Blog – Mary's Musings

Garden Update April 13, 2025

I hereby declare that our garden season has begun for 2025! I’d like to give you an overview of the upcoming season…sort of a baseline…so as the season goes on you’ll see progress. We are always hopeful at the beginning of the season!

So far, the planters by the patio are filled with 100+ onion plants. They seem to have weathered the below freezing temperatures just fine. We’ll thin them as we eat them so we’ll see how they do over the summer.

The planters along the side of the patio will have lettuce and radishes but it’s still a little early to start them.

Bert started the tomato plants in the shop under grow lights about two weeks ago. Today they are big enough to take pictures of them. We have three kinds: Bodacious…a large regular tomato; Super Sauce…a large Roma style; and Rain Drops…a large cherry-type tomato. They will soon be thinned and transplanted to larger pots. It’s probably 6 weeks before they’ll go in the ground.

Bodacious

Super Sauce

Rain Drop

In the planters off the patio, we’re hoping to plant asparagus and the Rain Drop tomatoes. Not sure if we’ll fill in with flowers.

As I walked up the hill to the fenced garden, I noticed the forsythia around the property still looks beautiful.

Up in the garden on the hill, the lavender (in the foreground) still looks silver green. So far nothing is happening there. We’ll have room for tomatoes, carrots, green and yellow beans and zucchini. We grow what we’ll eat and I’ll can, freeze or dehydrate the extra. I fill in with produce from the local farmer’s markets.

At the other end of the garden is our section of Echinacea…my favorite! It looks like nothing is happening, but when you look closely, tiny green shoots are starting!

As soon as overnight temperatures are above freezing, Bert will set up the rain barrels. So, watch for future updates as the season progresses. Enjoy!

Fabric Resources WalMart

With the reality of JoAnn Fabrics stores closing all over the country, those of us that actually sew are looking for new sources of fabrics…especially where we can touch and feel the fabric. In my area, central Pennsylvania, JoAnn’s has been the go-to source for many years. Recently, I really haven’t needed much except fleece for the greyhound coats. Now that I’m not making as many coats, and my other sewing projects involve using up the fabric I have, I realized I didn’t know what my other choices were.

Today I’d like to share what I found at my local WalMart for fabric and sewing notions. A store near you may have other choices.

I found many prepackaged yards of fabric…mostly 1-yard and 2-yards…of poly/cotton blends and 100% cotton. Prices were pretty standard.

They offered a section with utility fabrics, ready to cut to length…assuming someone was nearby to do the cutting.

A whole section of cotton fabric, ready to cut, was available.

Muslin and interfacing were available.

Fleece, prepackaged into 1 1/2 yards was available. I could make two coats out of one package, plus the linings out of another.

Poly-fil stuffing and pillow forms are stacked up.

The price of patterns in stores and online are crazy now! The display at WalMart seemed to be focused on the needs of families…clothing for children, costumes, etc., and ranged from $2.97 to $4.97!

The offerings for appliques and buttons were pretty sparce, but I can see those can easily be sold online…probably even at WalMart.com.

The rest of the items for sale were tools and other notions that could be useful to folks that sew or craft…scissors, rotary cutters, magnifying lights, Velcro, needles, rulers, safety pins, etc.

WalMart’s offerings of sewing fabric and supplies can certainly fill a need for those many useful items that you might need right now when you’re in the middle of a project. If you’re looking for specialty fabric, or high-quality fabric for clothing or quilting, you may want to find another source for that. I’ll continue exploring resources in the area for those projects.

Spring Has Sprung!

I know sprung is not a real word…but when I look outside that’s how it feels. I’ve been watching forsythia for a few days, waiting to see them all flower. Yesterday I took some pictures when it wasn’t raining for a few minutes! They are glorious! I hope the neighbors appreciate the color, since their houses end up in my pictures!

Several years ago, we had to remove 27 blue spruce trees that had formed our property line for 40+ years. They finally succumbed to disease and needed to be removed. Two years ago, Bert finally agreed to plant 65 forsythia plants along the property line. They’ve been growing but really didn’t bloom much until this year. What a wonderful treat while we wait for the grass to get green and the temperatures to finally stay above freezing. I’m ready for garden season, 2025!

Fabric Resources Frye’s Moyers Sew and Vac

Today I’m going to start a series of posts highlighting stores around my area that sell fabric and sewing supplies. If you sew, or if you ask others to sew for you, you might be interested in places around your area that sell fabric and sewing supplies. Look for the hidden gems that cater to quilters in your area, even if all you need is fabric for curtains. Here in central Pennsylvania, we are dealing with all of the JoAnn Fabric stores going out of business. Since this is a nationwide chain of stores, we can’t just drive 40 miles to the Altoona store…it is also closing!

Granted, we all have access to Amazon for internet sales. However, buying fabric online is difficult when I need to feel the fabric and see the true colors of the prints. Sometimes I’m restricted to buying a minimum of 2 yards…when all I need is half a yard. Internet buying for fabric is at least tedious and sometimes unreliable.

I will write more about resources on the internet in future posts, but today I’d like to profile a local retailer that is a hidden gem…Frye’s/Moyers Sew and Vac in State College. The main store is located in Altoona and has been in business over 70 years! The State College store is smaller, but it has a beautiful collection of quality cotton fabric available. I say it is a hidden gem, because if you don’t know where it is it might be hard to find. The local quilt guild members have long treasured the quality fabric and personalized quilting instruction from the employees.

First, how to find the store! The address for the store in State College is 1011 E. College Avenue. It is located just outside State College on College Avenue. Coming from State College, it is on your left. The sign is right along the road and directs you down a short side street. That short street continues up a hill to the Centre County Historical Museum building. You can read about their hours and available services at their website: https://fryessc.com.

This small store is divided into two areas…the fabric and sewing machine sales and repair, and the vacuum sales and repair. This is the only place I know in town to get my sewing machine serviced…and they can answer my questions when something malfunctions. Of course, should I need a new machine…they know all about them! I can also try them out right there!

The combination makes for a lovely store with various quilting projects displayed.

The fabric is just so beautifully displayed!

Even the fat quarters are all lined up!

All the notions are displayed on pegboards:

Needles and bobbins and rotary cutters…oh my!

Specialty thread makes a colorful display:

So, if you’re looking for top quality fabric and specific sewing supplies, this hidden gem of a store is ready and waiting to help you find what you need for your next project. Check in your area for small stores that combine sewing machine sales and service to see if they also have quality fabric for sale!

Dehydrating Pineapple and Zucchini

The last few days, when I needed a distraction, I decided to get the dehydrator ready for garden season. I look forward to planning what we’ll be canning, freezing and dehydrating. I also had fun with a new canning tool.

It all started with an ad for a tool, called a masongenie, that would suck out the air in a canning jar to seal it…as a way to preserve dry goods, like cereal, rice, beans or dried fruit. It looked pretty simple and could be used to re-seal the jar after using some of the contents. (NOTE: This is not a substitute for regular canning processes of raw, uncooked produce.)

I thought it might substitute for my usual way of taking the air out of a jar with little packets of “oxygen absorbers.”

They worked, but if I opened the jar to use some of the contents, they had trouble sealing the jar again.

The masongenie works with regular-mouth and wide-mouth jars. It can be charged with a USB connection and can seal most jars in 60 seconds.

I started with a partial bag of rice just to give it a try. In 60 seconds, the lid sealed and I could put the jar on the shelf. Looked much better than the wrinkled bag of rice and should keep the rice fresher. Now, when I use some, I can easily reseal the jar.

Of course now I looked around to see what else I could seal! I got distracted with the package of dried bananas we had been snacking on. When we read the packet, it said, “Made in China!” Yikes! Certainly, we could do better than that. I started thinking about other snacks I could make in the dehydrator.

I understand these bananas were freeze-dried…which is something I can’t do with my dehydrator. However, I can do regular dehydrated bananas. I didn’t want to go to the store to buy them right then, but I did have cans of pineapple that could be cut up and dried. They might make a good snack until I could buy bananas!

With the can of chunk pineapple, I cut each chunk in half to make it thinner and laid them out on my dehydrator tray. I had several cans of pineapple slices so I cut them into quarters and laid them on trays. Frankly, the slices worked best!

I filled three trays and started the dehydrator…135 degrees for about 16 hours!

The dehydrator ran all night until noon the next day! Delicious!

The pineapple is the first of several fruits I’ll experiment with…this batch is going into the fridge…the pieces were too big to bother putting in a jar!

Dehydrating Zucchini

Now that I had the dehydrator ready to go, I decided to work with the 4 medium zucchini I had on the counter. I use zucchini in a sausage/tortellini soup recipe, but I never seem to have zucchini at the time I want to make the soup. So…time to chop zucchini. Thinking ahead…that I wanted to dry the zucchini and store it in mason jars…I peeled the zucchini and cut it into small cubes. I filled up 4 trays with zucchini cubes.

When dried, the chunks were pretty tiny, but all four zucchini made about 1 cup of dehydrated chunks! Next time, I won’t cut them so small.

I put a lid on the jar, set the masongenie on top and in 60 seconds the jar was sealed! I added the jar to my shelf!

I’ll let you know when more produce and dry goods make it to my shelf! Garden season 2025 is coming soon!

Recipe Bonanza

I seem to be a collector of recipes. By now, almost every other post I read on Facebook is a picture of some delicious-looking dish or baked good. Since I open these posts to read the ingredients, Facebook offers me more recipes! Of course.

I have found recipes in cookbooks written by various community and church groups as fundraisers. Recipes are in every newspaper and magazine I read. Sometimes the recipes are easy to follow; others have complicated steps or ingredients. Some cookbooks focus on a specific topic, like low-fat or vegan ingredients. I seem to gravitate to recipes that use basic ingredients…flour, eggs, sugar, etc. Other cookbooks focus on a kitchen appliance, like recipes for crockpots, air fryers and instant pots. I have those appliances but they are stored in cupboards. It has to be a recipe I really want to try to pull the appliance out to the kitchen counter.

I just found a link to a huge list of recipes compiled by two women for their church…The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints…the Mormans.

https://safelygatheredin2.blogspot.com

https://safelygatheredin2.blogspot.com/2008/11/alphabetical-recipe-list.html

It is similar to many other cookbooks offered by church groups with breakfast, main dishes and desserts, but the focus is on recipes that use the ingredients that can be found in long-term storage, like flour, sugar and rice. The church guides their members to store basic ingredients for 3-months, 6-months and beyond.

Their advice to have a stockpile of food and supplies is now a common suggestion for non-church members who just want to be prepared. Even the government suggests a 72-hour store in case of an emergency. It sounds unnecessary, unless you remember all the shortages we just went through with the Covid lockdowns!

The website also has links to how to store the ingredients, how to store enough water for emergencies and a list of tutorials that show How to Pressure Can, Make Whole Wheat Bread and Plan Your Garden, among other topics.

It appears the whole website was written in 2008 and 2009, but because the recipes are timeless…meaning they use basic ingredients and simple cooking appliances…they won’t go out of style when a new appliance is developed.

I searched the internet for the guidelines for food storage and I think the label “prepping” must have been first attributed to the Mormans as they suggest food storage. Now we can learn from their advice.

I think I’ll start experimenting with the recipes in the list. I’ll cite the website so you’ll know the recipe came from that blog. Enjoy!

The Quiet Before Spring

Winter is holding on tight here in central Pennsylvania. We’ve had a day or two each week that pushes above freezing and then we might get a cold rain or a few snow flurries. You can tell that Spring is holding its breath waiting for enough sunshine a few days in a row. I walked around the yard to see if anything was trying to sprout.

The grass is pretty brown. the dogwood trees out front are still holding on tight.

The Red Bud trees are not waking up yet.

Bert has used over half of the wood pile but it has kept us toasty warm all winter.

The Butternut trees on the hill are resting.

In the garden, the lavender did very well over the winter. The plants are a silvery green and look just as they did last fall!

The Echinacea is slumbering just fine.

Now…the most exciting thing is the forsythia! The buds are looking yellow and should be the first flowers to pop! I’m so looking forward to the color around the property.

The most fun while we wait for spring is checking Bert’s trail camera to see the animals around our bird feeder at night. We knew we had 4 to 5 deer visiting every night but we also saw an unusual skunk around the Red Bud trees and the bird feeder.

We now have pictures of the all white skunk with a huge fluffy tail as big as its body!

We also have a regular skunk visiting.

Amazing to watch the deer and skunks around the tree at the same time. They aren’t bothered by each other.

We’ll consider these pictures of “nothing happening” as the baseline as we get into gardening season, 2025. These are the pictures BEFORE we plant! Haha! We will pay attention for the skunks at night…wouldn’t want to interrupt their dinner hour!

Making Cinnamon Apple Cake

I seem to be on the lookout for Apple Cake recipes. I’m interested in recipes that use apples without having to roll out pie crust for apple pie or cut butter into tiny pieces like apple crisp topping. So far I’ve written about French Apple Cake (https://marykisner.com/making-french-apple-cake/) and German Apple Cake (https://marykisner.com/making-german-apple-cake/).

This recipe for Cinnamon Apple Cake looked easy but the recipe was not in my preferred format. The ingredients were not even listed in order of use so I ended up having to search the list of ingredients at every step to confirm amounts. When I was done mixing and put the pan in the oven…I realized I didn’t measure out the brown sugar correctly! No problem. The cake was delicious with less brown sugar so I corrected my recipe.

Here is my version of this recipe:

Here are the steps to make this delicious cake.

In a medium bowl, whisk 2 eggs and 1 cup of oil.

2. Measure out the cinnamon, white and brown sugars and vanilla extract. Add them to the bowl. (Original recipe called for 1 cup of brown sugar. I used 1/2 cup.)

3. Measure out the flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder and add to the bowl.

4. Chop 1 large apple (I had two small ones) and 1/2 cup of walnuts. Fold into the batter. This made a VERY stiff batter. Using a spatula, press the mixture into a round 9″ pan (sprayed with PAM).

5. After baking for 45 minutes, here is the cake! It obviously didn’t rise very much but it sure smelled up the house with cinnamon!

The directions said, wait 15 minutes to cut…but I will tell you…wait a little longer! The first piece sort of fell into crumbs when cut while warm:

When the cake was cool, it was much easier to cut!

This is when I knew I didn’t need that extra half-cup of brown sugar…it was sweet enough! I think this recipe for Cinnamon Apple Cake is a winner! Enjoy!

Born in the Middle of the Story-Repost

This is a repost of a story I wrote at the very beginning of my blogging days (2021). I’ve had requests from some family members who would like to see these photos again. Quite a journey for all of us!

One of the things I treasure from my parent’s generation was their foresight to save many written stories of their lives. Sometimes it was an envelope of letters from a loved one overseas; or stories they wrote for historical societies documenting life “back in the day” like my grandfather did.

Sometimes, they specifically wrote “autobiographies” with photographs, assembled in their later years. My mother had even saved a handwritten autobiography she wrote in high school (around 1925) that shared her life up to age 12 or so. (You can read about her life in another set of 3 posts: https://marykisner.com/ruth-lowry-bixby-biography-part-1/); https://marykisner.com/ruth-lowry-bixby-biography-part-2/); and https://marykisner.com/ruth-lowry-bixby-biography-part-3/).

As I get older, I feel like I’ve let the next generation down. Somehow, I was never able to document my life adventures as it happened with daily journals. I did discover I had saved about 12 years of Christmas letters I had written over the years. What a treasure! And this week, while sorting through photographs and computer files, I found my first attempt at my own autobiography. In 2013 I had written several letters to my grandchildren which summarized my early life. I needed the focus of who was going to read the letters and since my grandchildren were just learning to read, I thought about them as I wrote.

I started with an assortment of photographs, hoping to show how as the youngest, I was joining a “family” that already had had many experiences. For a long time that was confusing to me. My sister would say, “Don’t you remember when…?” and it turned out it was before I was born!

I’d like to share that first letter I wrote to my grandchildren.

________________________

April 17, 2013

Dear Aislinn, Annika, Ben and Anna,

My life story started when I was born in 1946 in New Jersey. Since I don’t remember those early years, thank goodness I have a few pictures of me when I was very small. I was born into a family that had been around for quite a few years already. My parents had been married for 11 years and already had two children. They had already lived in Minnesota and New Jersey and apparently had a cat!

Before I was a year old, we moved to State College, Pennsylvania. I don’t remember anything my family did before I was born. I had seen pictures of my sister and brother with grandparents and uncles and aunts that I had never met.

Here is a picture of my sister and brother with our Grandma Cora Bixby. She was my Father’s Mother. This Grandmother died before I was born.

All this is to remind you that your family (your parents, their parents, and their brothers and sisters) had adventures long before you were born. Have them tell you stories about some of those adventures! It took me a long time to realize that I had joined the family somewhere in the middle of the story. I have some pictures of me as a baby but I don’t remember much of anything before I was 3 years old. I think I remember the tricycle I got for my third birthday.

Here are some other pictures that show my sister feeding me and my brother playing with me on my new tricycle. Even today…both of us over 70 years old…my sister sometimes calls me her “baby sister.” That used to make me so mad because I’m all grown up now. She remembers me as a tiny baby and thought I was cute. So, I guess that’s OK.

Mark, Jean and baby Mary

Mary, about 1 year old

Mary, at 3 years old

Mark and Mary

Paul Bixby family around 1950

So…do you remember any early events in your life? Sometimes you can remember a feeling but sometimes you only remember seeing the picture. Don’t feel bad if you don’t remember things like your parents do. Ask them what they remember from being a baby. And then ask your Grandma or Grandpa to tell you a story from when your parents were a baby and see if your Mom or Dad remembers that story. Sometimes all they remember is seeing the picture and hearing the story! Your parents were born in the middle of a story too!

Here is a picture of Ted and Kathy playing with a laundry basket. Kathy was 1 year old and Ted was 2 ½. Ask them if they remember doing this, or if they just remember seeing the picture.

Never forget your life story started when you were born. You might not remember the first few years, but pictures can reassure you that you were part of the family from the beginning!

Love,

Grandma K.

_________________

So, don’t worry if you haven’t kept a daily journal. You can begin documenting your life story. Start with some pictures and create a story around them. Your children and grandchildren will treasure them forever.

How to Make Gravy Like My Mother

My mother was the queen of depression-era cooking. Her meals weren’t fancy but they were frugal. She was married in 1935 and raised two kids during lean times while my dad was in college and finances were very tight. By the time I was born in 1946 our family was preparing to leave dad’s teaching job in New Jersey and move to State College and Penn State.

The lean times were finally in the past but my mother never let go of her efficient recipes and could make a meal out of a few leftovers. To this day, my favorite dish was her casserole that had some meat chunks, leftover vegetables and gravy topped with biscuits.

The Paul Bixby family around 1950

Somehow, I never watched how she made the gravy and I spent many years of my married life trying to duplicate those casseroles. I usually ended up with vegetable soup but could never seem to figure out how to make the broth into gravy. I often gave up and opened a jar of pre-made gravy or used a dry packet to make a cup of gravy.

A few years ago, I finally looked up on the internet how to make gravy and I’ve enjoyed being able to produce a nice gravy with juice left from cooking a roast in the crock pot or roasting chicken in the oven. Last week, I made a delicious chicken vegetable soup and wanted to convert it to my mother’s familiar casserole. I’d like to share the simple recipe with you.

How to Make Gravy

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter (or coconut oil, vegetable oil, olive oil, margarine or bacon fat)

1/4 cup all-purpose flour (or 2 tablespoons cornstarch)

2 cups chicken, beef, turkey or vegetable broth (or pan drippings…strained to remove gristle or fat)

Instructions:

In a medium-size saucepan, melt butter (or other fat) over medium high heat.
Whisk in flour (or cornstarch) until well combined and no white specks remain. Cook 2 minutes.
Slowly pour in broth and whisk well.
Bring to a simmer and heat until thickened to desired consistency, about 2 minutes, whisking constantly.

Making Gravy Out of Soup Broth

I started with a big bowl of my homemade chicken vegetable soup.

I pulled out my strainer and dumped the soup in to strain out the vegetables.

The recipe above is based on 2 cups of broth. You can see I had 3 cups of soup broth. So, I just increased the measurements of the fat and flour to make sure it would thicken properly.

I like to use coconut oil and all-purpose flour to make this gravy.

I measured out 3 tablespoons of coconut oil and melted it in the pan.

Then I added about 2/3 cup of all-purpose flour and stirred them together until all the flour was absorbed by the coconut oil.

Then, I added the soup broth to the oil/flour mixture and whisked until it was all combined. On medium heat, I stirred until it came to a boil, turned the heat down and stirred until it thickened…about a minute or two.

Finally, I added the gravy back to the vegetable soup and had the base for a chicken vegetable casserole!

Now for the biscuits! Of course, I had to try Bisquick like my mother used. She reminded me back then that in her high school Home Economics class she had memorized the ingredients to make biscuits from scratch and had usually done so. By the time I was born, she was thrilled to use Bisquick…such a time saver!

Luckily, I could use coconut milk (or almond milk) to make the biscuits. Of course, with the arthritis in my right hand, I had Bert mix up the biscuits. I just formed them into biscuit shapes and put them on a cookie sheet.

My mother would have spooned the raw biscuits on top of the gravy and vegetables and baked the casserole in the oven. I broke up a biscuit and spooned the hot gravy and vegetables on top of the biscuit. Worked for me!

Save this recipe and make your own gravy anytime! Enjoy!