I do eventually figure it out.... :) I have also heard more about possibilities with wordpress, and have to figure out what I want to do on that subject. Ah, technology--not my area of expertise, but one can always keep learning... So thanks again to everyone!

Turning to things that are much simpler when it comes to technology, one of my children and I have been gathering what amount to be heritage recipes, and, since I am involved, I am all about looking for the recipes that are basic and easy. Above is a recent example from when I made Irish soda bread, the recipe for which is found here. It is very easy, doesn't have all that many ingredients, and most of the family liked it. (As you can see, it has raisins in it, and so wasn't welcomed with enthusiasm by one of the children.) It's dense bread, and it was the first time I had made a "ball" of bread that I can remember--pretty fun. And I figure it's good to have a variety of recipes that involve the flour, salt, oil, etc. combinations. (Speaking of oil, the linked recipe calls for corn oil, but I used vegetable oil, since that is what I had. Wonder if it really makes a difference taste-wise...)

Speaking of searching for recipes, when I was looking at one, a measurement of water was lit up as a link. I found it interesting that when I passed the mouse over it accidentally, a question popped up in a box, and the question said something like this: "Did you need a 1/2 cup water?" That reminded me of this recent article from Preparedness Pro about water storage. She also has an article about dust bowl conditions that might be of interest. I know that there are a lot of things to do/learn/worry about when it comes to emergency preparedness, but clean water--whether it is endangered by dust bowl conditions, the after effects of tornadoes or earthquake, or for whatever reason that you can think of--would have to be at or near the top of the priority list to get your hands on before, during, or after an emergency. Just linking here in case you haven't seen it, since it gives a lot of food for thought. Hope none of us find ourselves short of water, 1/2 cup or otherwise.

When I went back to link these articles, I realized that there were comments there I'd like to look at, so I'll be going back to look myself. Sometimes you can learn a lot from comments. But I think I may have mentioned that before.... :)