April 2023 Highlights

Hello everyone 

April went by so fast! I want to blog one last time this month so I’m going to just post a bunch of things from our April 

Easter was fun.  We had a smaller family gathering with very easy food and some egg things.

  

Remember those little guys from what seems like just a few weeks ago?

Now they look like this….

They are 10, 11 and 14 now.  

Our youngest grand, Cora was here for a very short visit (like 36 hours) this month.  We were so busy the whole time but by evening,  she and cousin Jackson were both so tired.  

They were both waiting on their parents.  So these  2 finally laid down and watched tv and I don’t know how they stayed awake.  They were still excited and just happy to see each other 

Not good things this month- the hot water heater broke but thankfully my husband and stepson were able to replace it.  The old one was 9 years old. 

And the washing machine is not working right.  It’s about 2 years old but we bought a 5 year warranty as our appliances never seem to last long.  Repair person is coming tomorrow. 

We took a trip to Branson, Missouri- I guess it’s our favorite vacation place as we never go anywhere else.  

We like to see the live music and comedy shows that Branson is famous for.  

We stayed a full week and saw 15 shows and below are photos from a few of them. 

Hits of the 80s at the American Theater 

Acrobats from somewhere in China at the Mickey Gilley Theatre 

Clay Cooper with part of his cast 

The Haywood’s at Clay Cooper’s Theatre 

Back to the 6o’s, also at Clay Cooper

Country Jamboree at Grand Country Music Hall

There are lots of things to do in Branson like golf, water activities, fishing, arcades, so much shopping!  But we like the shows best of all.  

At home, we’ve started just a bit of gardening.  

And there are always things to do around our house, yours too I imagine? 

I’ll be back tomorrow with a new week’s to do list.  

Good night everyone 

❤️ Rhonda 

New to do list and more cast iron chronicles

Good morning

I made a new to do list and it’s a pretty simple one 

I’ve already started laundry, did the bills and budget and called Discover. (I hate to make phone calls,  I think it reminds me of when I worked in a office and would of rather been at home) 

Cast iron success 

  

I cooked an egg in a basket for my breakfast in our second smallest cast-iron skillet. As you can see, it didn’t stick at all.  

When we moved to the freezer into the breakfast room, I was able to see what was in there better. I found three packages of ground pork that was gifted to us. And I thought I would try to make breakfast sausage out of it. I looked up several different seasoning recipes, and kind of combined them to how I thought it would taste like we like. 

Homemade sausage uses a lot of seasoning! I mixed up 3 pounds of sausage and cooked them all this weekend because my husband likes to have biscuits and sausage in the freezer that can be easily reheated for breakfast.

This was not lean pork by any means, but it was crazy how much this sausage stuck to the skillet! I guess it was the spices that stuck, and burned on, I don’t know. I did get them clean afterward, but it was a very big effort. 

  

For now, I have zero plans to ever make homemade sausage again.

Also, I gave my stove top a very good cleaning since I took these pictures.

Now I need to get up and get some more things done

Hope you all have a great day

It’s going to be 85° in Oklahoma.

❤️Rhonda 

Hello- not an April Fool’s joke

Hello everyone, if anyone is still out there to read this neglected blog. 

I’m fine, everyone in my family is OK.  I’ve just been busy straightening out our home, regular housework and a little relaxing too.  

So I’ll just jump right back in here.  

One of the projects I worked on while daughter and family were living here was to clean and season 4 cast iron skillets.  It was a big project!

blog post where I talked about redoing the cast iron

I coated them with oven cleaner and let them sit in the sun in black trash bag.  Then I scrubbed and scrubbed with steel wool and an iron bristle brush.  It took multiple soakings and scrubbing to get them back to bare metal.  

Then they needed to be greased and baked in a hot oven.  This took multiple tries and It was a big effort but now I have 4 seasoned cast iron skillets.  

Even after all that work, I haven’t been cooking with them.  

So I decided for April,  I will cook everything I can in cast iron.  

Today,  I started the morning cooking myself some hash browns and an egg.  

  

Cooking 

And after-  the egg didn’t stick! 

For lunch I made a beef dish and for supper I made a chicken dish.  (We didn’t eat all of both recipes.  We like leftovers and the leftovers are  dished up in the fridge and will be reheated as desired) 

Anyway,  both recipes cooked nicely and the clean up was easier than I expect.  

So day 1 into my plan and so far, so good.

But I’ve always preferred cooking in nonstick, so come May,  if I’m not loving this cast iron,  I’ll buy some new nonstick cookware.  

We did get all our windows and 2 doors replaced.  The installers were great and the new windows and doors couldn’t be nicer.  I’ll share some photos soon.

One of the inside changes we made was moving our freezer into the breakfast room.  It has been in the garage for years.  

It’s better for the freezer to be in the house because it is  hard for the freezer to keep up during really hot summers and really cold winters.  

It’s more convenient for me to have the freezer right by the kitchen. 

The draw back is purely looks-  the breakfast room is much prettier when it’s not so full of appliances.  

But right now,  I’m liking convenience.  

I was reading Terri’s blog one night when I couldn’t sleep.  She talked about making chicken broth and it reminded me I had more than enough chicken bones and celery stalks saved in the freezer.  

Blue House Journal

Since I couldn’t sleep and my husband was out of town,  I started a batch of broth cooking about midnight.  

By then I was tired and able to go to sleep.  

I slept all night and woke up to a big crockpot of chicken broth.

  

I chilled the broth until the chicken fat hardened and was easy to remove.

Then I froze it 2 cup containers. 

Inside the freezer that is now in the breakfast room.  

Much of the USA had some unpleasant weather yesterday.  In Oklahoma,  we had so much wind all day,  50 to 70 MPH gusts which is really hard wind. 

I was nervous all day but thankfully our home had no damage.  Many people in Oklahoma lost their homes to fire.  Lots of trees fell and lots of power lines and poles fell too.  

We had nice weather today and next week’s forecast looks very pleasant especially compared to yesterday.  



April looks to be a busy month- one grand has a birthday, Easter, a vacation for my husband and I,  a very short visit from our son and family, another grand has 2 musicals in April.  

How is your April looking?  

I plan to blog this month too

Thanks for reading 

❤️Rhonda