Sunday Funday: 2026 Garden Update and Cooking like a Granny!

FIRST:  Three recipes - 

Cooking Like a Granny!

#1 Fresh Peach Pie 

(home frozen peaches)

• Two fresh pie crusts-unbaked

Filling:

• 1 gallon baggie (6 cups) of frozen fresh peaches/juice drained a little, thawed completely
• 2/3 cup of sugar 
• 4 heaping Tablespoons of flour 
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon 
• 2 Tablespoons butter sliced into small pats

Instructions:

1. Roll one crust and gently place in the pie pan making sure the edges extend over the sides of the pan a little bit.  
2. Mix up the filling and  pour into the crust.  
3. Roll remaining crust (top) and cut into lattice strips about one inch wide or so.  
4. Add strips across the pie.  
5. Fold back the top half every other strip and add a cross strip starting in the middle with the longest strip.  Unfold those strips over and fold back the  remaining "every other" strips.  Add another cross strip. Try to pick the wider/shorter strips to match the width across the pie.  Continue until the top of the pie is complete and then do the bottom half.  Crimp all edges when done.  I use my finger pushed around the edge using the other hand to pinch that finger and dough to make a scalloped edge. 
6. I brushed my pie crust with milk and sprinkled with sugar.
7. Place pie on a cookie sheet to catch any drips and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or longer as your pie needs.  (I like to use a glass pie pan so I can see if the bottom crust is done enough.)  Cover with foil at the end if the top appears to start burning and you can see in the glass pie plate that the bottom crust isn't yet browning.

#2 Pumpkin Muffins 

(fresh or canned pumpkin / uses no eggs in this recipe)

• 1 3/4 cup flour (I used freshly ground soft white wheat)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar -not packed
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 
• 1 cup canned pumpkin or 1 cup fresh pumpkin puree.  (I used frozen, pureed, fresh pumpkin)
• 1/2 cup oil (I used 1/4 cup olive oil + 1/4 cup applesauce)
• 3 Tablespoons water (if using fresh pumpkin, the water can be skipped since it's usually pretty juicy)
• Optional mix-ins:  1/2 cup nuts, raisins, chocolate chips (I used chocolate chips.)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix the dry ingredients well.  Separately measure and stir together the oil (applesauce if using), water (if using) and pumpkin.  Stir wet and dry together and blend until smooth.  Add any mix-ins.  I used chocolate chips.

Scoop into sprayed muffin cups (or a single loaf pan).  

Bake 20-25 minutes for muffins (or 50-55 minutes for a loaf).  Remove from the oven when they spring back to the touch or when a knife inserted will come out clean.

Schoolhouse Rolls 

(uses bread machine dough setting or hand kneaded)

• 1 1/3 cup very warm water (hot but no hurt)
• 1 packet of yeast (or 2 teaspoons)
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup oil (I use olive oil.)
• 4 cups "fluffed" all purpose flour (fluff with a spoon before measuring) (I used half freshly ground wheat, half all purpose.)
• 1 teaspoon salt

Instructions

For bread machine, add ingredients according to your machine's recommendations.  For mine, I add water, sugar, oil & yeast to the pan.  I then top with flour and lastly, the salt.  I use the dough setting.  When the dough cycle is complete, remove from bread machine and form into 12 balls.  Place in two pie pans (sprayed) or one 9 x 13 pan (sprayed).  Let rise about 30 minutes in a warm spot.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until brown.  Brush with melted butter when done.

For hand kneading:   Measure hottish water, add sugar and yeast. Stir.  Add oil and stir again.  Measure flour in a bowl and top with salt.  Mix well.  Add yeast/water/sugar/oil mixture  to the flour salt mix and stir.  Knead about 5 minutes  (can add dustings of flour to keep from sticking or oil your hands) and then divide into 12 balls.  Place in either two pie pans (sprayed) or one 9x13 pan (sprayed).  Let rise 30 minutes and then bake 20-25 minutes or until brown.  Brush with melted butter when done.

Gardening Update & Chit Chat

Here's an update on my 2026 garden and Sunday's cooking like a granny!  That combo is the very best kind of day for me!  It was a beautiful weekend here in Missouri and I loved every minute of my granny chores.

Saturday was rainy at first and after the rain ended, it consisted mainly of me push mowing my entire backyard, me recovering from push mowing my entire backyard, and then washing my bedding and organizing our closet.  Doug worked on flooring in the basement and mowing the front yard.

After those chores, we had lunch at our favorite downtown restaurant and later visited with friends who had poured concrete for a home addition.  The coolest thing happened on the way home!  In their driveway we came upon a momma deer and her very tiny baby.  Baby was about the size of a chihuahua.  I had never seen a baby deer so small!  He was adorable and was just figuring out his walking legs.  He ambled away into the darkness before we could get our phones out to snap a picture!  

Sunday was THE most productive day for us this weekend!  Doug worked on filling a box trailer with unused metal items we had lying around.  We have "scrappers" in our area who will come pick up the metal items for recycling.  They sell the stuff at the recycling center and we get rid of a bunch of junk for free.  We got rid of some old chairs, a broken fire pit, broken floor lamps, an old rusty refrigerator.  Boy it felt good to clean out some junk!

I worked in my yard and garden and here are some pics of my 2026 garden!

This is a view looking through my raised beds.  You can see the huge garlic we have growing.  All of this is the Musik variety from Baker Creek Seeds.  It creates massive bulbs.  We loved our fresh, homemade garlic powder last year and intend to do the same this year.  

On the right you can see a small bed of asparagus and strawberries.  Not a good experiment!  The strawberries completely choked out the asparagus.  

Here's a pic of the fence row after a few hours of me cutting vines.  Whew!  I have lots to do out there but it's a start.  I have some grapes to plant on the fence and I planted a few Delicata squash seeds there too.  One of the grow bags has some green beans and the other is a mix of mint plants.

I have two Arapahoe blackberry bushes along that fence  and the first year, I pruned them to the ground for winter.  Dumb de de dumb dumb dumb!  Arapahoe blackberries only get berries on second year canes.  This year I left them alone and just look at all the little berries coming on!

There are a few beets planted in a small open space in the garlic bed.  I have more beets planted in this little bed of lettuce and last year's onions are going to seed.  I'm actually very excited about harvesting my own onion seeds!

Here is one of my first garlic scapes and you know what that means!  Garlic Scape Stirfry and then soon after it will be time to harvest the garlic!  Garlic Powder, here we come!

This bed has some Dunja zucchini (parthenocarpic-meaning it produces 80% without pollination so it can grow inside or under a cover- which can help with pests).  It also resists powdery mildew although the leaves might convince you it already has it.  It doesn't.  The leaves just look like that.  I planted these seeds early and so today I already have my first two squash babies coming on.  One is a yellow squash and the other is zucchini.  I cannot wait for my first foil packet of fresh veges on the grill!

Further back in this bed is the motherload of oregano that comes back every year on it's own.  I need to cut some before it blooms and get it drying for the best tasting oregano.

Pitiful Bed #1 has some very tiny baby onions and tomatoes growing.  I couldn't find onion starts this year locally and only had a few that I had wintersown.  Oh well, we will take what we get!  Under the wire trash cans are some baby Early Golden Acre cabbage plants.  The wire trash cans are my feeble attempts to protect them from cabbage moths.  I added the straw and wire trash cans this weekend after weeding.  It was a hot mess of weeds in there but now looks much better.  Still pitiful but much better.

Here are some flowers!  That lavender smells amazing and I'm going to try rooting a few branches to grow more.  It smells as amazing as the soap you find at the farmer's market!

The next pics are some green beans that had PITIFUL germination.  In the open space of this huge bed I have some tiny pepper plants and some baby cucumber plants growing.

As if all of that gardening wasn't exhausting enough, I decided to make a real Sunday supper yesterday.  It was a two crockpot night similar to this long ago post`.  Two crockpot nights are sometimes the only way to go, especially on yardwork days!  At about noon on Sunday, I tossed a ham butt in the crockpot and placed my last batch of frozen purple hull peas in another smaller crockpot.  I used a combo of freshly ground hard white wheat and regular white flour (using the dough setting on my bread machine) to make these fluffy and amazing Schoolhouse Rolls!

I was out of all purpose flour at this point and already had peaches thawed for pie so ground some soft white wheat I had on hand for making pie crusts.  It made an incredibly soft dough so there is a learning curve here.  Next time I may just pat the crust in the pan.  It tastes great though!  The unbaked dough is just a little too soft for rolling and getting into the pan.  I tenderly managed to add strips to the pie for a lattice crust.  I think she is mighty beautiful!  Baking a pie with fresh peaches put up last summer and making that beautiful golden crust using freshly ground wheat definitely gave me "all the feels"!  lol

Next up, I used the pie crust bowl to make some muffins for the week.  In my freezer, I had pureed fresh pumpkin from a porch decoration pumpkin.  It was a hideous pumpkin (called a "Peanut Pumpkin") but had the most delicious flesh inside.  I saved all of the seeds for my garden and pureed the pumpkin (six cups of puree) all for less than the price of one package of seeds.

So I thawed the pumpkin and made a double batch of  pumpkin muffins for the week.  I scooped out half as plain muffins and then add chocolate chips for the rest.  My theory is when making a dirty kitchen, you may as well go all out and get a bunch of things done, which I did.  

All of this gardening and cooking like a granny made me realize one thing.  Old grannies are some tough cookies!  They did it all the hard way not using bread machines and crockpots.  They have some grit! I am blessed to be able to do it AT HOME MY WAY rather than the exhausting ways they had to get these chores done.  Although,... it is always a good idea to learn those old fashioned skills even if you don't always have to use them.  Just saying...

Spring is a busy season.  Let me know if you are getting some spring projects done at your house.  If you experience any cooking like a granny moments, I would also love to know those!

Have a good week!

Enjoy!

Gina