Huckleberry Mint Sparkling Water

I love sparkling water! It's wonderful that companies are finally adding variety and making sparkling water more readily available.  However, I think that it is still fun making your own at home (and it tastes better too)!  Especially if you already have ingredients in your garden.  My mint was ready for harvesting and I had some leftover huckleberry juice from a frozen bag of huckleberries.  So I had all the ingredients available for a refreshing treat after a long morning spent splitting wood for winter.  If you are interested in trying this recipe it's super simple!

First grab a few clippings of mint from the garden (or grab fresh mint from the produce section if you do have a crop of your own):

Next you'll want to wash the mint under cold water to get rid of any debris.  Then drop a few leaves into your cup and pour just enough juice to cover the bottom of the glass.

Use a spoon to bruise/muddle the mint.  This will allow it to release it's flavors.

Let the bruised mint sit in the juices for a few minutes.  The timing will be trial and error, depending on how strong you like the mint flavor.  I use a Soda Stream to make my sparkling water so I usually let the mint sit while I'm carbonating the water.  You can use bottled sparkling if you prefer.  Once your mint has had time to steep add in your sparkling water.  You can either remove the mint at this point or leave it in.  The longer that it sits in your drink the stronger the mint flavor will be.

That's all there is to it.  With a few simple ingredients from your garden and less than five minutes you have a refreshing and tasty drink with no added sugars.  What I love about garden sparkling water is that the combination are only limited to the scope of your imagination.  You can also use fruits that you have frozen, just crush them a little to get the juices out.  Plus then the fruit can act as ice cubes.  Below are a few that I have tried and love.  What are your favorites? Share your ideas in the comments below.

Blackberry/Sage (muddle the blackberries and sage together)

Raspberry/Lime (for those of you lucky enough to live in citrus country)

Strawberry

Blueberry/Mint (just be sure to muddle the blueberries to get the flavor)

Watermelon/Mint

Strawberry lemonade

Blackberry/Mint

Apple

Coconut

Lavender/Mint

Vanilla/Heavy Cream (makes it like an Italian cream soda)

Homemade Potato Chips

It's been a cool 104 degrees around here this past week, in fact we have been breaking all the temperature records for our area lately. Oh Joy! On the plus side all the fruit in the area is ripening quickly which is great because I can't hardly wait for all the fresh local fruit. On the downside, all my pantry items are spoiling early. Today I noticed that our potatoes were on their last few days and I just recently purchased the bag. Not wanting all those potatoes to go to waste I decided to make potato chips.

 A while back I purchased a microwave chip maker from Pampered Chef and I absolutely love it. In just six short minutes I have yummy potato chips all ready to go without any oil. Today I decided to try my hand at sea salt and vinegar potato chips. I started by slicing up three potatoes and letting them soak in a bowl full of vinegar.

I let the potato slices soak for an hour (just a note...I would recommend letting them soak longer if you want really tart chips.  This batch didn't quite have enough vinegar taste for me).  After the chips have soaked for as long as you would like you'll want to pour them out into a strainer and let all of the vinegar run off of the chips, but don't rinse them.  Place the chips on a dry paper towel and gently blot them with another paper towel just to soak up a bit of the moisture.  After that place them on your Pampered Chef chip maker and salt to your liking, which is A TON if you are anything like me.

You may be able to get away with using a plate, I haven't tried that before.  This chip maker has vents so that the air can go under the chips as they cook.  I used two trays and found that even though the instructions said 3-4 minutes it took 6-7 each batch, maybe because of the added vinegar.  If you are stacking trays it's best to rotate them every two minutes.  In no time at all you have a fresh, warm, homemade, mostly healthy batch of tasty potato chips.  Enjoy!!

I cooked up several batches and bagged them up for the weekend's camping trip.  I can't wait!

What flavor chips would you make?  Leave your  ideas in the comments sections!

Time to Simplify!

The world has been taken over by stuff.  Consumerism is at an all time high and the trend is not going away anytime soon.  Visit "The New Consumer" to see some shocking statistics on this national and global trend.  Including some mind numbing numbers like, "$30.5 trillion—amount spent on goods and services worldwide in 2006, up from $4.9 trillion in 1960 (in 2008 dollars)."  Spending on goods world wide has increased nearly six-fold in the last 48 years.  Whether or not these numbers have been adjusted for inflation was not clear from the article.  However, it is clear that we have gone crazy over technology and the desire to have the newest gadgets, "400 million—# of toxic electronic products discarded each year in U.S."  The thirst for the latest and greatest leaves many nearly new electronics to be destined for the dump.  Yes I do use these stats to shock, in hopes of bringing awareness, but please don't misunderstand my message.  I love technology, innovation and the freedom to start a business that is offered by the great country that I live in.  I just worry that we have become so inundated with stuff that we have lost  the other beautiful things that this country has to offer: forests, lakes, fertile lands, freedom, hard work and great rewards.  We have become slaves to technology, screens and the latest fads.  Its time to unplug temporarily, regroup and find a new path to follow as a family.


As hard as it is to admit, even our little hunting family has been consumed with stuff lately.  All these fun gadgets and gizmos have run amok and stolen our time, finances and quite frankly a piece of our happiness.  Unfortunately, for all the time and money that we have poured into our toys we have received little in return other than distraction.  We've decided that it's time to unplug and step out of this overwhelming and all consuming cycle of consumerism and move back to a more simple life.  Where hard, meaningful work can and will produce amazing results both financially and personally.  Join us as we document our journey to get closer to our roots and dump the junk.  Below are some of the ways that we plan to change our lives over this summer.  As we make progress on our list I'll post links here.

Quality Family Time

Time Savers

Grocery Budget Savers

Home Cooking

Mid Summer Vegetable Gardening

Canning and Freezing

Smoking Fish

Venison Jerky

Wild Berry Picking

Farmer's Markets

Preparing for Hunting Season

Free Summer Activities

Community Service

After you sit down with your family your list will most likely look dramatically different and that's the point.  Instead of following what we see in other's lives it time to follow the paths that are right for our individual families.  I just hope that the wins, losses, mistakes and fun that we have along the way will help guide even just  a few families on a new quest for happiness and adventure.  If you have other ideas that you want to try out please list them below.  We are always looking for new ideas and might even try a few of yours out if they fit with our plan.