Inspirational Thought

"At the root of self-reliance are the dignity
and importance of seeing ourselves as
children of God regardless of circumstance,
culture, or location."

Elder M. Russell Ballard
Becoming Self-Reliant, Spiritually and Physically, Ensign, March 2009

Food Storage Friday: Cherry Almond Oatmeal

We are in Pennsylvania visiting my parents, and my sister-in-law introduced me to this great oatmeal recipe.  We made it one night and it was a huge success!  This breakfast would be a great addition to your three-month plan!


Ingredients:

Almond extract, cherry pie filling, old fashioned oats, salt, powdered sugar, and cooking spray


First, measure out your oats, powdered sugar, and salt and mix thoroughly in a bowl.

Next, spray your crockpot thoroughly with cooking spray, and pour in your dry ingredients.

Open up a can of cherry pie filling...

And pour onto the dry mixture in the crockpot.

Add water, and stir.

Cook overnight......

And in the morning, you'll have a delicious hot breakfast waiting for you.

Even the kids loved it!

Cherry Almond Oatmeal

(serves about 6)

3 c oats

3/4 c powdered sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1 can cherry pie filling

6 c water

1 tsp almond extract

Spray the inside of your crockpot thoroughly with cooking spray so the oatmeal won't stick.  Combine your dry ingredients in a bowl, then pour that into the crockpot.  Add cherries, water, and almond extract, and stir. Turn on crockpot to "low" setting and allow it to cook for 8 hours.  Enjoy!

This recipe would be really great with apple pie filling and cinnamon!  Any other yummy combinations you can think of??

Summer Yields

The long summer is finally coming to an end. Our garden is mostly dead, the heat of August usually torches it here in the South, but we have a few herbs still alive, a few bell pepper plants with flowers on it and the cayenne pepper plant--an accidental purchase--still growing like mad.

I wasn't able to can much this summer, I've been down and out with morning sickness. But I was able to make one batch of strawberry freezer jam. Just enough to get us through the winter.


Last week I made pear sauce (instead of applesauce). A friendly neighbor gave us a bag of pears from their yard and I wanted to try something different this year. Last year I canned them, but they weren't a big hit with the fam. In fact I'm still using up pears in smoothies whenever I can sneak them in. We love applesauce and so I decided to try some pear sauce. It was really easy to make, but the grocery sack of pears only made 3 qt jars which I decided wasn't enough to process, so the jars went into the deep freeze.


With our excess of cayenne peppers, Mountain Man made some pepper flavored vinegar. All he did was chopped the tops off and put them in a jar, then filled the jar up with white vinegar. If we'd had cute jars it would've made a great Christmas present. Maybe I'll keep my eyes out for fancy vinegar type jars and use the rest of my peppers for some cayenne vinegar gifts.

I still want to make salsa this year if I can find a good and inexpensive source for tomatoes. We can't live without salsa and we all prefer homemade to store bought.

What fruit and vegetables did you put up this summer?