Medicinal Herbs

 Several of you have asked for more info about medicinal herbs/remedies. I'm not trying to be evasive and I would love to write for days about medicinal herbs but there's a very fine line between giving medical advice (which I am NOT qualified to do!) and sharing what I've learned through the years. There are so many online resources and I will list a few here and hope you can get enough info to get you started.

Probably the most common "concoctions" are tinctures and salves. I'm not much into tinctures. Many are very beneficial but, at least for now, we need salves way more than we've needed the benefit of tinctures. Salves can be used for itching, stings, bug bites - the things that happen daily around here.

When I make a salve, I start with herbs, mostly dried herbs. They can be dried on a towel on a hot sunny day or in a dehydrator. I usually dry mine below 100 degrees for about 20 hours.

The herbs/weeds/medicinal plants I make sure we ALWAYS have are:

• Mullein
• Comfrey
• Elderberry
• Turmeric
• Tulsi
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Dead Nettle
• Plantain
• Sumac
• Burnweed
• Dock
• Callendula
• Echinacea
• Self-Heal
• American Beauty Berry
• Yarrow
• Chamomile
• Wild Lettuce

There are so many! There are more than what I've listed - just am not remembering them all now. I don't grow them all every year. The mullein pops up every year, some years there's more than other years. Because we've changed what we had growing in some areas, we've had to add add mullein plants but in a few years, we'll be pulling up more than we leave in the ground.

We have comfrey, elderberry, self-heal, echinacea, American Beauty Berry, yarrow and sumac that we've planted and they come back every year. Mullein, for the most part, burnweed, wild lettuce, dock, plantain, dead nettle and dandelions are weeds that come back uninvited every year.

I plant turmeric, Tulsi, garlic, turmeric, ginger, chamomile, and calendular every year. Of course, ginger, garlic and turmeric get used in the kitchen all year.

Of course, you do not have to have all of these plants, and there may be others you want to grow but this will give you some things to think about.

Here are some useful links:

Barbara O'Neill is the one person who has had the biggest influence on my desire to learn about herbs/weeds as medicine. She has excellent books and videos.

Top 10 Medicinal Plants

10 Edible and Medicinal Weeds

Medicinal Herbs

NOTES:  PLEASE READ

1.  If you are taking Rx meds, be very careful about adding anything new without speaking with your prescribing physician. Some herbs are quite powerful and can cause problems with adverse interactions with other meds.

2.  I feel like everyone needs comfrey but one type is very invasive. I think it's some kind of Russian comfrey that is NOT invasive but I was checking to see what kind to recommend and some say there are types of Russian comfrey that IS invasive. The comfrey we have does not spread. Yes, it may grow from being a small plant to being a larger plant each year but it doesn't pop up here, there and yonder.

3. If  you are not in a position to grow your own or you just don't want to do it, I've always had good results with Mountain Rose Herbs. They can be a bit slow to ship. I've also used Frontier Coop and Azure has a few dried herbs that are medicinal.

Speaking of Frontier Coop, I LOVE hibiscus tea and this recipe is so refreshing! It has helped me quite a bit in kicking the Dr. Pepper habit.

One last thing:  Making a salve couldn't be easier. I dry the herbs. Then put them in a jar, pour in enough olive oil to cover the herbs. Let it sit in a cool, dark place for 2 - 6 months (some take longer, sometimes I just don't have time and they sit longer). Strain out the herbs. Gently heat the olive oil, adding in enough bees wax to the olive oil so that it thickens and gets a bit hard. I use a 1:4 ration (1 part bees wax to 4 parts olive oil) and I'm not exact with my measurements. I do store the unopened containers in the fridge until I need them. I try to make enough to use and share for one year. I have no idea what the "shelf life" is but I enjoy making it so I never mind having to make more.

I store my salves in the 4 oz. Ball jelly jars. You can buy fancy, cute jars . . I just use what's easy to get and fairly inexpensive.

Hope this helps and I hope no one thinks I'm being to evasive/unhelpful.

Foraging!

 Is it really "foraging" if it's in my back yard and I know it's there, even if I didn't plant it? In my mind, foraging is going out looking for something you may or may not find but . . foraging sounds more "back to nature" than picking a weed out of the back yard.

I see pretty, well manicured yards but we will never have that kind of yard and I'm sure my neighbors wish we would do better but I have wild lettuce, curly dock, mullein, burnweed and plantain. We also have American Beauty Berries and comfrey that we planted.

Above is dock. Below is burnweed.

I have the burnweed, dock, mullein (shown below) and comfrey in the dehydrators. I will use those leaves to make three different salves.

Soon I will use some of the American Beauty Berry leaves to make various insect repellent and skin conditioners.

It's hard to believe we're already at the end of June and by mid to late July, most of these leaves will be starting to get dry so I wanted to harvest and use them while they're still healthy.

Weird Things

 Maybe this happens to everyone but I feel like so many weird things happen to me . . not bad weird but just weird. Is it weird that I just used the word weird three times in one sentence?  :)

I'm not going to say Joplin has the worst drivers in the world but they should definitely be near the top!  It's a small city and probably has the average amount of traffic any city of its size has. I guess I spent too much time driving in rural Texas, Missouri and Kentucky because every time I drive in Joplin traffic, I wish I lived in the days before automobiles were invented. Seriously!

Yesterday morning, about 8:15 a.m. I was driving into town to meet Debbie. I was sitting at a red light - first car in line. I was headed south and there are two southbound lanes and a turn lane and one northbound lane. I was in the far right southbound lane and, as I said, stopped for a red light. The northbound lanes had the same configuration. The turn lanes going both directions get to go while we wait, then they have to stop and all the non-turning vehicles get to go.

The light turned green and I was entering the intersection. There was an older pickup truck headed northbound and he was turning left but he got to the light after the turn arrow was gone. He stopped and as with all intersections in Joplin, I make sure there's no one running the light before I start moving. The white truck was stopped but just as I started into the intersection, he started too. I thought . . wait a minute, dude . . we can't both go. I stopped and he stopped, both of us well into the intersection. I started to go and he started to go. I stopped and sat there while he went. It was a very, very old man (says the very old woman!). So . . he went on his merry way, and so did I. 

Today, about 9:30 a.m. Vince and I had to go to town to pick up my new glasses. We got to that same intersection and I was telling Vince about the old man in the truck and how he wasn't driving very good. Vince wasn't understanding which lane the truck was in and which lane I was in. There was a white truck across from us, in the same lane the white truck had been in yesterday. I told Vince - I was in this same lane. There was a white truck just where that white truck is. I was stopped for the light . . told him the whole story. I finished my story about what happened. The turn arrow came on, the white truck was turning left and he had the right-of-way. When he turned and I could see him better . . it was the same old man! The exact same old man in the exact same old pickup truck at the exact same intersection. What are the chances of that happening two days in a row when obviously, neither of us have jobs to go to, we live probably 12 miles from that intersection and don't go that way often. I have no idea where he lives or where he goes but I just thought that was so weird . . me telling Vince the story about him and there he was!

Then second weird thing today - I told Vince while we were out, I'd like to go to Sam's Club and get some chicken. I like Sam's organic chicken much better than Walmart or Aldi chicken. So, after getting my glasses, we went to Sam's.

I knew Nicole, Addie and one of Nicole's friends were coming to Joplin today because Addie had a dentist appointment. Nicole doesn't have a Sam's account so I surely didn't expect to see her there. We were in line to check out and I was looking up something for Vince on my phone. Just out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone running but I didn't pay attention. Then when I looked up, the person was running right at me - and then I realized it was Nicole. I said "What are you doing in here?" Her friend has a Sam's account and needed a few things so Nicole, Addie and the friend were in line checking out too. What are the chances of us running into Nicole and Addie in Sam's in Joplin? They live an hour from here and don't even have a  Sam's account!!

Does anyone else think these two things are weird??

Our Flag - Finished

 Tonight (Wednesday) I finished Our Flag, which is published in the Summer, 2026 issue of Punch Needle and Primitive Stitcher magazine. It's designed by Crocette a gogo. This chart will not be in Etsy shop now since it's in the newest issue of the magazine.

Even though I thought I had checked everything, once I took it off the frame, I realized I had not stitched the centers of the four flowers at the bottom. Those are now stitched and even though it's a bit wrinkled, it's beautiful.

I have a plan for how I will finish this. If it works, I may have it finished by the end of the weekend . . maybe!

The linen is Tropical Stitches' Perna. I don't think this is a current color for her. I have no idea how long I've had it but I do love Tropical Stitches' linen.

As far as floss used, most of it is called for but I subbed a few colors I didn't have with stash floss.

The Focaccia Bread

 On yesterday's post about the focaccia bread, a couple of readers asked how thick the focaccia bread was since I mentioned using it for sandwiches. I don't know if I mentioned this yesterday but the focaccia bread I've always made has been thin - not cracker thin but probably less than one inch thick. Here's a picture of a piece of the bread I made yesterday.

It's about 1-3/4" (just a tad over) thick and that's probably as thick, maybe thicker, than the focaccia bread Panera uses for their sandwiches. 

This is the recipe I used and it is so good! It truly is so easy - I stirred it up in a bowl with a spoon, the description says it needs to stay in the fridge 18 - 48 hours and she shows one she left in the fridge for three days so it's pretty forgiving. I left mine in about 14 hours and it did great.

I did use whole wheat flour. The recipe called for 512 grams of flour. I used 400 grams of hard white and 112 grams of soft white. I shifted out the bran so I actually milled extra and weighed the flour after it had been shifted. The bread I made this morning, I used all hard white and only shifted the bran out of about half of it so we'll see how that turns out.

The recipe calls for 8 grams of instant yeast. I used 10 grams because I felt like the dough might be a bit heavier with the flour I used. The last change I made was to add more water. I used the 455 grams called for and then added more water until I got the dough where I felt like it needed to be. Sorry . . I didn't measure. On about the third set of stretch and folds, I felt like the dough was a big dry so I added a bit more water. I'm just guessing so use your own judgment but I probably added close to 1/2 cup extra water. Again . . just do what feels right for your dough if using whole wheat flour.

Here's the photo of our Azure haul.

This evening's pickup was great. The truck was supposed to get there at 7. We got there about 6:40 and the truck was already there, people were already there and they mostly had the truck unloaded. We helped unload it, got all our stuff loaded in the car and were on the road home by 6:50. I hadn't planned to be home til about 8 but by 8, we had everything unloaded and put away. Nice!

I got 8 cases of pint jars. Almost everything I can these days is in pints or half pints. By this time of year, my jar stash is kinda unorganized so before adding the new jars, I straightened all the jars, got the pints all stacked together, the quarts all stacked together, etc. so I'm ready to start canning season with the jars organized and knowing what I have. I still want to can more beans (pints) and the potatoes need to be canned and I do that in pints so I'll go through the pints pretty quickly.

Here's what I picked up this evening:

3 tubes of Desert Essence Toothpaste - I use that because it has no fluoride.

8 cases of pint jars

6 - 7 oz. jars of Bionature tomato paste.

3 cases of 6 jars/case of 24 oz. of strained tomatoes

25 pounds of rye berries

1 pound of organic pine nuts

1 pound of organic almonds

1 - 128 oz. jug of Sweet Zephyr Ylang Ylang laundry detergent

1 - 32 oz. bottle of Azure Dish Soap - Citrus scent

1 - 32 oz bottle of Azure Dish Soap - Lemon Verbena

1 pound organic cocoa powder

1 pound organic cacao powder

25 pounds of organic cane sugar

2 cases of Jovial diced tomatoes (6 - 18.3 oz jars/case)

3 cases of Jovial crushed tomatoes (6 - 18.2 oz. jars/case)

3 - Mullein plants in 4" cups

Since I bought all those tomato products, watch my tomatoes wake up and produce a ton of tomatoes!  :)

Bread Making Day

 You know how I like to have a schedule and plan EVERYTHING but that never seems to work. It was so easy to keep a schedule when Vince was working but now that he's retired, we do so many things spur of the moment and that makes it hard to stick to a schedule. I guess it's kinda the same way for all of us retired folks.

But . . my preferred schedule is to make bread on Monday and Thursday. Wednesdays I stitch with Debbie so Mondays and Thursdays are good for making bread. I've also asked Vince to let me know a couple of days ahead of when he's going to need Ezekiel bread and rye bread. I make three loaves of Ezekiel bread and 2 loaves of rye bread at a time.

Yesterday I had started focaccia bread so I was going to finish that today and make hamburger buns so we can have pork burgers Thursday.

I was just about to start breakfast this morning and Vince said "I need Ezekiel bread and rye bread". OK . . forget cooking breakfast. I make about 20 breakfast burritos at a time, wrap them and freeze them for morning like this so I grabbed a couple of those, let them sit out while I started making bread, then baked the burritos and spritzed them with water a few times to keep them from drying out. They were delicious and quick and I'm so happy to have those in the freezer.

This is the recipe I used and it's the best focaccia bread I've ever made. Beware that it needs to sit in the fridge for 18 - 48 hours before baking. I baked it in a 9 x 13 pan and it's plenty thick enough to slice for sandwiches. Panera has several sandwiches with focaccia bread and I love them so I'm probably going to make this recipe again for baking Saturday. I did divide this bread into three pieces, wrapped and froze two of the pieces but I like to have several varieties of bread in the freezer and I was out of focaccia so I'll leave that in there and make more.

Next was Vince's Ezekiel bread. I don't like the taste of it and I detest making it but . . I do it! 

That's the grains/flours that go into the Ezekiel bread. The recipe I use calls for rye, barley, hard red wheat, millet, lentils, pinto beans and great northern beans. There they all are - freshly milled.

Two loaves of this will go into the freezer. Vince eats this every morning as part of his breakfast.

Final bread for the day - rye! That's another one Vince likes.

It seems like I'm making these two recipes once a week but I know it only happens about once a month so I'm not really complaining.  OK . . I am but mostly because that Ezekiel bread is a gooey dough and I have to use my hands and I hate sticking my hands in gooey stuff.

Tonight we have to drive about an hour for our Azure Standard pickup. It was supposed to happen at 3 p.m. but then it got moved back to 7 p.m. Then we get home and have to at least get it all inside the house. This one was a large order for me. I haven't ordered since January. I told Vince I'm going to try to make three larger orders per year instead of doing it monthly now that we have to drive an hour each way to our pickup. Going forward, I'll probably try to order in March, July and October. I don't like to order in November because we never know when our order is going to be delivered and we could be going to meet the truck the day before or after Thanksgiving and I don't want to do that.  Then December - February there can be snow and ice. When we went for the January pickup, it was 14 degrees, the wind was blowing and I think the "feels like" temp was below zero and there was about 8" of snow in the parking lot where we met the truck and guess who forgot her coat at home! Yep . . it was so cold - never ordering for a winter delivery again.

I'll try to get a picture of our "haul" and share what I got and how I use it if it's anything weird.

 

Egg Piercer

 Learning new things, especially those things that help in the kitchen, makes me so happy. I was watching Homesteading with the Zimmermans today. I love her!

She showed this gizmo for poking a hole in the bottom of an egg (raw) before boiling it and that makes a tiny little pin hole in the bottom of the egg. Ruth Ann said it allows hot water to get around the egg and results in a super easy to peel egg. 

She showed it in action and it seemed to work perfectly. We no longer have Amazon Prime and I'm hoping Vince can make it through the Prime Days (or whatever they call the days with all the specials) without signing up for Prime again  . . though he told me today he could sign up for just two days. I hope he doesn't but . . anyway, Walmart had the same thing Amazon has and it was $2 less at Walmart and we get free shipping there too.

I can't wait to try this thing. I've tried "boiling" eggs in the Instant Pot, then submerging them in ice water and that helps but sometimes when I get eggs that were are so very fresh, the Instant Pot trick doesn't even work.

It will be a couple of days before the poker arrives (Thursday).  You can bet I'm going to make egg salad for sandwiches as soon as it arrives.

Sourdough Starter

This post is more for a friend who has been struggling a bit with her sourdough but, of course, everyone is welcome to read it.

I've been thinking about it and have a question for any sourdough experts. Is it possible (or even likely) that an older a starter is, the more active it is? Even if that's true, I'm sure it would depend on the health of the starter but what I'm wondering is . .  my starter is probably 6 years old. Maybe it has adjusted itself to how I do things, to my water, flour, etc. I have no idea.

I fed it this morning and I was peeling a ton of garlic so I was able to set a timer and take pictures along  the rising progress.

I will add, and this is one of those don't do as I do things . . I don't measure. I like to have a very dense/thick starter. For starter/flour/water, my ratio is probably about 1/2/1. I will often add a bit of sugar or honey to the starter when feeding. If I do, say I have 1/2 cup starter, 1 cup flour and maybe 1/2 cup water, but probably a bit less, I would add about 1/4 tsp. sugar or honey. And, my water is highly chlorinated city water (which makes me sad!) but so far, my starter has not complained.

The above photo is one hour after feeding. 

This was 2 hours after feeding.

This was not quite 2.5 hours after feeding. I was getting ready to go downstairs so I put it in bowl, knowing that by the time I go upstairs, it will have gone over the top of the jar and made a mess on the counter.

Other things I was doing while in the kitchen . . in the blue bowl is focaccia in the making, there's a pint jar of garlic getting ready to start fermenting. In the back bowl is another starter - what was left in the bowl after I put some in the jar in the photos above. There was only a bit of starter left in the bowl - maybe 1/4 cup so I need to get it built back up. Between making bread, crackers and now pizza dough, we go through a lot of starter.

It's zucchini season and I'm looking for recipes. This zucchini salad was delicious! The recipe called for lemon juice and olive oil but I subbed balsamic with Italian herbs for the lemon juice. I didn't have pine nuts so I use some macadamia nuts and some pistachios. We pick up our Azure Standard order tomorrow and I have one pound of pine nuts coming. I've been out for almost a month so I'll be happy to get those things.

Appliance Funny

 This is really funny to me. I just finished writing the previous post about the problems with the shelves in two of our freezers. Then I went to Facebook and the first thing I saw was this memory:

On this day in 2025, the appliance store came to pick up the non-working 2 or 3 year old fridge and bring a new one. That was very nice and very appreciated (even though we had paid for an extended warranty) but we had not had a working fridge in the kitchen for six months. The appliance store did give us a loaner which we kept in the garage. 

I read it to Vince and we laughed and the next thing on my Facebook page was this memory!

On this day four years ago, this little stove was supposed to be delivered from Lowe's. It was going to be the canning stove in the basement. But, it arrived damaged and then there was something weird . . maybe they had sold this stove to someone else and the one they tried to deliver, aside from being damaged, was not the same stove we had purchased.

By the time Vince got done having his say, this is the stove they ended up delivering.

IF we ever move from here, I'll probably leave the G.E. stove upstairs since all the appliances match but I will take this stove with us. 

All's well that ends well, right? 

Sourdough Discard Pizza Crust

Sometimes during this past week, I saw this recipe for Sourdough Discard Pizza Crust. I thought about making it but wasn't sure. 

Kinda hopping off subject here . . but Vince detests G.E. appliances. I had never cared what kind of appliances we bought until we bought this house in 2020. I read and researched and the stove I wanted was the G.E. Cafe gas stove. That took a lot of convincing but he agreed to it and since the G.E. white didn't match the old Kenmore white, we replaced all the kitchen appliances. They were 17 years old so I didn't feel like we were being extravagant to replace them. Other than the issues with the fridge, which were enough to make me feel the same way about G.E. that Vince felt, everything has been fine and I could not love my stove more so I'll say I'm 85% happy with G.E. but we will never buy the brand again. We did get a new fridge after 6 months of them trying to repair our totally non-working kitchen fridge.

We have several upright freezers. We still have one we bought in 2006 and it works fine. We brought one from Texas with us that we had purchased in about 2017 and it still works fine. Then, because we have access to buying a whole cow and a whole pig, we ended up buying two more freezers. It was probably still during the time when it was hard to get appliances (is it still?) and Vince bought two G.E. freezers. My dislike for those freezers is why I have joined Vince in committing to never buy anything with that brand again.

The shelves are so flimsy, if you put a frozen turkey or a ham on the shelves, they will bend and collapse and then I open a freezer and a frozen turkey or ham comes tumbling out onto my foot. It's happened enough that I have learned to stand way back when opening either one of those freezers. I've had upright freezers for 40+ years and have never had one with such flimsy shelves. Vince called G.E. and they offered to send him new shelves for about $100 each and we needed 8 shelves. Vince asked if they had improved the shelves. Nope, same shelves we have. Why would we pay $800+ for the shelves that aren't working.

I kept telling Vince . . I know you can figure out a way to fix this and yesterday, for about the 100th time, I wasn't paying attention, opened the freezer and one of the shelves, which did not have a turkey or a ham on it, dumped everything into the floor . . and my foot!

The biggest problem is not so much that the shelves are flimsy but they are about 1/2" too narrow and don't really fit into the little edges that they are supposed to rest on. Even the shelves that aren't bent, if they're all the way against the wall of the freezer on one side, they fall off on the other side. It's a ridiculous design.

I went straight to YouTube and found quite a few videos with fixes. Obviously, we are not the only ones having the problem. The fix that looked the easiest and quickest to me was where a guy had a hose - something left over from a kit for changing the transmission fluid in his car. Vince was gone and when he got home, I showed it to him. This morning, he went to Atwoods but what they had wasn't thick enough. He had to go down to a hardware store and found a thick walled hose, cut it into about 3" strips, split it lengthwise so it would fit over the edge of the shelves and now it's a perfect fit. I don't think there's any way these shelves are going to fall now, even if they bend a little.

OK . . back to the pizza. I had planned to make stuffed peppers for dinner today but after totally unloading two freezers, adding the hoses to the shelves, re-loading everything, I was tired and I remembered the pizza recipe using sourdough discard. I was apprehensive but too tired to care. I told Vince . . I'm going to try this recipe and if it doesn't work, we'll go pickup a pizza.

Vince doesn't like onions and jalapeno peppers so the little one is mine.

This is the easiest recipe ever! From start to finish, I had the pizza on the table in less than half an hour. I may never make a real pizza crust again.

If you click on the link to the recipe, she has a video. So glad I tried this recipe!

Chicken Pot Pie - Almost

 It seems like weeks since I've cooked. That's not how things usually work around here but I'm still having finger issues and we've had things going on every day for over a week. We've either had appointments or Vince needed things from town. 

Vince was probably beginning to wonder if he was ever going to get a home cooked meal but . . today was the day!

One of the cooking YouTube videos I like is The Farming Pastor's Wife. Yesterday I saw this video where she was making "Old Fashioned Chicken & Biscuits". That sounded so good. I went straight upstairs, grabbed chicken out of the freezer so it could defrost. I had everything I needed so today was Chicken & Biscuits and, while there's not much healthy about it and yes, I used canned soups, it was so delicious.

I made my regular homemade biscuits and they are so delicious!

I divided up the chicken mix into two containers for the freezer and enough for one serving that Vince can take out one day when I'm not here. Whatever biscuits we don't use, I'll use to make strawberry shortcake with the strawberry sauce I canned.

Today I also made a blackberry cobbler . . and breakfast so I spent most of the day in the kitchen.

Still not stitching much at all until the finger is better.

If I can get Vince to help peel potatoes tomorrow, I'm going to can some of the potatoes from the garden.

Otherwise . . not much newsworthy going on around here.

Last Night's Storm

  Today I'm feeling very blessed. First, I'm very thankful I didn't know how bad the storm was as it was happening last night. We knew we might have severe storms, including a chance of a tornado. We began watching Ryan Hall early in the evening and it seemed the worst of the weather was going to stay south of us in the area around and west of Bentonville, AR and north of us west and into Kansas City. We pretty much let our guard down. Ryan Hall was still on and about 11:00 p.m., he started mentioning Joplin. My phone started going off with alerts from the local weatherman - get to your safe room! The weather radio was going off. Then Vince said "I hear the tornado sirens!" I can't hear them at all from inside the house but Vince can. I know - they're not meant to be heard inside the house. Funny because Vince never hears me when I ask him to do things but he can hear the sirens and I can't!   <G>

I was saying we should go into the safe room, then the electricity went off. Vince said he was NOT going to the safe room. We were already in the basement. I took a battery operated lantern and went and took a shower. I figured I'd just go to bed but by the time I got out of the shower, our power was back on but it was on and off - on just long enough for the internet to reconnect, get the TV on . . then electricity was off again. That happened probably 8 times over the next hour so we went to bed. The storm appeared to be over by then and we did hear that tornado sirens are activated when winds are more than 80 (or was it 85?) mph so it wasn't a tornado in the area that caused them to go off. Now we know we can have sirens without an actual tornado but if winds are 80 or 85 mph, it's probably a good idea to get in the safe room anyway.

This morning I went out expecting to see fence panels missing, trees down, but nothing! I figured the storms weren't that bad and then I looked at Facebook and the news. Oh, my . . I think for half of Joplin, Carthage and the surrounding area - so many are without power and will be for days. Crews have come in from other places to help but lots of power poles have to be replaced; lots of trees on lines and lots of downed lines.

There are so many people in our area with electricity right now. When I walk outside, I hear quite a few generators running. 

We don't have any trees down. We don't have any huge limbs down. One neighbor has quite a few big limbs down and one landed on their fence.  One friend down the road lost four big trees.

The church near us didn't have services this morning because they had flooding; I heard some of the stores in the mall have water in them.

A tornado would have been worse but this was quite a storm and I'm so thankful we didn't have damages.

Stitching, Gardening, Finger Update

Not much around here is newsworthy these days but I wanted to check in.

We'll start with the finger. I am still not 100% convinced that it's gout but I guess time will tell. There is much less pain but there is still pain and swelling and still very sore. We're into the 4th week so I'm sure I don't have to tell you how ready I am for this finger to get back to a point where I can write, type, stitch, and lots of other things without pain. My biggest complaint is that I have lost so much strength in my right hand mainly because I can't grip anything. There are lots worse problems that I could have and I remind myself of that a million times a day so I am not complaining (or I'm trying not to complain) but . . I just want it to go away!

On the garden front . . this evening (Wednesday) after I got home from a day of stitching with Debbie, I pulled out the garlic. I think there's upwards of 150 bulbs of garlic. I would like to have left it in the ground another week or so. It's been weird. The top was dying and the bottom leaves were not dying. I've always pulled it when the bottom third or so leaves were brown but that wasn't happening this year. I think I'm going to find that it would have benefited from another week or so in the ground but if I don't get my okra planted, it's going to be too late to get as much okra as we need for the year. If I had to choose between better garlic or more okra, I vote for more okra so the garlic is out. The okra seeds are soaking and I will plant them tomorrow. 

This evening I dug a few potatoes for tomorrow's dinner, picked four tomatoes and several yellow zucchini. I'm getting lots of peppers. My favorite peppers will probably always be the Giant Marconi but I'm loving snacking on the Bishop's Crown peppers when I'm out working in the garden.

I think I'm supposed to let them get red and they may be much hotter then but Vince and I have both been eating them while outside working.

I don't think it's going to be a good year for the tomatoes. It was so late when I was able to plant them and we're already having temps in the upper 90's and lows in the mid-70's. We are still having a fair amount of rain but I think those temps are not working in my favor with the tomatoes.

The best garden news is that we seem to have control of the squash bugs. I planted lots of mint and basil and fennel and dill - every strong smelling thing I could plant . . and wedged a squash or two in the middle of it all so almost every bed, tub and bucket had at least one squash plant in it. I also have marigolds and other plants that were said to deter insects. So far, I've found squash bug eggs on three leaves and killed two bugs. That's kind of a miracle but . . there's still a long way to go with the squash bug season. I've also been using lots of food grade D.E. out there and Vince came up with a possible solution which I'll talk about more once I know for sure how well it works.

On the stitching news, I am not getting much done. Out of the last 7 days, I've had two stitching days with Debbie and those are the only days I've stitched. Mostly it's because of the finger so I'm hoping very soon I can get back to stitching and have something to share.

Poor Man's Crockpot Beef Ragu

 Chad made this Poor Man's Crockpot Beef Ragu last week and he was telling me how good it was. I made it yesterday for today and it really is good.

The best part: Ever since I met Vince, over 30 year ago, he's told me that every Sunday they ate meatballs and sauce. Apparently they saved the leftover meat during the week - roast beef, steak, pork - whatever, and that went into the sauce. I've tried all kinds of recipes and nothing was ever close to what his dad made. It's kinda hard when I never even tasted it and Vince isn't 100% sure if he even remembers it after all these years.

So . . I made this recipe.

Chad was cooking his in the Instant Pot so he made a few changes.

I made a few changes even though I cooked mine in the crockpot.

1. I had pork . . I call it backbone but I think everyone else calls it some kind of boneless ribs. I cut that into good sized chunks, seasoned it and browned it in beef tallow on the stove. I used this because it was in my fridge and needed to be cooked and my chuck roast was on the smaller side.

2. I also cut the chuck roast into chunks, seasoned it and browned it.

3. I had a bit of ground beef left over from yesterday's grilled hamburgers. Our ground meat is in 1-1/2 pound packages so I usually make hamburgers for us and then use the rest for a meatloaf. Because I'll be gone a couple of days next week, I made extra burgers for Vince to have so I probably had about 1/2 pound of ground beef left. I browned it and added it to the crockpot.

4. I didn't have red chili peppers so I chopped a couple of jalapeno peppers and sauteed them along with the celery in onion in the leftover drippings from Browning the meat.

5. Since I was cooking it yesterday for today, I cooked it (crockpot) on high for 6 hours, then let it all cool, put the whole crockpot container in the fridge overnight, then scooped off as much of the hardened fat at the top, put it back on low and cooked it for several more hours so it would be ready for lunch today.

6. This morning I took it out of the fridge, scooped out all the hardened fat, put it back in the crock pot for about 6 more hours on high. I did add a bit of water.

Before it was done, I decided this would be a good day to make egg pasta so I made that.

I ended up with two nests on two trays for the freezer, and plenty of pasta for us for our meal.

The first bite Vince took, he said "This is as close as any sauce has come to tasting like I remember my dad's sauce tasting!" I was so happy to hear that. I had not been trying to make his dad's sauce and accidentally did it.

Hopefully I can repeat this . . just maybe not every Sunday!

A Little Italian Cream Cake

 Making bread is fun for me. I don't mind making pies but I love eating pies so I gladly make those. I will occasionally make cookies but cakes . . I do not like making cakes. I don't like making icing and I don't like putting it on the cake. So, I rarely make cakes.

There's a lady in a neighboring town and I've seen her cakes on Facebook. She has one that 5 or 6" round and I ordered one - an Italian Cream Cake.

Vince was a little frustrated with me. They are not cheap but neither are the ingredients to make a cake like that and I'm not going to make it and I wanted it so . . what's a girl to do? Vince is perfectly happy with the marked down, past the best buy date cakes from Walmart.

He ended up saying it was probably the best cake he's ever had. We each had one small slice. I saved two slices for tomorrow, sliced the rest and wrapped it - two slices per package wrapped in plastic wrap and then all stuck in a ziplock bag and put it into the freezer. Counting what we had today, what we'll have tomorrow and enough for us each to have a slice three more times, that's 10 servings of cake. 

I think even Vince will agree that it wasn't a bad deal. I may order one for Thanksgiving - a carrot cake! We won't get them often - neither of us needs that much cake but that Italian Cream Cake was so delicious!

Finger Update

I'm hoping this is the end of the finger story.  At this point in my life, I think what scares me the most about aging is the medical care. I am 100% sure there are places where medical care is good. Vince uses doctors in Kansas City, all of whom are associated with KU and the care/service he gets there is amazing.

It took visits to four different doctors in 2-1/2 weeks before I got a diagnosis that I feel is correct and got meds that have helped. The diagnosis is gout! It's certainly painful -- pretty sure some of you have experienced it but I feel like it's better than having rheumatoid arthritis. There are supplements that purport to reduce uric acid levels. I will not start taking those until after I'm done with the Rx med I'm taking to stop the current gout flare. 

There are way worse things that can happen but for a few days, I was pretty sad thinking if this was rheumatoid arthritis, my cross stitching days may be over. I'm a bit more optimistic with the gout diagnosis - not happy about it but, again . . it could be way worse.

Today I'm able to type gently using the bad finger. I was able to use a fork/spoon/knife the way I usually do without the index finger poking out hoping not to be touched.

The good news is that this was painful enough for me to commit to reducing sugar/high fructose corn syrup intake and that means goodbye to my beloved Dr. Peppers. Stopping drinking those is something I've known I've needed to do but hoping to not repeat this painful experience again any time soon, the Dr. Peppers will sit and mock me but I will not give in!  :)

Week 23, 2026 Project - G. Leger by Reflets de Soie

 The project for this week is G. Leger by Reflets de Soie. For the start this week, there are 2,265 stitches made and that's 5.52% completed.

I'm going to change things up a bit this week. My goal for each day (except the day I'm with Debbie) is to stitch 300 stitches on G. Leger. After I've stitched 300 stitches, I will switch to the Cross Stitch Camp project. I'm going to do a separate post about the camp project.