Category Archives: Food

Week in the Life, Monday

 

~rain, blessed rain!  Rolling off the roof this morning and more importantly, sinking deep into our gardens.

~The house smells good after a night of broth bubbling on the stove and yams cooking in the crock pot.

~an extra little person showed up in my bed this morning, looking to be cuddled.  Then they plotted together and there was a conspiracy to get me to read.  Which I did, one book each; “Little Baa” and “Mother Goose”, the later turning into a sing along.

Little Rosebud’s favorite illustration

~Galen has taken to slipping my wedding ring off while I cuddle him and putting it on his own finger.  Then he asks me to tell him about it.  I show him the circle as well as the continuous Celtic knot pattern.  We look for a beginning and an end and never find one of course.  I tell him that it’s just like my love for Daddy with no beginning and no end.

~The other two get up early and read to themselves for an hour or two every morning.

~Iain built a fire.

~He  lost two teeth on Saturday and has two more loose.  Galen thinks he has a loose tooth (it would be his first).  He often asks if I can see it wiggle.  I can’t really, but I’m certainly not going to tell him that!  “hmm, I think maybe I might see something…”

~Quiddler with the big boys over a breakfast of yams, sausages, sauerkraut and green tea.

~Chores as usual

Màiri Rose with the nasturtium she’s growing.  She was able to taste a leaf for the first time today.  It’s a climbing variety and growing so fast that Galen is convinced he’ll be able to climb it like Jack and the Bean Stalk.

~Baseball fever is alive and well.  We’ve been doing their team’s warm up exercises in the morning before school work.

~outdoor play

~Making sauerkraut this morning as an activity with the little ones.  Really it’s an all morning affair, one that lead right into making lunch, followed by most of the dinner prep, since I know we’ll be working when Steve gets home tonight.  It takes a whole lot of peeling and chopping to fill that big crock.  We usually get around 2 gallons of kraut once it has all fermented down.  We never really make the same one twice.  Today’s is green cabbage, onion, garlic, turnip, radish and ginger.  I got a new little gadget that you crank to julienne things.  The little ones love making (and tasting) little turnip and radish strands with it.

Iain’s Nature Journal Entry:

Date: 4/23/12     Time: 11:42   Location: home   Weather: cloudy, 48 degrees

*Nothing is coming up in the garden yet.

* It is raining today.

*The woods are turning very green.

*My cherry tree is in bloom.

*Galen and Màiri’s peach trees are starting to bloom.

*There are a lot of birds singing today.

~Elijah’s entry by contrast started with, “My fruit tree is the only fruit tree that does not have any flowers on it.”

~Galen the faithful forager went out and gathered a whole bunch of dandelion greens, even though I said I didn’t have time to prepare them today.

~A game of skippo with Galen while the big boys do their math work.  The Wee Girl likes to play with the discard piles, sorting and arranging them.

~Lunch: kale salad with baby basil, pear chunks and maple-blueberry vinaigrette

~Iain and Elijah finished up the map of our property that they started working on together last week.

~the little ones did some coloring of their own.

~One of the big ones told Rosebud that what they were doing was more important because they were working, while she was just playing.  I scolded him and told him that play is the work of little ones and very important.  At which point she announced, with a rather superior tone, “I’m doing baby work!”

~Steve and I put up just under 150′ of fence around the garden.

~ dinner was asparagus soup with Jerusalem artichokes and fresh thyme from the garden.  It was lovely to come in to after working in the cold and damp.

~Steve is reading Peter Pan to Galen at bedtime.

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Books, Food, Gardens, Homeschooling, Housewifery, Kids, Life, Mothering, The Renovation Journal
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Around the Garden ~ early spring

the first bloom of the season in our yard

I have window sills full of potential.  And floors and counters and tables.  There are seedlings everywhere.  I got completely ahead of myself with the warm weather veggies and now I have no idea what I’m going to do with this big, thriving plants that can’t actually go in the ground for another two months yet!

I’m all set with starts, but less prepared for actually putting things in the ground.  There is just literally too much ground to cover.  There is so much space that needs cultivating and so much we (I) want to accomplish in this one short season.  There are all the things that we want to do because it’s a new to us space, but also we have made the difficult decision, after 10 years, to not return to our beloved CSA.  As wonderful as our experience there has been, and as dear to us all as that community is, it’s very far away now.  We talked about it and came to the conclusion that what we really need is more time all together as a family, without anywhere that we need to go, then spending one of the only days we have to be all together, running all over creation doing errands (the CSA being close to town means that it only makes sense to do all of the grocery shopping, etc, at the same time).  So instead we’ve decided to use the money that would have gone into our share to try to grow as much as we can at home.

So far this time together in the garden thing is not really working out.  We are so busy, after work and on the weekends, that poor Steve never seems to get any time out there.  Which is sad for us both as we’ve always enjoyed working side by side to create our gardens.  Things will get easier as we cross things off of our house work list and our schedule lets up considerably in June.  For now the garden is my domain.  With lots of little helpers eager to get their own small plots in order.


We are out there in the afternoons, after school work, nearly every day.

Oh, it is good to be surrounded by green growing things and have a garden of my very own to putter about in again!

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Food, Gardens, Kids, Life, The Renovation Journal
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my favorite dinner…

at the moment.  It seems to be all that  I want just now.  It’s a simplified version of a recipe sent to me by some friends.  Theirs is fancier and fabulous, but I’ve heard a rumor that they might be starting a new food blog, so I’ll let them share it when the time comes.

My quickie version:

chicken thighs, quartered lemons, olives with their juices, lots of crushed garlic, salt and pepper

You’ll have to settle for a ready to go into the oven picture because once it came out, it went right into my mouth without any time for a photo.

So easy and simple!  Just throw it all in a dish an bake.  I like to make it in my cast iron with a vented lid.  It keeps just the right level of moisture without ending up soupy.  The lemons get so soft that you can eat them peels and all.  I think I could eat this for every meal just now.  This and that incredible local salad mix.  No boring all lettuce spring mix there!  We get pea greens and cuttings of baby mustard, several kinds of kale, broccoli sprouts, and all sorts of things, in a different mix each week.  Yes, I could survive, quite happily on these two things for quite some time, with the occasional cup of fresh ginger tea with honey as a treat in-between.

I’m bored with my blog layout.  It’s been exactly the same for a year now.  But I don’t have the time to putz with it.  I wish the blog fairies would swoop in and redesign it, make it all fresh and new for spring!

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Food, Life, recipes
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simple cookery: stewed fruit

The fruits of summer, warmed, sweetened and spiced to create a winter time treat.  Much of the fruit that I froze during the warmer seasons has been prepared with way.

I take my frozen fruit and put it in a pot.  The one above was a mix of peaches, blueberries and strawberries.  I find that berries and stone fruits work particularly well.  Add a good, heavy drizzle of honey over top and slowly heat to melt.  Sprinkle with ginger and cinnamon.  Stir occasionally.  As everything starts to melt and juice collects in the bottom, but before the sauce gets hot, stir in a couple spoonfuls of arrowroot powder (or tapioca or kudzu or whatever makes you happy).  Make sure it is all dissolved.  You don’t want any gooey clumps!  As it heats, stir more frequently, until the sauce thickens.  Serve warm or cold.

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Food, recipes
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simple cookery: a salad

Lunch one day last week.  With beans in lieu of eggs for those with allergies.

I like for the majority of the salads that I make to stand on their own, without dressing.  Also for them to be protein rich, a little fatty and filling.  And no I don’t worry about all of that fat in the least, to be perfectly honest.  Out of curiosity a couple of months ago I joined an online program where you could record your food intake in great detail and get the nutritional breakdown.  It gave you a set calorie goal.  You could set it for weight loss, gain or maintenance.  And even with it set so that I should supposedly be loosing 2 lbs a week, I could never even come close to the goal.  Without changing my eating habits at all and while being scrupulously accurate about what I was consuming, most days were around half the calories I was supposed to be consuming.  It’s eating low in sugars and carbs that makes the difference.  I don’t believe fat to be the demon that others think it is.  So, if I feel like, say, cooking my veggies in bacon grease to give them a rich flavor, I don’t think twice about it.  And I’m perfectly comfortable with that.

But back to the salad…I was actually really craving fat that day.  Something about the dark and damp and cold of winter, it seemed like just what I needed.  And eggs.  We don’t have them often, but from time to time, I really like some.  I remembered when I was little, my mother would sometimes make a different sort of egg-salad, mashing the hard boiled eggs with butter instead of the typical mayo concoction.  hmmm….

First I filled bowls with baby spinach.  I’m loving baby spinach right now.  Next I chopped up a whole bunch of leeks and sauteed them (yes, in a bit of bacon grease, it’s true!).  And generously layered that atop the spinach (all the kids deemed this their favorite part).  Then we topped the whole thing with hard-boiled eggs, mashed with salt, pepper and a bit of ghee.  While we don’t do well with dairy, everyone in the house seems to tolerate my home-made clarified butter fairly well.

The meal ended with everyone begging me to make it again soon.  The flavor combination was just right.  So nice when you can call a salad a treat!

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Food, recipes
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around here…

~we’re getting excited.

~I’m letting go of many little things, shrugging them off and moving on to more important pursuits.

~we’re baking Christmas cookies.

~we’ve played so many games of dreidel that even little Màiri recognizes all of the symbols and what they mean.

~I’ve been sewing, quietly and slowly and not getting very far.

~new giant paper snowflakes appear on the walls every time I turn my back.

~I’m thinking we could use a big pot of red raspberry leaf and nettle chai tea.

~there is lots of whispering and planning and conspiring.

~I’m cherishing some alone time in the deep and dark of the long, long nights.

~there are little and middle people, debating the merits of things like the shape of cards and the best wrapping materials.

~I’ve been doing so much knitting that my hands actually ache.

~we’re full of joy over the forecast that says there might be snow on Christmas day.

~I’m looking past these holidays to the birthdays of two of my loves, coming up oh so soon.  And planning and dreaming and conspiring for them as well.

~there are oddly shaped parcels being spirited away and concealed in the strangest of places.

~we’re all looking forward to gathering with some friends tomorrow night to welcome in the winter.

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celebrations and festivals, Food, Kids, Life, sewing
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letter to no one in particular

For three days now everything has been draped in thick grey fog.  It’s insulating and fascinating and kind of gloomy and in some ways very welcome to me.  It makes me want to knit shawls in just that same color.  I actually have two projects on needles right now in shades of fog, but it’s not quite the same as a shawl or a stole to wrap the fog about me.

It’s been a long and thoroughly stressful several months with yesterday ending in heartache and disappointment.  After everyone else was in bed I got down one of the cheap wine glasses with wisteria vines etched on them, that I bought myself when I moved into my first apartment, and poured myself a glass of really bad, cheap cooking wine.  The only kind of wine we ever have in the house because well, Steve doesn’t drink at all and I really don’t either.  Maybe a glass of wine while out somewhere once a year.  Maybe.  Depending on the year.  And never at home.  Seriously, this may well be the first time I’ve ever had a drink in my own home.  And it was from the screw top bottle of red wine that I mix in with my beef stew.

I read somewhere once that your cholesterol level influences how easily you become intoxicated.  The lower your cholesterol the less alcohol it takes.  If there is any truth to that them my cholesterol levels must be fan-freakin’-tastic.

I’ve been out of sorts and not exactly myself the last couple of days.  This morning I made a pot of coffee, perhaps as a counterpoint to the wine the night before?  Even though I’ve not been a coffee drinker for nearly 13 years now.  Not since I got pregnant with Iain.  Those two weeks of withdraw headaches were nearly enough to do me in and since then I’ve contented myself with snagging Steve’s mug on the weekends and taking a couple of deep breaths, and once every so often a tiny sip.  I deemed today’s indulgence medicinal, for the headache I woke up with, probably triggered by the wine (no I wasn’t hung-over, I don’t think you can get a hang-over from a partial glass of wine, but certain foods and substances are triggers for me).  I added maple syrup and coconut milk to it, even though as a coffee drinker I only ever made it black, plain, nothing added.  And usually that’s how it would appeal to me.  But today somehow I wasn’t entirely me.

We made Russian Tea Cakes, as the new me/not me conveniently forgot that we’re not really eating sugar right now.  Or dairy for that matter.  I replaced all of the flour with white buckwheat flour and once cool they tasted very much like the cookies I remember from my childhood, though we called them Mexican Wedding Cookies.  Elijah said they were, “scrumptious and sickening”.

We cut hundreds of paper snowflakes.  We’ve always made the ones with fancy folds of a hexagon, but decided to try circles of all different sizes this year and enjoyed the effect.

The big boys have taken to waking up early to clean random things as a surprise for me.  Which is really lovely, and kind of odd, and makes me feel vaguely guilty, though I’m not really sure why.

The two little ones have been out of sorts as well.  It’s that time of year when you can never quite tell if they are still getting over some little sickness of starting to fight off something new.  Màiri’s cheeks grow bright red when she’s fighting something off and Galen made her cry by telling her she looked like she had scarlet fever.

For dinner I made roasted Brussels sprouts, bacon and apples (for the first time ever) and baked squash (for about the umpteenth time this season alone).

It’s getting cold in the house.  I think that maybe I should make a new throw or two.  I keep borrowing The Girl’s yellow afghan to use as a lap blanket.  She shares very nicely, but it doesn’t seem fair.

It was my father’s birthday today.  I wish I had been there to give him his present.  Not that he would have been around anyway, as he’s working too hard this December, just like every one before it that I can remember.  I worry so about him.  The kids all sang ‘happy birthday’ over the phone.  I hope it brought some cheer to his day.

I just finished reading The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food and Love and it was very good, even while making me a bit squeamish at times.  Now I’m re-reading Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt because I seem to remember it striking a cord with me as an adolescent and I was wondering if Iain is old enough for it yet, but even a couple of pages in somehow I don’t think so.  Not that there is anything particularly alarming going on, but it just doesn’t feel right for the stage he’s at.  It doesn’t seem as though it would be nourishing to him in any way.  I really do look at books for them that way, for myself as well.  I try to find the ones that will feed something inside of them and my gut tells me it’s just not the right time for this one.

I had thought that this evening I’d curl up with my fog colored knitting and watch ‘Little Women’.  Somehow that sounds like such a comfort.  All day this has been in the back of my mind.  And if Màiri is restless again and wakes up looking for me, she can come and lay on my lap while I knit.  But now that it’s nighttime, I’m so tired that I can’t imagine staying up so late, so I suppose I won’t after-all.

Sincerely,

Melody

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Books, Food, Kids, Life
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simple cookery: squash and apple crockpot bake

I used to cook this in a covered crock in the oven, but more often then not now, I use the crockpot.  You can of course use either method!

Peel and cube whatever kind of squash you have around.  Slice the apples of your choice.  You can peel them as well, but I never bother.  You want about equal amounts squash and apple.  Layer them in your crockpot or baking dish.  As you can see from the picture above, I go right up to the top and then some.

Next add a couple of pats of butter, ghee or coconut oil, a spoonful of blackstrap molasses (about a tablespoon full for a whole crockpot), and a good glug or two of maple syrup (maybe a quarter cup?).  Top with a teaspoon or so of nutmeg and a pinch or two of allspice or clove.  Add half a cup or so of water, cover and cook.

I tend to cook it on low, overnight.  It wonderful at this time of year to wake up to the house smelling delicious and have something warm and spicy to serve along with breakfast.  Other days I might get it in early in the day, to go with dinner that night, especially if it’s going to be a busy afternoon.

The kids tend to eat it as it is, but I like to mash everything up on my plate with a fork so that all of the flavors get mixed together.  I think there is too much goodness that gets lost in the juices other wise.  But this may just be my own personal quirk.

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Food, recipes
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These food prep photos are all from Wednesday, when I cooked in the kitchen for 12 hours straight, with various “helpers” in and out all the while, and an evening break to put everyone to bed.  I was perfectly content not to take a single picture all Thanksgiving day.

Going around the table at supper time,

Màiri  Rose (age 2) was thankful for Hunter Pence (current outfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies, who’s name she’s heard quite a bit with all the baseball talk of the older ones)….to eat.  And then she laughed heartily.

Galen (age 5) was thankful for “everything, except that”, this said while pointing to the pot roast I had made.

Elijah (age 9) was thankful that he wasn’t a turkey.

Iain (age 11) was thankful for, and I quote, “I don’t know, everything I guess”.

We’ve had years where this sharing around the table has been solemn and moving and deeply felt.  Clearly this year that mood wasn’t quite there, and that’s ok too.  That’s life and the way things go sometimes, especially when you are dealing with such unpredictable creatures as children!  It’s good for a laugh and I’m thankful for that too.  I am thinking that next year it might be prudent to go oldest to youngest, instead of vice versa to set the tone!

I, for one, am exceedingly grateful for the gift of being a part of this amazing family.

Today we are all nursing a bit of a cold.  I think we’ll all take it easy and spend the day resting and eating leftovers.  I foresee a lot of cuddling and book reading in my future.  And I’m thankful for that as well.

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celebrations and festivals, Food
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