This monstrous sycamore is right across the dirt road from the near field.
I feel like the ant…busy, busy, busy getting things ready for winter. Putting things to bed for the year. Clearing out the old and unusable stuff out of the pantry and the freezer. Today is trash day and I throw the old foodstuffs out the night before so as to keep the neighborhood wildlife at bay.
I’ve never been good about going through the pantry and cleaning it out. I have a gazillion other things that seem to take priority. But since I deep cleaned the kitchen, the pantry was the next logical thing. I had noticed pantry moths this fall, and I can’t have that. I have a pair of really expensive LLBean washed wool slippers. I hadn’t seen them for a while and found them under our bed…moth eaten! It broke my heart. So, I’m cleaning like a mad woman.
Mr. FixIt found a good deal on ground turkey at Sam’s club the other day. Five pounds (two 2.5 pound packages) is usually $15.92 but he got it for $13 and change. I needed to do something with it yesterday other than my usual MO…stuff it in the freezer before it goes bad. That’s a bad habit because so many times it just sits in there and gets freezer burn. I’m making a pledge to reduce the amount of food that gets thrown away. It’s terrible! Since I was puttering in the kitchen anyway, I got busy and did some cooking.
I bought some Pork Sausage Seasoning at the Piggly Wiggly last night. It had 8 ounces in a packet. Zero calories. I had to do some math to figure out how much to put in with one package of two-and-a-half pounds of 93% lean ground turkey. I also added 1.5 cup of Panko crumbs, 1 cup of self rising flour, and two eggs as an extender. It made sixteen good sized patties at 177 calories a patty. I had one for breakfast and put the rest in servings of 2-3 patties in vacuum seal bags for the freezer.
I still had two-and-a-half pounds of ground turkey left so I mixed up much the same recipe but used different spices to make turkey burgers. We had that for supper. It made ten bigger patties for only 282 calories each. They are also in vacuum seal bags. I fried the sausage patties and the turkey burgers for a few minutes on each side to get the browned look, then finished them by baking in a 350° oven for 20 minutes. I turned them over and baked for another 5-10 minutes to make sure they were cooked through, but not too dry. Both kinds of patties came out really good but I was especially pleased with the sausage. We usually eat Jimmy Dean’s or Butterball Turkey Sausage and I am not happy with their seasonings. These tasted all the world like pork sausage patties.
I went out on the mower late yesterday afternoon and started mulching up the leaves along the hedgerow…keeping a weather eye out for the bear, of course. I saw more fresh sign and have paid special attention to the trees and underbrush. I found a place down by the creek that had been dug up by something BIG, but not sure why. We have a lot of voles down in that area of the field.
It’s time to start looking for seed for the pollinator gardens for next year. My friend Aimee is an Education and Outreach Specialist at West Virginia Conservation Agency and has the 411 on all things pollinator. She’s guided me to Ernst Seed to look for heliopsis. I’ve protected my five little milkweed plants with my life and they have opened with a proliferation of seed. Aimee says in three years, it will be everywhere!!! I’m praying for monarchs!
🍁
“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
Galatians 6:9 ESV
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The calories between Christmas and New Years don’t count nearly as much as the calories between New Years and Christmas! This cute sweatshirt is perfect for those Cookie Exchange Parties!!!
