Wheat Chile Recipe

This is a recipe my kids grew up on .  It is really yummy! Use a large kettle, as it makes a lot.

Ingredients

2 c wheat berries

6 c water

2 lb ground beef

1 large onion and bell pepper chopped

1 t salt (or to taste)

1 T chili powder

pepper

16 oz can tomato sauce

large can tomatoes

8 c beef broth

2 t dried oregano or fresh oregano to taste

4 cloves garlic

Instructions

Cook wheat in water for 1 hour until tender.  Brown beef.  Drain off fat thoroughly and brown onion, pepper, garlic, and seasonings.  Add wheat and all the rest of the ingredients.  Simmer uncovered 1 hour or more until the desired consistency.

Add

1 can small white beans and 1 can small black beans, drained.

optional: Add cohopped cilantro.  Correct seasonings.  Serve

some recent garden pictures

I just put away my canning things for awhile after canning many quarts of apricots and applesauce, making jam, drying apricots, freezing apricots for pies, and helping a sister in our ward can apricots.  I need a break from canning until the peaches are ripe!  Our apricots were huge this year and plentiful, and I gave most of them away.  I just can't use them all.  And I don't want to see another apricot for a while.

This is Holly and Isaac and part of the applesauce we canned the other day.  My apple tree is ready to share, but most importantly, I am happy to teach young mothers to can fruit.  Holly is very anxious to learn.  Home canned apple sauce is delicious and nutritious, right off the tree.  Its taste is incomparable when compared to that store-bought stuff.  And it costs so little.  

I have been teaching mothers like Holly to can this summer.  Do you realize that in the winter that the fruit we buy in the supermarket is shipped here from South America.  It is picked green and trucked up to the states and loses its vitamins in the process. It is grown and picked in less sanitary conditions than the USA (I've been to Mexico, and the fields smell like urine).  Yet we consider this produce "fresh."  Our home canned fruit retains its vitamins and is picked fresh off the tree.  In the winter it is healthier for us to eat it than the stuff on supermarket shelves.  

I've also helped several families start gardens this summer.  It is important in these times to have a little garden, some fruit trees and vines, and grow some of what we eat.  We will save money, eat safer food, teach our children to work, and teach them to enjoy the food Heavenly Father has given us from the earth instead of from the package in the store.  I am a crusader for this and have told anyone who will hear me at church that I will come over and help them with their gardens or to learn to can, and I am proud of any family who is ready to start.  Gardening is a way to save money, get great exercise, peace of mind, satisfaction, health, nutrition, and family togetherness.