Around the Kisner Homestead

Making Italian Sausage Soup with Tortellini

I’d like to share a recipe that makes a delicious, hearty soup! I needed to find an alternate soup to make for our Yard Sale/Bake Sale next weekend (Sept. 11 & 12). If you are local, come join us at the Boalsburg Fire Hall Friday (9-2) and Saturday (9-1).

In the past we had offered a Chicken Corn Noodle Soup and it just didn’t seem as popular as in the past. So, I decided to try this Italian Sausage Soup with Tortellini instead. This recipe is from https://allrecipes.com.

This first batch was just for us to see if it would even work. I’ll triple the recipe if the tortellini holds together. I needed something that could simmer for 3-4 hours and still look like tortellini. Usually, noodles worked well, but I knew fresh tortellini just got HUGE and then fell apart if simmered too long. I had corkscrew pasta ready, but I thought I’d try dried tortellini first.

Here is the recipe:

We started with 1-pound of sweet Italian sausage…loose like a package of hamburger. Bert cooked it and drained it in a bowl lined with paper towels. (Sorry…I didn’t catch a picture of the frying pan!)

While Bert was cooking, I chopped up celery, carrots and onions. We decided to skip the zucchini. We didn’t think it would be sturdy enough to simmer for 3-4 hours.

I measured out the minced garlic, basil, parsley and oregano:

I got the Beef Broth and cooked tomatoes out of the pantry:

Bert donated a bottle of red wine (we needed 1/2 cup!). If this works, we’ll save the rest for the triple batch of soup next week (at least another cup and a half!)

This all got assembled in our 5-quart pan and was brought to a boil.

When the vegetables were soft, we dumped in an 8-oz bag of dried tortellini.

Once stirred up, we let it simmer for another 15 minutes or so. Wow…it made a huge pile of soup!

This soup needed no additional seasoning, but it could have used more liquid…or less tortellini. It really sucked up the juice.

Finally, we let the soup simmer for several hours, just like it will at the Bake sale. It still tasted great. The best thing…the tortellini held together! I’ll take an extra box of broth to add if necessary after simmering for 2-3 hours, just in case!

We now have a great recipe to make soup for a crowd…or at least a hearty soup for us this winter! Enjoy!

If you have comments or questions, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.

Garden Update August 25, 2026

The canner is put away! The few tomatoes and cucumbers left are on the kitchen counter! The air is feeling like fall is coming. We’ve had over 6″ of rain this month so far and the lovely petunias were just beat down. It was time to get some of the garden cleaned up!

Here’s what is left in the garden. On the patio, I still have the planter filled with beets. I’ll leave them for a little longer to see if they will actually make beets! The spinach is doing well too. I’ve been adding a few leaves to my salads!

The petunias and mint have been dispatched! Here is BEFORE the rain:

After 2-3″ of rain, they were a mess (sorry, no picture…too depressing). As Bert picks the pumpkins, he’ll line them up here:

The geraniums continue to bloom if I can keep up with trimming the dead flowers!

In the beds just off the patio, the second planting of carrots are looking good. Not sure how big they are, but we’ll pull a few soon just to check.

The asparagus continues to wave in the breeze! We’re hoping next spring we’ll actually have a little asparagus to eat!

The pumpkins are now visible through the greenery!

Up in the garden on the hill, a few tomato plants still have green tomatoes. The plants look pretty sad!

The beans are all in jars in the pantry! Bert will rototill the garden before fall.

The carrots are finally noticeable! Bert accidently pulled one up when he was weeding and it was over 6″ long! It tasted great!

The cucumbers are done. They were very prolific but I was ready to be done trying to pick them! We have Bread & Butter pickles and pickle relish on the shelf that we’ll use all winter!

And of course, the echinacea is dropping seeds. The heavy rainstorms really beat them down.

On the one hand it’s kind of sad to see the garden season end, but it does feel good to see how productive our small garden plots can be! For another week or so we still have fresh yummy tomatoes and cucumbers on the counter! Time to move on to fall activities! Enjoy!

Please email me directly if you have comments or questions: maryjkisner@gmail.com

Canning Chili

The garden this year has been VERY productive! We don’t grow a huge variety of things but we focus on produce we will use. For vegetables that we want now and then, the Farmer’s Markets and the grocery store are adequate. Now that we are faced with an abundance of tomatoes, it was time to consider other ways to use them. We both like chili, but with limitations. Bert doesn’t care for sweet peppers and could do without beans. Our chili has to have lots of meat! I would like some kind of bean, so we agreed to use chick peas instead. So basically, we make a meat-heavy tomato sauce with chick peas. With the price of beef rising, it was a great way to keep beef in our diet without worrying that the price will continue to go up. We’ll have jars of chili on the shelf when we need a quick meal. Each jar can be stretched with additional fresh tomatoes (or a can of kidney beans…as long as Bert isn’t eating it!)

Many recipes include seasonings like chili powder, but when canning we cook the meat and onions with salt and pepper, and we add chili powder when we reheat it. It tastes much fresher.

Making Chili

We started with about 7+ pounds of ground beef (85/15) at almost $10/pound! Bert cooked it with two large onions (in several batches).

The cooked meat went into the refrigerator overnight. The next day I started on a pile of tomatoes…washing, cutting off tops, scoring the bottom with an X, boiling for 1 minute to loosen the skins, dropping into cold water and then peeling and cutting up the tomatoes. Long process, but necessary to remove skins…they are tough this time of the season.

The pile…

Tops cut off and the bottom scored with an X…

…dipped in boiling water for 1 minute…

Pulled out of ice water ready for peeling…

Tomatoes cooked until soft…

Cooked tomatoes run through the food processor, ready to assemble chili…

Assembling the chili…

Chili was packed into pint jars and pressure canned…1 hour 15 minutes at 10 pounds pressure!

We ended up with 17 jars of chili!

Each jar is a meal for the two of us! We often add extra fresh tomatoes and spices. I occasionally add kidney beans. So pretty!

Without the garden, I could have purchased tomatoes and onions at the Farmer’s Market. Gardens around the area are also abundant! Make use of what you have! Enjoy!

Please email me directly if you have comments or questions: maryjkisner@gmail.com

Garden Update August 10, 2026

The garden is changing as August arrives. We can now anticipate when we need to set aside time to pick and can produce. By August, it’s just too hot to keep up with radishes. The lettuce just gives up and gets bitter. The cucumbers have outdone themselves and the tomatoes ripening quickly. I’m now down to just one box of pint jars and Bert is going to pick up two more boxes so we can finish the season.

Just as I’m thinking we’re almost done…my neighbor brought me two large bags of commercially-frozen strawberries. I was just thinking they could be made into Jam! I have lots of ½ pint jars; I have several boxes of Sure-jell. Why not!

At the moment, we’re focused on using our latest picking of tomatoes. We’ll get a bunch of hamburger and onions and make a big pot of chili. We will pressure can the jars and have easy meals all winter! I’ve already made pizza sauce and just plain canned tomatoes so I don’t need those this year. Here’s the latest pile of tomatoes…with more to come! Yesterday we canned 12 pints of pickle relish and we still picked more cucumbers! Crazy!

So, let’s tour the garden today.

The petunias are going strong but after the rain storms, they look beat down.

The spearmint is growing tall but we haven’t seen any flowers at all.

In the planter on the patio, I’ve planted some old beet seeds. I wasn’t sure what would happen! We’ll wait and watch to see if they actually make beets!

The planter that held lettuce and radishes now has beets and spinach…also old seeds. I can start adding a few leaves of spinach to my salads! The center section had lettuce that I cut off. We did not pull the roots and it continued to grow! However, the lettuce is very bitter so we’ll save it for a friend who has rabbits.

In the bed off the patio, the row of carrots is looking good. Always a waiting game to see if carrots will develop properly.

The asparagus continues to just be there. It’s hard to get a picture of them because their green tops blend into the hillside behind them.

The pumpkin patch is looking impressive. We’ll wait to see how many pumpkins survive roving critters, but so far the fence has kept the groundhogs out.

Of course, there are one or two that insist on growing outside the fence!

Up on the hill, the tomato plants look like they’ve had it. However, the tomatoes are ripening quickly.

This row had beans. We’ll leave it empty now. Actually, the extra space makes it easier to pick tomatoes!

Here is the second planting of beans. They grow fast in this hot, wet weather!

I’m not optimistic that the carrots will produce much! Luckily, we have that section down by the patio that seems to be doing well!

The cucumbers have outdone themselves! I have a few just to eat and that’s fine. The wandering voles have managed to take little bites out of most of them and at this point I don’t care!

And finally, the echinacea is still pretty, but the seeds are falling and the seed heads are turning black. Let’s us know fall is on the way!

We’ve had plenty of rain this summer and no serious plant diseases to worry about. I marvel at how fast the summer is going. If I get depressed about it, I can just check out my pantry and admire all the beautiful jars!

If you have comments or questions, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com. Thanks!

Canning Pickles and Green Beans

When my kitchen counter starts to look like this, I know it’s time to consider pulling out the canner!

About the only thing I do with cucumbers is eat them! This year Bert suggested we try Bread & Butter pickles. The cucumbers are still producing, so next week I think I’ll make a batch of pickle relish…that we will use!

Bread & Butter Pickles

I found a recipe in my canning book:

Then we found packets of the seasoning in my supplies. We followed the recipe above and used the packets for the spices.

First, we chose some of the smaller cucumbers so we could slice them into rounds 1/4″ thick.

Bert chopped the onion.

We sprinkled the pickling salt over the chopped pieces and put lots of ice on top. We let it sit for about 2 hours.

The vinegar, sugar and spices were added to a large pot and brought to a boil. The cucumbers and onions were rinsed and drained several times and added to the pot.

Once this boiled, the mixture was spooned into hot jars, topped with hot vinegar mixture and sealed with a lid and ring.

The jars were placed in our big canner and covered with boiling water. They boiled for 10 minutes.

Within minutes of being removed from the canner, the jars all sealed. We have no idea how they will taste…they have to ‘cure’ for about 4-6 weeks on the shelf!

This is our canner set up. The canner is too big to put on our ceramic-top stove and is larger than the burner. We had to find another way to heat up the canner out in the garage. So…we have a canning party while things need to be monitored! (Actually, Bert monitors the canner while I clean up the kitchen!)

Canning Green Beans

Once we start the canning process it’s just easier to spend several days in a row canning what’s ready. While we’ve had quite a haul of green and yellow beans from the garden, the green beans did not do well. So, I went to the Amish Farmer’s Market nearby and picked up a box of green beans that weighed about 10 pounds for $20. (The green beans were selling for $2.25/pound, so I got a good deal!) The best thing was they were all about the same size and very blemish-free! All I had to do was ‘snap’ them…that took half a day!

I separated the snapped beans into 3 bowls and washed them well. Then they went into a big pot (one batch at a time) with water to boil for 5 minutes. That really made them easier to handle and they fit better into the jars.

I got the jars ready and put 1/2 tsp of pickling salt into each jar. The canner holds 19 pint jars.

Each filled jar was topped with hot water and sealed. They were put into the canner (with the appropriate amount of water for pressure canning) and processed for 20 minutes at 10 pounds pressure.

The 19 jars are beautiful and ready for the pantry shelf! They will be tasty in the winter!

Of course, the cucumbers continue to produce so I expect I’ll be grinding up a bunch to make pickle relish next week. We’ll also have a new batch of beans from the second planting. My back is grateful for a rest from bending over to pick them! And so…the 2026 garden continues!

If you have comments or questions, please contact me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com

Switching Gears from Bracelets to Belly Bands for Greyhounds

Sorry for the blog silence for more than a week! Cleaning up from the festival was just one activity this week. Then the garden started producing and suddenly I needed to make decisions about the tomatoes, green beans and cucumbers! Then I found out Nittany Greyhounds needed belly bands and coats (more about that in a minute). In the middle of all that, we took a few hours to drive north to have lunch with my brother and his wife!

Cleaning up from the Festival

It seems like when I move from one major activity to another a whole lot of other stuff needs to be addressed. After putting away my bins of bracelets and beads, I needed to reassess and redesign my booth for future shows. I’ve decided I’ll stick with indoor craft shows of 1-2 days. I’m now signed up for a 1-day show at the Ferguson Township Lions Club on November 14. That means my table and display elements needed to be redesigned. Without a tent background my gridwall won’t work. My signs can’t be hung on the wall behind my tables. My bracelets needed a better display. I quickly did some research on how other vendors display similar items. I ended up getting several new pieces. I needed to find a way to display my bracelets and still keep most of them in their packaging. Here are the three different racks.

For my individual packets of specialty bracelets, I purchased two of these table top racks that rotate:

For my smaller packages, these simple racks can display bracelets by size and the tags that extend outside the package can be seen. They have the size, the stone names and a short phrase about the meaning of the stones. I bought three racks…one for each size:

Finally, this display rack will handle the key chains and aromatherapy bracelets that just have their tag but don’t need to be in a plastic bag.

I’ve now disassembled all the racks and will store them until November!

Garden Produce

In the last week we’ve continued to pick tomatoes, picked yellow beans twice and discovered the cucumbers are going nuts! Thank goodness I have a few friends that don’t mind taking some off my hands! This is how many we picked today!

Lunch with my brother

We also finally made time to drive up to Salladasburg to have lunch with my brother and his wife. We’ve been talking about that for weeks and finally found a day with no medical appointments for all of us!

Mark and Mary

Mary and Lita

Making Belly Bands for Greyhounds

One of the benefits of writing this blog is the wealth of information I’ve saved that I can refer to when I want to make something again. Most of my posts involve pictures of how I did something and often I’m reminded how the pattern needed to be changed. Nittany Greyhounds needed belly bands, so I located the post I did about making them…#137… https://marykisner.com/belly-bands-for-greyhounds/ You can check out the whole article, but I’ll quote the first two paragraphs that I wrote about them:

“What is a belly band? A new fashion statement for our beloved greyhounds? Haha…no! Picture this…you have just adopted a 2 yr. old male greyhound from your nearby adoption kennel. You are ready to make him comfortable in your home and take him off his leash. He wanders around the living room…the kitchen…your bedroom. You show him his kennel or cozy bed in the corner. You let him explore on his own while you take off your coat and put things away. Very quickly you realize that he is lifting his leg and marking the corners of the furniture and table legs. This is a natural response to a new environment, especially if you had other dogs in the house previously. AHHHH…now what?

Luckily, the adoption group predicted this might happen and had sent you home with a belly band, just in case. You had wondered what it was for. This simple denim band wraps around their abdominal region and gently keeps his private parts from being used until you can get him outside. Over the next few days as he gets more comfortable in your home you can train him that if he’s in the house he should not have to mark his territory. When you take him outside and remove the band THEN is the time to explore and mark his territory. The hope is that he won’t need the belly band for very long, but that depends on the dog.”

The belly band fits snug around the dog like this:

I use lots of Velcro so it can be adjusted for many different sizes of dogs. Of course, I had a memory that I should cut the denim to 27” long, so today I cut out enough to make 25 belly bands. THEN I checked my post from 2022 and saw that I had mentioned I should cut them 29”!! Yikes!

Note to self: read the instructions BEFORE cutting things out! I will make one first and try it on a dog before I go to the trouble to add 2” to each band!

So, that’s what I’ve been doing the last week and a half. I’ve now ordered enough fleece to make 16 coats, so you’ll know what I’m doing next! Have a good rest of your summer!

Please contact me directly if you have comments or questions: maryjkisner@gmail.com

Garden Update July 18, 2026

I should not be surprised by the growth in the garden in mid-July! We’ve had hot days and lots of rain. I’ve been distracted by the festival preparations and clean up from last week, so when I headed out to the back yard yesterday, I was amazed to see how things had popped! Join me in a quick tour.

The petunias still look pretty…in the planters and in the pot. The spearmint is growing like a weed!

The radishes are minding the heat but the rain keeps them going.

I’ll wait until fall to plant more radishes so instead I found some old seed for beets and spinach. Not sure if it will even sprout!

We had to pull the sugar snap peas two weeks ago. Bert took our extra carrot seeds and planted a long row in that planter. They came up quickly. We might have to use that planter for carrots in the future…they don’t seem to do well up in the garden.

The asparagus looks pretty waving in the wind!

The pumpkins are determined to grow outside the fence! In the second picture you can see a critter must have taken a taste!

Up in the garden on the hill, the tomatoes are doing well!

The first picking included some pretty big tomatoes! I like to pick them while they are still firm. In a day or two they’ll finish ripening on the kitchen table.

Next, the green and yellow beans are making beans! Finally!

Here is the second planting of beans:

The carrots just can’t catch a break but some are trying! Maybe the soil just isn’t right. They seem to be growing more quickly in the bed near the patio (see picture above).

The cucumbers have gone nuts! Bert is spraying them for fungus I think.

The echinacea are spectacular this year! We started with several colors of flowers five years ago, but each year the pink ones take over more.

The bees and butterflies like them!

Enjoy! Please email me directly if you have comments or questions: maryjkisner@gmail.com.

Garden Update July 4, 2026

Happy 250th Birthday, America! We managed to get our red, white and blue petunias planted at just the right time to have them blooming today! Yay!

Of course, a week or so ago, the deer cruised by in the middle of the night and chomped off some of the red and white flowers so they aren’t all the same height. Luckily, they didn’t go out to the front lamp post so those flowers are all the same height!

We’ve had a week of VERY hot days, with occasional thunderstorms. The plants in the garden are minding the heat. Hopefully, things will moderate soon. Here’s what’s happening in the garden today!

The lettuce looks like it is trying to make heads, but it is turning out quite bitter. Luckily, the plants will compost just fine (smile). The radishes are in various stages, but they still taste good.

The petunias in the pot are hanging in there…I think a roving bunny has been tasting the flowers when we aren’t looking!

The Spearmint is going strong. I may decide to dehydrate some of the leaves, but I wanted it mostly to attract the bees. We’ll see.

The sugar snap peas are done. We’ll pull the plants when it cools off a little today. Behind the peas is the asparagus. We’re watering it, hoping next spring we have a meal or two.

The pumpkin plants are huge! Bert is trying to keep the runners inside the fence because they are starting to make pumpkins. We’re hoping they are very big and survive the groundhogs in the area.

Up in the garden, the tomatoes are going nuts! Not sure what I’ll do with them all, so be careful if you stop by to visit…I may sneak some into your back seat!

The green and yellow beans are thinking about making flowers. The green beans in the right row are a new variety to us. They almost look like a pole bean vine. Oops! A bush-type bean is what we wanted.

This section is the second planting of beans. We’ll see how they do in this heat.

And then, there’s our poor carrots! They need to be weeded, but they are in there somewhere.

The cucumbers are making blossoms so there’s some hope for cucumbers eventually!

And finally, the Echinacea is going crazy. The bees love them!

That’s what is happening in our backyard today! I hope you have a happy 4th of July!

If you have comments or questions, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.

Garden Update June 22, 2026

Our garden is busting out all over…mostly. We are getting a good look at which plants seem to like our kaleidoscope of weather. We have our share of hot days, some cooler nights and gusty thunderstorms just as plants are trying to get started. The wind has blown over our tall sugar snap peas just as it’s time to pick them, so it will be a challenge to find the ones that are ready. Here’s the tour of the garden today.

The radishes are ready to pick but even the leaves are having trouble with the heat. I may wait a few weeks to plant again.

I’ve cut off the first heads of lettuce. We will pull out the roots, add more soil and plant again. The plants in the back row are starting to curl and make little heads.

The petunias in the big pot are doing well.

The petunias in the planters by the patio are doing well also. No flowers yet.

The Spearmint in a big pot is spreading out nicely:

This is how the Sugar Snap Peas looked two weeks ago:

After two rain/wind storms, they’ve definitely been hit hard…a real tangled mess. I’ll have to pull them apart to get to the peas that are ready now.

I think they are worth the effort…they are delicious!

The pumpkin plants look huge, even from a distance. Bert saw a groundhog in the area so hopefully the fence will slow him down.

The tomato plants are going strong so far. Bert’s keeping an eye on bugs and wind damage. The tomatoes look great!

The green and yellow beans seem a little behind but they are on their way! The open section that is still empty will be planted with more beans soon. That way they all aren’t ready at the same time.

The carrots don’t look like much, but at least we can see where they are…sort of.

Close-up of the carrots!

The cucumber plants look healthy but it might be a while to eat cucumbers!

And, last but not least, the Echinacea are doing great all by themselves!

So that’s what’s happening around the garden today! Enjoy!

Remember, please email me directly if you have questions or comments, or comment on my post on Facebook…maryjkisner@gmail.com.

Prepping Fruit for Smoothies

Anytime is smoothie time but the summer is the best time to take advantage of available abundant fruit (unless you live in the tropics where fresh fruit is available all year). If I want to make smoothies with fruit, I need to plan ahead. I like to use frozen fruit in my smoothies (instead of just ice). If I freeze it myself, I can put it into single serving size bags and I’ve chosen the quality of the fruit.

Apples

I can usually find fresh apples most of the year, but before harvest season in September or October, the apples have been stored someplace in a climate-controlled setting. Most other fruit we buy here in Pennsylvania from October to June has been grown somewhere else and shipped to our stores. When local fruit shows up at farmer’s markets and the grocery store, I know it’s time to start chopping!

Anytime I buy a bag of apples and we aren’t eating them fast enough, I take the time to chop them up in small pieces, put them in a snack-size zip bag and get them into the freezer.

This quart bag held 4 bags of diced apples. I can easily break off half the bag if I want to mix it with other fruit.

Blueberries

Every year the Kiwana’s in our area have a blueberry sale. The blueberries come from New Jersey (or maybe Maine?) and are very clean and delicious. A 10-lb box this year was $38 and I bought only one box…I still have blueberries in the freezer from last year. I wash them right away and put them into 1-quart zip bags. Once they are frozen, I can pour them out of the bag like marbles right into my blender or into a measuring cup if I need them to bake muffins, etc.

Bananas

I especially like bananas in my smoothies, and freezing them in slices makes it really easy. Bananas don’t keep very long on my counter top and always go bad before I can get to them.

When they are abundant in the store and I have time, I buy about 20 bananas…all about the same ripeness. Then I turn on my music and start chopping!

Since we compost the peals, I’ve learned to remove the stickers. Even when the peals decompose and turn to good dirt the stickers NEVER decompose!

Each snack bag holds exactly 10 slices, which is about 1/2 a banana. Perfect!

Ready for the freezer! I don’t even have label them…they look like banana slices when frozen!

Nectarines

I just took three nectarines that were not going to last on my counter and chopped them up.

These are ready for a smoothie…and I can use just half a bag if I like!

Making Smoothies

My smoothies start with about 8oz of Almond or Coconut milk. You could use regular milk or water. My choices for Protein Powder include:

Or a whey-based protein powder:

This brand is called “Clean Simple Eats.” Very tasty!

It even comes in many flavors! I haven’t tried them yet…but the vanilla is delicious!

Milk goes in the blender first. Then a scoop of protein powder.

Then about 1 cup of frozen fruit.

Fruit goes on top of milk and powder.

About one minute in the blender and I have my “smoothie milk shake” for breakfast!

Prepping fruit for smoothies doesn’t take long but it sure makes my morning much easier to get going! Don’t let any fruit go to waste…get it in the freezer ready for smoothies! Enjoy!

Please email me directly if you have questions or comments: maryjkisner@gmail.com