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Showing posts from September, 2023

Preparing for a Disaster - Where to Start

Have you seen the headlines claiming food shortages are looming as inflation is rising? Are you wondering what steps you can take to help protect yourself and your family? After the Covid-era shutdowns and shortages, many people have taken the idea of preparedness more seriously and have at least made some preliminary efforts towards this end. If you have not yet done so, don't worry, you can get a start today with a quick visit to the grocery store. First, let me say that as Christians, we are called to have faith in God, so we should not allow ourselves to become paralyzed by fear. Nonetheless, God has gifted us with both a brain and a variety of abilities so it only makes sense to put those gifts to use. With this in mind, I am writing this post is to give you a few resources and ideas to help you take action to become a bit more prepared to weather a disaster.   What should be your main focus? Well, if you read any beginning survival or prepper post, they all recommend foc...

Foraging Flowers

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Some of you may have seen my earlier post on edible flowers.  I just put up new article on the website listing five edible flowers you can forage.  The post contains links to recipes and other useful information, so head over to the website and check it out here . To help pique your interest, here is a small visual preview for the article  -- The past week has been less fruitful than I anticipated due to health issues. Nonetheless, each day is a blessing and an opportunity to learn something useful.  Have a great week!

Zucchini - The Versatile Vegetable

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Wherever you live in the country, there seems to be a joke about locking your car during late summer to keep the neighbors from leaving zucchini on the seat of your vehicle. While I personally love to have a lot of zucchini and am grateful when our friends gift us with their extra bounty, not everyone loves this versatile vegetable. Even if you do not love the flavor of zucchini, there are so many ways to use it...and so many ways to disguise its flavor. Due to the prolific nature of the plant and the relative ease with which it seems to grow, it is often considered to be a perfect addition to a homestead, prepper, or survival garden. As a kid, I always thought that zucchini was limited to summer time eating and thus not a great option for preserving. Not so, my friend! Zucchini can be preserved and enjoyed throughout the year by freezing, dehydrating, and even canning, thereby reinforcing its candidacy for a survival garden. Check out our latest website article Three Ways to Preserve ...

A Goodbye Tea

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This week the girls and I hosted a small tea party for a friend who is moving halfway across the country. We wanted an opportunity to say goodbye and to express our gratitude for her friendship by putting together a gathering in her honor.     Though I have little natural decorating ability, I like to try and make the house look nice when we have friends over for tea, so I got out our lovely teapot and teacups, our nice dishes, and our candlesticks.  I then went outside to see if there was anything left in the garden with which I could make a small floral arrangement.  Don't look too closely at the picture. I am certainly no florist. I did manage, however, to put together something with a bit of color (and a lot of fragrance - I used tarragon in the greenery - ha ha!).  We served scones with homemade plum jam and serviceberry sauce. The girls brought fresh fruit and coffee cake. A meat and cheese tray completed our snack assortment.  It was simple, but...