Author: Julia

I am a retired software solutions architect. I have been married to my husband, Bruce, for over forty years. We went full-time RVing for 3.5 years and saw much of the United States. After deciding to stop RVing, we bought a ranch house halfway up a hill on five acres. After Bruce and I talked about names for our five acres, we settled on Blackberry Homestead as a homage to the wild blackberries on the hill. We are working on creating our homestead. I love cooking and enjoy sharing recipes. I am also an artist, and I’ll share my current projects. Gardening and reading are my favorite hobbies.

From All Over!

November 13, 2020 When I was in elementary school (grades 1-6 in the US) and junior high school (7-8 in the US), I was very interested in foreign places. I read everything I could about various places. When I was in 6th grade, I signed up for a program for foreign pen pals. It was […]

Instant Pot Low FODMAP Stuffed Pepper Soup

With the colder weather last weekend, it felt like a great time to have soup. I put my own spin on the Stuffed Pepper Soup recipe from Skinnytast.com. I changed the original recipe to make it low FODMAP with a Greek spice mix and slightly spicy. It was delicious! Here’s the link to the original […]

App for Low FODMAP Diet

October 28, 2020 After a lot of searching the internet to find more information about a low FODMAP diet, I found that the Monash University FODMAP Diet App was often recommended. It does cost about eight US dollars to purchase. It is available on the Apple App Store, Google Play and the Amazon App Store. […]

Things to Do to Get Ready for the Retirement RV Dream

First posted in December of 2019. Re-posted on January 24, 2020 with updates. Re-posted on July 27, 2020 with updates. Re-posted on October 27, 2020 with updates. This is a list of things that we need to do to prepare to live the retirement RV dream.

Oatmeal Puff Pancake {Gluten-Free Dutch Baby} — e2 bakes brooklyn

Did you know you can make a Puff Pancake {Dutch Baby} without any flour? And that by swapping in an equal volume of oats, reducing the milk, and getting the eggs extra foamy, you can get just as golden and rumply a result as in every other version you’ve ever had?Well, I didn’t. It hadn’t […] […]

More Snow

October 26, 2020 The temperature dipped into the single digits last night, 6 degrees F and the snow continued falling all day yesterday and last night. We got 7 1/2 inches of snow from this snow fall. Today is only supposed to get up to 12 degrees F and 4 degrees F tonight. I am […]

Promote Your Blog Here; Blog Party #4! — MadeByBernadine

Hello everybody! I recently got back into blogging so I thought what better way to promote this blog and help others than a blog party? Here are the rules: 1. Choose any one of your favorite blog posts from your own blog, all kinds of posts are welcome. (Anything inappropriate will be removed). You can […] […]

Sad Grape Vines

October 25, 2020 Just yesterday, the grapevines had green leaves turning yellow. After the temperature dropped last night to 13 degrees F and snowed, the grapes look sad.

Fraud Trends

October 21, 2020 In my day job, I work as a Software Solutions Architect at a bank. I’d like to share with everyone an email that our fraud department sent to customers. I am going to change the bank name to bank and I am going to make other parts generic, but other than that, […]

Instant Pot Low-FODMAP Beef Stew

I started from the Lazy Day Beef Stew from the The Rootitoot Cookbook, by Ruth “Rootitoot” McCusker. I changed the recipe a good bit to make it low FODMAP and then I simplified a couple of steps to make an even easier “dump” stew. This recipe can even be made with frozen beef cubes. Serves […]