Cook once, eat fifteen times

Yesterday I finally did something I've wanted to do for two years - I made and processed Beef Stew.  Fifteen pints, to be exact. That's fifteen evenings the daily dilemma of what to fix myself for supper is solved. 

Cooking for one is a lot harder than I ever thought it would be. It's a lot of aggravation to prepare an entire meal when I know I'll be eating the same thing, or elements of the same things, for the next three days. I've already discovered that's a recipe for wasting food. 

When I lived alone over thirty years ago, my mother and grandmother pretty much kept me fed. Back before the cellphone days, I'd come home from work and find notes in my mailbox instructing me to go to one of their houses and what was on the menu. With my grandmother next door and my mother only a mile away, it was good to have options. Ah, the good old days! 

This Beef Stew recipe is from the Ball Book, as are many of the foods I home process. When I'm ready to enjoy a jar, I'll make a bit of thickening from flour when I heat it up. Adding flour to a jar before canning is a no-no due to concerns about reaching proper heat levels inside the jar during processing. We do want to be safe. 

In the overall scheme of things, this is a small accomplishment but I feel good about it. Every little thing is a step toward what will be my normal life without Ron. Typing that sentence felt odd, but it's a truthful sentiment. Who knew Beef Stew could make a life feel like it was moving forward again? 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, Beef Stew, home canning, country lifestyle, rural living, Ball Book of Canning, life after death, a writer's life, KC Kendricks, m/m romance, grandmothers

Keeping a country girl warm

Rural living is not for the lazy. I know this because I live it. It would be much easier to watch television and play on the Internet all day than it is to go outside in fifty degree weather and split firewood for three or four hours. I'll take splitting firewood any day of the week over watching the vast wasteland.

There are a lot of trees here on the manor. Most of them are maple but there's a good smattering of oak, wild cherry, and poplar tossed in. I don't harvest healthy trees for firewood unless they've gotten tall enough to be a threat to the house or develop some other issue that will be a problem in the near future. In October of 2023, I had a professional come and take down a leaning maple. It was wood from that maple my cousin and I split and stacked yesterday. And we still have some to go, but he wants to haul that to his place and work at his leisure. 

The old adage is that firewood warms you three times. Once when you cut down the tree, twice when you split the wood, and thrice when you burn the firewood. My grandfather used to repeat that every year and it's true. Working firewood can make you sweat even in cold weather. 

I actually enjoy wood cutting season. I like working outside far more than cleaning house (I keep my house tidy enough, thank you). I like the aesthetics of a neatly stacked rank of firewood although I'll be tarping the ranks for the winter in the next few days. I already have enough firewood stacked just inside the basement door to last through January. Once what I have inside is burned, I'll only bring over enough for two or three weeks at a time so I don't have any wood inside over the warmer months. 

Yes, burning firewood is hard work, but it serves multiple purposes. It keeps dead trees from causing damage to my house, working firewood is good exercise, and burning firewood reduces my electric bill.  

I don't think there is any better heat than wood heat. Wood heat is a "hot" heat. No cool air swirls around the way it does with a furnace or heat pump. Wood heat is a constant heat without the continual cycles of cooling and warming you get with a heat pump. And if there is a storm and the power goes out?  Well, I won't freeze and neither will my water lines because the woodstove is impervious to power outages. 

I was born country, so using firewood to heat my house is not a foreign concept. It's all part of the self-reliance that is bred into "country folk." It's hard work, but people out here don't run from that. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, firewood, country lifestyle, rural living, hard work, power outages, water lines, winter weather, maple, oak, a writer's life, heat pumps