Homemaking on the Homestead

  Thanksgiving has always been a big gathering at my house with family. This year it will be smaller because so many of my children live out of state. But no matter how many people you plan to be gathering with this holiday it helps to have a plan.  I wrote out this plan many years ago and it has served me well. If you need a little planning assistance perhaps my Thanksgiving Planner will help you out!  I'll be sharing some of my favorite Thanksgiving recipes with you over the next couple weeks.  Thanksgiving Planner     3 weeks ahead of time  Figure out how many people will you be serving and how big of a turkey you will need.  To calculate this, you need to figure about 1 ½ lbs of turkey per person.  So if you are feeding 8 people you would need a turkey that was about 12 pounds.  I usually buy them bigger so I will have leftovers.    Write out guest list   Plan out menu   Gather recipes   Write out grocery lis...

If you are in need of some side dish recipes for Thanksgiving here are a few that might help you out.. My Favorite Sweet Potatoes Crystal Miller 5 to 6 large yams or sweet potatoes ½ cup butter ½ cups orange juice ¼ cup real maple syrup ¾ cup chopped walnuts Cook sweet potatoes until tender.  Drain and cool to touch.  Peel.  Chop into small pieces and put into a 9x13 pan.  Melt butter and add orange juice and maple syrup.  Drizzle this over the sweet potatoes and stir it up to mix it up.  Sprinkle the copped walnuts over the top and bake at 350 for about 30 to 45 minutes or until it is hot and bubbly.   Green Bean Side Dish This was my own little rendition of the cream soup/green bean/dried French onion dish I have had so many places. I just had the girls throw this together one evening with what I had on hand. It was a great success! 2 qts. Green beans (4 cans would be the same), drained 2 cans cream of mushroo...

I am sure a lot of you reading this already know how to cook a turkey.  But I also know that many ladies have never done it before.  I was in my late 20’s before I cooked my first turkey.  My grandma or mom or mother in law had always done that part.  When I went to cook my first turkey I was reading lots of cookbooks and talking with my mother to learn.  It is not like we have the opportunity to practice turkey roasting too often!   I thought I would just share from my own turkey roasting experience how I have done it.  There are lots of ways to do this and tips, etc..  and I am sure I won’t cover them all but will share what has worked for me.  First is the actual buying of the turkey.  I typically have purchased frozen turkeys.  The week before Thanksgiving you can find turkeys at the best price of the year.  In fact I usually take advantage of these great prices and buy another turkey or ...

  This week in Friday in the Kitchen I'll show you how to make super moist and simple stuffing in the Instant Pot. Instant Pot Stuffing Last week I made a turkey breast in my Instant Pot (IP) and then made stuffing to go with it. A little pre - Thanksgiving dinner for us. Instant Pot stuffing is easy to make and is so moist. If you have an IP, this might be handy in your dinner meal preparations.  I started by chopping up a small onion and about half of a red pepper. I usually also add celery, but did not have any.  I then put my package of stuffing cubes (I believe it was about 14oz in size) in a bowl and sprinkled the seasoning packet on it and added about a teaspoon of salt. In a frying pan I melted 6T of butter and sauteed the onions and peppers until they were soft and added this to the stuffing cubes... The turkey breast I bought had a gravy packet with it so I poured this into m...

Years ago I had a house full of young ladies all learning homemaking skills. They cooked and baked and cleaned right along beside me. On Thanksgiving we would get excited. We baked everything from scratch. The many pies, dinner rolls and stuffing were all baked right in our own kitchen. They loved it. Today they always talk about those years. It was part of what made our holiday special. Today, fast forward many years and I have no daughters at home to help me make all those pies and dinner rolls and goodies. And I have more people to feed on a holiday dinner. There are spouses and grandchildren and boyfriends/girlfriends... and I am the one to make it all happen. So for the past few years, that is what I have done. This year I was stressing a bit. My oven failed on me, my microwave died (due to a brown out), and I have family coming for Thanksgiving! I looked at all my options.. and this is what I found... Costco … Costco makes amazing pies and awesome dinner rolls (and ...

  There are some businesses that just can't take a day off.. and the airlines is one of them.. it is a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week type of business... they make it possible for those flying to spend time with their families to get to where they are going.. A shout out to pilots and mechanics and flight crews... that can't be home with their families today.. and such is the life of my hubby (an aircraft mechanic).. but we will have our dinner on Saturday!! :D .. Have a blessed day with your family!!

This is a repost from a couple years ago..  but my feelings are still the same!!  Be grateful, be thankful for all of God's blessings..  the big ones and the little tiny ones..  God's love is everywhere when we take the time to look and see them..  Thanksgiving always means to me a time to stop and give thanks. I’ve seen many lists on the things people are thankful for in their life. I have my own list as well. But I have really been contemplating something beyond this. I’ve been contemplating and thinking about a heart of gratefulness. How is this different you might ask? Well I’ll share my thoughts. In my mind a true heart of gratefulness goes beyond my list of what I’m thankful for. It is a deeper meaning that I am going to strive for in my life. I looked it like this.. if you were walking through a desert of heat you would be so thankful, deeply grateful for every drop of water you had. If you stood next to a huge lake, ...

This last week with the crazy power outages (we had 2 more after the one I posted about).. I've been afraid to plan to many meals. Loosing power for long periods of time means no cooking. We ate sandwiches for a few meals and I went out to Costco one night and bought pizza. Praying that this weeks goes much better. We are having our Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday, after the holiday. My daughter Emily and her hubby Brandon will be arriving on Thursday but my hubby has to work and so does my daughter Sierra. But that is OK.. we are flexible. I typically like doing my holiday dinner on a different day anyway. So it works well for us. I'll be planning regular meals for the week, a little extra because of my kids coming and then our holiday dinner. I'm keeping the menu super simple this week so I can focus on holiday preparations and more importantly, my family arriving and spending time with them. Today my plan is simple. We are having fish sticks ...