Hobby Farm Archives — Bless this Mess

April 24, 2018

Homemade Pickling Spice Recipe

A simple homemade pickling spice recipe to make refrigerator pickles, overnight pickles, canned pickles, and more!

This recipe might not be one that you make tomorrow, but when you are in the middle of making pickles (the canned kind or the simple refrigerator kind) and you run out of pickling spice (or your little store doesn’t carry it), this might just come in handy. I’m here to save the day, friends, one pickle at a time.

I am pickle crazy, if you haven’t noticed. I love normal canned pickles, overnight pickles, pickled peppers, and pickled hot peppers. Heck, I’ve even been getting into fermented pickles, and they are amazing (is that something you would want to know more about too??). All of them are so great in my opinion, and I’m here to get you excited about making pickles, too.

In the world of homemade pickles, pickling spice is essentially just a blend of spices that you use to season your pickles. It’s what makes a good pickle taste like a good pickle!

What is pickling spice made of?

I make mine from a mix of black peppercorns, mustard seeds, coriander seeds, dill seed, allspice berries, bay leaves, and optional crushed red pepper flakes. Some recipes include cinnamon, but it’s not my favorite in it, so I don’t include it.

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April 19, 2018

Sweet and Spicy Cucumbers and Vinegar

Sweet and spicy cucumbers and vinegar make the most delicious refrigeration pickles that only take about 5 minutes to make.

Making your own pickles sounds like a whole lot of work and you might even be thinking of hot water baths, canning, and boiling rings. I’m here to tell you that you can make the most amazing homemade pickles by simply adding cucumbers and vinegar and a few other ingredients together and letting them sit in the fridge. If you’ve never eaten quick pickles or refrigerator pickles, then you are missing out. They have so much flavor and the best texture. The cucumbers stay nice and crisp because they don’t go through much of a heating process. When you can pickles, you are boiling them in a hot water bath inside of the jars for a while, normally at least 10 minutes, which really changes the texture of the cucumber. When you make refrigerator pickles, the fresh cucumbers only get hot water poured over the top of them.

They have all the flavor and such a great texture with half the work! You do need to note that this is not a canning recipe. These pickles are meant to be stored in the refrigerator and eaten within a week. If you are looking for a shelf-stable pickle recipe, this isn’t it. I love that I can make a batch of these sweet and spicy pickles in the morning and they are ready to eat by the afternoon. They are even better if you let them sit overnight.

You’ll love how easy it is to make your own sweet and spicy cucumbers and vinegar!

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April 11, 2018

We MOVED IN!!!

We finally moved into the home that we spent so many years dreaming of and building! On January 26, 2018 we spent the first night under this roof, a mere 733 days after our official groundbreaking for the building and almost 3.5 years to the day from when we bought the property and started dreaming big (I announced the purchase for the first time in this post.).

If you are new to the blog or just tuning in, my husband and I and our 5 young children are building our dream home in beautiful southern Utah. We are doing 99.3% of the work OURSELVES, the ultimate DIY project indeed. It’s been a wonderful but arduous ride and we are so excited to be living in our dream home. If you want to see all of the posts on this crazy project, you can find them here. We are tired, but we are excited. Years of dreaming, working, and planning are coming together into a beautiful home we plan on living in forever.

We moved in a few weeks ago and I’m just now telling you. I’ve had some guilt about this but here’s the reason. I felt like once we moved in it should be done, but we certainly did not move into a finished home. We are still working on it every day! I felt like I needed my magazine-ready glossy photos to show you, but I just am not ready for those. So instead of making you wait while we finished, I thought I’d show you where we are at.

Welcome to our home!

The kitchen is pretty much done, expect for installing my pot filler. So that’s super nice. The space is perfection!!! It’s so much fun to cook, work, entertain, and live in.

Gorgeous, right?!

The copper hood is from Copper Top Metals, and the glass pendants and copper pendants in the dining room are from Bellacor light online. The flooring are engineered vinyl planks (in Farmland Hickory) from Lumber Liquidators, the tile back splash is in-stock tile from Home Depot, the bar stools are from World Market (so sturdy and comfortable!). The white of the trim and cabinets is Snow Bound by Sherwin Williams, the gray is Rock Port Gray by Benjamin Moore, and the dining room paint color is Pacific Palisade by Valspar. Those are my most frequently asked questions, so I thought I’d let you know!

The cookbook shelf at the end of the island is one of my favorite parts of the kitchen! All of the white books (and a few of the colored ones) are my America’s Test Kitchen cookbook collection. 🙂

This is what the living room currently looks like. We still have to build the wood burning fireplace into the wall (you can see the insert sitting in the corner where it will eventually go). So my couches are just in there for the time being. It’s functioning though and we love the view out the windows.

My dining room! The kitchen table is made out of wood from the Shanty (which was built in 1898) and I just love it. It’s HUGE, like 4.5 feet wide and 9 feet long, but I’ve had it packed to the gills with friends and family many times already. I love my huge table. The pretty cow painting is from my friend Ashley’s Etsy shop.

It’s so fun to have a place to put all of my treasures (and the corner shelves in the kitchen are full of things I love, too!). Gifts, antiques, paintings from my Grandpa, and so much more. Did you know this is our first house?! We remodeled a house but that one didn’t count as our house (we knew we weren’t going to keep it and moved out before we even finished fixing it up and Thomas just went back on weekends to work on it). So this is the first house we have owned since we got married 12 years ago. My heart was SO ready to “feather my nest” and it’s such a beautiful nest. Worth the wait and effort!

The entryway. We don’t currently use our front door because the porch isn’t on and it’s a mud pit up to it, but one day we will. For now we just have people go in and out of our garage!

My office/studio off the living room – it’s pretty empty. I’m still not sure how I’m going to use this space so right now it stores my camera equipment, computer, and some photo props.

What mudroom dreams are made of. All of the kids have their own spot and their shoes go in the drawer under it. Shoe drawers are AWESOME just FYI.

In the hall is my chalk board + kid school paper station. This is across from the drinking fountain.

Guest bath on the main level. There’s a vessel sink on the blue vanity already – my pictures are already out of date because Thomas just keeps on moving!

My bedroom. And those beams are styrofoam! How cool is that?

My bathroom. Toilet and tub are to the left and my closet is on the right.

Messy, but it’s awesome!

Laundry room

Now to the upstairs!

Kid/upstairs bathroom. The toilet and shower are in their own little room off of this one.

Guest bedroom

Our library/upstairs family room.

We definitely have room to grow into this house. The little boys room.

Macey’s room

Big boys’ room

And the view out the back windows!

We still need to put on the porches, finish the garage and do garage doors, and put siding on the house plus little things on the inside and major landscaping. But we are in, loving it, and working everyday to finish the biggest project of our lives so far.

April 9, 2018

Quick Dilly Cucumbers in Vinegar

Quick Dilly Cucumbers in Vinegar are also called quick refrigerator pickles made with fresh cucumbers and a homemade brine. You won’t believe how crunchy and perfect these pickles are.

I have loved pickles for as long as I can remember, and making simple homemade pickles is one of my favorite treats. I know that homemade pickles might sound fussy but they are literally just cucumbers in vinegar. I LOVE this recipe. It makes a flavorful crunchy pickle that can be eaten almost right away but gets even better if you let them sit overnight.

Homemade fridge pickles are something that my grandma has been making for years and years (her refrigerator pickle recipe is here), and this recipes is a whole lot like it. The only difference is that you bring the brine to a boil before pouring it over your cucumbers. This does a few things. It heats up the spices and as they soak in the hot water they steep their flavor into the liquid. This also helps the salt to dissolve easily. These cucumbers aren’t cooked in the brine though (like pickles that you can and are shelf stable), which means they stay extra crispy and crunchy. This recipe only takes about 5 minutes to make and it does have a little waiting time, but that’s it. Once you make it, you are going to be whipping up a batch of homemade pickles every week. You just can’t get simpler than cucumbers in vinegar that only get better with time.

I like to make a batch of these for parties where I’d normally serve pickles, for instance if I’m planning on hamburgers or pulled pork sandwiches. It’s so fun to have people try a simple homemade pickle for the first time because they are SO good. I can’t wait for you to make these yourself.

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January 11, 2018

DIY House Building Update: January 2018

House updates on our DIY house build are getting more and more exciting because we are to a point in the project where a lot changes visually day-to-day! It’s much more fun for me to share than all the time we spent wiring and plumbing…not much to see there.

If you are new to the blog or just tuning in, my husband and I and our 5 young children are building our dream home in beautiful southern Utah. We are doing 99.3% of the work OURSELVES and we are 23.5 months into the journey. It’s been a wonderful but arduous ride and we are so excited to be nearing a move-in date. If you want to see all of the posts on this crazy project, you can find them here. We are tired, but we are excited. Years of dreaming, working, and planning are coming together into a beautiful home we plan on living in forever.

We were hoping to be in the house for Christmas but that obviously didn’t happen. Our interior doors have had a lot of delays in getting here (they were supposed to be here December 8th and still aren’t here), and we had some issues getting tile done, and well, we just aren’t ready to move in.

When you walk in the house from the garage you see the hall to my bedroom and on the left is the mudroom and then a bathroom and on the right is the living room. I’ve been eyeing these old enamel lights online for ages. Two weeks ago I took my weekly trip to the dump, opened up the tailgate of the truck, and not 6 inches from the tailgate on a pile of rubbish was this light! The Dump Gods were smiling on me that day. I’m not normally much of a trash picker, but it was meant to come home with me. Thomas bought the lighting kit for $10 to hang it and now it’s in the hall. Cheapest light fixture in the house and I love it with my whole heart!

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January 10, 2018

How to Roast Butternut Squash

Quick and easy guide on how to roast butternut squash in the oven. You can use the roasted squash as a side dish or in recipes that call for pumpkin puree!

Butternut squash is one of those things that I come back to again and again when I want to feed my family healthy food. It’s sweet, simple to prepare, my kids love it, and it’s good for you! Have you seen the color of it?! If you are trying to “eat the rainbow” a little more, this beautiful, bright orange vegetable is a great place to start.

I normally grow and store butternut squash from my garden. This year I ended up with a million spaghetti squash and only a handful of butternuts so I stocked up when they were on sale at the grocery store and keep them in my cold storage just like I do my home-grown squash. That’s one of my favorite qualities of winter squash like butternut – they last for ages after you buy them, unlike a lot of other produce.

I like to roast butternut squash by cutting in it half, removing the seeds, and keeping the skin on.

This method lends to very creamy butternut squash that is ready to be scooped out of the skin and mashed. I serve the smashed squash like mashed potatoes as a side dish most often but you can also use it in place of pumpkin puree, potatoes, or sweet potatoes in most recipes. I often add it to soup and chilis, too, to thicken them. So many things to love about roasted butternut squash. It’s simple, quick, and one of our favorite side dishes.

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December 6, 2017

House Building Updated December 2017: Floors, Cabinets, and More!

We’ve had a very productive few weeks at the house and I thought I better show you some of the progress we have made!

If you are new to the blog or just tuning in, my husband and I and our 5 young children are building our dream home in beautiful southern Utah. We are doing 99.3% of the work OURSELVES and we are 22 months into the journey. It’s been a wonderful but arduous ride and we are so excited to be nearing a move-in date. If you want to see all of the posts on this crazy project, you can find them here. We are tired but we are excited. Years of dreaming, working, and planning are coming together into a beautiful home we plan on living in forever.

Our workload the past few weeks hasn’t really increased, but the house sure does look different from just a few weeks ago because the work has been big, fun, and obvious. Plumbing and wiring were just not that exciting without big visual changes; getting flooring and cabinets, though have changed the whole house. It’s starting to look like a home!

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October 20, 2017

DIY House Building Update: October 2017

Welcome to a little house update friends! I’ve had lots of people ask about the house lately so I thought I’d do a quick post on where we are at the moment. The pictures are just off my phone, nothing fancy, but this will give you a peak into the project.

If you are new to the blog, here’s what’s going on. My husband and I are nearly 21 months into your DIY house build. We bought our dream property (7 acres overlooking our favorite mountains) in 2014 and started planning our dream house then. We told my mom (who went to college for drafting) all the things that we did and didn’t want in a house and she hand-drew us plans in 2015. My husband (an engineer) took those plans, digitized them, and tweaked them over and over again into our version of perfection. We started building our own house in January of 2016! It’s been a LONG road and mama is tired, but now that we are getting so close to moving into our forever home, it’s getting so exciting. Building your own house isn’t for everyone (heck, I don’t think it’s for me) but my husband has loved this journey and it’s going to be beautiful under his careful eye.

You can catch up on all of my house building updates here.

So currently we have all the painting done (yay!), except for the walls that we are going to put ship-lap on (the living room and both sides of our stairwell). We did get help on painting. I’m losing steam, and if we want to be in by Christmas, help is a must. I had the upstairs primed so they finished priming, painted the ceiling, and did a few of the main colors, then I came back in and painted smaller rooms and closets the colors that I wanted. I LOVE all of the colors I picked and wish the pictures did them justice.

Kitchen cabinets get here MONDAY!!! This is a huge milestone in my mind. I’ve been dreaming of this kitchen (pictured) and the cabinets for years. Seeing them in the house will probably make me tear up. So this is the kitchen. Where the walls aren’t finished yet will be my tile backsplash. You can also see some of the furniture that I’ve been collecting just waiting to get settled into the new house. I got a new hutch (it’s huge!) to display all my pretties and I got all of the kids new beds. It was time! After 12 years of “making-do” I’m looking forward to decorating and getting some things that I like and fit the space well.

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October 12, 2017

DIY Chicken Waterer and Feeder from 5-gallon Buckets

Not everyone needs a post on a DIY chicken waterer and feeder from 5-gallon buckets, but someone out there does need it! Is it you? Even if you don’t have your own hens yet, this might be something to store away in your “someday” file because you just never know when you might need some great info that will save you a dollar or two! Or you might have a friend who is getting into backyard chickens and you could mention this cool site you found *cough cough* and then they could benefit!

Now onto the tutorial.

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October 4, 2017

The Best and Easiest Way to Cook a Pumpkin

Ever wonder how to cook a pumpkin? The best, easiest way is to toss it in the slow cooker. This post will explain all the details!

Have you ever tried to cook a pumpkin to use in a recipe instead of buying canned pumpkin from the store? I always think that it sounds like a fun idea but I rarely do it. A few years ago, I cooked a small pumpkin in the oven and what didn’t stick to the pan tasted too roasted to enjoy in sweet dishes. My quest for a better option started early this year when I decided to plant sugar pumpkins in my garden. They grew well and now I have about a dozen sitting on my porch!

Sugar, sweet, or pie pumpkins are general terms for the smaller 3 to 5 pound pumpkins that are typically grown to be eaten. They’ll be labeled at the store as a pumpkin that is good for baking (generally with a sticker or label attached to them). Their flesh is firmer and sweeter than other varieties, which makes them a great choice for cooking. The insides are a lot less slimy, stringy, and wet than typical jack-o-lantern pumpkins, so prepping them is pretty painless.

Cooking a fresh pumpkin is fun and simple. You should try it this fall just to say you did!

After a bit of research, I decided to try to cook a pumpkin in the slow cooker. My friends, this method is perfect. The pumpkin stays moist, it scoops out easily, there’s little clean up, and it practically cooks itself. The day that I was in the kitchen trying out this method, I planned on cooking 2 of my pumpkins in my large slow cooker at once. When they were finished cooking and my warm slow cooker was still on the counter, I grabbed 2 more pumpkins to cook just because it was so easy. I love this method!

Aren’t the pumpkins pretty?

Tips and Tricks to Cook a Pumpkin

Sugar, sweet, or pie pumpkins are general terms for the smaller 3 to 5 pound pumpkins that are typically grown to be eaten. They’ll be labeled at the store as a pumpkin that is good for baking (generally with a sticker or label attached to them). Their flesh is firmer and sweeter than other varieties, which makes them a great choice for cooking. The insides are a lot less slimy, stringy, and wet than typical jack-o-lantern pumpkins, so prepping them is pretty painless.
That being said, you can still cook the pumpkins you normally buy to carve!
Most you-pick pumpkin patches will have a section of edible pumpkins/squash so be sure to ask if you go.
Don’t forget to puree your homemade pumpkin puree in the food processor or blender for that smooth velvety texture.
I love to use fresh pumpkin in my fresh pumpkin pie, homemade pumpkin pasta, pumpkin enchiladas, and healthy pumpkin muffins.
You can use fresh pumpkin puree in any recipe calling for pumpkin, though the color will be a little different than using canned pumpkin.
Homemade pumpkin puree freezes like a dream. Freezing it in one cup proportions is the best option for long-term storage.

Craving more? Subscribe to Bless this Mess to get new recipes, meal plans, and a newsletter delivered straight to your inbox! If you try this recipe, let me know what you think! Leave a comment, pin it, and don’t forget to tag a picture #blessthismesseats on Instagram. I love to see your kitchen skills in action!

How to Cook a Pumpkin in the Slow Cooker

★★★★★

5 from 2 reviews

Ever wonder how to cook a pumpkin? The best, easiest way is to toss it in the slow cooker and let it cook on its own!

Author: Melissa Griffiths
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 3 hours
Total Time: 3 hours 5 minutes
Yield: 1 pumpkin makes about 1 1/2 cups
Category: Side Dish
Method: Slow Cooker
Cuisine: American

Ingredients

1 or 2 sugar pumpkins (3 to 5 pounds each)

Instructions

Wash the outside of the pumpkin with warm water taking care to scrub off any dirt if necessary. Remove the stem and cut the pumpkin in half. Remove the seeds (you can save them to roast) and the stringy parts of the inside of the pumpkin with a spoon or an ice cream scoop.
Place the pumpkin halves skin side up in your slow cooker and cook on high for 2-3 hours or until a fork pierces through the skin of the pumpkin easily. Allow the pumpkin to cool enough to handle and then scrape the flesh from the shell with a spoon.
Use the fresh pumpkin as you would canned pumpkin. Mash the insides with a fork to remove lumps or you may choose to puree it in a food processor or blender before using to get a very smooth texture.
Store pumpkin flesh in the fridge for up to a week or in the freezer for up to 6 months.

Notes

If the pumpkin isn’t fitting well in your slow cooker, feel free to cut it into a few more pieces.

Keywords: slow cooker pumpkin recipe, easiest way to cook a whole pumpkin, how to cook a pumpkin in the slow cooker, easy pumpkin recipe

This is for sure the easiest way to cook a pumpkin but it isn’t the only way. You can also bake your pumpkin. It’s a bit quicker than this method, though there is a little more clean up involved. You can see my baked homemade pumpkin puree recipe here.

This post was originally published in October 2014 and has been updated and republished in October 2017.

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