What constitutes a real dog?  Man’s best friend.   He’s a companion, a loyal friend, always happy to see you.  Maybe he’s a big dog that makes you feel safe when you’re home alone.  Oh, I know.  He’s a dog that you can take into the woods and he likes to hunt.  He likes to ride in the back of the truck.

Poor Mike – this is what we have - Frankie. Believe it or not, he’s 9 years old. Our neighbor’s dog tried to kill him because he thought Frankie was a squirrel.  It’s just almost embarrassing.  

But this dog is a people magnet.  Strangers come up to us everywhere and want to see him.  Mike took him for a walk at an outdoor restaurant in Austin and had a gaggle of college girls following him around wanting to take pictures with the dog. 

He’s not even our dog.  He belonged to our daughter who moved out and left him with us years ago.   Well, we’ve made him into a real dog – OK, that’s a severe exaggeration.  Look at this  -  he’s out in the woods – doing dog stuff.  We were out in the back of the property checking out the trees that got knocked over during the last storm and had to actually lift him over a couple.  And if the hay has grown up and needs mowing,  then we usually lose him out in the field.

This is a picture for you deer hunters.  This guy was standing in my driveway here in Magnolia.

At the end of the day is usually a domino game at my mom and dad’s.  Here’s proof - I actually won a game!  (You’ll have to take my word for it since the score didn’t show up in the picture.)

Someday we will get a real dog, but for now…..    At least he doesn’t take up a lot of room at the foot of the bed.

There's a reason my kitchen is a disaster area several times a week.  You'd think after being at work and/or on the road 12 hours a day I'd have better things to do.  But, I really, really like experimenting in the kitchen.
Yes, I went to Tractor Supply in Lufkin this weekend and spent my paycheck on the magazine rack.  Today's project was inspired by 'Hobby Farm Home' magazine.  Bean Soup Mix.

 Is this not the prettiest jar of beans you've ever seen?  You stack the beans, add seasonings and stick it in a jar.  How easy is that?  Beans, it's what's for dinner - with cornbread of course! Here's the seasoning pack: 1 TB dried parsley, 1 TB dried minced onion, 2 tsp seasoning salt, 2 dried bay leaves, 1 tsp garlic powder.

 Put the seasonings in a baggie and tuck into the top of the jar before you put on the lid.  Here you go - ready to cook.  Just put on the shelf and wait for a rainy day.

 I used eight types of beans.  Black beans, Navy beans, Lentils, Kidney beans, Cranberry beans, Pinto beans, Split Green peas and Black Eye peas.  (Can a pea be a bean?)
 
Cool, huh?  I cleaned the kitchen, then headed for bed to write my blog and look what I found!  Mike had made this awesome fire in the fireplace.  

Here's the directions for the bean soup:
Rinse beans, place in bowl and cover with at least 1 inch water.  Let stand overnight.
Drain beans in colander and rinse well with water.
In a pot, cover beans with fresh water and cook about 2 hours.  Drain beans and rinse with fresh water.
Place beans in large pot and cover with 6 cups water.  Open seasoning packet and sprinkle into soup.  Add 2 cups chopped tomatoes with juice. Cover and simmer 30 minutes.  Remove bay leaves before serving and season to taste.

Even if you never cook a bean in your life, this jar will look really cool just sitting on the shelf!  And if anybody is mean to you - you can give them a jar of beans for Christmas.  It cost about $1.50 a jar.  (I shouldn't have admitted that.  You will know you're on my naughty list if I give you a jar of beans for Christmas next year!)

I read in the ‘The Backwoodsman’ magazine that folks in the old days made bannocks.  That’s a quick bread that you make over a campstove and either bake or fry in a cast iron skillet.  Every article says it’s the best bread they’ve ever had!  So, I thought I should learn to make it in case the world comes to an end and I need to eat scraps from my pantry.

That stuff tastes like hard no-flavor biscuits.  I tried it a couple of times and it never got any better.  I actually felt guilty feeding it to Mike for dinner.  So, my next plan was to find a bread recipe that was quick and easy and you could actually eat it with a smile on your face.  I kept thinking about the cherry/chocolate boule bread I  bought at Hubble & Hudson in The Woodlands.  The kind of bread you wanted to lick before you ate it.

My solution?  You Tube.   I have learned so many things on You Tube – but that’s another story!  I looked up boule bread recipes and found a great one called “Artisan Bread Master Boule Recipe – Part 1 & 2”.  There are only 4 ingredients:  water, yeast, salt and flour.  I like simple.

 (pretend you're seeing one of the really cool pictures I was trying to upload - but blogger.com changed something and I can't include ANY pictures)

I mixed the ingredients according to the directions but with the last cup of flour, I added a cup of chopped dried dark cherries and a cup of mini milk chocolate chips.  Yummm.  You’re supposed to let the dough sit in the refrigerator over-night before you bake the bread – not gonna happen.  Mike and I pulled out a fourth of the dough and let it rise for an hour then we baked it.  He wanted to eat it the second it came out of the oven, but I convinced him to wait 20 minutes so it could breathe.  Ha!  I was really praying that it would taste really really good and not like that nasty bannock dried up no flavor biscuit thing.

Not able to put him off any longer, we sliced it up (of course we put lots of butter on it) and took a bite.  Awesome!!  My only change would be to add more cherries and chocolate.  I wonder if you could stuff it till it looked like fruit cake?  Too much?  Mike wants walnuts in it next time.  Maybe next, next time.  Next time, I’m going to try apricot and white chocolate.

But first, we have to eat the other 3 loaves waiting to be baked.  That recipe makes a lot of bread!  Eating half a loaf of bread a day is a bad idea.   I better go buy some bigger pants this afternoon because this is not going to be pretty. 

I am officially a honey bee owner!  I am so excited!  OK, they won't be ready for pick up until April.  They only give out bees in the spring - although you have to order and pay for them in November.  That's "bee"cause they have a better chance of survival in the spring when all the flowers are in bloom.
Here's a picture of the bee house.  (a hive).  It comes in two boxes, the bottom brood box and the honey super on top.  The bigger box at the bottom is where the queen lays the eggs, the nurse bees tend the brood (that would be the bee babies for you non-bee people) and they store food for the winter.  The upper super (honestly, I don't know why it's called that) is where the excess honey is stored.  That's what you get to keep for your biscuits.

 Here's a view of what's in the brood box.  There are 10 frames with a sheet of hexagonal cell shaped foundation boards.  The bees build  in that shape, so it kind of just gets them started. This box will be where the new bees come from. You think your life is hard.  If you're a female bee, work 24/7 to feed more bees, then die.  Awesome.

Anyway, here's the top honey super where the bees store extra honey.  They store extra honey for winter when they can't find pollen on flowering plants. But, if you own the hive, you steal the honey from the bees for your own use. So, what happens to the bees?  You feed them a sugar/water solution that they think is a flower supplying what they need.

Here are the gauntlet gloves and smoker.  The purpose of the smoker is to calm the bees so you can steal their honey.  Actually, what's happening, is they think there's a fire that's threatening the hive, so they gorge themselves on honey - thinking they're going to have to flee.  Fact is, they're so full of honey they can't move fast and chase you. Whatever it takes to keep them away from me, I'm OK with that.  They can think there's a fire.

Here's the netted helmet hat. Can you see me wearing all this stuff?

Well, I'm getting ready to paint  the supers some really cool colors.  They don't have to be white - so I've read on the internet..........  We'll see if the bees stay in their cool home I'm making or run for the hills.  I'm picking up a box of bees and a queen next April.  They're going to show me how to get the bees out of the  travel box and into the brood box. Once you get the queen in the box, the other bees will follow her anywhere.  I can relate to that.  Do they have princess bees?

I'll be selling honey in a couple of years so ya'll just remember that when you go to the store to buy honey that my honey will be the BEST!
I can't wait till April :)

I have been such a slacker!  I have so much to tell you but I've had this allergy attack for two weeks and just didn't have the energy.  Anyway, today I want to make a tribute to my awesome turkey frying Dad.  He fries our turkey every year at the Hostage Thanksgiving.  And - he has never made the car explode or burned down the garage or house - like you see on TV.

So, what's a Hostage Thanksgiving?  It's at my Mom's house every Thanksgiving.  We all show up and have to decorate her house for Christmas before she'll serve Thanksgiving dinner.  My mother has strict requirements:  put up the 15 foot tree (that comes in 5 different pieces), put on the lights and decorations, put the garland on the banister, garland and lights on the outside of the house, and on and on and on.  Everyone knows their place and what to work on.  It totally works.

Anyway, for all you turkey-frying wanna be's, pay attention to the master:
First, season, season, season the completely thawed turkey.

Place your fryer in a safe area without clutter, or exploding chemicals or small children. 

 Place the turkey in the drop pan.

 Wearing long sleeves and leather gloves (hot oil) slowly lower the drop pan into the hot oil.
Slowly, I said!

 After the correct amount of time in the fryer, lift the frying pan out of the oil.  Slowly, while you let the oil drain out.

 Place pan on folded newspaper for a few minutes to let oil drain before you remove the turkey.

 Ta daa!!  Isn't that gorgeous?  I have one request for next year.  Can we remove that turkey butt thing before we plate the turkey?

Another great family gathering at Thanksgiving.  We had a great time and the food was fantastic.  Lots of dominoes and double solitare competition.  Hey, my Mom gives away cash prizes to the winners!  It's become really cut-throat.  If you can't take a beating in dominoes, don't play!

I told you last week that I would actually cook something with the dehydrated veggies I've been making. So, I made a chicken pot pie, just for you (and Mike and me).  First I boiled the dehydrated veggies in chicken broth for 30 minutes, then added a little flour to thicken and chopped chicken.  

 While that was cooling off, Mike came by and added salt, pepper and garlic and I made the pie crust.

 I put the filling in the bottom crust and covered with a top crust.  Several slits were added to vent the steam.

 The pie was cooked for 40 minutes at 400 degrees.  Isn't it pretty?

 I know, that's all well and good, but what does it taste like?  To be honest, it was not a Swanson or Marie Calendar.  But it was not bad - could have used more spices, though.  Next time, we'll kick it up a notch - the crust was the best part.

However......you can buy frozen pot pies any day of the week at a grocery store.  But what if the grocery store is closed due to a hurricane or other emergency?  Yep, you'll be standing in the food hand out line and I'll be at home cooking hot chicken pot pie.  

I'm on a new tangent with my dehydrator.  After watching the devastation from Hurricane Sandy and all the people without electricity or food or gas - I was even more paranoid about food storage.  I took my little insecure self into my pantry to take inventory and realized that I was a little short in the veggie department.  Not only that, jars and cans of veggies are really heavy!  I went to a website that sells freeze dried  and dehydrated food and they're really proud of that stuff.  I don't happen to have an extra $700- $3000 to spare at the moment.
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So, I decided to do it myself.  Check out dehydrate2store.com.  That woman has a great website and lots of videos.  Kroger's has their frozen vegetables on sale so I loaded up.  (oh yeah, you can dehydrate fresh or frozen).

Here's my first example:  Vegetable soup mix.  (fine, go ahead and read the fine print - I didn't buy all the same thing - big deal!)  There's corn, peas, green beans, potatoes, carrots, okra and potatoes.  There are 12 oz in each bag, (I use 5 bags at a time in  the dehydrator)   which equates to 7 and 1/2 cups of veggies.  After they've spent 12 hours in my dehydrator, it's only 4 cups.

Yes, it does look like little shriveled pieces of .....stuff.  But add boiling water and let it sit for 20 minutes and they rehydrate right back to their original size - I tested it.

This is a quart jar which holds 4 cups of dehydrated veggies.  Next step is to vacuum seal - well, the jar is heavy!  If hurricane flood waters are coming and you want to leave with food, wouldn't you rather carry a bag instead of a jar??

A quick run through the vacuum sealer.  Don't forget to add an oxygen absorber in the bag.  You can buy them online.

There you are - 4 cups vacuum sealed that takes up the space of one bag of frozen vegetables.  Next week I'll cook chicken pot pie and let you know how that works out.

You didn't think I was going to stop with just one example, did you?  Oh no, no, no!   I've done green beans, peas, corn, carrots, sweet potatoes and banana chips.  Each of the bags in the picture above contains 7 1/2 cups of frozen veggies dehydrated down to 4 cups.  My poor dehydrator is running 24 hours a day.