Kitchen Experiments

 Can you guess what I'm making?

Cheese!

Specifically, I'm attempting to make a whole milk ricotta cheese. It's still in progress, so I'm not sure how it will turn out, but I'm excited.  I've made farmer cheese before (delicious!), but I've never tried ricotta.  Since I've been getting milk from a nearby farm, I have been doing a bit of experimenting.  I've made sour cream, and I absolutely love it.  Mostly, I've been drinking the milk, because I love unhomogenized milk, but I'm also trying some other things in the kitchen.  More cheeses will be attempted, another week.  

Update: Ricotta is delicious!!! I probably drained it too long, but otherwise it is fantastic.

My friend suggested mixing some cream with it, which would work, I think.  Or we can just eat it, which may be the case.  Right now, it is hiding in the back of the fridge so no one eats it before I figure out how I want to serve it!

Projects and Etc

 

I took the 3 younger kids to Walmart today.  They wanted to spend a bit of Christmas money.  Emry got a new Lego set.  He's been liking cars for a while, so he got a technic car:

Gyunay opted for Stich Monopoly, which Lydia and Nathaniel agreed to play:

I've been working on various projects, including this blanket for our bed:

Last night, I was trying to clip the loose threads, but I had to snuggle with the dogs, so it wasn't easy:

And I have been working on reorganizing and cleaning.  The play room got a facelift and much needed organization:

Elijah has been helping me with some projects in the basement, so more organization will be upcoming.  I also need to start seeds in the playroom, now that it's not absolutely frigid.

Winter News

The dogs are happy to have the Christmas tree out of their sun spots.

This is Lydia's snow angel last week:

It has melted some, but it is still visible.

Lydia had her pole vault debut on Saturday, and we are looking forward to seeing more of that.  Emry had his first basketball game of the season, which was very close all the way through.  He gets to play every Saturday through February, so we will be enjoying lots of basketball.

Also, Friday the boys enjoyed this epic snow sledding hill with friends:

It was 45 degrees and sunny, with plenty of snow still around, so they had a blast.  Since then, we had another light coating of powdery snow, and we are now in frigid temps, so no one has been doing any outside snow play!  It was -4 this morning.

 

And Just Like That,

Malachi and Pilot are back at school 

Around here, Lydia has a new church outfit that I absolutely love:

Some of you will recognize the sweater.  It was Papaw's.  After he died, Mamaw gave me some of his clothes for the boys.  Neither Elijah nor Malachi ever wore this sweater, and they are too big for it now. I had put it up in the closet, but I recently got it down and realized that Lydia would probably like it, and she did!  She paired it with her green pants and affectionately calls it her "old man 'fit".  (Fit=outfit, for those not up on teen slang)

So Much Snow

 We've had a lot of fun in the snow this week.  Emry, Lydia, and Gyunay have all been sledding.  Lydia made a snow penguin chick:

We also made and enjoyed snow ice cream!

Buddy Bean loves the cold and the snow:

He is less thrilled that his tunnels are buried under snow.

The dogs love the snow, too.

Yesterday, the boys and their friends had a fun hockey game on the pond:

Right now, Nathaniel is out on the pond playing with them.

And Lydia drew a fantasy platypus:

It and the snow chick were both assignments from her Ceramics class this week.  She's been home with us and doing some online assignments from her teachers.

We got another couple of inches yesterday/last night (probably 2 or 3), but tomorrow it's supposed to warm up to 38, so we will see a lot of melting.

Snow!

 Real snow! Lots of snow!

Nathaniel and the boys shoveled a path to the chicken coop for me and the dogs.

The dogs love it!

These are from yesterday, when we had about 8 inches of snow.  We've added about 4 more, plus some sleet, and it's snowing again.  The paths are well covered now!  However, they are still considerably lower than the rest of the yard, and the dogs and I took them this morning for chicken chores.  The dogs went under the trampoline to do their business, where there is no snow.  

I'll try to get some pictures of the kids in the snow today.  Yesterday, we took shifts on shoveling, and the younger 3 all had fun sledding and playing in the snow.  Lydia made a snow angel on the carport roof.  

December Harvest Totals, and Jam and Preserves

 Eggs - 112

Bulgarian Pepper - 1

I have made jam since forever.  I learned from Mom when I was a kid.  Actually, one of my first kitchen memories is making jam: I was in my underwear, smashing berries with a fork in our kitchen on 5th Street.  Most of the jams we made when I was little were either strawberry or blackberry.  I'd help pick wild blackberries at Sleepy Hollow, and we sometimes had enough for jam.  Later, a neighbor kept us well-supplied with blackberries.  When I was older, Papaw would buy cherries for Mom to make jam, which was a fantastic flavor.  Once, someone gave us a bunch of nectarines, and Mom made jam from those.  Basically, I loved homemade jam, and I made it off and on as a kid.  As an adult, I have been making it for over 20 years now, and it is generally a well-received gift, so I make far more that we actually eat (although we do eat a ton of it).

This year, I made 47 pints of jam.  Last year, I made 66, so I'm a bit down from that, but we didn't pick blueberries this year, and we didn't buy tons of cherries like last year.  We also didn't get to upick strawberries, and I never did make mint jelly like I meant to.  However, I did make a new flavor, tangerine marmalade, since I bought a half bushel of Georgia tangerines.  Nathaniel is very happy with that discovery.  This year's jam flavors were: raspberry, strawberry with lemon, strawberry peach, cherry, cinnamon peach, peach, blackberry peach, peach hot pepper, apple, and tangerine marmalade.

Since my tomato harvest failed, and I got no canning tomatoes elsewhere, I didn't can tomato salsa for the first time in forever (excepting 2022, of course, when I was hospitalized).  However, I had a bumper crop of tomatillos, so I canned 25.5 pints of tomatillo salsa, and I canned an additional 18 pints of peach salsa and 3.5 pints of green tomato salsa, so we do have salsa, just none of the red kind.  I also didn't grow a ton of cucumbers, so I only canned 6.5 pints of relish and 6 pints of dill pickles, although we ate a lot of fresh cucumbers, and I fermented several batches of dill pickles as well.  Honey Peaches remain a staple for me to take to breakfast club, and I canned 28 quarts of those this year (down from 40 qts last year).  I think aiming for about 35 qts a year makes sense for next year.  I actually plan to can more tangerine marmalade and some chicken stock this month, but those totals will go to 2025.

In other news, last month Lydia, Malachi, and Acorn serenaded us with music:

Elijah has been busy with 3d puzzles, including this owl:

And he spent a great deal of time with Emry's dragon/phoenix one.  Emry's friends got him it for his birthday, with no idea of how hard it actually would be.  Emry enlisted Elijah's help.