We live in the country. Random predators (stray dogs, foxes, the occasional bobcat) are always coming in the yard and messing with our cats and other pets. Last year Aaron found a sling shot in the shed. He can stand on the porch and shoot tiny stones at the offending animals. This is his way of protecting the home. It’s his job and he loves it.
Did you know that you can actually hunt with a slingshot?
10 Practical Presents for Your Princess
Dana (one of my favorite readers/Facebook Friends), commented on last week’s post about cast iron pans:
A local store carries the cast iron cookware-all of it-but I have no idea how
you’d use a dutch oven with FEET unless you did use it outdoors….and then I’d have
no idea how to do that! On one hand, how do you keep from burning things, and on the
other hand, how do you get it hot enough to actually cook anything? You’re going to
have to share details about this, ok? 
Blessings-
Dana
My cast iron dutch oven has feet, which is helpful if you are outside. I can also use mine in my oven inside because the feet slide through on the oven rack. Using a tripod to hang your pot helps to regulate the heat over an open fire, or you could just move the pot further away from the fire if you don’t have a tripod.
Last weekend we went camping, I only brought one pot and it was the dutch oven. My goal was to cook everything in this one pot over an open fire. For the most part it worked out good. Just like anything else you have to use it a while to get the hang of it.
I forgot to bring our tripod so we had to be a bit creative. We had friends come visit one day and the dad and Jeff used two wood chunks and a steel pole (clothes rack) from his van to make a way to hang the pot to cook the roast and potatoes more slowly, of course, I did not get a picture of THAT! It was the best meal of the weekend!!!
This really does work like an oven, you can even bake bread in it. It heats evenly and gets VERY hot!
This was chicken that was in the freezer that Olivia made, so all we had to do was warm it up.
One afternoon we had friends come to visit (a family of 10) so I had to think of a way to make the food stretch. I cooked a roast and potatoes; when that was finished I used the drippings from that, a jar of vegetable soup (I brought as back up) and leftovers from the pasta salad from the day before. I threw it all in the pot and warmed it up. It was YUMMY! Mr. Crawford called this Ho-Bo Stew. :o) It went perfect with the roast!
One night the girls and I tried popcorn.
Actually we tried it twice… it was a failure. We’ll need to play around with that one some more.
One morning Olivia made sausage…
then the gravy (all from scratch)…
then she combined them…
this with the BEST buttermilk biscuits she made at home before we left….YUM!
I made whole wheat pancakes…
They were good, but not near as good as the gravy and biscuits!
Even if you do not camp or care to cook over an open fire, it is a good thing to have at least one cast iron pot and learn how to use it. If there were ever a natural disaster (or man-provoked disaster) it is wise to know how to cook for your family in rough conditions.
