I know I know … wooden spoons and the like are cheapo. I could buy a new set every month. But I like my wooden spoons that I’ve had since we were married. 42 years y’all. 

I’ve broken one over the years and warped one pretty good from stirring. One has a burn mark, which I’m pretty sure was achieved the first year I had them in our first apartment.

They were made in the U.S. which isn’t totally necessary but I like that.

My girls probably won’t want them, they’re a whole lot more practical than I am, not nearly as sentimental as me. I don’t know what happened to me to make me like that.   It’s just me.  So I plan on using them up and to do that they need to be cared for.

An important thing you should remember about wooden utensils is NOT to run them through the dishwasher. It won’t ruin them but it will weaken them over the years. It water-logs them and they might not ever get really dry if you keep running them through the dishwasher. That could lead to them being weakened and breaking or to bacteria and mold growth.

I wash them off and even scrub them after use. I sometimes dip them in water with some peroxide in it and then air dry then to sanitize them if needed, after washing.

Let them dry thoroughly before storing them.  overnight is best, maybe even all day the next day too.

If you happen to have a utensil that is black with age and water damage, sometimes the best thing is to take a small sharp knife and scrape it along the grain, gently, to remove all the black. Don’t actually cut the wood, though.  Then sand it.

About once a year I sand them all and oil them. Be sure they are completely dry when you sand them. If you sand them while they’re damp the wood is soft and can be damaged and misshapen.

I use a rough grit sand paper, usually 120 and then a finer grit, usually 220. After they’re sanded really well I wipe them down with a clean cloth and get all the sawdust off. You could use a tack cloth for this.

Then I apply a good oil like avocado or coconut oil. I rub in the oil really well, let it sit and soak in over night and then polish the utensils to a shine with a clean cloth. This takes some time, so just get your tools together, sit at a well-lighted table and enjoy the work.

The oil coating keeps moisture out of the wood and keeps them looking good. They can be as smooth or rough looking as you want them to be. The idea isn’t to make them look new, but to keep them in good shape for using. I think there is a beauty in that. 

I know it’s more trouble than most people want to go to but I like old things and the durability of a tried and true tool. I also like the idea of using things til they can’t be used any more. 

You will need: bulk sausage, extra lard, jars, lids, rings and a pressure canner. Also clean cloths, vinegar for cleaning the grease off the jar rims and a jar lifter.

Omit sage from your recipe if you are mixing your own sausage as sage  will make the sausage bitter. Go easy on other herbs and spices too.

Use 2/3 lean meat to 1/3 fat to make the best canned sausage.

First, melt some lard in a heavy pot. This lard will be used to cover the meat in the jars instead of broth or water. Keep it very hot while waiting to be poured.

Put water in your pressure canner according to your manufacturer’s instructions.

Get your jars, lids and rings very hot in boiling water.

Make small patties from the sausage meat, cook in a skillet until very done. My patties are about 2 tablespoonfuls of sausage.  They are always very dark, mahogany brown when they’re done.

Reserve the grease from cooking the sausage and add it to the melted lard.

Fill each quart or pint jar 2/3 full with cooked sausage patties. Don’t fill the jar too full, 2/3 full is enough.

Pour the hot lard in each jar and cover the sausages.

Wipe each jar opening and the whole rim of the jar with a clean cloth dipped in vinegar. The vinegar will help to cut the grease and get it off the jars. If you leave grease on the jars, they won’t seal.

Adjust lids, can in pressure canner at 10 pounds pressure.
Pints 75 minutes
Quarts 90 minutes

Let the canner cool naturally. Once cool, remove jars and allow them to continue cooling on a clean towel on the counter top.

To serve these sausages, open them up and pour the patties, grease and all into a skillet. Heat til very hot and serve. Reserve the melted lard to use again, but store it in the refrigerator or freezer.

We sat in lounge chairs surrounded by a sea of red fescue and clover in the back yard. The grass and the chairs were already hot from the August sun beating down on them for hours before we ever came out. Bees made their contented sounds around our feet.

We quietly listened to everything; the wind in the tall trees, our little goats eating in the fence row, the way the cicadas crescendoed and quieted again and the cardinal song. We both enjoyed just sitting in the shade of the tree and not talking. Talking was what we did inside the house or in the car. We talked a lot and we laughed a lot. But when we were outside, we were mostly silent like we were waiting for Nature to take her turn.

We sat there taking it all in, everything enveloped by the cotton clouds and the heat, the deep blue of the sky, the butterflies landing on our feet. She turned her face to me and it surprised me when she broke the silence, “Remember this day when I’m gone and how much we loved it.” I balked of course, “Don’t say that! I don’t want to think of that.” But I was young and immortal and didn’t like the idea that she might not be. Now she isn’t with me any more and I do remember that hot, beautiful day. Her fingerprints are on every August day.

I remember more days too, when we just sat or walked somewhere outside, at a park, on the farm, at the lake, in the garden. With yellow leaves falling on us, with a flight of geese sounding above, with the green brown of the lake meeting the startling blue of the sky, where we just ‘were’.

All those sights and sounds remind me of her now and there is nothing I can do in August that doesn’t speak her name. When I step outside into the heat and sunshine, the memories rush in and bring a smile and a soft sigh along with them.

©Sylvia D. Britton ~ The Christian Homekeeper 2020

But I like the taste of pickled foods so I used vinegar in all my cucumbers, okra, etc. for a long time, then I went back to the traditional way of preserving vegetables and started fermenting them again. I like them so much more when they’re fermented. And these okra pods are crunchy not soft or slimy!

Don’t let the word “fermented” throw you. The vegetables aren’t rotten and they aren’t stinky. They are lightly fermented, a little effervescent and totally yummy. Here’s my fermenting okra:

Here’s the recipe:

First make your brine using 1 cup of pure water and 2 teaspoons of sea salt, set aside. You might want to make about 1/2 cup extra in case 1 cup doesn’t cover everything, so for that use 1/2 cup water and 1 teaspoon of sea salt.

Wash however many small pods of fresh okra you can fit in a pint jar, and put them in a clean jar.

To the jar add:

1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns

1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 teaspoon dry dill seed or a part of a seed head

2 cloves of garlic

1/2 of a small onion, sliced thinly

Pour the brine over the ingredients in the jar. Cover loosely with a lid and let this sit out on a countertop for 3 – 10 days, Open it daily and after 3 days you can check the taste. When it tastes tangy enough, cover it and refrigerate it. It will last a couple of months in the fridge.

This year we were able to make this using the okra, onions and garlic we grew!

Yesterday I canned some tomato sauce using tomatoes from our garden. The tomatoes are trickling in and so as not to lose them, I can them a few at a time.

Since I use a water bath to can tomatoes it’s not a big ordeal. This batch had a lot of yellow tomatoes in it so it isn’t as vividly red as most batches.

I used pint jars and boiled them for 40 minutes. They will be great this winter for small recipes of chili, soup, etc. I used to put basil leaves in the sauce when I canned it but the basil turns black and doesn’t do a thing for the sauce. It’s better to add the basil later when you’re cooking with the sauce.

Another thing I did yesterday was to make yogurt. I love yogurt and homemade yogurt made with live cultures has such healthy probiotics. I bought a culture from Homesteader Supply called Ly-Pro Y+. And it it super! I use a Yogotherm these days to make yogurt. I don’t like tying up my Instant Pot and I have some serious struggles using the IP with yogurt, mine gets too hot.

A Yogotherm is simply a little bucket that sits in an insulated container. The bucket holds about 3 quarts of milk . You heat the milk, let it cool to room temp and then add the culture/inoculant, stir well and pour it into the bucket. Then you cover the bucket and place it inside the Yogotherm and put the lid on that. It is ready in 5-8 hours. You could use about 1/3 cup of live, active culture yogurt instead of the culture. I think you could use a small styrofoam ice chest to do the same thing if you wanted to.

I will say though that this Ly-Pro Y+ culture is pretty great. I had two quarts of milk left that wouldn’t fit in the Yogotherm so I just put it in quart jars and wrapped the with a towel. They will firm and ready in about the same time as the Yogotherm yogurt.

I want some Greek style yogurt so I put the two quarts of yogurt in my Hatrigo yogurt stainer. I’ll keep the whey that strains out to ferment vegetables.

That was my ordinary day yesterday. Who knows what today holds!

Now, if someone is highly allergic, using clay will help but there are still dangers associated with allergies that should be treated as usual.

Clay powder can be made at home from your local soil but the higher actual clay content the better. You will dig up a small bit of soil, dry it completely til its powdery and then to use it you make a paste with some water. It doesn’t take much water so add it a drop or two at a time.

You can also purchase French Green Clay Powder which works wonderfully as a remedy for bites and stings. I used to buy it at Frontier and I’m sure they and other outlets still sell it. I bought a pound in 1994 and still have about 1 cups of it left!

Once you apply the clay to the bites/stings, let the clay dry completely. Let it dry until it can be brushed off the area with your hand or a cloth. While it is drying you can apply more clay paste if needed but let it all dry completely before trying to remove it.

In the picture above my 2 year old granddaughter was stung 4 times by a little bee of some kind and it hurt so badly, she was inconsolable. I immediately made the clay paste, applied it to the stings and within 2 minutes it had calmed down and stopped hurting. Once it had dried and I brushed off the clay, there weren’t any signs of stings at all.

Dried beans are one of the most economical items you can home can. They’re getting expensive in the stores right now so stock up and plan to preserve them by canning some. Canning dry beans does require a pressure canner.

This is not a tutorial on how to use a pressure canner. If you don’t know how to use one or don’t have one, you’ll need to get that taken care of before canning dried beans. I’ll give instructions for using my Pressure Canner which is a Mirro 23 quart Pressure Canner, and you can take it from there.

An important thing to remember when pressure canning ANYTHING: Time your canning according to the ingredient that needs the most time. So if you put meat in your dried beans, you can them as long as you would a whole quart or pint of meat.

There are several methods you could use to home can dried beans.

1. Soak, cook, can. In this method you soak the beans in water eight hours or overnight. Then you rinse the beans and put them in clean water and cook them. Finally, you can the cooked beans. I am not personally fond of this method because it cooks the beans twice and they are very mushy. If you like mushy beans, for example if you were going to do nothing with these beans but make re-fried beans, this method might be the best for you.
2. No-soak, can dry beans. This method is definitely the easiest. It works just fine, BUT I can never really work out how much water to add to the beans especially if I have meat in the jars taking up some of the space. I usually end up with lots of water and not enough beans. I’ve experimented with this method a lot and I CAN do it, but I prefer the next method. If you need fast, easy, uncomplicated method, try this one.
3. Soak, can. This is my go-to method for canning dried beans. I like the soak time, it gives the beans a great texture after they have cooked in the jars. They’re not mushy. Plus, after soaking I can add meat and I know the beans aren’t going to swell up much more in the jars so I know how much water to use.

I’ll start with my favorite method: #3, Soak, Can.

My Mirro 22 quart Pressure Canner hold 7 quarts. So to fill 7 quarts with beans I’ll use 2 pounds of dried pintos. Its hard to estimate how many dried beans you need for canning because beans dry at different rates. But a rule of thumb is 2 pounds for every 7 quarts of finished beans.

First, wash your beans. Dried beans are an agricultural product so they’re going to have soil, bugs, twigs, rocks, in them. Wash them in clear water and rinse them. Pick through them while you’re washing to remove debris. Beans that float are probably OK but the ones that are discolored should be removed and discarded.

Now that you’ve got your beans washed, put them in a big bowl or pan that is twice as big as you have beans, at least. Cover the beans with water by several inches and check on them throughout the day or before you go to bed if you’re soaking them overnight. They will soak up a lot of water and you may need to add more.

After the 8 hour or over-night soaking time, pour off the water and get your jars and canner ready.

Your lids, rings and jars should be hot.

Get a big kettle or pot of water boiling to put in the jars after adding the beans.

I put 3 inches of water in my Mirro 22 quart Pressure Canner and start getting it hot while I prepare the beans in the jars.

In each quart jar you’ll put 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 cups of soaked beans and a chunk of cured meat if using. This much salt seasons the beans well. If you think you need them to be less salty for recipes, decrease the amount to 1/2 teaspoon.

If you use pints, you’ll use 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1 cup of soaked beans in each jar, plus the chunk of meat if using.

Next, pour boiling water over the beans and meat in each jar, leaving a 1 inch headspace. this water doesn’t HAVE to be boiling but I think it gives the beans a good head start and shortens the heating up process a little.

Wipe the mouths of the jars clean and dry with a clean cloth. Add the hot lids and rings. Tighten the rings just hand tight don’t force it tight.

Put the jars in the pressure canner, I use a rack and I weave a clean cotton cloth between the jars to keep them from bumping into one another and breaking. That doesn’t always happen but I’ve done it a few times so the cloth is a must in my opinion. It works.

Close and lock the Pressure Canner

After you have locked and vented the canner, let it process.

If you have never pressure canned, find someone who has to do it with you first, that’s my suggestion any way. I pressure canned by myself with my Mother on the phone the first time.

Process these quarts of dried beans with meat for 90 minutes. If you happen to use pints process them for 75 minutes after venting.

After the canning time is up, remove the canner from the heat and let it naturally depressurize. Don’t remove the weight yet. If you do, you risk all the liquid being sucked out of the beans.

When the canner is decompressed, remove the jars and let them cool on the countertop. They’ll still be really hot, probably boiling, so be very careful.

After they cool check to see that the lids are all popped downward and then you can store the jars.

You’re invited to join the new CHK forum far away from facebook and other social media of that type.

The requirements are that you be a woman and that you read about our purpose and calling, our rules and agree with them and fill out the registration form.

Message Board Rules and Registration

Grandma and Papaw were born again at the late age of 28 and 36. Up until then they attended Church in their tiny Kentucky community. It was not unusual for people to be saved in adulthood in the early part of the 20th century. Child Evangelism is a relatively new thing. That came around in the 1930s and really gained momentum by the 1950s. Once they became a member of the Church they were devoted. They supported missionaries, taught Sunday School, cooked for the preacher and were very active members. I remember my Grandmother reading scripture with a magnifying glass and praying for people until she passed away at age 87.

The Church we attended had been in this community for a very long time. I have ancestors who attended there as early as the 1790s. It had undergone many remodels by the time I came around. In the 1960s it was a typically built little white building with a steeple. The quintessential Church in the Wildwood. My Great-great-great grandparents went to Church there all the way down to my Mother and I. I have cousins and uncles and aunts who still go to Church there.

My first memory of the Church was when I was 5 years old. I wore a little light blue dress that Grandma had made, white socks and black patent leather shoes and my Sunday School class sang in front of the Church members one Sunday.

My Uncle has a memory of the Church too. In 1948 when he was 2 years old, a family member passed away. The little Church was packed with people for the funeral. Funerals were different back then. The deceased was in a casket on a gurney and because it was summer time, there was a contraption on the casket where you could hang a mosquito net over the open casket. Not that mosquitoes were likely to be bothering the deceased but there are other flying insects to think about. Gurneys had very large rubber wheels so the casket with the deceased could be moved around.

So the day had dragged on and on and it was hot. People were really flapping those Church fans and perspiring up a storm. And a little fellow with a white shirt and overalls was getting so bored.

So he got up and wandered around a bit during the funeral. He was being good so Grandma allowed him to move about, it was better than him fidgeting and making noise. All was well and the really sad part of the funeral had begun and the pastor began his final, solemn prayer.

So what does the little boy with the overalls decide to do? Well he does what any 2 year old boy would do. He sits down in front of one of the big rubber gurney wheels, legs splayed, grabs the wheel in both hands, sticks out his tongue and starts making loud, wet truck noises. That lasted about 3 seconds before Grandma jumped up and grabbed him.

More to come …..

I left Facebook this week. Well, mostly.

I did leave the Official Christian Homekeeper Facebook Page up and my personal page is still active though I haven’t been posting. There are some reasons I took the Facebook Group and moved it here and will not be visiting FB as much as I had been.

I don’t believe Facebook is a horrible place. There are a lot of good things that I see on Facebook every day, encouraging things, pretty things, sweet pictures and funny stuff.

Here’s the problem though that I saw in MYSELF: I was spending way too much time looking at Social Media.

I closed my Twitter account. I closed my SNAPCHAT (which I only had because of my kids) and though I am registered at many social media places, it’s because I didn’t want someone else to claim the name “Christian Homekeeper”. 

What did I do with all my time BEFORE social media took hold? I read a lot more. I talked to people. I created things, did crafts, sewed and worked on my home more. 

I take pleasure in my home, in keeping it clean, arranged, comfortable, but I was not doing a lot of those things, I was casually sifting through all those Facebook posts. 

Then there is the political aspect of Facebook. I simply got tired of all the political posing and harping. Politics are not first and foremost in my mind, the Kingdom of God is first in my mind. I do vote. I don’t want to read or participate in FB political shenanigans and memes. 

Next, there is the fact that Facebook isn’t what many think it is. Facebook is a company, owned by an individual/individuals. Does anyone really think they have rights on Facebook? We do not. We can be censored and all the information we receive on Facebook can be carefully manipulated and fed to us. If a post is removed, some cry censorship. But it is their right to censor. Just like it is my right to censor certain posts here on this message board that conflict with my beliefs. Just like it is your right to leave here if you don’t agree, it is my right to leave FB because I don’t agree with their social agenda.

Finally, there is the whole economic, marketing aspect of Facebook. We are the ones purchasing and being sold things to. We are the captive audience and we’re not being paid for our time, we’re paying them by seeing advertisements however unsavory they may be, and by purchasing anything via a link on FB. I am all for commerce and making honest money, I simply want off the money train that is Facebook.I’ll insert one more reason here: I hate some of the memes that come across my FB page.

I hate some of the ads and memes. There is a lot of vulgarity and baseness on Facebook. This is something Facebook allows. I think it dulls our minds to that type of humor. I can disallow those things here and I can provide you a place where it doesn’t happen. 

These are my reasons. I just wanted to be away from Facebook and I don’t think I’m alone in that. So, after much prayer, discussion, more prayer and seeking the Lord, I realized that God can do His work anywhere, Facebook included.

He had me and CHK at Facebook for a while and for a work. Now it is time for another phase of this work that is CHK and it will be here away from the deafening noise of social media.