Prairie Scraps

My 14yo son is doing a three year 4-H project where they raise funds and study the United States government and end with a three week trip to Washington DC.  One of the fundraisers that the group does each year is Spaghetti dinner.  It was a huge event where we served dinner for 500 people. At the end of the night, there was a ginormous amount of spaghetti sauce and spaghetti left over.  (There were sausages, salad and bread too, but those were pretty easy to take care of.). Of course, I couldn’t turn down an industrial size pot of spaghetti sauce as well as several gallon bags of cooked spaghetti for free. I made up dinners for my college kids and kids at home out of them.    I have two recipes that freeze very well with cooked spaghetti.  The first one is Spaghetti pie.  There are dozens of recipes on Pinterest for it, but this is what I did (I didn’t use any measurements, because I was using several different size containers): Spaghetti Pie...

We love to share with our neighbors and friends at Christmas time by giving them a gift.  Even better, is to make it homemade!  This year, I wanted to make an Eggnog Quick Bread, but soon realized that this would require a lot of Eggnog for the ingredients.   I decided to try this  Cinnamon Bread Recipe  and loved the taste and texture of it!  It turned out wonderfully (as long as you don’t overbake it!) and made a nice large batch.   I love my mini loaf pans!  They are a must have for making quick breads.  My quick never get fully cooked in regular size pans, but the mini pans really work great!  You can get some on  Amazon HERE. This summer, I found a Pampered Chef Stoneware loaf pan at a rummage sale for $3.   Was a little worried about getting them out of the stone for sticky breads, especially in this case.  They came out wonderfully, so now I’m pretty excited about this stone pan! I highly recomme...

My chickens have been laying a ton of eggs lately.  We raised 11 new chicks this spring to add to our hens and they've begun to lay.  In addition to that, we gained 9 new to us hens, because someone realized they aren't farmers after getting them.  Added to our 28 hens already we have an Egg Surplus!   I've tried to find a few more customers for eggs, but right now, I'm just not finding them.  So, I've been coming up with creative ways to save them for the future.  The first thing I made were breakfast sandwiches for the freezer.    For this recipe, you will need: eggs Salt & Pepper to taste butter sliced cheese deli ham English muffins and/or bagels saran wrap First, spread butter on the inside of each muffin or bagel.  I think you could leave this out, but I wanted them to taste really good.  Sprayed muffin tins with butter spray and cracked an egg in each tin.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper...

  Years ago, my aunt had the most tasty and easiest appetizer at a Family Thanksgiving Dinner.  We have since adopted this recipe for ourselves, and I thought that I would share it with you. It is so easy, and in fact, is made ahead and put in the freezer!  I love things that you can make way ahead of time!  Just be prepared for them disappearing as soon as you take them out of the oven!    The strangest ingredient in the recipe is Old English Spread!  This is a tiny jar, usually found in the processed cheese section, way on top.  And this little jar is usually about $4, which is the part that kills me.  I actually saw some the other day on clearance for $2 and thought about stocking up, but decided that it was on clearance because it was already old, and it would be awhile before I used it.       Old English Appetizers 12 English Muffins 1 Jar Old English Che...

I'm not sure if it's a Midwest thing, but it seems that many of my Western friends don't know about freezing zucchini or what to do with all of the zucchini from the garden, like Midwesterners do.  So lately, when I bring a dish to pass at potlucks, my friends are surprised at how good my zucchini recipes are.  You can check out how I freeze zucchini and one of my favorite muffin recipes Over Here. One of my favorite zucchini recipes is this Chocolate Zucchini Cake.  I get a ton of compliments when I bring it as a dish to pass on how moist and delicious this is.  I'm not usually a fan of cake, but this one has a crunchy chocolate chip topping, so no frosting needed!  I love that you don't have to make a separate frosting for it to taste wonderful.   My Mom used to make this when I was young.  I remember how proud she was that she found this recipe and tried to lie to us about it being a real chocolate cake, and yet she had snuck in the much dr...

I'm new to elderberries.  I don't ever remember seeing them in the Midwest.  I've heard quite a bit about them since moving to the West, but have been really intimidated by the.  The house that we moved to last year has the bushes (or shall I say trees) everywhere on the property.  Several people told me how poisonous they are and how they can cause stomach problems if you don't handle them right.  Last year, I thought about harvesting my many bushes of them all season, but chickened out!     This year, I decided that I wasn't going to use them again, but at least I would try to let people in my friends circle come pick them. So I put up a post on a local Facebook group.  I got a couple of takers.  Of course, the one evening that we could pick together, it was pouring rain and really cold!  While I was helping my friend pick a 5 gallon bucket of elderberries, I got to thinking that maybe it was tim...

This last week, I actually had to take time off of homeschooling to get my canning done.  Don't worry, the kids worked on their handwriting, math and grammar workbooks in the kitchen (if you can see all the clutter in the background - that's it!) while I canned away, but I couldn't do our history, bible and read-alouds or my tomatoes would go to waste.    You might wonder where I got so many tomatoes.  I'd love to say I grew them, but that's just not the case!  It is so dry here in the summer, that it's difficult to get tomatoes to grow nicely.  BUT, we have a guy down in Lucille, ID area who's know as Tomato Tom!!! He has tomato growing perfected, and you can pick your own tomatoes for only $.50 a pound!  Why grow your own, when it's so cheap and fresh down the road?  Each year, we run down there on a weekend and pick with the kids about 100 pounds of tomatoes for the winter months.   I like to have enough salsa and ca...

Do you have an overload of zucchini right now?  I have to say, I don't.  For whatever reason, my plants just didn't produce anything this year.  Of course, I really love baked goods with zucchini in them, so I picked up some at a local farm for $.25 each this week, to be sure that I have plenty for the winter.     I shred all of my zucchini, yellow and green with my Kitchen Aid  and my shredder attachment  into my big bowl.   I especially like to shred up those huge, overgrown zucchini's!  Those big seeds get mixed right in.  If the seeds are too big, I'll just take them out and use the flesh only. Then I measure out the shredded zucchini into freezer bags two cups at a time.  I like make all my freezer bags flat for my freezer, so I can stack them neatly and in less room.   I've found that most of my favorite recipes use two cups of shredded zucchini, so I...

I love nothing better than being able to use leftovers in a new way or even make breakfast from the fruit of our labors.  In this case, I provided a Taco Soup and Corn muffins for the Youth Group at church this week, so had way too many corn muffins left over to eat.  My family doesn't eat "old" breads, since I bake fresh so much, so I knew these corn muffins would go to waste if I couldn't figure out how to use them.  My grandmother used to make bread pudding when she had leftover or old bread.  I've even found a recipe for making bread pudding from leftover donuts that tastes pretty close to my grandmother's bread pudding.  I was thinking about what I could do with my corn muffins and decided to make it into a bread pudding for breakfast!  The best part was, that not only did I have leftover muffins, but a neighbor gave us free milk from her cow, I used huckleberries we picked in the forest, and I was able to use eggs from our own hens!  That ...

As the fall harvest begins, I was finding several different bags of fruit in the freezer from last year that we hadn't used yet.  On top of that, we had an obnoxious amount of rhubarb this spring already!  What started to be a batch of Huckleberry jam, turned into an afternoon of making jam and sauces!    The jams I used from last year's berries were huckleberry, raspberry, strawberry rhubarb and cherry. My favorite recipe book is The Ball Complete Book of Canning, which if you don't have, you should get!  It has every recipe that you could possibly use and more. Only one recipe have we not likde and that was the Cherry Jam, where the optional ingredients we didn't like.  We leave them out and we love it!    I still had over 30 bags of rhubarb in my freezer (what can I say we love rhubarb coffee cake all winter long, but this was a little much!) so was checking out the recipes in my canning book.  I've made...

Ok, I love old fashioned s'mores.  You know, the yummy perfectly golden cooked marshmallows over a campfire between two graham crackers and three rectangles of Hershey's chocolate.  We've tried all different kinds of options for s'mores, but they just don't quite make the cut.  We've used Peeps instead of marshmallows.  We've tried Rolo's and Reese's peanut butter cups.  We've tried square marshmallows and the jumbo ones.  I love the off brand, cheap marshmallows the best.  None of these options quite match up, though! Sooo..... this weekend, while we were camping, we went about making our traditional, only-way-to-eat s'mores as usual!  Then, for whatever reason, I decided that I would try my perfectly cooked, off-brand marshmallow between two homemade chocolate chip cookies!  Oh, my!! We now have a competitor to the original, traditional s'mores!  You don't even need the chocolate!  The chocolate chips melt with the h...

Fresh Rhubarb!  There's just something exciting about having rhubarb freshly cut and bagged up in the freezer.  I freeze it in 2 cup measures because that's what my rhubarb coffee cake calls for.  All winter long, my family gets fresh rhubarb coffee cake for breakfast.  I also noticed that as soon as I can get some fresh strawberries this spring, the strawberry rhubarb jam recipe calls for 2 cups of rhubarb, too.  Rhubarb is my favorite spring harvest from the garden.  What is yours? Oh, I wanted to share my Rhubarb Coffee Cake Recipe .  It is from my favorite farm Old Oak Family Farm in Wisconsin.  You can look up recipes from any of the fruits and veggies that the grow there on their farm!  I love them all!

For years, I made my own liquid laundry detergent every couple of months.  That being said, I always put of making the detergent until I absolutely had to, because it was messy and needed my undivided attention to make (something I don't have much of).  Overall, I loved this laundry soap, but really wanted an easier one to make.  Then I ran across a recipe for dry laundry soap that could also be used in HE Washers.  This recipe is so fast and easy, it's unbelievable!  The other part I like about this recipe is that it includes OxyClean, which I find really cleans my clothes better than find the pool supplies.  Here is where you can get my number #1 laundry recipe:  Laundry Detergent Recipe .  I've copied and pasted the Liquid Recipe I used below for your reference. Here is my recipe for that detergent that I first posted on my first blog, www.spartasavings.blogspot.com : One of the things that has saved me a ton of money over the last ye...

Now that you have gotten your budget in order, or at least made a plan of what little to so with your money that you do have (See my first post on this HERE.) , it's time to get down to the knitty gritty of making do while things are tight. Groceries are always my first concern.  I don't know why, but this is my biggest worry, that I won't have enough food to feed everyone in the house.  This is a perfect time to eat leftovers!  I know, most people really don't care for leftovers, but you can stretch your family budget some more by having a designated leftover meal day.  A look at my stack of leftovers today! Some ways to make your leftovers more exciting and taste better: Fry It - Ok, not the healthiest thing, but some things are great fried up in some butter, such as leftover baked or mashed potatoes, oatmeal, meats, etc. Bake It - unlike microwaving the food, this gives things a nice crispy edge and sometimes may take a little of the "staleness"...

We've had a pretty busy summer, and try as I might, I haven't gotten around to posting here and updating things.  For that, I apologize.  So with a little nudge from a good friend, I am starting with a new post today to share one of the things that keeps me really busy every fall. Since moving West, it's been difficult to change my concept of harvest time.  We had a great big garden in the Midwest in which I was busy harvesting and preserving.  In the West, I haven't been in a house long enough to actually grow a garden, but we have been greatly blessed with the great outdoors and some wonderful neighbors!  One of our neighbors here, shares their fruit orchard with us after all their family and friends pick what they need first.  I often feel like the old picture of "The Gleaners" when I go to clean the trees of the leftover fruit. Here's an excerpt explaining the picture from Wikipedia that describes the picture: "The Gleaners is an exampl...

Since I have been showing you so much of what we've been canning, lately (sorry, my crafting is on hold for the canning!)  I thought I would share the recipe I've been using for the berries we've been finding out in the mountains.  The one thing I've learned about canning, is that it's not a good idea to vary the recipes, as there is a lot of science put into canning.  I prefer to do water bath canning (ok, I'll admit that I am afraid to do the pressure cooker), so the food I can needs to have a high enough acidity to not need the pressure. People often ask me if I make low or no sugar jams or jellies, but hey, I love the taste with the sugar, so why change a good thing?  There are recipes for no sugar, but it's not what I'm sharing today.  Besides that, I love to give a jar of jam for a house warming or Christmas gift here and there, and who wants to get something sugar free for a gift, besides a diabetic?  Sometimes it's just nice to have the rea...