You can find my blog here: homesteadinghomemaker.blogspot.com/ I blog/video a little bit of everything on homemaking and country living.. Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to subscribe to my channel for all my latest videos!! Crystal
I’m going to be like you when I grow up 😊 making your own pie crust?! Apples from your own tree?! I hope your family cherishes you. Bravo. I know that pie tastes like love. ❤
Beautiful road trip!! What a wonderful experience to travel and see family, I love it ❤ Do you know which mountain that is in the beginning? It's so magnificent 🤩
Recipes: My Favorite Pie Crust! For my 5 8 inch pies I doubled this recipe. Never Fail Pie Crust 9 inch double crust 2 cups flour 1 ½ t sugar ¾ t salt 2/3 cups butter 1 ½ t vinegar 1 egg (small) ¼ cup water Combine dry ingredients. Cube butter and add to dry ingredients. With your hands or pastry cutter work butter into flour mixture until it resembles coarse cornmeal. In a measuring cup or small bowl combine vinegar, egg and water. Add to flour butter mixture. Stir and work in as much of the flour mixture as you can then using your hands work the dough to form a ball. Divide dough in half. Roll one half to fit into a 9 inch pie plate. Fill pie with your favorite pie filling. Roll second half and place on top. Trim edges using a butter knife. Seal top and bottom crusts together. Cut vents in top to allow steam to escape. Bake pie according to the directions for the pie filling of your choice. To pre-bake the pie crust (for cream type pies): Bake empty pie shell at 425 for 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly golden brown. I tripled both the pie ingredients and the crumb topping ingredients. The topping does not call for cinnamon but I sprinkled in probably 1 teaspoon, this is optional. Our Favorite Apple Pie Crystal Miller 5 to 7 tart apples (5 cups) 1 9-inch unbaked whole wheat pastry shell ½ cup sugar 3 to 4T flour (use the higher amount for juicy apples) ¾ tsp. cinnamon Peel and core apples and cut into slices. Put them in a large bowl and sprinkle the remaining ingredients over the apples. Toss carefully to coat the apples slices without breaking. Pour this into the pie shell. Top the pie with crumb topping (recipe below). Crumb Topping 1/3 cup sugar ¾ cup flour 6 tbsp butter Mix sugar and flour together. Cut in butter. Bake at 400 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes, or until apples are soft when poked with a fork. If pie browns too quickly, cover edges with foil. Cool and enjoy! Would you like to freeze these pies for a special treat through the winter? Make your pies in disposable pie pans and before baking wrap well with plastic wrap and then with foil to keep them from getting freezer burned. When you want to bake one, take from the freezer, remove foil and plastic wrap and cover the top with foil to keep from getting too brown. Bake at 400 degrees for about an hour, maybe longer. Make sure you check often. Towards the end of baking time remove foil so the crumb topping can crisp up.
It’s been a busy week for me. Birthday celebrations happened for one of my daughters and my husband. It’s nice to sit down this afternoon and enjoy a great Crystal video! I’ve been making soups too since our temperatures have been so much cooler lately. I’m really loving it! We had a great church service today with some of our grandchildren. We were invited to their church for “Legacy Day” to celebrate Grandparents Day. It was a precious family time! Have a great week!
Thanks Dana 😊Yay!!!!! on getting your Nesco! One of my daughters recently bought a Nesco and likes it a lot!! I'll be looking forward to hearing what you can up in it 😃 Have a blessed Sunday my friend! 💞
Also homemade laundry soap is real bad for septic systems. They get all gummed up and sludge is formed and floating in your septic tank. I was making some and when I found out from my septic cleaning man I was shocked to see the slide black in color like a thick Crisco slimy mess causing the holes in my septic system to potentially get clogged and damaged to the whole system would mean having to have a totally new septic system put in again. I am not up to that expense however so I have stopped making homemade soaps for laundry and well as stopped using bar soaps for body and hands as well. I just wanted to point this out for homeowners so they won’t damage their septic systems at 10,000$ a pop to replace is it worth cheap soap making? Not for this mom
Lovely to see you today Crystal! Thoroughly enjoyed your camping trip updates and fall cooking 😊. It was chilly here but temperatures are back up to mid 20's for a few days so its hot, but the trees are already changing into autumn colours. X
Our Temps here in Appalachia VA are 50 at night. My body goes into "nesting mode"😂 I got 3/4 bushel green beans at local produce stand and made southern green beans and put those away for winter. Got some free peppers and tomatoes there and made stuffed pepper soup and put up for winter. I would like to know more about your canner. I am unable to lift a heavy canner now and that type may work for me. Thanks for the inspirational videos.
Hi Vicki! Nice job getting things put up for the winter!! I have a Presto Digital Canner. It's a 12 quart electric pressure canner. I've made several videos about it and using it (you can see them under the Canning and Preserving playlist). I have been so happy with it. I've had it for about a year and a half. If you have any specific questions, let me know!
@HomemakingontheHomestead thanks for responding. I thought canning was in the past due to my arthritis and other old people things😅. Anyway when watching your video today I realized 😳 there would not be lifting heavy pressure canner around. I could still can! So I will be looking into it. Thanks 😊
@@vixxcottage You're welcome Vicki! Yes, no hefting a big canner around and I like that it makes small batches. I'm no longer canning 100's of jars each year for a big family. This works great for the two of us.
Thank you for stopping by channel!! I hope you enjoy today's video and get some fall inspiration for cooking, baking and canning! Don't forget to give this video a like and if you haven't subscribed please do! I'd love to have you back here again! Have a blessed day! -Crystal 😊
Thank you! I am spending the next month cleaning out my freezer making some sale meats shelf stable. Recently I found pork butts for under 5 dollars 🙌 I wanted all of them but only took 3 🤣
Hello from New Jersey and I am a new sub here and thoroughly am enjoying your channel. It came up on my recommendations. I have a Nesco canner and I love it. Question for you though I was wondering because the store bought meatballs include breadcrumbs and they tend to expand… Can you keep them shell stable for a good length of time with the meat having the breadcrumbs in it?
Hi Lynn! I enjoy your channel!! Thanks for subscribing I appreciate it 😊 I had the same thoughts with the meatballs and I did some research and what I found is that with the Kirkland meatballs the amount of ingredients other than beef is extremely small and does not pose a problem. I really can't say if that would be the case with other brands. After watching Pam's video (RoseRed Homestead ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QBei8EE4bvc.html ) I felt much more comfortable canning them. I've never had a problem with them. Hope that answers your question!
Add pressure canned spaghetti sauce I heard a pop and one of the tops come off of the jar it happened to me three times I don't know what am I doing wrong
Crystal, once again, thank you for a enlightening video. I must say that you look radiant today! Have a blessed and safe Labor day weekend. Blessings sent your way!❤
Thank you! I know you made this several years ago but I found the information you shared very helpful and probably why I won't take the time to make my own laundry detergent.
Hi Crystal, this is Marti and I have a question... what water do you drink? We have city tap water that's too chlorine tasting, now we're drinking bottled water but hear about the microplastics and not sure about that. I would like to drink more water but it's getting confusing what water is the best. Do you have well water on the homestead? Really enjoy all your videos so much, thanks -
Hi Marti! So we don't have a well. We get our water from a natural spring on our property. We have a filter that does filter but basically for parasites or anything like that. When my daughter lived in the city she had a Berkey Water Filter System www.usaberkeyfilters.com/ that she had on the counter and would filter her city water through that. And I'm sure in the long run the cost of filter system would save money over bottled water. Hope that helps!!
@@HomemakingontheHomestead That sounds like a good idea, I'll check into it that then. We do want to cut down what we have to spend on bottled water. Thanks for the info! 😀
@@HomemakingontheHomestead Just looking at the website it sounds perfect, was hoping the water would still contain minerals and electrolytes and it definitely does, so thank you again! I actually want to jump up and down ha, there's finally a solution to what I've been mulling over for a long time.
Thank you so much!! I'm so glad you found my channel and it can be so difficult when you have friends and even family that don't understand. And support is valuable! 💞😊
I'm a newbie here and feel so thankful to have found you, Crystal! What an encouragement to know there are other like-minded empty-nesters enjoying (and thriving!) in homemaking/homesteading. So much of what you said in this video encouraged my heart. In prayer, years ago, I also had the same thought to notice what God had already given me to work with -- truly a timeless wisdom that can apply in each season and walk of life.
Hello Tracey! So nice to meet you. Yes, we are out there 😃💞 .. that's been my desire for many years now.. to encourage homemakers at every stage of life 😊
This topic is dear to my heart. We started making big changes in our city backyard which is about 1/16 of an acre when COVID hit and the shelves in some stores were empty. We took the stimulus money and put it towards heating mats and lights and seeds and my husband started making raised beds. We now have 28 raised beds in our backyard. We grow 3 kinds of kale, bok choy, carrots, radishes, lettuces, watercress, stevia, herbs, eggplant, 8 kinds of tomatoes, all kinds of peppers, spinach, all kinds of winter and summer squash, asparagus, okra, different kinds of melons, corn, (150 white, red, and yellow onions) blueberries, apples, celery, nectarine, grapes, cherries, pomegranites, avocado and artichokes. I wish I could share pictures. We also added 6 chickens which we can legally have in the city. I collected 4 eggs today and 5 eggs yesterday. There is so much you can do on a small lot to help towards self-sufficiency.
Wow Georgene!! That is incredible. It's so amazing what you can do with a small space. And I love that you have chickens.. 😃 I didn't know that! 💞.. exactly, there is sooo much that can be done in a small space.
@@HomemakingontheHomestead We also make money from home through selling woodwork and in the Spring Kevin sells vegetable plants and I sell extra flower plants that come up in my yard. The home used to be a place of productivity before world war two.
@@HomemakingontheHomestead It is a trade off though. I always tell my friends when they come to visit that our backyard is not a Better Homes and Garden backyard. we keep the weeds down and the grass in between the beds is green and we keep things looking neat but it does not look like your traditional backyard. The entire yard is taken up with raised beds. The side of our house has two large raised beds on each side of a second driveway and the flower bed along the entire side of the house is also used for onions and garlic.our grass is nice and green and the bread and we have plenty of pretty flowers in the rest of the flowerbeds.
I grew a bunch of tomatoes this year in the hopes to make sauce, and of course it's been a horrible year for tomatoes here in the PNW. I have a ton of green tomatoes and barely any reds. So I bought some canned paste and diced tomatoes to make pasta sauce. This is a great video. Thanks for sharing! ❤
This was such a great topic for me. My husband and I are empty nesters. I really love the idea that every day life is where the content and passion is. Thank you ❤
