It's Cold Out, So Let's Bake!

Hello Fellow Homesteaders!

I love to bake, but I really really love to bake when it's cold outside. One of my many favorite things about winter is coming in from out of the cold into a warm house and being enveloped with the warm aroma of baked goods. Especially when that aroma is spicy like it is with pumpkin baked goods! I'm pretty sure I made excuses to go outside for a moment here and there just so that I could experience this over and over!

Well, today I started out with a tasty Honey Maple Pumpkin Bread recipe. I wanted to do some baking, this popped up on my news feed, so I thought, "why not?" My 9 by 5 pans are not exact. As you can see, one is shorter and wider than the other. It works though!

While that was baking, I looked through my recipes for the next one. I love cooking with honey and maple, but only have so much of it. So I found a recipe for Healthy Pumpkin Muffins. When I went to paste the link on here for you, it said the page was no longer there. I'm thankful I had it written down already!

Healthy Pumpkin Muffins

1 1/2 C Whole Wheat Flour

1 tsp Baking Powder

15 oz Can of Pumpkin Puree (I used home made)

1/3 C Canola Oil (I used apple sauce)

2 Eggs

1 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice (make your own w/ 2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp all spice, 1/2 tsp nutmeg. I usually double this or more to keep on hand. Works for Apple Pie Spice too.)

1/2 tsp Cloves

1/2 tsp Nutmeg

1 C Sugar

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Salt

Mix flour and baking powder. In a separate bowl, mix everything else, then add flour mixture incorporating slowly. Don't over mix. Divide into greased or papered muffin pan and top with cinnamon and sugar mixture if desired. (I forgot this part, but it didn't need it anyway.) Bake at 350 degrees: 25-30 minutes for regular sized muffins, or 15-17 minutes for mini muffins, or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes and remove from pan to cooling rack. Serve warm with real butter!

I made 3 batches of this...some regular sized muffins and some mini muffins.

I rarely stop for meals when I am on a cooking spree, so it was convenient to have something easy to eat while I baked. Mmmm mmmm!! They were good! They were pretty filling too.

I love to re-use items, so I decided to wash out a 15 oz can to measure my pureed pumpkin more easily. 

After using up what I needed, I froze the rest of the pumpkin puree in 1/2 cup measurements in my other muffin pan. After they are frozen solid, I sit this out for a few minutes to let the bottoms soften up just enough to get them out, then I put them all in a freezer bag.

I have to show off my girls' glorious eggs! Thanks to them, I didn't run out! I found this nifty egg-holder on clearance at Target long before my chicks started laying. Perhaps I was counting my eggs before they were laid, but I am thankful my girls didn't let me down. This won't wear out like an egg-carton would and it makes me happy to see my eggs displayed every time I open the fridge. 

I also had several small eggs from my younger girls. I was going to crack them all, whisk them with a bit of salt and freeze them in ice cube trays for later use in cooking. I'd guess these 10 eggs would be equivalent to maybe 5 or 6 large baking eggs. (Fun tip: unless otherwise specified, the general egg size to be used in recipes is large.) Then I got an idea...maybe they'd make cute boiled eggs! So I made some cutesy hard-boiled eggs while I baked. Maybe I'll make some deviled eggs out of them. I love these precious tiny eggs! 

Fun Fact: Did you know that the fresher an egg is, the worse it sticks to the shell when you try to peel it? To fix this problem, steam your eggs instead of immersing them in water. That's why these little bird fruits aren't under water. I usually steam eggs for about 20 minutes. You can hard "boil" any egg like this.

Well, I'd say at the end of the day, I had a pretty good bounty! Much of this will go into the freezer for another day. With this hungry crew, it's a wonder any of it made it there!

What have you been baking this fall so far? Please share your recipes below! I love trying new recipes! So much so that my husband sometimes complains that I'll make something that's really good, but then he never sees it again...lol! 

Happy Baking!

Jen Hen

Our First Injury and Tackling Blood Stains

Hello Fellow Homesteaders!

Well, I had a first as a Momma...a visit to the ER because of an injury. I mean, we have been to the ER several times, but always for an illness of some sort. This was our first visit involving blood. My sweet tiny Stitch (nick-named from the cute and destructive creature from the movie Lilo and Stitch) fell down. Actually, he does this a lot, several times a day in fact. Except this time, he hit his mouth on the edge of a chair and split his bottom lip...in. half. Oh. My. Goodness!

At first, I couldn't tell it was that bad, but a milli-second later, I realized what had happened, scooped him up, and ran into the house. We had come around to the backyard from the front, so the back door was locked. There I was, hugely third-trimester pregnant, scooping up my bleeding chubby toddler and running hurdles back to the front yard calling on Jesus's name to care for us. Traumatic and funny all at the same time!

I thank God my Knight had just gotten home from work not an hour before because he saved the day like he's so good at doing (which is why I call him My Knight in Shining Armor, or Knight for short.) I can't even remember what I said, just ran Stitch into the bathroom, pulled his face off my shirt (I was holding his mouth tight to my shirt to help stop the bleeding), we looked at him, I said "Stitches? ER?" my Knight says "yes!" and I said, "I'll get him in the van." Then I crammed my large pregnant body into the back of our van so I could hold a towel to Stitch's lip while my Knight ushered a very frightened Little Buddy out with shoes in hand and we were off.

So, at this point, you are either really caught up in this story, or laughing at all the drama because you have been through so much worse, but remember your first scare too.

By the time we get to the ER, the bleeding had stopped, Stitch had stopped crying, and Little Buddy figured out that Stitch's "lip is broken." (Sweet things!) Stitch even made sure to point out his lip to me when I got him out which pretty much made my stomach turn. (I'll leave out the details on what he did there...ack!) They got us in right away and I am so thankful that the nurses and staff were so caring and sympathetic! I know they see things everyday that are much much worse, but didn't treat us any less.

I had a hard time staying strong for my little ones once we were under medical care, but I held out. Jesus is with us always and I knew He was with us then too. I knew that I just didn't have it in me to stay in the room while they sewed up his lip, though. Thank goodness, they put Stitch out so he slept through the whole thing and my Knight held him the whole time while I took Little Buddy down to the cafeteria to get him a snack and talk about what happened. Half an hour later, Stitch had 6 stitches in his tiny bottom lip. (This was a couple days later. He was making funny faces at me while I was trying to get a picture, so you can see he was doing well.)

You can also see part of the cut on his chin. It goes all the way around under his chin. He got himself good, poor guy! The next couple of days and nights were a bit rough. He didn't need a whole lot of pain management, but he needed extra cuddles and got scared every time he fell. Can't blame the little fella! Plus, Little Buddy needed a lot of reassuring. It was very scary for him too.

Well, enough days have passed and everyone seems to have settled back into the routine, so I decided to tackle our clothes. Stitch, my Knight, and I all had gotten blood on our shirts. I have to be honest and say, I can't believe it wasn't more than it was! That was a lot of blood, but I must have gotten the towel to his mouth sooner than I thought. There was a lot of blood on it and we threw it away when we got to the ER. My Knight's shirt is a navy blue work shirt, so you couldn't really see the blood on it, but here's the others.

This all happened on the 8th, so I was pretty sure these shirts were trash, but I had to try. The nurses at the ER told me to mix equal parts hydrogen peroxide and water, dampen the stains, then wash in cold water. I had always thought peroxide acted like bleach, so I asked around to some other experienced folks, and they agreed with the nurses. Well, really, what was I thinking? If an ER nurse doesn't know how to get blood out of clothes, who does?! Lol! But, they also wear scrubs and I didn't know if they were perhaps more stain resistant than your average shirt. Don't forget, I'm a fairly new momma and pretty naive to a lot of this stuff. (Stitch is certainly doing his job of breaking me in though...lol!)

So, I mix the peroxide and spray on the shirts. I was so surprised when it started foaming up on the blood spots!

So I sprayed more of the shirt and it found blood spots I hadn't even noticed.

How cool is that?! I soaked it down pretty well because even after all that, I still wasn't convinced it would work. At the very least, I was sure I'd have to do this a few times. But, lo and behold, I was pleasantly wrong! Here they are after a quick wash in cold water with my homemade laundry soap (equal parts washing soda and Borax and 1/4 part Oxy-Clean.)

So, I didn't treat them again, but then I put them in with a regular load of laundry, and washed and dried them like usual. (And apparently my camera changed the colors...lol...oops, different flash setting, but I promise they are the same shirts!)

So our shirts are clean enough to wear for another day! Well, this experience made a believer out of me.

Stitch gets his stitches out tomorrow, poor baby! I wonder if I should wear our shirts and thank the nurses for the tip! Well, I am sure this is the first of many visits to see them. Today alone, Stitch got a bruise under his right eye and scratches under his left! I didn't see what happened, but Little Buddy was involved with the bruise somehow. The scratches came from a head-first fall off of a step. Oh please don't let us have to have one set of stitches removed only to have to get more! I just hope this little tyke has some strong bones...lol!

Well, until next time...

Happy Homesteading!

Jen Hen

I Love Fall! Apples Galore!

Hello Fellow Homesteaders!

As promised, I am sharing my apple preserving adventures with you from my first free apple picking! Wow, can't beat that deal! I've read that some late freezes up north have really devastated the apple crop, so my heart goes out to those of you who didn't get a harvest this year.

I'm not sure what kind of apples I picked as the owner didn't know either. Though, at that price, I didn't really care! I picked two milk crates' worth. Not a lot to many of you, but I wanted to start out small in case I couldn't keep up with all of it. Especially being 5 months pregnant, I don't want to commit to a major project right now because even daily tasks are sometimes too much. My first pregnancy I could have run a marathon, canned an entire orchard of apples, processed an entire field of pumpkins and still had dinner ready in time! Baby number 3...not so much. I am just hoping I survive! Lol!

I started every batch out by soaking it in vinegar water. This batch looks pretty good.

Many of the apples had a lot of bad spots in them though. These are perfect for applesauce! I keep the peeling on my apples for applesauce. It's easier, keeps more of those yummy vitamins and fiber, and adds a beautiful color to the final product. I cooked 2 batches on the stove in a bit of lemon water and canned them in a water bath. I don't add sugar either. These apples were so sweet, I wouldn't have needed it anyway. I don't have a pressure cooker yet, so I am limited on what I am able to can, but apples are good for the water bath method!

Next I tried my hand at Apple Pie Filling. I didn't use the Clear Jel because I didn't have any and found differing views on whether it's safe or not to use any other type of thickener in canning, so I just left it out. I can thicken this when the time comes to use it. Since I didn't put in thickener, I was able to make a double batch of this recipe all at once. (All the gelling/pectin type products I have used so far warn against making double batches due to the chance of the final product not gelling up correctly.)

I found a recipe on simply Canning Apples, so I gave that a try. I should note that I don't have an apple peeler either, so the paring knife and I had a lot of bonding time in this process. After the kids went to bed, I set up shop in front of a movie with a pan of lemon water, a bowl for the good scraps, a bowl for the yucky scraps and peeled away until my hand fell off! It took me two sittings to get all the apples done for the apple pie filling and the canned apples.

I used the light syrup method in the above recipe. Since then I discovered you can use plain water for apples also, but no one in this house is going to complain about a little extra sweetness! I haven't decided how I want to use these apples yet. As time goes on, I'm sure recipes will present themselves.

While I was working on all the above projects, I had some Apple Butter cooking in the crock pot. As you can see, I keep the peeling on for apple butter too. For this and the applesauce, I use an immersion blender to grind up the peels. Granted, I will still find a good size piece of peeling sometimes while consuming these yummy foodstuffs, but I don't mind. Oh, and can you guess what else I don't have? That's right, I don't have a food mill either! Hey, I'll be the first to admit, my cabinets may be full, but my kitchen is totally under stocked!

My first batch of apple butter barely yielded 4 pints even with a full crock pot! So my second batch, I piled it high then added even more apples before I went to bed. Alas, for some reason I didn't get a picture of the final product! Rest assured, it is deep brown and tasty. Mmmmm!

So, after all my hard work, I still have this to deal with. Yowzers! Just had to show this because I like to be real! As you can see by the dates, I left this overnight. Yes. I. did. That's the power of being the head of the kitchen! HA HA HA HA!!

Now I have have 2 1/2 gallon bags of yummy scraps in the freezer to make Apple Scrap Jelly. (I threw even more in the compost pile from rotted and/or nasty scraps.) I tried this recipe last year and couldn't get my jelly to set up. Since then I have read that as apples ripen, the pectin in them decreases. Also, the scraps had turned brown by the time I used them, so I wonder if that affected the amount of pectin in them as well. This year I haven't decided if I want to try this same recipe or use the one out of my box of pectin. Either way, this is a project I saved for another day. I also just read the other day that sometimes it can take several days if not a week or two for jelly to gel up. So perhaps if I had left last year's product alone, it may have set up on it's own. I remember my biggest problem is that I couldn't get the liquid up to temperature. I used a pot four times bigger than I needed, but it still boiled over terribly before it hit the temp I needed. Have you tried this method? Let me know in the comments how it went for you. As a noob to all this, I'll take all the tips I can get!

I also took a few apples, cored them, sliced them thin with my mandolin and put them in the dehydrator for apple chips. I forgot to save some apples for more batches, so I ended up with just one small bag's worth, but it will work for a couple of snack times for the kids and I. Plus I hope to get my hands on more apples now that I have ventured into the world of apple preservation and feel more comfortable with it.

Well, I hope you are having as much fun preserving your harvest as I am. It's such hard work, but the rewards are exponential. Plus it makes me feel like a pioneer to learn how to do these things. I love digging into my roots and learning the ways of old. I am sure many of our ancestors didn't have the nice equipment we have today. I try to think of that when my hand feels like it's going to fall off after peeling my 100th apple! I wonder how many apples my great-great-grandmother peeled by hand in a season...

I welcome any recipes or tips on apple preparation and preservation in the comments. I'd love to hear about your experiences as well!

Happy Preserving!

Jen Hen

I Love Fall! Pumpkin Everything!

Hello Fellow Homesteaders!

I love pumpkins! I love how big and impressive their vines are.

I love how bright and beautiful their flowers are.

Though, I am not sure I will have a pumpkin crop this year as it is mid-September and this is the biggest little guy I have so far.

I did get some pretty white acorn squash and a teeny green one from my garden, so perhaps that will do.

No matter where it comes from, I love pumpkin! One year I acquired a huge box of pumpkins and had enough for the whole year! One day I hope to grow enough of my own pumpkins to last a year. Pumpkin puree keeps well in the freezer. I have also dehydrated pumpkin puree, then ground it into a powder to be reconstituted with hot water later on. Canning pumpkin puree is not recommended, but you could can pumpkin chunks with a pressure cooker if you wanted to go that route.

Did I say I love pumpkins! They are pretty, nutritious, fun to grow, and can be used in almost endless ways for cooking! (Perhaps pumpkins are why orange is my favorite color!) So, here are some yummy pumpkin recipes I have gathered and want to share with you. I have made some of these and the rest are on my to-do list! I have yet to taste a pumpkin dish I didn't like!

I almost always use fresh pumpkin over store-bought canned. Use whatever method you like, this is just a personal preference of mine because I love pumpkins! But, don't feel bad if you don't have access to fresh pumpkins and/or just don't want to mess with preparing them. I enjoy all this because, as you know, I have a bit of craziness about me. If you want to try your hand at using fresh pumpkins, here's where you begin!

Pumpkin Pie Puree

Cooking a Whole Pumpkin

How to Roast Pumpkin Seeds

Pumpkin Pie Spice



Of course we all think of pie when the subject of pumpkins comes up. Here is a yummy variety!

Pumpkin Pie in the Slow Cooker with Crust

Party Pumpkin Pie

Microwave Impossible Pumpkin Pie

Lactose Free Dairy Free Pumpkin Pie

Healthy Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin Pie Casserole

Homemade Pumpkin Pie

Individual Pumpkin Pies



Pumpkin Bread makes a wonderful gift!

Pumpkin Bread

Pumpkin Seed Flat Bread

Pumpkin Praline Bread

Slow Cooker Pumpkin Bread in Jars

Cranberry Pumpkin Bread

Yogurt and Pumpkin Bread

Pumpkin Walnut Bread



Start the Day with Pumpkins! Waffles, muffins, and pancakes...Oh My!

Pumpkin French Toast

Pumpkin Waffles

Healthy Pumpkin Pancakes

Amish Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls with Caramel Frosting

Pumpkin Blueberry Pancakes

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

Pumpkin Waffles

Pumpkin Muffins with Oatmeal Streusel Topping

Pumpkin Spice Pancakes

Delicious Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins




Making a Meal out of Pumpkin. A walk on the wild side...

Pumpkin Pasta

Pumpkin Apple Harvest Rice

Pumpkin Mac and Cheese

Low Fat Lemony Lentils with Pumpkin

Creamy Pumpkin Polenta

Abobora Refogada Brazilian Stewed Pumpkin

Afghan Fried Pumpkin

Pumpkin Risotto

Best Pumpkin Casserole




Pumpkin Soup?! Yes Please!

Roasted Pumpkin Soup

Fall Harvest 3 Sisters Soup

Zesty Cream of Pumpkin Soup

Armenian Pumpkin Stew

Pumpkin Soup (Dairy Free Option)




Beyond the Pie: Yummy Pumpkin Desserts and Sweets!

Pumpkin Crunch

Baked Pumpkin Bread(less) Pudding

Candy Corn Smoothie

Pumpkin Cheesecake Bites

Bisquick Pumpkin Cake

Almond Pumpkin Charlotte

Amazing Pumpkin Spice Cookies

Easy, Healthy Pumpkin Cookies

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Crock Pot Pumpkin Spice Latte

Pumpkin Gingersnap Ice Cream

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars




I don't know about you, but I'm ready to get started on my fall cooking! The weather is cooling off, soon the leaves will start to turn vibrant colors, and we'll feel winter's nip on our nose in no time. Fall seems to disappear before I've had time to really enjoy it, so I'm keeping an eye on it this year.


Here are some of last year's pumpkins. The nasty looking one got attacked from underneath by rolly-pollies and I didn't catch it until it had already mended itself and grew some more.

After cutting off the bottom part, the rest looked normal, so we cooked it and ate it and I lived to post this today. Ha ha ha!

I hope you have an excellent time cooking and baking with pumpkin! And please share your favorite pumpkin recipes in the comments and/or share a link!

Happy Pumpkining!

Jen Hen

***Don't forget, only 2 more days to get your copy of the Ultimate Healthy Living Bundle 2014! Have questions? Click HERE.

Healthier Living

Hello Fellow Homesteaders!

Well, it has certainly been a tough summer with me being down and out for much of it. I am glad fall is arriving since the cooler weather seems to be helping me feel a bit better. Baby girl is healthy and growing well, so if I need to be tired so she can be healthy, then so be it! But I should add, I could be healthier. If you have followed me for long, you know I have a terrible love of sugar! I cook fairly healthy meals, have cut out a lot of processed food, and enjoy the harvest of my garden, but then I add way too much sugary stuff on top of that! I know this isn't the only thing I can change to help my health and I have a lot to learn.

This is why my first opportunity for revenue I have chosen to be an affiliate for the Ultimate Healthy Living Bundle 2014. This is a wonderful reference at a great price with many authors that I'm sure you will be familiar with.

This sale ends on September 15th and there is a limit on the number of copies sold, so be sure to check it out!

I love fall and will hopefully be posting how my garden is doing. (Which would have happened today, but it's 54 degrees and raining.) I am enjoying this cooler weather and have been feeling a bit better on the cooler days. I'm ready for pumpkin-everything, colorful falling leaves, and that nip in the air! How about you?

Happy Homesteading!

Jen Hen

Freezer Cooking 2014: Another Batch of Yum!

Hello Fellow Homesteaders!

I have a confession to make... Can you believe after several days of cooking all this homemade food, we ate fast food for dinner one night?! Well, I am just telling on myself because, sad to say, I still love terrible-for-you-fatty-artificial-nasty fast food burgers and fries and I suspect I'm not the only one with this secret love. Between that and my addiction to sugar, I keep the waistline generous! I just want to be real with you all. I love real food, healthy food, made-from-scratch food and then I'll top it off with the worst of the worst! So now you know my dirty little secret. 

It would be easy to hide from those of you who don't know me personally. One day I will post a pic of the real me. Believe it or not, I'm not purposely hiding myself, I just forget to ask the hubby to snap a pose of me when he's home. May as well show myself now while I can hide behind being pregnant...ha ha ha! Though I can't blame any of my kids for the weight. I'm the crazy lady who loses weight during pregnancy then gains it all back plus a whole lot more when I am nursing the baby. I know I'm not the only one there. I have run into other women who have the same issue. So if that's you, now you know you aren't alone either. This time, I aspire to change that, so pray for me if you will.

In the meantime, I will share with you some more of my yummy food projects. No tutorial here, they are all pretty simple. First up, I made a quadruple batch of chili! Tell me that wasn't a chore! Even though it's August, it was a cool rainy morning when I made this and I have been in the mood for soup-like food lately.

I got the recipe from this awesome book! I highly recommend it, or one like it. Everything I have made out of here is super tasty. We have made several jar meals over the years to give to friends. It provides little cards to put on the jars telling you what to add to the mix. A wonderful way to make your own instant box meals. Scoot over Tuna and Hamburger Helper, we have a homemade version in town! I also have one for breads and desserts. They are equally as good. You can do an online search and come up with a ton of recipes there as well.

When it came time to freeze the chili, I discovered, not only did I not have enough freezer space to freeze it all at once, I had to get creative to find space in my refrigerator for the rest of it! That was quite the ordeal. After eating 2 meals, sending a third to a friend with a newborn, and a couple servings left over from measuring it out, I got 3 - 4 cup bags of chili, and 2 - 8 cup bags of chili. Folks, that's a ton of chili! I'm thankful now I bought that massive cooking pot for water canning! It's all very thick too, like gravy, so chances are, it will need a bit of water added on re-heating which will bulk it up even more.

Next I made a bunch of chicken and beef broth using my trusty Betty Crocker cookbook. Well, what was supposed to be beef broth. I had some frozen bones in the freezer and I thought they were all from some t-bone steaks we ate a few months ago. They were crusted over with frost, probably freezer burned, but for broth, I though it would be ok. I had 2 bags of it and threw them both in the pot with the veggies and seasonings. Later, when I went to stir it, I saw a chicken back pop up! Well, so much for that. But it still tasted good, so I kept it. I got 4 bags out of it, one of the bags has 3 cups and the rest have 4. I also got 3 bags of chicken broth at 4 cups each. So the homemade broth stock should be good to go for now. One day if I get a pressure cooker, I'd suspect it would be more convenient to can them because thawing it out can be a pain. But it's worth the effort for the health benefit. (Never mind my fast food/sugar binges.)

Then I have freezer burritos inspired by this recipe. Though I made mine with taco meat, homemade refried beans, and cheese. I haven't been able to find the reference for the homemade taco spice mix to share with you, but there are several out there. Just find the one you like best and go for it! For the refried beans I found several crock pot recipes and created my own out of the mix. I like to use dry beans, but sometimes that can really be time-consuming and/or heat up your house. So I like to use my crock pot for them when I can.

Refried Beans in the Crock Pot
1 chopped onion, or 1 T of dry minced onion
2 c dry pinto beans, sorted and washed
1 can of Rotel, or salsa, or a can of green chilies and some chopped tomatoes (or whatever you have!)
2 cloves of minced garlic
1 tsp each of salt and pepper or to your taste
1/2 tsp cumin or to your taste
5-6 c of water depending on how "liquidy" your other ingredients are
Combine and cook on low 8-12 hours or overnight and blend to desired consistency. If you have a lot of liquid, you may need to drain it first so you don't end up with soupy beans. If you cook it overnight, beware, you will wake with the smell of Mexican food filling your house! Perhaps some breakfast burritos are in order?

Notice I don't have any fats in this recipe. That's because I like to double it and preserve the rest by dehydrating it. (Dehydrated foods last a lot longer in storage if there are no fats that will go rancid.) The way I do that... After I blend the beans, I spread them into my dehydrator and let them dry completely. Then I blend them into a powder and put it in jars. When it comes time to use it, I slowly stir in boiling water until it reaches my desired consistency. The more gradually you mix it, the better because it takes a few seconds to fully absorb the water. Then it's ready to eat! It's so much easier than freezing and thawing it. Plus you can easily create a single serving. Use roughly half the amount of powder for the amount of beans you want to end up with. For instance, if you need a cup of refried beans, start with 1/2 cup of powder. It's not exact depending on how much water you use, but it's a good starting point.

I mixed the meat, beans and cheese together, filled the burritos, then laid them out individually on a pan to freeze. After they are frozen, I put them in bags. I thought, the burritos you buy in bags at the store aren't individually wrapped, so I didn't wrap mine either. Saves waste! They reheat in the microwave just the same as the store-bought kind, but are so much better! Heating time depends on how big you make your burritos. I made them with both white and wheat tortillas.

I hope you are enjoying my cooking endeavors! I sure enjoy sharing them with you! I have gotten so much help from cooking tips and suggestions, so I am happy to keep passing on the love. Until next time!

Happy Cooking!

Jen Hen

Freezer Cooking 2014: Chicken Pot Pie

Hello Fellow Homesteaders!

Today I will show you how I not only made some yummy Chicken Pot Pie, but I made my first real-lard Flaky Pie Crust! I have made chicken pot pie many times before, but it usually consisted of canned cream soup, chicken and veggies with a biscuit mix crust on top. Nothing wrong with that! But in my effort to be more frugal (baking mix costs quite a bit more than the ingredients it's made up of) and trying to use less commercially canned items, I went on the hunt for a more home-made version. Well, I found it, and it was fabulous! This recipe is also great for freezer cooking because it makes 3 whole pies! She doesn't give instructions for freezing a whole pie, so I took a chance and froze the other 2 instead of baking them. I will thaw them and bake them a little longer than recommended when the time comes.

The differences I used for my recipes:

I used a 32 oz bag of frozen mixed veggies in place of the carrots and peas. That is still much more than she calls for, but I also usually cut the meat in recipes by half to save, so the rest was made up in veggie bulk. I feel this is a win-win here. Veggies are cheaper and healthier than meat in general.

I had no fresh onions, so I used 2 Tablespoons of minced dried onion.

I omitted the salt (as she suggests) because my homemade chicken broth already has it added. Plus I omit salt from many of my dinner dishes because we like to add our own to our individual servings. My husband likes much more than I do.

Instead of cream, I used half and half. It was about 1/4 the price of cream here.

Instead of fresh parsley, which I did not have, I used about a Tablespoon of dry parsley flakes.

I was out of eggs (same day as the Cinnamon Rolls) so I used a bit of the half and half to brush the top of the pie instead. 

The only other difference, I used lard instead of duck fat in the crust itself. I did not ask for it at the meat counter, though I probably will in the future. Now that I have bought lard, I see they add preservatives and such to it, so I am going to look into rendering my own lard from beef (or duck) fat. I will let you know if I do.

Then I just followed the instructions as she has them. Mix the flour and salt first. By the way, my food processor is extremely loud! It's just a cheapy because I do not use it often.

Then I added the chunks of butter and lard.

There are much bigger chunks underneath that you cannot see. It was hard not to over mix this! I kept wanting to blend until smooth.

Then a bit of water. I think I ended up using 7 Tablespoons for each one.

She says you should see chunks of butter because that's how the crust ends up flaky. Look close and you can see, mission accomplished! Pretty proud of my novice attempt here.

Somewhere along the line I have read about using parchment paper to roll dough out to decrease the chance of it sticking. In the past, pie crust and I have not gotten along, so I thought I'd try this out. Here's my dough still in the plastic from chilling in the fridge. If you look super close, you can see teeny black dots where I marked a 10 inch circle to follow when rolling out the dough.

And here is my circle covering all the dots! After having this stick to the parchment paper, I learned that a bit of flour sprinkled on the parchment makes an honestly non-stick surface. So I will do this from now on. I don't like the waste of parchment and will one day look into buying the reusable kind. I rarely use it and found a few rolls for a great clearance price after the holidays last year that will last me awhile, so I will keep using it for now.

I didn't get a pick of this, but I folded the crust into fours (after flouring the top a bit so it didn't stick to itself) and unfolded it onto my pie crust. It didn't quite fit, but close enough I could make it work.

Then I filled all 3 pies with the filling. I didn't want to chance overfilling any of them, so I ended up with about a cup or so of filling left over.

Here's a pie getting ready to freeze in my deep freeze. My refrigerator is a side-by-side, so most dishes won't fit flat in that skinny little freezer. Yes, I found that out the hard way. Do you like my attempt at getting decorative with the vent slits?

Then here is the pie I baked for dinner that night and another fun attempt at artistry. We had dinner with friends, note the towel and plaid casserole carrier underneath. The pie was a huge hit! I played the humble card at the time, but when we got home I celebrated another culinary win! I love when recipes come out tasty and satisfying!

I hope you also enjoy this tasty recipe! I am excited to have 2 more of these in the freezer ready to go for another day. Possibly with a new infant in my arms. Yay! Right now I'm happy to be in my second trimester nesting phase. So if I disappear on you for awhile, just know that I am probably homesteading up some more entertaining posts for you!

Happy cooking!

Jen Hen