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
