::BACK TO BASICS::

As you may have read from the previous post we have lots to care for in the way or produce right in our own backyard.

I noticed a few weeks ago when I was grocery shopping that bread was incredibly expensive.  I had mentioned to the hubby that I will have to start baking bread again. He was happy to hear that.  Homemade bread is so much better for you.  No preservatives and it's FRESH!  Only down side is that it gets eaten a lot faster.

When our children were younger we had to watch the budget very closely.  We didn't have a lot to just willy nilly spend on anything frivleous.  I did what I could to save money where I could.  I shopped thrift stores and sewed.  One area I noticed where there was a great opportunity to save money was the grocery bill.  I had the most fun coming up with meals that were inexpensive and filling and nutritous.  I tried to shop stores like Aldi's when I could.  I also found out that Wal Mart is by far the best place to shop for sundries.  They have the best price.  Fast forward about ten or more years and while we are in a better place financially, I still find myself going back to the basics.

All this to say that in the past few weeks we have started baking bread again.  Our daughter came home from work last week and the first thing out of her mouth was, "MMM, the house smells just like it did when we were little, are you baking bread?" 

Here is a little peek into what I was doing in the kitchen this morning.

I love my glass pinch bowls.  I a  foodnetwork junkie and when I saw these at Kohl's a while back, I just had to have them....only because I have a bad habit of talking when I am measuring things out for a recipe and can't remember what all I measured.  These nifty little bowls help me out.  I premeasure everything that way if anyone is talking to me, I don't mismeasure anything.

I wasn't able to get a picture of it when it was done cooking.  I will be baking another loaf or two today, so hopefully I can show you the bread in all it's yummy goodness.  Don't you just love the smell of baking bread?  We do!Pin It Now!

::THE BACKYARD FARM::

We decided to plant a garden... again.  The first one we ever planted was when we lived in Illinois.  I can't tell you how excited I was to see and eat all the tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers we grew that year. 

Today I want to share with you our garden here in Louisiana.  We are learning about gardening in here.  For one thing, it's very HOT here in LA and there is lots of  watering that needs to be done.  We also learned that we need to plant the garden a little earlier than we did.  We started planting late May early June.  When really, we should of started probably in March or April.

 We decided to grow cucumbers, squash, zucchini , watermelon and cantalopes.  We have yielded some nice yellow crook neck squash and cucumbers.  We just started seeing a couple of tomatoes and we have a couple of big cantalopes out there.  By the way, cantalopes and watermelon take a lot of space to grow. I know we read that on the back of the seed packet, but seriously, I didn't think it would be like wildfire.   They are all over the place.  Haven't seen any zucchini yet.

Okay, enough of my blabbering on.  Here are some shots of the backyard farm.

see how big the tomato plant got?  We saw blooms, but no totmatoes.  This pic was taken a couple of weeks ago.

Here is a pic of the zuccinin (far right), then the squash (middle) and on the left of the pic is the cantalope.  To the right of this raised bed is a fig tree and a satsuma orange tree.

                          Doesn't that fig look delicious?  We still aren't sure what kind of fig tree it is.

Can you see them?  They are grapes.  Muscadine grapes to be exact.  They grow over the swing wooden porch swing area that the previous owner built.

Here are some Satsuma oranges.  We also have meyer lemons too, but I can't differentiate them in the pics.  They are both green now.  They won't harvest until fall sometime.  I will be sure to share more pics then.

Satsuma oranges.

Well, there is a gracious plenty to take care of out there.  I need to get off this computer and go pull some of those weeds you saw in the picture and water, water, water. 

I will leave you with the picture below.  The only good light in our kitchen area was on the window ledge.

Enjoy!

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