"The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land."
-Abraham Lincoln

I FINALLY Got My Camera Back!

After many, many, many loong weeks of not having a camera, I have finally gotten a new one.  Well, it's not exactly new.  I just managed to save enough money to fix up an old one.  The picture quality isn't great (as you'll see soon enough) but at least it's something.  Who knows, maybe Santa's elves have something in the works for me for Christmas.  

The last couple of months here have been pretty busy, mostly with the usual seasonal stuff like putting up corn and freezing and canning fruit from the fruit trees and vegetables from the garden.  In fact, both of our freezers are so full of corn, peaches and cherries that I'm having extreme troubles getting to the meat that is tucked back there someplace. 

Freezer number 1 has been housing all of our corn.  I think we put up somewhere around 40 bags of corn.  As you can see it's not entirely full at the moment. The partial clearing is thanks to the fact that we have been eating corn 4 days out of the week for the last 4 weeks.  We're all so sick of corn at this point that we're starting to have nightmares about it.  I think we'll have to take a couple weeks off from corn fritters, creamed corn, baked corn casserole, buttered corn, etc. etc. etc.

Freezer number 2 is completely filled mostly with peaches and cherries along with some small amounts of pumpkin, apple pie filling, strawberries, and the occasional pack of hamburger.  We currently cannot use freezer number 2 until I can clear out some of this fruit!  Now we LOVE fruit in my house but we all seem to be getting bored with the same peach muffins, cherry cobblers and various pies.  So, I've been on the hunt for new and versatile recipes that will help dwindle down some of our surplus.  One of our favorites so far is Cherry Coffee Cake which you can make with really any kind of fruit filling including peaches and apples. 

I personally found the recipe written out on an old recipe card and I have absolutely no idea anymore which cookbook it came out of but, here it is, in case you want to try it.  I completely recommend trying it, it's good.

Cherry Coffee Cake

1 egg, beaten
1/4 c. milk
1/2 c. sugar
1/8 t. salt
1/2 t. vanilla extract
1-3/4 c. biscuit mix (I make my own but you could use Jiffy or Bisquik too), divided
21-oz can of cherry pie filling (I made my own cherry pie filling using a quart size bag of frozen cherries).
1/2 c. brown sugar packed
1/2 t. cinnamon
3 T. butter, diced
1/2 c. chopped walnuts (optional)

Combine egg, milk, sugar, salt, vanilla and 1-1/2 cups baking mix.  Stir until smooth.  Pour mixture into a lightly greased 8"X8" baking pan.  Spoon pie filling over mixture in pan.  Mix together remaining baking mix, brown sugar, cinnamon, butter and nuts (if desired).  Sprinkle over pie filling.  Bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes.  Cut into squares.  Makes 6 to 8 servings.

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