Cajun Watermelon Relish

Excuse my iPhone pics. They are not the best. I have an awesome camera and no time to use it or edit photos. One of these days...

Anyway, this picture above is what it looks like when you brine watermelon rind. It doesn't take as much watermelon rind as they say in the recipes. You cut the pink off. You can tell that I did not remove every last piece. It was fine. Then, you take a handheld grater and remove the rind. You can keep removing it, and it will have a slight green color. Since this was a double batch of my recipe, I added 2 cups of water and 2 tablespoons of canning/pickling salt. Refrigerate for 8 hours or more. I left mine in there for over one day because I had stuff to do.

This recipe calls for red and yellow sweet pepper. When you use those colored peppers, the mixture turns out beautiful. I grew my own bell peppers this year so I used the green. It was not as pretty, but it still tastes great.

This is what my mixture looked like cooking in the pot. You can see my pickling spice cheesecloth bag in it. Yes, this is an ugly pot. I can't quit using it because it is so thick. I think it is third-hand. ha!Your house will smell pretty stout for a few hours after you do this. My girl thought it smelled good.

My recipe came from the You Can Can book put out by Better Homes & Gardens. That link went to the Amazon listing. This can also be purchased at Wal-Mart in the canning section.

I found that I had scanned this recipe in awhile back. It is in picture form. Click it to go the bigger picture.

It is very green due to the green bell pepper. 6 half pints and 1 itty bitty sampler.

On the right in the above picture is the same with the colorful peppers. I made this batch last year. That was probably Jalapeno Pepper Jelly on the left. Still, the same iphone camera.

Family updates & Garden stuff

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Here is my little buddy, D sucking the ketchup off of his fries at the Macaroni Grill in Shreveport. He had a pretty great time sitting in a booster chair.

Alex seems to have a good time in D's tunnel. haha

D got a cowboy hat at Academy. He really loves it. He got a little fishing pole to go with it.

Here is my biggest baby, Grace, with her fish. She has been doing great at fishing lately.

Just a crazy face from me.

This is from 2 days of picking. It was close to 10 pounds of tomatoes. That is from only 4 tomato plants. We were pretty blessed with great weather at the beginning of our growing season. I have been able to make salsa, eat tomatoes everyday, give away 5 small sacks to people, and freeze 4 quarts. It's not over yet either.

I will leave you with this great video of one of my fave girl folky bands, The Be Good Tanyas. This is a good upbeat song that is fun to drive to when you are on a road trip. The Littlest Birds

Gonna make a quick blog that just contains stuff about Cajun Watermelon Relish.

Maters and Taters

Here is my harvest today. This is from 2 potato plants and 4 tomato plants. I just picked tomatoes 2 days ago. They are turning quick. Woohoo! D can't resist these taters.


I stopped at a farmer's fruit stand in Pittsburg today. I got okra, cucumber, squash, onions, and peaches for $17.00. If you saw in person the amount of food you get for your money, you would be surprised. When you grab your bag, it is heavy.

That smarts

Respect your knives because they will bite you. I was handling a knife that was too big for what I was doing. Ended up grabbing the blade with my thumb. My hubby doctored me up so I could finish cooking (with a glove on). This is picture is the day after. It was a bleeding mess yesterday. I am so glad he poured the alcohol on it because I am not sure that I would have done it.

I love my knives although they are sharp. :) I was using the largest in this set. Danny got me these for Christmas. It is a Fiesta Cobalt Blue Wood Block Set that can be found at Amazon. I didn't even know Fiesta made these. This is a Kitchen Cutlery Set. It is not a steak knife set.

I found this pretty picture of the Fiesta Steak Knife Set that matches it. Ahem!!! Hint!!! Smiles!!!

I did finish preparing my meal anyway - King Ranch Chicken Casserole and Fried Green Tomatoes. I grew my tomatoes. ;)

First attempt at California Rolling

Not perfect, but it was tasty. I made some California Roll Sushi. I made the sushi rice a day ahead and got sidetracked. I like these rolls occasionally although I wouldn't want to eat it all of the time.

When I was making these, a small piece of the ever so stinky seaweed fell on the counter. I thought I would just pop it in my mouth. I have to say that the taste of it by itself was a little yuck to me. I got it down, but the smell got up my nose and I thought I was smelling it all evening. Somehow, the mix of all of these flavors is pretty good. I don't do fishy fish or raw fish so these little sushi rolls are all I will probably make for now.

Here is the video I used to help me through the rolling.

Here is where I purchased my Bamboo Rolling Mat.

Little John, I Am

Little John, I Am - Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out.

Feels like a Bluegrass Friday. I just heard this song today for the first time in the car on the Bluegrass Channel. This should be the next bluegrass song I learn. I hope everyone has a safe holiday weekend.

Today's Harvest

I got a few bell peppers, handful of peppers, potatoes, white and red radish, rosemary, mint, pineapple sage, and a few green onions. Even though my harvest is small, it is enough to add to my cooking for the next few days.

Here is what the little garden looks like now. I have a few other various things planted in the yard in containers. Our 4 tomato plants are covered in tomatoes. Raise a few things even if you don't want to plant rows and rows like old traditional gardening. The reward will be tasty.

Playing in cold process soap making

I have put lots of effort lately into making cold process soap. I have always wanted to but really afraid of the lye and how precise everything needed to be. I did it. Look out Christmas! I bet everybody is getting soap.

 Shea Butter Coconut Milk Soap

I took the plunge and made a 3 lb batch of Shea Butter Coconut Milk Soap 2 weeks ago. This iphone pic is not great. The soap was not bad for a first time soap. It has some calendula in it. It is unscented. I am curious to see how the smell of the soap changes as it cures. I am wishing now that I added a light scent of something. This soap that is shown has already cured for 2 weeks. I was definitely learning. Note: I now tap the mold to make sure all of the air bubbles are out. Character!

Half a week ago, I tried again. I made 4 pounds of Cucumber Green Tea Cocoa Butter Soap. I will take some pictures after it has cured for a bit longer. It was fun, and I used real pureed cucumber, green tea, and some aloe vera juice in it. I scented it with some lavender and tangerine. It smells pretty great. I got 24 bars out of the batch.

Black Coffee Soap

This soap making is truly addicting. I then thought Sunday that I should make some coffee soap. I had some olive oil melt and pour. I mixed ground espresso beans and a few other things. I had a pint creamer carton. I recycled it into a one time mold. Coffee is supposed to get rid of bad odors. Smelly things such as fish! The coffee I made does not smell as nice as I would like it to, but it does work. It has a very strong raw coffee smell. I purposely rubbed my hand in wet canned cat food and then washed with the new soap. It worked. I heard the smell will wear off some over time, but it will not lose its effectiveness. I wrapped these already. This black soap look great up close. They look rustic and the finely ground coffee feels nice on your hands.

Pink Sugar Floating Blocks Soap

My first attempt at suspension soap. It was a lot of fun.

iPhone pic

I had some avocado cucumber melt and pour base and some olive oil soap base. I made two small thin batches of avocado cucumber soap. It was cloudy. I made them pink and blue. Cut them up into little squares. I then made enough olive oil soap to cover the bottom of my container/mold. I tinted it light purple and made it smell like pink sugar. I poked a few of the blocks in it. I would then do a few layers of more olive oil soap and put a few more blocks in it.

The most important part of layering I learned is to spray alcohol. Once you pour the soap, spray alcohol to pop the bubbles. Before you can add another layer, you need to spray with alcohol again. I read that if you don't have alcohol sprayed, that the layers won't stick and they may come apart.

Potatoes and Tomatoes Update

My little garden is doing pretty well. I have pulled all of my first crop of radishes out of the ground. I have replanted them as I was pulling them. I hope to get another cycle of radishes.

Some of my Potatoes

I added another bag of soil trying to hill up these potatoes. I bet I have to keep adding because they are tall.

4 Tomato Plants (Better Boy)

Believe this or not, but this is 4 tomato plants that have sprawled out and aren't staked or caged. I am not sure if I will have to stake them anytime soon. They have made one giant bush. Ha! They are starting to get little tomatoes all over them. I have hilled them and pulled off the lower branches. I am constantly pulling off the tomato suckers. I was going to cage them, but I waited too late. There is no way to force these into cages at this point.

I currently have this growing (not shown): radishes, crookneck squash, swiss chard, cucumber, bell pepper, some kind of pepper, jalapeno, spinach, onion, garlic, lettuce, purple beans, spaghetti squash, mint, cilantro, dill, rosemary, pineapple sage, and strawberry. Plus, 11 potato plants and 4 tomato plants.

I want to note that I do not have any of this planted in the ground. Our yard does not have topsoil so we have found other ways to grow.

Itsukushima Shrine, Japan

I ran the 5K in Itsukushima Shrine in Japan on my iFit Live yesterday.  This is on the Miyajima island. This place is so beautiful. Unfortunately, I could only run the terrain and could not see any sort of pictures or video. Beautiful!

I did it on an elliptical with iFit Live. The course mimics the inclined terrain of this beautiful place. Most of the time, the incline was on 20 and the resistance was from 11-15. That is pretty much about topped out. I am not a runner and have only started working out more about 6 months ago. I am trying to shed those baby pounds.

The winner of the race completed it in 57 minutes. Wow! I was much slower. 99 minutes. 1582 calories burned. Bam!!! I didn't really compete to win. I just wanted to finish. I was so excited that I didn't quit or fall off of the elliptical. Ha!

Here is a quick peaceful video of the Shrine that also shows the Otorii, the grand gate in the water.

Harvesting More Radishes

I have been able to get a few good radishes here and there, but this was probably my biggest harvest. I have a small area designated for radishes. I ended up using more space on potatoes than I wanted to. These radishes are not near as long as the first ones. The first ones were around an inch thick and 5 inches long.

I took my dad's advice and planted new radish seeds where I pulled them out. I also have another rotation of radishes growing in an old broke down swimming pool. Not sure if it will be deep enough for them to get so long. This time, I planted the small red round radishes. I think they were called Sparklers.

My dad said that my grandmother used to eat the green tops from radishes. They are known to have more vitamin C than the actual radish. I also heard you can juice it.

If you are interested in learning how to grow radishes, you can read about it on Mother Earth News.

Crafty Catchups

Over the last week, I have been so busy that I hadn't had a chance to catchup. So, here is some of the latest.

I tried my hand at some colorful bath bombs. They were fun.

I also made some more melt and pour soaps. I added some good stuff in these. One had chamomile and honey added and the other had some rose buds and green tea. I am getting up the nerve to try the lye soap making.

A week or two ago, I decided to try planting in some bags of soil. Can it be? No digging up my clay. This is what it looked like when I planted. I already have stuff coming up. I will get updated pics soon. I will have to show you a pic of the broke down baby pool I planted salad stuff in. Recycling at its best - redneck style!

My radishes have started getting big enough to eat for sure. The taste is great! I am going to attempt to cook some of these. I read that they are like an onion and will caramelize. You can grill them in some foil. Look it up.

Last weekend, I decided to get something on my baby's windows. We only had window blinds. I wanted to do something that looked like a toddler and less infant. I got 6 yards of a robot fabric, and I am on a mission to add it to everything in his room. I started with adding material trim to some valances. The sheers on the window really helped. I plan on making a comforter, and some pillows or throw animals. I should have enough material to go awhile.

Baby Haircut and Pleco

Baby D got his first full haircut. I was hesitant because I was afraid that all of his curls would get cut off. He still has small curls!!! He did really well getting his haircut. He didn't cry. He liked the cape and loved Laura. She gave him a certificate, too. This happened because some man at church called him a girl.

Blurry but oh well!

I snapped this picture of my huge Plecostomus. We have had him for a few years. We have to feed him 2 algae wafers a day. He looks like a dragon swimming in the water. To be so big, he is quick and agile.

Organic is Bigger

This is not trick photography. This lemon came in my biweekly organic shipment. It was grown in California. Compared to the shriveled small lemons we get from our stores, this lemon looks Huge to me. The cucumber that came in the shipment was at least a foot long.

I have to give credit for the awesome produce to Papa's Organic.

Six Little Hands' Giveaway

Six Little Hands - having a giveaway on Sampler Village. The details are here - Sampler Village.

The giveaway consists of Lavender and Honey Milk Bath Salts and Mom's Shea Lotion Bar. I have personally used all of my Lavender and Honey Milk Bath Salts. I loved them. They were the best salts I had ever tried.

Go enter this giveaway or go directly to her Etsy shop.

Vegetable Warrior - printout

I created this document to print out and put on our fridge for my kids. I think the fridge is a good place for the kids to read "good stuff." I home-school so this will be handy. It is just fun facts for fruits and vegetables. I have a problem with getting my 13 year old boy to eat anything that is healthy. Knowledge is Power.

You can download the pdf from here. It is a better quality for printing than this jpg used for viewing.

Go Steve Martin Go

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Spring Cleaning Outdoor Spaces

Saturday, I enlisted the help of my older kids to help me clean and watch my littlest one. Our back porch is almost as long as the house and has three distinct areas because of the odd shape. It has been the catch all for quite some time. Last summer I could hardly put the baby down to go outside and water or clean the porch. This summer, we are ready to enjoy the outdoors since it is Baby D's favorite place to be.

It took us over 5 hours to remove everything and clean it to a sparkly shine. One of our hunter cats tends to deliver dead animals at our doorstep and then by a few hours all you find are the yucky organs that even the cat won't eat. I felt the need to disinfect the porch. Yuck!

Baby D looks dangerous with brother's iPhone and the water.

Instead of buying some new patio furniture, I decided it was best to save money and clean up and oil my old wood furniture. I spent the money instead on a water fountain. Woohoo! Way better investment.

Quiche on the Fly

I am still using many great organic vegetables since I received my awesome biweekly combo box from Papa's Organic. I had to look up how to use Swiss Chard because I had never cooked it or ate it, that I know of. I received a bunch of red chard and a bunch of green chard.

Sauteed Veggies

I found this recipe on Food.com. It is for Crustless Swiss Chard Quiche. (I did not use the stems of the Chard) I changed it up a bit when it came to the vegetables because I have a ton to use right now. I sauteed 2 cups of Red Chard, handful of spinach, 1/2 small onion, 1/4 red bell pepper, 4 mushrooms, 1/2 yellow crooked neck squash, 1 clove of garlic, and about 12-15 little smokies cut in small pieces. I sauteed the veggies and smokies in olive oil and seasoned it with salt and pepper. I just used the kind of cheeses I had: Cheddar and Parmesan. I followed the rest of the directions.

Raw mixture ready to go in oven.

I popped it in the oven for 40 minutes, and it was super yummy to me. I am the only quiche lover in the house so I got plenty. :)

Garden Quiche - all browned!

Organic Delivery and Zuppa Toscana

I was so happy when I woke up. My bi-monthly delivery from Papa's Organic came in by FedEx on my doorstep. It was everything I hoped for and more. It was packed nicely with shredded paper and cold packs and sealed in an insulated foil bubble wrap.

This amount shown was a Medium sized box of Veggie and Fruit Combo. It contained: zucchini squash, 1 bunch kale, 1 bunch spinach, 1 bunch Red Chard, 1 bunch Green Chard, 4 bell peppers (3 red & 1 green), avocado, sack of new potatoes, 2 apples, 1 yellow grapefruit, 2 yellow onions, 3 red onions, bag of mushrooms, bananas, and pack of blueberries. Awesome! 40 Dollars and worth it to me.

This called for a cleaning of my fridge. I started gathering all of my old produce that needed to go. I even added the shredded paper that was with my veggie shipment in there. I got it ready for my compost tumbler. Today was the day I emptied my compost from last season in my garden bed and started a new batch. You can put almost anything in compost except for plastic, meat, and dairy. We have put everything in ours from food, hair, junk mail, paper from our shredder, dryer lint, and grass clippings. I also start mine with a little compost starter.

Here is what my dirt looked like when I removed it from the tumbler. Yep, I made that dirt.

Hard to believe it came from all of that junk I kept throwing in there. Tea bags and Coffee grounds and so much more!

Here is a picture of my tumbler I ordered from Amazon. It is called an Envirocycle Composter. It's pretty slick. The bottom can catch compost tea. It comes totally put together. It has rollers where it sits on so you can roll the tumbler to mix it. Sit it in the sun and it will make some dirt. I am going to get another one this year so I can have two batches during the summer time.

I added my compost to my little above ground planter that Danny and friends built for me. You can see in the background that Danny's office is coming along nicely.

I decided to make some of my favorite soup with some of my great organic veggies that came in. I made Zuppa Toscana. It is the one they sell at Olive Garden. You can get the recipe here.

This was a shot of my last ingredients to put in. The Kale was already chopped and the cream was waiting. I love that Pink Himalayan Salt. After it was all done, here is what my bowl of soup looked like. Hope yall enjoy!

Recreate Yourself

I have been listening to an audio book, "Throw Out Fifty Things, Clear the Clutter, Find Your Life" - Gail Blanke. The best surprise message from this book is Recreate Yourself. We tend to hold onto old ideas we have of ourselves because we need a kick in the pants. If you ever say to yourself that you wish you were more like another person because of their qualities then you need to make it so. Start becoming that person you want to be. It is just that easy. Throw out the old clothes that you don't like and start over. Isn't that a concept? It's just that easy.

The most important part of this book is to get rid of all of the stuff that you have latched onto that is weighing you down. It is a great motivational book to get you going. Sometimes that is all we need. Someone to say it out loud.

To go along with the book, you can download a workbook from her site. Even if you don't get this book, her site has some help.

Peppermint Hiccups

 My friend, Michelle, told me that Peppermint Essential Oil would cure hiccups because it stops spasms. I hope I said that right.

Anyway, the other day I had hiccups, I turned the bottle up and dropped a drop of oil on my tongue. In a few seconds, my tongue felt funny and my throat started feeling cold. ha ha It worked. My hiccups stopped immediately. Tonight, I got hiccups again and thought I would give it another try. It worked immediately. Not only do the hiccups stop, you get extra minty breath.

Thanks Michelle!

ALO Awaken with a side of Ginger

My friend, Michelle, told me about the health food store in Texarkana called Granary Street Discount Store. It is pretty awesome! I grabbed a few different drinks while I was there and popped them in the fridge.

My favorite so far is a drink called ALO Awaken. ALO's official website here. It has chunks of aloe in it with wheatgrass. It is surprisingly good to me. I already juice and have been drinking aloe juice almost daily so the flavor was not weird for me. My normal aloe juice does not have a taste. It can be put beside water, and I couldn't tell it apart. This drink has 2 servings in it. One serving is supposed to be equivalent to a cup of coffee, naturally.

A review of the ALO drink here: BEVNET. The user reviews outweigh the site's review. :)

The other night while I was working out, I tried another drink called Ginger enerGizer. It is put out by the Ginger People. It really is an energizing drink. It has triple the Ginger with a splash of apple. You can feel your body start to heat up when drinking it. It is said to improve digestion and metabolism. Woohoo! I usually add ginger to my juices when juicing, but I had never had this much at one time. It did its job. The taste was a little strong for me, but I would probably grow used to it quickly. It can be served hot or cold.