Farm Girl

If you are looking for a quick, flavorful chicken recipe this is a great recipe to put into your dinner rotation.  I used boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but it is wonderful with any pieces you have and love.  It is also very forgiving so don’t worry about perfection — just toss it together and relax. Lemon Rosemary Chicken Recipe Type: Entree Cuisine: American Author: Mary Lovstad Prep…

Several years ago I had a bumper crop of cucumbers.  I decided I needed to find a pickle recipe I liked since Mom’s didn’t really bring back images of pickle love.    I started Googling recipes that had won at a state fair.   If I am going to spend the time, money, and effort to make something, I want to make sure I have the best recipe and ingredients.  I and found it —   Linda Cifuentes’ Blue Ribbon Bread and Butter Pickles came upon the Mrs. Wages website.  Ding, Ding, Ding…we have a winner!  I knew this recipe was going to be the one when I spilled some of the pickle syrup on the counter and my hand — it wasn’t hot and I absentmindedly licked it off my fingers…It was magic and I found myself thinking – will anyone see me lick it off the counter — it simply can’t be wasted!

Since I didn’t like pickles growing up, I didn’t learn how to make pickles from my mom – so here are some tips that I’ve found in my research that seem to really make the difference in the quality of the end product!  

Enjoy and add a little summer to your winter with this pickle!

Tips for Great, Crisp Pickles

​​Use your cucumbers as soon as possible, whether picked fresh or purchased from a farmer’s market or the store

Only use canning/pickling salt, it does not contain anti-caking ingredients that can make your pickles cloudy, or iodine, which can make your pickles dark.

Slice cucumbers as uniformly as possible.  

Add the pickling salt and ice to cover slices and let sit for about 3 hours.  None of the church cookbooks or my mom’s recipes includes this step — I’m convinced it is why the pickles are so crisp.

Blue Ribbon Bread and Butter Pickles

Recipe Type: Vegetable

Cuisine: American

Author: Linda Cifuentes

Prep time: 3 hours 30 mins

Cook time: 10 mins

Total time: 3 hours 40 mins

Serves: 5 to 6 pints

The best Bread and Butter pickles I’ve ever eaten

Ingredients

6 pounds pickling cucumbers

1 pound onions (1 1/2 cups sliced)

2 large, peeled garlic cloves

1/3 cup pickling (canning) salt

2 trays of ice cubes

4 to 4 1/2 cups sugar (I only use 4 cups)

1 1/2 tsp turmeric

1 1/2 tsp celery seed

2 TBS mustard seed

3 cups cider vinegar

Instructions

Wash and slice cucumbers, peel and slice onions — combine in a large non-metal bowl

Add garlic cloves, canning salt and mix

Cover with ice cubes and let stand 2 to 3 hours

Remove garlic, rinse well and drain

In a large pot combine sugar, turmeric, celery seed, mustard seed, and vinegar

Stir and add drained cucumbers and onions

Heat for 5 minutes

To can, pack hot pickles in hot sterilized jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Adjust jar lids. Process in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes for pints or quarts.

** You can also use as refrigerator pickles — I still pack in hot jars out of the dishwasher, cool and store in the fridge for up to 1 year.

3.5.3229

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I’ve been making a lot of bread lately, stress baking, but also learning how to make different kinds of bread.  As a teacher in a past life, one of my goals with trying a variety of recipes is so that I can help others trying to stay at home not to need to make extra trips to the store for a loaf of bread.  I have been looking for recipes that work well for beginners, don’t take a lot of…

For the last few days — especially after I made biscuits, I’ve been wanting some jam.  I had used up all of the jam I made last summer from my raspberries.  After making my own lower-sugar jams even if I wanted to order it from the store — I’m spoiled and really don’t care for them anymore.

One of the things about growing up in a family of 12 children is that you learn to improvise a lot and my…

Originally I posted this Corn Chowder recipe as a way to use fresh corn which is so plentiful here in Iowa at the end of the summer.  However, the other day as I was thinking about recipes that would be easy to make from pantry and freezer items I realized this would be an easy and delicious choice.

This recipe has been adapted from several church cookbooks in my vintage cookbook collection. …

I am fortunate, I have plenty of good food in my fridge, pantry, and freezer.  Living on the farm and just coming out of winter, you are used to stocking up in case you get stranded for days.  However, I have run low on one of my favorite snacks — CRACKERS.  I love all kinds of crackers, straight up, with cheese, peanut butter, bacon jam — whatever!  So the search was on to find some easy…

Social Distancing Recipe : Got 4 apples? You Can Make Apple Hand Pies…

Do you know those 4 apples that have been rolling around in your fruit drawer in the fridge?  Yes, I’m sure you do.  They have been there for a while and no one seems to be interested in eating them fresh — they are still good, but maybe not as pretty as they were the day you brought them home.  Here is a great way to use them for a delicious treat while you are social distancing.  Once you have…

Self Distancing Recipes – Breads You Can Make Without Yeast or Kneading

Many areas are finding grocery store shelves bare of bread and other items and many are homebound right now.  If you have a few common ingredients in your pantry you can easily make your own bread without yeast or kneading.

If you have self-rising flour great, but if you don’t King Arthur has this simple recipe to make your own using All-Purpose flour, baking soda, and salt.  Homemade Self-Rising…

Are you and your family trying to stay healthy by doing some social distancing?  Maybe even struggling to find foods in your local grocery store.  You can make the most of what you have in your fridge, freezer, and pantry by making as much as possible from scratch.  New to some of you and old school to lots of others.

It’s hard to know where to start, but my suggestion is to start with the…

Podcast: 3 Pork Chops, Ham Balls, and Sausage Gravy

Recipes From My Podcast Guests

Alicia: Brandy and Brown Sugar Ham Glaze

Alicia: Biscuts and Gravy Casserole

Val: Hamball Recipe, An Iowa Classic

Val: All-Purpose Pork Rub – Tractor Approved Recipe

Val: A Look Inside Our Pig Barns

Helpful Sites About Raising Pigs and Pork

7 Pasture Pig Breeds for the Small Farm: How to Choose the Best Pigs to Pasture Raise

How to Choose Pig Breeds…

The Great British Bake Off Inspired Me to Bake a Cake…

I have been binge watching The Great British Baking Show this winter — all seasons and the Christmas shows and it made me think I wanted to be a better baker.  It has inspired me to start a cake project and to begin with recipes in my grandmother’s handwritten cookbook.   One of the cakes they talk about all the time on The Great British Bake Off is a sponge.  While digging through those old…

I Was Shocked to Find This Hidden Art Treasure in North Iowa…

Name: Homecoming | Date of Print: 1933 | Type of Print: Color Lithograph | Artist: Marc Chagall | Nationality: Russian | Artist Life Span: 1887-1985 Charles City, Iowa Library

Disclosure: My stay was hosted by Red Cedar Lodge and Charles City.  As always, opinions are 100% my own.

This winterI when was doing a cooking class for a travel blogger group in Charles City, Iowa. The first…

Hearty & Delicious Simple Beef Stew – Guest Blog

Recently I did a cooking class at a Winter Glamping blogger event at the beautiful Red Cedar Lodge in Charles City, Iowa.

Winter Camping for me was a new adventure and it was lovely. Winter walks, cozy cabins, Christmas shopping in town, baking bread and sharing this beef stew with new and old friends. Perfection. One of my blogger friends enjoyed this stew enough to share it on her blog. I…

1 Week Spring Challenge: If you have it ..eat it! I have prizes…..

Last night when I was searching through the pantry, freezer and fridge trying to figure out what to eat for supper I realized I still have a lot of my fall harvest items left.  I don’t know if you are like this but I savor them and am kind of stingy sometimes with them — saving them for a “special meal”.  Now is is the middle of March and I am planning my garden and we need to eat this stuff up.

One Rotisserie Chicken, One Afternoon and Four Healthy Recipes

When I was a young bride, my mother gave me a lesson on how to buy a week’s groceries on twenty dollars (not including paper & cleaning products).   OK, yes, that was a long time ago, but I’ve never forgotten how to be frugal when necessary and with a little planning create healthy, filling and enjoyable meals for my family.

Since I am doing the 10 Week Wellness Challenge with the Iowa Food and…

Gordon’s Winter Project

My father, Gordon, was pretty dapper in his day.

Like many a dad, my father was handy.  He could fix things.  As a farmer and father of twelve children, nine of them boys, it was a necessary skill.  He fixed tractors, cars, windows, electrical problems, washing machines, broken chairs, you name it — he fixed it.  But over the years one of the main things he fixed was a plethora of broken chairs,…

When I was in 7th grade we were required to take Home Economics and the first thing we made was a white sauce, also known as Béchamel sauce.  Having been in 4-H and done lots of cooking already at home,  I thought this was the lamest thing.  I couldn’t imagine Creamed Peas on Toast eeewww– the epitome of a teenager’s idea of gross food!  Little did I know that years later this skill would “FREE”…