Category Archives: Food

Just Playing Around

with my camera, while out and about, earlier in the week.

I took Elijah and Galen to the park while Steve and Iain had their guitar lesson. Then we all made yet another stop at the orchard on our way home.

I did have my knitting with me and obviously the kids, so my attention was divided, but I still managed to snap a few pictures, just for the sake of doing so. I feel like that’s something that I’ve really gotten away from lately. It was fun just to play around with things with no particular goal in mind.






By
Food, Kids, Life
5 Replies

Shabbot

Iain and I are currently studying Jewish culture, religion and customs together. Some of the rituals and ideas I’ve been reading about are truly beautiful. I don’t think it’s for me, right off the bat I could never get behind the whole circumcision thing (funny that jumps to mind first and not the greater philosophical differences), but I do find it absolutely fascinating. I’m enjoying this chance to delve deeper into subjects that I only have superficial (at best) knowledge of. And while I don’t see myself converting any time soon, I feel like there is a lot here that is worth learning.


This week we made an effort at incorporating some of the ideas behind Shabbot into our lives. I’m not quite up to the honoring of the Sabbath completely, but we did have a nice festive meal, while talking about the different practices we might be involved in, if we were a Jewish family. Then we took it easy for the rest of the night. With a class this morning and all of our errands to run after, there will be no rest for us today though.

I love the idea of a weekly sabbath and I’ve always thought how I would love to institute one for myself and our family. A day to come together, to honor and renew our spirit, celebrate and relax as a family. I just don’t see how I could possibly do it right now! I know, I know, the old bit about the creator of the world the whole world being able to take a day off, but modern woman not. I can’t help it though, it’s true. No, the world wouldn’t stop turning, but some very important things would go undone. And I would have to work twice as hard the rest of the week to take that one day off. These days I really don’t think that’s even possible.

Back to what we actually did manage to do… Dinner started off with traditional inspiration, but quickly took on our own flair. With being egg-free and gluten-free, I’m finding it difficult to find appropriate foods to go along with this block! The egg thing makes it especially hard with all of the egg noodles and egg breads and such. We did make Challah bread. It was a pretty ridiculous thing to attempt really….gluten-free, egg-free EGG BREAD. It actually turned out pretty well, considering. We based ours off of this recipe, switching out Egg Replacer for eggs… as well as swapping several other ingredients. We kept the same basic basic proportions though. I baked a couple of banana breads at the same time to have, so that we would have quick food on hand for our busy Saturday. There was salmon with sauce and onions, and meatballs with a dipping sauce for those among us who don’t care for fish. We had delicata squash and peas. I had planned on making greens as well, but I was tired and seeing as we had a whole bunch of broccoli at lunch, I decided not to fuss about it. Oh and there was sparkling grape juice in lieu of wine.

Iain and Elijah made candle holders for the table by taking a set of jars and filling them with some of the crystals they’ve been finding in our yard. They also pressed some pretty leaves between the crystals and the glass. The little Galey boy was intent on having a candle of his own, so I fished out a little homemade one (I actually think it was the one that we used for his first birthday) and he found a candle holder from their play kitchen which fitted it perfectly. After lighting the candles, we said a blessing in our own words, in our own way, over a glass of grape juice. We broke our Challah and shared our meal!

By
celebrations and festivals, Food, Homeschooling, Kids, Our Little Home
2 Replies

Our Summer in Pictures

Our home this morning smells like a curious mixture of tomato sauce (emanating from the big pot bubbling away on the stove), blueberry muffins and spice tea.

Everyone donned sweaters first thing. There is a decided autumnal qualify to the air today. Summer is coming to a close. This has been a very busy season for us. I went back to look at my pictures from the last 3 months and was surprised to see how few there were. I guess we were so busy that camera play fell to the wayside. This has been such a special year, such a full season. We will all carry many memories from this summer. And thankfully, I did manage to capture a few images, a couple of moments in time, to help to sum things up.

Of course the big news this season was travel. For the first time, in a long time, we were able to get out and about and venture far from home. First with our camping trip to the ocean. And then to Philadelphia to visit family. The last time that we went down Iain was four and Elijah had just turned two. Steve’s parents and all of our extended relatives finally got to meet Galen for the first time. As you can imagine, it was a very big deal.


Back home, we spent a lot of time at our community garden plots. That was a first for us and the town this year. The general consensus seems to be that it has been a fabulous addition to our lives!

We are already so excited to be planning our plots for next year.


There was lots of time spent in nature…
Lingering to enjoy the splendor of a summer sunset…
Time spent learning new skills…and trying to perfect old ones…
There were swim lessons and drama classes and several art workshops.

As always there were many, many days spent at the farm…
Last year and this year…(oh, and those are the green shorts that I mentioned before)


And time out in the world meeting new creatures…
Lots and lots of water play, of all sorts…
Many, many hours of building…of splitting and stacking wood, harvesting food, making clothes, and just generally getting ready for the colder weather to come.

Of course there was also some time spent just hanging out at home.
With quite a bit of baby love…
And the usual amount of general silliness….

By
building, Food, Gardens, Homeschooling, Kids, Life, Our Little Home
2 Replies

Gathering

When we gathered acorns for acorn muffins last year, I don’t know that I intended it to be an every year thing. Yes, it was fun. Yes, they were yummy. Yes, I felt like it would be worth doing sometime in the indefinite future… But in this year of extreme business, it surely wasn’t in the forefront of my mind. And yet, as soon as the first earth bound acorn was spotted, certain creatures started scurrying to gather them, the little two-legged creatures of my house being some of the most productive among them. And many a handful came in, and was presented to me as if a great honor, being deemed “for acorn muffins”. After the 11th or 12th occurrence of this sort, I resigned myself to the fact that evidently I was making acorn muffins this year.

And the children have taken to gathering with great determination.

These are from two days worth of gathering. Now they’ve made it into a contest with a score for each. From here on out, the goal is to see who can make it to 1000 first. They are neck and neck and alarmingly close. Every time they come in, glowing with the thrill of the hunt and baskets full of bountiful treasure, I have to remind myself to quiet the part of my brain telling me that we are going to have pry off the caps and break open the shell of each and every one of them…and then comes the days and days of soaking, with frequent water changes and then drying before grinding and finally baking, with the meager amount that remains. No, this won’t be a substantial contribution to our own stores of winter food (and I’m starting to feel a bit of concern for our furry friends outside, who must surely be starting to wonder about the severely depleted harvest). But there is other value here. My children are amazed and excited about the bounty nature has provided them. They are living in to the cycle of the year. And as a family we are (apparently!) creating new traditions. And those things are important too.

So, while it will be more work for me, which is not a thought I relish, perhaps the returns are quite, quite enough after-all…so much more then a few cups of flour. And in the meantime, I’m leaving the lion’s share of the gathering to my little forest children three. Two days ago, I took a book on our walk and let them scurry about me while I sat on a rock and rested and read. And while I didn’t get further then a page or two (with all of the exclamations of “Oh Mama, look at how perfect this one is!”) it was nice to sit and rest.

Current reading, for those interested, is “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. I have it as part of a book exchange with some friends and am finding it to be quite an interesting read.

By
Books, Food, Homeschooling, Kids, Life
3 Replies

Food, Food and More Food

View from the orchard.

The fresh food just seems to be pouring in these days. It’s feeling like the peak of the season with tomatoes and green beans still appearing, while the early apples start to roll in.

I’m still working away, trying to make good on my food saving challenge. Here is a break down of my successes and failures since the last time I posted.


After the strawberries, I moved on to can a small batch of pickled beets. With no pressure canner, and limited freezer room, pickling seemed the way to go. I ended up with 6 pints and 1 quart. I thought it would be nice to have some family serving sized jars, as well as a couple of larger jars for parties and such. I should have had two quarts, but one of the jars burst in the canner! Very disconcerting and alarming, that. It’s just a small batch, but the beets look so pretty and festive in their little jars, I think the will make a nice addition to holiday dinners.

I then brought in the saddest garlic harvest in the history of cultivating garlic. In case you were wondering, the answer in no, garlic really won’t grow in the shade! It was a new bed and when I planted the garlic, in the fall, it was fairly sunny. In retrospect, I’m thinking the distinct lack of leaves had a lot to do with that illusion. My perfectly pathetic harvest is currently hanging to dry. Bah.

Next came the peas. Two quarts of snow peas and 5 pints of shelling peas, frozen, again due to a lack of pressure canner. Much like my feelings with the strawberries, I felt like I really didn’t take full advantage of this harvest. At this point I just kept telling myself that if I managed to put up a little bit of many things, then it would add up to quite a lot of food in the end.

If I felt like I failed on the strawberries and peas, well then, I surely made up for it with blueberries! First we did some picking, of the high bush verity at a friends house. That resulted in 5 quarts of berries, only…I had another in-canner explosion. Two in a row after never having it occur before. It was certainly starting to feel a little unnerving. I was starting to get jumpy anytime I was near hot glass. And, oh, all of those hundreds of berries so painstakingly picked, just wasted in a mess of glass and water. Ugh! I’ve since spoken to a friend about it, who mentioned that sometimes people just get a bad batch of jars. Since both of the exploding jars were from the same batch and I’ve not had a problem since, I’ve decided to chalk it up to that.

Blueberries Part II:
We got a fabulous price on bulk low-bush (wild), no-spray blueberries from a local farm. When compared with the price of even the most inexpensive fruits in winter, it was a deal, and wild blueberries are arguably the healthiest fruit around. Eager to take full advantage of this opportunity (and also to get the full discount), we ordered 100 lbs. Let me tell you, I was so, so grateful that My Molli happened to be up for a visit the week that we picked these up. It takes a lot of time and effort to get 100 lbs of blueberries processed before they start to go bad! We had many nights, up until 3 or so in the morning, just scooping up berries and plopping them into jars….letting them boil while we readied the next batch. Thankfully, Molli is the best kind of company at any hour of the day and we made it through it all laughing and talking and having a grand old time.

Final tally on the blueberries?

3 gallons, 8 quarts in the freezer

6 pints of syrup

24 quarts, 3 pints of straight berries in water

23 pints of jam

While I subscribe to a baby feeding philosophy, very much in line with the one expressed here, I had all of these berries! And knowing that they were going to last a while, I decided to make a small batch of blueberry puree for the wee one. I figure that at the very least it will be good for tossing in the diaper bag or for when we are eating something that might not be babe appropriate. So, 12 bitty jars of blueberry puree.

And a very new thing for me…thanks to a listing on Craig’s list for a free food dehydrator, we a have a jar of dried blueberries to add to trail mixes and granolas in the future! Yum!


With the advent of high-tech food drying technology, I decided that was the way to go with our surplus of beans (green, yellow, purple, and speckled…copious amounts from both our own gardens and our CSA). Dehydrating has it’s up sides. It doesn’t take any freezer space, for one. In fact it barely takes any space at all. The dried foods take up a teeny-tiny portion of their original mass. On the other hand, chopping and blanching and arranging bushels of produce and then only walking away with like a quart of food, is a pretty big let down. In theory, things like beans should resume there original size when re hydrated. However, my kids have deemed dehydrated beans “the best snack ever” so I doubt that many (any?) will ever make it that far. But let’s face it, my kids are begging for green beans, what am I going to do, say no?? No, I think that my job in this situation is to just shut up and keep on processing beans.

So far I have around 2 quarts of mixed dehydrated beans, with more to process today. I’m thinking of doing a bunch of other veggies too and making a snack mix.

To date I have processed 17 pints of salsa and 11 quarts of peaches…with a table full of tomatoes and another big box of peaches just waiting for my attention this week. Oh yeah, and those two big sacks of apples, must get to them too…

There are a couple of jars of pesto in the freezer, just leftovers from whenever I happened to be making it. I had plans for two big batches of both traditional pesto and purple pesto, but my food processor died the very week that I came home with my two big bags. Hopefully I’ll be able to get to it before the frost gets to the plants.


Between this and the sewing and knitting (did I even mention that we started school work again??), and trying to get the house and gardens all set for winter, well, I’ve rather had my hands full!
By
Food, Gardens, Kids, Life
4 Replies

And Today?

Well, today is a different kind of day, with a different kind of rhythm. The heat and humidity have broken (thankfully) and our windows are all wide open filling our home with cool breezes. There is an extra large batch of grain-free granola baking away, it’s spicy-sweet scent mingling with the fresh air in a most delicious way. At 9:30, we’ve already logged nearly two hours of laying together on the futon cuddling and reading books. We’ll be headed outside to play, once the granola has been served. With plans for making zucchini bread later, and quite possibly a long hike in the woods.
By
Food, Homeschooling, Kids, Life, Our Little Home
2 Replies

Strawberries

Our farm had a great crop this year, and we came home with 12 quarts of beautiful berries, acquired with very little effort. It seemed like a reasonable start for jam. So, why did we only end up with 8 pints of jam?!? I know that when you are not using tons of sweetener, the yield tends to be significantly less. And there was the quart (or was it 2?) that the kids finished off before we even started the jam making process. Something leads me to believe that it might have had something to do with the assistance I received in making said jam…one strawberry for the jam pot, one for Iain’s mouth, one for the pot, two for Elijah’s belly, “Galen grabbed another handful!”, giggle, giggle, “Elijah, when is the last time you put one in the pot??”….and so forth.

All told we ended up with 3 pints of strawberry-rhubarb jam and 5 pints of straight strawberry jam. Of course one of those jams was served over yogurt for breakfast the next morning. Leaving us with a grand total of 7 pints stashed away for winter. Somehow I don’t feel like we took full advantage of the harvest. But the food time line moves quickly at this time of year. The strawberries are all ready gone and it’s time to move on to the next harvest.
By
Food, Kids, Our Little Home
1 Reply

I’m Back!

I know, I know, you didn’t even know that I was gone…because that’s just how disorganized I was when we were leaving. But I’m back now (and still disorganized as ever), and I’ll have little updates on our trip and life and crafty things, just as soon as I can get to them.

Summer is really kicking into high gear now. I had originally thought that I would continue with our usual school schedule through June, but our End of Year Review has gone out the door and I’m feeling like we put in a full year and it’s time to focus on other things. If I’m going to have any success with my challenge, there is going to be lots of work to do around the garden and out in the fields, starting now. We came home to a jungle! And I’m about to go out and start trying to tame it. My honey has promised to come home and start hauling mulch from the local pile of free wood chips. Tomorrow will bring bulk strawberry picking, should the weather choose to cooperate. And Friday will be jam making (I’m thinking strawberry-rhubarb for a start, mmmm….), with hopefully a trip to our plots at the community garden in the late afternoon. Saturday is our usual day at the farm, as well as other shopping and errands, and plenty more harvesting as well. And we were just invited to a potluck in the evening. So, we are stepping right back into the swing of things!

I’ll slowly be posting pictures, as I find the time to upload them, and I hope that in the meantime you are enjoying abundant sunshine, punctuated with nourishing, gentle showers, bird song, the smell of flowers and the taste of fresh strawberries! Happy almost summer everyone!

Oh, and I was asked in the comments if I could post the recipe I used for the violet jelly. Honestly, I just looked around the internet, got a basic idea of proportions and then improvised, based on my own tastes. I used more violets then most of the recipes called for, and honey (in a lesser amounts) instead of sugar.
By
Food, Gardens, Homeschooling, Kids, Life
Leave a reply