A Trip To The Farmer's Market

Every Wednesday our city has a Farmer's Market downtown where I love to go and purchase fresh produce. This week I asked my dear hubby if he would like to come along with me. He has been pretty much home bound since his back surgery the end of October and I knew he was ready to get out of the house. It is very painful for him if he has to sit or stand for very long so this quick trip seemed like the perfect opportunity.

While visiting one of the farmer's booths we found the most beautiful green tomatoes! Now my boys-everyone of them-LOVE fried green tomatoes. Monroe and I had to have a basket of these beauties. We could taste fried tomatoes just looking at them! Happy with our purchase, we went on to the other produce stands and finished our shopping.

On our way to the truck we both realized that just one basket (4 tomatoes) would not be enough to feed our family. But at $3.50 per basket I was not ready to buy any more. However, my husband was not going to leave without another basket of tomatoes. Now you must understand how our grocery budget works. Basically, Monroe has NO idea how to stretch our money when it comes to food. I have always bought the groceries and he never. ever. goes with me to the grocery store. I didn't argue with him though and we went right back over to the booth with the green tomatoes and bought yet another basket. $7.00 for a side dish people!! I would never pay that much for a vegetable for one meal. I glanced over at my business partner. Humpf-he wasn't worried about it one bit. "Do you realize we just paid $7.00 for one meal of tomatoes?" I asked. "Oh well, they(our boys) are worth it." was his reply. And that was the end of it.

We went home and had fried green tomatoes for lunch and they were just as delicious as we thought they would be!!

I decided to show how I make mine in case this blog has inspired someone out there to give fried green tomatoes a try. First of all, start with very hard and green tomatoes otherwise they get all soft and mushy when frying. Wash and slice them. Then salt and pepper.


Next I mix one part cornmeal and one part flour. Then coat each tomato in this mixture.

Get your grease, I use peanut oil or homemade lard, nice and hot and gently lay the slices into the grease. If you get your oil too hot the flour that settles in the bottom of the pan tends to burn and that causes the tomatoes to taste burnt. Lightly brown on each side and that's all there is to it! Oh, if you have cast iron ware this is one of the foods you just have to cook in cast iron! There is no comparison to the end result.....really!

And here they are crispy, hot and oh so delicious!
How do you cook your fried green tomatoes?

Hmmm....it is almost time to make a trip to the grocery store. Note to self: Do not ask hubby to come along ;-)

It's Almost Christmas!

Once again the Christmas Season is fast approaching. It seems that no matter how hard I try to slow down and enjoy the days with my family and friends I find myself out of breath and rushing to finish last minute plans. With money in short supply this year I can't even say I spent a lot of time waiting in lines and/or waiting in traffic. Where has the time gone? I don't know!

It doesn't dampen my holiday spirit though. I love, love, love Christmas time!! Tomorrow I plan to spend the day prepping the food and beginning to bake for Christmas day. Our family will be attending the candlelight Christmas Eve Service at our church. This is such a sweet and special service we have every Christmas Eve. I will also make time to play Rokenbok with Bryce and Brandon too. The Rokenbok set is only played with during our Christmas break. The boys look forward to setting it up each year. I try to add a new piece to the collection each year as well. The set has grown so big that this year we assembled it in the garage. Here it is still in the set up stage. If you are not familiar with Rokenbok you should go to the website. They have some great video of the set in action. Just go to Rokenbok.com

Brooke, Ricky and the little ones will be spending Christmas day at our house. I am so very glad that they still enjoy coming over on Christmas morning. We always wait for them to come over before we open our gifts. I hope my older boys are making a mental note of their sister's holiday rituals ;-) I would love to have all of my future daughter-in-laws and grandchildren at my house on Christmas Day!!

I wanted to share a few of my Christmas decorations and crafts I have out this year. I decided to have a more "natural-rustic" tree. It just seems to fit with our lifestyle. I have tried having a more sparkly, glittery tree but it never looked right. So, I put together this garland on burlap to decorate the tree and I love it! The ornaments are rustic looking as well.

We are working on this Christmas puzzle. It is fun to watch the puzzle come together as different ones stop and work on it.

I am proud of my garage sale find a few weeks ago! Isn't this pillow adorable? It cost me $2.00!

Bradley helped a friend of his move a couple of weeks ago. The day after the move I saw this little Christmas tree lying haphazardly in the back seat of my truck. I am not a big fan of ceramics but I picked this little tree up to keep it from getting broken and.......

look what I found on the underside....
Yep! It's a real McCoy!!! We researched it on the internet and discovered that it has a base that it sits on. I asked Bradley if he remembered seeing a green base to match. Of course he paid no attention to that type of thing. I could not find the value of this tree and it may not be worth very much without the base. I would love to find out more about it.

I also found this little tart burner at the same yard sale that I mentioned earlier. It was brand new!

And I saved the best for last. My precious nativity scene. I have had this set for about 20 years and I still love it as much as the first day I got it. It is a Fontanini collection so I have been able to slowly add pieces to it through the years. Believe it or not, I have actually found a couple of pieces at garage sales and clearance shelves! One of the things I love about this set is that my children and grandchildren can set it up and move the pieces around as much as they like because it is unbreakable. Helping Mom/Nonna set up the nativity scene is a memory I would like for them to keep in their heart forever!
To all of my dear family and friends I pray you all have a blessed and Holy Christmas Day!!

Quail Anyone?

Of all the many different kinds of animals we have raised/taken in here at our farm we have never had any experience with quail. A friend of ours started the hobby of raising quail. He became too busy to care for them so we took over and here we are with a quail pen in our yard!
The pen was set up to encourage the hens to lay. They were doing a great job too. Now that the days are shorter they have stopped laying altogether. When they were laying we would gather the eggs daily and put them in the incubator.

As they hatched we put them in this smaller pen that was kept in my LAUNDRY ROOM! We learned an important lesson in a terrible way. We put the younger quail in with the adult quail too early. They looked almost the same size so we thought they would be safe. We kept a check on them for a couple of hours and all was fine. However, the next morning when we went in to feed them the older quail had pecked the younger ones in the head and they ended up dying. We knew to watch for this because chickens will do the same thing to the young chicks unless a mother is there to protect her little ones. We felt just awful about our mistake.

Now you may be wondering what we are going to do with all these quail. Trust me, I wondered the same thing ;-) However, my guys had a plan all along. They are raising the quail to release them in the field behind our house. Then they want to go quail hunting. We will, of course, be eating the quail. Our boys have been taught by their father to treat all animals humanely and with respect. Also, they know that when they go hunting to kill an animal it is to provide food for the family.

I remember a time when Brandon killed a squirrel without asking his Dad. Guess what Brandon ate? Yep. He had squirrel for supper. He didn't mind though. He thought it was pretty cool because he cleaned it and cooked it over an open fire outside.

Have you ever eaten quail?