good morning dear ones. I hope you are all doing well and looking forwad to the marvelous day that God has set before us. it's gonna be a great day today. lots of opportunities just waiting for us. it's cloudy here this morning. that will be fine for our walk here in a little bit. I'll have to layer up because it's 39 hot degrees this morning. hahaha I don't know what all we'll get into today, but getting our walk behind up will be the start of a busy day. hopefully, I can share some of it with you tomorrow. let's make it a good one y'all!!!!!
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let's do a quick "2 minutes in the kitchen with me" today. so, the other day I took the rest of my cranberries from the dehydrator. I started with 8 bags in total for the year. I had originally gotten 3 of them done. then I done 2 more at 2 different times. then last friday, I think it was, I got the last 3 bags sliced and on the dehydrator. that's what's in the first picture. the bowl of slice cranberries.
the second jar is cranberries. these are from 2020. they were from frozen cranberries. I thawed them in sugar water and cooked them till they soaked up some sugar. that was the way everyone was saying they HAD to be done. well, I done those 2 bags that way. guess what, I now make my own executive decisions on how I do things instead of listening to what other people say this is how it HAS to be done. NO, NO, NO it doesn't have to be done that way!!!! I'll never do them that way again. I have found the perfect way for me to do them and that's slicing them fresh and putting them on the dehydrator and dehydrating them. this works wonderfully!!! so, that is what I used, is some from the previously cooked in sugar cranberries with dehydrated orange slices. this powder turned out good, but not as good as the plain sliced cranberries I have been using. I have 2 quarts of these to get used up and I'll do that just so I can I get back to my really delicious cranberries. hahaha
the third jar is rhubarb orange powder with stevia sweetener. the rhubarb was also previously frozen. I just thawed it a little and put it on the dehydrator. previously frozen rhubarb doesn't maintain it's deep pinkish color, unfortunately, when being dehydrated. the pink took on a brownish cast. put that with orange slices and you get the color that's in the third jar. it tastes fantastic, it just doesn't have the beautiful color that I was hoping for. but I'll definitely use it to put in my breakfast. it will still be great.
my main takeaway from making these powders this morning is that frozen berries and produce is excellent. but they may not maintain the lovely colors we hope for. even strawberries, previously frozen, doesn't have that beautiful red colors like when they are fresh. once frozen and then dehydrated, they take on a little bit of brown hue to them.
but, don't let that stop you from using frozen berries. unless you grow them yourself, most berries are too expensive to buy enough to dehydrate, but frozen berries can be affordable. so while fresh is the best, frozen is still a perfectly wonderful option and I'll be getting more frozen blueberries for sure. they will go a long way to helping restock my pantry.
I don't grow rhubarb, but I do love it. and it's difficult to find. the 2 batches I've dehydrated came from an amish store several hours away. so I doubt I'll be having any more of this any time soon. I do love it, but it's just not worth the drive to go get it. so for now, I'll just try to enjoy what I have left of it and maybe consider something else.
but it's so easy to make powdered fruits and then even easier to use them. a teaspoon or two in a cottage cheese or plain yogurt is really delicious. it's easy to sprinkle some in pancake batter or just sprinkle some in a cake mix. and then I use it in my chia flax and oatmeal pudding for breakfast every morning. it's just a way of bumping up the nutrition levels of my breakfast and it tastes good too. if you haven't tried it yet, go for it, you'll like it too.
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This is something that I wrote back in 2019 and I can't remember if I had shared it or not. if I have, that's ok, because it bares repeating again. there is lots of truth in this and that's why I share it, because I believe in sharing truth.
You know, the state of the country is really heartbreaking and it makes me have a deep longing for days gone by!!! I have been thinking a lot about the days of "yore", if you will. and I've been wondering about what makes those days so appealing and why one would love to go and spend a day or two or a year or two back in those times. The best I can do is try to share with you, in words pictures, what makes me long for those days.
I think one of the things that was nice, was that no one had a cell phone hanging from their face. hahaha Oh, don't get me wrong, I enjoy my electronic and technological devices, I do. I really do. But I also loved the times back then, when if you wanted to find out how someone was doing, you got in a vehicle and went to see them personally. A visit took effort, not afterthought.
When I was growing up, I did not grow up on a farm. Meaning that my parents did not own a farm, but my grandparents owned the farm that our small piece of property came from. Our property was on one side of the highway and my grandparents farm was on the other side of the highway. So, in that respect, I did grow up on a farm. Looking back on it now, every day on the farm was an adventure. And it was fun as a kid. I now know just how hard both sets of my grandparents worked, all their lives to sustain their families early on in their lives and then to sustain the farm in later years. But for a kid, there was a certain level of fun.
For instance, it was fun to go with Mamaw to gather eggs. She never took a basket, because she always had an apron on. That familiar piece of ladies clothing that I long to see again. Her apron was her egg basket and she never broke an egg!!! She had lots of chickens, so there was lots of eggs to collect at least twice a day. As I ponder on that, I miss it. There was also time to milk the cow each day. As a child, my Mamaw was the best milker I ever seen, I just knew she was a professional cow milker. hahaha I never could get a drop of milk from the cow!!! But she could get a gallon of milk in no time flat!! Papaw was just as good at milking as Mamaw was.
After the milking, Mamaw would always take her cheesecloth and strain the milk. That happened without fail, every time. She would strain out any stray hair that may fallen from the cow into the milk bucket. If I remember correctly, they may have milked that cow twice a day. It gave lots of milk with lots of cream. Then Mamaw would take some of the milk and make butter. Her butter was the best butter I ever had in my life. Take a fresh baked biscuit of my Mom's and put some of Mamaw's fresh homemade butter on it and it was simply delectable. I always loved to help Mamaw churn the milk too. She had the big old crock churn with the lid and the wooden dasher in it and once she got the churning process started, I would help and I enjoyed that a whole lot. After the butter was removed from the milk, the remaining was buttermilk. She didn't take every speck of butter off the milk, so it would be good and buttery and it was really good. An after supper delicacy was buttermilk and cornbread. It doesn't get much better than that. Oh, and cornbread was delicious slathered with some of the home made butter at suppertime.
They also had a huge garden that my Mom helped them with each year and they shared the produce. So, a lot of the time, all of us was in the garden. If we was too young or too small to help in the garden, we was nearby in the fence row where the adults could keep an eye on the smaller ones. One of those times, my brother and I got into poison sumac in the fence row, but that is a whole different story in itself!! But that too, just goes along with the days of yesterday and some of things we survived. hahaha
When it come to farming, Papaw farmed the old fashioned way. He had two mules, Jim and Red. They were the largest mules I ever remember seeing in my life, especially as a kid. He loved those mules. He was good to those mules and expected a lot from them and they never failed him. Every once in a while he would go into the kitchen to his brown sugar jar, setting in that old fashioned cabinet that so many farm houses had back then, and get a spoonful in each hand and walk out the screen door as it slammed behind him and the mules would hear the slam and look up. If they seen him walking to the fence, they would come to him and each one would get the special treat in his hands. After they had eaten the sugar lump, he would rub them on the face and head and pat them and slap them on one of their big sleek shiny sides before they walked off.
The slamming of the screen door is one of the sounds that I really miss from those days. No matter when you heard that sound, you knew some activity was getting ready to take place. Or maybe a particular activity had just finished. Maybe the filling of coal buckets in the winter time. Or filling of the water buckets from the well. Or taking scraps out to the chickens. Or maybe Mamaw was hanging laundry on the clothesline. But the slamming of the screen door meant someone was stirring. And that is a sound forever etched in my mind . Back in the day, everywhere you went, that was the sound you heard and it was a homey, familiar sound.
Another sound I loved to hear was the sound of the mules with all their tack on and hitched up to the wagon, coming down off the hill. I would love to hear that sound one more time in my life, but that is impossible. All I can do is try to remember it in my mind. There was no other sound quite like it. It was a very distinct sound. When you heard it, there was no doubt as to what it was. Hearing the jangle of all the brass attached to all the leather that made up the harnesses and then attached to the wagon and the rumble of the wagon wheels on the gravel road, picture in your mind some scene from a western show or movie of some kind. Those are sounds and even the sights that may have been very similar. But, when we heard the wagon coming off the hill, we knew that Mamaw and Papaw were, more than likely, going down to Jesse's store to get a few necessities for themselves and to also pick up a wagon load of feed for the animals. If my brothers and I got to go with them, I always asked them to pick out pretty feed sacks because I wanted pretty clothes made from them. I didn't get a lot of their feed sacks, but I did get a few and Mom would make me shorts and tops from them most of the time.
Their house sat at the top of the hill. While it wasn't a huge house, it was a 2 story house. As a child going up the hill, it looked to be a really big house, kinda like an antebellum house, but it was FAR from that. The driveway came up the center of the front yard and made a circle and then back down the hill. Think of the eye of a needle, that's what their driveway was. With a large cedar pole, from a VERY large cedar tree making the lamp post in the center of the eye of the needle. If you was setting on the front porch, you had a bullseye view of the driveway. You could see a head bob up and down while walking in the distance long before they got to the house. If someone was in a vehicle, you could hear it long before the vehicle got in sight. Papaw made a "no agents allowed" sign many years before I came along and nailed it to a tree at the bottom of the hill close to the road. If he wasn't expecting anyone, or if it was a vehicle he didn't recognize, he might get up and get his shotgun and have it sitting pretty close by. At any rate, he had it and would have used it if necessary. Fortunately, he never did. (I don't think he ever did!) hahaha
They never had a modern vehicle of any kind. No tractor. Everything that was done, was done the hard way, but when tractors started becoming popular, he would hire someone to come and break up a field or something or someone might just do it being neighborly. At any rate, it would save many back breaking hours for him. But he never felt the need to get one for himself. He would have had to learn to drive a tractor, but he already knew how to drive his prize team of mules.
Speaking of vehicles coming up the hill to their place, one of the things that we all waited for was the spring of the year when Mamaw would order her new chicks. Always 2 or 3 boxes of little chicks would be ordered and the mail carrier would deliver them. Mr. Gilliam would always take them up the hill to her and we, as kids, were so excited about it. We couldn't wait to get to see those new chicks. It was so fun!!! All those hopping little fur balls, they didn't have true feathers yet, just that baby pin feathers, more like fur than feathers, and they were the cutest things. I always loved that time of the year. We knew that later on in the year would be time to put the older chickens in the freezers. That was one heck of a time, doing all that. But it also meant that we all would eat well, because we had them in freezers.
At one time, Papaw had a small tobacco patch. I don't remember a lot about the growing process, but I do remember all of us being up there. we would be out by the pond and using the mules to haul water from the pond to the tobacco patch on a small flat bed runner wagon that he had built just for that purpose. that little wagon was used mainly when they was in the process of setting the tobacco plants. I also remember tobacco stripping time, everyone smelled of tobacco. It wasn't an unpleasant smell, just something we didn't smell all the time. I guess that may be where my brothers cut their teeth on learning to be good farm hands and learning how to do things as instructed by an adult. Because all 5 of them grew to be the best farm hands that any of the local farmers had ever hired and great men in general.
I remember a lot of time being spent sitting on the front porch with Mamaw and Papaw after the chores were done. I loved the times of sitting on the porch. It was a time that the young people got to listen and learn from the older people who had lived good hard lives and soak up a little wisdom. Sometimes there would be a lot of talking and other times there wasn't. but, at the end of the day they knew they had fulfilled the mission for the day and felt very accomplished for doing it.
In the early summer, the mornings were filled with lots of dew that had collected overnight and everything would be wet. That was the best mornings to go blackberry picking. Because we layered up with clothes to keep chiggers off us, and that made us hot. Most of the time we looked rather funny, more like we were dressed for the dead of winter, with our socks pulled up over our pants legs. Probably coal oil rubbed around our ankles and wrists to keep chiggers off our skin. We not only looked funny, but we smelled a little funny too. hahaha So when everything was full of dew, our clothes soaked up the dew and that cooled us off. If you didn't dress for success when picking blackberries, you would pay dearly!! Maybe at least one chigger per blackberry. Sometimes 2 chiggers per blackberry!!! hahaha That's a little bit of an exaggeration, but chiggers was a big deal and you wanted to avoid them at all costs!!!
I grew up in a day and time where, if you ate meat, more than likely "you" killed it beforehand. My grandparents would butcher a hog. That's where a LOT of their meat for the year would come from. My mother and older brothers would help them with the butchering process. They rendered their own lard and it was good. The rendering process left what was called "cracklings". It was the thick hide of the hog with fat on it and when they rendered the fat out, and it was thick, tough and chewy. A favorite to make with cracklings was crackling cornbread. Oh boy, was that ever good!!!! Not only would they kill a hog, but my brothers also deer hunted. So we would have deer meat. Rabbit, squirrel, quail, fish, turtle as well as beef was among some of the foods that we was raised on and we knew how to dress the meat in order to put it in the freezer and eat throughout the year. Those are lessons that never ever hurt a child to learn and know!!! You are more appreciative of the food you eat if you have time invested in it. Every child knew where their food came from, because more than likely they seen it butchered and cut up. By the time a boy was six or seven years old, he was going out in the woods with the older ones. He was learning how to hunt meat for food. When the young girls were of the same age, more than likely, they were in the kitchen helping their Mom and seeing how she prepared the food that had just been butchered. There was absolutely NOTHING wrong with that way of life!!!! That's what everyone did. If you ate meat, you killed it!!! When you come from a large family, it took a lot of meat. Heck, it took a lot of everything!! hahaha Just sayin'. Now days, all that the kids and most adults know, is that their food comes from the grocery store.
As a matter fact, I heard an "ignorant woman" (best words I can use without saying bad words) trying to make a point against hunting and wanting to take guns from the law abiding citizens say that there is no reason for anyone to have guns or to ever have to kill an animal for food when all you have to do is go to the grocery store and get meat!!! She was honest and truly trying to make a point that meat that comes from the store wasn't killed!!! (she may have been eating petri dish meat, I don't know!) Yes, that truly is the point she was trying to make!!!! I would loved to have told her to go ask a grandparent where their meat came from and ask her parents about the meat that they ate. Some people are beyond help and beyond understanding reasonable thought. Some people are dumber than a rock and they can't help it or they chose not to help it. I don't know.
That is some of the ignorance that makes me long for the days when the average person could think for themselves and didn't need biased news media or biased politicians or biased people pushing their own biased agendas telling them how to think. People used to have common sense. People used to know how to feed their families. People used to know how to love their neighbors. People used to have respect for what the bible says about sin. People used to have respect for this country. People in the past have sacrificed for their country. People used to have respect for a man or woman in uniform or for those that had worn the uniform of any branch of the United States Military. People used to have respect for human life. Real women would have attacked anyone wanting to kill a baby in the birth canal!!!! The females that we have seen, as of late, wearing white are not even qualified to be called females in my humble opinion. I have called them witches in social media and I stand behind that well enough to keep calling them witches. As a matter of fact, "evil witches" is what I have called them and I still do!!! There is absolutely nothing about their gender that defines me in any way, shape, form or fashion. There is truly something WRONG with these animals!!! They have sold themselves out to the devil and we are seeing what that looks like.
We also see men wanting to be women and women wanting to be men. And they are taking the steps necessary to change their gender. Whatever those steps are. I never thought I would ever live to see such days. I am serious about that. I remember when sin was treated as such, but now, we promote sin, we encourage sin, and we salute sin, we parade sin around like it's a part of God's grand desing!!!! Well, IT ISN'T!!!!!! Two men living as husband and husband is not a marriage, it's sin. Two women living together as wife and wife is not a marriage, it's sin. You know what, this is what God declared many years ago when He spoke the universe into being and set out to design what the family should look like. So, this is not what I think, it's what God thinks. I don't want anyone to give 2 hoots about what I think, because what I think matters to no one!!! But I do want you to care what the God of all creation thinks and He has said that there are some things that He has declared as sin.
I can not and will not speak otherwise. If I spoke against God, it would be down right sin and I will not purposefully sin against God. Yes, I sin every day, I repent and seek forgiveness every day. I do not want to mislead anyone with what I say, that's why I make sure to try and not tell you what I think, but share with you what God has said. and I have to say this while I'm at it: there is no such thing as "homosexual Christians". show me in scripture where the Word of God says there is such a thing as "homosexual Christians!!!" show it to me, I want to see it!!! but, Paul did tell the Corinthians when he was addressing sin in the church, along with homosexual sin, that "such WERE some of you". "were" is the operative word here. so if you go to church that freely openly accepts people living in homosexual sin and accepts it as a way of life, you are attending a club, not a church that worships our living God. it's just that plain. if they ever were a church, they have been taken over by the devil and his helpers. and if there are any true christians in a church like that, they should run away and don't look back!!! when we normalize sin, all hope is gone.
So, when I think of the present day in which I live, I truly long for days when kids could just be kids, men were men and women were women and proud to be exactly as God made them. The days when people was respectful to each other. The days when children were treated as such. When children was respectful to the adults around them. When children was actually disciplined. When parents parented and the government expected parents to parent. When drunks were called drunks and drug addicts were called drug addicts, not victims of society. When people actually worked for what they had. When handouts wasn't a way of life. When "being entitled" meant that you had WORKED HARD for what you got, meaning that working hard is what "entitled" you to the paycheck or social security or medicare that you was to get. That is what entitlement IS!!!!!!
Entitlement is NOT a free handout!!!! But, if you come across the border illegally, then you can get whatever the United States Government has in the way of handouts, free, just for coming across the border!!!!! There is something wrong with that!!!! When honest, hard-working men and women have worked hard their whole lives and paid their fair share of taxes into this system and they are denied disability, when in fact they are disabled, that my friends, is a diabolical disgrace!!!! Lord, I long for the days when people had enough active brain cells to tell right from wrong.
let me throw out a couple of words right here, and then you think about it. think about what it means to and for you. INDOCTRINATION BRAINWASHING this is what the news media is doing and this is what the public school system is doing!!!! when you tear down the family with divorce and perversion in the form of homosexuality and having women taking mens places in all areas of life, you get what we got right now!!! and that's a horrible mess!!!!! don't believe me, look around you with clear eyes.
Freedom is NOT free!!! The sad state of the matter is that there are not enough people willing to fight for their freedom. As a matter of fact, these people are working hard at handing their freedom over to someone else, anyone else, on a silver platter, free of charge, and not even trying to retain even a little bit of freedom. I never ever thought I would live long enough to witness as much stupidity in high levels of authority as we have today. I never ever thought I would live to see the people turn our land over to the muslims so easily!!! Remember 911, I do! I never thought I would live long enough to see govt officials cower down to CHILDREN!!!!!! What in heck is wrong with people!!!!!
Lord, I long for the days of common sense!!! I long for the days in which people thought for themselves. I long for the days in which you didn't have to worry about offending people so easily. the truth of Christ is offensive to those filled with devil!!!! I long for the days that people recognized sin as sin, instead of an alternative lifestyle. I long for front porch chats. I long for visiting friends in person. I long for children chasing fireflies instead of being chastised for catching them. I long for the days that you would see kids out picking blackberries. I long for the days of collecting eggs in aprons. I long for the day in which you didn't wonder if you was looking at a man or a woman. I long for the days of seeing generations working side by side in the garden. I long for the days when you would see teenage boys out working for the farmers. That's where a lot of boys grew to be trustworthy men!!!! I long to see men being men and women being women and seeing both men and women accepting their responsibility as parents. I long for common sense to make a return. I long for the days in which parents thought more of the children than they do of the dogs and cats living in their house. now a days, they'll let the school system and the community feed their children while they take welfare money and feed the dogs and cats. they'll use their welfare money on manis and pedis, and get their weaves done while their children are living without basic necessities.
This is just some of things that I long for. I realize that common sense will not be coming back around any time soon and if it does try to make a comeback, I'm sure that it will be taken out swiftly. I don't know if there is anything left worth fighting for. I don't know if there is anyone left that would be willing to fight if we do deem something worth fighting for. I just know for sure that we have handed everything that our forefathers have fought and died for over to a generation of ingrates and an influx of illegal aliens. By the time these animals are done, there will be nothing left worth reminiscing about. we have what a "tide pod" eating society produces.
If this sounds depressing, let me say that "it is depressing". The days in which I live are depressing and the days in which you live are no less depressing. Prayer is our only recourse. Not only for ourselves, but for this country, for the leaders of this country and for anyone who actually cares about this country anymore. We have more politicians in office that are working hard from the inside to destroy this country than there are those who are trying to save this country. Lord help those who are trying to save this country. From my pitiful point of view, it's time to clean house!!!!
Insanity has been described as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. We are living in insane times with insane people making decisions beneficial to themselves, instead of benefiting the people who put them in office. Voting themselves big raises and bettering their insurance programs all the while the working poor get poorer and their insurance is laughable. If I let myself go, I could really tell y'all about what's happening, but I try to refrain from foul words and potty mouth. But needless to say, I am ticked off about what's happening in our country.
That's why I long for some of the days back when I was kid and I knew that adults had everything under control. I could go to bed each night and know that whatever happened, Momma and Daddy was gonna take care of us. Now, we have parents murdering babies in the birth canal. Abortion has become this countries great holocaust and it only gets worse. Because no one cares about the babies. Animals have a higher regard in this country than an actual human baby!!! Abortion has become the modern day sacrifice to the devil. read about the sacrifices that the pagans done in the Old Testament. that's why God forbade His people having any interaction with the pagans, but the people didn't listen to God. we don't listen to God either. Abortion has become the coverup for fornication, the coverup for cheating on one's spouse, abortion has become the coverup for a lot of bad behavior and apparently, people want to continue to kill the children that had nothing to do with it in the first place. and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with the betterment of womens health!!!! that's another indoctrinational LIE!!!! if you're concerned about womens health, then stop breeding with anything that comes along!!!! you know the drug saying, "just say NO!", well, just say no!!!!! but if you say yes and you end up pregnant, in God's eyes, you MURDER that child when you have an abortion. The best I can say, "hell keeps getting hotter every day"!!
The thing of it is this, not a single sin that I have mentioned is unforgivable. Not a one. But repentance is a word that people are bound and determined NOT to have anything to do with. I don't even know if the word repentance is a viable word these days because we never hear it used. The act of repentance is all it takes for the shed blood of Jesus to cover those sins. But that IS what it takes. Nothing else will suffice!!! Repentance is an ugly word in most people's mind. But that's the only way to get out of this mess, is repentance. Those of us who are Christians need to repent for our complacency and then we need to pray for others to repent. If ever there was a time that people need to repent, it is now. I pray that people will come to the Lord and that other people will come "back" to Lord. This country needs some serious healing, and it will only come with repentance and turning to Jesus Christ.
Lord, I pray that you show me the error of my ways. I pray that You will show us all the error of our ways before it's too late. I pray that You will give common sense and wisdom and knowledge to those actively seeking it. I pray that You will bless those who are at the forefront of the battle, fighting for this country. I pray that You will stop those who are dead set on destroying this country. Focus our hearts and minds on You and what You desire for us. Forgive us for not seeking You when we know that You are our only salvation. Help us to arise from the sleep and daze that we are in and see clearly what You have for us. Show us directly, with no doubt, the things that are sin and the things that displease You. Forgive us for not trusting You. Thank You for what You are going to do, in the name of Jesus! Amen
So, as I re-read this, I realize that I "keep" going back to a time that made sense. I keep going back to a time when people cared about others. I keep longing for the days when, even if you didn't go to church, you had respect for those who did. You know, we have never had a time in this country when someone wasn't in need of some of the basics of life. But it used to be that if you knew someone was in need, you helped them while allowing them to maintain a little bit of their dignity. Those days are gone. But, I can't help it, I keep longing for those days. Since we live in a time where some people are profiting from evil, it's gonna be hard to change the outcome. We have tolerated way too much for the sake of not offending someone!!!! Well, I'm offended at that and it's time to repent and have some courageous faith that God can change the evil winds that are sweeping across this country. We either fight for good or we fight for evil, either way we are in a battle. Our battle starts in our circle of influence, right where we live. You/I/we do have influence and we need to remember that. If we have Christ as our shield, we can stand up and make a difference. It's up to us to repent and ask Christ to go before us.
So......we reminisce, we repent and we keep moving forward, in the name of Jesus Christ. Repent and serve the Lord right where you are, make a difference for Christ. hugs, love and blessings, patty
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