A Freshly Milled Life

Saturday morning is pancake morning

2011-04-09T08:08:00.000-07:00

In the book "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" it is declared that Saturday morning is pancake morning. The bee of course takes all things literary as fact, so of course in our house Saturday morning is pancake morning.

But the problem is pancakes aren't good for you. White flour, sugar, and fried up in some sort of grease. They are completely void of fiber, nutrients, and spike your blood sugar quickly. In little people blood sugar spikes are the things nightmares are made of. So I had to figure out a way to make pancakes that delivered protein as well as pancakey goodness that was supposed to be for Saturday mornings. This way I won't have to worry about blood sugar spikes and dips that make people lose control of their bodies and emotions! Two eggs and 1 cup of ricotta cheese gives this a lot of protein and balances out the straight carbs of regular pancakes. My kids eat them up and are getting a good dose of protein to help control their sugars and prevent behavior spikes. You can also add 2 T. peanut butter to this recipe and make peanut butter cookie pancakes

Pancakes:

1.5 c. whole wheat flour
1 1/2 c. whole raw milk
1 T. whey or 1 t. raw apple cider vinegar
3 T. butter melted and cooled
2 eggs`
1 c. ricotta cheese
3 T. baking powder (take care to find some without aluminum, Rumford is a good brand)
1 T. sucanat
1 t. salt

Mix the flour, milk and whey or vinegar the night before. Cover and let it sit at room temperature all night. The next morning add the rest of the ingredients and fry in coconut oil. Top with maple syrup, berries, fruit compote. Never ever ever top it with nutella, pecans, and whipped cream. That defeats the entire point of a healthy breakfast. Trust me. You'll never want to stop eating that.

an update

2011-02-07T10:38:00.000-08:00

Thank you all for your concern.

We are fine, though have had a rough go of it.

I had severe pre-eclampsia and was on bedrest for three months. The ninja made an appearance when I was 35+5 weeks pregnant and is beautiful and healthy. Since we knew he was going to come early we were able to prepare his lungs with steroid shots. He breathed on his own from the beginning and didn't ever have to stay in the NICU. He was very small when he was born, but is nursing wonderfully and growing on schedule. He is catching up with his adjusted age nicely.

His brother and sister are thrilled with him, and I'm so glad for them to have another sibling. They are doing wonderfully with him.

We have had a rough couple of months. December was me recovering from a c-section and dealing with a preterm baby, and in January we were hit with the flu for myself and the bigger kids and the baby was hospitalized with RSV.

However it seems we are all getting healthy again and looking forward to spring as a family of five.

Infertility sucks

2010-08-27T17:05:00.000-07:00

It does. Even though I'm halfway through a healthy surprise pregnancy, infertility sucks.

I don't fully believer I'm pregnant. I've seen the ultrasounds, heard the heartbeat, know the gender, and feel the jabs that are getting stronger by the day.

And I don't believe I'm pregnant.

I have lost the innocence of rejoicing in those first flutters of movement and being excited and thrilled over every little thing. I lost that because of the decade of loss that I had.

Please don't misunderstand, I'm happy to be here, and to be pregnant.

I fear for the loss of this little one in such a deep way, because it is all my body and spirit have ever known. The loss of my biological children.

And even now, after the infertility cycle has seemingly been lifted for a brief moment, infertility still sucks. It has left a big deep gaping wound on my soul that I don't think will ever heal. It will just scab over, for a while, and then be ripped off again and again.

How I got here

2010-07-25T12:12:00.000-07:00

I have PCOS, Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome. This is an endocrine disorder where your ovaries produce tons of cysts and your entire endocrine system is out of balance. It is closely tied to Insulin resistance and thyroid issues. PCOS is the leading cause of infertility in the nation, affecting almost 10% of women in the United States. It has some additional fun side effects to the infertility including male pattern facial hair, chest hair, a difficulty losing weight, some fun gastrointestinal side effects, and fatigue. My husband has very low sperm motility and those two things combined made doctors think it was pretty much impossible for us to conceive. And according to medical science it was.

After we decided not to pursue any more fertility treatments, ever, I started to really concentrate on finding health for my body. I was specifically looking to cure, or at least calm the effects of, PCOS with my diet. After a lot of research as well as trial and error I discovered more things about my body and food tolerances/intolerances. First, like most women with PCOS, I am gluten sensitive. I am not intolerant nor do I have celiac. However gluten does tend to slow my digestion, give me gas, and destabilize my blood sugar. One of the first major dietary changes I made was to eliminate wheat and other glutens from my diet on a regular basis. I still milled my own grain, and my kids still eat fresh bread, but it wasn't working for my body anymore. I didn't look for hidden gluten, nor did I give up the occasional treat, but bread and gluten heavy products were no longer a part of my regular diet.

And as soon as I made that change I started to drop weight.

The next thing I looked at was fruits. Fruits are an incredibly healthy food, and should be a major part of the diets of most people. But I was experiencing major sugar highs and lows over even something simple like a nectarine. The first thing I did was eliminate fruit all together, and that wasn't my brightest day. I love fruit, and am much more likely to get my nutrients from fruit than veggies. So I started to make sure that my fruit intake was limited to only times when I was consuming protein too. For breakfast I'd have eggs with pesto and 1/4 of a grapefruit. No more stand alone fruit, but instead I would have my fruit with a balanced meal and I would eliminate the sugar highs and lows. Since I was not eating many grains it was important that I still get carbohydrates, but in a balanced way.

I vastly increased my protein intake also. I was eating 80 or so grams of protein a day. Eggs for breakfast every single morning, and red meat for dinner every night, except a couple of days a week of fish. I do not like Chicken well, nor do I feel well when I eat it, so I don't. I think that most food aversions like this are indicators of foods that are and aren't good for us.

The final dietary change I made was to drastically increase my intake of cruciferous vegetables. These are veggies from the cabbage family, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc... I would make sure that I had something from this family every day of the week. More often than not it was cole slaw, since I'm also a big fan of a high fat diet.

Over the course of changing my diet I lost 20 lbs and started to ovulate on a more regular basis. My cycles were about 40 days in length. The longest I'd gone in the past without a cycle was almost three years.

And that, is the story of how I started to ovulate based on dietary changes, and got pregnant very unexpectedly.

25 weeks

2010-07-22T18:12:00.000-07:00

25 weeks from now, give or take a week or two, someone new will be coming into our lives.

I am pregnant. 15 weeks pregnant.

After multiple miscarriages, and being told that we had a 1% chance of ever conceiving a baby, even with treatments I'm pregnant. No treatments. Total and complete shock.

I think that extreme fatigue of the first trimester is a valid reason to avoid blogging.

I have a ton of emotions ranging from fear to elation. I worry for my two children that they won't transition well. I worry also about their emotions related to their adoptions and navigating those waters.

I do believe that a big part of my ability to get and maintain a pregnancy was finding out, by trial and error a diet that worked best for my body. I had recently lost quite a bit of weight because of my diet, and I believe this also factored into it.

But more than anything God chose to open my womb.

I'm still here

2010-07-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

I still mill my own flour.

I still make my own breads, and dehydrate food and can for the winter. I'm knitting, and quilting and thinking about taking up sewing for my daughter.

I've been absent for a while for a good reason, reasons.

I'm not sure I'm ready to share yet. Perhaps after a week from Thursday I'll be ready to share in such a hugely public place.

Dehydrating vegetables

2010-03-12T17:13:00.000-08:00

I'm growing broccoli this spring. Hopefully I'll get a bunch of it. I love broccoli. Well let me clarify. I detest vegetables, all vegetables. However of all the vegetables that I detest I can stomach broccoli. I'll seek it out. I like broccoli soup with chicken stock and lots of fresh pepper and onion and a little bit of cream.

But I'm growing a lot of broccoli. I've got twenty plants right now. All going to arrive at the same time. And limited freezer space. So I was trying to think of some alternative ways to store said broccoli. I could make big batches of the soup and can it, and I'll probably do some of that. But I'll still have more broccoli.

So I've decided to dehydrate my broccoli. I'll steam it for a few minutes, and then pack it into vacuum sealed jars. I'll reconstitute it for soups in the winter months. I'm really excited to see how this works!

Art

2010-03-09T19:29:00.001-08:00

This was inspired by two wise women, Crystal and Rachel. Wisdom is awesome.

Three years ago I saw this amazing collection of Monet paintings. I remember weeping at seeing the beauty of those paintings up close and personal. I could see his brush strokes. The actual strokes where he his brush dipped in the paint and each individual bristle drew a small line in the paint. It was breathtaking. Absolutely amazing. I was so close to this genius that I could see the individual bristle marks. Incredible doesn't begin to describe it.

The bee has this amazing curly hair, and is so smart I can't stand it. Huck has this giant blue eyes and is the sweetest kindest little soul I've ever known. Those things about their person, about their personality are beautiful. The result of a God who created with love these little people and entrusted them to me. He has asked me and the sailor to help to mold and shape them into the people he wants them to become.

Imagine again seeing a Monet painting in person. The beauty and delight of that simple painting.

Now imagine hitting it. Imagine hitting it so you left a mark and marred the paint, or worse put a small hole in the canvas.

Why would you mar a child like that? How on earth does hitting a beautiful child, something precious and beautiful and created, benefit anybody, most especially the child? They are lovingly created, by a God who adores us. And some choose to believe that the same God also calls us to hurt them.

my flu garden

2010-02-22T19:09:00.000-08:00

My sweet baby boy (whom I refuse to admit is almost two!) gets colds every other minute, and is one of those kids who is "always sick" We have and are going down the allergy/natural remedy path and it is frustrating, and expensive.

So now, I've decided for sure to plant a cold and flu garden in the coming season. I think I'm going to use a raised bed, the rest of my garden is in ground, and use a children,s plastic swimming pool as my template for the size. I want to do a wagon wheel.

I'm planning on planting specifically in the cold and flu garden; yarrow, echinacea, catnip, thyme, peppermint, and lavender.

These plants, plus the garlic and rosemary in my regular garden are amazing sources of cold and flu prevention and treatment.

I'm also planning on planting elderberries, but I won't get my plants till the fall, and they won't start to produce until the end of next summer, so I'm going to stock up on dried elderberries this summer so we have plenty of elderberry syrup this coming winter!

Coffee

2010-02-15T19:16:00.000-08:00

More than half of the American public drink coffee. I drink coffee. I have ADD and caffeine is a huge part of my routine and keeps me off stronger levels of amphetamines to deal with my ADD. (I've GOT to do an ADD post eventually) Coffee helps me to function as a wife, mother, student, and woman. Not to mention be a productive member of society!

But the choice of coffee is dreadfully important, and we as Americans have the lunary of making HUGE impacts on the coffee industry! We are the wealthiest nation in the world, and except for those among us who are living paycheck to paycheck or on government aid can make a difference.

Fair trade coffee is something that is important. We can with our money put an end to the horrific practices of the big coffee companies and do our part to help end worldwide poverty! Please at least watch this trailer, and if you can afford to rent them watch the movie!

Tired

2010-02-11T19:51:00.000-08:00

We are tired of winter here. The thing is, I have always loved winter, but this year I'm finding it trying. The kids are tired of bundling up everytime we go out, and being sick, and all the junk you have associated with winter. I've let our diet go, and when the sailor is gone for days at a time, I far to often don't cook the way I want to, or the way that we are healthiest.

I'm so looking forward to the ground being turned over in my garden again in a few weeks, and scattering those first few seeds and waiting on them to come up and reward us with their delightful flavors.

Soon, soon. This season will be over. Spring is almost here

My perfect day

2010-01-17T17:26:00.000-08:00

I had a perfect day today. Really perfect.

We woke up with the sunshine, and a sweet girl whispering "The sun woke up again today!"

We had soaked oatmeal with raw honey, bananas and cinnamon for breakfast. Topped with coconut oil and raw heavy cream.

We went to a new church that was small, only twenty people, but the teaching was amazing and the people were sweet.

We came home and had quesidillas for lunch with cheese I made from raw milk, and tortillas I made from freshly milled wheat and spelt. Plus homemade salsa that I made last summer all from my garden.

Then we had a kazoo concert. The bee has a particular love for The Beatles, especially "I am the Walrus"

I put a roast in the oven.

Huck took a nap. And the bee and I worked out, and the sailor went to lowes.

We looked at paint colors when he returned.

We colored for a while with some markers and made up stories to go with our drawings.

We went into the backyard and looked at the first tiny shoots coming up in the asparagus patch on the side of the house, hoping that we get more than two this summer and picked a few weeds that are invading the strawberries. We checked the raspberries, and are worried they won't make it.

We finished dinner. We had creamed spinach, roast, and mashed potatoes. The kids loved it all. The bee "helped" me cook, as she loves to cook.

We then read books, nine books to be sure. Brushed our teeth, and then the sailor and I put the kids to bed.

Then the sailor and I came downstairs and did some chores together and he decided to turn on the television to watch a TV show that he loves.

We spent no money, we just spent time together.

I cannot for the life of me think of a better day.

New year, new prep lists

2010-01-01T11:20:00.000-08:00

Jan 1 isn't a huge deal in my world. I love the gentle flow of season into season and while I do love holidays, for some reason the new year has never been a huge deal for me. It is just another day. Of course this year I'm watching the Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl, but aside from that, not a lot going on.

However it is a good time to make some lists and do some cleaning out of the old. January is typically a slow month around the house, and the time of year when everything is dormant. Nothing much grows, at least where I live. I usually find some yummy citrus and make a few batches of marmalade, but no more than that.

But the lack of anything going on, gives us ample time to do stuff. I try to clean out my pantry in January. Anything that expires in six months or less I donate to a food pantry and buy replacements. I make lists of what I need to expand in the next year, and what I had to much of the year before. Last year I came across an amazing deal on canned corn, and bought far to much. Nobody in my house aside from me likes corn. If we aren't going to eat it, we shouldn't buy it.

Here is my current pantry list that I need to buy ASAP:
Black beans #300
Wheat #200
Honey 15 gallons
Oatmeal #100
Dog Food #200

This of course is just the beginning of my pantry, but these are the most important staples that I need to keep building. I'm also hoping to add some freeze dried meals to the pantry this year that stay good for 20 years. NO they aren't the healthiest or most delicious food, but they will keep you going.

I am also pouring over my seed catalogs this month to get ready to place my spring order. Where I live, I can plant peas and broccoli at the end of next month! Of course this is an incredibly cold winter and the ground is frozen solid and covered with snow right now, so this year might be a little later than usual. I try and garden according to two things. What I can can, and what we will eat. Not to mention what will grow here ;) Last year I learned that corn does not fare well in a backyard garden here. It is just far to windy here, and we get hail. I was seriously depressed when my corn was hailed out last year. But tomatoes thrive! My tomatoes last year were amazing, and I got hundreds of pounds of tomatoes off my vines. I know that I have vine borers and that I need to use floating row covers to keep them from getting into pumpkins and other vining plants. My zucchini was lost early, so I'm hoping to remedy that this year.

Currently I'm planning on growing in the backyard garden:
Early spring:
Peas
Spinach
Lettuce
Broccoli
Radish
Onions
Carrots
Potatoes (In a trash can)
Chard?
Cabbage

Late Spring:
Green Beans
Black Beans
Tomatoes
Cantaloupe
Watermelon
Pumpkins
Zucchini
Butternut Squash
Cucumber

Fall:
Lettuce
Peas?
Radishs
Garlic
Chard?

I'm also going to try and lacto-ferment carrots, cabbage, and cucumbers this year in an attempt to preserve some food without canning. Not to mention that lacto-fermented food is amazing for your gut.

I'm also working on updating the car kit and our bug out bags. In fact we are going to go buy a new hunting knife today for the car kit. Stay tuned

I long for snow

2009-12-07T19:32:00.000-08:00

I do. I love snow. I love the soft sound, the quiet. I love the way it looks, and the way it feels.

But most of all, I long to see how the bee responds to the joys of snow in her fourth winter, and how Huck enjoys it in his second.

My children are absolute joys to me. I can't wait to see their response to so many things.

Alcohol

2009-12-07T12:01:00.000-08:00

I love a good beer. Ambers are my favorite, and I like to discover local breweries and sample their beers.

I like wine, but am not a wine snob. I'll drink two buck chuck with pleasure.

I don't like hard liquor that well, but it is fun for cooking, and sometimes cocktails.

But one of the things that we include in our food storage is whiskey and vodka. Now, we don't drink whiskey or vodka, though my husband does enjoy a bit of makers mark once in a while.

IMO alcohol is essential for food storage and especially a TEOTWAWKI situation. Alcohol is incredibly useful, especially high proof alcohol. It can be used for cleaning wounds, knocking someone out if they need a splint put on or bones readjusted, making extracts and tinctures, and even currency.

I store cheap whiskey and vodka. NO need to store high quality alcohol as the cheap stuff will do the job just as well.

Christmas and the meaning behind it

2009-12-01T07:51:00.000-08:00

I'm not a big "Keep Christ in Christmas" type of gal. I couldn't care much less if a retailer has up holiday signs rather than Christmas signs. I don't expect a secular world to live a Christian lifestyle, and have Christian principles. But in our home we aren't huge into the whole birthday of Jesus thing either. Christmas to me isn't about the birth of Messiah, that is what Sukkot (Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year) is all about. But the fact is that we wouldn't be celebrating Christmas if Jesus wasn't born, despite the fact that he wasn't born anywhere near the time of Christmas.

What Christmas is though, to our family, is a time of giving and loving on as many people as we are blessed to do. I want my children to not only have fond memories of the gifts they get on Christmas morning, but also experience the thrill of giving and sharing with our friends, neighbors, and those who are less fortunate than us.

One idea that I'm incorporating this year to pick a family and sponsor them for christmas without them knowing. We are going to drop off a small gift, food item, card or whatnot every day today through Christmas day. I know this family, they are friends of ours, and they are really struggling financially this year. I'm excited to have the bee help out making small things, and dropping them off. Teaching her that it really is more blessed to give than to receive.

Christmas and why my parenting is different

2009-11-29T18:48:00.000-08:00

I love Christmas. Like really really really love it. I cannot wait until Christmas morning to see the looks of joy on the faces of my children as they come downstairs and see the lit tree, the presents and their bikes!

I have so few good memories from my childhood, but Christmas was almost always one. I want my kids to have that joy, that magic, that complete delight that I did.

My mother was not a good mother. She was just not. I'm not going into specifics publicly, but it wasn't a good childhood. I had absolutely no trust for her by the time I was four.

The memories of Christmas is part of why I wanted to change the way I parented my children. Christmas was such a joy for me as a child, at least until I was about ten. It was a day when I wasn't scared, or angry, or sad, or lacking trust in my mother. It was a day that I knew that she could be counted on. And that is a wonderful thing.

But it is so sad that there was only one or two days a year that I could feel that way about her. The fact that Christmas and my birthday were so hugely different than the rest of the year is not a good thing. I looked forward to those holidays with such a passion because they were safe days. I don't want my children to look forward to safe days, I want every day to be a safe day.

So I comfort them when they cry, I don't scream at them, I don't hit them, I feed them healthy foods and wear them when they need some extra snuggles. Every child deserves those basics in life, to live a life where they trust their family.

Where will they go

2009-11-21T04:32:00.000-08:00

My three year old is obsessed with being a doctor. She talks about it frequently. When people ask her what she is going to be when she grows up she always says a doctor. She loves to read the pages in her books about doctors, and asks what schools she has to go to to become a doctor. When she goes to the doctor she asks the doctor to look in her ears with the otoscope.

Sometimes she'll also talk about when she is grown up and is a ballerina, or a farmer, or a mommy, or a dog. Yup. A dog.

As we are looking on a new and unexpected phase of education for our kids next year, we are thinking about their future in different ways. Something we have always said is that we don't want them to be pushed toward college. There is an unhealthy push to get a college education in our country. Some people probably question that, but college is overrated. Not all children are cut out to go to college. Some kids aren't designed to do four years of post high school education and work in a cubicle, but that is where our American society is leading kids.

I want my kids to have the freedom to go to college and excel if they choose. Even if they choose a major that doesn't seem to have a lot of job potential like art history, if they are passionate about that, they can make a wonderful life and career out of that. But I also want them to have the freedom to go to trade school, or start a business, or become an apprentice or go to ten years of college and medical school.

I am sure at this point that God is calling us to send our kids to school. At least for a few years. Just like homeschooling families we say we will take it year by year. This might only be a season, and it might be a long term venture. Who knows. But there are a few more worries with sending my kids to school rather than keeping them home.

The biggest worry I have is that my kids will feel forced and pressured into college. The school that we are sending them to has a 100% college matriculation rate. And the kids who go to this school don't go to east handkerchief state either. They go to tier one schools. I want to set up an environment in our family where they know college isn't the end all be all and there are other paths they might follow. I want to guide them toward their strengths and interests and callings, not push them toward college.

How can my children still explore freedom when they are being tunneled toward college?

And these big questions honestly make me wonder if school is going to last beyond the elementary years, and they will be homeschooled in high school. I know that is the opposite of most homeschooling worries. Many parents wonder if they can teach the upper division stuff, and don't worry about the lower division stuff. But not me. The elementary stuff does NOT interest me, and in fact I have never been sure if I could teach my littles the three Rs. But I have never worried from about sixth grade up. From that point on I was quite sure I'd be able to teach.

It is going to be interesting to watch this unfold.

On letting babies cry it out

2009-10-30T08:47:00.000-07:00

Babies cry. Thats how they communicate. It sucks as a mother to hear your baby cry. Especially when you are over tired, frustrated, overwhelmed, and just want to sleep. I know how tempting it is to put your baby into their bed and "teach" them how to sleep, by letting them cry and cry and cry until they finally go to sleep, and repeat until they have been taught to sleep.

But it is cruel. You might not want to think that or admit it, but it is. You are taking a tiny little baby, who trusts you. Who looks to you for everything they need, and teaching them that you cannot be trusted. That you won't be there when they need you. That they are alone and have to fend for themselves. You aren't teaching them how to sleep, you are teaching them how not to trust other people.

I've heard from several people lately that your baby will try and manipulate you. Babies honestly think that when you leave the room you are gone. They don't know that two halves make a whole. They don't know how to say their names. How can they have the cognitive ability to manipulate. It just isn't possible. Testing boundaries is NOT manipulating. To assign such an intent to an infant, shows a major misunderstanding of babies.

But think about it from your perspective as an adult. If you were alone, and tired and scared would you like to be left alone to scream yourself to sleep night after night?

my fuzzi bunz are for sale!

2009-10-19T17:50:00.000-07:00

Well we have a new front loading washer and dryer and they just won't wash my diapers well enough for my liking. So sadly we aren't going to be cloth diapering anymore :(

I'm selling 13 fuzzi bunz in gender neutral colors (though there are some dark blues and one pinkish) All are in great condition, and I have the inserts for all. I also have 5 hemp inserts that we used at night!

I'm asking $140 for all of them. Please respond with your email if you are interested.

sauteed garbanzo beans

2009-10-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

There is this amazing restaurant in Berkeley and Oakland California called Cesar. It is a tapas bar and an Alice Waters restaurant. If you are any sort of foodie you know who Alice Waters is.

Every spring for a few weeks they have fresh garbanzo beans still in their shells fried with cumin and spices. They are amazingly fresh, and spicy, and yummy. When the bee was ten months old we ate there five days in a row, eating those wonderful beans and my ten month old could get those shells open herself to eat the inside of the bean. She loved them!

She still does. Garbanzo beans are wonderful for so much more than just hummus. They are great in minestrone soup, and other multi bean soups. I even like to use them in chili sometimes because of their meaty texture. They don't ever fall apart when they are cooked.

But one of our favorite quick and easy breakfasts is sauteed garbanzo beans. Sure it isn't a traditional breakfast item, but combined with a piece of whole wheat bread it makes a complete protein that keeps you from getting hungry in twenty minutes.

2 cans garbanzo beans drained.
1 shallot
2 Tbsp cumin (or less to taste)
1 tsp chili powder
1 clove garlic
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

Mix all but the butter in a food processor until garbanzos and garlic are chopped fine. I sometimes add a tiny bit of olive oil to get the beans to hold together well and make patties. Form patties and fry in olive oil. They will fall apart a bit, and won't ever be firm patties, but it is still yummy. If you add eggs you could make a more firm patty.

I like a LOT of cumin because it is just yummy and I want a big strong slightly spicy cuminey flavor.

Balancing two futures

2009-10-09T03:49:00.000-07:00

I think our country is on its last legs. Honestly I do. I think our Dollar is in very big trouble, and will likely collapse within a few years, and that our country might not survive in the way we know it. More it will go from super power, to something more like Russia is today. So I prepare for that future.

We store food, stock up on clothes for the kids several sizes in advance, and plan on chickens as soon as spring comes. We prepare for a future that I believe will very quickly in the future be very bleak.

But I could be wrong. Perhaps our nation is on the road to recovery or at least maintaining the status quo. Perhaps things will continue to limp along in a nature very similar to where we are now. I can't dismiss that that is a valid option. So I go back to school, prepare my family and my kids for them to go to school and grow up and be responsible citizens of our nation.

Flu season

2009-10-08T06:49:00.000-07:00

Well fall is in full swing here, and I'm starting to be able to breathe again. Though I know it is short lived as the Holidays are right around the corner.

But fall also brings flu season and that is the topic of much news lately.

We of course don't vaccinate against the flu. I understand that the flu can be deadly and that it is a serious illness, but I think the vaccine is more dangerous for my family than the actual flu. If we had someone in our home who was immunocompromised, we would absolutely vaccinate. But we are all healthy in our home and I don't see a reason to compromise our immune systems with a vaccine.

But we aren't arrogant about the flu either, we do stay on top of things and do our best to remain healthy during the flu season, just as any other time of year. We have never suffered the same sicknesses that our friends do and I believe firmly it has to do with our diet and prevention.

First and foremost I wash hands a lot. The bee also washes her hands regularly. But we do NOT use anti bacterial soaps. Those soaps breed super germs like MRSA and there is no need to use them. I do keep products like purell in my purse when we are out. I'm not thrilled with them, but I do think that sometimes it works well when we don't have good hand washing options.

Secondly we eat healthy real living foods. We have green smoothies several days a week to make sure that we are getting a good amount of raw foods as well as lots of vitamin C and Iron. I often add cod liver oil to the smoothie, but honestly it does not taste that good. The Lemon flavor does the best and is the only one that my daughter will drink anymore. We also don't eat much sugar. That is a big one actually sugar is a immune depressant.

My kids don't eat processed foods. I'm probably the only parent who doesn't send store bread and lunchables to the bees school. That isn't to say they have never had processed foods, they have. But it isn't very often.

But there are a few other things that we do. Both kids take a multi vitamin and a vitamin D supplement every day. Vitamin D is huge in fighting the flu, especially the H1N1. We also take elderberry syrup every day. Elderberry syrup is great for building up an immune system, and some say more effective against the flu than tamiflu is. Vitamin C is best gotten from citrus fruits and veggies, but supplements are easy to find and usually easily eaten by kids.

E-Mealz

2009-10-05T09:08:00.000-07:00

**This is NOT a paid endorsement, it is just something I've found that works wonderfully for us**

If you aren't familiar with e-mealz you should be. I love it. It is a menu planning system, and they are just great! Our food budget has dropped dramatically since we started using it, and it is so much easier.

What it is, is meal plans. It is also store specific and goes with the specials at a store during the week. It does use some processed foods, but I either substitute with homemade, or sometimes use the processed. It is healthy and kid friendly.

But more than that it is cheap! It is only 1.95 a week. They offer vegetarian, low carb, weight watchers points, and other options. You can choose for a family of two or a family of four to six. Also you can choose the plan for Wal-mart, Ralphs, Publix, Aldi, or "any store"

I really love it, and it has made our lives a bit easier right now. We are super busy right now and will be getting busier in January. This has worked really well for my family.

Pork

2009-09-14T19:39:00.000-07:00

As I'm preparing for the New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and doing a study on the sermon on the mount, I can honestly say I don't understand why people don't think that eating pork is okay. Or not following the law is okay. It truly doesn't make sense to me.

All the while I'll admit I love bacon and crave it ;)

homeschooling

2009-09-13T18:36:00.001-07:00

It is with a bit of sadness that I say goodbye, or perhaps only see you later to homeschooling.

I always assumed I would homeschool. I wore my babies, slept with them by my side, though not traditional co sleeping, responded to their needs, and nurtured their nature and spirit. I assumed and hoped that the natural next step would be to homeschool them. It was my dream, and what I wanted to do. Beyond that I felt like it was what all the "good" Christian mamas did with their babies. I couldn't bear the thought of letting them go away from me for long hours during the day in an environment that I wasn't a part of.

But last winter the sailor went away for two weeks and I realized that I wasn't good on my own full time with the kids. It wasn't that I couldn't do it, but I wasn't good at it. I was alone. While I have built a great group of friends here that I know I can count on, I'm not sure that homeschooling is an option without my husband here for extended periods of time. I really struggled for the time that he was gone, and was not a good mother. So I enrolled the bee into a two day a week preschool program. My mothering improved greatly and our lives became much better.

We intentionally took the summer "off" to see how things progressed this summer. It wasn't good. I was not able to manage my ADD and work with my children AND not lose my patience with them. After an almost hellish summer my husband and I decided that homeschooling might not be the best path for us.

During the summer we also had the bee re enrolled in speech therapy. She has a speech delay, but she tests far above her age. She is freakishly smart. I don't want to be 'that' mom, but my daughter is really advanced for her age. I wasn't sure that my ADD combined with her intelligence, and my own lack of patience would provide a positive homeschool environment.

That all being said, we are still open to homeschooling. We want our children to thrive, and I'm not convinced that always happens in a homeschool environment, but I'm also not always convinced that it happens in a school environment. I've finally come to a place where I realize that different things work for different families. I'm not cut out at this point in time to be a homeschooling mama. Perhaps later I will be, perhaps not.

I have the highest respect for homeschoolers, and know that more often than not they provide superior education to any public school. I may join their ranks some day. Only time will tell

an absentee summer

2009-09-13T04:50:00.000-07:00

I've been through a lot this summer, it hasn't been a great one.

I found out a while ago that I was pregnant, only to find out a few short hours later that it was not a viable pregnancy.

My poor garden got hailed out. I have six butternut squash and one beautiful white pumpkin. And enough basil to feed Italy.

But we have been making some changes in our plans for our future. We have been spending a lot of time in prayer trying to find out where God wants us to go, and we are sure we know on one front, and not so sure on another.

We are applying to send the bee to a really good prep school here. At this point in my life, and looking at the combination of my personality and limitations with my ADD, and the bees personality and unique gifts we have decided that a prep school with a Montessori education model for the younger years might be a better fit for her. I'm surprised that we are leaning this direction since we always planned on a little homeschool, but this decision feels so right to us. I'm going to write a post soon on my emotions regarding homeschooling, because they are pretty big right now (good big)

I'm also returning to school in the spring and plan on pursuing an education degree and want to teach high school.

The rapid change in our lives feels right and both the sailor and I are at peace about this. We are both very good at making decisions "quickly" but they are almost always right when we do. Long drawn out decisions often mean we aren't pursuing the right path.

another reason to stock up

2009-08-03T20:38:00.000-07:00

State workers in Pennsylvania aren't getting paid. I can't get html to work tonight, so please cut and paste this article

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2009/07/pennsylvania_state_workers_cau.html

With the budget impasses that are going to happen in the federal budget, the giant deficit, and all else going on it is more important than ever to have some reserve money, and reserve food.

August now

2009-08-01T06:17:00.000-07:00

Well where are we with the garden. Honestly, horrible. We had hail a few weeks ago and it destroyed my corn, beans and tomatoes. My beans already had a bacteria and weren't going to make it. But I was really upset at the tomato loss. I've had wonderful tomatoes this year, and have put up a lot of them!

So I need to buy some green beans, and a whole bunch of them. I'm headed to a local farm today to see how many beans I can get! I'm hoping for at least a bushel of green beans! That is about thirty pounds. My kids both love green beans and it is one of the few veggies I actually look forward to. Plus I use them in soups, stews, casseroles etc all winter long, so I'm going after those today. Also I am going to can sweet corn this week. I know of a farm near me that has sweet corn coming out the wazoo, so I'm hoping for a couple of bushels of sweet corn. I much prefer frozen sweet corn, so I'll freeze a few, but canning is self stable and we live in a part of the country that gets bad ice storms that knock out power sometimes for weeks at a time.

why food storage, and what does it look like?

2009-07-20T07:20:00.001-07:00

I'm a food storage person, and always have been. There is a bit of a preparedness and survivalist streak in my family and I've embraced this. I also look to the bible and think that there are a lot of stories to prepare your family for hard times. Think of Joseph, he was told that hard times were coming and by being prepared saved a whole people plus his family!

I've said before I do believe hard times are come for our nation, probably our world. Economics are cyclical and we are overdue for a very big crash. My husband has a very secure job, so we are blessed. However even with a secure job things can happen that would cause you to need to eat from your own food stores. Perhaps there is a flood in the wheat belt, and bread prices skyrocket, there is a severe oil shortage and trucks aren't able to move, there is freak storms in the northwest and the apple crops are lost, inflation or deflation are so bad our money isn't worth anything anymore. In these situations we will be grateful for our stored foods!

Many of us depend on the grocery store a couple of times a week for all of our food needs. Most homes don't have gardens anymore, most people don't store more than about two days worth of food. But is that the wisest way to live? In the part of the country I live in we get massive tornadoes and ice storms every year. Both of those could knock out power for several weeks. Do you have the ability to feed your family if the grocery store is closed for a week, and your power is completely out?

Another great reason to store food though is to save money. My family spends about 190 dollars a month at the grocery store, and that includes all our toiletries. This is because we buy on sale, stock up, and make almost all of our food from scratch. Sure I have some packaged foods, but not a lot. When I make a loaf of bread it costs about 68 cents a loaf. For a loaf of 100% whole wheat, with no additives or anything. I can make the same amount of oatmeal that comes in an "instant" package for about 8 cents, while the packets cost about 30 cents a packet.

I seldom run out of anything when I'm cooking. I almost never have those moments when I'm in the middle of cooking something that I realize that I don't have enough of something and have to make a quick trip to the supermarket.

Have I convinced you yet?

How about this? Imagine a truck with dangerous caustic chemicals spills near your house and you have to evacuate, now. It happened in my hometown when I was about four years old, it happens all over the country all the time. Do you have what you need to leave now? Do you have snacks and diapers and a change of clothes for your kids? What if the police say you have ten minutes to get out of your house. What then? Do you just hope that there will be restaurants open and that old navy will have the clothes you need? Will there be clean water?

This is where to start, it is called a 72 hour kit or a bug out bag. This is the first step in being prepared. I'll post instructions for a 72 hour kit soon!

Ketchup

2009-07-19T15:29:00.001-07:00

My kids eat a lot of ketchup. I think most kids do, so nothing super weird there, but commercial ketchup contains high fructose corn syrup which is something we try to avoid. So I make my own. Not to mention that I think it tastes better in most applications. It is different, far different, than the stuff you get in the squeeze bottle, but it is healthier and yummier.

I will probably put up 14 pints of ketchup this year. To do that I need 48 lbs of tomatoes, some sort of paste tomato. A paste tomato is something that has a lower water ratio than a slicing tomato. Rome tomatoes are the most common, but cherry and grape tomatoes also work. I personally use an heirloom variety called "Amish Paste" They are perfect and have a fantastic tomato flavor that really shines through in all my tomato stuff. I also have a yellow pear tomato plant in my backyard which is producing TONS of tomatoes, far more than we can eat, so I threw some of those in my ketchup also. The yellow tomatoes have a very intense sweet tomato flavor, and I think they actually added a nice flavor to my ketchup. If I continue to get this huge crop I might make a special yellow batch of ketchup to see how that turns out.

For many tomato applications you need to first peel the tomatoes. Tomatoes are very easy to peel. Drop them in boiling water for a minute, then straight ice water. The peels slip right off. However for sauce and ketchup you don't need to do that. Both of those applications go through a food mill, so you can just chop them in quarters and cook them until soft. While you are cooking the tomatoes you also need to add some onions. If you have 24 lbs of tomatoes you need to add three large or four medium onions and about ten cloves of garlic (I love garlicky ketchup) Combine the quartered tomatoes and onions and garlic and cook until soft.

While this is cooking (over the lowest heat possible) take 3 cups of apple cider vinegar and put it in a stainless steel pan. Make a spice bag with 3 tablespoons of celery seed, 2 cinnamon sticks broken up, 2 teaspoons whole allspice, 2 teaspoons whole cloves, and one teaspoon dried red pepper. Bring the vinegar and spice mixture to a boil and as soon as it hits a boil, turn off heat and let stand for one hour.

*a note about vinegar. Use organic or raw vinegar when cooking. Other vinegars can be full of weird stuff like formaldehyde.

Combine the vinegar and tomatoes and let stand for 3 hours at room temperature. Add three to four tablespoons of canning salt at this point (kosher salt works also, but table salt does not due to the iodine in it) This slightly pickles the tomatoes and makes the flavor deeper. At this point you need to run your mixture through a food mill. I think that some of the best 50 dollars you can spend is on a good food mill and my favorite for large batch cooking is this food mill

At this point I put the ketchup mixture in my crock pot and put it on low overnight. This helps to keep the ketchup from burning, which is possible on the stove top. I don't use my lid, but rather cover the opening with cheese cloth to allow the moisture to escape. When I wake up in the morning the kitchen smells amazing, and I have perfectly thick ketchup.

I pack mine in pint size jars, with clean sterilized lids and process in a boiling water canner for 15 minutes.

First tomatoes

2009-07-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

I planted forty amish paste tomato plants and they are producing a ton of tomatoes and they are coming ripe quickly!

Today I put up my first batch of tomato sauce. I don't have a recipe as I just use what I have around and tastes and smells good. I always includes tons of onions and garlic, basil, oregano, carrots, and olive oil. Other ingredients vary from red wine to herbes de provence.

But my house smells wonderful this evening and I've got a row of tomato sauce ready for winter when I don't have fresh tomatoes anymore.

So far this season I've put up apx 65 jars of peaches, 30 jars of blackberry jam, 10 jars of fig jam, twelve jars of tomato sauce, 4 jars of ketchup, and 6 jars of green beans. I'm looking to start on some corn and more green beans this week and might put up some vegetable soup for those cold winter days where I just don't feel like cooking!

All my pumpkins died :(

2009-07-01T02:44:00.000-07:00

I'm very sad about it. I had vine borers that ate the insides out of all my pumpkins and summer squash. My butternut squash is still thriving, as are all my melons. But I'm honestly upset about the pumpkins, I was so looking forward to roasting them and having fresh pumpkin pies and pancakes and breads and adding pumpkin to my green smoothies with some honey and spices. Now I'll have to settle for store bought ones, or hopefully find a local farmer who has sugar pumpkins!

I'm not a giant zucchini fan, so it isn't a huge loss aside from the fact that I've never heard of a person who can't grow summer squash.

The rest of the garden is amazing. My tomatoes are freakish, over six feet tall now.

Giveaway results!

2009-07-01T02:38:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the delay on this, but blogger has been weird and I haven't been able to log on!

We have 2 winners! I'm excited to share this book with these folks. The bee drew two names out of a hat and the winners are......

Deena and family of three! email me at erin underscore d underscore a at yahoo dot com with your address and I'll send the book right out!

A giveaway!

2009-06-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

I'm doing a giveaway. I'm giving away two copies of “Common Sense" This book is one of those books that will educate and enrage you about our country at the same time. It is a great jumping off point to figure out what is "wrong" with our country. Most of us feel in our gut that something is off, and this book explains it well. And it is NOT a rant against the left as both political sides are to blame here. It is based on the work of Thomas Paine and in his day seventy five percent of the American Public had read Common Sense. It is time to read it again. The original Common Sense is included in the book also.

Here is how to enter. Leave a comment on this blog and link back on your own blog to here. If you don't have a blog, link on your facebook page or twitter and leave the link in your comment. You can earn up to three entries per person. This giveaway closes Friday at 11:59 p.m. central time. I'll announce the winners on Saturday.

Plans for the week

2009-06-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

Thinking about adding more peaches. I'm just not sure that I have enough to get us through next summer. This is just the beginning of busy season, but I am really considering adding some more peaches.

I'm going to make some vanilla extract this week. It is so easy, throw some vanilla beans into some vodka and put into a jar. I'm doing 1 pint of extract and that should get me more than through the next year. It stays good forever too, so no worries.

Make a couple of logs of cookie dough for Christmas. Yup, I'm already thinking about Christmas. If I can get three logs of dough made I'm ahead of schedule. Since I've got a boatload of tomatoes coming ripe soon I need to stay on top of the holiday stuff so that I can actually enjoy it.

a window unit

2009-06-21T20:35:00.001-07:00

We bought window air conditioners for our house this summer in an effort to reduce our energy usage. Window units in bedrooms only actually. They are energy star and cost very little to operate. Our electric bill was cut by half this past month.

We still use our central air, but keep the AC set at eighty during the day and off at night. It almost never kicks on before five in the afternoon and because of our big shade trees it stays around 75 most of the day.

We can set the window units at 73 at night, which is nice and cool and still keep our electric bill down! I'm loving this.

Peaches

2009-06-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

I just put up fifty six pounds of peaches.

Peaches are exhausting for a couple of reasons. First unless you have a peach tree you need to buy them in bulk and do them all at once. Second you need to peel and slice every single peach. Third, I had fifty six pounds of peaches, which translates to 41 pints.

But they are beautiful.

I also have peach butter in my crock pot cooking away slowly and will be ready to be canned tomorrow morning.

Peaches are done for me for the year. We love peaches, but this is enough to sustain us for this year. They are extra expensive this year because of a late frost, so we'll have to make do with a smaller quantity than I would like. I would actually like to double this amount.

But that doesn't mean I'm not staying busy this week! Vadilia onions are in season, which means I'm putting up sauteed onions! They are so great to have on hand to open a jar and top a steak or some chicken sausage! Also wonderful with potatoes.

More later on instructions for the peach butter and the onions!

The last of the spring carrots

2009-06-19T12:58:00.001-07:00

I'm going to put some more in the ground at the end of next month, but for now, this is the end of the carrots. I didn't freeze any, we just ate them as they came out of the ground and they were amazing. Bright vibrant colors and sweet as sugar.

Jam

2009-06-19T04:42:00.000-07:00

The blackberries kept me busy. Since other berries aren't happening this year, we are going to have our main stock of jam to get us through winter from blackberries. Thankfully we all love blackberries in our house. And a lucky side effect from four gallons of blackberries is pie too

But this post isn't about pie. This post is about jam and the thirty six half pints I've canned. I'm unsure if I'm adding more at this point or not.

If you don't have access to fresh blackberries you can also use frozen blackberries and still get great jam.

You start with your jam making process by picking over your berries and discarding any that aren't fully ripe. Blackberries must be black all over and even a tiny little red spot on a berry can cause the berry to be less sweet and slightly bitter. No amount of sugar is going to cover up that flavor either. Discard any berries that are unripe.

You need some pectin. I always use boxed powdered pectin. Making my own from green apples is a ton of work that isn't worth it to me. Jam is already a sometimes food since it is full of white sugar, so adding powdered pectin isn't a big deal. You will also need apx 9 half pint jars for this method.

First thing is you need to check your jars to make sure there are no chips, cracks, or other damage. You also need new lids and some rings (these can be used dozens of times) Lids must be new every time you process food because they can only form a proper vacuum seal one time. Wash all of these in hot soapy water and rinse well.

Next you need to bring some water to a boil in a canner or a very large pot that will cover the tops of the jars by at least 1 inch. This takes a while so you might want to bring the water to a boil ASAP. You also need another pot of very hot almost boiling water to keep your jars in to keep them sterile. And another of hot, but NOT boiling water to keep your lids and rings in.

Now for the fruit. You should have picked over and rinsed 2 quarts of fruit at this point. Mash the fruit with a potato masher 1 cup at a time.

You want to use a potato masher because if you puree it in your blender or food processor your jam will separate in the jars. 2 quarts will yield about 5 cups of mashed fruit. Bring that to a boil with your box of pectin. You need to boil this until it is at a full rolling boil, which means that it is still boiling all the way through as you stir it. While you are boiling this measure out seven cups of white sugar.

After your jam is at a full rolling boil add your sugar. Remember that this much sugar is not going to boil until well over 212 degrees so you need to be very careful as jam is VERY hot. You need to return the jam to a full rolling boil and boil for one minute after it reaches this stage. At this point you have jam, though it is very hot. You can put it in jars, put lids on it and freeze it. However you cannot store it on a shelf until you process it.

Ladle your jam into your sterile jars with a soup ladle and if you like a canning funnel (a funnel with a mouth that fits perfectly into a jar). After you jars are all filled put a lid and ring on each jar and tighten, but not to tightly as you still want air to be able to escape. You want the ring tight enough that it will hold the lid firmly in place, but loose enough that air can still escape.

Put in your boiling water canner and return the water to a boil for ten minutes. (Canning tongs are almost a requirement)

After your cans are out the lids will start to pop. You can hear them quite clearly. To check and make sure the jars were all processed correctly you should press down on the lid after the jars are cooled. If the lid still has give, then they haven't processed properly and need to go right in your refrigerator. If they have, mark them with the date and store in a dark cool pantry or shelf. They will last one year.

If you ever open a jar that sprays anything at you, smells off, or anything of the like do not eat it. Throw it away and use bleach on any surface that the food or juice may have touched. This is a bad jar.

After all this work (which only takes about 30 minutes active time) you'll be rewarded with delicious jam, and it is just beautiful!

I have blackberries!

2009-06-09T18:03:00.000-07:00

I'll be making jam tomorrow and if the smalls cooperate I'll post tomorrow night!

And these blackberries are awesome and beautiful and I'm going picking again on Thursday, possibly Saturday and for sure on Tuesday.

So excited

Canning

2009-06-06T12:23:00.001-07:00

If you want to learn to properly can food I'll be documenting it this summer as I go through things. My first project will be blackberry jam. Home canning is easy, safe and inexpensive! I'll probably be canning in a few weeks and there are a few things you need if you want to follow along with me :)

1. Ball Blue Book. This is the bible of canning and every home canner needs one!
2. For Jam, pectin. You can make your own from green apples and yes that is a more natural way to jelly food, but I have no interest in that at this point in my life. Perhaps I'll learn how in the next few years, for now, I'll use the stuff you get at the grocery store in the canning aisle
3. Jars. Ball or mason jars. Clean, no cracks. Lids need to be new, rings can be used over and over again
4. Sugar. I have yet to use honey successfully in canning, so I have to use good old white sugar. No it isn't good for you, but oh well. I'm still working on using alternative sugars.
5. Fruit. Jams all work basically the same way, so whatever fruit you have you can use!

Antsy

2009-06-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

I want to get away for a weekend, but I don't think it is going to happen this year. The sailor won't have a chance to get away until late summer and I'll be in full preservation mode then! I won't be able to get away at that point.

I'm antsy for berries to come into season. No strawberries in the state this year, which is a bummer. But blackberries are in the next two weeks, followed quickly by blueberries, then I'll be busy nonstop with preservation.

I'm antsy to get started on it! I'm also trying to get the house in order as much as possible before the busy season starts. Because summer busy season goes straight until after Christmas before I can relax again.

Goodness, I'm tired thinking about it!

Busy season is in full swing

2009-05-23T18:18:00.000-07:00

As I'm learning to live my life again more in tune with natural cycles spring and summer and fall are the busiest time of year, though right now there is a natural lag in things. The seeds are all in the ground, and they are all producing small plants. My tomatoes even have some tiny little green tomatoes on them! It is truly awesome to go out in the morning to look at my garden and see a whole row of new plants, new leaves on the squash, new blossoms on the tomatoes. The strawberries were all killed in Oklahoma due to a very late frost, so no strawberry jam this year :( I might buy a few bags of frozen and make some from that. Blackberries are next to ripen and they won't be ripe for about three more weeks.

But I'm trying to prepare for the beginnings of busy season which is coming up.

My cow is going to be slaughtered in about two weeks. I'm getting bones and organ meats also, which is very exciting. It will actually get here in about five or six weeks and that should line up perfectly with my final spring carrot harvest and perhaps a few onions. It will be exciting to make pot roast with stuff from my own garden. I don't have potatoes this year, so next year we'll add potatoes of our own! But I also plan on taking bones and making lots and lots of beef stock! I'll also be canning some stew, stew meat and ground meat. Canned meat is great, shelf stable, and easy to use. If we lose our power for an extended period of time, which is very possible in Oklahoma with the tornadoes and ice storms, we won't lose all our meat!

I also expect to be going blackberry picking in the next few weeks. I'll put up about twenty half pints of blackberry jam. Freeze some whole blackberries, and freeze blackberry pie. I'll probably spend the next week making pie crust dough and freezing it. I use whole grain wheat, freshly milled of course, and make a yogurt cheese crust with fresh butter and a slight touch of raw apple cider vinegar. It is actually a pie crust that is GOOD for you. I use soft white wheat, commonly known as pastry wheat.

When I make pie crust I make several batches at once and freeze them. That way I have pie crust on hand if I need it. But it is so easy to freeze pies and bake them later. I roll out my pie crust and line the pie plate with parchment paper and make sure it is VERY well greased with coconut oil. Fruit pies are the only pies that freeze successfully though. You make the pie according to whatever directions you are using, and freeze it in your super greased parchment lined pie plate. At this point slip it out of the plate and vacuum seal and stick back in the freezer. When you want a fresh pie you put it in the pie plate, and bake according to the directions and add fifteen to twenty minutes! It is wonderful to have fresh delicious berry pie in the winter.

IFLYSWA

2009-05-17T07:41:00.001-07:00

We love Southwest airlines, truly we do. they are inexpensive and no frills, but that is all good!

Now go click the button and enter to win four tickets to fly on SWA!

Spring

2009-05-17T05:42:00.000-07:00

Spring is a busy season in our house this year! I've got a fairly large garden and am planting, watering, weeding, and doing all those fun things. Usually by this time of year I would also be canning strawberry jam, but this year it isn't happening because of a very late frost here in Oklahoma that destroyed the strawberry crop. The few places that have strawberries are selling them for three dollars a pound and that is just insanity! Next year my own strawberries will be growing and I'll be able to get at least a small amount of jam out of them! I have a feeling though that as they ripen we'll just eat them out of hand. My strawberry patch isn't huge, 2 feet by 15 feet.

I have everything in the ground now, except my second planting of beans which will go in today. I'm only growing one crop of snap beans, and four crops of dry beans. I'm really excited about them and hope they all do well! Everybody in our house loves snap beans, and the bee is really loving going out every day and looking at the progress of our tomatoes, of our beans and now that corn is coming up she is thrilled!

I've got 40 tomato plants exclusive for canning this fall. I use canned tomatoes a LOT and in lots of various forms. I'll probably make 20 quarts of maranara sauce and the rest will go to juice, bbq sauce, ketchup, and just plain canned tomatoes. I'm hoping to put up a very large amount of all of those things!

I'm also growing a pretty large winter squash crop, hopefully next year I'll double it. Sugar pumpkins and butternut squash are staples in our home in the winter.

There is something wonderful about moving toward a seasonal life, more nature driven. I can't do laundry on days that it is rainy (which has been a LOT lately) because I hang my clothes outside and they won't dry. I'm paying closer attention to what foods are in season. Honestly who wants to eat a crappy tomato in January, or a hard strawberry in October. They just aren't good.

There is something wonderful about living a life that is more unplugged, pulled away from the life that is focused on the glow of the television, or of the lights in the supermarket. I'm excited for this transition. I think it is better for my kids.

This is not a political blog, but....

2009-05-07T08:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes politics really have a profound affect on all aspects of my life. I've been down the political blog path, and I can't do it, for many reasons.

However, due to many things happening in the world, and especially in our country today I want to encourage anybody who is reading this, to build up a food supply of at least three months. Our freedoms are being lost very very quickly in our nation today. Free speech is under attack, personal liberty, and many other freedoms are under attack. I believe firmly that while the government is telling us that the economy is on the mend, it hasn't even hit bottom yet. The new deal didn't work if you study history beyond the junk that one is fed in schools. And the current administration is going so far beyond what was done in the new deal it isn't even funny.

We have been building a food supply for several months, and hopefully will have a one year supply by the end of summer. Not only do I want to get a full year supply, but I want to have a longer supply of such staples as sugar, salt, and wheat.

The economy is built on a house of cards right now. I believe we are in a temporary upswing, it might last as long as a year, but it will crash hard, very very hard I believe after the 2010 election cycle. I think that God is giving people who are willing to listen a time of preparation. I'm not screaming total collapse or tyranny, or holocaust, or apocalypse. I'm saying that our nation, no our world, needs to reset its economy onto something real. We can't continue to exist on virtual and theoretical currency. Economics don't work that way.

I think we need to erase as much of our debt in the next year as possible. And store enough food to feed our family. The church of latter day saints has some amazing literature and guides for this, but I'm hesitant to link to it without the disclaimer that I believe Mormonism is a false religion and their teaching does not lead to the true Messiah, but a Jesus that they twisted and crafted. However, they have excellent guides to food storage for your family, just read at your own risk. I'm hoping to step up my blogging here again after the spring rush of planting slows a bit. And hopefully I can encourage many of you to build your stores as Joseph did in Egypt. For indeed, I believe dark clouds are gathering.

This sunday morning

2009-05-03T06:48:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here listening to my big two year old singing "Mmmmm and wide" She doesn't like the part where they sing the actual words to Deep and Wide, so she just sings the MMM part for deep. Now she is singing wonderpets.

I think we might have worked out the church issue. I think. We visited a church last weekend that had great fellowship, nice people, kinda lousy pastor. I feel bad saying that, but he preached the exact same tired recycled sermon that every other pastor of non denominational churches that want to become mega churches preaches. I feel like so often those pastors are preaching textured vegetable protein, not meat. They are giving you something that looks like meat, kinda tastes like meat, but isn't actual meat.

However, we went to a homegroup associated with this church on Wednesday night, and it was awesome! Mature Godly families who really wanted to dig into scripture and grow. I was blown away by this group. It was the first time since we have lived in Oakland that we found this. I cried as we were leaving, looking forward to the following wednesday night.

However we aren't planning on making the church our church home. We'll go, on a semi-regular basis probably, but not full time. We ARE planning on making the messianic Jewish church here in town our home. We loved that church, but our only hold up was they didn't have small groups, which for us is really important.

I'm thankful, I think it is solved!

very very very sensitive

2009-04-26T23:09:00.001-07:00

Please pray for my family. My cousin just hung himself.

I'm unsure at this point if I can make it home or not.

Please please please if you have an alcoholic in your family or life try and help them if possible.

First Harvest

2009-04-18T15:39:00.000-07:00

Well my garden is doing GREAT! I've gotten several harvests of spinach, and now we are almost to the point where we are so tired of spinach we can't stand it. I pick enough spinach each day for use somewhere and the next day the small leaves have grown so big I have to pick some more! Green smoothies, spinach quiche, Saag paneer, all sorts of stuff and we have spinach coming out our ears.

But, the spinach is amazing, almost buttery. The bee sits in the garden and eats it without even washing it and I don't worry about it because I don't spray my garden with anything but garlic juice.

We have also had a few radishes. I would have had far more but a late hard freeze killed about twenty of them. But we have had about ten white radishes which have a great peppery flavor to them. They are delightful straight from the garden, rinsed and popped whole into my mouth!

We'll have broccoli soon, hopefully before the summer here gets to hot and causes it to bolt. I've also got about twenty onions growing! I'm hoping to get a big harvest around the same time that my tomatoes and jalepeno are ready so I can make a few batches of salsa. My beans onions garlic, herbs, will all go into the ground in about two weeks. I'll follow that up two weeks later with corn, summer squash, cucmbers, and winter squash.

Food Inc

2009-04-07T11:05:00.001-07:00

homeschooling thoughts

2009-03-22T16:51:00.001-07:00

The more I study homeschooling and learn about it, the more comfortable I am with it. I started out thinking about it because I didn't want my children in public schools. We actually live in a community that has really good public schools and that would be a decent option for my kids if homeschooling doesn't work out. But we'll be moving away from here at least once before we move back, and I don't want to put my kids in and out of schools that may or may not be good. I want to insure stability in their education. And I know that I can provide a good education for them.

I have a friend who is really really smart. She worked for NASA, got a degree in some sort of engineering, and she was unschooled until she was ten (I think that is the age) She didn't know how to read until that point because she wasn't interested in it! Yet despite a very unconventional education, she is one of the smartest people I know. She is one of the many many success stories I've seen with homeschooling, and I'm confident that we'll be able to do this in our home too.

However I'm not sure I'm ready to jump into unschooling. I think that I would fail my children if I didn't have a curriculum. I think about that a lot actually, but I just don't think I could do it.

So the more I look into homeschooling, and the more I get to know my oldest child, the more I lean toward Charlotte Mason as a model for our home, with some Classical education thrown in for good measure. Charlotte Mason especially is very focused on nature, spending lots of time outside, and lots of books. Young children are encouraged to spend all day outside if possible! And it is amazing how much learning there really is to be done from nature.

It is also very book intensive! Lots of reading. The bee and Huck both love to be read to. In fact I bet we spend about an hour every single day reading out loud!

I'm loving this phase of pre-school where it is so focused on nature and books. There are no flash cards, no spelling, no quizzes, nothing that I've heard other children go through at this age! But she knows all her colors, she knows how to spell about ten words, knows how to count to forty, knows so much! Just from observing the world around us!

Cauliflower Soup

2009-03-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

This time of year is a bit rough on me. I LOVE spring and we have these delightful warm days where it gets up into the eighties, and then the next day it will be a high in the fifties.

So today it was the latter. And I'm trying to be positive about it because I do love cool crisp weather too.

ETA: I put the leftovers in the fridge and it was WONDERFUL as a cold soup! I might make it again in the summer as a chilled soup and perhaps cut or eliminate the cream! It was great!

So I decided today was a cauliflower soup day. And I've never made it before.

It was great! Easy too. I always keep a lot of frozen cauliflower in my house because it is a quick and easy veggie that all of us like. Or at least can tolerate easier than others.

1 quart chicken or vegetable stock
3 cloves garlic
1 lb frozen or fresh cauliflower
1 t. salt
1 T. herbes de Provence
1/3 c. cream

Cook the garlic in the chicken stock for about 1/2 an hour then add cauliflower and simmer until it is soft. Add the salt and herbes and then blend either with a stick blender or your stand blender. Stir in cream.

Spring!

2009-03-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

Spring is here! sure we have another couple of days till it is "official" and the lat frost is almost a month away, but oh my spring is here!

We have been trying to spend as much time outside as possible. The flowers are blooming, the air is warm, and we are just loving spring! The bee is at such a great age for really exploring the outdoors also. She chases ants, catches ladybugs and laughs when she touches rolly polly and they roll in a tight ball. She is enchanted with the radishes and spinach and carrots that have come up in the garden and helps me water and weed every day! She can't wait for the spinach to get big enough to eat!

And we found a TURTLE in our driveway a couple of days ago. Slowly, as turtles go, he wandered through the backyard, down the hills to the fence. We opened the gate for him to get to the creek and he left. The bee loved it, she loved watching him go across the lawn slowly and find his home. It was amazing.

Huck isn't so thrilled with being outside. He seems to be a bit scared of grass, which is odd. So we have been putting him in the pack and play, or I've been wearing him. But he is outgrowing wanting to be worn all the time also. So that has been a bit sad. But he still naps for long chunks of the day, so we are outside during naptime frequently.

green smoothies

2009-03-15T08:15:00.000-07:00

So it isn't the most appetizing looking drink in the world, but it is delicious and soooooo good for you! I have long proclaimed my hatred of vegetables, but know that I need them in my body. But this is an ingenious way to get raw veggies and fruits into your body! And it is SO filling and delightful!

You want to use a variety of greens and fruits, sixty percent fruits to forty percent veggies. And leafy greens work great! Broccoli and cucumbers add great flavors, and parsley and mint is just really refreshing! But the best part of green smoothies is you are getting all these greens and getting them raw and can't taste them! The fruits take away the bitterness of the greens. I've used spinach, collards, turnip greens, broccoli, lettuce, cabbage, endive, chard, and kale. And I've discovered that there is nothing in the world that could make me want to eat kale. I don't like it. If I can't drink a kale green smoothie, nothing on earth is going to get kale in my body.

But you can also add some great extras into your smoothies to boost the nutrition. Coconut oil is a great one to add, raw milk kefir or yogurt, raw honey, anything that is healthy and sounds good to you!

I'm not going to post a recipe for green smoothies as I've not been using any, just kinda raiding the fridge and frozen berries to throw in there. But you can google green smoothies and find tons of information about them and lots of great recipes! Have fun!

Gah I've been missing

2009-03-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

I've been missing I know. But spring is here! Well that isn't why, we have had a few weeks of sickness floating around our house, but with the advent of a few things that I'll post about later it is all good! (Including my adventures with green smoothies which are my new love) I think I'm also struggling with a bout of anemia so I've been extra tired on top of it all.

But we are still struggling finding a church and I wanted to share part of a message I sent to a friend this morning and tell me what you thought about our struggle to find a church.

We really love it here and are still praying about where God would have us for Church. We are so tired of mainstream consumer driven evangelicalism. We have serious theological issues with mega churches and even some of the smaller consumer driven ones. I'm so tired of going to churches that advertise "an awesome worship experience" Great worship is very important, but these churches are so caught up in flash that they forget the Good News! They get stuck in happy God is love seeker friendly mumbo jumbo they never get to the heart of Christ. People get "saved" but couldn't articulate what they are getting saved from. I don't believe you can get saved from the unknown and you can ask Christ to save you if you don't know the truth about God! It just doesn't work.

There is one that had a ten week bible study on how to help people transition after the move! I'm sorry, but I don't need a ten week bible study on that, maybe MAYBE an afternoon. But I looked over the book, there were verses at the beginning of every chapter and that was it! That wasn't bible study, that was fluff! These churches aren't turning out mature disciples Christians who can effectively spread the gospel, they are turning out plants that fell on the rock and at the first sign of trouble will wilt and wither away.

As we go into the next century further, and starting no with a government who is becoming more and more Anti-God (yes I said that, and yes I believe that) we have to root our children in something far deeper than shallow prayers before a soccer game and awesome worship experiences. I will not have my children following the path of other children raised in "Christian" homes who are assaulted when they get to college with liberal ideas that are against God and falling away from the faith. 80% of our kids are falling away!

So we are looking for something deeper. Something meaningful that will last in our childrens lives, and we are finding it in places that we didn't expect. That is why I posted the article about the coming evangelical collapse. We have been finding true deep Godly worship in old denominations. Nazarene, Mennonite, Orthodox, even the Catholic church here in town (which I grew up Catholic so it shocked the heck out of me) and our favorite has been the Messianic Jewish congregation.

Okay, so you probably didn't want my novel and rant LOL My heart is honestly aching for the American church though. I'm angry at Satan for getting in there and having such a huge STRONG foothold! And some are so ignorant of his very existence that they don't even know what to look for and how to resist him. It makes me mad

That is where we are, and this article about “the coming evangelical collapse seems very timely to me.

So where do we go. Do we continue to search the nondenominational evangelical congregations we have always been so comfortable in, or do we move a little more toward the traditional? We are as always in prayer and study about our next choice.

California's drought and why we need to prepare here

2009-02-28T19:44:00.000-08:00

California “has a drought emergency I don't live in California anymore, and even if you don't, this is a big deal. But beyond that combine that with a 10% unemployment rate in California, and the California economy tanking. The state is in huge HUGE trouble.

California is a big deal in our nation. Half the nation's fruit, nuts, and vegetables come from there, it is the number one dairy state, they grow almost all of the almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, kiwifruit, olives, persimmons, pistachios, prunes, raisins, clovers, and walnuts. Get my point, they grow the majority of food in America. If California falters, you might go hungry.

Imagine that 25% of the onions that are in our food supply suddenly disappear (this is what is grown in California). The crop fails in California due to drought, or lack of workers, or transportation issues, or failure of the state government to pay agraculture subsidies. There are a whole myriad of things that are very possible in our current climate to cause this failure. The price of onions will go up by probably 100 to 200 percent. But not just onions, do you know how many products onions are in? Soup, breads, chips, salad dressings, potato salad, pot roast, fish sticks. Get my point?

California is in a serious situation right now and it would be wise to store some food for your family to weather the storm. I'm not saying to go out and buy seven hundred pounds of wheat berries and five years worth of toilet paper. I'm saying pick up a few extra cans of soup when you go to the store. Prepare. Higher prices are coming, as are possible food shortages.

Just be wise. Joseph saw the signs and prepared the nation of Egypt. See the signs. Prepare your family

my last jar of strawberry jam

2009-02-28T10:44:00.000-08:00

I opened my last jar of strawberry jam from a canning session last spring before Huck was born. It is perfect. Sweet, but not as sugary as the stuff you get from the grocery as I typically like to use about half the amount of sugar as you get in the grocery (if anybody has made jam with natural sugars pass along the recipe!) I think there will be local strawberries here in about two months, so I have to survive without any strawberry jam for a few months. I suppose we can make it. It does remind me that I need to add some jars when I make jam this year. Now that there are three of us eating jam, and by this summer four, I'll have to step up my preserves a bit.

This is a quiet time of year in terms of eating, especially if you are trying to eat locally. Eating locally in Florida was very hard as there wasn't a lot of agraculture in our part of Florida. But we have a few jars of this and that left from last summer. I didn't do nearly as much as I wanted to because Huck was so little!

But I DID get some local asparagus a couple of days ago from a woman that I met online. Just a few spears, but if you have never had fresh local asparagus you have never had asparagus. It was sweet, and, almost buttery tasting.

Oh and we joined the Y. We wouldn't have done it, but our local Y offers free membership to military families, so that is pretty exciting!

crazy busy

2009-02-25T18:19:00.000-08:00

So much is going on here lately, lots of stuff. But all good things.

First we have wild sand plumbs growing in Narnia in the back. These apparently grow quickly and wildly where we live, and are supposed to make delightful preserves. So it seems when the fall comes I'll be making sour plum preserves. I'm also going to experiment with some sour plum pies, in the tradition of sour cherry pies!

Second in addition to my spinach plants which I've already had to thin, I also have some broccoli, fennel, tomatoes, eggplant, and onions started. My radishes are going to pop through any minute. Carrots in a week or so I hope.

And I found a wonderful source for raw cows milk. I don't like goats milk, so finding cows milk close by was a delight. It is very close to where the sailor works and is a healthy source. I met the farmer when he was feeding a little calf that had just been born! There is something so amazing about meeting the farmer, petting the cow, and knowing exactly where your milk is coming from. The price is amazing too! I'll easily be able to start making my own cheese and butter again!

In addition to all those amazing things we have also gotten free membership to the local YMCA. In an effort to bless the military population they are giving free memberships to military members. I was amazed and blown away when they told me that, I just couldn't believe it! We were planning on spending over 50 a month for a membership, and now we are free! I can't quite get over the shock.

New life

2009-02-19T08:41:00.001-08:00

It is chilly outside. We have had a few days of warmer, some days even hitting 70 and that is the joy of living in the part of the country we do, but today is chilly. But this morning, as I went to give water to some desolate ground I found this

It doesn't look like a lot, but last week the bee and I pushed a tiny little spinach seed into those very spots. And now, there is tiny new life appearing where there was once just brown dirt. My first little crop has appeared, my first little step toward growing food this year to sustain my family. I've got about fifteen little tiny guys appearing right now!

And I'm giddy with joy!

I've got seed pots started with broccoli, tomatoes, fennel, and eggplant. Onions and carrots will hit the ground soon, carrot seeds perhaps today. Radishes in about three weeks in a direct sew.

my goals for the year

2009-02-15T06:32:00.000-08:00

Yes, it is the middle of February, and I'm only now getting to my goal list, but here goes anyway! The furthest from home my list takes me (aside from my trips to Narnia) is Arkansas, but that is okay. My home is lovely and my family a joy, and I need to work on our home and my little urban homestead.

1. Can enough tomatoes, juice, and sauce to last until the end of next summer when I have more tomatoes

2. Can enough jams and jellies to get us through next summer (2010) when I'll have more

3. Grow raspberries and blueberries and blackberries around the house

4. Make and freeze a massive amount of basil/mint pesto

5. Learn how to knit socks. I can at this time only knit washcloths and scarves.

6. Finish a quilt

7. build a chicken coop so we can start chicks in spring 2010

8. Build a root cellar in Narnia (we have on our property a wooded area by a creek with a gas lamp that we call Narnia)

9. Repair the gas lamp in Narnia

10. Make homemade Lacto fermented pickles

11. Take the kids peach picking in the summer early in the morning

12. Run a 5K. This will be tricky because I hate running more than anything else in the whole universe ever. However, I keep setting this goal. My husband loves to run and always wants to run with me. It is good for me, so I should probably step up and just do it.

13. Visit the western heritage museum.

14. Rid our home of more plastic, especially in the kids toys.

15. Start and maintain sourdough and use it regularly.

16. Move to grains beyond wheat, rice, and oats on a regular basis.

17. Grow potatoes in a trash can. How awesome does that sound!

18. Make Narnia look a bit nicer, since right now it is overgrown and full of fallen trees from the Ice storm a couple of years ago.

19. Increase my food stores to six months, and make sure we are not only eating them, but rotating them.

20. Dig for diamonds in Arkansas

21. Go camping at least three times

22. Live with the heat at 66 in the winter and the AC at 80 in the summer

23. Go fishing a couple of times a month

24. Take a gun safety course and learn how to hunt

25. Go hunting

26. Butcher whatever I can manage to kill on my great hunt

27. Eat vegetarian at least twice a week

28. Increase my veggie intake to the USDA recommendation

29. Make Parmesan cheese, and start making homemade ricotta and mozzarella again.

30. learn more kids songs to sing with them

Whats on your list this year?

light dinner

2009-02-01T15:38:00.000-08:00

The sailor came back from deployment a bit tired, so I'm trying to make whole nourishing foods to help bring him back to feeling better. But I'm also so excited to have him home I didn't want to spend a ton of time in the kitchen!

So pasta is the dish when you don't want to spend a ton of time. Always.

I'm Italian and I think somehow the previous generations of women who cooked amazing Italian food deposited memories into my DNA and I'm naturally a good Italian cook. There are a few secrets though. Garlic, lots of garlic, never EVER garlic powder or garlic salt. Sun dried tomatoes in olive oil. Olive oil. Super fresh or frozen veggies. Fresh basil. Fresh mint. You get the idea. Fresh, good, real food. No imitation, no additives, nothing but real food.

True Italian food is clean and healthy. Americans have visions of Italian food dripping in marinara sauce with cheese from a green can sprinkled on top. Sure marinara sauce is a staple in Italy, but not at every meal! Not even on a weekly basis!

This dish isn't a 'true Italian" dish. You'll not find it in the Silver Spoon, which is the Italian cooking bible, and you won't find Mario Batali making it in his restaurants. But it is real, clean, fresh, and delightful. It has many variations, but probably no name.

*cooking note, you can substitute garbanzo beans for the chicken for a great twist! The garbanzo beans combined with the whole wheat pasta is a whole protein!

1 lb broccoli (fresh if in season, otherwise frozen is great)
2 carrots chunked or shredded
5 cloves garlic finely chopped
1 zucchini chunked or shredded
1 yellow squash chunked or shredded
1/4 jar sun dried tomatoes packed in olive oil sliced in long strips
hand full of basil, chopped
Parmesan cheese to taste

2 chicken breasts or 2 cans garbanzo beans
1 lb farfarle pasta

simmer chicken until cooked through but still very tender. While this is simmering cook all other vegetables in olive oil until crisp tender. Salt and pepper to taste. Cook pasta until al dente. Mix all together and top with basil, tomatoes, and cheese to taste.

What to do in an ice storm

2009-01-27T10:38:00.001-08:00

We go outside daily. We walk around in the backyard or at a park even if it is cold. The only time we stay inside is if something wet is falling from the sky.

Well we have ice. Falling from the sky. It is beautiful as all ice is, but it keeps you in the house because it will cut your face if you are outside in it!

You can see the sweet little bush (I can't wait to see what it looks like in the spring!) all covered with ice.

But what to do with a two and a half year old and an almost nine month old when it is this cold? Why crafts and candy making of course!

Our craft selection was a bit scarce. I needed to plan a bit better, and I didn't. I try hard to plan crafts a week in advance, so that I know what I need and can get prepped the night before. Preparation is key with a two year old because you never know when they will turn on you! So you want to make sure things are fast paced.

But today we were low key, so we broke out the watercolors and I printed the story of Noah off the internet! And we made books about Noah and talked about it, though as we were talking about it I was a bit disturbed about the actual story and hesitated to really go into it. We stuck with the animals and the rainbow part of the story, and rested in the knowledge that God is faithful!

We attached the whole story together and had the cover made of pages that we had glued rainbow stripes to. She loves her new Noah book, and I'm thinking of having it laminated so that it isn't destroyed over time.

It does snow where we live, but it is fairly rare. Ice is more common, and we have had sleet, ice, and snow in the past 36 hours. But I grew up in snow country and I know what to do inside with snow, make snow candy!

First you gather up a big huge bunch of snow, in a large bowl or on a cookie sheet. I left a pie pan and a cookie sheet outside as soon as it started to snow (please discard ALL snow that is discolored! And if you live in an area where you are known to have very polluted rain or snow do NOT do this!)

I always use a copper pot if possible for candy making. It is much more sensitive to temperature changes than stainless, and my gas stove is a joy when candy making as I can make very slight, but instant modifications to the heat.

you need for this

1 c. real maple syrup
1/4 c. butter (no margarine!)
snow

Boil your maple syrup and butter until it is 255 on your candy thermometer.

Then remove from heat, let cool for three minutes and pour in funky designs over your snow!

This will harden pretty quickly and you should be able to eat it within five minutes. It never gets super hard like a lollipop and if you would prefer than then boil it until it reaches at least 265 on your candy thermometer. I much prefer it where it is hard, but still has a little bit of give in it.

Why I make graham crackers

2009-01-23T12:39:00.000-08:00

Graham crackers are yummy. One of my favorite foods, and I was excited to make them when I first found a recipe!

However, once in a while I like to buy graham crackers for ease of transport. Well Imagine my surprise when I opened up a box of Earth's best Organic Grahams to find

So yeah, no I remember VERY clearly why I don't eat a lot of processed foods!

Graham Crackers. I've adapted this from one of my FAVORITE cookbooks, which is Bread for Life 3 by Beth Holland. It is hard to find, but she does have a website, and I can't access it right now because firefox is freaking out.

1/3 c. oil (I use 1/6 cup coconut oil and 1/6 c. canola oil)
1/3 c. honey
2. T. Molasses
1 t. vanilla
2 1/2 to 3 cups of fresh ground hard red or white wheat (I prefer white)
1. t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 to 3/4 c. milk

Have your oven at 300. Mix the first four ingredients in a large bowl. Combine the dry ingredients in another bowl and add the wet to dry, alternating with the milk and mixing very well. The mixture should be to stiff to mix with a spoon and not very sticky and easily form a ball. Spray two half sheet pans with non-stick spray and divide the ball into two. Roll onto the half sheet pan until the pan is covered. cut the dough into 2 1/2 inch squares and poke each with a fork several times. Bake 15-20 minutes until it is lightly browned. Remove from the over and let it cool on the cookie sheets then separate into squares.

home brews

2009-01-22T19:47:00.000-08:00

I want to learn how to home brew beer. I Love beer, and live in a state where six point beer has to be purchased only in a liquor store.

Even cooler would be to grow my own hops and barley and....

Well that just sounds like a lot of work. Nevermind. I'll drive to texas and get myself some Fat Tire

an energy crisis, even with low oil prices, and a plea to President Obama and congress

2009-01-22T06:41:00.000-08:00

“For now, the wind stuff is deader than hell.” What happened to the much-hyped Pickens Plan?

I don't believe in man made global warming, but I believe STRONGLY in green living, and the importance of finding alternative energy sources. We are required by scripture to take care of our earth.

A year and a half ago I was paying over four dollars a gallon for my gasoline in my car, today, I'm paying a dollar sixty. Oil prices have plummeted and this isn't entirely good news. We in the western world are such instant gratification people. A year ago people were pushing green energy, bio energies, wind power, solar, hydro, nuclear. Anything to get this oil beast off our backs. Four dollar a gallon gasoline seemed to be the tipping point for Americans, and where we decided something should be done. But now oil is cheap again, so the oil crisis must be over, right?

Not so much. WE all know that oil is in limited supply. It won't last forever. Especially with China and India demanding more and more every day. So why aren't we converting anything? Why aren't we working toward our country getting off our oil addiction? Former President Bush addressed the issue, but never did much about it. I had hopes that President Obama would use his stimulus package to develop green energy, but instead the stimulus package is going to help build a waterfall in the tiger exhibit in the Philadelphia zoo, and a mob museum in Las Vegas. Neither will help prepare our country for our future with a limited energy supply.

We need to work on alternative energy now, so if we run out of oil in fifty years we have power, transportation, and aren't scrambling to get something done.

I am writing to President Obama and my congress men to ask them to please look seriously at REAL alternative energy sources. Wind, solar, nuclear, and natural gas are the best, most realistic solutions!

Time alone

2009-01-22T05:12:00.000-08:00

I've come to value alone time a great deal since Sunday. My kids do sleep through the night and they are sharing a room and often a bed right now. The bee goes down at seven and Huck usually around eight. I have about an hour to an hour and a half after he goes down all to myself. And I'm waking up at six, and they aren't up until seven thirty. So I use that time to work out, shower, and do a bible study, followed up by some internet time.

I'm doing it on my own right now as my husband is deployed on a training mission.

It makes me appreciate how hard it is to be a single mother. Just these few days. I'm not sure I would be up to the challenge of being a single mother and having to work.

And with that, I hear a bee who wants me to come and wish her good morning.

History with a 2 year old?

2009-01-18T11:34:00.000-08:00

If she can identify Dora, she should be able to identify famous faces from history.

So I went to the Library today, and found two books. And I'm so excited to read them to the bee tomorrow and tell her about this amazing man who changed the world. However, how do you address a topic as henous as racism with an innocent child. As I was looking at these books, I was a bag of mixed emotions. So proud of this man who I admire, but at the same time, so sad there was ever a need for him.

The first is a board book, and looks like it is really on her level. We haven't read it yet, but we will tomorrow.

The second was written by Martin Luther King's sister, Christine. I haven't read this one, and just picked it up, so I'll read it tonight before we read it tomorrow.

I've been trying to think of some sort of activity or craft we can do to celebrate this holiday, and I think that we are going to make a list of how to make people happy. It sounds simple, but she is so young. I'm hoping that a small activity like this will build the spirit of caring and compassion that moves mountains.

skim milk

2009-01-18T05:46:00.000-08:00

Who ever decided to take all of the cream out of milk and make it blue and serve it skim style was nuts.

I tried it on some cereal this morning and was horrified. I couldn't even eat the cereal. ewwwww

Our future (and current) Homeschool

2009-01-17T19:23:00.001-08:00

The bee is two and a half years old. However, she is old enough to learn so many things, and she craves structure. She loves schedules and lists and charts. She has a 'chore' chart where she checks things off with a washable crayon every day when she accomplishes them. She makes her bed when she wakes up in the morning, and checks it off, she helps me unload the dishwasher, then checks it off. She loves it! Totally the opposite of my personality which is much more laid back and unscheduled. It has been hard to mold myself to her needs. Huck so far is much more laid back than the bee ever was.

So we chart. We have schedules and actually keep them pretty strictly. She loves them, and thrives on them.

And thus we DO a bit of homeschooling already.

I'm a big fan of Charlotte Mason and Rudolph Steiner (Waldorf method) when it comes to the early education of children. Both are very arts and crafts driven, as well as lots of time in nature, observing seasons, and natural progression of things. Very little media, and just a general encouragement of creativity.

However this form of education seems to suit me a bit more than the bee. I'm learning to mold the philosophies of these methods to a child who thrives of her little lists of things to do. So we go outside from ten to ten forty five, then we come in and have singing time for fifteen minutes, followed by lunch at eleven, book at eleven thirty and nap at noon. (Just an example, not always the real schedule)

I've been looking a bit more into more structured education for her. She seems at this point to really like it, and I think I'm leaning toward a classical approach at this point. Once again it is book heavy, as is Charlotte Mason, but it is also more structured. I like several things about the classical method, especially the emphasis of critical thinking.

But again, I'm getting ahead of myself. The child is two ;) And Huck isn't even nine months old.

I think one of the keys of parenting is identifying the styles of your children and catering to it. Especially perhaps with adopted children who aren't going to follow the same styles as yours. And perhaps that will require a home school where if you have five children, you'll have five different styles.

oh the food he'll eat

2009-01-17T13:35:00.000-08:00

Huck is eight and a half months old and doesn't stop eating it seems. But he is wanting less and less formula, and more and more real food. So far today he has eaten a half a banana, some mexican rice and beans, this apple/oatmeal/cinnamon thing that I made, and some sweet potatoes, plus two bottles. He just isn't all that interested in bottles anymore :( I'm wondering if he would like to start drinking from a straw or a cup.

I am not one to feed babies filler foods like manufactured rice cereal or puffs (though the bee gets these as a treat once in a while) or such. Babies are just little people, they should eat food just like real people eat. And I don't think we should start putting food in their little bodies until they are reaching for it themselves. With the bee this was around five months, with huck this has been around six months, but starting in a BIG way this past week.

Whole grains are good for babies and they are so easy, not to mention cheap, to make at home! Grind up some rice, barley, oatmeal, or millet in your blender or grain mill until it is a fine flour. Then whisk it into rapidly boiling water and cook for about ten minutes, thinning as needed. If you add some fruit or veggies to this it is a great healthy cheap and easy option for babies and their little tummies.

But they don't need it at four months. They still need breastmilk (formula if that is what you do) at that age!

I have returned

2009-01-15T05:50:00.000-08:00

I'm back on this blog. I haven't had time for it since we moved, but we finally have internet back, and hopefully I'll be blogging more a bit more, but we'll see. I've got a nasty internet addiction and have to be careful.

We are home, and slowly, slowly unpacking. Much harder with two little kidlets than it was before they came along. But I'm making this house we bought my home. And it is our first home in many ways. This is the longest we'll be stationed anywhere, we could be here up to six years.

I've dug a garden, and have plans to put peas in the ground in about three weeks. Oh glorious peas! I might throw a couple of spinach plants in, and perhaps a few other very cold hardy plants. We live in a fairly moderate climate, but this is a cold winter, so I might put it off a bit.

We made a large purchase right after we moved in, a new sofa and loveseat. We sold the old one when we left Florida, and needed something besides blankets to sit on in the living room. Dark brown leather, not squishy, but lovely. And we got a crazy good bargin because it was a floor model.

My little ones are transitioning to sharing a room. Huck had been sleeping with us until recently, when he started to rebel. He waited longer than the bee did to rebel against the family room, so off to his own space he goes, right across the hall and I'm checking on them several times a night. But it is really sweet. When he fusses in the night the bee will often climb into the crib with him and they will snuggle together. During the day she shows no interest in him at all, but apparently at night, he is her responsibility. I'm glad we chose to have them share a room.

Life is calming down, we are happy, thrilled to be here. It is just wonderful to carve out a small part of the universe for our little family, something that is ours.

thanksgiving

2008-11-27T00:50:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is unsuprisingly my favorite holiday. I get to spend the entire day cooking, weeks in preperation, and get to have in my home friends and sometimes strangers, who need a warm meal, some good wine, and the love that only comes about Thanksgiving day.

This year, it is three in the morning and I'm surrounded by boxes in a cold desolate kitchen. Almost all of my pots and pans are in those boxes, and I've got out one sautee pan, one fry pan, and my faithful single nonstick for eggs in the morning. There will be no smell of turkey this year, no last minute panic as something in my kitchen goes wrong. Instead we are cleaning out the freezer and taking a very out of season peach crisp to a friends house to celebrate with someone else as the hostess. As happy as I am, and as much as I enjoy the company of said friend, I do find it sad that for the first of ten thanksgivings with my sailor I will not be playing hostess. Instead I'll be cleaning and packing all day, and then getting dressed and headed toward a friends house to enjoy that she prepares.

But even amidst the slight sadness of moving away from my home, and starting anew again, I'm so very thankful.

I'm thankful first and foremost for my sweet Jesus who died for me. How blessed I am that he chose that path, and was thinking of me in that moment. What an amazing blessing.

I'm thankful for a new friend who opened her home to us, and thankful for the experiences that have connected us.

I'm thankful that God has not only provided for my needs every single day, but gone far and above my wants. I'm blessed beyond measure and want for nothing. How amazing that he chose my family to have that amazing blessing.

I'm thankful for my husband, who everyday becomes more and more of my dream come true. I'm always amazed at a new way that I fall in love with him every day.

I'm thankful for my amazing children. The bee who is just starting to realize the world that she is living in and how she will mold and change it, even on a local level. And sweet sweet Huck, who seldom fusses and will smile quickly and easily and loves to cuddle with me. Some days I can't believe that I was trusted by God and man to care for these amazing little people. I can't wait to see who they grow into.

I'm thankful for my homes, current and future. Currently we have been blessed with a house that fits our needs, even exceeds them, and next week we will be able to own our own home that we can put to work for our family and neighborhood.

I'm thankful for God providing family every time we move. No matter where we go I've always got family.

I'm thankful for the family I was born into. While we may have our issues and our problems, without them, and without my past with them, I would not be the person who I am today, and I like who I am today.

Childhood

2008-11-22T16:34:00.000-08:00

Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook

I'm so glad I've not grown out of my childhood yet. I'm still very much a child in many ways.

My kids don't want an adult for a playmate. They want someone who will climb in a box with them and then tell a story and turn it into a beautiful castle. They want someone who will sit on the floor with a bucket of water and pour it from one container into another for an hour, and who will laugh at the funny sounds that cows sometimes make and lay on the ground and watch the ants go in and out of their little hill.

My kids need an adult sometimes, but thankfully, even in the midst of the stress of this move, I'm still enough of a child that I can see the joy in a big pile of wrapping paper.

Sadly

2008-11-12T04:55:00.000-08:00

Our food life has fallen a bit by the wayside while we are preparing for this move.

But I did make our favorite vegetable beef soup a couple of days ago and we'll be finishing up the pot today. It is so yummy! And very easy to substitute a couple of bags of frozen mixed vegetables when you realize that you have already packed your big cutting board and only have the tiny one and don't want to deal with chopping veggies with the real chance that you could slice off your finger. All the veggies are approximate, use what you have on hand and as much as you want!

1 lb ground beef
1 onion diced fine
2 cloves garlic
3 white potatoes diced small
4 carrots diced
2 ribs celery
Peas
green beans
beef stock (enough to fill the pot)
2 bay leaves
6 sprigs of fresh thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Thats it. Mix it up, cook it all for a few hours, and eat. It tastes better the second day though. Make sure you remove the bay leaves before eating!

A home

2008-11-09T05:57:00.000-08:00

Military life requires some interesting things from you. We have been married almost ten years and lived in seven states, and will hit eight before we have our tenth anniversary. I'm not complaining, it is one of the things I love about military life. Moving, seeing different people all over the country and learning about different regions. I think it also gives me the ability to adapt quickly to any situation and make friends no matter where I am. I'm finally comfortable in my own skin and know who I am. I think the moves have something to do with this. I couldn't create a facade and keep it up like I could when I was younger.

Something else that is required is to plant and grow a strong tree with shallow roots that can be pulled up at a moments notice. When we lived in Oakland I think we had the best tree possible for us. It was strong there, a large wonderful support system that I miss, but we had to pull it up and go to Florida. Luckily when you make a life for yourself someplace part of you is always there and you always have people you love, and that love you, to go home to. We have homes all over.

And Friday we purchased our first home. I see this lovely house being a home, not just a house. It is a corner lot in a quiet neighborhood. It has four bedrooms, and two of them are very large. One will be a school room in a few years. And the school system is wonderful in case homeschooling doesn't work out for us.

There is a large kitchen that has been recently updated. Lots of room for me to do home canning and store my food in a large pantry.

Then the yard. Oh the yard. The front has raised beds for ornamentals. Flowers and blooming bushes. I'll plant mint right by the front stoop. There are two large old maple trees that hover around the corners of the property. A large privacy fence seperating us from the street, but NOT from our neighbors. I can plant berry bushes on the outside of the fences and have something pretty and practical.

In the rear of the house there are two large decks, one with a built in picnic table. Our decks will make it easy to sit outside in the evenings and watch the kids in the yard.

There is already a vegetable garden plotted out by previous owners so the soil should be enriched beyond the typical Oklahoma clay. I can have a large, and hopefully bountiful garden.

Then it slopes down a hill toward a creek! My dream has always been to have a creek on my property, and somehow it has come true.

Amazing.

That one smell that you can't quite put your finger on

2008-10-26T05:34:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to that smell. It is the smell of your heater clicking on after being off all summer long. When it gets to be this time of year I turn on the heater at night set at sixty three so that if it gets below that it clicks on and the kids don't freeze to death.

And this morning I woke up to that lovely smell. It is a weird thing to enjoy, I'll give you that. But I love it. Some of it is my intense hatred of hot sticky summer, but most of it is my deep love for fall and winter. And we are headed into the best time of year, the holidays! Granted it is going to be hectic this year as we are moving a few days after thanksgiving, but it will be wonderful as always, especially since the bee is big enough to really enjoy it this year.

Ooooo how happy I am this morning. I've got the sound of my grain mill in the background. A cup of good coffee. Eggs in the oven for breakfast. The bee coloring quietly across the table from me, Huck and daddy sleeping in the bedroom.

And that smell. The wonderful smell that makes me know beyond a shadow of a doubt that fall is here, and Christmas is on the way.

I'm a blessed woman indeed

searching for our home

2008-10-23T05:30:00.000-07:00

Simplicity in life is actually hard work, but I'll get there.

We are currently house hunting for our new home in Oklahoma. Oklahoma for many reasons is our dream location and we are thrilled to be moving there.

There are a few things in a home that we are passionate about. Right now we live in a very nice house. It is new construction, split floor plan which means the master bedroom is clear across the house from the bee's room. Huck still sleeps in our room and will for a while longer, so that isn't a big deal. But I hate being so far from the bee. When she wakes up at night those few seconds that it takes me to cross the house to comfort her seem like an eternity to me. I want to get to her as quickly as possible.

We have a large kitchen, open floor plan with a great room. I can see the living room while I'm cooking dinner, which is nice.

And I love many things about this house, it is large, open, big back yard, a lot of things that are nice.

But it isn't want we are dreaming about as we search for our first home to purchase. And of course we are doing most of this online until we get our house hunting leave in a couple of weeks. So what do we want?

A smaller home, less than 1500 sq feet, on at least 1/4 of an acre of land, hopefully closer to 1/2 an acre. We want a small home because we feel like in a smaller home families tend to be closer and more involved with each other. Plus while my children are small I want to have them close, but not in the same room. Co-sleeping doesn't work well for our family, so I just want them very close. I need a larger kitchen though. I'm willing to give up family room or dining room space to have a kitchen that is workable for me. Gas stoves are the preffered choice, but we'll see.

I want hardwood floors. Carpeting traps all sorts of nastiness and gives off noxious fumes even years after it has been installed. Though carpeting is a big step above the ASBOESTOS floors that they give you in base housing!

The land is very very important to me though because we will have fresh vegetables from our garden starting next summer! I'm hoping to have a fairly to very large garden and since I'm a good gardenener I should be successful the first year and will be putting up food next summer and fall to help sustain us through the following winter. I've got a ton of seeds right now, and will order some new ones after we move in and see what kind of land we have. Oklahoma has wonderful weather and soil for growing things and is a climate that I'm familiar with. We are getting there a little later than I had hoped, but hopefully the ground won't be frozen and I can get a plot put in ASAP and set up my composting heap soon there after.

I do NOT want wood paneling. And wood paneling is freakishly expensive there.

But something else that really doesn't interest us is living in the suburbs or new subdivisions. We hate those types of neighborhoods. For starters we aren't mall people and we don't want to eat at applebees, well ever really. Secondly those neighborhoods tend to be so insualar as I wrote about a few days ago. We want a neighborhood where we actually have the opportunity to get to know our neighbors and to be part of a community.

We are looking at neighborhoods with homes built in the forties and fifties. Brick ranches of course as it is Oklahoma. The neighborhoods are a bit more diverse than you will find out in the suburbs too. And those homes have character! One of the biggest complaints about our house now is there is no character. It is exactly the same as the house three houses away. Down to the type of tile in the bathroom.

Oh I'm so anxious to go out there and look!

gentleness

2008-10-07T17:25:00.000-07:00

I'm not a naturally gentle person. I'm blunt and abrupt. I have issues with people touching me to much. I don't like a lot of hugging and stuff like that.

I also come from a background where my mom thought the best forms of punishment were screaming and hitting. I am at a point in my life where I think she really felt she was doing her best. But it still left scars.

Yet something I crave is a gentle home for my children. No yelling. No hitting. No belittling. These things are really important. Guidelines and discipline yes, punitive parenting no.

Just a little thinking tonight about who I am vs. who I strive to be. I guess we are all works in progress

My fence

2008-10-05T09:04:00.000-07:00

Our house is on a 1/8 acre lot. It is a good size and we have a nice size backyard. We have a nice patio set with a really awesome umbrella with solar powered lights that make it wonderful to sit outside in the evenings. A kickin gas grill, kiddie pool, sand and water table, a clothes line, and lots of toys. And a six foot tall fence to keep us in and everybody else in the neighborhood out.

When I was growing up we had a house in a 1/4 acre lot. The Wellmans lived next door, Mrs. Fisher lived around the corner and beside her lived the pastor and his wife. Behind them lived my friend Sarah's family. There were on my block eight kids between the ages of four and ten. Nobody had a fence around their yard. There were two grapevines on my block and early in the morning in the summers all us kids would stuff ourselves on the grapes. We would wander from yard to yard playing in this huge space. All the adults and parents would watch out for one another. The preacher and Mrs. Fischer both had huge vegetable gardens and we always had fresh veggies because they grew far more than they could ever eat.

There are three little girls that live in the house beside me and there are two little kids who live behind us. Once in a while we will see them over the fence, but we don't know their names. They are very disconnected from us. In our little neighborhood there are tons of kids, but they never have the chance to play outside with each other because everybody has a six foot fence keeping people out.

Our society has set up this general attitude of isolation, and it is part of what is leading to our downfall. Would we be demanding more stuff if we had actual relationships with those in our neighborhoods? Would we need two hundred dollar a month digital cable packages if you were sitting in your back yard at night and your neighbor could walk over and you could have a light conversation? Would we care more about those who lived around us?

When I was seven my mom and I were in a near fatal car accident. We were hit head on driving home from my aunts house by a sleeping man. My mom went through the windshield and both of us had severe problems that we both still struggle with today. After our wreck our neighbors took care of us. Mrs. Fischer brought us meals for months. Yet when the woman across the street had twins earlier this year, nobody did anything for her.

There is a saying "Good fences make good neighbors" I say, good fences make crappy neighborhoods. Humans began settling together for several reasons, one of which is that we are social creatures and need to be in fellowship with other humans. Yet creature comforts, the internet, television, fences...they have turned us into something that we weren't meant to be, isolated.

I'm up earlier than usual

2008-10-02T03:54:00.000-07:00

Huck woke up at four thirty this morning. He is suffering teething pains and needed to be fed NOW he shouted at me. So I made his bottle, fed him, and laid him back down where he now sleeps until probably seven or so. I however am not so lucky as to be able to go back to sleep, so I sit up and drink my coffee and think, then I blog.

I am a morning person for the most part. I love getting up early and having a couple of hours to myself where my house is mostly quiet and I can surf the web and think big thoughts and pray and do a devotional. Right now I can feel the cool fall air coming in the windows, which I opened all up as soon as I woke. The sounds I hear are coffee, the gentle hum of my slow cooker, and my grain mill chugging away in the background getting wheat ready for a new loaf of bread.

This morning I'm pondering jumping back into church life. We have had a year now, that we haven't been in a church. There are a few churches that are 'okay' but nothing that makes me actually think we would be in a body of believers, just a body of Churchgoers. However, that doesn't excuse us from going. We are told by God to be in fellowship with the body, and we haven't been for a year now. I'm not sure that these churches really are "the body" but they at least are people who are seeking something. Perhaps that is where we are to start. And I'm sure God will surprise us with a reality we aren't expecting.

l'shana tovah!!

2008-09-30T19:19:00.000-07:00

Have a VERY happy new year!

Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year! Celebrate the sweet life that God has blessed us with!

Tonight we ate apples dipped in honey to remember that our Lord is sweet and wonderful!

Blessings on your new year!

Here is what is coming next

2008-09-30T06:58:00.001-07:00

See if you can figure it out.

I went to the bathroom this morning. The bee LOVES it when I go to the bathroom because I let her watch Television then, and that is pretty much the only time she watches Television.

I eat a prune every morning and have since I was a little little kid. I love them.

I had a box on the counter.

I forgot to put them away.

There were about ten in the box when I went to the bathroom.

Two were left when I came out.

Soooo, I'm thinking I'm not going out with her the next couple of days.....

a mission statement of sorts

2008-09-28T09:35:00.000-07:00

This isn't meant to be just a food blog. It is meant to be more my mommy blog. Perhaps (hopefully) less aggressive than my other blog. I don't want to write about adoption here, or politics, or anything super dramatic. This is where I want to talk about my family, my faith, and most importantly my kitchen. Feeding my family, spiritually and physically, is my most important job. I don't talk about adoption or politics much in my day to day life, so I think that is why they are coming out on the other blog.

But here, this is about my home. My kids. My spiritual journey, which is so intertwined with my nutrition journey.

I don't want this to be just food, but also my walk with Jesus, nurturing my children, and being the wife and mother that God wants from me.

Beautiful morning

2008-09-28T06:03:00.000-07:00

It is Sunday. We don't do church on Sundays for a myriad of reasons, the biggest being we have never found a Christian Community here in Pensacola. But we worship at home on Saturdays, the Sabbath.

But this morning, my house smells, and sounds amazing.

We have fresh coffee, grain milling, an apple cinnamon oven pancake baking away. I can look out my window and see freshly washed diapers fluttering in the cool fall breeze.

The bee is cutting bread dough and rolling it out, laughing as it stretches and springs back. Huck is in his high chair chewing on a maple teether and John is listening to his political shows in the bedroom.

This truly is the good life.

It ain't pretty, split pea soup

2008-09-21T12:29:00.000-07:00

But it is delicious

6 c. chicken stock, vegetable stock or water
2 stalks celery chopped
2 carrots chopped
3 cloves garlic chopped
1 med. onion chopped
2 t. fresh thyme, or 1 t. dried
2 bay leaves
Dash of tobasco sauce or a pinch of cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste
2 1/2 cups split peas

Boil everything hard for thirty minutes, then simmer for an additional thirty minutes. The peas will take different amounts of time depending on their age, how dry they were, even the weather. You'll have to taste test to find out when they are soft. After they are all soft, remove the bay leaves and discard. Blend with your stick blender, or in your blender. For a smoother soup run through a strainer.

It is ugly when it is done, but delicious.

Coffee and Juice

2008-09-20T06:44:00.000-07:00

I'm a coffee snob. We drink two types of coffee in our house Peets about ninety percent of the time, and Illy once in a great while. It is hard to find where we live. Both are amazing coffees, though I'll admit I'm partial to Peets. Having lived a block from the first Peets and spending three awesome years in the Bay area makes me love Peets.

We have two methods of making coffee in our house. The most common is the French Press. We also use an espresso machine, but ours is broken right now, so no espresso for us :( However a french press makes good coffee, and topped with a little fresh cream it is just perfect.

After I make coffee there is usually a bit left in the press. So I put that into an ice cube tray and put that in my freezer. It is great to have frozen coffee on hand for several reasons. First, who doesn't love iced or frozen coffee drinks. Second when you are making chocolate desserts they often call for things like 2 tablespoons strong coffee. And if you have ice cubes on hand, you'll have quick coffee to add to your desserts!

Doesn't that look delightful. Easy too

8 coffee ice cubes
1 c. milk (whole is best here)

Blend. Drink. Now you can add some chocolate syrup or cream or sugar to give it a bit more sweetness. But I love just the coffee and milk, where you can appreciate the flavor of the coffee and the sweetness of the milk. If you would like to add chocolate syrup, I think 1 tablespoon is a good amount. Someday I'll share my homemade syrup recipe.

The other thing I love is Orange smoothies. The bee loves them too. (And she loves the coffee smoothies, but that makes me feel like a bad mom, so not to often!) I've tried this with vanilla yogurt and kefir, and ewww both were awful. We don't have these often at my house because I very seldom even have white sugar in the house, but boy howdy do I love them.

1/2 can orange juice concentrate
1 c. milk
1 t. vanilla
1/4 c. sugar. I do use white sugar here, because brown sugar or honey gives it a funky flavor.
8 ice cubes

Blend until smooth.

eggs, spinach and pesto

2008-09-17T05:02:00.000-07:00

I love pesto. My love of pesto is to the point where I will gladly eat pesto, out of a bowl with a spoon. It isn't low fat by any stretch of the imagination, but it IS very good for you! The fat used is olive oil which is a miracle fat. Not to mention that it has pine nuts in it, (or walnuts if you prefer or can't get ahold of pine nuts) which are full of vitamin E, that is good for your skin and brain. I like a mint and basil mix, but you can use all basil which is delightful too. I usually plant a mint plant when I move in somewhere, and it grows like crazy, so this is a good way to use mint. But if you want pure basil pesto, just omit the mint and double the basil. A pure mint pesto is, intense, but very good on lamb also.

Basic Pesto:
1. cup basil
1. cup mint
1/2 c. parmesian (do not use the stuff from the green can, use real cheese!)
1/3 c. pine nuts toasted
2 cloves garlic (optional, I'm not a huge fan)
pepper to taste
apx 1/3 to 1/2 c. olive oil.

Okay the method is easy. First toast your pine nuts in a dry skillet over med high heat. Stir frequently, and watch VERY carefully as pine nuts will go from toasted to burnt in just a moment. And those things are expensive. Be careful!

Throw everything but the olive oil into your food processor and blend it up until it is like a grainy paste. Then with your food processor on, slowly drizzle the olive oil into the mixture. The final product should be a little thick and should hold the olive oil in, and not leach it out.

Pesto is SO versitle. Toss it with some pasta and chicken and you have a great dinner. Mix it with some mayo and spread it on a sandwich. It is just wonderful

But I like it for breakfast. I saute two cups of spinach with 1/2 of a small onion in some coconut oil or butter. Then fry an egg to over easy and put that on top of the spinach mix. Serve with a couple of tomato slices.

Yum

Our overall food philiosophy

2008-09-16T04:06:00.000-07:00

I used to weigh over three hundred lbs. Yesterday I tipped the scales at 201, which isn't okay with me. So back on my exercise plan. I hate to exercise. I'll never be a size six, but thats okay with me. I just want to maintain health! I will NOT become diabetic again!

Okay, back on topic. I grew up on the Standard American Diet. My mom claims that she cooked for me, but about three nights a week we would have tuna and noodles. Boil a bag of egg noodles, throw in a can of cream of mushroom soup, throw in a can of tuna. Serve. No veggies, no fruit, nothing "real" except the tuna. Its no wonder that I was 310 lbs at 23 years old. I grew up eating like that, nothing fresh, all fake foods. I was even a pepsi drinker from a young age. My mom did breastfeed me for a few years, but that was all jacked up anyways, so it wasn't really the foundation of a healthy diet.

I realized that I had to change my eating habits, and I have to raise my children with better nutritional foundations that I had. I can't do to my kids, what was done to me and have them spending their twenties floundering around looking for what a healthy diet is.

Here is the basics of what we do and don't do in our home now, what I think is the healthiest diet.

Whole foods. I try to have fresh veggies and fruit at every meal. The only veggies that I don't serve cooked from either a fresh or frozen state are green beans and sometimes tomatoes. Perhaps it is my Italian mushy veggie background, or my midwestern upbringing, but I cannot stand fresh or frozen green beans. I like them straight of out the can warmed with butter. But we do try to have these whole fruits and veggies at every meal.

Whole freshly milled grains. Grains that are milled more than 24 hours in advance of cooking and eating lose MASSIVE amounts of nutrients. The oils in them also start to go rancid after a few short days. I also want to make sure that my breads, which are also served at every meal (not always eaten, but always offered) aren't filled with weird stuff. Flour, honey, yeast, milk, water, and salt (sometimes eggs) is it. Lots of different grains too. We eat all sorts of grains from barley, to rye, to wheat, to quinoia, to spelt. I like variety. Though beans aren't a grain, they fit in this section because they combine perfectly with grains to make a complete protein. And they are just yummy. Unless they are pinto beans, then they are gross and I hate them.

Raw dairy products. I think that raw dairy is really important for humans. We drink raw milk, eat raw milk cheese, raw milk yogurt, raw milk keifer (though I haven't made any in a LONG time) However with raw dairy it is VERY important that you know and trust your farmer. Make sure they are practicing clean catch and that their animals are tested for diseases every six to twelve months. Also you want your cows to be primarily grass fed. Grass fed cows produce higher levels of good fats and lower levels of bad ones.

Free range meats. Cows that eat grass. Chickens that eat grass and worms, and the eggs that come from those chickens. Fish that is wild and swims around in the ocean eating normal foods, not penned up in a cage on the coast sucking in all the undiluted pollution and eating fake foods. I think eating meat is a very important part of a healthy diet. I also believe there are some very serious health risks associated with a vegan diets. Of course we as Americans eat far to much meat. We don't need meat with every meal, nor do we need it every day. Learning to incorporate vegetarian meals into my diet has been great!

No pork or shellfish. Actually we try and follow the biblical standards for diet, though this is a new development as I'm feeling called to be more and more Torah observant. I feel like looking at only the new testament and ignoring the old is a grave mistake. God gave us his ENTIRE word, and he never said the NT voided the OT, just that Jesus was the fulfillment of it. I think God gave those laws for a reason, and that reason was to protect our health.

Are you KIDDING ME?!

2008-09-15T06:33:00.000-07:00

Apparently big corn is having problems because more and more people don't want to eat High Fructose corn syrup. "Its fine in moderation" they say. Well, maybe.... But HCFS is void of any nutrients aside from calories, unlike Honey, maple syrup, agave nectar and dehydrated cane juice. It is absorbed into your blood stream very quickly, and causes spikes in blood sugar.

But beyond that it is everywhere. Most Americans eat quite a bit of processed foods, and almost all processed foods have HCFS in it. So if you are eating the Standard American Diet, moderation of HCFS isn't really an option.

2008-09-13T18:09:00.001-07:00

We went to visit a friend of ours today who lives about seventy miles east of us. This friend is who supplies us with milk, and also runs our grain co-op. They have a lovely farm, around twenty acres with cows, chickens, turkeys, ducks, goats, and a defunct garden. They have five sons, all homeschooled, and like me they are passionate about healthy local "real" foods. Grinding grain and making bread is part of everyday life, just as is taking care of the farm and raising animals and food to feed their family. In the next few years they are planning on putting in fruit trees, and expanding their animals and garden.

We were talking about the bible, as they are our "brand" of Christian. Bible believing, verse by verse studying, take it literally and study at home types. Like us they have been very frustrated with the church in America as of late. This seeker friendly mega church milk only body that is all about fluff and media and pleasure, not about really digging into the word of Christ.

So we started to discuss Acts 2 a bit. In the Book of Acts Chapter 2 Jesus has just ascended to heaven, and the church is left behind. Peter gives a pretty cool sermon, then we read what the church was like in verses 42-47

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Do we see anything like this in the American church today? I know I've seen in a few times, heard tell of a few Christian communes or deliberate Christian communities, but for the most part does this picture look like your church? Does it look like your friends, or your church family?

I see a LOT of people in the church who are taking taking taking. They are taking entertainment on sunday morning, they are taking fluffy sermons and doing nothing with them, they are taking part of their tithe and using it to fund their lifestyle.

But do we really gather together, and share everything we have? Do you see how these people EVERY DAY gathered together. They sold their possessions and gave to anyone who had needs. The church was a hippie commune! I can just see them coming together everyday, one would bring a surplus of figs from their tree, another a windfall of grain, and a third some extra oil. They would divide up their bounty with anybody who needed anything, and praise God.

Do we do that in the Christian church today? To often I see the church, myself included, giving their ten percent and not a penny more. We NEED that money you see, to pay our cable bill, or for our cell phones, or the new portable DVD player for our car.

So, the sailor and I do what we can with what we have. We don't live extravagant lifestyles, we live pretty simply. We don't have cell phones, or the newest televisions or the nicest clothes. We live a comfortable lifestyle for sure, perhaps a little to comfortable honestly. As we continually look at ourselves in an effort to make ourselves more like Jesus wants us we realize there is much we can give up in our own lives to help others.

But we have decided on a few long term goals. One is to attempt to live deliberately in a community, especially once he is out of the military. I say after that because it is very very difficult to establish community with people who are moving on in six months. There is a camaraderie for sure, but not the time it takes to develop true community.

We plan on living in an urban setting of sorts, perhaps in a smaller city, but we'll see. We want to live in the city, or a small town, not in the suburbs. We want to raise chickens, fruit and vegetables and share our bounty with those who live around us. We want to be able to practically provide food for people in need, and show the love of Christ in a tangible way. But we hope to have a body of fellow believers living the same type of lifestyle.

When I was a kid the woman across the street had a pear tree. She would let everybody from the neighborhood take their fill of those amazing heirloom pears. We canned for weeks these pears and shared our canned pears back with Mrs. Fanning. Down the street someone had plums, and another person had a huge strawberry patch in the spring. Everybody would share their bounty and because we all had a variety, we all had everything.

That's what we want in our future.

Now we just have to find, or build, our community.

Tortilliaish soup.

2008-09-09T12:26:00.000-07:00

Yeah, tortillaish isn't a word, but whatever.

I love soup. That being said I HATE vegetables. But I don't have a death wish so I eat them as often as I can stand. Being Italian I also like my veggies mushy. Unlike the crazy French who like them tender crisp, us Italians cook our veggies until they are almost mashable. Nothing I can stand worse than crisp tender green beans. Ew.

Okay, so soup gives me a great outlet to use lots of veggies and not dwell on the fact that I'm eating vegetables.

I call this soup tortillaish because it is based on Chicken Tortilla soup, but packed with veggies. I've also used firm tofu chunks and vegetable stock in place of the chicken and chicken stock before and gotten really good results!

Start with good chicken stock. I make my own as often as possible, but sometimes don't have any. I always have a couple of boxes of chicken stock in the cupboard. When you are using homemade chicken stock you ALWAYS want to make sure that it boils for a few minutes to kill off any germies that might have wormed their way in there.

I typically use about 12 cups of stock for this soup because it has lots of stuff in it.

Look at that stocky goodness. Isn't it beautiful. Ooooooooo

Okay so to the stock I add 1 large or 2 small onions,
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 chicken breasts
1 bay leaf
1 bag frozen corn
2 cups salsa
3 T. cumin (I adore cumin)
2 T. chili powder
2 zucchini chunked
2 yellow squash chunked
1 T. oregano, dried is fine here
Salt and pepper to taste
whatever other veggies I have that need to be cooked

simmer for about an hour until the veggies are really tender. Serve with shredded Monterrey jack cheese, sour cream, or avocado chunks (my personal fav) Traditionally it is served with broken up tortilla chips, but I don't like this because it is hard to find good tortilla chips that aren't fried in lard, which we don't eat because it is a pork product, and I don't like the flavor of tortilla chips fried in canola or corn oil.

ETA: I just threw some a can of black beans in there cause it was looking a little thin. OH MY GOODNESS, great addition! I don't like Pinto beans, but perhaps those could work too? I wouldn't go with white beans, to creamy in texture and flavor

a word about honey

2008-09-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

Don't give honey to children under two. Raw or pasteurized. Just don't do it. There is a botulism risk and it could be fatal.

You can find raw honey at most health food stores. If you don't have a local health food store ask around and see if anybody keeps bees that you can buy from. County fairs almost always have a honey competition and you can also contact your county extension office.

For local co-ops check out Local Harvest

Pumpkin Maple Granola

2008-09-04T14:36:00.001-07:00

So I mentioned earlier that the cool breeze made me realize fall is actually going to come. Despite the fact that outside the heat index is 101, and inside it probably isn't all that much cooler, my house smells like cinnamon and ginger and cloves and pumpkin. I love fall and can seldom wait for fall to actually start cooking fall seasonal foods! I usually try to cook in season, but how can you resist pumpkin pie in may. I can't

Ingredients:
4 1/2 heaping cups of rolled oats (not instant or quick cook)
3/4 c chopped pecans
1 c. slivered almonds
1 pint pumpkin, or 1 can of pumpkin, not pumpkin pie filling
1/2 stick of butter, melted and cooled
1/2 t. cloves
1 t. ginger
2 t. cinnamon
1 c. honey
1/4 c. maple syrup
2 t. sea salt
1/2 t. maple extract

A few words on these ingredients. I like organic thick cut oats. It gives a little more umph to my granola. I also make sure that my pecans are raw (and in a few weeks I can start to get them local and fresh again!) Raw almonds are illegal in the U.S. now, so I just get organic almonds. Most years I have my own canned pumpkin, but I didn't put any up last fall, so I use just organic canned pumpkin. Canned pumpkin is an amazing invention and is just as good as fresh in my opinion. It is one of the canned foods that holds its flavor and texture beautifully when canned. We only use organic butter in our house. sometimes I make it myself, but I never cook with homemade butter cause it is just so yummy on bread. Many fats and hormones are stored in fat, so it makes sense that I would want fats that were organic. Also sea salt is good and holds minerals that table or kosher salt doesn't.

Someday I'll blog on honey and how awesome honey is. But for now I'll say this. I use raw, unfiltered, local honey. I also eat a teaspoon every day for allergies. Honey rocks. Pasteurized honey that you get from the store is useless and you may as well eat white sugar. But if you don't have access to raw local honey, go ahead and use the stuff that comes in a bear. Be warned local honey is almost always dramatically cheaper.

So the method is easy. Mix together the oats and nuts in one bowl. Mix together everything else in another bowl until it is very smooth, then pour into the oat mixture and stir until it is well mixed. Spread out into a thinnish layer on a sheet pan or two and put into a 325 degree oven. Depending on your oven and the humidity it should be done in thirty to forty five minutes. It should feel fairly dry, but not brittle.

to store, let cool completely, and then put it in a covered bowl or jar. We use plastic in our house sparingly, so i usually store everything in a mason jar.

Popcorn

2008-09-04T12:01:00.000-07:00

Popcorn with curry, nutritional yeast and olive oil is really yummy.

Just thought you should know.

the nutritional yeast tastes kinda like cheese

a cool breeze

2008-09-04T06:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at my friends farm picking up my grain order there was a cool breeze. Cool enough that I wanted to cover Huck's little legs with a blanket.

While this morning it is already (at 9:00 a.m.) eighty three degrees with a heat index of ninety one, I know that fall is coming. I felt that delightful breeze yesterday, almost like an answer to a prayer.

So now my granola changes from using applesauce and oil as a binder, to a spicier mixture with pumpkin and oil as a binder. I want to try and use a nut oil as a binder sometime instead of canola oil. Olive oil, well that is just nasty with granola.

I'll let you know how it goes with the new granola! Oh sweet fall, come soon!

Questions

2008-09-02T05:08:00.001-07:00

I've gotten quite a few questions about my kitchen and I'll be addressing them as they add up :)

Q: Will you come be my personal chef?
A: Sure! Sounds fun!

Q: Why do you mill your own wheat?
A: Because freshly milled wheat is much healthier than any wheat you buy on the store shelves. First off even "whole grain" wheat on the store shelves is missing part of the grain that is fatty because it will go rancid if it is left out more than about three days. Also A, B, and K vitamins that are in whole grains are destroyed a couple of days after milling. But freshly milled grain tastes much better and is overall cheaper than buying whole wheat from the store. However you have to buy your grain in bulk (usually)

Q: Do you use a breadmaker
A: No, nor will I use a breadmaker. I like to kneed my bread in my kitchen aid mixer or by hand when I'm stressed. If the bee has been having a rough day we can make and kneed bread together and it will calm both of us down. Not only that but I enjoy the feeling of communion with the billions of women who came before me, spending their days kneading bread. It is almost a connection with the past and a less stressful time. I also think that bread tastes better if baked in an open oven and develops a better crust.

Q: Where do you get your wheat?
A: I get my wheat from a Georgian company called Bread Beckers I participate in a co-op and get a small discount. You can also buy whole wheat berries online in bulk at stores like whole foods and online too. Make sure if you are buying online that you are buying "triple washed" berries and know that you aren't going to be finding pebbles in your wheat.

Q: What kind of mill do you use?
A: I use a Family grain mill. I have the hand cranked model, which works great. I can grind about seven pounds of flour in about fifteen minutes, but it is a workout! I got the attachment for my kitchen aid mixer and let my kitchen aid do the work for me, usually. It grinds a very small grind for bread, and will also grind large enough for cracked wheat for cereal. To get the best bread grind, I run the wheat through twice, once as whole berries and once as flour. I also like this mill because of the attachments you can purchase, Meat grinder, oat flaker, and slicer shredder. I'll be able to buy whole oat groats, and make oatmeal fresh for my family! I can't wait! I chose this mill over some of the more expensive models for a few reasons. First it has a hand crank option which could come in very handy should we lose power for an extended period of time. Second it has a kitchen aid attachment, and third it has some great attachments.

Q: Do you use white flour for anything
A: Not really. Whole wheat flour is much healthier for you, and does everything that white flour does, but makes bread a little denser. Yes, I love a beautiful loaf of good white bread with a crunchy loaf. I haven't perfected that with whole wheat yet, and I'm not sure I can, but I'm going to keep trying!

Q: Do you use white sugar?
A: Once in a while. I do have some in the house, unlike white flour, but I don't use it for much anymore. I use Honey most of the time with dehydrated cane juice coming in second. I'll also use maple syrup and agave nectar to sweeten too. I'll make a full post about this eventually.

Stale bread

2008-09-01T12:12:00.001-07:00

I frequently have stale bread in my house as I try to make bread fresh almost every day. There are a few things that I regularly do with my bread, bread crumbs and Panzanella (which I did make today also and will blog about later) and every once in a while I'll make a strata.

I adore strata. A few years ago, a few months before we found out about the bee, the sailor and I went to Tahoe to go skiing. We stayed at this cute bed and breakfast that was run by a ski bum looking for work that would leave him plenty of ski time, and he came up with this strata. While The recipe isn't exactly his, it is a recreation of what he cooked. I've got one very important change, and that is the bread that I use as well as the sweetener. I only use freshly milled whole wheat bread, and honey as a sweetener in this dish and it is delightful

First you want your bread cut into bite sized cubes, and make sure the bread is stale, but not super hard. If you don't have stale bread you can cut your bread up the night before and leave it on a tray on your counter and you'll have stale bread cubes in the morning. Then you need to make a custard base.

Custard is quite possibly the most perfect food ever, and so very versatile. I usually have enough bread to fill a two quart casserole dish, so it usually takes about three large eggs, which usually equals around 3/4 of a cup of eggs. Mix that very will with 3/4 of a cup of milk. then soak your bread until all the custard is absorbed in the bread. If there is any dry or hard bread left, add more custard mix of equal parts of egg and whole milk. You want to make sure your bread is wholly saturated with the custard mixture.

I also sweeten this with honey, usually about 1/3 of a cup of raw wildflower or raw tupelo honey. Tupelo honey is delicious but hard to get outside of the Florida panhandle. It never crystallizes which is kinda nice. The reason I use honey is because it is much healthier for you than white or brown sugar, both of which we almost never use in our home. Though there is nothing in the world that will stand in for white sugar on creme brulee

Okay so you have your sweetened custardy bread and it is looking delightful in a bowl. Then you add a bag of frozen blueberries. I use frozen unthawed blueberries because you can find them year round, they are harvested right as they are ripe, and almost always taste better than the crappy berries you can find in the store fresh, plus they are usually cheaper!

Then add a weird ingredient, but it works so well. Shredded or chunked swiss cheese. Yup, swiss cheese. The kind with the holes and a slightly sweetly sour bite. Aged swiss is best. Today I used Jarlsburg because that is what I had on hand.

Mix it up, and bake in a 2 qt casserole pan on 350 for about 1 hour. Then remove the cover and let the top get all crispy and bubbly. It will rise when it is in the oven and puff up. Serve with vanilla yogurt or heavy cream. Also yummy with some maple syrup.

vegetable curry

2008-08-29T10:25:00.000-07:00

I love curry. I love it. Sadly the east Indian population in the Florida panhandle is non existant and I have had to resort to making Indian flavored food myself.

This dish isn't pretty when it is done, but it is sooooo yummy

I always serve it with long grain brown rice. I like jasmine rice if you can find it, but brown jasmine rice is hard to find! So I just use generic brown rice.

Make your rice however you make your rice.

For the curry. First take about two tablespoons of curry powder or garam masala and toast it in a dry pan until it is fragrant. I usually throw in some cumin also, about one tablespoon. This really brings out the flavor of the curry.

Remove the curry from the pan and set aside. Then saute one onion and four cloves of garlic in some fat. Ghee is the traditional Indian fat, but I don't usually keep Ghee on hand, so I just use canola oil. Rice oil, while hard to find, is really yummy also. Add to the pan whatever vegetables you like. I usually have cauliflower, green beans, and canned tomatoes, as well as garbanzo beans. I like garbanzo beans in this because I like the flavor and texture. They are also a traditional Indian bean.

I almost always use canned tomatoes when I'm cooking something with tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes are delightful, when they are in season and fully ripe. However canned tomatoes are really healthy too and far more delicious than out of season farmed yucky tomatoes. I'm not a big fan of canned foods in general, but canned tomatoes and canned beans have a large place in my cupboard.

Okay, so you add your veggies to the pan (don't drain the tomatoes), then add back your curry powder and then add a can of coconut milk. You can make fresh coconut milk if you want to. I don't. Cook until the veggies are tender and serve over brown rice. The rice and beans in the same meal provide a complete protein too, so this is a great vegetarian option!

Butternut squash soup

2008-08-24T06:28:00.000-07:00

I have a dear connection here. There is a farm in Alabama where I get amazing stuff, for very very low prices. The woman who runs it gave me TONS of blueberries earlier this year, enough to put up two dozen pints of blueberry jam and make a couple of blueberry pies and a few dozen blueberry muffins that are in the freezer to pop in the toaster oven in the morning for a quick breakfast.

Well this woman has butternut squash in season right now. I ADORE butternut squash and hers are a beautiful deep orange inside with a sweet and musky aroma. Oh they are amazing. She isn't organic, but she never sprays any of her stuff, she says she just grows it until it is ready to eat. Well I got fifteen butternut squash a few weeks ago for less than five dollars! And yesterday while I was preparing for Fay (which never came) I roasted them!

The easiest way to make butternut squash is to simply roast it in the oven. Cut the stem off the squash then cut it in half lengthwise. Put it cut side down in a 350 oven until the squash is very tender. I can't give times for this since every squash is different in size and tenderness when you first put it in. But when your house starts to smell delightfully like fall, you know it is about time. Take your squash out when it is tender and let it set for about ten minutes. While it is still really REALLY warm, almost to hot to touch scrape out the meat. It will leave the skin pretty regularly when it is hot, but gets much harder when it is cooled.

Now I had a LOT of squash at this point in a big huge bowl. I took a few cups and put it in the blender with some water and then poured that into ice cube trays for baby food for Huckleberry in a few months. He'll be ready for squash in two or three months (I believe firmly in spoon feeding babies around six to eight months, I've seen the research for only letting them do finger foods and I don't agree with it) I then put 8 pints of squash into the freezer for later use.

But the soup. Oh the soup. I get so excited at this soup every year. I stole the basics for the recipe from the back of the Williams-Sonoma jar of butternut squash puree. But you get a tiny jar of butternut squash for like ten dollars, so forget that.

For the soup:
1/2 stick of butter You can use canola oil, but I don't recommend olive oil as it gives the soup a weird flavor. Butter is best. You can also use bacon drippings which are delightful, but we don't eat pork in our house and for health reasons I don't recommend using bacon drippings
2 cooking apples. I almost always use granny smith because they are very easy to find
1 1/2 large sweet onions. Do not use red, white, or plain small yellow onions. You can use shallots in place of the sweet onions, but I like the sweet onions
Saute all of those until they are really tender, but don't allow them to brown. I usually do them on med low heat for close to half an hour, stirring frequently

Next add the meat from about two squash, apx 4 or 5 cups and stir it all together well

Then add some chicken or vegetable stock. I like to use homemade stock, but if you don't have homemade, the stuff in a box will work. I usually add about 3/4 as much stock as squash. This soup is meant to be thick.

Next you want to add your spices. Salt first, apx 2 teaspoons. Cinnamon apx 2 or 3 teaspoons. Ginger powder 1 teaspoon. And dried sage 2 tsp. I don't like fresh sage here because it never blends well enough later, and I don't like biting into a small piece of sage, to much sage flavor.

Finally add some white wine, about 1/2 of a cup of a medium dry to dry white. Gewürztraminer is by far the best choice as it pairs really well with butternut squash, which is hard to pair. Make sure you are buying a wine you would drink, and drink it with your soup!

Cook it all together for ten to fifteen minutes then blend. The easiest way to blend is with a stick blender. Just put that puppy in there and blend away. If you don't have a stick blender you can also blend it in batches in your blender. If you want to get really super fancy about it use a chinois. But honestly that is overkill for most home cooks.

Now if your soup is a bit thick you might want to add a bit more warm stock to the soup.

Serve topped with some yogurt, or creme fraiche, or sour cream, or even Mexican table cream. I've also topped it with sauteed apples and onions before.