For those of you who missed my last post, I wanted to invite you over to our new blog (Sufficient Acres.com) we are slowly moving posts from here to there and posting all sorts of new stuff over there! We would LOVE it if you would click on over and take a look and sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Here are just a few of our latest posts you might want to check out, just click on the picture to take you to the new blog to read the post.
On our new blog instead of sending an e-mail every time we publish a post we send out a free weekly newsletter that goes out every Saturday morning. Because we post info. on several different topics like: from scratch cooking, raising chickens and ducks, homeschooling, gardening and natural cleaning tips/recipes. We thought it would be nice for you to receive one email a week that contains all of our posts from that week, then you can choose what you want to read from there. To sign up for the newsletter click over to the new blog scroll down just a little bit and enter your email and first name under the sunflowers (on the right side of the screen) and click subscribe!
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We grew LOTS of sugar pumpkins this year. I gave away several and we still have about a dozen left for us to enjoy.
Making your own pumpkin puree for all those fall recipes is great, and you can put left- overs in the freezer for later. With this easy method of baking the pumpkin you don’t need to worry about loosing any body parts when you cut the pumpkin up because you put the whole darn thing in the oven (pre-heated to 375°) and bake it whole…..
I put the pumpkins on a cookie sheet just in case of any drips. It will take 30 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes to get done. It all depends on how big your pumpkins are. You can use the big pumpkins to make pumpkin puree, but the small sugar pumpkins have a sweeter more pumpkiney flavor. My spell check is telling me that pumpkiney is not a word, but you get my point, right? (pumpkinie, pumpkiny, pumkiney, pumpkinish…..one of these should totally be a word!) These two took about 45 minutes to get done. When you can poke a sharp knife into the pumpkin easily, it’s done.
Let them cool down enough to handle, then peel them.
Cut your peeled pumpkin in half, spoon out the “guts” and separate the seeds.
Take the “meat” of your pumpkin and puree it in a food processor or blender.
Now you can use it in any recipe calling for pumpkin puree and put any leftovers in the freezer.
Now, take the pumpkin seeds, rinse them off and dry them. These two little pumpkins gave me a little more than a cup of seeds, so I added 1 tablespoon of olive oil with 1/2 teaspoon of seasoning salt and 1/2 teaspoon of garlic salt. I stirred it all together coating all the seeds and poured them on a cookie sheet, then sprinkled some pepper on them.
Pre-heat the oven to 325° and bake the seeds for 5 to 20 minutes. Check them every 5 minutes and give them a little stir. These took about 17 minutes.
This is just a basic recipe for roasted pumpkin seeds so feel free to add any seasonings you like!
A few tips: One 15oz can is equal to 1 3/4 cups pumpkin puree – If you have chickens, feed them the guts and skin from your pumpkin and you will have wasted NONE of your pumpkin! If you don’t have chickens the compost pile is a great place for the “extras”.
Easy Homemade Pumpkin Puree and Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
For the pumpkin puree: Put your whole pumpkin(s) in the oven at 375°. Depending on the size of your pumpkin it will take from 30 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes to cook. When you can easily poke a sharp knife in the pumpkin it's done. Let your pumpkin(s) cool until you can easily handle them. The skin will peal off easily, then cut the pumpkin in half and spoon out the guts and seeds. Place the "meat" of your pumpkin in a food processor or blender and puree.
For the roasted pumpkin seeds: Pre-heat the oven to 325° Separate the seeds from the guts then rinse and dry the pumpkins seeds. Take your dried pumpkin seeds and stir in the olive oil, seasoning salt and garlic salt. Spread the seasoned seeds out on a cookie sheet and sprinkle a little black pepper on them. Bake the seeds for 5 to 20 minutes. They will burn easily so check on them and give them a little stir every 5 minutes.
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Here are a couple recipes that call for pumpkin puree:
This morning, Mary came out of her room with a big fluffy blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and announced: “It finally feels like fall, it’s cloudy and wet outside and I smell pumpkin pancakes!” I had to smile because she is TOTALLY right. There is a definite feel of fall around here and I’m so ready for it!
These hearty pancakes are a wonderful fall morning treat. If you don’t have pumpkin pie spice mix on hand here is a link to my easy homemade mix.
Put the first five ingredients into a bowl and whisk together.
Put the rest of the ingredients in another bowl and mix.
Then pour the dry ingredients in with the buttermilk mixture and stir gently just until mixed. Let the batter sit (for bout 10 min) while your skillet heats to medium low.
Put a little butter into the skillet when it's hot and then WITHOUT stirring your batter scoop about one third of a cup out and fry it in the butter.
Let them cook for a couple minutes on both sides until golden brown and not doughy in the middle.
This recipe will make about 10 pancakes and they are wonderful served with butter and warm maple syrup!
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Here are a few more fall recipes you might like to try out.
Other than a sinus infection (yuck yuck yuck!) that lasted a couple of weeks, I had a really good September. We’ve been enjoying the lovely fall weather and the garden is STILL giving lots of good stuff!
The cantaloupe is delicious! We’ve eaten seven of them so far and more are coming. I keep praying that the frost doesn’t come for a few more weeks so I can finish harvesting as everything continues to ripen.
The girls are going to have some nice big pumpkins to carve. 🙂
After raising meat chickens over the summer it feels like these little layers are growing slowly, but they ARE growing and will need to be moved to the bigger coop before long.
I think at this point the Golden Laced Wyandottes are my favorites.
We started to harvest the sunflowers that the wind blew over. Most of them aren’t quite ready yet though.
Jo’s puppy grew lots this last month!
Jo got her hair cut and her ears pierced. My little tom boy is starting to care about hair, nails, clothes and jewelry! WHAT happened!?
August was a blur!! Birthdays, dogs, 4-H books, fires, harvesting, dogs, the fair, starting school, butchering chickens, and did I mention dogs? I thought about writing a post called “How to say no to more dogs”….wait, we don’t know how to say no to more dogs. I guess the post should be called “How to spend $2,436.70 on dog food every month”.
(OK, I exaggerated a little, or a lot, but SHEEEESH!)
Anyway, here are a few pics of our crazy August.
The chicks I ordered at the beginning of August are all doing very well. Four more months and we should have fresh eggs again, at least more than two a day!
I love grocery shopping in the garden!!
We got a new food processor!! Just in time to help with harvest. Thanks Aunt Stella!!!! We LOVE it! (Can you tell by the look on Mary’s face?)
This is Mary’s bantam hen “Tiny” and that is a small snake she has. She stole it from one of the other hens and slurped it down like a noodle! I had a little trouble keeping my breakfast down after watching that.
In my last post I mentioned that we told Jo that she could have a puppy for her 11th birthday. It took a little while to find one, but she did.
I really don’t think he could be any cuter and she is IN LOVE! Meet Rebel:
Two days after she brought Rebel home, Jade came home and brought his dog. He had to leave him with us because he couldn’t find a house or apartment where he could keep a pit bull.
Seriously!? Who could not love that face!!
We missed Gunner and are glad to have him back! The other dogs missed him too and Rebel thinks Gunner is his best buddy. They spend hours wrestling around the house…..highly entertaining for us!
We had some interesting sunsets in August because of some horrible fires in the area.
Waiting to show her chicken.
The girls did AWESOME at the fair with their chickens!
Mary got Grand Champion Market Chicken and Jo got Reserve Champion Market Chicken! They both got blue ribbons in showmanship and Mary’s chicken “Tiny” (the one eating the snake above) was the Grand Champion of her breed! They also did VERY well with their 4-H books. All that hard work paid off……literally. They both sold their chickens at the market livestock sale and got $250.00 and $375.00…..for CHICKENS that only cost them 10 dollars to raise!!!! We live in a great community with great people that support our kids! Of course their Papa and Grandma also helped in this area 😉
Photo By: Jo
The last day of the fair the girls and I enjoyed watching the rodeo and Jo took a bunch of pictures.
Photo By: JoPhoto By: JoPhoto By: Jo
And then there is the cutest nephew EVER!
The garden is still over flowing!
Photo By: Digger
My sunflowers grew 13 feet tall!
Photo By: Digger
This is the first time I’ve ever been successful growing cabbage!
After the fair we started off our home school year with a field trip to OMSI. (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.)
It was a great day and a wonderful way to start off the school year!! We are easing our way into a full school week. The rest of their books will be here next week so we will be in full swing after that!
Hope you all had a wonderful August too and are getting used to the cooler weather!
