Oh Hey Friday // Field Meals

Hello again!  Since I have only been around on Fridays lately (ashamed face) you must be getting used to the drill for these Friday link-ups. As you know, the lovely ladies I am linking up with are The Farmer's Wife and September FARM.

This week, I am going to tell you all about my staples for harvest meals.  As a disclaimer, I am literally making a field supper as I write this, so forgive me if things seem a little scattered.

This is the second year that I have really been helping my mother in law with field suppers.  She is wonderful and lets me just do them whenever I have time, and picks up whenever I don't.  So that has been a huge help for getting me used to the routine of taking out supper.  Here are five other things that I find myself going back to again and again:

This looks like a good place for supper!

1.  Pie.  It may seem old fashioned and traditional, but I always get the best response when I bring a pie out to the field.  They aren't as fussy to make as you might think (especially if you use store bought pie crust).  But with practice, they are pretty easy to whip up in a relatively short amount of time.  You can find my blueberry pie recipe here or my lemon meringue pie recipe here along with a pie crust tutorial here.

This isn't pie related... But it is our swather

2.  Casseroles!  Easily the most useful dish for taking out to the field (or to a pot luck for that matter) is the casserole.  They are so versatile, basically you can throw whatever you have in your fridge into one (a little meat, a carb and some veggies) - add in some canned cream of mushroom soup and you're golden.  Speaking of cream of mushroom soup, that leads me to #3....

Brett is enjoying this Biscuit Topped Chicken Pot Pie Casserole - tune in Monday for the recipe!

3.  Canned cream of mushroom soup.  Canned cream of mushroom soup is truly God's gift to farm wives (oh and our husbands of course...).  You can put in on anything and it makes it better; from fish to chicken to beef to meatballs, you name it and a farm wife has put cream of mushroom soup on it.  As an aside, if someone in your crew happens to be lactose intolerant, I recently discovered Campbell's golden mushroom soup which tastes similar to cream of mushroom (with a hint of tomato) but doesn't have dairy in it. 

It is right back to work for the boys after supper.

4.  Slow cooker.  This goes without saying.  There are some days that you just don't have two hours to spend standing around the kitchen.  I loved this beef vegetable soup recipe that I made recently in the slow cooker - plus it makes enough to feed an army of hungry men.

5.  An insulated casserole dish carrier (I like this one from Walmart).  I don't know if these are well known or not. I got two for my bridal shower and I think they were one of my favorite gifts.  They come with a casserole dish, lid, hot/cold pack and obviously the carrier (with handles).  I use it to take all kinds of stuff out to the field and it is worth its weight in gold.

Yep, that is how our night ended.  Yes that is rain running down the swather windshield.  What the heck mother nature??

Farm wives (or ladies who do a lot of pot lucks), what are your favorite tricks for field meals?  I would love to hear about them in the comments!

Oh Hey Friday! // Life Lately (in pictures)

Well hi there!  Feels like forever since we talked...  August craziness really is getting the best of me these days; between trying to get going with harvest, getting in as many shifts at work as possible, trying to finish up projects and getting ready for the up coming school year, it feels like I am running in circles.  This week's Oh Hey Friday link up will be a recap of life lately.  But before we get started, the lovely ladies I am linking up with are The Farmer's Wife and September FARM.

So let's get to catching up:

1.  I'm finishing up the last of my night shifts for the summer (since I will be back at school in two weeks).

I'm looking uncannily bright eyed and busy tailed before a 12hr night.

2.  I cannot stop eating blueberries lately.  Seriously, its a problem.  I think I am going to turn into a giant blueberry like the little girl in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory... #cantstopwontstop #noregrets

How can you resist when they look like this??

3.  The quilt is done!!  And we hung the headboard that my dad made us out of an old door from the farm.

To make the headboard, dad cut down the door to our mattress measurements.  Then he sandblasted the old paint off.  To finish it off, we stained it a dark brown and sealed it.

I made the calligraphy prints on either side of our wedding photo.  They say "Where you go, I will go" and "and where you stay, I will stay" (from Ruth 1:16).

4.  I've really been loving calligraphy and watercolor painting.  I find it super relaxing.  My latest design is a quote from The Notebook (you can't go wrong):

5.  Brett and I had our first field supper of the season together this past week.  It wasn't the usual field supper because neither my mother-in-law nor I made it (as I was in the city all day) and the combining got shut down because of a torrential down pour.  The canola we were swathing didn't get any rain though, so I was just me, Brett, the swather and some delicious Boston Pizza take out.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is nothing like enjoying a meal off the tail gate of a Chevy on the open prairie.

I hope you had a lovely week and have a great weekend.

Blueberry Pie Recipe

Happy Wednesday!  I am so happy to share with you that I have perfected my blueberry pie recipe.  Hooray!  I hope you enjoy it.

You can find a detailed tutorial (with pictures) on how to make this pie crust here.  

Look at these beauties!!

I hope you enjoy this pie as much as we did.  And please forgive me if I missed any spelling/grammar/other errors in this post.  I am currently trying to stay awake to change over to night shift.  Enjoy the rest of the week!

Oh Hey Friday!

Hi there!  My five for this week are all my top moments of our camping holiday.  If you want to see more of the Oh Hey Friday link ups, check out September FARM and The Farmer's Wife.  There were some good moments for us this week:

One - We got away on a holiday!! Yay!  It was only for four days (and had to be rushed in as soon as Brett was done scouting fields), but still... I will take what I can get.  We went to Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park.  Basically our time there consisted of relaxing and reading in various locations around the park.  It was perfect.

Cypress Hills is really cool because you basically go from rolling prairie to forest in 0 seconds flat.

Two - I got to swim on said holiday... This may seem silly, but I have really sensitive skin which usually breaks out into serious hives on contact with chlorine.  But thanks to some great allergy meds, I got to take a quick dip!

Careful you don't blind yourself on our whiteness..

Three - Hammock... Enough said.

Four - Our camping set up was pretty sweet.  Generally, I am not a camper.  But with a set up like this, I never wanted to leave.  We are super lucky that Brett's parents were kind enough to let us take their camper and diesel truck to pull it.

Five - I got to have my farmer all to myself.  I like not having to share him with anybody.

Enjoy your weekend!!

Today

Sorry for the radio silence on the blog this week.  Summer is great for a lot of things, but it sadly is not great for my blogging getting done!

To catch everyone up on life around here, I am...

Making: lots of tea (peach and vanilla chai are my latest obsessions and are getting me through all my night shifts).
Cooking: as many things in my slow cooker as possible thanks to the hot July temperatures around here (like this delish soup).
Drinking: tea, tea and more tea, as well as as much water as possible.
Reading: Modern Calligraphy by Molly Suber Thorpe - all the bloggers are so into hand lettering these days, I figured I would give it a try.  Surprise surprise, I love it.
Wanting: to be done my fourth year of nursing school already... yikes, and it hasn't even started.
Looking: at our beautiful Saskatchewan sunset... I love this country.
Playing: with George and his favorite stuffed mice.
Sewing: this quilt for our bed (our duvet is too hot for the summer heat we are discovering)

It is only half done here, but I am making a lot of progress.

Enjoying: all the time with my hubby I can get.
Wearing: my big sun hat (in the picture above) - my fair skin needs all the sun protection it can get.
Waiting: impatiently for everything (something that I need to work on...)
Loving: life... and peach tea.
Anticipating: harvest... am I crazy or am I crazy?  I love it for the first few weeks, after that it's game over.
Smelling: summer country nights.
Praying: for good weather to nourish our crops.
Feeling: thankful for all of my blessings.

How was your week?  Hope it was great!

Oh Hey Friday - My Very First Link Up

Hey!  Hope your week was a good one.  Today I am participating in my very first "link up".  The idea behind Link ups are to "link up" bloggers with each other using one button (see below) and a common topic.  If you are a blogger and want to participate, follow the link back to the hosts at September Farm and The Farmer's Wife to get the button to publish on your page.  The basic idea is to make a list of five things (anything goes).

I have had some serious shopping on the brain this past week, so this is going to be a list of my favorite summer outfit pieces.

1.  This jersey knit skirt from The GAP.  I bought this skirt over the past weekend.  Mine is a solid color (I bought it in both grey and black), but for some reason the clothes that were in my local store and online were slightly different.  In any case, this is the most comfortable skirt (probably most comfortable thing) I own.  It wouldn't have been something that I would have tried on if I didn't see Brett's cousin wearing one (she was the one who directed me to it).  It looks really nice, and is so comfy and cool.

2.  This top, also from The GAP.  I got two of these tops to match the above skirts.  Generally I wouldn't wear a 3/4 length sleeve, boat neck top in summer (especially with the hot and humid weather we've been getting lately).  But these are nice and light and super breathable.

3.  I mentioned this top from Le Chateau a while ago.  It is really light, but it keeps the sun off of my shoulders if I am going to be outside on a hot day (this fair skin needs all the sun protection it can get).

4.  Mom and Dad brought me these earrings back from a trip they recently took to Wyoming.  Aren't they gorgeous?  I love the colors, and that they aren't too heavy.  Also, I don't know how I have survived for this long without prescription sunglasses.

5.  These Heartsoul Scrub pants.  If you are in a profession where you need to wear scrubs, you need to track these pants down.  These are probably the only thing that could challenge the skirt from above for most comfortable piece of clothing ever.

Do you have any favorite summer pieces?  I'd love to hear about them in the comments.  Have a lovely weekend!

Our Adoption Story - cat adoption that is

There is a hilarious commercial that I see every once in a while that explains our pet adoption quite well.  I tried to find a video link for it but sadly could not, so you will have to deal with my poor explanation.

Basically, how things go down is a newly married couple has just bought a house.

Husband: "Now that we have all this room and a yard we can have-"
Wife (cuts husband off): "A baby!"
Husband: "No, I was thinking a dog."
Wife: "A baby..."
Husband: "You mean a puppy?... Like, a baby dog?..."

I kill myself laughing to this every time I see it because it is sooo true.  I wanted (cough... want... cough) a baby so bad.  But thanks to school, it really isn't the perfect time for us to have kids.  So to try and ease my baby fever, and give me someone for company when I was in the city at school, we decided to get a cat sometime after we got back from our honeymoon.

How can you not love that face?

 Brett wasn't totally sold on the idea of a cat at first.  I think that a big part of him was doing it to appease me (as he is a self-proclaimed dog person).  But that lasted a whole of about 5 minutes after bringing George home.

 We weren't sure what age of animal we would want.  We were worried about bad habits if we got an older one.  But we were also worried about litter training/destructiveness if we got a kitten, so we tried to go into the shelter with an open mind.  That ended up being the best decision we could have made.

He loves his cuddles (and so does George... haha).

We got to the shelter around lunch time on July 20th last year.  The girls at Moose Jaw Humane Society were really friendly and helpful and took us into the back to see the cats.  They discussed with us what we wanted from our pet, etc. and took us to see the kittens first.  The first thing I saw was about five kittens clawing the screen to their room.  With visions of our brand new leather couches in shreds dancing through our minds, we asked if we could maybe take a look at the adult cats.

George on our way home from the animal shelter.

I thought I wanted a black cat and Brett thought he wanted an orange one, and we had both decided that a short haired cat was the right move because we didn't want to deal with too much shedding.  A couple of cats jumped out at us right off the bat.  Then there was the dilemma of choosing.  If you have never experienced the torture of trying to choose one animal to take home with you from an animal shelter, let me tell you, it's not easy.  Even though Moose Jaw Humane Society is a no kill shelter and they treat their animals really well, you just can't help but feel the need to save them all.

Austin was complaining to me about her chemistry course... This was my very witty response.

 In the midst of trying to make that difficult decision I was pacing around (also known as trying not to make it obvious to the girl working there that I was nearing tears... I was worried she would think I was a crazy person).  I noticed one cat that we hadn't seen before.  He was in the last kennel at the very end of the row, sort of hidden.  He was looking around with curious eyes, but seemed very calm, just hanging out.  I asked the girl if we could see him and pet him.  She opened the kennel, Brett and I gave him a few pets and he started purring.  We looked at his info posted on his kennel door and saw that he had been in the shelter since the beginning of March - months longer than all of the other cats.  At that moment we knew.  There was no way we could leave him there.

Less than an hour later we were on our way home with a new little being in our truck.  As it turns out, he was the most perfect addition to our family.

George was the perfect cat for Brett particularly, as I would say he has more of a dog like personality.  He greets you when you get home, wants to cuddle and be around you, and plays fetch.  Yes people, our cat plays fetch.

Our house feels so much more like a home with George in it.  It is kind of silly how a cat can become such an important thing in your life, but he is.  Thank you so much Moose Jaw Humane Society for uniting us with our first "baby".

He says he's not a cat person...