What Am I?

I'd like to think that I know alot about the lands I have spent all 30 of my years on.  But I really don't know very much, especially when it comes to native and not so native plants.

I try, when there's time, to look up certain things on the Internet, only to discover that everything but that plant can be found online, or that I must have discovered some odd new species that has yet to be cataloged on any Missouri website. 

So I was out the other day, hunting in my "I'm deathly scared of heights, so let's make a pretend tree stand in the corner of our lean-to" and noticed that I was surrounded by these small trees (or large bushes) that had hundreds of bright red berries on them.  I have no clue what they are, and I'm assuming, since it's November and these are still covered in berries and not ravaged by our deer, turkey, bears (I haven't told you about that discovery yet) and many birds that they must not be tasty. 

I googled them online and found nothing.

Here's a photo I took from my cell phone, while I was on my pretend deer stand, the quality is awful, lol.

If you have any guesses as to what it is, please do share!  Thanks!

Healthy, Wholesome... Fail

Today I was planning on posting pictures and stories of my new food journey that I've been working on for over the past few weeks.  I've stopped buying soda, processed snacks, white bread and other foods that are junk in a box.  The goal is overall to lower the amount of money we spend weekly on food and to better all of our health. 

There's been some successes and some failures.  I found out that my kids will eat lots of healthy things when you call it a neat name and present it right.  I've also been finding tons of healthy recipes to use making chicken taste great even if it's been all you've had for an entire week.  I also found out that if you allow my husband anywhere near a grocery store he will come home with double the things that you have not been buying.  Ask for milk and you'll get pork steaks, brats, salami, 2 bags of chips, corn syrup disguised as fruit punch, loaves of white bread and a case of soda. 

The hardest yet most amusing aspect has been the bread making.  All though I have never had success in baking bread I'm still trucking along, giving it my best shot, praying one day I'll get that perfect loaf.  The first set back was discovering my stash of flours had been invaded by flour moths, which I'm still fighting.  Then I discovered that most of our stores do not offer whole wheat flour!  The next issue was my finished product.  Every loaf always borders on being too yeasty, too compact, almost bordering on a beer bread type of taste.  It makes awesome toast and french toast and the like, but eating it as just bread has been leaving much to be desired.  I'm almost positive it comes from my kneading, and my husband is already looking into getting me a dough hook for my mixer.

Then I decided while I was head first into this whole bread thing that I would take on the sourdough world.  I carefully have been feeding my starter, keeping it warm in our frigid house, mixing, dividing, nursing it along.  Waiting, and waiting till I felt secure on actually using it.  So yesterday morning I carefully followed the steps to turn the goo into bread. 

I already knew something went wrong half way through the process, it never shaped, it never rose, it just sat there like a blob.  But after all of that work I put it in the oven anyway. 

Then my son runs into the house, "There's cats everywhere in the chicken coop!"

My husband runs out there with him (and we STILL haven't gotten any eggs, I think we were way off on their age) and soon returns into the house with an arm full of kittens!  The rest of the night was spent cleaning out a dog crate and posting alerts on Facebook and everything BUT checking on the bread. 

So out the bread came a nice and rock hard, blackish brown, which wasn't that bad since I already knew it hadn't turned out.  But the killer was my starter, which normally sits on top of the oven to keep it warm... some one had moved it, on top of a range, the one where the oven vents and it too was cooked!  The other jar of starter was right next to it, but it too I fear is dead.  The top is dried over and crusty.  Disgusted and exhausted I left it all right where it sat.

So for today I have kittens to find a home for and a disaster of a kitchen to clean and probably starter to re-start.  But I won't give up!  Saty tuned!