Homemade Poptarts

For real.
My kids like pop tarts but I'm not a fan. I think they look and taste like cardboard, but hey,they have sprinkles, so they love them. But they can get pricey and there aren't many in the box and split between 3 kids is about one box per breakfast.
There are a few different recipes for homemade poptarts, without the ingredients I can't pronounce ( and with sprinkles!) floating around Pinterest, but I found this one on Smitten Kitchen and we tried it tonight. I ended up cooking ours for longer than the recipe says to- about 20-25 minutes. We did half cinnamon-sugar and half (homemade) strawberry jam and they we so good! We also made them mini just for fun. The kids ate a few for a snack and we are saving the rest for breakfast. Next time I will try drizzling them with icing.Yum!

Go here for the recipe ( it's long, but these are so easy and quick to make.) I bet you could even freeze some and toast them later.

Homemade Spaghetti Sauce for Canning

I made this sauce this week and really surprised myself- usually my spaghetti sauce turns out either too sweet or too spicy. But this one is just right. And it looks so nice in jars all lined up on the shelf...

Ball's Blue Book Spaghetti Sauce (with some minor adjustments)

-makes 4 pints plus a little left over (I doubled this and made 4 quarts)

2c chopped onions
2c chopped green and yellow peppers (2c total)
1c chopped celery
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp oil
18oz tomato paste
24oz tomato sauce
1-28oz can whole tomatoes, chopped
2 bay leaves
2 tsp italian seasoning
1 tsp basil
1 tsp salt
1\4 tsp pepper

Saute onions, peppers, celery, and garlic in oil until onions are tender. Add remaining ingredients, simmer 1 hour.
Remove bay leaves
To can, follow instructions for WaterBath Canning. Add 1 tbsp lemon juice to each pint jar. Remove air bubbles, wipe rims and process 45 minutes.

*I love to can and do it all the time,but I'm not a "professional". Please refer to the Ball's Blue Book of Canning for instructions and to answer any questions. Canning is a lot of fun, but its also pretty serious stuff so it's a good idea to know what you are doing before you do it!

Good grief. Is anyone else ready for Spring and warm weather and no more sickness? I sure am. I have more posts coming up soon and I am really excited to get back to blogging.

Our seedlings are growing and I can't wait to plant our raised beds and grow our own produce. So far we have a couple different kinds each of lettuce and spinach, a few varieties of tomatoes and some peppers. We are also going to do Amish Pie Pumpkins, potatoes, carrots, green beans, onions and garlic.

Why raised beds?  With raised beds you don't have to till the ground, there are less weeds and you have more control over where everything goes. You can plant things all over your yard instead of one big patch. Plus, we got some railroad ties from HH's brother and we don't have a tiller.

I'm also thinking of using the front flower bed as an herb garden.

And I want to plant lots of these:

Peppermint Stick Zinnias

credit

We get our seeds from Baker Creek- all heirloom, non-GMO.

We have virtually no idea what we are doing so this will be an interesting experiment. Our plan is to grow as much as we can, preserve what we don't eat fresh, and use some to barter for honey across the road, fresh eggs from friends, and who knows what else. The sky's the limit!
Have you ever bartered? Its not such a big thing here but a lot of cultures do it. I would like to do it- I think its a really interesting concept. Plus it would help save some money on groceries.

Speaking of which, I canned up some really great spaghetti sauce yesterday and I will post the recipe this weekend. See you then!