Frying Chicken for two and what is going on here today...

My daughter bought me one of these nice little 2-quart Lodge Logic cast iron Dutch Ovens.  I also have a very large Lodge deep skillet that I use for frying chicken. Today though, just for the two of us, I wanted to fry just two chicken drumsticks.  If I use a regular skillet, then lard will get all over the stove because a regular skillet is too shallow.  But it occurred to me to use the 2-quart Dutch Oven, and that worked very well!  I always use kettle-rendered lard to fry our chicken.

About 3 years ago, I started a simple quilt and then life intervened and I didn't get to finish it.  Finally, I've been working on it again.  I am doing hand quilting, sitting here at our kitchen island.  Hopefully, I will complete it before too long.

We had a break in the weather and I actually found a few oyster mushrooms outside today!

Mystery soup.... ;)

Husband: "What are you making?"

Me: "I don't know."

Husband: "Sounds scary."

I agreed, but was on a mission to cook something nice with what I had that needed using up, like some leftover meatloaf.  I cut it into cubes.

On the left, you can see the meatloaf.  I scrubbed and cubed a nice potato.

...put some good extra-virgin olive oil in my cast iron Dutch oven and sauteed some cut-up red cabbage and a diced onion until the onion was starting to brown, stirring the whole time.

I had about 3 cups of leftover chicken bone broth/stock and poured that into the pan.

Last night I put 1/2 cup of lentils to soak in plenty of cold water.  Here they are, drained and rinsed.  These go into the pot next along with a minced clove of garlic and the potato chunks.

There it is all is together, and I will bring it to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer it, covered, for 30 minutes:

While it was simmering, I cooked 1 cup of "bow-tie" pasta in water and drained it.  Why bow-tie?  Because it's pretty, of course!  :)

After the pasta was cooked and drained, I added it and the cubes of meatloaf to the soup, as well as 1 teaspoon sea salt and a few cranks of black pepper.

Here it is!  It is now in the fridge.  I will reheat if for dinner and serve it with some good homemade bread and butter.  

It tastes wonderful!  Hmmmm...  I just need a good name for it.  Any suggestions?

Two More Potholders... just had to show you. :)

A little gift for a special friend....

Our New Year's Day Dinner

The Garden Fairy and I decided to try to make a southern style meal for our New Year's Day feast.  It worked out well and was delicious.  I made this pot of black eyed peas in my 6-quart pressure cooker!

Black Eyed Peas

1 pound dried black eyed peas, sorted, rinsed and soaked in lots of cold water at least overnight, and drained.
1/2 pound bacon - fried and crumbled
1/2 pound ham - diced
1 medium onion, chopped, and sauteed in the bacon grease and butter until it is a little brown.
1/4 cup butter
6 cups chicken stock

Prepare all of these ingredients and combine them in a 6-quart pressure cooker.  Put on the lid and petcock and bring up to pressure over medium heat.  Reduce heat so the petcock is rocking gently and allow to cook for 40 minutes.  Remove from heat and let the pressure release naturally.

Here are the soaked and drained peas:

The onion cooking in the butter and bacon grease:

Diced ham:

Everything together in the pressure cooker:

Finished soup!

Along with this we had corn bread, collard greens sauteed with bacon, and a wonderful pork butt roast that I cooked in my big Crockpot.

Oh, it was all so good.  I am very grateful for all of the good food and the blessings of family.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OF YOU!

Money saving bread making tip...

I like to use honey in my homemade bread.  I also like to use blackstrap molasses.  See that bread there?  It is kind of dark in color.  I used the blackstrap molasses this time.  It is delicious.  Honey costs over $40 a gallon.  Blackstrap molasses costs about $9 a gallon.  It is also very high in minerals.  If you make bread, you might want to give it a try.  It has a significantly lower glycemic index than sugar, and just a little lower than honey.  Since I use natural yeast now, almost exclusively, this makes it so my bread has a very low glycemic index.  This is all good news. 

A scrappy quilt for my grandson's bed...

My 12-year-old grandson has a queen-size bed.  He didn't have a blanket big enough for the whole thing, so I told him I'd make one for him. I found THIS nice video on YouTube and so I followed her instructions for making the quilt top from strips of scraps. 

I made my strips a little wider than she suggested - 3 1/2 inches, so with 1/4 inch seams, I ended up with 3 inch wide strips in the quilt.  I just randomly stacked the strips for sewing together.  I started out with 66 yards of sewn-together strips, and after finishing, the quilt is 90 inches x 100 inches, which is a nice size for his bed.  I put a layer of batting between the top and the backing, which I made out of bright orange fleece fabric... his favorite color.  After it was all together, I pinned it with safety pins and then took it to the sewing machine and "stitched in the ditch" between each 3rd strip.  That's all there was to it!  Of course it took some time, but it was very simple and relatively quick to make.

He loves it.  He says he sleeps better now with it on his bed.  :)

FYI - I laid it out on the gym floor at our Church.  I don't have enough floor space here, without all sorts of gymnastic moves on my part.

Yogurt in my Wonder(ful) Cooking Bag!

My friend, Juvonda from Hoosier Heartland Alpacas, shared her yogurt recipe with me.  She incubates hers in her oven, and it works perfectly.  My oven won't let me set it at such a low temperature, so I wanted to figure out another way.  After much thought, I settled on trying to do it in my "Wonder(ful) Cooking Bag." It worked perfectly! Here is what it looked like when I opened it all up this morning:

And here is Juvonda's recipe:

Homemade Yogurt

1 gallon whole milk
1/2 cup plain yogurt with live cultures

Over medium-low heat, heat the milk in a stainless steel kettle to 185 degrees F (85 C)
Remove from heat and allow to cool to 115 F (46 C)
Whisk in 1/2 cut plain yogurt, thoroughly.
Cover with lid and either put it in your oven at 115 F (46 C) overnight, OR, into a cooking bag like above or wrap it up a lot with fluffy quilts in a basket or box.
Let it sit at least overnight.  Longer is fine.
Pour into glass jars or a glass bowl, cover and refrigerate.
That's it!  Easy Peasy.

Be sure to save 1/2 cup yogurt for your next batch.