Beef with Onions, Pineapple, and BBQ sauce.

All recipes in this blog are my own. When cooking, I very rarely measure anything at all, so I'm afraid that some of the amounts I mention here are just educated guesses :) Use your best judgement.

What you'll need:

- 1 pound of ground beef.
- 1 small can of pineapple chunks. 
-  4 ounces of BBQ sauce.
- 1 big onion.
- 4 ounces of Thai coconut cream.
- 1/2 cup of fine breadcrumbs.

- 1 tbsp of dried spinach or parsley flakes. (optional)

How to cook it.

This is a really simple recipe but it's delicious, I promise. It only takes about 15 minutes from start to finish so it's great for a quick meal.

1) Open the can of pineapple chunks and pour a little bit of the juice in a pan. I am using this juice instead of oil which makes the recipe a bit healthier or at least I think so :)

2) Break up the ground beef and add it to the pan. I cook it on medium heat to medium-high.

3) Chop the onion in small pieces and add it to the meat.

4) While it's cooking, add the breadcrumbs, BBQ sauce, and half of the pineapple chunks as well as some more of the juice from the can with the pineapple. 

5) Last, add the coconut cream. 

6) Let it all cook through, add the spinach or parsley flakes, and it's ready to serve.

That's really it. It's super easy, it's fast and it's delicious.

A few things to keep in mind

- You can add as many or as few pineapple chunks as you feel comfortable with. I use half a can, and I transfer the other half to a plastic container and put it in the fridge to make something else with it later.

- My ground beef is incredibly lean. I can't even cook it without using oil or some kind of moisture like the pineapple juice. This is because my Amish friend raises the cow, I don't buy meat at the store. If you have ground beef that's fatty, you might want to cook it first and drain the fat.

- Thai coconut cream (not to be confused with coconut milk) comes in a 13.6 ounce can, it can be found in the Asian aisle at Walmart, at any Asian store, or on Amazon. Walmart is often out of stock on it, so I usually order it from Amazon. It's actually not more expensive than at Walmart. I open the can and transfer the content to a small canning jar with a cover and put it in the fridge. It's excellent in stir fry, soup, and all kinds of sauces. It needs to be stirred up very well before each use.

- The spinach or parsley flakes are just to make it look fancy.

Strawberry secrets

 Well, this was my first experience with growing strawberries.

I purchased 10 small strawberry plants last year. Great was my excitement when I found a handful of strawberries on the plants. I saved the runners and planted them in little pots in September. Runners are vine-like extensions that shoot out of the plants and grow some leaves as well as some roots.

Once the runners were well established in the pots, it was time to plant them outdoors.

I made a hill of about a foot tall and planted the runners about 12 to 15 inches apart. Once planted, I covered the entire hill with hay, and this has definitely kept the weeds down.

I also planted some runners inside a stack of two tires plus I made a raised bed out of Styrofoam boxes. At that point, the runners had gotten pretty big.

This is what it looked like:

After my strawberry beds had been set up, fall and winter came and the gardens took a long, cold nap. Would the strawberry plants survive the bitter cold? Would the snow flatten them?
Once spring came and the snow melted away, I was happy to see the strawberry plants come to life.
Fast-forward a few months, and June has been beyond generous. With still numerous strawberries to pick, I have already frozen 10 quarts.

The strawberries are big and oh so sweet.

Four quarts in the sink, just from today's harvest.

I didn't even use half of the runners. I am convinced that you can start a strawberry farm with just 10 plants. If I saved all the runners from this year, I'd literally have hundreds of plants.

Adirondack living

Life is about simplicity. It's about rolling snowballs, conquering mountains, and smelling freshly picked walnuts. 

Once upon a time, a friend far away, published a comic strip. One page showed a man, sitting at a table on his patio with a multi-million dollar home behind him and a swimming pool large enough to shoot another Jaws movie at. The man was writing about how he felt that his whole life had been a failure.

I am sitting at my hand-me-down desk when I write this. The puddle in my driveway is the only swimming pool I'll ever own. Happy? You bet! I'm just minutes away from the most beautiful views in the world. The cat is purring in her sleep, the chickens produced 6 eggs today, and we ate our own, organic red beets for dinner. They were still growing in the garden two hours ago. It doesn't get any better than this.

This blog is about living in the Adirondacks region just outside of the Adirondack Park. It is about living where many people would not want to live. It's too far out in the boonies, it's too cold in winter, there are too many wild animals lurking in the bushes, it's too far to get to the grocery store, etc... There are many times when I wish I could live somewhere else. However, it's close to the mountains, the deer are practically within petting distance, and who needs to go grocery shopping when the freezer is full with home grown organic vegetables?

Welcome to this journey. Glad you stopped in.

Picture taken from the summit of Ampersand Mountain.