MerryHeartCrafts.comMountain Momma… Country Living

I have no picture to post today.  I just wanted to let everyone know I was still around.  David is working on my computer this week so hopefully I will be back in action soon.  Things have been very busy here this past week.  We were blessed with a beef.  Billy had butchered him for someone and they did not want the meat.  He was an old bull-about 10 years old and weighed about 1800 pounds.  My friend Vicki and I have been working all last week to process it.  We are cutting some of the meat in chunks and canning it.  We are making hamburger out of the rest.  We are about half done (I think).  George and Quentin-Vicki’s hubbie-will be helping us tomorrow.  I will let you all know the total of cans and hamburger we get when we finish.  We went to visit Jess yesterday.  She is scheduled to have her labor induced June 7th.  Little Samuel will soon be here.  We took the cradle down and it is all set up and ready.  Just needs a little one in it.  Continue to pray for them.  We took the long way home today and stopped at a little picnic area.  It was very pretty with lots of overlooks.  We then stopped at this little store in Meadows of Dan and they were having a craft show.  Lots of cool stuff to look at, lots of new ideas for me to work on.  Of course, we took the camera case down to Jessica’s however the camera was not in the case.  So I have no pictures to show you.  Oh well, that’s pretty typical of me.  Enjoy your Sunday and God bless.

A picture of the field.  I was hoping it would show how the sun was glistening off the snow.  It was absolutely beautiful.

Our road after the tractor had made a path.

Going up the hill beside the hay barn.  Yes, that brown spot proves there is still dirt under all this snow.

Guess what?  We’re supposed to get more snow tomorrow.  Not much though-about 3″.  After all this, we probably won’t even notice 3 more inches.  Anyway, we have company coming over today.  My brother-in-law and his wife are coming.  I made homemade vegetable beef soup(cooked on the wood stove, of course)and I’m making  rolls as I type this.  I use my bread machine to mix and knead the dough.  I love this machine.  It is a Zojirushi.    

I bought it used several years ago and consider it a very valuable helper.  I put 1 cup lukewarm water into the machine, 1/4 cup butter-cut into chunks, 1egg beaten, 3 1/4 cups bread flour, 4 tbsp sugar, 3 tbsp powdered milk, 1tsp salt, 1 1/2 tsp yeast.  Set the machine to dough cycle and walk away.  It takes the machine l hr 50 min. to run through this cycle.  Then I take the dough out, punch it down and form the rolls.  I get about 15 rolls from 1 batch.  Then I spray them with olive oil and let them rise for about 1 hr.  Bake 12 min. at 425 degrees.  When I take them out of the oven, I brush them with melted butter(being generous with the butter).  Half of these never make it to the table.  They get eaten as soon as the butter is spread on them.  One thing I do a little different from this recipe is I put 1 1/4 cup fresh ground wheat flour and 2 cups bread flour instead of using all bread flour.  My family doesn’t care a lot for whole wheat so I mix it.  I guess I better go check on my rolls and get ready for company.  God Bless.