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Canning Tomatoes

Canning Tomatoes

I love fresh ripe from the vine tomatoes. I love growing them, I love canning them to use all the rest of the year. Here in the desert we plant our tomatoes in February. If we plant too much later than that they won’t produce much. We have to get the plants to do all they can before our night time temperatures exceed 70 degrees, after that the tomatoes won’t set, so we plant early. We rarely freeze here more than a few days a year, once in a while that February planting time will bite us with a freeze but not usually.

This year we planted 30 tomato plants in hopes of making up for the garden we didn’t…

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Yummy Green Sauce!

Yummy Green Sauce!

Ok here goes, I don’t really have a recipe for this so I’m just going to tell you what I do. It’s almost fool proof and very tasty and can be used for tons of things like, enchiladas, dips, salsa’s, tacos, my hubby would eat it with a spoon. It can be as mild or as hot as you would like it depending on what kinds of peppers you use and how many.

So I start with tomatillos, I grow my own. There are easy to grow other than a bug we ran across but I told that story in a previous blog. I use about 2 gallon size ice cream containers full of tomatillosAren’t they pretty! Peel off the…

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The Great (First) Cookie Cook-Off of 2012

As a teacher, I “get the summer off” each year. Technically, I get fired in June and rehired in August…but no one really wants to think of it that way…they prefer to think that teachers have the best/cushiest jobs around. And, really, we do. If it weren’t for the parents and the kids, my job would be perfect. But today I’m not talking about my job. It is, after all, “summer vacation,” the reason that all teachers become teachers: June, July, and August. We look forward to it all year. We plot and plan and hope and dream and it finally gets here. We finished up school and got the kids graduated on last week, so this past Monday was the official “start” to my summer vacation. Monday, I went with my sister and nieces (and great-nieces) to Las Vegas to do some shopping. Tuesday, I went with my Mom to Mesquite to go shopping and get her hair done. Wednesday I officially got bored.
 What does that say, when I get “bored” after two days? I refuse, however, to let boredom win. I will not waste my summer sitting around trying to figure out what I can do. That’s when I decided to make some oatmeal cookies. (Well, sometime between that moment and the moment I realized we had 7 containers of oatmeal…unopened…in our pantry.) It sounds easy enough…but when I looked in The Cookbook (the cook book that my mom (usually referred to as Grandma) makes for everyone on their graduation/wedding…I realized that there was no recipe for oatmeal cookies. If there is no recipe in the book, that means there is only one thing to do…find a bunch of recipes and try them all.…

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Empty Nest = Moldy Bread

When your kids start leaving home you slowly begin to notice the small changes. There are fewer clothes to wash, more leftovers in the fridge, less noise. But when the last one leaves you really begin to notice things, things that no one tells you about.

We are down from doing laundry all day Saturday and a few loads during the week to only 3 loads a week. We need to clean the bathroom less often. There are fewer dishes to wash. The house is much quieter. We eat a little healthier, a little lighter and our meals are simpler. But the biggest change was something I noticed just last week. I had made a simple cake, we had eaten…

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Tips for storing cookies and bars

Cookies tend to switch texture upon storing soft cookies get hard and crisp cookies get soft. Here are a few tips to keep them stored at peak freshness.

Allow cookies and bars to cool completely before storing. Cut crisp bar cookies while slightly warm allow icing on cookies to completely dry before storing

Store soft and crisp cookies in separate airtight containers. If stored together, the moisture from the soft cookies will soften the crisp cookies and they will lose their crunchy texture

Flavors can also blend during storage, so don’t store strong flavored cookies with delicate flavored cookies

Arrange cookies in a container with a waxed paper between each layer

Store cookies in a cool, dry place. Cookies, frosted…

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