Please excuse Sionnie's absence

Hey guys

I am writing this note on behalf of Sionnie. As you can tell I have authored all of the posts thus far (Sion has been here in spirit :)). The reason being, in case you didn't know, was that they just bought the house next door!! So, they are busy fixing her up nice and pretty before they move everything in and they're doing all this while still working full time jobs. All that to say, please excuse her absence and know that you will be hearing from her shortly, probably after the holidays. She has been working hard on some DYI projects for you guys and some fun informational posts on healthy living. Thanks for understanding and hope you've been having a super week!

Lovingly,

Shell (and Sion)

Leftover Land! (What to do!)

Leftover Land

(whose fridge looks like this!?, this is not really a pic of mine but might as well be)

Hey Guys!

Hope everyone had a stupendous Thanksgiving! Ours was absolutely fantastic, it got a little crazy there in the last couple hours before game time but we finished everything, kept it hot and it tasted great! I think this was the best turkey I've ever made! It's all about the brine baby. If you have never brined a turkey, you are missing out. Its a salty concoction that you soak the turkey in for 12-24 hours before cooking (use a brine bag). I added brown sugar, bay leaves and orange peels to mine usual recipe this year and buttered the top of the turkey for the last hour, huge difference!!

Okay...so if you're like me, you have toooonnnss of leftovers! I don't have too much turkey left, mostly dark meat (we're a white meat family) but here's what I am doing with mine so that I don't waste a thing!

Chicken Noodle Soup:

We have a lot of egg noodles left so, I am cutting up 2 carrots, 3 celery and 1/4 of an onion and throwing it in my crockpot with 48 oz of chicken stock. I also tossed in a raw chic

ken breast. I set it on high and walk away. About 30-45 min. later, once the chicken is fully cooked, I'll shred the chicken throw it back in the pot and dump my left over egg noodles

in the pot and turn it down to low and let it cook for another 30min to an hour. And Tada! Chicken noodle soup!

Shephards Pie:

We also have a lot of gravy, green beans and mashed left. So take your leftover dark meat that no one is eating (ha!) shred or chop and add it to some sauteed onions in a skillet. Next stir in your leftover gravy and layer the bottom of a 8x8 casserole dish, next layer with your green beans and top with mashed (or sweet potatoes) and some yummy cheddar cheese and some of those yummy crispy onions that you use in your green bean casserole. Cover with foil and bake in the oven on 375 for 30-40 minutes. Take the foil off for the last 5-10 minutes to bake the cheese on top. Tada!

Leftover Stuffing:

Okay,this may sound weird but is soooo good! We took our left over stuffing shaped it into little patties and put them into a skillet with a little bit of olive oil. This crisped the outside of the patty. Then we cooked an egg (over medium, so you still have runny centers) and topped the stuffing patties with the eggs! Sooo yummy!

As for cranberry sauce, put it on pancakes, toast or yogurt. Waste not, want not is a motto in my home! I still have some leftover sweet potatoes that I am going to put into a freezer bag and freeze so they don't go bad (use a straw to suck out all the air if you don't have a vacuum sealer) and then later make some sweet potatoe cakes to eat with my peach chutney I made this summer! Yummy! I'll post that recipe later (along with pics).

Hope this was helpful!! Do you have any yummy leftover recipes? Please post!! :)

Lovingly,

Shell

I will be making this for Thanksgiving!

Walnut Streusel Pumpkin Pie (yes, please!)

Original Recipe Yield 1 - 9 inch pie

Ingredients

• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
• 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 egg whites
• 1 (9 inch) unbaked pie shell
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons butter, chilled
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, mix together the pumpkin, sweetened condensed milk, and egg yolks. Stir in 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt. In a large glass or metal bowl, whip egg whites until soft peaks form. Gently fold into pumpkin mixture. Pour filling into pie shell.
3. Bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven. While the pie is baking, prepare the streusel topping: In a small bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, and 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Blend in the cold butter with a fork or pastry blender until the mixture is crumbly. Mix in the chopped nuts. Sprinkle the topping over the pie.
4. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Bake an additional 40 minutes, or until set.

How to make Homemade Laundry Detergent

Well, I am out of laundry soap, so I spent part of my afternoon making more and I decided what a great opportunity to share with my friends! I have been making this for the past 6 months or so and use it for all our laundry. The secret ingredient is soap nuts! They are all natural and fragrance free. Gentle for babies, great for allergie sufferers and strong enough to clean out heavy dirt. You can buy them online and don't be freaked out by the price. You get a lot of soap nuts and you don't have to use very much each time you make a batch. You can just throw the nuts into a muslin bag and then into your washer but I prefer to make a detergent out of mine, I feel like I get more bang for my buck that way! So here's how you do it:

Take a handful of soap nuts, about 10-15...

and throw them into a pot with about with about 4 cups of water. Bring the water to almost a boil, right before the water begins to boil pull off the stove and drop the temperature to low-med and return pot to stovetop and let simmer for about 15-20 minutes. The water will begin to reduce and turn a yellowish/tan color.

I like to add just a little fragrance, nothing major and still all natural. I add lavendar oil I made this summer and homemade vanilla extract. Both are super easy. For the lavendar oil you just need dried lavendar (make sure its dried completely or it can get moldy) use the flowers and leaves and compact it into a jar with a carrier oil ( I used grapeseed oil) and let it sit for a month and voila, lavendar oil! For the vanilla you just need a 1/2 of a vanilla bean for 4oz. of 80 proof vodka. The beauty about the vanilla extract is that you can keep replenishing it for up to 2 years! All you do is fill the bottle back up once it's halfway gone, give it a couple weeks and it will have it's full flavor back. Pretty cool huh?!

Once my soap is done, I strain out or spoon out the nuts and then pour the liquid into ice cube trays. (This recipe makes 1 ice cube tray, 16 loads)Since its all natural and made from plant material and water, I freeze it so I can keep it longer. And I don't have to worry about reusing my ice cube trays for ice because there's no chemicals, all natural and safe. Once my cubes are frozen I empty them into a ziplock freezer bag and store. You only need one cube for small to medium loads and two for large loads. I haven't found the perfect fabric softener but just read one about vinegar and orange zest? Don't know how I feel about that but anythings worth a shot, I'll keep you posted.

Enjoy and let me know if you have questions or suggestions!

Lovingly,

Shell and Sion

"Broken" bottle and stray cats

So...last night Sion (another fun example of a halfsies) mike (my hubs) and I decided to go on a cleaning binge to prepare for Thanksgiving company. We were almost finished and getting ready to enjoy a fun game of Settlers (if you haven't played this game, you haven't lived!) when all of the sudden we heard a dribble, Sion states it as more of a running water sound. I swiftly ran to the source...the closet that holds our washer and dryer and sure enough there was "water" running but we couldn't figure out where it was coming from...and then I smelled it...wine...

BACK STORY: I started making peach wine, 12 gallons to be exact, this past August. Sion and I just recently bottled it, it tastes yummy! I stored some 17 bottles flat in a cubby on top of the dryer.

So...there I was, nose to the ground and I suddenly remembered something that I read. Once you cork your wine, you need to wait a couple days and watch to see if the cork starts to rise. If it does, it means the wine is not done fermenting and you just need to put it back into the carboy to ferment and then try to bottle it again. Well, folks, truth be told, sometimes...I get antsy, so I didn't wait and here I was knee deep in wine, (well, not really knee deep but we did have a mess on our hands.) We had to remop the floors that had just finished drying, not fun at

all. So, the lesson from all this, don't just read the directions, FOLLOW THEM! (Picture to the left shows a cork that is rising)

Here's a fun pic of Sion with her new sieve aka stylish hat! She's going to make apple sauce tomorrow, so we will be posting!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! So, at about 5 am this morning I was getting in my car to head to work when I noticed I left my window down, all the way down. Right then I thought, "What if someone is in my backseat?" as I turned around I heard..."meow," I totally freaked, jumped out and I think the cat was as scared as me because it got out of my car at the same time I did! Ha! Guess, I learned my lesson, don't leave your windows down, next time it could be a possum, gross!

IT'S TURKEY TIME!!!!!!!

So, this is my second year hosting Thanksgiving and it's been a dream of mine to do. I know that sounds like a lame dream but I always admired my grandma as a little girl. She made everything from scratch with the help of my aunts. She fed our whole clan for practically every holiday and after my grandma passed, my Aunt Nancy took over. I have always looked up to my Aunt Nancy, she reminds me so much of my grandma, she is a great cook, mother, wife, artist, teacher, etc. So, I decided when I got married and began to have my own family, I wanted to model it after my grandma and aunt. So, that means, everything from scratch!

I know Thanksgiving is about a week away but there's no time like the present to get started. It's a lot of work when you make everything from scratch and if you're like me, you don't want to be stuck in the kitchen cooking and cleaning while everyone else is having a good time! So I got started about a week ago, I made almost 50 rolls that I froze after they rose once (I will thaw and let me rise a second time before baking)

 I made all my homemade egg noodles and froze those as well ...

And just last night I started my stuffing. Heres the first loaf cubed and laid out to dry and that is a picture of my second loaf that I am getting ready to cut this morning and let dry out. (excuse the picture, its early, no make-up! and I tend to always make awkward faces :/)

And here is a picture of the apples I canned for my pie. I picked these this summer and canned them and now all I have to do is throw them into my pie crust and bake. No coring, peeling or slicing. So this weekend, I will make my pie crusts and freeze those, get my brine ready and voila!

 Preparing for Thanksgiving can be a lot of work but if you get as much done on the front end and spread it out. Then when it comes time for Thanksgiving, you can enjoy your company and not be a slave to the kitchen while still providing your family with yummy food with good-for-you ingredients!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Lovingly,
Shell

(P.S. I am going to set up a separate tab with all my recipes for my Thanksgiving dinner. Some fun twists on sweet potato casserole and pumpkin pie!)

All in a name!

So, I this is my first official post! I've been telling myself I'd do this for almost a year now and I couldn't come up with a title for my blog so I kind of gave up. I wanted it to be something that stood out and could stand up to its name. And I went through so many names (I'll spare you the long list, some were pretty awful). I also wanted to make sure that I knew what I wanted to write about and that takes time also, I didn't just want to write posts that looked more like tweets or fb status...I want to write stories(-ish) about what's going on around these parts (and I wanted to make sure they'd be interesting).

So...by now you've seen the name..."Our City 'Stead." And you are probably asking yourself, "What does that mean?" Well, friends let me tell you. We live in the city, Nashville to be exact, and love it. We've (my wonderful husband and I) been here for almost 2 years and God has put us on a pretty exciting path of learning, growing and adapting. Since we've come hear, we have been on somewhat of a food/wholeness journey that initially began about 5 years ago. It all started with HFCS (that lovely high fructose corn syrup that is in EVERYTHING!). Well, we began to become aware of this synthetic sugar that we were consuming on a daily basis and we started to ask questions and investigate. Next thing you know we were cutting out partially hydrogenated oil, BHT (and other preservatives), horomone filled milk, GMO's (genetically modified foods), horomone pumped meat, aluminum filled deoderant, sugar/fluoride toothpaste, and household chemicals. We began eating locally, buying food from local farmers and participating in CSA's (community supported agriculture), eating fresh eggs, raw milk and growing our own food. And as we've begun to embrace this new way of looking at food and what we put into/on our bodies, we began to hear this term more and more....homestead(ing). There were oodles of books and blogs dedicated to this way of life, it was like uncovering a buried treasure!

So what is homesteading? Well, the definition is so broad but the long and short of it is...it's sustainable living, self-sufficiency, getting back to the land, keeping a home and so much more. And it's something I love to do.  Its like a hobby, so it makes the work enjoyable and believe me it's a lot of work! So, seeing as how I loooove to shorten all my words (time saver) i.e. perf-perfect, presh-pressure/precious, secs-seconds (that I have quit saying recently because it was brought to my attention it doesn't sound right), div-divide, I mean you can pretty much halfsies any word..it's real fun, you should try it! So....naturally I shortened homestead to stead :) and Ta-da! "Our City 'Stead"

Oh, yeah, who are we, since it is "ours," grammar anyone, school did pay off after all! We are Shell and Sionnie (pronounced sho-ney)two friends (and our amazing husbands) that met through a wonderful orchestration of events, this was meant to be people! And now happen to live next door to each other! (Well, actually they are staying with us for the next 10 days until they move in to their house, did I mention it was NEXT DOOR!) I (we) will definitely go into more detail in another post about how we met and how God gave Sionnie and her husband the house next door, great story! But we are friends and we love to say that we are kindred spirits. It's amazing to us to have someone that we share so many commonalities with, from our families and how we grew up, our history and so many of our beliefs. It is truly something special to find someone that you can talk to who you don't have to explain/defend yourself to. Sionnie and I have been on a similar journey that has led us to this place of desiring to have our own urban homestead and much of what we have done, we have done together over the past 11 months.

This blog is our way of documenting our homestead adventures, the triumphs and the fails (believe me there have been lots of fails!), along with some yummy recipes, encouraging stories, and cool pictures (Sionnie is an incredible photographer!).

I imagine some of you out there reading are on a similar journey which is exciting! And I know we can encourage and help each other on this road! So please feel free to share your stories and helps!

Lovingly,

Shell (and Sionnie!)