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.

Julia’s Red Beans and Rice

Here’s my recipe for Red Beans and Rice with sausage. You can cook the rice while the red beans simmer. Serves 6 to 8

No Brown Sugar Oatmeal Cookies

I really wanted oatmeal cookies last weekend. When I went through my pantry, I had almost everything I needed, but I didn’t have brown sugar. In the time of improvised cooking, I looked up what I could replace the brown sugar with. The base recipe comes from the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie from The Cook’s […]

More April Snow

April 17, 2020 Ah, springtime in the Rockies! All the snow from the previous snowfall had melted, and the weather had started warming up some. Yesterday, we woke up to seven inches of snow and 24 degrees F. The temperature got all the way to a balmy 25 degrees F. A light snowfall fell all […]

Green Leek and Potato Soup (Vegan)

These recipe uses the leek greens and makes a creamy green soup without any dairy. I was down to just a small amount of baby red potatoes when I made this soup. I realized that I had some mashed potato flakes left over from bread making, and used that for some of the potatoes. It […]

Snow Play Time

April 15, 2020 It started snowing on Sunday and it snowed all day. Monday morning, it was 15 degrees F when I got up at 6 am. We got about 8 inches of snow. Nox enjoys playing in the snow. Here are some pictures I took of Nox on Monday, before playing in the snow […]

Cone of Shame

April 11, 2020 Luna started licking her leg, and we didn’t want her to create a sore from all the licking she was doing. DUN DUN – time for the cone of shame! Luna had to wear the cone of shame for several days last week, but I am happy to report, that she is […]

Spicy Breakfast Sausage

I love good sausage patties for breakfast. I’ll admit it, I love good sausage for breakfast, lunch, or dinner! I started from Spicy Fresh Country Sausage from Bruce Aidells’ Complete Sausage Book, by Bruce Aidells, and added more spice and herbs. Serves 12 to 16

Various Projects

April 9, 2020 I’ve been doing various cooking projects, but I haven’t been great at getting pictures. I made breakfast sausage using my Kitchen Aid grinder and pork but. It came out great. When I’ve got some more time, I’ll put out the recipe. I made tamales in my Instant Pot on Saturday. They came […]

Published Book

April 1, 2020 Back in 1995, I wrote a book for my daughter. She was in forth grade at the time and loved ghost stories. She had read all the ghost stories at the library and wanted to read another one. I recently decided to publish the book on Amazon. amazon.com/author/juliasculthorpe The age level is […]

RV Dream Thoughts…

March 28, 2020 My blog hasn’t been much at RV dreams and plans lately. I had planned on writing about our trip to the RV show on March 8th during the next week. Life changed drastically in such a short time, that it feels our RV retirement dream is on hold, at least for now.