Category Archives: Food

midsummer

We came home to peonies just on the verge of bursting into full, frothy blossom, blooming peas and the very first ripe strawberries of the season.  We’ve now entered that time of intense growth.  I swear, everything in the garden, including the weeds (!) doubled in size over the last week.

We may have gone a bit over-board with the Summer Solstice treats.  One morning for breakfast it was lavender scones (we modified this recipe) topped with whipped coconut cream and dew covered strawberries fresh from our garden.  The following afternoon peach cobbler for baking day, with the last of the frozen peaches from last year.  There will be more soon!  Delicious ripe peaches on our trees, bought in cases from the orchard, available for snacking whenever we please, oh I can’t wait.  Then there were strawberries, dried in the oven, just because we never tried it before.  One batch came out a little over-done, one a bit under, but we every last one of them anyway.  The summer sweets don’t seem to be stopping any time soon.  We baked strawberry rhubarb pie today.  It was fabulous, but now I’m out of honey, maple syrup and every possible kind of flour.  So, I guess things will let up a bit…at least until shopping day.  I’ve been indulging my sweet tooth these last few weeks.  I’m being quite naughty.  I don’t care and you can’t make me.

Only a child of mine would deem an axe a necessary tool for making floral crowns!  A little bit into the process Elijah decided that some birch bark would really be “just the thing”, moments later he reappeared with axe slung over his shoulder and a decent chunk of tree dragging behind.  Floral crown making somehow morphed into iris leaf plaiting.  They are wondering if it can be wound into a hat like straw.  My pantry is festooned in yards of iris leaf braid.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the experience of being a teenager.  By next year we will have two such creatures in our house.  I myself was a very typical teen.  When my parents went away for the weekend when I was 16, I threw…a dinner party.  I served fettuccine alfredo and garlic green beans (because you’ve got to have your veggies. duh.).  There were other things too, but I distinctly remember preparing the fettuccine and the beans.  Fresh green beans from the little produce market that I worked at part time during the summer.  Because, come on, what kid would serve frozen green beans to guests?!?  Lame-o!  I bought myself a set of new candlesticks to use as a center piece.  They were made from a combination of clear and teal glass in three different heights.  There was piano music playing softly in the background as guests arrived and sparkling cider all chilled and ready to serve with dinner.  I only wish I could remember what I served for desert.

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celebrations and festivals, crafts, Food, Holidays, Homeschooling, Kids
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Feeding Our Families ~ Economics

We recently embarked on a whole family homeschooling project.  It was a little bit practical math, a little home ec. and a lot of honing of critical thinking skills.  The premise was really very simple, it’s easy to figure out how much we spend on groceries in a given week or month, our goal here was to figure out where exactly that money goes.

For two weeks, we calculated the cost of each and every meal we ate.  We kept all of the receipts in an envelope, on a clipboard, along with our lists.  When we sat down to a meal or snack someone would grab the clip board and a calculator and off we would go.  We included every ingredient that it was reasonably possible to figure out a monetary sum for.  Where we would normally “drizzle” something or add a “splash”, we started measuring that drizzle or splash and then figuring out exactly how much said drizzle of olive oil cost.  We added in the cost of a teaspoon of vanilla and a tablespoon of lemon juice.

There were a few things that were really beyond our ability to figure out, at least without driving ourselves crazy.  I drew the line at trying to calculate the cost of salt per meal, as monitoring and measuring each individual’s salt usage seemed a bit much.  I also have no way of knowing how much it cost to make a jar of peach jam last year.  Nor do I have much of a chance at figuring out the cost of bananas, bought by the case months ago and frozen.  Without knowing exactly how many bananas were in the case, it’s hard to say what the three we added into our smoothie amounted to.  But we were able to figure out mostly everything else.  We came up with a grand total for each meal and then divided it by the number of people eating to get a price per person.  At the end of the day we did a full day total.  If a by product of the food got used again, we went back and marked the original entry with an X, allowing us to really see what gave us the most bang for our buck, if you will.  So the roast chicken from Monday gets an X when I make hash on Tuesday and another when I make stock on Wednesday and so forth.   The results were surprising!

I’ve always felt guilty about making my cashew yogurt.  Cashews are expensive after-all.  But it turns out that a container of cashews being the basis for an entire meal made for one of our lowest cost per-person meals.  One of our highest?  Brussels sprouts!  This never would have occurred to me, as I always think of eating more vegetables as being cost effective.  Granted on this occasion we did add in bacon, which didn’t help the cost.  Because they are priced by the pound, we had been just scooping them into a bag, until we had a meals worth, without realizing we had packed away like $16 worth of sprouts!  All of which disappeared in a single sitting easily, without so much as a leftover to redeem itself by.  Now Brussels are out of season in our area at the moment and we normally wouldn’t be buying them at all at this time of year, but there was a special request and we obliged.  It’s like when a house guest came to me concerned because a 1/2 lb of spinach had been left out on the table and the kids kept coming by and taking huge fistfuls.  Seriously, what am I going to do, stop my kids from eating spinach?  I think not.  Like wise, they ask for Brussels sprouts as a special treat (really, I’m not making this up) and I wouldn’t think twice about putting them on the list, at least that is, until now.

It turns out that we don’t save nearly as much as I had hoped growing all of our greens for six months of the year.  Not that I have any intention of stopping, but that was a disheartening discovery.

What to do with all of this information?  Well it’s helping us to better define what we should enjoy occasionally as a treat and what we should focus on as everyday foods.  It seems that a couple of our regular meals were huge money drains.  It has also helped to shape our garden plans.  Hint: we’re growing a lot of Brussels sprouts.  I think that knowing exactly how much a teaspoon of vanilla extract costs is just the kick in the pants I needed to finally, finally start making my own, after years of just talking about it.  The whole thing was a really empowering and educational experience and I strongly recommend it to others.          

Just because I feel like I should have some actual food represented in my Feeding Our Families post, here we have a Blackened Salmon Bowl (served on a plate!).  In theory this should be an expensive meal.  However, by cutting out some of the more expensive ingredients, i.e. no truffle oil, using salmon that was purchased in season during a sale, playing up the veggies and serving it alongside asparagus from our garden, it was actually quite reasonable and very enjoyable.

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Feeding Our Families, Food, Gardens, Homeschooling, Housewifery
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Feeding Our Families: Planning, Planning, Planning

Swiss chard and leeks

Thumbprint Cookies- we used this recipe.  The recipe is only so-so, but it’s fun for each of the kids to be able to mix up their own batch.  We topped them with some of our mixed berry jam before baking and served them with home-made cashew milk.

This month I’m mostly trying to get back on track here; in the kitchen and in life, stepping out of that newborn haze and back into real hands-on, nitty-gritty Life.  I seem to have convinced myself that if I plan everything out just so and am meticulously organized, then everything will go smoothly at all times.  Ha!  As if meeting the physical, emotional, educational, nutritional, social, spiritual needs of 7 people on a daily basis, year in and year out, could possibly be effortless!  But there you have it.  This is the way my brain works sometimes.  The fact remains that it certainly can’t hurt to be a little more organized.  With that goal in mind, over the last couple of weeks I’ve been slowly (very slowly, I do everything slowly these days, hence my usual Monday post appearing mid-day on Thursday…) working on creating a master grocery list.  This is a document that I’m typing up of any and all items that we might buy on a semi-regular basis at various food stores.  The idea being that every week I can print a new one out, post it on the fridge and check off things as we run out.  Also having everything right in front of me will hopefully help with my constantly forgetting little odds and ends, resulting in extra shopping trips.  I will see all the possibilities right in front of me, and therefore (hopefully! fingers crossed!) be reminded.  And as a side benefit, poor Steve won’t have to try to interpret my hand writing, which isn’t the best to begin with and these days is mostly done on a book, balanced on my knee, while trying to contort around a nursing babe….a situation that is not likely to improve it’s quality.

My other project is to get back to meal planning.  Somehow I fell out of this habit and we were really so much better off when I was keeping up with a seasonal meal plan.  You can read more about my meal planning process here.  I’m also looking to update our breakfast menu for the season, but feeling rather uninspired on that front, so suggestions are welcome!  Thus far we’ve switched out our hot cereal for a lighter and cooler grain-free granola.

Also on my mind this month is getting the garden off to a good start.  The couple of photos above are from syrup making this year, because really that’s our very first harvest of the growing season.  It wasn’t the best year, between the strange weather and the timing.  We sugared off once at the very end of my pregnancy.  Seraphina’s first trip outside was to sit fireside during the day long process of evaporation.  Followed by one more somewhat disastrous attempt right before Easter.

The garden is coming along.  Largely thanks to the efforts of the older children.  Though something ate many of our starts, while they were still inside (!).  That was a completely new one for me.  I still have no idea what got to them.

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Feeding Our Families, Food, Gardens, Housewifery
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Feeding Our Families- Postpartum Meal Planning Part 2

postpartum vignette: knitting, book, food, baby

Some of the meals I ended up making and freezing:

Shepheard’s Pie

Pork and Apple Bake (2)

Lemon-Olive Chicken with broccoli

Beef Bolognese (5 quarts)

Carrot-Ginger-Coconut Muffins (2 batches)

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins (2 batches)

Creamed Spinach (modified with safe for us ingredients)

Honey Sesame Chicken and Broccoli

Chicken Apple Curry* (2)

Peach Chicken*

Apple Pie (2)

I also made a list of the food that we still had available from the harvest this year; apple sauce, jams, chutney, roasted tomatoes and a bag of zucchini muffins that turned up when we rearranged things in the freezer.

I had plans to make more but a couple of friends were talking about maybe dropping off a few freezer meals and I wanted to be sure we still had room for them.  That didn’t actually happen, but two dear friends did drop us off some lovely fresh food, which provided us with salads and soups to pad out our meals.  Also the most wonderful nut and fruit bars that turned out to be the perfect solution for those middle of the night, suddenly ravenous, nursing mama moments.  I really must get the recipe for those!

*I’ll try to post recipes for these at some point.

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Feeding Our Families, Food, Housewifery
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Feeding Our Families ~ Postpartum Meal Planning

When Iain was born there was just the two of us to feed and absolutely zero thought was given to planning food for the postpartum period.  Steve would come home with plastic cups full of prepared fresh fruit salad from the grocery store and we’d eat baked potatoes and pasta in bed and I don’t believe it felt like a strain at all.

By the time Elijah came along I had made some serious dietary changes.  Our kitchen life wasn’t quite so easy anymore.  We had just moved and the situation over-all wasn’t ideal.  It was really Steve’s first time caring for Iain alone and I think that was kind of over-whelming.  It’s not that he wasn’t an involved father before, he’s always been that.  It’s just there was no real need for him to be involved in the day to day caring aspects.  He would come home from work and everything would be under control.  There might be a couple of dishes to do, but otherwise he was free to devote his time to playing with and reading to our little guy.  This time around things felt stressful.  We ate a lot of prepared food the first couple of days, that did not do well by our bellies and I really felt pressured (not at all by Steve, just by the situation) to be back to “normal” much sooner then was reasonable and I seriously paid for it health-wise.

I was ill for much of my pregnancy with Galen and very worried about being able to care for everyone after.  With the memory of our last experience in mind I went manic- Type A and prepared a binder full of several weeks worth of food schedules.  Every possible detail was in there, right on down to how to prepare the herbal baths and infusions from the blends I had made during my pregnancy.

With Màiri our life circumstances were such that I couldn’t have possibly done anything in advance to prepare.  Every day was full to overflowing with just the tasks that needed to be accomplished to survive that day.  Luckily we had a wonderful community around us that organized around 3 weeks worth of home-cooked dinners for us, for which I will be forever grateful.

And here we are again, with more dietary restrictions then ever and more mouths to feed.  We have no real community nearby to speak of at them moment.  From the beginning I’ve felt that I would need to be really thoroughly prepared if things are to run smoothly after the baby comes.  And I thought the timing of this post would be just perfect because by the beginning of March, surely I would have just about everything in order.  While I’m not truly expecting this baby anytime soon (I tend to have very long pregnancies), the fact is we’re at the point where any time is fair game.

And so, as of yesterday this is what I had to share with you….

Pictures of snowmen.  Do I get any kind of credit for the snowmen having carrot noses?  These ones were supposed to be our family, in snowman form, on an unfortunately melt-y day.  Some of us didn’t make out too well.

And this one appeared outside my window to cheer me up on a day when I wasn’t feeling well…

Complements of Iain and Elijah, dear sweet souls.

In other words I was pretty much no where.  I believe I had two meals in the basement freezer.  Which is enough to get us through all of 2/3 of a day, provided nobody needs a snack.

I started off well.  In autumn when we were putting up the bounty of our garden, I did a lot of baking to preserve food with this time in mind; zucchini bread, chocolate zucchini bread, roasted pumpkin muffins.  One day I got well into making a large batch of apple sauce, only to discover I was out of canning lids, and so I made batch after batch of applesauce muffins instead.  The problem was that between then and now there have been more then enough occasions where we’ve just needed to grab something quick when running out the door or I was in need of an easy middle of the night snack, that, well every single last one of those things is long gone.

Trying to get back on track now, yesterday I spent the entire afternoon making Beef Bolognese.  I used the recipe found at the bottom of this page, times six, switching out coconut milk for the cream.

Currently there is a double batch of Carrot-Ginger-Coconut Muffins cooling on the counter and headed for the freezer.

I’m making lists.  I’m a great one for making lists you know.  I can plan and plan until the sun comes down, it’s the follow through that is sometimes lacking.  I have a list going of easy to prepare foods.  A list of food the kids don’t mind cooking and a list of foods to try to freeze.  I’m measuring out all the ingredients for our Wednesday morning hot cereal and storing it in jars with cooking instructions, making sauces and freezing chicken in them so that it can marinate and be ready to cook as it thaws.  We’ll have baking day twice this week, eating just a bit and freezing the rest.  And whenever I can I’ll be doubling the meals I make and freezing half.

I would love to hear other people’s experiences with postpartum meal planning.  What worked for you?  What didn’t?  Any fabulous meal suggestions?

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Feeding Our Families, Food, Housewifery, Life
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Celebrated

An eighth birthday in the midst of an ice-storm…

There were mama-made gifts and a brother made gift and the gift of visiting family from far away.

I put the chords to “Happy Birthday” in his Wonder Book, which inspired a full out sing-along of every song he’s ever played.

There was a special dinner and gingerbread…

and one splurge of a very cool gift.

He’s been wanting a camera for ages and this year we set out to see if we could find him one.  Nothing that we came across was very satisfying…that is, until we found the Bigshot build it yourself camera kit, which also happened to be way more money then we wanted to spend.  The problem was, after we saw that, nothing else came even close to comparing for this boy of ours who truly needs to know exactly how everything works.  Finally we asked a couple of other people to chip in and went for it.

Of course it absolutely had to be built right away…

Self portrait from this morning.  He’s really enjoying the timer setting!

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celebrations and festivals, Food, Homeschooling, Kids
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Week in the Life Friday

More snow and another day at home for everyone.

I’ve decided that a picture together every year is a nice Valentine’s day tradition.

Galen was hilarious.  He came down dressed in a complete suit and bow tie and started helping with dinner.  As he worked he began to shed one thing after another until he was grating potatoes wearing nothing but shorts.

Should we even talk about these ones?

No, I don’t think we should.

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celebrations and festivals, Food, Holidays, Kids, Life, photography, snapshots
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Week in the Life- Wednesday and 07/52

A rare late work day for the Papa.

Iain and Elijah took it upon themselves to try to bring down a bunch of wood off the driveway before the storm started.  Over the course of the day they transported an entire cord (that comes out to enough wood to make a 4′ x 8′ x 4′ stack, for those who aren’t conversant).  By evening time they were out with a head lamp, with little ones helping, trying to sled down the last couple of loads before Steve got home.  They like to surprise him.

A gnome a day?

I was informed that this day required a ballet bun.

They danced…

and they danced…

and danced.

They put on several shows, all with a Valentine’s Day theme, in case you couldn’t tell from their costumes.

Writing about Elijah’s horse book inspired Galen’s current school project.  I thought how nice it would be to write out, illustrate and bind one of his stories.  He’s hit a tricky age in regards to school work.  He’s coming out of that oh-so-excited to be big enough for school phase and entering one where there is a lot of frustration over what he perceives as inadequacies.  He wants everything to turn out perfectly, but that’s just not possible for a not yet 8 year old body and mind, very frustrating, poor little guy (though please don’t tell him I called him that, as we’ve hit that stage as well!).  We have some experience with this as his older brothers went through similar phases, but it’s still a challenge.

New topics for the older children.

Valentine’s tea party…

with Pumpkin Gingerbread.  They insisted on spinning for place settings and things like in the Tea Party game.  Elijah downs the tea in those little cups as if he’s doing tea shots.

Slow Cooker Sesame Chicken with broccoli and quinoa as an attempt to make the single parenting dinner/bedtime easier.

After Steve got home we wanted to show the big boys how much we appreciated all of their help with the wood.  We finally settled on watching a movie together.

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52, Books, Food, Homeschooling, Kids, Life, photography, snapshots
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Week in the Life- Tuesday

It was a very busy at home type of day.

No matter how many times I ask her not to, she always sneaks away to scrape the pans when she thinks no one is looking.

Everyone woke up quarrelsome and cranky.  After breakfast and math I decided it was in all of our best interests to send them outside for a bit (especially mine!).  They set about harvesting icicles, my children are strangely obsessed with icicles, and working on their “snow caves” and came back much refreshed.

Finishing up some of the schoolwork overflow from last week, getting ready to start on a whole new topic tomorrow.

So many deliveries today!  A package from UPS, a package from FedEx, a delivery of extra wood (because it’s been that kind of winter), our birth supply box and birth tub liner.

A somewhat impromptu midwife’s appointment (she was in the neighborhood).

Other random odds and ends:

Playing “Pease Porridge Hot” with Màiri Rose and “Cat’s Cradle” with Galen.

They are still all about the clay.

And catapults.  Because apparently one house can never have too many catapults.

We wanted to go for a walk, but the wood guy who was supposed to come in the “morning” showed up around dinner time and there had to be someone here waiting to meet him.

Reading practice and knitting in bed late in the day.  This book was mine when I was little.  I distinctly remember sitting on the steps outside our kitchen door on a warm spring day, listening to sounds of my mother cooking through the open window, and reading this entire book from cover to cover.  It was one of the first books that I ever read entirely on my own.  It has such sweet illustrations and a darling, gentle stories.  I’m so glad to have it to share with them.

Busy day= easy and simple dinner: kielbasa, cabbage, collard greens and apples, all cooked together in a bit of broth.

Steve stopped in at the post office and the library on his way home and came bearing letters from friends and the next two books in the “Black Stallion” series for Elijah.  Which means that he will not be resurfacing again until he’s devoured both books and written a reply, likely in that order.

This would be his siblings trying to get him to come help set the table for dinner.  Behind the book he is grinning madly and trying desperately not to laugh, which is why I didn’t bother to intervene!

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Books, Food, Homeschooling, Kids, Life, photography, snapshots, Yarn Crafts
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Week in the Life: Monday

I know it looks like a weird way of cleaning out the fridge, but it’s actually math.  Please ignore the boxes in the background.  I’ve been sorting baby clothes.

Decidedly not school work.  These books are kind of the bane of my existence, but I suppose if it’s the worst they get interested in…

I set up a fun photo shoot to do with Màiri (I’ll share some pictures soon).  It was the kind of thing that takes a rather silly person to even think of trying and a completely ridiculous one to attempt it without another adult on hand to help out.  But they certainly had fun.

They came home from our excursion yesterday with clay.  This is Mossy the Gnome.  Apparently he’s not a morning person either because he looked much happier later in the day.  He gained a great many accessories as well.

Plantain crackers with all sorts of seasoning for a snack.

Dance night for the two of them.

The smell of broth simmering all day, followed by cauliflower soup for dinner.

A bit of top secret sewing for the birthday boy.

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crafts, Food, Homeschooling, Kids, Life, photography, sewing, snapshots
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