A fun day!

For it is in giving that we receive
― St. Francis of Assisi

Yesterday we had an errand in Madison, Wisconsin, so we decided to also drop by American Family Children's Hospital (aka UW Children's Hospital).

I had 21 quilts to drop off.

As we came in the door, the one valet parking guy asked if we needed a wagon - we'll have to do that next time.

The lady at the desk where we donated the quilts was excited to see us. Another lady passed by and had to admire and touch a few.

I always enjoy stopping by and leaving quilts off at the hospital - it high on my list of fun things to do!

The Harry Potter quilts are coming along. The Gryffindor one is pinned!

And I decided to try drying honey. It's been in the dehydrator for 3 1/2 days and is drying but very slowly. Patience!

Our youngest son is a beekeeper and has LOTS of honey this year. A little bit of it had a high moisture content so it won't keep like regular honey. I took a couple of pounds and am attempting to dry it and make it into honey powder.

At least dehydrating things don't require much of my attention so I still have time to quilt!

Vegetable Soup with dehydrated ingredients

It is definitely still winter here so soup sounds good. I am beginning to run out of some of the ingredients so the dehydrator will be turned on next week. I'd like to have a couple jars of the vegetable mix with us when we travel in May and June - we may want soup way up north in Canada.

Vegetable Soup with Pasta

adapted from Colleen Bohrer of 21st Century Simple Living 

You can package the following in a pint jar or just measure it out when it's time to make soup.

Vegetable mix:

2 t tomato powder


2 t parsley flakes 

1 t garlic powder


1/4 c dried diced tomatoes


1/4 c dried onions, chopped


1/4 c dried white potatoes, diced


2 T dried carrots, diced
 (I have used 2 medium raw carrots)

2 T dried celery

2 T dried corn kernels
 

3 T dried cabbage

2 T dried lima beans

2 T dried mushrooms

2 T dried, shredded zucchini

1 dried bay leaf

Notes: 

• This is about 2 cups and fits into a pint jar.
• Any dehydrated vegetables will work - this is just what I usually use. 
• If you do not have dried vegetables, you can substitute raw when you make the soup, but you have to figure out how much. The only raw vegetables I have used are carrots.

To make soup:

1 pint jar dried vegetable mix


12 cups water or beef stock (I usually use 8 c stock and 4 c water)

1 teaspoon dried oregano


3 beef bouillon cubes

3 tablespoons tomato powder or 3 tablespoons tomato paste


1 cup pasta - use whatever you have broken into bite size pieces, if necessary

1. Add everything (except: pasta and any raw vegetables you might be using) to a large pot and bring to a boil for 10 minutes. 


2. Add any raw vegetables you might be using. Simmer until vegetables are tender, about 1 hour. If soup becomes too thick, add more water. 
I often add 2 cups water because the bouillon makes the soup a little too salty for our taste.

3. Add pasta and simmer an extra 15 minutes. 


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Apple Cinnamon Granola Bars

I found this recipe and had to try it. I have seen a number of granola bar recipes that are similar and I think you can make changes and the bars will still turn out. I used dried apples but I think any dried fruit that is a bit chewy will work.

Healthy Chewy Apple Cinnamon Granola Bars

from Lovely Little Kitchen at http://lovelylittlekitchen.com/healthy-chewy-apple-cinnamon-granola-bars/

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup old fashioned oats

1 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans)

1/4 cup flax seeds

4 tablespoons coconut oil

1/2 cup honey

1/4 cup brown sugar, packed

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups puffed rice cereal (I used Rice Krispies)

1/2 cup dried apples, diced (I cut up with kitchen shears)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a 9 by 9 inch baking dish by spraying it with nonstick spray and lining it

with parchment paper, leaving excess hanging over the sides for easy removal later.

2. Spread oats, nuts, and flax seeds out in an even layer on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.

3. Bake for 5-8 minutes, watching closely for the oats to just start to brown and become fragrant.

4. In a small sauce pan, bring honey, coconut oil, and brown sugar to a simmer over medium heat. Stir to dissolve

sugar for 2-4 minutes. Remove from heat, add vanilla extract, and set aside.

5. In a large bowl, combine puffed rice cereal, dried apples, cinnamon and salt. Stir in the oat mixture, and pour in

the honey mixture. Stir until everything is well coated.

6. Press into your prepared 9 by 9 inch square baking dish. Use another piece of parchment paper on top to pack it

down and press it into the corners.

7. Place them in the refrigerator to chill for an hour before removing from the baking dish to cut into bars. Serve at

room temperature.

You might want to stop over at Lovely Little Kitchen. She has a number of recipes that sound wonderful.  I'll be trying the Blueberry Muffin Energy Bites soon!

A couple of knitting finishes and more

I've been keeping busy and I just don't seem to get around to blogging! 

There's been lots of dehydrating: onions, potatoes, dill, cucumbers, zucchini, bananas, brown rice, tomatoes, more tomatoes, and whatever else I find.  I will use many of the tomatoes for tomato powder and the zucchini for zucchini powder. The tomato powder can be reconstituted into tomato paste, sauce, puree, and juice. The zucchini powder will be used in smoothies. Some zucchini will be reconstituted for baked goods. I finally tried reconstituting bananas we've always just eaten the banana chips and it worked great for baking. 

I roasted some garlic and made garlic butter - roasted garlic mixed with butter, basil, and a little lemon juice. I also made one 'stick' with oregano instead of basil. Everything is mushed together then put into a block and it's stored in the freezer. It's pretty good! 

I've been playing with my new Instant Pot - some successes and some opportunities to improve. There is a learning curve and I am climbing it! The tapioca pudding was quite runny but good. The yogurt really didn't set up. I guess two opportunities to improve isn't too bad. Everything else I've tried has been great.

I finished a scarf that I began knitting a while ago. It's made with Zauberball; I love the color and the pattern Girl's Best Friend.

I'll wear this around my neck as a scarf not a shawl. It should look great with a dark shirt.

I bought some Wooly Wonka yarn; the color is White Birch. I thought it would be great to use with some other yarn for socks. Well, it wound up loosely and then I decided to use it from both ends. What was I thinking??? I ended up with a mess! 

I cleaned up the tangled mess it took a while. The socks are now done and they look great. I used the leftovers from my Baddeck Socks and the leftovers from my scarf (above). The socks match except for the foot part.  I was hoping to get the tops to match so I'm happy. I used Dorothy's Slip Stitch Spiral Knit Socks pattern.

I have been quilting for 15 minutes most days and will have a finish soon. 

Kaffe Fassett top has borders

Remember my Kaffe Fassett top?

Unpressed top

It has borders! I wasn't sure what to do because I have very little fabric K. Fassett fabric, that is and I really wanted to finish this top. I had a fat quarter of orange so I made that work for the inner border and then I had just a yard of the purple that I used for the outer border.

Still not pressed well!

The 'plain' blue in the quilt - the secondary square and the center squares - isn't a Kaffe Fasset fabric. It is a hand dyed piece that I bought at Delve in Cedar Rapids, IA. It will probably be the binding also.

The quilt is about 73" square and I love it. Now I just need to decide what will go on the back - that might be a shopping trip.

It's been a busy day here - we picked up some major produce yesterday- a little at a farmer's market and lots at my favorite produce farm. 

The dehydrator has been running since last night. I know it's really hot out. I dried cucumbers and tomatoes last night. Today I did tomato puree. I want plenty of dried tomatoes so I will have tomato powder all year.  I'll do more next week.

Tomato puree

I also cooked onions in a slow cooker all day today to make dehydrated "fried" onion rings. They will go in the dehydrator in the morning with the rest of the onions which I diced in the Vitamix. Today the slow cooker was out on the screened porch; tomorrow, the dehydrator will be out on there.

Onions cooking down in slow cooker The slow cooker was full 10 hours earlier.

And we got some fresh peaches so I made some hand pies and peach cobbler. 

Peach hand pies. The prettier ones were frozen for later.

I froze some of the sweet corn and the yellow beans. Whew!

I love fresh produce, especially when it is organic. It's well worth a few day's work to enjoy it all year.

Keeping busy

Oh my, it must looks like I haven't done anything for a while - WRONG! I'm keeping busy!

I helped make mission pies a few days. Our church, along with a few others, take orders and make pies before Easter and Thanksgiving each year. The profits go toward our mission trips. We have a small core group of volunteers that do most of the work during the week and then volunteers from each of the churches come to help mostly on Saturdays.  Ray makes crumb topping and I roll pie dough. Every time we work, it takes a day or two for our bodies to recover.

These pies are sooooo good!

I began quilting this quilt - I just need a little more time! I took it off of the machine so I could attend a day retreat at Lucky 2B Quilting last week and haven't had time to get it finished. I had a great time at the retreat but did not take one picture!

I made a gift but I can't show it yet. Here's a peek:

I've been knitting but I ended up frogging a pair of cool socks because they were too big. I'll knit them again with a different pattern. 

Cool yarn from Knit Circus

I finished knitting Ray's sweater - I just need to sew the pieces together.

I mended two jackets for Ray. Ugh! I really do love him or else I wouldn't have done this! I had to go through inside seams to get to the areas to mend. This took most of two days. It took more than four hours just to tear the cuffs off of one jacket (the elastic was worn out). Does anyone like to mend???

I dehydrated some rice to make instant rice. Instant rice made this way still has all of the nutrients. I cooked some brown rice in chicken broth and when it was done, I added some soy sauce. Then I dehydrated it. Now we have instant flavored rice which we'll be trying soon!

I'm getting things ready for an upcoming quilt retreat.

We decided to go on a little get away in April - a photo class for Ray, a visit with family, and a tour of the Budweiser Clydesdales Breeding Farm. It will be fun and we're hoping to see some foals.

And we are both still finalizing things for our upcoming trip to the northeast in a couple of months.

Time seems to be flying by so I'll just wish everyone a Happy Easter now. May God bless you.

Breakfast for Dinner

Red Coins is finished! I made White Coins a while back and this was in the works then. White Coins 

was the last finish before our trip in May and Red Coins is the first finish post-trip. So maybe it didn't take me forever!

No outside pictures today - it is way too warm outside. We are in an excessive heat warning.

This quilt is 61" square and I used Dream Cotton for the batting. I used a walking foot and straight stitched the quilting.

I love the back! It's just one of those pieces that I randomly buy to use for backing someday. It has all of the right colors and the reds match!

Red Coins will go on the donation pile. One day soon, the pile will shrink by 5 or 6 quilts. 

Ray is downstairs on the treadmill. I'm just taking it easy! Did I mention that I had a wart burned off of my foot - below my pinkie toe? Well the burning had to be repeated and I think it's working this time. I have a large blister. I also seem to have a case of poison ivy on my forearms. Thank goodness it is not contagious. This is definitely my summer for weird little health problems. Along with the sprained ankle which needs to get stronger but I'm not walking much this makes three weird things so I figure the weirdness is over. 

It hasn't been all quilting around here...

We have a new bookshelf, made to my exact specifications deep, tall shelves by our very talented neighbor Jeff. It is solely for photo albums - right now each is labeled with a sticky note but that will change. I still have a few years of photos to get into albums. Hopefully this project will be caught up before the end of this year. 

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I am still dehydrating food. One of my latest ventures is powders. 

Tomato powder can be used for tomato paste, tomato sauce, tomato soup, pizza sauce, and just about anything using cooked tomatoes. 

We use zucchini powder, spinach powder, and cabbage powder which is all gone right now in smoothies. Did you know about the magic 5 vegetables that, when used in reasonable amounts, you can't taste when added to fruit and other things? They are spinach, cabbage, zucchini, yellow squash, and carrots. I often throw fresh carrots or spinach into smoothies if I have some. Now I always have veggies for smoothies. The spinach powder turns smoothies green, sometimes an unpleasant shade. The zucchini powder has no trace of taste or color. This morning we had a 'side of zucchini' with (in) our breakfast smoothie.

I didn't like the texture of the mushrooms I dried when they were rehydrated so I powdered them. The powder worked great in some BBQ I made the other night.

I thought the orange powder would be great to have when I don't have fresh oranges or frozen mangos for smoothies. It works great but this powder, at least mine, has a tendency to cake. I tried dehydrating it longer but it still cakes. I'll dig the rest out of the jar as I need it and then reassess whether or not to make more. 

Another dehydrating adventure is making yogurt. I've never tried yogurt before and it is so easy! When the yogurt comes out of the dehydrator, I strain it for about 45 - 60 minutes so it becomes Greek yogurt. I've used whole milk, skim milk and 1% milk. I think anything works! The yogurt stays good for about 3 weeks.

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We are planning another long trip. Ray has his yearly cancer checkup in May. We plan to leave the following day on another bucket-list adventure. This time we are headed to the northeastern USA, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. We are both excited and happy that a lot of the planning is done. As much as we'd love to see this area in the fall, neither of us enjoys crowds so we try to do our traveling in the off season.

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And I am diligently exercising again. I've let that slide and I really do feel better when I pursue my program. Here's my mat, my exercise ball, and my weights and band are on the chair in the background.

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Of course, I knit a little every so often. Here is the back of Ray's next sweater. I have the front and back finished and have started the first sleeve.

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There is SOME quilting going on! Most days don't pass without some time upstairs to quilt. Here is a table runner that I recently finished. It is some improve piecing. I didn't have many red batiks and I wanted it to match (in color) the other runners in the room. The improve gave me the freedom to just use what I had.

This runner will be on the bottom of the behind-the-couch table. Before this area was filled with photo albums.

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This afternoon, I think I'll spend some time sandwiching and pinning the next quilt to be quilted. I'm not sure there's been enough quilting going on around here lately!

We are home and busy!

We arrived home late Monday night, just in time to see the Cubs win their game. We unpacked Tuesday, did laundry,  bought 1-1/2 bushels of apples to put up, and watched the Cubs win. I have lived my life with diehard Cubs fans.

On Wednesday, I finally bought groceries. I've been busy - the apples are almost done - the last crockpot will be done soon. I have these three apples left. I kept them to make Apple Pie Tacos, a recipe I saw online.

I've made lots of crockpot applesauce no additions, just apples, dehydrated sliced apples, dehydrated apple chips with cinnamon, and now I'm dehydrating applesauce. It supposed to turn out a little chewy. I made some plain 'blobs' and some with cinnamon. We should know how they are tomorrow.

I've tried a couple other recipes this week too. This Cheesy Baked Asparagus was good. We aren't big on asparagus but we'd both eat this again.

I also made Butternut Squash Au Gratin. We really liked it but it makes LOTS! We've had it twice. I'm thinking about freezing the rest for later. That's bacon on the top.

Two of the grandkids' quilts need to have the binding sewn down, another is pinned and ready to quilt.

We are leaving on a short trip Monday celebrating my birthday. We are headed to Hamilton, Missouri to the Missouri Star Quilt Company. I'm packing light - I might need room in the van for all of my purchases!

A quilt finish and a little catching up...

I'm managing to stay quite busy! 

Last week, we had a HUGE garage sale with Brent and Emily. So glad to have a LOT of stuff gone from our house and garage! It was time to do some cleaning out and now it is done! Nothing came back to our house - yay! And I have money!!!

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I did get this tablecloth quilt done. 

It will be used on our screen porch table this summer. I love the colors - they just say summer!

The fabric is Moda Folklore by Lily Ashbury - I used a jelly roll and pieced this at a retreat a few weeks ago.

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Of course the dehydrator is still running.

• I tried a new crazy fruit - banana strawberry - very good!
• We found that pears are wonderful - they rate right up there with apple slices (my favorite)!
• Raspberries are good - I had to try them because Grandson Mack asked me if I had. He thought they would be good! They didn't overtake pineapple as his absolute favorite though. 

My 'canned good' drawer

• After cooking some Acorn Squash, I mashed it with a fork and rolled it thin. I did not add anything. It dehydrated fine and I hope to use it as mashed squash.
• I partially cooked and cubed Butternut Squash and hope to use it in soups.

Overflow of 'canned goods' sit on the counter

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Ray has his 1-year checkup next week. We know he is still  cancer-free. He is doing great and exercises as much or more than before his surgery. We continue to eat a healthy whole food diet. He feels wonderful and is enjoying life.

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We leave soon on our next Big Adventure - this time we are touring most of the northwestern states and also crossing into Canada. Only two more weeks until we leave! Lodging is in place. A number of dehydrated meals are ready to go. We have maps and travel guides. My to-do list is very short!

Ray attended a photography workshop on Saturday so I think he has now figured out his latest gadget. He'll be taking LOTS of photos.

I have my knitting set to go. I do hope to 'finish' a sweater for Ray before we go. I'd like the knitting all done; I can sew it together when we get home. I have just a little more than one sleeve to go.

The hardest part of any trip is deciding what to take. Since we'll be driving the jeep, our space is a little more limited. If we do run into snow, we'll be really happy that we have the jeep though! We have washers and dryers at almost every stop so we'll be fine with just a few clothes. 

The next two weeks will fly by as most weeks do anymore. We plan to enjoy each day, however and we are still Loving Retirement!