Peggy's Porcupine Balls (Meatloaf balls)

These porcupine balls turned out great. They were easy to make and start to finish in less than an hour. I started out with really fresh ingredients: fresh zucchini, green peppers, onion, all from my garden and carrots, ground beef, and arborio rice from the grocery store.

And an egg. This one was a double yoker. I have always considered double yokers good luck!
These ingredients looked so pretty in the mixing bowl, especially with the afternoon sun shining in through the window.

I love my Pampered Chef chopper and veggie spatula, and my hand grater. I use these almost every day.

Peggy's Porcupine Balls

1 1/2 lbs. ground beef

1/2 cup grated zucchini

1/2 cup chopped green pepper

1 chopped carrot

1 medium onion-chopped

1 1/2 cups cooked arborio rice

1 egg

2 packages turkey or brown gravy mix (enough to make 3 or 4

cups)

Dash of paprika to add to the gravy mix.

Add all ingredients in mixing bowl and gently mix and form into

3 inch balls. Place in baking dish (I use my cast iron skillet) and

bake 30 minutes until fully cooked, no longer pink in the middle.

Make gravy according to package directions and pour over

cooked porcupine balls. Serve with bread or noodles. Makes

about 18 porcupine balls.

There's no added salt in this recipe, the gravy mix adds enough to give this dish alot of taste.

I mixed this easy side dish up and baked it in the oven with the porcupine balls. It is simply 3 cups of chopped cauliflower, 1/2 cup fat free sour cream, 2 tsp. Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix, 6 thinly sliced pats of butter and about 2 tsp. freshly chopped chives. Again, just mix everything together toss in the oven, stirring occasionally.

The Love of...Mason Jars, and the Sauce that Goes in Them

These are couple of my favorite mason jars. Atlas Special Mason with the old time lids.
Some people like jewels, and shiny things, I like canning jars, what can I say? I'm a country girl.

I love mason jars. There's just something about them that feels very safe, very home. I was lucky enough to can LOTS of tomatoes this summer. So many that I had to enlist lots of old canning jars in the basement of the farm. These ones have been there for probably 25 years, just waiting to be filled again with love. I love seeing the old names not around anymore. Genuine Sarma Mason. I've only found one of these~ I wonder how old it might be?

These baskets of dingy, dirty jars once held sauce, juice, relish, peaches, pears, anything my Mom could think to put in them. My love and appreciation of canning and gardening to feed a family came from her. She would tell me stories of when she was a young girl living on a steep hillside in Pittsburgh, PA, of planting flowers and vegetables on the hill in and by their yard, and that she always looked forward to getting her seed catalogs~ her reference bibles~ every winter so she could plan the next spring's garden. She saved so many! She said if she ever forgot something about anything, she could just refer back to the description in the catalog. She was right. She loved thumbing through her catalogs, and dog earring pages, dreaming of a bigger and better garden for the next year! It's a trait she passed along. With some TLC, and a very worn out bottle brush, these jars came back to life!

The Atlas mason jars now hold the most incredible thick tomato sauce. I have enough to get us through winter, maybe even spring. That's even with giving a few away. Just a few, I can be stingy with my fresh sauce!

My Ball Perfect mason's hold beautiful tomato juice~ I've found my kids like homemade tomato soup, and that this juice makes the most wonderful base for vegetable beef soup! My girls like that too. I add cut green beans from the garden to it, it's one of the only ways they don't fuss about eating green beans!

This might be my favorite jar, Kerr's Self Sealing 'trademark reg.' mason. The older jars from Kerr don't have the 'trademark reg.' on the jar, so I figure another company picked up on it and the Kerr Co. felt the need to add the trademark. Man, cutthroat business even then, it just seems like a much more innocent time than now, but I guess a businessman is a businessman. Oh well, on to better things...

like these beautiful jars catching the morning sunlight. So simple, yet, so beautiful.

Adventure hit me this year too. As I was thumbing through my Ball Blue Book of Canning, I spied a recipe for Honeyed Yellow Tomato butter. I thought, WHAT??? , this must be either delicious, or tradition. Since I never heard of it before, I was thinking delicious. This was my first attempt at making any kind of 'butter', other than from a cow, and I have to say it was a success! And it definately wasn't great granny's fruitcake! It's very sweet, probably no sweeter than jelly, but since I'm not a jelly toast kind of girl, I'll use this beautiful butter as a glaze on turkey and pork. I added some applesauce to mine since when it was cooking, I just couldn't get it as thick as I would like, but I think it actually improved the taste. The yellow tomatoes are so mild to begin with, they can't even be tasted in this recipe. Plus, their my youngest girls venture of experimenting with volunteer tomatoes that just happened to come up in her raised bed this year! I may be partial to my little girls tomatoes, but I don't think so. This gorgeous honey-apple-tomato butter will have a special place at my Thanksgiving table this year, as I remember all of the things (and people) who are dear to me.

Happy, happy thoughts!! : )

It Found ME!!

The poison ivy I feared so much in the last post, has found me. Specifically my nose. I can't say I've ever inhaled the oil of the poison ivy vine until now. It sould be an interesting, akward week.

Under the Apple Tree...

I often find myself under, in, or around a big old tree. For some reason, I'm attracted to them. They reach out to me...they call to call to me "come here, under me, take a rest"... I find myself underneath in no time just looking at their beauty. I wonder how their branches came to grow as they do. I wonder what kind of animals call it their home, or which ones find shelter at the foot of her trunk. I wonder, I dream, it's what I do, what can I say?

I marvel at the color and texture of the bark. Some is rough and jagged, or like this gorgeous old sycamore tree on our tree line, smooth and inviting. The bark is beautiful with soft browns, mossy greens, and light tan patches saying "come and look at me, I'm beautiful". I found myself under her beauty, and I wanted to stay and sit a spell and explore more around her, that was until I spyed a poison ivy vine about five feet from my face, and then I decided it was time to move on. I was only hoping and praying I didn't touch it, or disturb it in any way. Poison ivy has a way of finding me and has the uncanny ability to make me remember that 'parting is such a sweet sorrow'. Yes, for about two weeks! So I moved on. I very quickly forgot all about the poison ivy.

I spotted what I was secretly hoping to see. Apples! I love apples and frequently get excited about them, but our farm has been in the process of being strip mined this past year. The ground is back in place now and the hill reseeded, so when my hubby, our two younger girls, and I ventured up to the top of the hill to take a look, I was so happy to see the trees we planted when I was a kid. Did I say I was happy? I wanted to jump for joy, but I was too tired from walking up the huge hill! So many years ago, my Mom picked these trees with care from a mail order catalog to plant in front of the tree line marking our property. She thought the other trees would eventually die out, so if we were going to have a tree line, it might as well be productive one! She would be happy to see her trees not only survived, but are thriving. So am I.

This is the McIntosh. It's the first one I saw when I got to the top of the hill. The other trees are about 30 feet away from this one. All of us found ourselves picking and reaching as high as we could to reach these beauties, acutally using my daughter's jacket as a 'basket' to carry our bounty down the hill. Luckily some of them aren't yet ripe yet, so we can head back soon with our fruit picker, the only way to reach the perfect ones the deer can't reach, and the only way to assure no unplanned trips to the ER because someone fell out of a tree! They are so good. I predict apple cake, applesauce, apple pie, and apple crisp in our near future! Yum!

~ An Open Letter to all of the Important Girls in my Life! ~

To all of the important girls (and boys too) in my life. I don't have pictures of everyone here, but you all are important. Dove Beauty products has a 'Beauty within' campaign running right now and posed the question: "What would you like every 13 year old girl to know?". Here's what I would like to tell every girl. This applies to any girl 13, 23, 33, 43 etc... (and the boys too!)

This is what I have learned in life ~~ so far.

Remember no matter what anyone or any group of people say, you matter, what you think matters, that you are beautiful and special, and you can accomplish anything!

Parents aren't perfect. Sometimes we guide you in the wrong direction out of our own fears and wants. Listen to what we have to say, but in the end, remember you are your own boss, and make your own decisions.

We freak out sometimes because we don't want you to make the same mistakes, or walk down the long, windy, wrong way paths we may have walked down before finding our way.

Remember to be patient with us, most of us worry out of love.

Be true to yourself! Don't do something stupid because you see others doing it, or saying they have done it ~~ they probably haven't.

Listen to your inner voice, it's usually right. Most importantly, remember that you are loved and worth loving!

You are loved and cared for by people who may not ever know you. After all, we are all ONE!

Always be yourself, after all that's what makes 'you', you!! Be yourself!!

Down Time...at the Farm

These two beauties are quarter horses from the farm across the road from ours. I call the black stallion 'Black Beauty' for two reasons: first is that he is beautiful and majestic as he grazes in the field, secondly, because I can't remember his registered name! So, to me, he's Black Beauty. The pretty chestnut mare is 'Brandy'. I also can't remember her registered name (registered names are often so long...) but thankfully she has a nickname, and it is indeed 'Brandy'. She is very docile, so is Black Beauty, especially for a stallion!



My sister and nephew visited last week from Boston, and Eddie decided to feed the horses. He always likes to visit them when he's here, it's just something he doesn't see in Boston. He loves to grow things in the garden, explore, and be outdoors, so visiting the horses with my girls was his cup of tea! The horses were very thankful, because the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence! They enjoyed their afternoon snack very much!

Afterwords, the kids thought pushing each other on the tire swing was the thing to do. Well, I think it's the thing to do on a wonderful summer day too. Tire swings never get old!

The tree in the above shot is a bit deceiving. It looks like my daughter is going to crash into it any second, but it's really about 7 or 8 feet out, thankfully from the trunk. They've only hit the tree a few times, without any injures, thank goodness. It kind of reminds me of "George of the Jungle" when he yells "Look out for the...tree".

All in all, they had a great time, and I got a great picture!

I was able to tend my garden, leisurely, since we had company, I was very thankful for that and due to a cloudy morning, my morning glories were tricked into staying open into the afternoon. It was a great day!!

Down Time...