Prayers

Praying for everyone on the east coast. Please take all the precautions you need to and stay safe!

Living on a Dime

I love this site. I'd never been to Living on a Dime until a couple weeks ago. It's a great place for any of you that have noticed your monthly budget not doing as much as it used to. In this day of rising grocery prices, along with rising prices in everything else, I'm doing my best to find ways to make our limited finances s-t-r-e-t-c-h. I've been buying bread this summer instead of making it, and it has added so much to the grocery bill that I'm not sure I'm actually saving money. It might be cheaper to use the electricity! And it would certainly taste better.

Not much has been happening around here. The pups are growing, of course. They killed a chick yesterday. Poor chickie:(. They didn't mean to do it, just playing. Nevertheless, they were punished for bothering it. They really take to heart being locked in their little kennel for five to ten minutes!

Hope all of you are enjoying this last month of summer!!

Good Morning

Hello to everyone. I'm guessing that my last post about oven canning was a little bit confusing to everyone. I want to clarify that it is not actually 'canning' food. It is a method used by some (at least according to an article I read) to further extend the shelf life of food that you have purchased at the grocery store. Foods like dried beans or oatmeal. It just seals out all the air and helps the food last longer.

I realize that most of you don't want 25 pounds of oatmeal or beans in your house, but I live quite a ways out in the country and I like to stay stocked up on food that I use all the time. The oven canning was in an article in the newest edition of Countryside Magazine. I went to their website, but the article is not online.

How are all of your gardens doing? Mine is about dried up. If the weather is starting to moderate (90s instead of 100s) I am going to replant my squash, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Our muscadines are still looking good, so maybe I'll be making jelly sometime in September.

Good Morning~Canning and Writing!

As usual, I've been rearranging, de-cluttering (not as much as I should), and generally trying to make things a little more organized around the cabin. The heat has been horrid, so working inside most of the day has been my only option. I think we may be in for a cool down~highs in the upper 90s!

Have any of you heard of oven canning to preserve dried foods? I'm not talking about actual canning of fruits, vegetables, etc. This involved setting your oven to 200 degrees, filling sterilized jars with dry food you purchased at the store, such as oatmeal, beans, rice, even boxed cereal, such as Cheerios.

Put the jars on a cookie sheet in the 200 degree oven for one hour, then take out one jar at a time, put on clean, dry, sterilized lid (after wetting rim of jar with damp towel), and screw on the ring. This should seal your jar and you've also done away with any bugs hatching out in your food. Supposedly, this will keep the food sealed and good to eat for years. I haven't tried it yet, but I think I'm going to experiment with it on a few items.


In writing news, though I have no release date as of yet, the cover for my Christmas novella, Christmas in Coyote County, has arrived. Nicola Martinez, Editor-in-Chief of White Rose Publishing, did a fantastic job of capturing the fun nature of the story! Thank you, Nicola!!