Memorial Day, homemade yogurt, homemade frozen yogurt

good early evening y'all!!          I hope and pray that this finds everyone doing well and happy to be a part of such a beautiful day.         it's been a very pleasant change from the last couple of days with all the storms that rolled thru my neck of the woods.          I'm thankful for the protection of God over us and I pray for those who have lost loved ones to this and all the other storms. 

today is the day that Americans celebrate Memorial Day to remember all the people who have given their lives in service to this great country.         many Americans have died trying to keep people safe all over the world.        it's one thing when the rest of the world doesn't appreciate the sacrifice, but it's a totally different kind of disrespect when some americans don't appreciate the sacrifice.        so I just have to say that I'm thankful for all the men and women who have given the most that can be given to a country, their lives.         the saying, "all gave some, some gave all", really has more meaning on this day and I pray that we have all remembered what today is all about.        thank you to all the veterans and active service people who are serving this country now.       you are our heroes.       thank you for your service!!

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I finally got back to making something that I absolutely love.         homemade yogurt!!!        it's made in the instant pot that has a yogurt setting.         it has to have a yogurt setting or it won't work.        it takes "ultra high pasteurization" milk, such as fairlife or kroger carbmaster.         fairlife is not quite a half gallon and kroger carbmaster is a full half gallon.        I mention that because with the kroger carbmaster, I feel like you get your moneys worth and not so with fairlife brand.    then I  add a couple of tablespoons of a really good plain, unsweetened greek yogurt such as chobani brand.     make sure that what ever you get has lots of different live active yogurt cultures in it.        the more the better.

I put the milk and yogurt in the instant pot and set it on the yogurt setting and put about 18 to 20 hours on the countdown.        I like my yogurt to have a lot of tang.         you can set it to 8 hours and that's what most people like, but I love a lot of tang.

this first pic is of the finished yogurt.         I stuck my spatula in it to see how thick it was.         it's looking really good.

I have a basket that I use in my electric pressure cookers to cook meats and veggies or anything that I want strained and it turns out that it's the perfect strainer for me to strain my yogurt with.        I set the strainer in a bowl on top of a rack in the bottom of the bowl to give lots of room for the whey to strain off.    I line the strainer basket with a flour sack towel and pour the yogurt into it.

here the yogurt has been poured into the strainer and it's already staining the whey off.    I try to get the yogurt in the fridge, straining, just before I go to bed, that way early in the morning it's ready to take from the strainer and get dished up and back into the fridge.

I take the flour sack towel and twist it up and just lay it on top of the strainer.         if you let the towel hang over the edge of the strainer, it will wick the whey out into the fridge and that's a mess you don't want to have to deal with.          trust me on this.       hahaha         I learned the hard way.   

once I got the greek yogurt made, I decided we needed to try some frozen greek yogurt.        my friend had made some and I wanted to make some too.          my hubby's favorite all time frozen yogurt is black cherry yogurt.        it just turned out that I had some frozen black cherries in the freezer.       Yay!!!         I got out about a cup of them and thawed them some and sliced them up.        I got my ice cream freezer bowl out of the freezer in the garage and put the yogurt and black cherries in it and in about 15 minutes I had frozen yogurt.      

it does look pretty good, if I do say so myself.           my hubby thought it was delicious!!         and it was.

it look really nice in the bowl and it was really creamy.

this is what we enjoyed and I do mean enjoy.

my one take away from this experience is that the next time I make the black cherry yogurt, I will thaw the cherries completely and maybe put them in the food processor for just a pulse or two.         slicing the cherries didn't break them up enough and I think pulsing them in the food processor would also give a little more color to the overall color of the finished yogurt and I think it would also add more actual flavor to the yogurt.          we really enjoyed this and I'll be making it again.

back to making the yogurt.           I went to the dollar tree and got a got couple quart cartons of shelf stable whole milk to try.          it was ultra high pasteurized and I wondered it if would work.          well, I'm happy to say that it did work wonderfully.          it was the creamiest and smoothest yogurt that I've ever made.

and, when I made the black cherry yogurt, I forgot to save enough to start my next batch.         you always want to save 2 or 3 tablespoons per half gallon of milk.       well, I didn't have any yogurt, but I did have a quart of whey from that batch.         I used about a cup of whey to the 2 quarts that I had gotten at the dollar tree and that worked wonderfully!!!!!         I had never used whey as a starter, but had heard you could.          and as it turns out, you can.         

I always pour up the whey into a quart jar and save it to use in soups and breads and whatever, and as it turns out, I was really happy that I had saved it because I would have had to go to kroger to get some yogurt to use as my starter.         but I didn't have to.         and I can say that this yogurt will stay in my fridge for the foreseeable future.          it's so very easy to make, just a little time consuming and I'm ok with that.

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I hope you have a great day and I pray that you have a restful night or healing sleep.        I pray that you can sleep tonight knowing that "God is; all is well".         I pray that if you don't Christ as your personal Savior, that tonight will be the night that you ask Him to save your soul.         He's just waiting for you to ask Him.       

I guess this is about all I have for tonight.         I hope to be back with more real soon.        I hope you check out more of my blog posts and feel free to leave me a message.       always remember that God loves and so do I.         hugs and blessings, patty

It's a Good Day

good morning beautiful friends.        I hope and pray that where ever y'all are that you can say, "it's a good day".         the main reason it's a good day is the fact that we woke up this morning by God's  plan and not ours.        any day my feet hit the floor is a good day.          any day my heart is beating, it's a good day.    it's hard to remind myself of that when my body is in pain, but I still have to say, "it's a good day".       

another reason it's a good day, we got a quick walk in this morning.       it's a good thing we got it in when we did because a severe thunderstorm alert has just come thru the cell phones and the local weather system for tornado sirens are going off, but not for a tornado, I'm thinking it's for the severe thunderstorm warning.         the maps shows a huge mass of bad weather upon us.         I pray that the Lord keeps us all safe till the storms passes by.

we've had a lot of rain this month.          I remember the old timers calling it the "May Fresh".        my husband and I was talking about that yesterday.        I reckon they had gotten the crops planted and the May Fresh would help them come up.         if it rained too much, a lot of the crops would wash right down the rivers, creeks and streams.        there has been a lot of that this spring too.        as of right now, in my particular area, we've had 11.5 inches of rain just in the last 2 weeks, and we're getting more today.  so we'll see how much we end with in all.       the ground is so saturated, there's no where for it all to go.

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I have been taking care of my garden as good as I know how to.         every day is a new learning experience for me and I look forward to the new lessons.     we had gotten 3 inches of rain over the last 3 days, including friday night on into saturday morning.          I have 4 large raised beds on legs called keter raised beds.           you can easily google that and see what they look like.        I had planted greenbeans in them  about a couple of weeks ago, after I got the first 9 inches of rain drained from them.       I amended the soil and planted my beans and they came up and have been doing really good.         

while they were sprouting, I put my mesh covers over them to keep birds and squirrels from eating the sprouts as they come up.       I had been putting off uncovering them till coming monday.           well, as I said, it rained friday night and early saturday morning and then on up in the day, the sun came out.       I was happy to see the sun.          we decided to hop in the car for a minute or two and on the way to the car, I ran to look at my greenbeans in the keters and oh my gosh, water was standing in one of the beds again and the sun had already scalded one bed of my greenbeans.          I don't know if they'll survive or not, but I sure hope they do.        I took a peek at them this morning, and they may, that's a slim may, but they may survive.       so I quickly opened the drains in the bottoms of all 4 and got them draining.       for the time being, I just left the drains open, because as I type, you guessed it, it's raining.  

I had been using the mesh over the keters doubled.        that made it kinda like a greenhouse of sorts and holding all the heat in and then the water, it just made for a perfect scenario  for scalding the beans. when I took the mesh off the raised beds, I went to my garden shed and got scissors and I cut each piece of that mesh into 2 pieces.        so now, I have 8 pieces of mesh and that chore is done.        I had been putting it off for a few years, but it's done now.         better late than never is what I always say.     

my gardening got off to a  very rocky start this year.         I had started a bunch of seeds back in late january and early february and when would have a warm sunny day, I would set my seedlings out in the shade and let them feel the breeze and just breathe  and enjoy the real weather instead of heat mats and fake lights.      they was coming along really good and one day in march it was a beautiful day and weather bug was calling for the 50's at night, so I knew those temps would not hurt my seedlings, and would actually be good for them.         so I left them out over night.  

don't trust a weather app, trust your gut!!!!!         weather bug lied big time!!!        the temperature dipped down to 19*!!!!!!!!!           that's a big difference between the mid 50's and 19*!!!!!!         I lost all of my seed starts but about 6 of them.         I cried for a little bit.        then I got on amazon and looked for a hydroponic garden.         I found a Dak Ride that was less $30 when the coupon was applied so my husband ordered it for me.         it came and I got it set up and had tomato and pepper seedlings coming up in less than a week!!!!!         it usually takes a long time for either of those to sprout.        once they got a pretty good size, I took them from the Dak Ride and put them in pots and keep them really damp for the first 2 weeks and set them out in the shade on sunny days.       during that time, my husband suggested I get another one.          I happily obliged that suggestion and got another one and between the 2 Dak Rides, I've best seedlings I've ever had.         that goes for the seedlings I've bought over the years too.        they are healthy and strong and beautiful.

once I get them all set out in pots and containers, they are just doing so good.        I'm so thankful that I have something now that will help me with having strong healthy seedlings for my  container garden.   plus, I can also grow all kinds of salad greens during the late fall, winter and early spring.       that's a plus all year long.

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I was grocery shopping on friday and went to kroger and then aldi on up in the morning.         I always go to kroger first and get the   sale items and then go to aldi and get what I stay stocked up on there.      I wanted something different, I had no idea what that would be.        I got to the meat department and  was looking.       meat of any kind has gone up so much that I'm picky when I spend money on meat.     hahaha          so as I was looking, I seen a pkg of something that caught my eye.         they called it "pork rib tips", but it looked more like scraps to me.        anyway, I looked at it for a minute and I put a pkg in my cart and went to checkout.         I got home with my groceries and got everything put up and started thing about what I wanted to do with those "pork rib tips".     

I actually done a quick google and they was showing recipes that 14 or 16 hours to cook!!!!       NO WAY!!!         I got out one of my electric pressure cookers and put a rack in it to keep the meat out of the cup of water I added.        I have applewood rub and I rubbed each piece with that and put it in the pressure cooker for 35 minutes on high.         

when they was done, I took some small tongs and pulled out all the little bones out.        once I got the bones out, I fixed a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.       I put the meat on the baking sheet and covered it with bbq sauce and  popped it in the counter top oven on 350 for another 30 to 35 minutes and I'm telling you it was the best meat that my husband and I have ever eaten!!!         it was absolutely delicious!!!!          next time I go, I'll check for more and put a pkg or 2 in the freezer.

so, while I was at aldi, I picked up a pkg of zucchini and this is my fav way to prepare it.          I slice it thin, length ways and put it on parchment paper on a baking sheet and add just a dot of butter on each piece, a sprinkle of parm bread crumbs and this had a slice of gouda cheese cut in real thin strips.  I popped it in the counter top oven on 350* and baked for about 25 minutes and it was fabulous!!!!!!

the below pic is the finished product.           the one thing to do differently is use a melty cheese.        the real gouda cheese turned into cheese sticks.        hahaha         don't get me wrong, it was delicious, but I'll use something a little more melty next time.

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this is something else I wanted to share with y'all.          it is turkey bacon wrapped greenbeans.         this is what I'm doing with all my greenbeans this year.          I've got it down a mathematical science of sorts.          hahaha          for this particular dish, for the 2 of us, it takes 32 greenbeans and 8 pieces of bacon.          cut each strip of bacon in half length ways  to end up with 16 long strips of bacon.     separate the beans into 2 piles of 16 each and the bacon strips into 8 piles each.         wrap 2 beans with 1 strip of bacon.

one you get all your little bean and bacon bundles made, put them in the air fryer on 400* for as long as it takes to the bacon done to your satisfaction.          I usually leave mine in the air fryer for between 12 and 15 minutes.

they are done to perfection here.           we love this so much!!!          you don't even have to season the beans in any way because the bacon will automatically season them.           I also wrap dill pickle spears the same way and asparagus.          it's all better with pork bacon, but pork bacon is very expensive and I have quite a few pkgs of turkey bacon in the freezer right now.         so I try to use what I have as often as I can.

I ask you all to keep my neck of the woods in your prayers.           we are in an active weather situation right now with tornado warnings and tornado watches and all the local tornado sirens going off.        just pray for the Lord to keep us safe as this thing passes thru.

Lord keep us safe till the storm passes by!!

I will leave you all with well wishes and prayers of safety for you all.        if you're experiencing bad weather, I hold you close.        

I hope you seen something here today that you enjoyed.        maybe try a quick recipe idea or something.         I also hope that you leave here knowing that God loves you and wants to be in right relationship with you thru the shed blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.        I pray that if you don't Him, that today would be day that you reach out to Him.       He will save you from the devils torment.     

blessings to all.       God loves you and so do I.        big hugs and stay safe, patty

Blessings, big and small, enjoy them all

Good afternoon on this Memorial Weekend.        I pray that we all take the time this weekend to think about what it's all about.        It's about our freedom and the heavy price that people have paid for it. Most families across the US have family members that have fought and died for this country.       It's a shame that we don't value our freedom enough to fight harder to keep it than we do.         Those in politics have fought tooth and nail to squander our freedoms.        I think a new law should passed.    This new law would be that you can only run for a political office AFTER serving this country in the form of Military Service for at least 4 years!!!!        I wonder how many would be running now.        Not many!!!!        Anyway, I hope that we all remember the huge sacrifice that some families have given to our country.

ALL GAVE SOME, SOME GAVE ALL!!!

May we never forget!!!!
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I wanted to share a little bit about my garden and my second harvest of produce.         in the first pic is some stevia leaves that are now on my dehydrator.         I have high hopes of filling a gallon jug of stevia leaves thru-out the summer.        like I said, high hopes, a few leaves at a time.        hahaha

beside the stevia is my second batch of greenbeans.        I planted them in my greenstalk planters back in the middle of march and covered them with frost protection and when I took the protection off they already had blooms on them and I'll be doing this from on to have early greenbeans.

beside the greenbeans is my lettuce harvest.          it's delicious.         all of this is up on the deck at the back door. it's not too pretty, actually a mess or I would take a pic and share it.

the other pics is my below deck at the back of the garage.         I have 4 keter raised beds and they are now planted with greenbeans too.           I was going to take the covers off today and put my little fences in them to help keep the greenbeans from spilling out of the keters, and I was going to get the forks in them.        but, it's raining, so that's on hold.

all my peppers and tomatoes and cukes and squashes have been filled with forks, and guess what, it's working.          as you can see in the background, we have a forest behind our backyard and that means we have more squirrels than we have blades of grass.        hahaha         that's almost true.        hahaha  the forks are working so well that hubby ordered me another box of 1000.        and since these pics were taken, I've added more to all the pots you see.          because before I did, there was 2 pots that the little bandits had dug around in.

well, I put more forks and left those a little higher and it is working.         I probably have between 15 and 20 forks per pot.                I know a lot of people don't like forks in the garden, but I don't like squirrels in mine a lot worse, so there's that.          😅😅😅        I also have some long cook out skewers that I have tied some holographic strips to that also helps with keeping birds out.       when there is a breeze, they flutter around and it looks really nice.

a little about my garden deck behind the garage. in jan of 2023, my husband took that deck apart from the deck that is still at the back door. it was a 2 level deck.        he took that off and moved it behind the garage.                  we had intentions of tearing the old deck off and building a new one.

on the first sat in March of 2023, we had a contractor lined up to come out and give us an estimate on what it would cost to replace the old deck.           on friday before the contractor was to come on saturday,    we had a storm and had straight line winds of over 75 mph that brought down a lot of the neighbors trees on our property and one of them fell directly on my husbands lawnmower and tool shed. the tops was twisted out of a lot of them that didn't fall.              praise the Lord, that none of it landed on our house.       and that was His hand of protection over us.

but, we did have roof damage from the straight line winds.        so our contractor came out to look at the deck and give us an estimate.        we had to wait and see what the ins co was gonna do.        the adjuster came and looked.       he worked hard for us, but the insurance company wouldn't pay but just a couple of hundred dollars on the roof, so we had to foot the rest of the roofing job and that done away with the funds to build a new deck.       so, I have a garden on the upper deck and a garden on the lower deck.  the lower deck looks decent, the deck on the house is a wreck.              hahaha      so hopefully in the next year or two, we can get the new deck and get everything up where I don't have to go up and down steps all the time.

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as I leave you to today,   I leave you with an incident that happened to me that helped me to see and realize that God loves us enough to give us little things to bring great joy,   if we are just willing to see them.           I wrote of this incident and shared with someone else and decided to share it here too.       I hope it speaks to just one person.        if it does, then it will have served it's purpose for this day.

I take great joy in the things of God. even and especially the small, unnoticed things of God.        after an especially low day, probably 15 years ago,      I was taking a sack of trash out the trash can before dark.          we have some pavers that make a stepping stone sidewalk and then pea gravel surrounding the pavers.        I was stepping from paver to paver,       watching each step.        all of the sudden I seen something in the pea gravel that stood out really big although it wasn't but about the size of my thumb nail.       I looked, and I bent over closer to get a better look and then I just decided I need to sit down and look even closer.          when I finally got as close to it as possible, I seen that it was little, tiny velvety purple flower.            purple being my favorite color, I sat there and just praised God for letting me see that little flower.        I watered it with a couple of tears and got up.       and I must say that this situation gave me a whole new way of looking at everything from then on.         when I can see the small things that God puts in my path for joy, then the larger things will become easier to see.       I challenge any of you today, to look for the small things.               things that you wouldn't be expecting, unless you're looking for them.        take joy in what you see.        and thank God for it all.       then start sharing with others the smalls things you have seen.          sometimes it's hard to remember to be thankful in the hard days that come, but when you have a day or a season of life that's hard, go back to the small things that God has shown you and ask Him to show you more.        as we grow older, we have more harder days and I find myself asking for more of the smaller things to brighten my day and then that puts me in a frame of thankfulness.        blessings be yours today and every day.           hugs and love, patty