Audible Deals

I recently discovered a pretty sweet deal on audiobooks at Audible, and wanted to share it here in case anyone else is looking for some classic books "on tape." Audible and Kindle have a technology called Whyspersync. If you own both the audio and the ebook, the technology syncs the two mediums so that you can always pick up where you left off. This is great for me since I have a long commute and listen to books in my car but then also want to read over my lunch break. Most of the time Amazon (Audible and Kindle are both Amazon affiliates) will often offer a discounted price on audio narration if you buy the Kindle version of the book.

Well, Audible Studios has been releasing classics such as David Copperfield and Anna Karenina read by incredible narrators. If you buy the Kindle version of these books, you can add the audio narration for just $1.99.  And the best part is - the Kindle books are already free!

So for just under $2, you get a Kindle book and a fantastic audio book. 

I don't even have to tell you that I downloaded all of them. Anna Karenina has been on my list for a looong time, and now I'm listening to the lovely Maggie Gyllenhaal reading it on my drive. I paid all of $1.99. Which is half of what it costs for a drink from Starbucks. It might cost even less than what it would cost me to drive to the library and check these out. 

The other books I downloaded were the following:

David Copperfield 

The audio is $1.99 with the free Kindle version and is read by Richard Armitage (the smoldering gent of North & South for my BBC miniseries friends). 

Pride and Prejudice

Audio is $1.99 and is narrated by Rosamund Pike who played Jane in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightly. 

Great Expectations 

Narrated by one of my favorite narrators Simon Prebble, this audio book is only $0.99 with the download of the Kindle book.

As far as I can tell (I logged out of my account and tried all the links) you don't have to have an Audible membership to get these prices. However, you will need the Audible app on at least one of your devices (I use my iPhone) in order to listen - it's free.

To get the audible app on your phone, go to the app store and search for Audible

I already own it, so it says "open" but for it should say "get." After it downloads, it will show up on your screen automatically.

When you open the app, it will show you all the books you've downloaded. It will always track where you are. And if you switch between Kindle and Audible, it will still pick up wherever you left off!

If you are interested in an Audible membership, you can get a trial membership for one month free by clicking here. It gives you one free audiobook even if you cancel the membership after the thirty days. And if you need a recommendation for that free audiobook, I listed all my favorites in this post.

All four books listed here totaled come out to $6.96 total. That is just $1.74 per book or $0.87 for each Kindle and audio book respectively. 

What Kindle and Audible deals have you been scooping up recently? 

**this post contains affiliate links. However all products were purchased by me**

What We're Digging 8.16.16

Matthew

reading // Pig Tales: An Omnivore's Quest. This book shows how most commercial pigs are raised inhumanely. It also shows how pigs can be raised responsibly and respectfully. We buy our pork from a local butcher, and this confirms how important choices like that can be.

eating // Liz's homemade jam and bread made by our friend Rachel.

craving // Thai food. If you're in Greenville, check out Jasmine Thai Cuisine on Wade Hampton Blvd. It is the best Thai food in town.

wearing // jeans and a blue polo shirt

currently // raising up guinea keets and runner ducklings. Guineas make a big difference with the fire ants on our property. Our flock last year was wiped out by a predator, so we're starting over.

Elizabeth

reading // Tim Challies' Do More Better. Every summer I start to feel a little overwhelmed. It is easy to let the days get away from me when they are so long. This book is helping me work on prioritizing without putting myself as the focus. In fact, the author is pretty firm that prioritizing self is at the root of a lot of stress.  *sigh*

listening // Hamilton - Three months ago I heard Leslie Odom Jr in an interview on NPR, and he sang "Dear Theodosia." I immediately downloaded the entire album and have been hooked ever since. I tend to listen to something to death, but I'm still going strong on this one.

eating // grilled pita bread. I didn't even know this was a thing, but it was part of a Fresh Market Little Big Deal, and it is delicious. I don't even like pita bread. Grills are magical.

drinking // LaCroix - all day every day

wearing // light sweaters. Because my office is set to Arctic.

craving // peaches. It;s hard to believe that in spite of the heat, the growing season is already starting to wrap up. Eating everything fresh while I still can.

currently // making an automatic chicken waterer. I bought these, but the jury is still out on how well they work. Stay tuned.


** This post contains affiliate links **

Can She Make a Cherry Pie?

I was lucky enough to grow up in southwestern Michigan - just twenty minutes from The Lake (Lake Michigan for those of you who don't know) - an area that is known for it's fruit production. Our summers were marked by standing over a steaming sink and peeling peaches, our falls celebrated with apple picking and hay rides. My friends and I would go on long bike rides where grapes, hot in the sun, would make the hills smell like juice.

South Carolina has it's own selection of fruits and veggies (okra, anyone?), but Michigan fruit still tastes sweetest to me.

If I'm lucky enough for my parents to visit in late July, they bring me tart cherries. Seventy-five percent of the sour cherries in the United States are grown in Michigan. They are very fragile and have to be sold or preserved (frozen or otherwise) within 24 hours of being picked. Think of the challenge of that versus growing apples that have a shelf life of over six months! They are also sensitive to weather. In 2012, an early spring followed by a frost destroyed 97% of the cherry crop.

Another reason they are hard to get is that a Cherry Industry Administrative Board (CIAB) regulates how many processed tart cherries can be sold out of Michigan. This year some cherry farmers had to destroy up to 30% of their cherry production because the processors couldn't accept them. One farmer posted a picture of the rotting fruit on Facebook to show people the waste. You can read more about it in at Modern Farmer here and at Huffington Post here.

The reason for the mandated production regulations are  multi-layered and too complicated for me to get into here, but it is important to note that the CIAB is regulating the supply in order to also control the demand. With articles like this from Livestrong outlining the multiple heath benefits of sour cherries, there is an increased interest in cherry juice and other tart cherry products. But when 97% of your product could be destroyed by an early spring, there is no way to keep up with that increased popularity. Therefore, product supply must be regulated and the prices must be kept up. All of this with no benefit to the farmer whatsoever.

If consumers knew more about how food is grown and the limitations of farms (maybe you can't get cherry juice every year or in January), we would have better farm practices and better food. Just another reason to buy seasonally and to buy directly from farms when possible.

Lucky for me, my mom brought me a generous load of sour cherries, and we made most of it into cherry preserves from, you guessed it, Canning for a New Generation. But I saved four cups to make into cherry pie. It had been six (SIX!) years since I had eaten my last tart cherry pie, and I hoarded those cherries until the right time.

Dinner with our amazing friend Rachel and Jake four weeks later was deemed a worthy occasion (I'm not a very good hoarder).

This turned out to be a great idea, because Rachel was there to shoot photos - something she is quite good at.

The recipe comes from the Berrien County Youth Fair cookbook. This pie won champion three years in a row. I have been making this pie crust for twenty years (give or take), and it has never failed me. It makes four pie crusts which freeze really well. I just wrap them in wax paper and stick in a freezer bag. They thaw out quickly and are great to have on hand for chicken pot pie or an unexpected craving for Shoo-Fly pie. It also adapts well to being generously dusted with flour - which is helpful because I'm not exactly the best pie crust roller-outer.

If you don't have access to tart cherries where you live, most grocery stores sell them in the freezer section with fruit. Or even better - fill the pie crust with whatever fruit filling is growing in abundance near you!

Mom's No Fail Pie Crust
adapted from Jody Anderson

4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups butter, cut into squares
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 tsp vinegar
cold water

Mix flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Cut in butter with two forks or a pastry cutter until pea-sized crumbs form. In a measuring cup mix egg, vinegar, and enough cold water to make half a cup. Add to flour mixture. Stir to make dough. Makes four 9-inch crusts.

Cherry Pie
Adapted from Jody and Hannah Anderson

4 cups of cherry, drained, reserve juice
1 1/2 cup of sugar
3 1/2 Tablespoon tapioca pearls
1/8 cup reserved cherry juice
1 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and let sit for fifteen minutes. Fill a prepared pie plate, top with pie crust. Cut slits in top pie crust to let the steam out. Bake at 375 until the filling is bubbling and the crust is golden brown (about 50 minutes). Let cool completely before eating.

A note about fruit pies: whether you use cornstarch or tapioca as a thickener, always cook it until the mixture boils/bubbles and do not eat it until it completely cools. Otherwise, it won't set. I prefer tapioca to cornstarch the thickener as I think it gives it a more pure fruit flavor.

** This post contains affiliate links **

Family Pictures

Sunday night our neighbors invited us over for dinner.

"We can't," I said. "We're having family pictures taken tonight. We haven't had any taken since our wedding."

"Neither have we," he said. "And we've been married longer."

Honestly, it is hard to find a reason to get family pictures when it's just the two of you and you don't change very much (Matt is still wearing t-shirts from high school!). But we have so few pictures of the two of us, and my friend Rachel was willing to come out to the farm for a photo shoot.

In the end, taking pictures in August might have been a mistake. It was like taking pictures in a sauna. And I insisted on sweaters because they "span three seasons." Rachel got bit by ants. Her husband Jake had to chase down our chicken. And it starting pouring rain in the middle of the shoot.

Thankfully Rachel really is a fantastic photographer and still managed to get great shots.











Some were not so much great as epic:

Did I mention that they also have the cutest baby?

For dinner we had Italian beef sandwiches. Rachel is a vegetarian so we made her a sandwich of sauteed zucchini and onions, pickled jalapeno and melted Provolone. It looked so good I wished I had more zucchini to make one for myself!

I made cherry pie, but forgot about baby bed times, and didn't make it soon enough for us to eat before they had to leave. No worries, though, because I did get some slices to Rachel a couple days later. She had earned them!

And it's probably a good thing we got some new ones. We really have changed a little.

circa 2007

Catching up on Canning

I don't know if it's that our garden is smaller (maybe?) or that we're just getting the hang of preserving, but Matt and I both agree that this has been our best year for saving what we've grown.

There is something about discovering the rhythm of growing and learning what we like to eat that helps shape what we plant and preserve. We always run out of frozen corn, green beans and peaches by February. I also hoard my peach preserves like summer will never come again. The strawberry syrup finds it way into sparkling water, and sweet, spicy strawberry butter gets used up on waffles and between layers of cake.

The other jams, however - well there is really only so much jam two people will eat in the course of a year. And whenever I find myself blueberry apple jam, I kind of wish I was eating the peach instead. So we focused on freezing the beans, corn and peaches, and made less jam.

Matt always loves to grow hot peppers, and they usually go unused, but this year I did pickled jalapeno slices and peach, mango, Carolina reaper sauce.  We're pretty sure the Carolina reapers cross-pollinated with bell peppers (Matt ate one without regret), but it still produced a sauce that is not for the faint of heart. It served as a daring dip for raw veggies, and I have big plans to mix it with yogurt and make a marinade for chicken.

The pickled jalapenos were the star ingredient in Italian beef sandwiches from Canning For a New Generation (one of the things I love about this book is that she has suggestions and recipes for using your canned goods) and they were so good, I'm making another batch before the season turns.

This year we ventured into the realm of fermented foods. Matt and I have been reading Folk's This Ain't Normal by Joel Salatin, and he talks about how people are always hungry for the next season just before the current season wraps up. As a result, most farmers end up with an excess of seasonal vegetables as they scramble to provide early produce from the next season. He encourages people to talk to the farmers and buy up their excess for preserving. Inspired by this, I found myself with 8 head of cabbage for sauerkraut.

Fermenting was an entirely fascinating experience. Did you know that if you add salt to shredded cabbage and squeeze long enough it creates enough brine to cover the cabbage? I did not know this. But I squeezed and squeezed and just when it seemed like it wouldn't work, my bowl was full of brine. Then it all sat on my counter for three weeks and I didn't have to do anything except skim off the foam every 2-3 days..

It was delicious! The sauerkraut is now carefully sealed in jars in my pantry and will be featured on a pork roast in the crock pot one day this winter when the thought of buying excess cabbage seems more luxurious that dutiful.

Tomatoes have been roasted and frozen or turned into tomato jam. We ended up with approximately one million cherry tomatoes (did NOT know those plants were cherry tomatoes), so I'm on the hunt for a way to use those.  Any suggestions welcome.

What are you "putting up?" Do you find yourself starting to crave pumpkins and kale (I do!).

**This post contains affiliate links**

Hidden Acres

Hello!

After a year hiatus (how is that even possible?), the blog is back up complete with a new name.

It took us four years to settle on a name for the farm. We had discussed different possibilities, but nothing ever felt right. Then we bought an American Guinea hog and needed to put our farm name on the registration. The whole way home (with our pig grunting in the back of the car) we tossed around ideas, but it didn't getting us any closer to filling out the registration paperwork.

I put feelers on Facebook, and the very first idea came from our neighbor, Kris. It was perfect.

If you've been to our house, you know that it is something of a surprise after a long, dirt driveway. The UPS man knows. Or doesn't know.

The name Hidden Acres Farm suggests to us something about our property that appealed to us from the very beginning - the sense of seclusion and retreat. When we started to talk about relaunching the blog with a more specific focus, it was the obvious choice for a new name for the blog.

So welcome to Hidden Acres. Here you'll find the same kind of content that has dominated this space before (me rambling), but Matt will be chiming in once in a while. We have learned so much doing life on this property for the past four years. Trust me - if we can do this, anyone can do it. There will be a lot about gardening and canning in the summers and a lot about  frozen pipes in the winter. And we will be talking about some of the unique challenges we face farming with a wheelchair in the mix. Neither of us are an experts (i.e. no  advice here on actually fixing frozen pipes), but we love each other, our house, and our land and are excited to share it with you.

Thanks for joining us!

Pictures courtesy of the talented Rachel Hrinko. Check out her farm and beautiful photos here!

The Guest Room - Before and AFTER!

Cue the music..."At laaaaaaast...."

It has been three months since I last posted.  Things ended up snowballing on the house project until I was completely overwhelmed with responsibilities.  Then things slowed down and I was just tired of remodeling and not even blogging about it sounded palatable.  

I love before and after pictures on blogs.  Rarely can I pass over a suggested blog post or article that has before and after pictures.  I had expected that when the guest room was finally complete, I would feel the same thrill I get from looking at before/after pictures but on an even larger scale.  That might be the case for a lot of people, but I was just tired.  

Now it's been a couple months.  My parents stayed in there for a week and two brothers were in there for a couple weeks.  Now we've moved in.  We couldn't help it - we like the bed too much.  When I wake up and look at the mouldings that I painted and helped hang, and look at the small marks on the floor that indicate where that ugly old closet used to be, I start to feel a little bit of that thrill.  I'm wearily proud of all the work I put into it.  I can't believe I actually did it (with a ton of help!).

So without much more in the way of explanation, I present the completed guest room.  The first room in the house to be complete.

Guest Room Inspiration Board

Day 1

Progress

Complete!

Some stats:

We took out about half the walls and replaced the insulation and dry wall

We added three new light fixtures all with light switches - this room previously had no light switches.

Replaced all the window trim, floor and crown mouldings - painted in SW Westhighland White

Contracted out having new windows put in

Painted the walls in SW Wordly Gray

Left the original wood ceiling

Added a custom stained door with sliding barn door hardwood over the new closet space

I love it!  Definitely glad I didn't know how much work it would entail, or I would never have worked up the courage to start it.  I owe my father-in-law for life for giving up Saturday after Saturday to help me.

Hope you enjoy the pictures!