January 6, 2024 Happy New Year everyone! I hope you’ve all been doing well. I know that I haven’t posted in quite a while, but that’s going to change! I’m excited to say that this blog is going to be on my priority list with a weekly (hopefully!) blog post. I will also be updating my YouTube page with videos of trips, home improvements, and cooking from the past few years. So please go check that out!
Well, this last week has been fun! On New Years Eve my husband, dog, and I ventured to Cabela’s for the fun of it. Ellie wasn’t sure about the moose.. once she actually saw it, she jumped a little and became curious. She loved the fishies!! 🙂 We then grabbed lunch and went home. We took a little nap, the husband gathered up some fishing supplies, and I got together some munchie foods for a charcuterie box and a mocktail mix. My charcuterie box consisted of venison jerky, homemade salmon dip, smoked pulled pork, cheddar cheese, pears, crackers, and salt & vinegar chips. The mocktail was a juice combo of pineapple, orange, cranberry, and coconut water topped with ginger ale. We have been wanting to get out ice fishing, but mother nature is just keeping the ice away. Regardless, we took our ice shanty out to keep warm while fishing. It was quite fun and worked out nicely! Bonus of it all is that we caught one! We had a fish get off the line, and had quite a few steal our bait, but luckily the husband was able to reel one in!
For New Year’s Day, I was able to convince my daughter, her boyfriend, and my best friend to help me cross of a crazy item on my bucket list. We completed a polar plunge!! It was a great way to start off the year! It was absolutely crazy, terrifying, exhilarating, and exciting! There was such a cold breeze hitting us while we waited for our turn to jump. Once you hit the water, it felt like millions of needles hitting you all over, making your skin feel like it was burning. I am so glad I had enough courage to do the jump, but I don’t think I’ll be wanting to do it anytime soon. 🙂
On our way home, we stopped by this adorable gas station that has a petting farm. I took my niece to check out the animals, since no one else wanted to.. apparently they were TOO COLD… blah, blah, blah 🙂
The next day, I took my dog, Ellie for a walk on our favorite trail. The weather has been nice and it seemed like a great opportunity to get out and enjoy some more fresh air!! Ellie had a blast running the trail and chasing squirrels.
i also starting thinking about garden plans for this year. While planning out the garden, I realized that I still had red beans and broccoli that needed shelling. I also still had my oregano, lavendar, and lemon balm that needed to be cleaned up and put in storage containers from their drying process. I was really impressed with my new drying rack. It really works great! You can tell the difference in the oregano between oven drying and rack drying… rack drying retains its color very well! I also started some sprouts to add into our meals and to share with our chickens. And we’ve come to the end of our homegrown onions. We’ve used our last one. So next week I will be starting up some onion seeds for the garden this year. We’re obviously going to need to plant way more than last year!
One of my goals this year is to have a really tasty, easy, gluten free bread recipe. So I’ve started trying it out this week. My first loaf was a little gummy, but tasted good. This is my second loaf. It has a much better texture, and there is nothing like warm, homemade bread. The husband was actually impressed with this one! So I’ll be keeping this recipe but working on others to try and get a good, taller, sandwich loaf. I also want to try my hand at a good gluten free sourdough and artisan style loaf. So many possibilities! Since the weather decided to take a more wintery turn, I also loaded up our living room with more firewood to get through the cooler days. There just isn’t anything quite like a home warmed by the fireplace..
I then finished up the week making pickled eggs, due to our overabundance of eggs from our ladies. I was able to make 3 quarts of pickled eggs and still have more that could’ve been made up! I also made a zucchini bread for us to enjoy for breakfast this weekend. My quick bread recipe is wonderful!
I hope you all had a wonderful first week of 2024! Til Next week! 🙂
