Up North, Over Yonder, and Out of My Mind

Pumpkin Roll Re-do: GAPS style (mostly)

2012-01-18T23:21:00.000-08:00

I'm not very good at GAPS and I make compromises. Dr. Campbell-McBride says that canned pumpkin is bad & that even honey should be used sparingly. Dairy products are all supposed to be cultured at least 24 hours. The reality is, I've got a picky 9 year old who I need to stay out of his seat-mate's lunch. This is my re-work of our much beloved pumpkin roll recipe. This version is more delicate during the rolling process after frosting. It REALLY benefits from freezing before slicing. The kids have all declared this just as good as the regular kind which is wonderful since many of my attempts at baking have been hit-or-miss when using grain-free flours.

In a small bowl, combine:

1 cup almond flour
.5 cups coconut flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon pie spice

1 teaspoon salt

In your mixer bowl, beat together until fluffy

7 eggs

3/4 cup honey

then add

1 small can organic pumpkin

1-2 teaspoons of vanilla

then mix in the dry ingredients until just well combined

Line one jelly roll pan with waxed paper or very well greased parchment paper. Pour the batter in and spread it evenly then bake about 25 minutes.

When the cake is done, pull it out of the oven and quickly turn it onto either a lightly (coconut)floured tea towel or another sheet of waxed paper and roll them up, towel/paper and all. Cool completely on a rack before unrolling to fill.

Frosting:

Whip together in the mixer bowl that you washed while the cake part was baking:

1 8 oz packages of cream cheese
6 T of butter
.5 c honey
1 Tablespoon vanilla
1/2 cup plain full fat yogurt or sour cream

unroll the cake , spread frosting and re-roll without the paper or towel.

Berry Applesauce

2011-12-30T15:31:00.000-08:00

One of my goals for this year is to have less waste coming from our lives. I've gotten into a bad habit of purchasing single-serve organic fillings for the lunch boxes. It's not cheap and it certainly isn't green. Those little throwaway applesauce containers have to add up and each serving costs at least $.60 . The berry variety costs even more.

I had ordered a few boxes of dirt cheap organic cider apples ( $10 for 20 lbs!) . They were keeping OK in my unheated garage but they were not really being used. I also had a bag of the ends of berries picked or ordered for jam making. This week I pulled in the apple boxes, culled the bad ones and then cut about 10-12 lbs worth of the 'iffy' ones- spotty, getting soft on one side but fine on the other, that sort of thing. I left peels on, simply removed bad spots and cores. These I tossed into a pot with the berries and some water and cooked slowly for a full day until it was total mush. Then I let it cool completely.

The next step was to wrangle child labor to run the food mill for me. I had them take turns until all the mush mix was milled leaving just a bit of peel behind. We did a taste test and declared it way too tart (remember- cider apples, not real sweet, plus a berry mix heavy on the cranberries) so I added honey until it was declared good plus a touch of pie spice and cardamom and vanilla.

Once we were all happy with the taste, the applesauce was ladled into regular muffin cups and frozen (also with some excellent assistance from the 'end consumers'). After freezing, the pucks will be popped out of the tins and stored in tupperware in the freezer. When one or two are wanted for lunches, we will just pull them out and pop them into one of our little covered bowls or a small canning jar which will come home again to be washed and used..over and over and over.

Total cost of my apples from Azure, berries, and 1.5 cups of honey was about $12. With spices and gas for the stove, we'll round up to $15 for 52 servings. $.29 per serving plus a whole lot of plastic I'm not sending to the landfill. Now to figure out how to kick my ziploc habit....

100 Lbs of Ground

2011-12-03T02:02:00.000-08:00

Beef. My meat order just arrived from Sitkanak and I now have a total of 100 lbs of ground beef in addition to about 120 lbs of other cuts- all beautiful, flavorful, healthy organic and totally grass-fed. Beef + pig + lamb+ salmon = a freezer bursting at the seams.

When I purchased my beef, I opened the order to some other people at my kids' school. All together we picked up 917 lbs of meat at the airport last week. Several people have said "But what do you do with it all??"

At the moment, shoving it all into the freezer seems like a major accomplishment but I do have a master plan. My plan is designed to maximize freeze space and to address the three major issues of my culinary life: Cooking supper gets old. Packing lunches has gotten even older. I am completely out of steam by 5:30 and more than a touch lazy to begin with. The key is bulk cooking. If you're going to spend several hours in the kitchen, drag all the stuff out and make a huge mess, why not get a lot done? This will be a two to three day project for me which I plan to tackle after Christmas but before my helpers head back to school. Here is what I will be making:

Meatballs - swedish and italian - 22 lbs
meat loaf - 6 lbs
taquitos - 4 lbs
tamales - 4 lbs
taco filling - 4 lbs
homemade hamburger helper - 10 lbs
Hambuger soup - 2 lbs
salisbury steak - 4 lbs
burgers - 14 lbs
chili - 10 lbs
pasties- 4 lbs
Shepherd's Pie Base - 6 lbs

22 lbs of meatballs??? Yes. My kids absolutely love those little Aidells spicy meatballs in their lunches. Nutritionally, they are better than a lot of things normally packed into school lunch boxes but they aren't perfect and they are expensive. I can make them for a fraction of the cost and also have a stock on hand for kid pleasing suppers, potlucks, and church coffee hours. Since I also order my cheese in bulk blocks from Azure, I can even cube it up and freeze little pouches of meatballs and cheese cubes for those lunches. Meatballs also pair with rice spaghetti and tomato sauce or the Swedish ones go with a heap of dilled buttered potatoes or they can become a hot sub or into a crockpot with BBQ sauce and jam and garlic for a favorite finger food without all the chemicals.

Meatloaf is not a huge favorite here and 6 lbs will get me 3 loaves. Enough to be tolerated, not enough to inspire revolt.

Taquitos. My kids love the boxed ones with all the nasty stuff. I discovered that they also love them homemade and that I can make organic ones at home for less than a box at Costco. Browned spiced ground beef with a little sprinkle of cheese for a binder, rolled inside a con tortilla and fried. Once they have drained and cooled, they freeze beautifully. Two make just the right sized lunch entree. I have most of a case of organic (only way to be sure you are getting GMO-free!) corn tortillas in the freezer but I'm going to take a shot at making some as well. We'll need them for the tacos anyway.

Tamales- also good freezers, well liked and I have some masa that needs to be used.

Taco filling- beef, spices, onions, peppers. Pair with some shredded cheese, salsa, maybe a little sour cream and this goes well either in tacos or over re-fried beans.

Hamburger Helper - The 'real thing' is disgusting to me. It tastes like someone sprayed my food with herbicide. Of course, my little guys think it is AWESOME. That happy little hand on the box, powdered cheese, all that salt and sugar and MSG...Mine is essentially browned burger meat which is spiced and sauced. I freeze it all together and mix with rice noodles at meal time.

Hambuger Soup is a lot like stew only easier. I don't do turnips but I do add parsnips. And a nice splash of red wine. I put it all together except for the beef broth and freeze that way. I freeze my broth in 2 cup cubes for efficient use of space and it all thaws and cooks faster this way than freezing in a big block.

Salisbury Steak- steaks frozen in one bag, gravy in another. Speed and portion flexibility.

Burgers- spice them, patty them, divide them with wax paper for faster thaw time.

Chili- no beans because of Miss V's dietary needs. Eat it plain, over rice, with a batch of gluten free corn bread, over corn chips with some shredded cheese....

Pasties- a little meat turnover, sort of like stew in a pie casing. beef, onions, carrots, potatoes, parsnips, herbs and a gravy from the juices baked into a pastry. I use the tiffins as the cutter so I'm sure that they will always fit in the lunches!

Shepherd's Pie Base- beef, onions, tomatoes, spices, & corn. I have a bag of organic mashed potato flakes (which are one of those convenient compromise choices) from Azure. If the base is done, I can have a shepherd's pie bubbling away in the oven in under 5 minutes

Life keeps happening

2011-12-03T02:01:00.000-08:00

I essentially abandoned blogging last spring. We moved and spent many months where my only internet connection was an iphone. Our family has changed- Miss V is home again, MK is out on her own, our oldest daughter is back in state (although nowhere near as close as we would like). Two of the youngest continue to thrive in school, the third has come home to learn. We are selling the huge heavily mortgaged house to our renters and are now living through an Alaskan winter in a much smaller home. In most ways I much prefer this little house in this wonderful neighborhood but having another bedroom would make it much nicer.

Having kids in school has been a very new experience for me and it is interesting how the most unexpected things can serve as impromptu values clarification exercises. I've discovered that I am passionate and adamant about parental rights and consent, that I absolutely do not believe in homework, and that I am ambiguous about public education as a concept. My bureaucracy tolerance is just too low.

Food will again feature prominently here. I make no promises to blog daily or even to do that much better. I simply have the connection now so that, when I have something to say, I can.

In which I burn my nuts and other GAPS misadventures

2011-03-21T23:51:00.000-07:00

First off: aren't we all glad, given the title, that this isn't a guest post by His Majesty?

T2 and I have embarked upon the GAPS diet. We're a few weeks late getting to it thanks to my ability to acquire multiple illnesses simultaneously. Now that we have started, I'm ready to be done. This thing is a huge pain in the rear. Giant. I suspect that it would be so much easier if it were just me but T2 requires a lot more thought and effort to feed, especially in the packed lunch department. I'm pretty sure that I'm feeding us both more honey (the only allowable sweetener) than is ideal but I don't know if we could do it otherwise.

Today for lunch he took meatballs, hot beef broth with some gingered carrots, apple sauce, cheese cubes, laraballs, yogurt with honey, and a hard boiled egg which he didn't eat. Tomorrow is going to look a lot like today....

The 'laraballs' are my attempt to create a GAPS allowed treat for him at a reasonable cost, something like a Lara Bar. When I first attempted them, I soaked my nuts like you are supposed to. Then I promptly burnt them while trying to get them dried out. For round two, I skipped the soaking and drying and just went for it. The results are OK but I think I'll do things differently next try.

For starters, I just couldn't get the mix smooth and T2 is not a fan of the crunchy bits. Next time I'm going to soak them, drain and rinse, and then process them before dehydrating (which I will do with a dehydrator and not my too-hot oven). I'm hoping that will give me something a little closer in texture to a fruit chewy when I'm done.

Miss V is home for a few weeks to help me get the house done, spring break was better than I feared but that might be because I was too sick to be up for a lot of it, and I am profoundly ready to see leaves on the trees. Anybody need to buy a 5 bedroom house with a spectacular view ?

A message from the nearly dead...

2011-03-14T15:20:00.000-07:00

OK, not literally. I just feel like it. I, being multi-talented, have managed to get bronchitis, a sinus infections, and the beginnings of pneumonia all at the same time. The antibiotics are working like teamsters during a slow-down - in other words, not very fast and not very effectively. Back to the doc today or tomorrow for something new.

I was supposed to feel all better after three days so a dear friend came over Saturday to help with the house stuff. After we sorted the stuff in the garage loft (I sat in a chair and made decisions, she did actual work), we dropped off a bunch of "treasures" at Salvation Army, and came home and cooked supper I was exhausted. that is a ridiculously low amount of actual work performed by me to be wiped out !

We're getting geared up to begin the GAPS diet here (late). I got 2 quarts of gingered carrots started and a 1/2 quart of beets fermenting with some cardamom. Wednesday is the milk run so I'll go out and load up on fresh milk for making lots of 24 hour yogurt. I did a small batch of beef stock and determined that I was going to have to put back a LOT more of that stuff. Off to Mt McKinley to fetch bones tomorrow. I just wish I had a good source for chicken. The ones I bought locally in the fall are all still in my freezer- but they are still there because it tastes like fish & that is kind of icky. Other accomplishments: 3 bags of meat balls and "meat muffins" in the freezer and the beginnings of a plan for packing lunches for T2 who will be joining me on this quest for improved health.

There should be more. This should be interesting. I should say something deep and meaningful about the horror in Japan. Wit just isn't coming through the brain fog. sorry.

The Giveaway

2011-02-14T23:41:00.000-08:00

I've decided to give you both something! But since I haven't made them yet, you'll have to wait to be surprised. Congratulations. Christine- tell me what color your kitchen is?

Raised Beds

2011-02-14T23:39:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here on Valentine's Day, before a summer in which I won't be gardening because we'll (hopefully) be building, and thinking about interesting recycled raised beds for: Gardening! I promised myself that I would not so much as peek at a Fedco catalog- and I haven't!- but it never occurred to me that I could sneak in obsessive garden design as part of 'siting' the house....

I found this while wasting time on pinterest and loved it. It's an old metal filing cabinet!

That started me thinking that perhaps old fridges could be used similarly. It seems that if one lined the inside in wood to keep the plastic nasties from leaching into the soil that the insulation would be perfect in our harsh climate. Covered in windows, they would be lovely cold frames...filled with compost, they could be great all-weather bins. There are so many of these dead fridges sitting at the dump. Old Dead chest freezers could also be great for people like me who have some physical limitations. HM would surely be delighted at the idea of NOT having to build something else- there's only a house, barn/garage, greenhouse, chicken house, and guest cabin on his list- and this appeals to the cheap hippie in me. (Yes Anna- I've admitted it publicly!)

Update: So this isn't an original idea. Here's a video of a guy using it!

100th post and other milestones

2011-02-04T21:58:00.000-08:00

100! I should give something away. Hmmm...but what? I don't know! It's a mystery! Leave me a comment and I'll put you in a drawing to win an as-yet unknown something nifty.

Other milestones:

Miss V is moving out next week. She's the first kid who has left on really great terms and it's wonderful and still a lot sad for us in a pathetically selfish kind of way.When did I get so old? How will I function without her? Who will run to the store for me? I'm going to miss her like crazy but it's a very good thing for her. This will leave me with zero teenagers in my house. First time in well over a decade that's happened.

T2 is 8. My baby. I feel old and yet delighted. The big party is tomorrow and then I'm off birthday duty for quite a while. Woo hoo.

HM managed to plan a training so that he's gone for Valentine's day AND my birthday. I don't mind the Valentine's part so much and I'm trying to look at the positive side for my birthday: I won't be driving him into Anchorage first thing in the morning to leave that day. I think I'll take myself out for breakfast after I drop kids at school and then over to the yarn store.

There's more but my brain is flaking out tonight.

A Link I Love

2011-01-23T01:31:00.000-08:00

A quick post since I ought to be sleeping already....

Rythm of the Home

I've just begun to dig through it. Lots of interesting stuff there!

The secret to perfect coffee

2011-01-20T11:43:00.000-08:00

It still eludes me but I think I'm getting closer. My local favorite place in the whole world to go for coffee is The Red Beet, newly opened on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway. Everything there is based on the philosophy of FLOSS cuisine: Fresh, local, organic, seasonal, and sustainable. I haven't had anything that wasn't great but the cafe chocolat is my addiction. It is so amazingly smooth - no cigarette butt aftertaste! - and strong and just wonderful.

Its so good that my husband- who does not flirt- was even flirting with the waitress for tips on how to get our French Press coffee to taste like their french press coffee. The three big take-away tips were:

1. Use more grounds. A lot more grounds
2. After you put your grounds and water in, stir before you put the lid on
3. Throw a little bit of fresh beet in with the grounds before you add water.

Then wait 4 minutes and press. Wow.

Our home coffee has gotten so much better. I think I need a different bean to achieve perfection - not to mention the recipe for that lovely cinnamon-laced chocolate sauce also served with the cafe chocolat. Breakfast there tomorrow with a friend before a trip into Anchorage for the Lands End Sale and some thrifting and maybe a new french press.

Mr Bento Giveaway

2011-01-18T23:53:00.000-08:00

I've been lusting after one of these for a while and now my friend Laura at Hey What's For Dinner Mom is giving one away. Check it out here. You can even enter. If you have to. I guess.

House Goals from the Peak Oil Princess

2011-01-07T00:52:00.000-08:00

I read Nesting Place (she's having a linky party about home goals for the new year) periodically because I enjoy reading about projects on the cheap that actually look good. My own home is just not so 'together' . I'd like it to be but I have some different interests and priorities than 'normal' people. I get excited about wood cook stoves and grain bins, pull down drying racks and compost containers. Of course I want my house to be lovely but I'm really wanting it to 'work'- even when the power is out or the power is just too expensive. My taste runs less to Architectural Digest and more towards Backwoods Home. I drool over the kitchen at Granny Miller (but my trim would be painted a nice deep delft blue. Or maybe turquoise...

That said, I now need to turn my house into a lovely, polished, decidedly upscale showplace in the next 90 days on virtually no budget so that it is ready to list and sell quickly at a good price.

We need to:

Replace the flooring through the main dining area
Re-do and paint all the trim and doors upstairs
Finish painting all the trim and doors downstairs
Replace the downstairs/ on stairs carpet
Replace the kitchen counters and sink/faucet
Rehab the cabinets
Put fresh paint on the walls
update some of the world's ugliest light fixtures
Do something about the sad, sad upstairs powder room
replace the front door
pressure wash the outside and re-seal the deck
Declutter ruthlessly
Stage and decorate

That last one is the one that worries me most. I am generally plagued with indecision. Hopefully I'll get it right so that we can sell out quickly to more genteel folks and get our little cabin built quickly!

The idea is that 2011 will become the year that sees us really, totally debt free. Praying that its so!

Back on the Lunch Wagon

2011-01-04T00:59:00.000-08:00

Christmas break was lovely. At least until the 1st. Then T1 and T2 apparently decided that they had had entirely enough of this being home silliness and declared war on their mother's sanity. Tomorrow I get to send them off to school again and I think it's safe to say that we are ALL delighted. There are just two things I haven't missed about school: 7 AM wakeups and lunches. I'd gotten lazy about lunches anyway, using a lot more processed and packaged food than I wanted because it's just so easy.

Fortunately, one of the kids' Christmas gifts was a tiffin and custom made tiffin carrier. Not only do these little beauties allow me to pack lunch with not a single scrap of plastic or tin foil, they are so cute that they inspire me to come up with new things for lunch. So for the inaugural tiffin packing I sent:

In the top layer:
Homemade blackberry yogurt in the little mini cup
sea salt kettle chips
a sprinkling of sundrops (aka hippie M & Ms)

In the center:
mini sandwiches of greek seasoned pork meatballs on 9 grain rolls with cheater's tzatziki, orange pepper strips and red leaf lettuce

On the bottom:
an orange, cut into 8ths
tropical carrot salad

all in all, I think it's a decent lunch. I get them to eat the things that are important to me (raw local dairy, organic local meat, whole grain bread, fruit, lacto fermented veggies) and they get the foods they think are cool and/or yummy (chips, mini sandwiches, chocolate). Do I know what I'm packing the rest of the week? Uh. No.

There are no pictures of my gorgeous packed tiffins because my camera is dead and I've been hoarding my coin to pay to have the roof repaired after the wind storm. There are pictures of the carriers though! The were made for me by a friend who does this for a living and would gladly make one for you too. Rachel does beautiful work so check out her etsy store if you're in need of a wonderful, one of a kind bag or tiffin carrier of your very own.

My kids love them. They were REALLY excited about them. T1's (top) thrilled him because it was Fish! and the water bottle holder was FISH EGGS! Just like the ones we caught and processed this summer!! Only a little Alaskan boy would be excited about this. T2 loves his little hedgehogs (he also got a tiny stuffed hedgehog in his stocking) and SCS was clearly pleased in her quiet way with her not-kiddy bag. When I initially told Rachel what I wanted, I was planning to purchase the tiffins from Happy Tiffin and was going with a bigger size. When I got to check out, the combination of the higher price and spendy shipping sent me looking again. I found a price I was happy with at Natural Abode but the size was 1/2" smaller in diameter. It turns out that the extra space is actually great- it gives me room to pack them a small plate, utensils, and a napkin. I wish now that I had ordered the bamboo utensil set. Maybe later.

What's going in your kids' lunches this month?

Tropical Carrot Salad

serves 3 kids for lunch with a little leftover for a mom snack

1 cup shredded lacto fermented carrots (or regular shredded/grated carrots)

1/3 cup mayonaise

1 T dried currants (my children are raisin-hating freaks- normal folks use raisins)

about 1/4 cup pineapple bits with a little juice

if you didn't use the lacto fermented gingered carrots, add a little ginger and some salt. if you did, add a dab of honey.

Mix it all up and serve.

Easy Giving

2010-12-18T21:26:00.000-08:00

My friend Laura wrote a post about my pumpkin rolls and about her personal canned food drive. For every comment left in that post, she's going to donate a can of food to our local food bank. With the terrible wind and low temps, utilities bill are going to rise and put even more of a squeeze on budgets. Leave a post and help stock the food bank for those in need!

Best Husband in the Whole Wide World

2010-12-15T21:58:00.000-08:00

See- I promised you a shiny happy post!

I am married to, hands down, the best guy possible. Yes, he has his faults and during a certain phase of the moon I can enumerate them colorfully in three languages. But in the past 24 hours he has proven that mostly I'm a whiner. Except for that "doesn't listen to me thing"- that one is valid.

Last night in the wind storm, our roof started coming off. Apparently the guy who installed it didn't feel the need to use more than two screws per panel along the bottom edge and we're gusting to 75 here. So the metal roofing started to come loose at the bottom, blow up, and sheer off in places. In other places it just flapped up and down all night long. Who gets on clothes and goes out in the dark with a wind chill of 15 below zero to see what is happening? My hero. Who later today climbed a 30 foot ladder to install screws to prevent further destruction and another all-night thunder session? Same guy. Who then took Miss V to work (while I cooked supper without power) and then came home to figure out which battery in our stupid interconnected smoke alarms was causing them all to go off? Yes, him. To finally cement his super fantasticalness, he went back out to pick up both older girls because the car was out of the garage (power outages make automatic door openers very manual) and he was sparing me from the cold and the wind.

There was help today in the from our wonderful deacon who quietly takes excellent care of all of us (even from a snowcat on the hillside!) and Wilbur who brought the ladder and held it. Many thanks to you both.

I really can't ask much more for my daughters than that they find men like their father.

Failed Adoption

2010-12-15T01:04:00.000-08:00

Warning: This is not a shiny happy post about Christmas cookies or Advent wreathes. I'll try to get to that next week when things are (hopefully) calmer.

So I mostly don't blog about kids and adoption and adoption issues. And even now, I'm not going to run through the litany of reasons why one of our adoptions has failed so totally. I'm just going to say right out here in public that it has. Debra Gray talks in Attaching In Adoption about adoptions that have failed but still exist in a legal sense. They are more common than you would ever dream. Most parents who have lived through it just don't talk about them. The kids grow up and move out, everyone is relieved, and questions from others are answered in vague ways. The kids find a series of new parents who are sure that they can succeed where others failed. The new parents judge the legal parents as selfish, cold hearted, and cruel. At least until they are in the position of finding themselves lied to, manipulated, stolen from, and generally used. But when they start setting firm personal boundaries, it all blows up and a new set of kind strangers is found.

As miserable as the entire scenario is, there is a great deal of relief when everyone finally calls a spade a spade and the pretending can stop. We're there. It's sad and yet, it's a gift. The freedom to look reality in the eye and just deal with it instead of maintaining a polite fiction and having every (supposedly) pleasant event in the cycle of the year overshadowed by guilt and ugliness is a bittersweet kind of joy and I am grateful for it.
I am grateful for the people who are currently and will in the future designate themselves substitute parents for the extremely damaged people with whom I'm unable to handle any relationship. I wish them all well- happiness, health, prosperity, salvation, a complete renewal and a joyful life. I just have to admit that they must have that life away from me and mine. One may forgive the person who harms without wanting them across the table every holiday. Some people can manage more but I'm not that special. I need to keep myself sane and healthy and fully functional to raise the kids for whom we are still responsible- and to protect those kids from negative influences or from being victimized.

If you know me (or the kids in question) and you just don't get it, consider reading some blogs where other parents have the courage to lay it all out there. Cindy has been doing this longer and on a larger scale than I have and it's nice to know that I'm not the only one out there with PTSD- she's just nicer than I am.

Gobble Gobble

2010-11-27T22:03:00.000-08:00

I survived Thanksgiving and it was much better than it might have been thanks to an invite from wonderful friends. HM and Miss V were both gone and it fell in the middle of what ended up being the longest weekend in the history of ever. (9 days people! and to think , I used to homeschool....) Good food, good company and pies...not to mention the Serbian Anarchist Raspberry Wine (not mine - no Serbs in the family). The previous year's vintage had been compared unfavorably to turpentine and I was one of only a few willing to try it. " A fruity insolent bottle with hints of berry, watermelon, and lighter fluid" It was much improved by the addition of a little orange juice. Note to self: get this boozemaking thing down well before the apocalypse. The middle of a global collapse is no time to be without the makings for a smooth martini.

Yesterday I ventured out in search of a screaming deal on a fake tree. It eludes me still. I did pick up a couple sleds for T1 & T2 and fuggs for Este' plus the yarn for T1's much coveted pointy hat (T2's was completed last Sunday but the ice storm stood in the way of the acquisition of necessary supplies). After all that, I just couldn't face any more and we came home. Today we ventured out again for Volvo parts, skinny jeans, a hoodie, and a small costco run. The Volvo Doctor confirmed that I totally scored with my beloved 240 wagon- always gratifiying to have that sort of thing confirmed by an expert. He also liked my bumper stickers!

Having Miss V gone is kinda sad. I miss her face. However, she's having a wonderful time and I'm very glad of it.

Soaked Biscuits

2010-11-22T17:20:00.000-08:00

sorry folks- no pictures. The camera is dead and a new one isn't in the budget this week.

Last week I rode out to the farm to show my friend Shelley the ropes of making the milk run for our cow share co-op. She's a biologist by training and shares my interest in nutrition and traditional foods. To be totally honest, I have resisted the whole soak-your-grains thing. I tried it once, made bread like a door stop and went right back to grinding fresh and baking immediately. But on the ride Shelley told me about a guy who is a serious scientist and working on issues of the neurobiology of fat metabolism and other interesting and related stuff & convinced me that I should give grain soaking some more effort. I'm sure that I won't be doing it all the time- it takes a lot more prior planning and I draw the line at Christmas baking. Soaked whole grain sugar cookies just sound too gagtastic to contemplate seriously - not to mention sort of pointless. Still for daily fare, I'm looking for the best nutrition I can manage.

To inaugurate my soaked baking experiments I decided to try Jenny's Fluffy Soaked Whole Wheat Biscuits only mine are decidedly non-lenten. Yes I know that it's advent but my family is much more likely to eat whole wheat anything made with lard and real buttermilk. If this bothers you, pray that the angel of vegan cooking is sent to visit all of us! Not only did I fail to soak 8 hours (5 was my limit - people were hungry), I altered the recipe. They are good. Really good. I may not bother to cook supper.

2 1/2 cups of whole wheat pastry flour (I used a fresh ground mix of whole wheat, spelt, and kamut, sifted 4 times to remove the bran)
6 tablespoons non-hydrogenated lard and/or raw butter
3/4 cup of real buttermilk - or a similar quantity of milk with whey or yogurt and water
1 tablespoon lemon juice or raw apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt

Dump the flour into a medium size bowl. Using a pastry cutter, or a fork and knife with a cutting motion, cut in the palm oil or coconut oil into the flour. (or use the food processor!) When the fat is the size of peas or smaller, you are done. Add the milky liquid, and mix in until just combined. Leave overnight at room temperature, well covered. This mixture will be wetter then your average biscuit recipe. This is so we can more easily mix in the salt and rising agents the next day.

Please go to Jenny's version for good pictures of the rest of the process.

I need to find a good loaf that my kids will eat, which makes good packable sandwich and isn't sourdough (they hate it).

What the heck is interesterified oil and why is it in my tortillas?

2010-11-22T15:14:00.000-08:00

I was in Fred Meyer last week picking up some things for school lunches & I needed tortillas for black bean and pumpkin burritos. There were no tortillas in the organic section but I frequently buy non-organic tortillas frozen at Costco so I headed to the 'regular' part of the store. I located the tortillas and began reading labels. Since our government refuses to allow the peons to decide for ourselves whether or not we want our corn genetically modified I had to assume that all the corn, corn meal and corn flour included was GMO. There were the usual unfortunate cast of industrial food players- partially hydrogenated oil, additives, preservatives, artificial flavors, corn syrup solids - but then I noticed something new: interesterified oil. I didn't know what it was and I wasn't going to experiment on my kids without some serious research. I ended up finding some minimally acceptable tortilla's in the fridgie section (white flour, safflower oil, salt) and went with those. Still not great but handmade tortillas were not in the cards that night.

After a week of having my life go swirling into crazy land (Miss V leaving for a trip, school stuff, big auction, nutso acting out and drama, knitting a stripey elf hat for T2) I finally got time to sit down and read up on this stuff. Yuck. I think I'll pass, thanks. The last thing I need is a new frankenfat that raises blood glucose.

Here are several links on the subject. All more comprehensive than my description.

here

or here

or here

or maybe this one

Really?

2010-11-10T12:43:00.000-08:00

This video, entitled "Stop Not Paying Attention to Things" is fantastic as it portrays how ridiculous we've all become about technology- until it gets to the part where it asserts that selling us another phone will rescue us from our phones! As they say in the commercial itself: really?

Instead of one piece of overpriced technology 'rescuing' us from our previous overpriced pieces of technology, why don't we all just put.down.the.darned.phone!!!! unplug, disconnect. When you sit down to a meal and you know that all the really core people in your life are safe and well, just turn off the ringer. Light a candle and breathe. Talk to each other, Make something, sing something.

I'm thinking about my internet use (too much) and that advent is a perfect time to unplug, slow down, and draw the whole family inward. The question is: how much do I need to maintain the blog, volunteer commitments, and things like banking and bill pay & how much is mindless entertainment? I guess we'll find out. An hour a day?

The Feast of St Martin

2010-11-08T22:13:00.000-08:00

Today I went in to school & took a friend to see the place and to be present in T1's class as they got to light their lanterns, eat their traditional breads, and sing the songs of the feast of St Martin. This was a part of their German language and culture class& the other kids will get to do it later in the week. T2 has it tomorrow and I think SCS has it Wednesday.

The mom who had volunteered to bring the breads had a baking fail, something with which I am all too familiar of late, so I ran to Three Bears and bought 28 mini-Danishes. They certainly weren't the traditional pretzel or goose shaped breads but they made children happy and hey: Denmark is next to Germany. I briefly contemplated croissants instead (St Martin was technically French) but they were more expensive and I knew the kids wouldn't like them nearly as well. Everyone left happy.

Since I have had recent experience with total baking disaster, I resolved to not dally in making the breads for T2s class tomorrow. If I were to totally mess up I thought I should at least have enough time to go to the store. Miss V assembled the dough for me while I took T1 to our friendly neighborhood wood working priest for some help finishing the birthday present Mom had messed up (and Fr. C assured me that the nails in the kit were just way too big and it wasn't really me. I think he was just being nice but I'll take it!) She used the recipe for Finnish Pulla in Baking with Julia and it worked beautifully and tastes lovely. Recipe at the bottom.

Each class gets their own little celebration as part of their German class. They have all made lanterns, learned some songs, and heard stories about both the man and the traditions. But they were not going to get the full experience of walking in a group with their lanterns on a cold evening with the fellowship of family, friends and neighbors. Then some brilliant person had the idea that we could hold a completely optional event outside of school so that anyone who wanted to do it, could. Wednesday evening as dark falls a group will walk a path lit by luminaries into the woods by Finger Lake. Children will carry the lanterns they made and sing the songs they learned and we will end at a bonfire where the story of the life of St Martin will be told. I'm super, duper excited.

The recipe follows. I shamelessly copied and pasted the recipe that Kellypea at Sass & Veracity painstakingly typed in. She has pictures of the process and video so check out her post for helpful tips. You'll notice that my braid is just a touch lumpy looking. After I cut out the geese I took all the scraps, smooshed them together and made the ropes for the braid of that.Normally it would be all smooth and pretty but I needed geese ! Also, the 24 small geese and 1 large loaf are the result of a doubled recipe. I sprinkled the geese with sugar (Dehyrdrated cane syrup crystals) after the egg wash and their eyes are currants. I found that poking the currants in with the tip of the knife gave the little goosy faces a less deformed look.

Finnish Pulla from Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan

1 c. milk
1 T active dry yeast
1/4 c. warm water (about 110 degrees F)
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1 tsp. crushed cardamom seeds (about 7 pods)
1 tsp. salt
2 lg. eggs, slightly beaten, at room temp
4-1/2 to 5 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
4 oz. unsalted butter, melted
1 lg. egg beaten with 1 T milk, for glaze

Heat milk in a small saucepan until small bubbles are visible around the rim of the pan. Remove from head and let cool to between 105 and 115 degrees F.
In the large bowl of your Kitchen Aid, whisk yeast into the warm water and let sit for about 5 minutes or until yeast is dissolved and creamy.
Whisk in milk, sugar, cardamom, salt, and eggs at medium speed.
Switch to the hook attachment and add 2 c. flour, beating until smooth, occasionally scraping around the bowl to incorporate all the flour.
Add the melted butter, and then keeping count as you go, add flour 1/2 c. at a time until the dough is stiff, but not dry. (My dough took 4-1/2 c. flour)
Cover and let the dough rest for about 15 minutes before proceeding.
To knead the dough, either use your machine on medium speed until dough is satiny -- OR -- turn dough out onto a lightly floured counter and knead until it is smooth and satiny, about 10 minutes.
Shape the dough into a ball and place in a lightly oiled bowl making sure the top is oiled. Cover with plastic and let rise at room temp until doubled in bulk -- about 45 minutes to 1 hour.
After dough is done with the first rise, line a baking pan at least 14 " long with parchment. Then oil a work surface. The surface should be cool.
To shape the dough, turn it out of the bowl and briefly knead it to deflate it. Divide it into 3 pieces and roll each piece into a rope about 36 inches long. Braid the three ropes pressing the ends together and tucking them under the loaf. Lift the braid onto the parchment.
Cover the braid lightly with plastic that has been lightly oiled or with a kitchen towel. Let rise at room temp until puffy, but not doubled about 45 minutes.
Brush egg glaze over the bread.
Bake the bread in a preheated 375 degree F oven on the center rack for about 20 to 25 minutes until golden. Let cool on a rack until room temp.

Pumpkin Rolls - updated with pictures!

2010-11-05T14:06:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have noticed my obsession with pumpkin rolls. I start thinking about them in August and if I weren't too lazy to bake every other day, I would happily eat them for breakfast 3 or 4 times a week.

Sunday is T1's birthday so today he needed birthday celebration treats for school. The last birthday child had brought blueberry muffins and,the school being a sort of crunchy health food kind of a place where we're asked to bring treats that don't sugar them up too much, I was thinking pumpkin muffins. Matthew requested pumpkin rolls instead.

My last batch were done with fresh ground whole wheat flour and the texture was not nice. It would have been better if I'd sifted a few times but still- grainier than I wanted. I also have concluded that I don't like powdered sugar. It tastes like chlorine to me. So this time I tweaked the recipe and am really pleased with the results. When you look at the picture, you see some slices at the top of the platter are much prettier than the rest. Those are the ones from the frozen roll of the previous batch. If you freeze these and slice them frozen they will be much, much prettier.

In a small bowl, combine:

1.5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon pie spice

1 teaspoon salt

In your mixer bowl, beat together until fluffy

6 eggs

2 cups succanat or organic cane sugar crystals

then add

1 small can organic pumpkin

1-2 teaspoons of vanilla

then mix in the dry ingredients until just well combined

Line two jelly roll pans (the big cookie sheets with a side on them) with waxed paper or very well greased and floured parchment paper. Pour the batter in and spread it evenly then bake about 15 minutes.

When the cakes are done, pull them out of the oven and quickly turn them onto either a lightly floured tea towel or another sheet of waxed paper and roll them up, towel/paper and all. Cool completely on a rack before unrolling to fill.

Frosting:

Whip together in the mixer bowl that you washed while the cake part was baking:

3 8 oz packages of cream cheese
1/2 lb of butter
1 cup succanat or cane sugar crystals
3 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 Tablespoon vanilla
1/2 cup buttermilk or sour cream

unroll the cakes, spread frosting and re-roll without the paper or towel. Cut off the ends to make it look prettier and eat the 'defective' end slices with a cup of tea for the baker!

These freeze beautifully. I should do several more for an emergency coffee hour stash but we always seem to eat them.

The FDA did not approve this post

2010-11-04T23:24:00.000-07:00

Lord Love a Duck!!!! In the whirling craziness of an Alaskan summer, I thought "Well, I'll spend a lot of time sitting and relaxing in the winter". What was I smoking? There are kid's projects, performances, wants, need and trips; Christmas gifts that need to be done; teenager sewing projects that turn out to need more mom help because she chose the fabric specially knit by the devil himself to make a saint swear.

In addition to making progress on the cute purple dress of the fabric of eternal despair, I also managed to make butter today. This isn't terribly unusual or difficult but, for a change, I remembered to weigh it all so that I could figure out how it compares in price to the organic or Kerry Gold butter from Costco. There was a nagging worry in the back of my head that I might be making the world's most expensive butter. Every few weeks, I get a gallon of cream from my cow share and just make it all into butter. At $16 a gallon, that's some expensive butter for just a pound or so.

Fortunately, I found today that my gallon of cream produces the equivalent of 3 boxes of Kerry Gold (3 8 oz bricks per box = 4.5 lbs total) plus 1/2 gallon of buttermilk So $16 of cream made me $24 worth of butter plus buttermilk. It's nice when better nutrition costs less! When we lived outside I met a guy who was selling contraband blackmarket raw butter for $10 per 8 oz container- and selling out every week. Bless him- it warms the cockles of my cranky little Libertarian heart. All that free enterprise and free choice and personal responsibility and farmers making a decent living without a subsidy in sight!

To make butter:

Equipment-
I use my Kitchenaid and break the gallon into 3 batches. You need your mixer bowl, a big bowl to drain the buttermilk into and a bigger bowl to wash the butter; the whisk attachment for the mixer; a mesh strainer; salt; paper towels or good, clean, fine linen; parchment paper.

pour about 1/3 of a gallon of the cream into your mixer bowl with the whisk attachment. Turn it on to about 7 and let it run. First you will have whipped cream. Let it keep going past the whipped cream stage until it breaks and separates into clumps of butter and liquid. Pour the contents of the mixer bowl into the strainer with another bowl underneath. The stuff that runs into the bowl is buttermilk. The butter solids now in the strainer need to be 'washed'. Dump them into your bigger bowl and run cold water over it and swish/squish the butter around in the water . Pour it all back into the strainer.

Next take the butter out of the strainer and squeeze it to push the water out of the fat. A last squeeze in a paper towel pulls out more. When you've got all the water out that you can get, salt your butter lightly and roll it into a log and wrap in parchment paper.

Repeat this process with the other 2/3s of the cream. I put two of my logs of butter into a gallon ziploc bag and keep them in the freezer, the third goes into the fridge for use.

If I had hogs or chickens to feed scraps, I would add my butter rinse water to the scraps to really milk every calorie and nutrient out of the cream I buy. Sigh. Soon. Hopefully this time next year instead of complaining about having to plow myself I'll be complaining about having to feed and water in the snow. And a few years past that I'll have been forced to find something new about which to whine since my beautiful New England style barn will be attached to the house, saving me from ever needing to get my dainty little feet snowy.

It's all my fault

2010-10-25T18:10:00.000-07:00

The snow is dropping in fat white flakes. I had hoped for another year where we dodged the white bullet until November but today I opened my big fat mouth & suggested that HM get on with getting the Christmas lights up since next time he's home it will surely be snowy. He got out the ladders and started laying out the lights but then we had to get to school to finish a project there and retrieve kids - and of course the flakes began to fall. So I officially apologize to all my Alaskan friends. It's all my fault.

Chard in Lard

2010-10-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

Tonight's supper was certainly not a Meatless Monday but, since we try to do our meatless meals on Wednesdays and Fridays I'm going to skip the side dish of guilt. That is what Lent is for...

The whole menu was roast lamb with garlic, rosemary, thyme, and marjoram; baked potatoes; roasted acorn squash; green salad; and chard in lard. If you are one of the dozen people who regularly read my blog, you may recall that I have something of a love affair with lard.

This is a super simple side dish, loaded with nutrients and flavor.

1 bundle of fresh organic red or rainbow chard
1 puck of lard (about 3/4 of a cup)
salt
a clove of garlic, pressed or finely minced
a little butter to finish

wash and dry your chard, cutting off the biggest, woodiest pieces of stem then chopping it coarsely (I lay mine out on the cutting board all stacked up and hack it about every 2-2.5 inches)

melt your lard in a large skillet over medium flame. When the lard is melted, toss in the chard and let it cook until well wilted. Then add the garlic and salt. You want the garlic to cook but not burn. pop a pat of butter on top and serve hot.

Honestly, sometimes I make this just for me and eat the entire bundle. It's so, so good.

Gnocchi with Squash & Porcini

2010-10-18T21:44:00.000-07:00

This is one of my "Failed to Plan" meatless favorites. Be warned: It takes advantage of a processed item- ready made gnocchi. As processed foods go, it certainly doesn't fall into the same category as something like Spaghetti-O's but it does come in a box and it does have a few iffy ingredients at the bottom of the list. One can make gnocchi from scratch and freeze them and, perhaps, on a day where I have an abundance of energy and the urge to be covered in flour I'll stock up on some. I've done it before and I love them but the work load and mess factor can get out of control. Maybe I should try again now that I don't feed 11 people every night and see if it's as bad as I recall.

All the kids love this, the squash hating husband even likes it. It's creamy and cheesy - what's not to love?

To feed 7:

3 boxes packaged gnocchi
1 bag frozen organic cubed butternut squash, thawed and drained
4-6 T butter
1/2 cup cream
3 T porcini powder
salt to taste
fresh sage
grated parmesano reggiano or grana padano cheese or some good raw cheddar

In a very large skillet, melt your butter and add the sage ( a leaf or two). Saute for a few minutes but don't brown the butter. Remove the sage. Stir in the cream and porcini powder. Hold at a low heat.

Drop the gnocchi, a package at a time, into a pot of boiling salted water. When they float to the top, scoop them out with a strainer and let them drain for a second before adding them to the skillet and stirring gently, just to coat. Repeat with the other two packages.

Add in the squash and stir gently to avoid turning the chunks into orange goo. Check for seasoning and salt as needed. Top with grated cheese.

Serve with a big salad and a nice Reisling. As with nearly everything, the addition of pork products would be heavenly.

Linking to Laura's Meatless Monday

Why yes, I have lost my mind. Did you find it?

2010-10-13T15:41:00.000-07:00

So the secret is out- I'm a freak all the way across the board. Not only do I disdain the standard American diet and purposefully (happily!) drive a 27 year old car, now I'm advocating a radical plan financially. You thought "No corn syrup" was nutty, wait until you hear this one: "No mortgage".

Yep. None.

I hope to sell our over-sized, over-mortgaged house in the spring and downsize radically into something we can afford to actually own, rather than rent from the bank until just before we die. The plan goes in phases: first build a very small cabin on bare land (like 16 x 20) for cash. As soon as the house sells, move all of our belongings except for the bare minimum into storage and move us into the cabin for the summer. Take the equity from the house sale and build like crazy, knowing there will be another infusion of cash in early October. If it becomes obvious that we're not going to have the house done and habitable before Christmas, then we can move into a rental for the winter & continue to build the following summer.

Why would anyone want to do this to themselves? Simple answer: Freedom. Security. As an example to my kids.

Right now, HM works 14 days at a time. 3 days for the government, 1.5 days for insurance and 401K , and 5.5 days for the house payment. We only get to really live on 30% of his earnings. There's little I can do about the government or insurance parts but we can free ourselves from servitude to JP Morgan Chase. We can build something on a smaller, more human scale and similarly reduce our contribution to the borough's tax account. We can spend less to heat a smaller home, have fewer electrical gee-gaws to power, be free of neighborhood covenants restricting chickens, live closer to friends and church, and let boys and dogs romp freely with other boys and dogs. We can say 'yes' to things like trips outside, musical instruments, visits to Kodiak, h2Oasis, and museum memberships. A few years of hassle, hard work, and sacrifice will buy us 20+ years of freedom and limitless peace of mind - not to mention a retirement where my go-to cookbook isn't "101 Ways with Alpo".

My Friend Went to BlogHer Food and All I Got Was Some Floury Hair....

2010-10-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

I'm not even making this up. Last night as I was about to walk out the door to pick up said friend, T2 started hollering about how we had no peanut butter and how he hates that nasty healthy other butter (almond- little weirdo). I was certain that I had a stash of peanut so I went into the pantry to look for it. And there it was! On the top shelf, behind something else and mostly being hidden/squashed by the self reproducing 5lb/18 cf bag of dried apples*.

So I- being the tallest person in my house- reach up to get the kid his peanut butter. In doing so, I bump another container to the right which sends a plastic canister containing 5 lbs of flour crashing down on my head. We all know the lid didn't hold..... So then I had to vacuum up the flour and then I had to go take a shower and wash all the flour out of my hair. Twice because the minute it got wet, it turned into paste. Makes me think those no-grains people may have something of a point.

Once out the door, 15 minutes late, wet hair, socks that don't match, I zoomed over and picked her up in my awesome new retro ride and then we jetted into Anchorage for 'old lady painting'. No, I am not painting old ladies as either subject or canvas. I went to learn rosemaling, an art now practiced pretty much entirely by little old ladies. I was told to come empty handed and Laura tagged along for a ride to the airport after. I'd been to the place once before but I'd had children and a GPS with me and come in from another direction. Finding it was a touch spotty this time since I had no GPS and the road was closed & a giant backhoe sitting in front of the building.

"Old Lady Painting" was just that. Laura just barely prevented me from being the youngest person in the room by 20 years. If you discounted the one lady in her early 60s, I would put the average somewhere in the mid 70's. Was I any good? Yes! I did exactly what I was told and I was brilliant at it!!! A triumph, in fact. Unfortunately, what I was told was to sit and watch what she did. No brush entered my hand. Next week, I get to sniff the paints.

After watching intently, trying to avoid offensive political discussions, and giggling over Laura's shock at a septuagenarian casually dropping an F bomb, we popped over to the airport so that she could run away for a fantastic week in San Francisco at BlogHer Food. Great food, bags of swag, and she gets to speak on the panel about feeding children, stay in a hotel room without children, and go to fabulous cocktail parties and schmooze with Food Network stars. Yeah. I'm jealous.

By the time I stopped for bread and yogurt and got home, it was nearly midnight. Miss V was trying to be disgruntled but you could tell she was amused over the antics of her small brothers earlier: T1 chased her around the house, squirting her with water from what we refer to as "the snot sucker" to make it look like she wet her pants while she tried to talk to her boyfriend on the phone. Not wanting to be left out, T2 started just tossing water from a cup. I suspect the boyfriend was unfazed- he's one of 7 brothers.

Lessons learned yesterday:

1. Relocate the snot sucker to an undisclosed location
2. Do not keep flour on the top shelf of the pantry
3. I really want to go to BlogHer Food next year

* those apples: I bought a 5 lb bag of apples last march (dried apple rings). I've tried to use them but I swear they magically replace themselves. Every time I use some, the bag just returns to its previous size. I am never going to get through them all. Ever.

Praise the lard and pass the ammunition!

2010-09-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

Lard has a bad reputation. It's that old-fashioned fat used only by ignorant redneck grannies with no teeth in a holler in W. Virginia and by similarly uneducated Mexican women who don't know that saturated fat is bad, bad, bad. Civilized, educated people do not...ever...eat lard. Epithets for the obese include terms such as 'lard-ass'.

Guess what? Lard is AWESOME. Really. It makes pretty much anything taste better. Pie crusts, biscuits, veggies, beans and, yes, tortillas. The problem is that the lard you can buy in the store really is awful. they've taken a good fat and screwed it up completely. Instead of using the fat from pastured and humanely raised animals, your store lard will come from grain fed confinement hogs who have never seen sunshine or rolled in the grass. It will be processed in highly questionable conditions and then it will be hydrogenized, deodorized, and adulterated with BHT and/or BHA. Homemade unadulterated lard is believed to promote lower cholesterol, contain Vitamin D, discourage the formation of cancers, and is high in Omega-6 fatty acids.

The good news is that lard is really easy to make at home. For locals, Mt McKinley Meat and Sausage in Palmer will sell you locally grown leaf fat by the pound. $.99 per pound last time I got some. Take it home, and prepare to render. If you have a meat grinder, grind your leaf fat first. I was amazed by how much grinding sped up the entire process and reduced waste. Once your lard is ground, put a big pot on medium to low heat and toss a few (3? 4?) cups into the bottom. Stir it occasionally and when all your fat is melted, pour it off into the container of your choice and repeat with more fat. I rendered 10 lbs in about 35 minutes that way.

If you don't have a grinder, cut the fat into the smallest cubes you're willing to do and toss the fat into a pan or slow cooker and, again, wait for your fat to become liquid but take care not to burn it.

I pour my lard into my jumbo muffin pans and freeze it then pop out the 'pucks' for nice 1 cup portions. Others pour theirs into sterilized canning jars, fill it clear to the top and store it in a cool pantry until opened. I find my method more convenient from a cleanup and portioning perspective but if I had a bigger pantry I'd be willing to use the jars.

Howling

2010-09-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

I should be climbing into bed but I'm sure I won't sleep well tonight. The wind is screaming, the temp is dropping fast, and I know that my 'emerging view' will have emerged by morning. The idea of the coming dark is kind of a bummer. Already, the mornings are a little darker and the boys a little harder to wake (like I'm not...hah!) and by Christmas 'first light' will be around 10 and 'twilight' will happen at 4 or so. In spite of that though, I am excited about the change in seasons. Pumpkin bread, pumpkin rolls, squash dishes of all sorts, soups and stews and fires in the wood stove. The Autumn festival, St Nicholas Day, Thanksgiving, sweaters, cranberries, candles, the silence of an evening snowfall. I'm sure I won't be quite so sanguine about the cold or the wind or the dark or much of anything by mid-March but for tonight the wind only reminds me of the happy parts of an Alaskan autumn.

When a disaster isn't

2010-09-23T21:34:00.000-07:00

I don't blog much about my kids directly. Parenting some of them hasn't been much like 99% of other folks' child raising experiences because of their early traumas, some of them also devastated neurologically by their biological mother's alcohol use. I have to say that I haven't exactly been a cheerleader for older child adoption the last few years. Living with the constant lying, sneaking, stealing, and destructiveness had me more than a little cynical.

Tonight we had a dinner disaster- the kid I had asked to put a chicken in the fridge mistakenly put it in the upstairs freezer. When I went to put said chicken in the oven at 5:30 tonight the fridge was quite notably NOT containing one. The freezer next to it was. 5:30, nothing thawed, and no plan B. I was frustrated and I know that my voice showed it when I demanded to know who had put that chicken in the freezer.

Instead of the usual "Notme" or "I dunno" or silence a little voice says "It was me. I'm sorry". It was like the heavens opened and angels sang. I hugged said child & thanked them. It was a little confirmation that all is not lost and that this thing we are doing is not always doomed to failure and misery. I also figured out the root cause of another little issue and discovered that the very simple solution solves more than one problem at a time.

Then, feeling very blessed, I popped out to the store and picked up a rotisserie chicken, some corn tortillas, and a few cans of salsa verde and made Chicken Enchilada Casserole for supper, got two days of kid lunches from it as well, and still managed to have everyone fed and in bed on time. It would be so nice if all of my disasters ended so well!

Settling into Fall

2010-09-21T17:23:00.000-07:00

After the freak out (overblown and mostly unnecessary since my parents wanted to see us not the house...) of last week, the lovely busyness of their visit and finally getting Este' into school, I'm sitting and watching the yellow leaves drift to the ground and happily contemplating....nothing. I have some sewing to finish, a day of berry picking, an azure order coming in, but nothing huge. I can stay home and do laundry on my amazing new washer and dryer. My parents were stunningly generous and bought me a beautiful, brand new matching gonzo frontloader and matching dryer. Kenmore Elites with the extended service plan. This was my Christmas gift from them (and should cover the next 5 years I think!)

Christmas is still far enough away that I don't feel the need to start whigging out about that (yet). That might be because I mostly have a plan and have started collecting gifts. Also thanks to my parents' incredible generosity, I had a little extra wiggle room in the budget and was able to take advantage of a great deal on Craigslist: a 3/4 size Viola for SCS. We bought swords and scabbards at the fair & Battle Bonnets are underway. Mom's gift is finished & Dad's are in progress. I've even scored some things for HM and tucked them away. SCS is one of my hardest to buy for- she almost never asks for anything!- so having hers taken care of is a huge weight off. We had expected to have to wait until next year to be able to buy her an instrument and she was being a very good sport about that. She's usually a very good sport though so it will be a huge treat to surprise her with something so big.

I missed summer, kind of dread the snow, but for the moment I can happily wallow in fall. Apple cider, knitting by the fire, and pumpkin rolls. Ahhh.

AAYYYAYYYYAYYYYY!!!!!!!!

2010-09-13T00:04:00.000-07:00

That, my friends, is the sound of me running about like a recently decapitated chicken and screaming randomly. Posts have been and will continue to be sparse because my parents are coming. You see, the sordid tale of my life is this: Martha Stewart and Oscar Madison had a love child in the late 60s but Oscar was an idiot and a cad and Martha was raising the child on her own until she met and married Mr Clean. The child is me. I would like to be an ultra organized neat freak and I'm certainly a lot closer than I was in my 20s but really- I live with small mess making people whose standards of cleanliness would warm Oscar's slovenly little heart. Most of my furniture is embracing the 'distressed' look....my mother's house looks like a Better Homes & Garden's shoot. All the time. Really.

this is the first time in over 10 years that we've had few enough kids for them to actually be willing to stay with us so I've been running around cleaning, painting, fussing at kids, yelling at kids (at what developmental stage do they grasp the concept of 'all' as it relates to cleaning?), and generally freaking out. I love my parents. They would never knowingly cause such uproar. And I am thrilled that they are coming. I just need an extra week, two handymen, and a spare $3000 to make things as I think they ought to be. I guess they'll have to live with my reality instead. See ya'll on the other side!

Fair Food Reviews

2010-09-06T00:38:00.000-07:00

The Alaska State Fair ends tomorrow and various members of my family have been more than once. Some of them like to pretend they can't remember what they ate or that they didn't when quizzed about what they had and how it was. Apparently I'm not smart enough to be able to figure out that such statements are code for "I ate nothing but kettle cork, cotton candy, and Red Bulls but I know you'd blow a gasket". Um..sure... I'm going to believe that you went to the fair and ate no junk because I'm over 40 and therefore completely stupid. Gotta love teenagers. Lets stop right here and say that almost nothing served at the fair is remotely compatible with Nourishing Traditions or healthy eating in any way. The fair comes once a year and half the fun is the food.

Given the lack of info forthcoming from the teen who has been without me, I'll have to stick to the booths I tried.

Chocolate Covered Bacon on a Stick- I was totally prepared to love this. It sounded suspect but I had to try it. It could have been a match made in heaven- and heaven knows how I feel about chocolate covered potato chips. Alas, it was awful. At $3 a stick (that is one single chocolate covered piece of bacon on a shishkabob skewer) I expected something other than "ew!". I won't be repeating that next year.

The oyster booth- I love the oyster booth and not just because they are good for you. I. Love. Oysters. If they could serve beer there and you could hop onto a bar stool with a Glacier Brewhouse IPA and 2 dozen raw with some saltines and cocktail sauce I could spend my entire day (and fair budget) in one spot. Miss V had the fried oyster sandwich ( very good ) and I had some raw plus some of the sour cream parm ones. They put the oysters under the broiler for a minute, then pull them out and plop some sour cream and some shredded parmesan on them and put them back under the broiler to melt the cheese. Very, very good.

Tamales- Good, probably the healthiest thing we ate, more than a touch overpriced- even for fair food. We opted for the pork one with black beans, rice, and all the trimmings. It would be easier to eat if they would take the corn husk off before they dump the stuff on it.

Fried Cheese curds- always a treat. I don't even want to think about what is in that fryer oil. Those little curds are irresistible. I can't get excited about the pork chop on a stick though.

Cream Puffs- people rave about them but I don't get it. Yes, they are big. If you're trying to induce diabetic ketoacidosis this is a fine choice. The pastry is pretty good but the toppings are canned and nothing special and the creamy filling left a lot to be desired in my opinion. I admit to being a pastry cream snob- if I can tell that it came from a can or it reminds me of cool whip in any way I'm done.

The cookie booth- so good we did it twice. Fantastic chocolate chip cookies, organic milk available, friendly staff and they donate $.25 of every cookie to charity. Plus you can play with their hoola hoops. There was no sharing at this booth.

Bushes Bunches - The peanut potatoes. I was expecting something more like tiny fingerlings but what I got were more traditionally cut french fries. They were hot, salty and excellent. I'm sure the dipping sauce is full of things that are horrible for you because it was really tasty and addictive.

The Pasty booth- I love these. It's like a full meal of comfort food in a little pocket.

Elephant Ears- Every bit as good as I recall from my childhood. We had one with just honey and it was great- far more flavor than powdered sugar. I mentioned to the man running the booth that they are fantastic with nutella and he promised to have it there for next year. I plan to hold him to it.

Buffalo Burger- in one of the cabins next to the midway. Not bad. Plastic cheese but some decent flavor to the burger.

Pizza- kids ate it, I didn't. I did munch the crust though and it was good. The pepperoni looked greasy but doesn't all pepperoni? Possibly the cheapest way to feed a kid and keep them happy at the fair.

And no- just to clarify, I did not personally eat all of that stuff. Most of it was shared between 2 to 5 people. Otherwise I would need one of those little skylark carts to haul my fat(ter) butt around.

Real Food for Rookies

2010-09-03T12:19:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to mentally compose this for a few days and failing but I wanted to get it out there because I've mentioned it to people: Kelly the Kitchen Cop has put together an incredible online class about how and why to find and use real food. I'm taking it and I'm making Miss V take it and I think it would be immensely helpful to so many of the other moms I've met lately who have said "I want to change how we eat but I just don't know how to put it all together!"

Kelly will be covering label reading, fats and oils (what is really good and what is disease in a bottle), meats, dairy products, grains, sweeteners breads, and more. I'm making Miss V take the class because I think it is so critically important that she understand how to protect and maintain her own health and the importance of her diet in building the bodies and brains of her own future children. Kelly is going to be teaching stuff beyond what I've learned- and it has taken me 8 years to get to about half as far along the real food path as she is by my own reading /trial/error process.

You can sign up by going here. 4 payments of $35- $10 a class. I think it is a great bargain. I've wasted more than that over the years buying the wrong things and making 'healthy' food that was rejected or genuinely inedible.

Vegan...and good?

2010-09-01T21:48:00.000-07:00

Who knew this was possible? Certainly not me. My general philosophy of cooking is that anything can be improved with the addition of sufficient quantities of pork or dairy products. Butter? Bacon? Cheddar? Yes! Please! This impulse is at odds with the practices of our church about 170 days out of the year- most every Wednesday and Friday, Advent, Lent, and a few other fasting periods dictate vegan (shellfish OK) or pescatarian meals(dairy free). Honestly, I've never made it through a fasting period and usually I'm doing well to just cut out meat. I have maybe two good recipes that I trot out to every potluck during those periods. Nobody is ever going to nominate me for the "Babushka of the Year" award.

Tonight I tried something new because a friend raved about it. Dal. Swore her kids ate it by the bowlful. It was fast, cheap, and I was without a better plan on a Wednesday. It totally rocked. Miss V was running an errand for me while I made it and when she came home and started to chow on her bowl she asked me three times if I was sure I hadn't used chicken in it. This stuff is so incredibly chicken-y that even I was shocked.

I served it over brown rice, mine also got a dollop of my homemade super-low-sugar apricot orange jam, a sprinkling of dried cranberries, and some slivered almonds for crunch. I ate it all. Then I made another bowl to photograph (yay- the camera is fixed!)and ate that too. Chutney just moved to the top of my list of things to can and I may have to try my hand at making Nan for a more authentic Indian experience. The original recipe was for a smaller quantity and included things that I left out. This was very mild and was happily eaten by small children (who said it tasted like chicken nuggets?)

2 cups small red lentils
1 medium onion
1 cup coconut oil
spices: 1 teaspoon cumin, 1 teaspoon coriander, 1/8 teaspoon cardamom, 1/4 teaspoon cayenne, 2 teaspoons ginger, 1 teaspoon salt
water

Wash your lentils! If you've planned ahead and can do so, soak for phytate nutralization

Cut up onion,place pieces in a pot, cover with oil -be generous with the oil they should swim in it. Let all of it simmer, about 5 mins. Add lentils, stir.

Add spices, stir, add water to cover. Cook at medium to medium high. Check and stir often to prevent scorching. You will probably have to add more water periodically.

This took about 35 minutes total and my recipe served 6 people with a bit of leftover (and I pigged and ate two bowls). Next time I want to add some chard for color and nutrients. There will definitely be a next time!

Bulk Food Ordering Update

2010-08-31T23:42:00.000-07:00

Our first order has been delivered! It was quite the learning experience for me and there were some bumps along the way. Happily, all the grains for the Kindergarten classes arrived as ordered and most of the stuff mislaid by the shipper was mine. If I'm very lucky, they will have found it and it will be on a truck out tomorrow. I'm going to be really upset if my pickling cucumbers go bad before they find them and get them to me!

My gingergold apples are tasty but the peaches really stole the show. They are so sweet and juicy.

The next ordering window will begin September 13 and end at 10 AM September 17th. Food will leave the warehouse on Sept 21st and should arrive for delivery on the 28th of September. They charge your card the day it ships from the warehouse! Shipping came in a little lower than expected this time but please figure $.35 per pound just in case. The shipping charge is paid to me the day prior to delivery so that I can pay the driver.

Pimento Cheese

2010-08-30T14:08:00.000-07:00

If you're from the south, skip this. You already know.

Pimento cheese (pah-men-ah) is one of the great regional contributions the south has made to American food. It ranks next to (and pairs well with) sweet iced tea. As a regional specialty, there are probably as many recipes as there are cooks. Some people are happy with the tubs in the supermarket just like some people are happy to eat pop tarts. I'm not among them. Some people put strange things like jalapenos in their pimento cheese- I'm not with them either. Others argue the merits of hand grating versus food processor or blender. On that point, I can go either way- but the food processor is just easier.

Pimento Cheese, once made, has a variety of uses but the classic presentation is on a sandwich of white bread. This makes an appearance at most weddings as some people believe that a marriage solemnized below the Mason-Dixon line is not valid until the pimento cheese finger sandwiches (crusts removed) have been served at the reception. It is heavenly on grilled hamburgers. It makes wonderful grilled cheese sandwiches (especially with bacon!). It turns grits from blah to wow. I once had deep fried pimento cheese- little balls of the stuff frozen, dipped in beer batter and deep fried. It might be the most dangerous fair food in the world since you just can't stop yourself from eating the whole plate and washing it down with an icy coke. I know that coke, 'veggie' oil in a deep fryer, and white flour are bad, bad, bad and usually avoid them but I last tasted those cheese balls 25 years ago and I still remember them.

To try your own:

1 cup mayonaise
1 lb sharp cheddar (please- for the love of all that is holy, do not use any cheese whose name ends in 'eeta')
1 large jar diced pimentos- do not drain, use the juice too!
1 t celery seed
salt to taste

to shred: shred the cheese either by hand or in a food processor then mix in the remaining ingredients

or not to shred- cut the cheese into chunks, toss all ingredients into the food processor and puree.

If it is too dry, add more mayo. If it is too wet, add a little bit of cheese. You may want a touch more celery seed. The flavors blend and it improves after a day- if you can keep your family out of it.

Linked into Meatless Mondays at Hey What's For Dinner Mom?

Cheaters Chicken Congee

2010-08-27T21:51:00.000-07:00

After this morning's lunch fail (a 7 AM trip to the store for lunch stuff!) I realized that I had to get back on the wagon and actually plan meals and implement the plan! To accomplish that, I tossed a pair of whole chickens in the roaster pan, sprinkled on some sea salt, olive oil, fresh rosemary and greek spice mix and popped them in the oven. I also had about 1/3 of a rice cooker full of sushi rice. What I lacked was a burning desire to really get elaborate and 'cook'.

When the chickens came out of the oven, I pulled one out of the pan and picked half the meat off. I plopped my cold sushi rice in a saucepan and poured all the chicken juices from the roaster pan onto the rice & set that to heating.

Next into the pot was: 1 cup of frozen diced mango, 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro, about a tsp of pureed ginger, a T of wasabi paste, some soy sauce and a T of sucanat. Then I added in the picked chicken bits and 2 cups of frozen corn kernels and a splash of lime juice.

There are no pics because my camera is dead and, honestly, its not much to look at but oh my is it good on a cold rainy night. We all added varying amounts of sirachi sauce because we're freaks who love sirachi on most anything. This stuff is creamy and comforting and packed a lot of nutrients for very little cost. I think I would love it with chard in it or as a vegetarian dish with coconut milk instead of the chicken juices. It worked out to be right at $1 per serving, all organic ingredients except the mango which is on the 'clean 15' list anyway.

To further stretch the nutrients from those two birds, all the bones went back into the pot (after I had picked off the rest of the meat and refereed a fight over the skin) with some carrot pieces, a few spring onions, sea salt and vinegar plus plenty of water. By morning, I'll have at least 1/2 a gallon of beautiful, nutrient dense gleaming chicken stock. I also have meat in bags for a batch of chicken salad and a pair of pot pies.

I've linked this to Pennywise Platter Thursdays at The Nourishing Gourmet. Check it out some great ideas on how to pinch a penny 'til it screams without sacrificing nutrition.

How Do I Love Thee

2010-08-27T11:22:00.000-07:00

No, this is not a sonnet for His Majesty, love him though I do. This is for the kids' school: Birchtree. How I do love it!!!

My children go there and they get to do incredibly fun things; they spend the day with wonderful, gifted, positive teachers; they learn things; they make music and art; they move and sing. Then they come home and there is significantly less bickering and destruction from T1 & T2. They're happy and occupied and learning.

I never would have believed that I would be so delighted to be dropping my kids off at school, especially a public school, in this country. The environment and the atmosphere in this school are so hugely different than what we experienced in our local 'regular' middle school last year. That school reminded me of a low security prison - it was dark and a little decrepit feeling, cinder block walls and dented lockers and florescent lighting (we are stuck with some florescents at Birchtree too but there is just so much more natural light!).

(note- the pic above was shamelessly lifted from the school's blog run by my friend Laura who is speaking at BlogHer Food! because my camera has shuffled off it's mortal coil. The class in the pic is not one that my kids are in but theirs are similar in size and feel and general wonderfulness)

Off the Face of the Earth

2010-08-27T10:54:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy week. School is in full swing for the younger kids, Miss V returned from Kodiak which required an overnight trip to Homer to fetch her, we got to do battle with a flea invasion (those things which allegedly don't live in Alaska) that included shampooing all the carpets, the Azure order went in, we're still trying to get Chase to fix their mess-ups and bring our escrow payment back to a reasonable level, and Estee didn't get to go to school where we expected so that is it's own set of challenges. I've run out of good options, OK options, and am hurtling towards bad options. Doing nothing because of lack of other options is the current bad option we're experiencing.

The fair yesterday was fun, expensive, and let me know that my new shoes really don't cut it for 8 hours on pavement. HM, V, and I went during the 'get in for $2' hours and slurped oysters, shared a tamale, and gorged on milk & cookies and sweet corn. Miss V got a pair of very on-sale Carharrt bibs to make into a jumper and a cute scarf that reminds me just a bit of Yasser Arafat . We scored cool wooden swords with leather scabbards for T1 and T2's Christmas (to go with the knitted battle helmets and tunics/surcoats). The weather was beautiful , the mid-way obnoxious, and the barns a little disappointing. It still managed to make me really, really miss my chickens.

Azure delivery should be Monday so I'm going to be cleaning out my pantry and doing some baking for the freezer. I was so wiped after the fair last night that I did nothing and made a 7AM run to Fred Meyer today for lunch stuff. Failure to plan and prep on my part.

Healthy Homemade Granola Bars

2010-08-20T13:47:00.000-07:00

I came across this recipe for the fruit and oat bars which have replaced chocolate chip cookies at the White House. I'll be making some changes to it- notably using sucanat instead of the dark brown sugar & coconut rather than grapeseed oil- and a lot of dried apples (because I ordered 25 lbs of them.... what was I thinking? Does anyone need any dried apples? dried date pieces?)

These could be a really nice snack to send for school treats since they could be done with GF oats and don't contain nuts. On the other hand, for folks without nut issues, you could add some nuts and up the protein.

This is my doubled and altered version of the original recipe

3/4 cup coconut oil, plus extra for brushing pan

4 cups rolled oats

1 cup mixed seeds, such as pumpkin, sunflower and sesame

1 cup honey

2/3 cup sucanat

2/3 cup maple syrup

Generous pinch of salt

3 cups mixed dried fruit, such as raisins, cherries, apricots, papaya, pineapple and cranberries (at least 3 kinds, cut into small pieces if large)

2 teaspoons ground cardamom or cinnamon.

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line a lasagna pan with parchment paper or foil, letting a few inches hang over side of pan. Brush with oil.

2. Spread oats and seeds on another baking pan and toast in oven just until golden and fragrant, 6 to 8 minutes, shaking pan once.

3. In a saucepan, combine oil, honey, brown sugar, maple syrup and salt. Stir over medium heat until smooth and hot. In a mixing bowl, toss together toasted oats and seeds, dried fruit and cardamom. Pour hot sugar mixture over and stir until well combined.

4. While mixture is warm, transfer to prepared pan, pressing into pan evenly with an offset spatula.

5. Bake until brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Transfer pan to a rack and let cool completely. Using the overhanging foil or paper, lift out of pan and place on a work surface. Cut into bars, about 1 1/2 inches by 3 inches.

Bulk Food: Ordering problems!

2010-08-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

If you've tried to order with us through Azure, please know that there is a problem- they put us on the wrong truck route. I am working with them to fix this but you will need to go back into the azure site, modify your order, and re-check out. You will know that the problem has been fixed when there is a drop box giving you the option of using "C1- August 24th" as a ship date. IF they don't get it fixed in time we may end up having our ship date pushed back a week. I will update here and on the Birchtree Facebook page as I learn more.

Thanks for your patience. We will get this straightened out and subsequent orders should go much more smoothly.

UPDATE - Azure is having some computer issues. They said to go ahead and submit the orders as going on the c-4 route on the 14th. The guys in the warehouse know to pull the orders manually for our group and they WILL ship next Tuesday.

A Simple Request

2010-08-17T23:40:00.000-07:00

Could we please, as a society that allegedly values tolerance and individual freedom, embrace the idea that a human's inherent value is not tied to the possession of a college degree? That a person can be 'smart' and choose not to go into big debt for a piece of paper that attests to one's mastery of irrelevant (to that person) subjects?

Call me a nouveaux hippie but I still have crazy ideas about how fame and fortune aren't necessarily relevant to happiness or satisfaction or a life well lived. I resent the implication that I am leading my children to doom by agreeing that a degreeless future need not be one of misery, social isolation or grinding poverty. I even have the audacity to believe that people with low intellectual functioning shouldn't be encouraged to want 'the college experience'. Not everybody can work at NASA. Not everybody wants to. The guy with the degree from StateU who is now frantically peddling plastic crap made in China to cover his $45,000 of student loan payments plus the $2500 credit card balance he ran up buying 'professional' clothes needed to land his $30K a year job is, according to the current mindset, a more valuable member of society than the guy who shows up to fix my plumbing when HM is away? Ummm...No. Flush toilets and hot showers trump My Little Pony or a Snuggie or a Ginsu Knife set any day. Every day.

I could rant on this for a while. Days maybe. But here it is: My brilliant daughter who I pushed and nagged through 3 years of college before she was 18 doesn't want to do any more of that and I think that its her choice and that she's more capable of making the best decision for her. Colleges aren't going to be vanishing from the earth and if she changes her mind, she can always go back. For the time being, she has chosen to spend these days of her life in a place that brings her joy, strengthens her faith, and encourages her to develop traits like patience, thoughtfulness, compassion, and diligence. I consider that a superior education and support it wholeheartedly.

Update about comments: I pulled them all down. It was starting to look too much like a public family squabble (not yours Anna, but I figured I should just take them all down, mine included)

In which I hide in my room, typing furiously

2010-08-14T16:37:00.000-07:00

to avoid some really regrettable parenting moments. T1 just threw a rock. A large rock. At a high rate of speed. He threw the rock in spite of many repeated past warnings about throwing rocks. Warnings in which he heard of the dire things that can happen. Head injury. Putting an eye out. Breaking a window on the house. Breaking the $942 +installation hatch back window on his sister's car. Yes. He did.

So I am hiding because if I hide and type I don't yell, scream, explain the financial doom forthcoming. I just pound little plastic keys and count to myself. He's fallen asleep on his bed. I'm still counting. But I'm getting better. When I'm all better, I will wake him up, reassure him that he is loved and that we will all forgive him, and figure out how he can make restitution for this. I think I know who is going to be stacking all the fire wood....and taking up the carpet tack strips....

Boys just aren't like us.

Frutti del Campo

2010-08-11T23:15:00.000-07:00

No- that isn't nutcases on a camping trip. In Italian, it's fruits of the field which seems more appropriate than the more usual frutti di bosco since most of my goodies came from a field rather than the woods (currants being the notable exception). This isn't to imply that we have not ever been nor will ever be nutcases on a camping trip, simply that such a scenario would be a different post than this.

Got the canner out and going last night. The Williams-Sonoma Preserving book recipe for Apricot Orange preserves is fabulous! I think I want to do it again but as a jam. If only I had discovered it earlier in the season when I could still get organic apricots at a reasonable price...Could it be done with dried apricots? Maybe we will find out this winter. The cardamom and vanilla are such amazing flavor additions to this preserve. 6 pints was just nowhere near enough.

I also canned up some jam from the currants we picked up at Moose Creek with my new foraging friends plus some blueberries Laura brought me from a trip I couldn't make. To those I added strawberries, raspberries, and some knudsen Organic Berry Nectar to stretch the berries. I went fairly low sugar but am out of honey and low on sucanat so I used organic sugar crystals for sweetener. This also came out nicely with a beautiful ruby color.

Pictures? Maybe someday but the camera seems to be dead.

Bulk Food Series- Part 8, Ordering Details

2010-08-09T16:52:00.000-07:00

So now that you've suffered through the endless boring details of food prep at our house, you'd like to know how to actually order.

1. Go to www.azurestandard.com . Set up an account for yourself and start putting items into a shopping cart but don't check out before August 16th! If you do check out and finalize your order on, say, the 12th your order will be shipped all by itself and your shipping charges will be ugly.

2. Your azure shopping cart will give you two totals- one is a dollar amount and one is a weight total. Plan on about $.35 per lb for shipping. You will pay me the shipping directly by the 27th so that I can pay the delivery driver when the load is delivered, probably on the 30th. Our Drop number is 2781. You will be asked for this number as you are checking out with Azure.

3. Deadline for the first order is the 20th of August at noon. That means that you need to have checked out and completed the order with Azure. Please send me an email when you have completed this step so that I can be sure that everyone is accounted for in the master order.

4. Our order will be delivered to Birchtree Charter School. The truck usually arrives in the valley from the American Fast Freight terminal around 10 but I have no way of knowing if our stuff will be at the front of the truck or the back. Most probable delivery date is August 30th.

5. We can set up a tarped area out of the regular traffic pattern to sort and distribute orders. It all comes off the truck as one big jumble! A few volunteers to help with distribution would be much appreciated.

6. We are not charging any coordinator's fees. The idea is to make healthy, high quality food accessible to everyone in our community.

7. If there is enough interest, a local farmer who raises chemical and hormone-free pastured beef is willing to also bring his coolers of frozen cuts of meat to pickup day. You would purchase directly from him but if you would like for him to come, please email me so that I can give him a rough idea of what to bring.

Starting to damage my calm

2010-08-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

Laura was blogging about stress. About how maybe it makes us fat. I think it is also contributing to making us dumber, sicker, and more mentally unstable. Then, it is stressful to live with stupid unstable people who hate what they see in the mirror. So we become more stressed and less peaceful which leads to the consumption of more Ding Dongs, Cheetos, coke and take-out pizza. Which makes us fatter and sicker and dumber. rinse. lather. repeat.

My peace was disturbed (about a 6.5 on the richter scale) today when I opened the mail. There in our little Chase statement was an "Escrow Account Disclosure Statement". It's hard to tell through all the happy corporate-speak but it appears that my Escrow Account Disclosure Statement discloses that the folks at Chase are idiots. My previous experience with them also supports that conclusion. Not only am I a disgruntled customer, I was once a contract employee! Of the mortgage division. In IT.

Chase is a huge corporation. They have a lot of money. They make a lot of money. They got a lot of bailout money. One would think that an organization with so much money could afford the very best in IT infrastructure and intellectual capital.

I wish.

They paid my property taxes twice, decided that this caused a shortage in my escrow account, and then sent a letter demanding $4K (immediately, if you please) and announcing a 35% increase in my monthly payment. They also simultaneously reminded me that Chase's systems are not set up to accept split payments and informed me that I could now pay via an iphone app. Now on Monday, hours of my life will be spent on conference calls with some Chase flunkie in Bangladesh, a line of supervisors who will (hopefully) speak increasingly better English, the Borough tax folks, and maybe my bank. Plus my husband who is about as freaked out as a bird dog at 4th of July fireworks. He's not sure if he should bite someone or hide under the bed- and I'm right there with him!

I'm reasonably sure that this can all be worked out as just a minor inconvenience over the long-haul so I'm going to view it as a blessing. Just a little reminder that we need to be progressing toward the real goals and stop spending money (which is simply a fiat method of exchange for portions of my dearest's very life) on things of no lasting benefit or value. This does not, of course, include canning books!

Anybody need to rent a 5 bedroom, 3 bath house with a view ?

In which I rationalize blowing all my fun money....

2010-08-06T23:54:00.000-07:00

on payday. This is why we pray "and lead us not into temptation": because we can find ourselves!!!! Or at least I can.

I went for the Costco run and to see if the shoes on sale at Lands End were similarly on sale at Sears in town. But since Sears is so very close to Barnes and Noble and I had a little money left on a gift card plus my teacher card, surely I should pop into B & N and pick up the less expensive of the two preserving books I wanted? You know- to save on gas money. So I left with a copy of Well Preserved for a mere $9. Look at me! Aren't I thrifty! Snort.

Then I went to Summit Spice and Tea. This is dangerous. Their web site is sad and blah but the store certainly isn't. I knew that a re-stock on Tea and Spices were both in order so this part of my spending wasn't quite as injudicious as it might have been but did I really need a jar of raspberry curd, a second small infuser, or the little cup of duck demi-glace reduction? Uh, well...no. Not really. As I was cringing my way through check out, the nice clerk assured me that I was nowhere near the point of her feeling it prudent to do an intervention. I had used all the restraint I could muster - and I bribed my children with the promise of Carl's Jr.

Yes- for those of you sure that I serve only organic local veggies with beef I raised and killed myself - I bought drive-thru burgers today. And there was silence for 5 whole minutes and it was good. Until the war of the kids meal toys began and I paid for my sins.

During the actual Costco part of the day, which was the reason I went to the city in the first place, I was again being very restrained. There was a lot of whining about the total absence of organic fruit of any variety. The children also complained. I flirted with the idea of picking up some of the organic ground beef because the price is $2 a lb less than my local farmer but stopped upon reading the disclaimer saying that it contained meat from cows from the US, Canada and Argentina. I recognize the irony of doing this as a Carl's Jr burger was digesting in my belly, really I do. But I decided that I would rather spend a little more and vote for local. However, my chickens won't be ready until October 1st so I grabbed a pair of organic whole chickens and some of the chicken breasts then some wild caught shellfish to make Thai curry for the now-canceled Birchtree potluck.

All was going well until I walked into the crack den...I mean book section. There at the top of a tidy pile was the book, the one I really really wanted, which I had just virtuously passed by at B &N because I could get it more reasonably on half.com: Williams-Sonoma the Art of Preserving. $ 18.

As that book was jumping (all by itself! I swear!) into the cart and I was for the 14th time denying T2 permission to sample a Gogurt or some other sugary thing, I spotted Fun Stuff Silly Snacks and decided that it would be so very useful for lunches. Or something....

The good news is that Sears did not have the on-sale shoes so I had extra budgetary wiggle room. The bad news is that I partially melted my everyday, knock around shoes when we went fishing but I slunk home without replacing them this afternoon so that I could get lost in my new cookbooks and a cup of tea. The Lady Grey is excellent and I am dying to get my hands on some good apricots and meyer lemons.

Rice and Beans and Eggs!

2010-08-05T19:09:00.000-07:00

Miss V is heading down to Kodiak tomorrow to participate in the annual pilgrimage to Spruce Island and then share her mad Irish Dance skills with the folks at St. Innocent's Academy. This is a big deal for her since she's afraid of boats and large bodies of water. I'm going to miss her a lot but I know that she is going to have a wonderful, wonderful time there and its one of those growing-up adventures that a girl needs to have.

In addition to her little (huge) case of aquaphobia, she also gets an upset stomach from foods with a high sulfur content. This means that I don't get to indulge in some of my favorite low-budget, high nutrition dishes without making her something else. While she's in Kodiak (where she will likely be served beans and where, she says, she will eat them with a smile on her face because I raised her right) I will be making a lot of rice and beans, refried beans, black beans and squash, baked eggs, quiche, and some more rice and beans. I hate cabbage as much as she does- as well as its cruciferous relatives cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kohlrhabi, and kale - but beans will be in daily rotation. My freezer is fairly barren (don't cry for me- its on purpose because we have a side of beef and 20 chickens ordered plus I'm getting more salmon and need another half of a hog) and the pantry is emptying out in preparation for the big azure order plus we're in the Dormition Fast so this is the perfect time to use what I have on hand and indulge my beany little desires.

Here's a great link to a bunch of suggestions for theme and variation on 'rice & beans'. My personal favorite is refried black beans over rice with a little shredded cheddar and big chunks of cooked winter squash or grilled zucchini. Yum. Beans fried in coconut oil are great but the ones done in lard have even more depth of flavor. Leftovers make lovely lunch burritos.

Beans:

Soak beans overnight, drain, rinse

Put them in the crock pot with some homemade bone broth if you have it or enough water to cover the beans by several inches, a chopped onion, a fresh seeded jalapeno and then cook them low & slow. Got whey? Use some of that too! 10 hours if you can manage it.

Melt a good half cup or more of coconut oil or lard in a big cast iron skillet. Chop or press a few garlic cloves into the fat and give them a minute to cook, being careful not to burn the garlic. Pull out a lot of your beans, leaving most of the liquid in the crock pot, and fry and mash them until they are very thick and pasty. Add in more whole beans and the bean liquid until you are happy with the consistency. Salt to taste then wait about 15 minutes and taste it again.

While your beans are cooking......

Chop the winter squash of your choice in half and scoop out the seeds. Oil the exposed flesh, place on a cookie sheet and bake until tender. Time will depend on the size of your squash. When the squash is cooked, pull it out of the oven and let it cool to room temp or at least a comfortable temp for handling. remove the skin, cut your squash into chunks and season to taste. Salt, pepper, maybe a little cumin?

Cook some rice. Brown rice is the best (unless, of course, one child left the bin of organic short grain brown rice open while another failed to clean out the cat box resulting in the very involuntary throwing away of your entire now-disgusting brown rice inventory leaving you with only arborio or sushi rice). If you have an abundance of stock, cook your brown rice in that and it will taste heavenly.

When your three components are done, put rice in the bowls and top with the beans and the squash and some shredded cheddar. I suspect some sauteed rainbow chard might make a wonderful addition but, alas, I ate all of ours.

In a hurry and need to cheat? Drain and fry canned black beans, heat some cubed butternut squash from the freezer section and you're all set.

Now please excuse me while I go put some beans on to soak!

More on Lunch

2010-08-05T14:54:00.000-07:00

I promised my oldest daughter more details on packing lunch and I've been procrastinating because this is a topic that is tougher than I thought it would be!

First, good containers make everything easier. We have some of the 4 tier melamine tifffins sold at Target this summer and those are good but...they're too big for daily use. They were OK for camp because I was also sending snacks but I think that just for one person's lunch they are simply too much. They also aren't going to look very 'professional' and my son-in-law is in a very status conscious industry. Having a couple of options also allows you to vary lunches so they don't get boring. I like the look of the stainless tiffins,carrying cases, and reusable bamboo utensils at Happy Tiffin

A laptop lunch set in a dark neutral color could be good:

and Bento boxes come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. Zojirushi even makes a "Mr Bento" line for guys who don't want to go to work with Hello Kitty or Spiderman

Another nice and very masculine looking option from katachiware

Since packing a lunch has become more mainstream and less 'blue collar' more options have appeared. Once you have a few good containers (and smaller containers and thermos-type things for hot items) then you can tackle the issues of keeping foods at their most appealing temperatures and creating an appropriate, attractive, and enjoyable menu.

Temperature: Currently in the school supply sections of both Walmart and Target I've seen little mats with cubes of blue freezer coolant fluid that you could (carefully!) cut to fit your containers. Hardware and building supply stores sell a very thin silver insulation product that can also be cut to fit to line or surround containers.Tiles from the building supply store can be heated in the oven and packed with the lunch to keep things warm (not a concern in a Chicago summer, I know- but winter comes eventually). Some foods handle being frozen and serve as natural ice packs. Yogurt does very well and lunch meats and cheeses often do too. For a wrap or a sandwich you would freeze the meat and cheese then pack it separately from the veggies, condiments and bread.

Menu choices: Google bento, low carb bento, and low carb lunch ideas. There so, so many options. With someone who isn't excited about raw carrots and celery, think of ways to put the veggies in the food. Shred them and put them in things. It doesn't matter how good for a person something is- if they don't like it and there are other choices (Hunny Bunnies, Lara Bars, vending machines!) the more desirable thing will be chosen. Rice is nice because it is versatile, freezes well, and its so easy. For a guy who likes to graze all day, small rice balls (onigiri) can be filled with things that are good for him and yummy- take those veggies, mix with some meat and terryaki for instance. Thai spring rolls can be made without the rice noodles and using butter lettuce for a wrapper with no loss of taste. Steamed chicken and veggies with some soy sauce on a bed of rice is calorie conscious and more attractive than the raw carrots. Burritos and tortillas are good. For people who already spend half the GDP of Zimbabwe at Whole Paycheck, why not use some of their healthier hot bar items in a thermos? A tiffin would be great for a big chef's salad but guys usually don't feel that they have had a full meal with a salad as a main course. When the weather turns, chili or stew in a thermos is filling and comforting and an easy way to get veggies in someone. Hard boiled eggs pack well and are loaded with protein. Bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese are another option.

Happy packing!

Green Thai Curry

2010-08-04T18:56:00.000-07:00

Combine in a gallon bag, pyrex or other freezer container (or just in a pot for immediate consumption- but start with the onions and pepper for that)

1 tbsp Thai Kitchen Green Curry Paste
1 can coconut milk
16 oz of the shellfish or fish chunks of your choice (shrimp, scallops and squid rings are our favorites)
1 tbsp Soy Sauce
2 tbsp succanat
1/3 cup veggie broth
1 onion, diced and sauteed with the pepper
1 red pepper, diced and sauteed with the onion
1 T coconut or other oil for cooking the onion and pepper
1 cup frozen corn
1 cup frozen green beans
pinch of salt
fresh basil - 3-4 leaves, cut in a chiffonade
lime zest and juice

Combine all those ingredients in the bag, cooking only the onion and pepper. Squeeze out all the air and freeze. This is the perfect brainless busy-day meal for me because of my rice cooker. I pull the bag of curry stuff out of the freezer and pop it into the fridge in the morning and start a cooker full of rice. 15 minutes before we want supper, I dump the bag o'curry into the rice cooker, stir well, and re-set the rice cooker for a fast cook. 15 minutes later, you have supper ready and no mess in the kitchen. Even if you are starting from scratch to eat it immediately, this goes together fast.

Every one of my kids loves this. The 1 T of curry paste does not make for a very spicy curry. The boys often add more curry paste or the Garlic Chili paste or sirachi sauce. This is also a great way to use salmon when you've hit the point in the year where everyone is just sick of it! Play with the veggies- use what you have or what your kids like.

Bulk Food Series - Part 7, Meal Plans: Supper

2010-08-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

Nearly any meal your family loves can be made with real food!

Two weeks of suppers at our house could look like this:

Monday: Pot Roast with Potatoes and Carrots and Onions,Caesar Salad, Vanilla Custard

Tuesday: Chicken Pot Pie, Green Salad, Brownies

Wednesday: Baked Salmon, Smashed Potatoes, Slow cooker green beans, Apple pie

Thursday: Chili with rice, cheddar and sour cream, Salad

Friday: Green Thai Curry, Fresh rolls (the Thai sort, not the bready sort)

Saturday: Leftover Banquet and/or fried egg sandwiches

Sunday: Pizza

Monday II: Beef Stew, Green salad, Chocolate pudding

Tuesday II: King Ranch chicken, green salad, Brownies

Wednesday II: Salmon Chowder, bread & butter, blueberry cobbler

Thursday II: Lasagna, salad, chocolate chip cookies

Friday II: Burritos of refried black beans, pumpkin chunks, cheddar and sour cream, pico de gallo and greens

Saturday II: Leftover Banquet or fried egg sandwiches

Sunday: Pizza

To accomplish real meals every night, I'll be using the freezer again. A lot. To get through a month I'll use this menu twice. The only way I can pull off 3 meals of real food every day without losing my mind or feeling like a galley slave is by making things ahead. Some people do all of their cooking in one crazy day. I tend to spread mine over two or three. With this menu I would do this:

Day 1:

Place 4 whole chickens in roaster pans with some seasonings and roast. Cool so they are comfortable to handle. Pick the meat and place into a holding container in the fridge. Bones then go into the stock pot with veggie trimmings, a little salt, some herbs and a bit of vinegar to make stock.

brown 2 large chuck roasts for pot roast. Cube two more large chuck roasts(or a lamb leg or half and half) and brown the chunks for stew. Peel 3 onions and chop into halves, peel 3 more and chop into a large dice. Place a whole roast + 3 onion halves in a freezer bag; repeat. Place half the browned stew meat in a freezer bag + half the diced onions; repeat. Seal, mark and freeze.

Brown 6 lbs of ground beef or other ground meat with diced onion and garlic for chili and lasagna. Divide it into 3 equal portions. Season two bags for chili, mark and freeze. Take the remainder and a portion of frozen or canned grated zucchini, carrots, or other veggies; add tomato sauce, tomato paste, seasonings, a little wine or balsamic vinegar to your taste. Then make up two lasagnas. There are two ways to handle the freezing part. The greener way is to make your lasagna in your regular lasagna pan, freeze it, then pop it out of the pan by running hot water on the outside of the inverted pan. You then wrap the entire lasagna in plastic wrap for freezing. The less green (and, admittedly, my) way is to buy a pack of the disposable aluminum pans at Costco and make your lasagna in that and wrap then freeze the whole thing. Aluminum is very recyclable and there is still less embodied energy in my one pan than a Happy Meal. I know- I'm rationalizing.

Put black beans on to soak. You want to do enough for two meals of chili, two meals of burritos, and the enchiladas for school lunch. For my family of 6 at home, that means about 3-4 lbs.

Day 2:

Prep shredded cheese

Cook black beans

Assemble chicken dishes. I make just the creamy filling and freeze that in large ziplocs & add the crust or the tortillas before baking. You also want to put aside enough chicken for chicken salad for sandwiches for lunches. That I chop into the fine dice for salad, add my pickle relish and store in small ziplocs. I add mayo at the last minute before packing the lunches.

Assemble the shellfish/coconut milk/veggie mix for the curry into ziplocs and freeze

Assemble chowder ingredients- salmon, sauteed onion, bacon, corn, dill, salt. Freeze in large ziplocs.

Make Pizza crusts. Enough for the family for 4 weeks. Mix, rise, blind bake, top, wrap and freeze.

Day 3: Baking

Make pie crusts, chicken pot pie crust, cookies, brownies, lunch baking

Some things just have to be done that day and for other things, I'm relying on having previously canned other ingredients (carrots, pie filling, stock). Puddings and custards are just too good warm and too easy to do for me to do them ahead for supper desserts. Potatoes don't freeze well.

I still need a plan for Sunday coffee hours- I invariably find myself scrambling at 9:30 on Sunday morning because I've failed to plan and have still not gotten used to the idea that I need to bring something small every week as opposed to having one week a quarter or so when I needed to do the whole thing. It's always evolving!

Why We Don't Drink the KoolAid

2010-08-02T15:54:00.000-07:00

I've long observed a correlation between food colorings and negative behaviors in some of my children. I was not aware that some of our FDA approved petro-based colorings are also linked to cancers in laboratory animals. I thought they just made my kids hyper and obnoxious.

When you combine that with the chemical load from things like pesticides and air pollution, leaching plastics, and who-even-knows-what-else I have to ask: when do we start drawing some lines? The CSPI report notes that these dyes are now directly linked to behavior problems in Britain and being more heavily regulated in Europe:

"Two recent studies sponsored by the British government on cross-sections of British
children found that mixtures of four dyes (and a food preservative, sodium benzoate)
impaired the behavior of even non-hyperactive children (Bateman, Warner et al. 2004;
McCann, Barrett et al. 2007). As a result, the British government told the food and
restaurant industries to eliminate the dyes tested by the end of 2009, and the European Parliament passed a law that will require a warning notice on all foods that contain one or more of the dyes tested after July 20, 2010. The notice states that the dyed food “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children” (Parliament accessed February 20, 2010). Distressingly, some products made by McDonald’s, Mars, Kraft, PepsiCo, and other major U.S. multinational companies contain dyes in the United States, but natural or no colorings in the United Kingdom."

Call me a food Luddite if you will, but I can't justify feeding my family chemicals whose only real purpose is to make nutritionally suspect products more appealing - especially if there are behavioral side effects.

The lurid photo at the top comes from a better written and more comprehensive post at elephant journal

Bulk Food Series - Part 6, Meal Plans: Lunch

2010-08-02T12:21:00.000-07:00

Lunch:

My kids will need lunch packed every day. Although the majority of the Birchtree parents I’ve met so far have fairly similar ideas about children eating real food that isn’t 95% ultra-processed corn with a little hydrogenated oil for texture, I still have the idea that lunch should look and taste great. It’s the only thing I can control that might possibly dissuade them from bartering for a classmate’s Twinkies or Doritos.

Lunch will rotate on themes:

Monday: Mom’s choice
Tuesday: Stew or Soup
Wednesday: Bento
Thursday: Sandwiches
Friday: Mexican or Italian

These themes give the children a sense of rhythm which is encouraged by their school and give me a place to start in my planning. I'll spend a day every two weeks doing some prep work to allow the lunches to go together fairly quickly. On my big prep day I will do things like:

1. Bake a pan of mini-bundt cakes
2. Make gelatin cups and individual cheese cakes
3. Make onigiri, sushi rice mats, burritos, pizza crusts, and sandwich fillings
4. Bake cupcakes and cookies
5. Make granola bars
6. Blind bake tart shells
7. Make yogurt cups
8. Bake rolls

A week of lunches might look like this:

Monday: Bacon and cheddar individual quiche
Veggies with ranch dip
Vanilla custard with carmelized apples

Tuesday: Beef stew made from the leftovers of a pot roast
Homemade roll and butter
Cheese cubes
Grapes
Chocolate chip cookies

Wednesday: Onigiri
Nori rolls
Fruit gelatin cup
veggies
Mochi

Thursday: Chicken salad sandwiches
Mini cheese rounds
Cucumber salad
Mini bundt cake

Friday: Enchiladas
Grapes
Individual cheese cake

No Poo?

2010-08-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

Not so much. I tried it for a few weeks and just couldn't do it. My hair felt oily right after a shower. I couldn't stand it. It was gross.

I went out, bought the least objectionable crunchy no-nasty-stuff shampoo I could find, didn't go back to conditioner (kept the vinegar rinses every few washes) and have been much happier.

Also, Miss V tried this with me and was also grossed out by the greasy feel but...the first few times of washing with shampoo again she was using the pantene left from our pre-experiment stock and noticed that while on the baking soda regimen, he hair had stopped falling out but as soon as she went back to the pantene it started dropping out in hunks. I found her one of her beloved Liggets tea tree oil and hemp shampoo bars and the hair loss stopped immediately.

Bulk Food Series - Part 5, Meal Plans: Breakfast

2010-08-01T14:11:00.000-07:00

My plans involve the freezer. I would be very challenged if I lost my grinder, my rice cooker, or my mixer but I would melt into a puddle without the freezer. It makes my sanity possible.

I am not a morning person. Before noon, my IQ is about 60 points lower. This is not the time for me to be figuring out meals on the fly. First priority then is breakfast foods. I’ve let this go over the summer since we didn’t have to be anywhere or do much on any specific schedule but knowing that school is starting means that I must, must, must have breakfast under control or we will not make it out the door on time. I’m going to lean toward things that are portable and can be eaten in the car if necessary. Muffins, quick breads, yogurt and granola, individual servings of breakfast casserole, eggs (love the egg cooker!), sausage balls, and bacon.

This day spent making breakfast foods will cover breakfast for me for at least 6 weeks.

Monday: Zucchini or carrot bread with butter, tea, soft boiled eggs
Tuesday: Pancakes and bacon
Wednesday: Granola and yogurt
Thursday: Egg cups
Friday: Scrambled eggs, muffins & milk
Saturday: Sausage balls, cream of wheat
Sunday: church (we don’t eat before communion)

1. Defrost my bacon. I purchase side pork in 20 lb packs and brine it for flavor then freeze it in gallon bags. Once I thaw it, I will cook it , drain and save the grease, then re-freeze it. When re-freezing I put the strips on a cookie sheet so they don’t touch, freeze them, and then transfer to a bag. You could skip the first freezing- I do it that way to spread out the labor.

2. Grind my grain mix. If you buy flour, you obviously get to skip this step. I'd like to move to all sprouted flours but the expense is just too high and I'm not going to be able to afford a really good dehydrator before spring.

3. Brown sausage. I have a local source for a very nice pork breakfast sausage without anything bad in it.

4. Make quick breads. I still have carrot and zucchini grated in the freezer from last summer’s harvest so I will be using that up first to make room for the new stuff. I did those in gallon bags and it was way too much in one container. This year: smaller bags! Or canning. I wonder how grated carrot and zucchini will can? And if I can open a can of grated carrot, drain the liquid off, add whey and ginger and ferment them?

5. Make muffin batter. A separate post on muffins and their storage will follow. I freeze the batter so there are lovely hot fresh muffins.

6. Assemble egg cups

7. Sausage balls- make them, freeze on cookie sheets, then bag.

8. Make Granola

9. Make pancakes. If I am a very clever girl, I can make the batter and put my husband to work cooking them. He does a great job of it.

Bulk Food Series - Part 4, General Meal Plans and Canning

2010-07-31T21:22:00.000-07:00

Your food has arrived, your pantry is clean and stocked, and your children are standing in the middle of the kitchen wailing “There’s no food here!!! Just a bunch of weird ingredients!!! Where are the Doritos? I want a sandwich!” Your husband is whistling the Sicily’s Pizza jingle. The nursing baby and the dog are the only ones not freaking out.

This will happen if you don’t have a plan. The biggest help is to have supper made in advance the first night. Something in the crockpot, something warm and familiar and that everyone in your family loves. Pickup day is always a lot of work and you really don’t want to cook that night. Pot roast is my go-to meal for this unless I have a chicken pot pie or a pan of enchiladas or lasagna in the freezer.

Hopefully, you have a meal plan for the following week or two or four so that you can relax over supper with your family as soon as everything is put away and then tackle the actual cooking the following day. Plan on something easy like eggs and toast for breakfast- quick to make, quick to clean, and not a lot of prep. Then decide which big tasks you want to tackle first. With a large produce order for canning, that will be my priority.

Canning: doubling and tripling jam recipes has never worked well for me so I have to do one recipe at a time. 72 lbs of berries should net me 60 pints of jam. In a perfect world, I would use only local honey, fruit and Pomona pectin but to stretch my spendy fruit, spendy honey, and spendy pectin I will also be using some organic apple juice. Jam will eat an entire day of my life but this is a once-a-year occurrence. When I’m buying jam, I’m spending about $8 per week or $416 a year. The cost of ordering berries, pectin, jars, and shipping will come to about $225. I save $190 or a savings wage of $24 an hour. Those numbers will improve the following year when I won't have to purchase so many jars. Not bad for a day’s work!

Other canning tasks: Pickles! Unlike jams, pickles can be doubled and tripled. I’ll spend another day making pickles, pickle relish, and canning grated carrots and zucchini.

One day later in the fall, I’ll spend a day making gifts and beef stock. I used to order the Pacific Naturals organic beef stock from Azure (costco only carries the chicken flavor) but then I discovered that it contains autolyzed yeast extract which is another name for a form of MSG. Sigh. I’m sure the homemade stuff is nutritionally superior but sometimes those convenience products are just so darned convenient! I plan to cook my stock down to something more like demi-glace than stock to save space. I’m also planning to caramelize enough onions to give me 12 lovely quarts of onion soup base.

Ketchup takes little time to can but a lot of time to simmer. Days and days. I’m shooting for 10 quarts this year.

Bulk Food Series - Part 3, some more thoughts on organization

2010-07-31T21:21:00.000-07:00

So now you’ve got all these bags and boxes and it all seemed like such a great idea as you were clicking things into the online shopping cart. Pickup was even kind of fun- a little like Christmas but without any toys to assemble or sugared up kids melting down in the line to see Santa. But you get it home and into the kitchen and you wonder what on earth you were thinking.

The good news is that once you get it broken out into containers and put away, it gets better. The bad news is that you may find yourself pulling everything out of your pantry and reworking the whole thing to accommodate these new foods. That isn’t as bad as it may sound because it gives you the opportunity to take a close look at the things you have in there. I just threw away my 3 year old cans of escargot last week. I wish I could claim an organizational frenzy but the truth is that one of them fell off a high shelf onto my toe and I slam dunked them in a haze of pain. I should have thrown them away two years ago! What is sitting in your pantry that you’re probably never going to eat? Make space and get rid of it before it attacks you!

Hints:

1. Before purchasing storage containers, measure your space. How tall are your shelves? How wide? How deep?

2. Think about having primary and secondary storage. For instance, I’ll be ordering a 50# bag of polenta but only about 5 lbs at a time will be up in the pantry. The rest will be on the gorilla shelves in the garage in a large Rubbermaid tub.

3. Plan for a day of pantry scrubbing and cleaning the day prior to pickup. Maybe it’s just my house but it seems that ick accumulates in my pantry. As long as you know you need to sort through and pull stuff out, you might as well factor in time to clean it.

You might also want to consider declaring an 'eat from the pantry' week where your meals are planned around what you have instead of what you might want since that will save money and create space.

Bulk Food Series - Part 2

2010-07-31T00:33:00.000-07:00

So what do I order? And what do I *do* with it all?

Today we’ll tackle the ‘what’ part.

What you order depends on your priorities and food philosophy. I’ve been heavily influenced by the Weston Price Foundation and Sally Fallon Morell’s “Nourishing Traditions”. Maybe you just want to go organic or vegetarian or macrobiotic or you have a child who needs to be on a gluten free diet- these are all things that ordering from a co-op can make easier. Our family’s priorities are these:

1. No high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated oils or MSG or artificial food colorings/preservatives
2. Avoiding pesticides
3. Dairy products which have not been subjected to the homogenization or pasteurization processes
4. Clean meats, humanely raised and slaughtered
5. Local and sustainable whenever possible
6. Natural sugars and fats

The reality is that I live in Alaska, I have kids, I’m not super-homemaker, and we have a budget with very, very little budge. I don’t soak my grains religiously. I often buy my bread from the local bakery. I drink coffee and tea. I don’t much like sourdough bread. And sometimes, you will see me coming out of the drive-thru. Some days are like that.

So here’s what I do order:

Frozen berries- I'm ordering 72 lbs of them to make jam. Raspberries are a favorite here but the blackberries are much cheaper so we're doing 24 lbs of raspberries and 40 lbs of blackberries and 8 lbs of strawberries.

Produce- I'm writing at the end of July so what's listed now won't be what is listed when we order. Hopefully there will be large quantities of pickling cucumbers and tomatoes available then. I got a great deal on tomatoes last year and canned ketchup. It was really good but only lasted about 8 months so this year I know to do more. I would like to end up with 12 quarts of ketchup and 12 pints of barbecue sauce in addition to 40 quarts of pickles and at least 12 quarts of salsa. We tried a weekly CSA box this month and I go to the Farmer’s Market pretty religiously.

Nuts- cashews & almonds. Walnuts and Pecans are cheaper at Costco and since I totally can't afford the organic and we don't eat enough to make the potential pesticide load worth freaking out over that's OK.

almond meal- great for baking, a nice way to sneak some protein into sugary stuff and for gluten free things. Miss V loves making macaroons. They’re a little sweet for me and they don’t really work as well if you cut the sugar.

coconut oil- sometimes. I can get a better price if I order direct from wilderness family or Tropical Traditions when they are running specials but only if there are other people to share the shipping costs with. Azure doesn't carry palm shortening which is nice for holiday baking - another consideration when ordering oils.

almond oil- for adding to my mayo oil blend. Organic Olive oil is now available at costco less expensively than through azure when shipping is factored in.

pasta- we like the spelt and rice pastas

sugar- sucanat, 50 lbs. Honey- maybe. I'm waiting to hear back from a local producer to see if I can get a similar price if I take my own 5 gallon bucket when they harvest in august. I order maple syrup direct from a grower I know in Maine.

rice and grains- sweet brown rice, white sushi rice, wheat berries, spelt berries, kamut berries, rolled oats (oatmeal, granola, cookies...), barley, arborio rice, popcorn

salt
mustard
ginger paste
corn tortillas
baking soda (aluminum free)
unflavored gelatin
cocoa powder

cheese- we prefer to have as much of our dairy intake in an un-pasteurized form and the raw milk cheese sold in 5 lb blocks at Azure is much less expensive than the 2 lb blocks available at Natural Pantry. When I'm unable to get what I want in raw form and must buy it pasteurized I try to buy local so the creamery just down from the school is my first source for that.

Dried fruit: We like their dried cranberries much better than craisens . Dried apples, apricots, currants, raisens, sultanas and coconut all find their way into granola and baked goods throughout the year. I bought the 25 lb bag of dried apples last spring and that was a little more than I really needed. I also bought a bag of date pieces for granola and the kids rejected them outright. Want some?

Vanilla: Good prices on good vanilla. No fake icky stuff and nice reusable bottles.

Powdered Milk- an emergency stash item as well as used to make home-made instant hot cocoa mix

Things I don't buy from Azure:

Meat- I like to know my farmers whenever possible. I like knowing that the cows making my milk are well cared for, that the steer munching its way into a starring role in winter pot roasts has eaten only grass and a little barley and had a happy life, that my chickens spent their days chasing bugs and pecking in the grass and running from shadows overhead. We split a hog with another family and slaughtered it ourselves in May and that was a pretty good deal financially and flavor-wise. Duane Clark comes to the Friday Flings as well as the Saturday market in the Natural Pantry parking lot with coolers of frozen local raised, grass fed, grass finished meat. He has a counterpart with pork who is usually at the Saturday Markets but not the flings.

When I can’t handle a half of a hog or cow, I’ve found that the gentleman running Mt McKinley Meat in Palmer is a very sympathetic soul and I can at least know that they animals from there went as easily as he could dispatch them, they weren’t in a miserable feed lot for months, and they weren’t fed all corn (barley is cheaper by a lot here). From Mt McKinley I can also buy leaf fat for making my own lard with no preservatives and no hydrogenation as well as sliced side pork for home brining bacon without a trace of nitrates, nitrites or MSG.

Lamb comes from Costco- the positive to that is the meat is grass raised and has good color; the negative is that it is shipped frozen from Australia. That’s not exactly a low-fossil fuel endeavor. Someday I might be able to have some sheep of my own to keep me in meat and fiber but until then, the Australian grass fed stuff looks a lot better than the pale slabs at Fred Meyer.

In a perfect world I could barter some moose meat or- the holy grail- caribou this winter. His Majesty has many outstanding skills but he doesn’t hunt. Some women live in houses decorated in a heavy taxidermy motif and have to pay a mechanic though so I know just how fortunate I really am.

Milk and yogurt: We’re big fans of milk in its natural state so our milk comes from a herd of cows in which we are part owners. I use some of my weekly share to make yogurt and we supplement with the oh-so-addictive Greek Gods honey whole milk yogurt. There are better choices than Greek Gods- Stoneyfield organic cream top for instance- because Greek Gods is pasteurized and homogenized but it’s really, really tasty. And effortless.

Fish: If we didn’t catch it or have it given to us, I’ll buy from The Salmon Guy where I can be sure it was at least wild caught and as local as I can get it. Finding shrimp that hasn’t been farmed or messed with is becoming a very difficult and expensive task. Thanks BP! I’m doing some lox and smoked fish this year and I love, love, love my salmon roe. Yum.

Butter:. I make some from our milk shares, I buy Kerry Gold at Costco, and I buy some of the organic regular stick butter at Costco.

Soy sauce: My family’s favorite brand of MSG free stuff is at New Sagaya so I pick it up when I’m in the city.

Spices: I’ve ordered from Penzy’s in the past but now that we have a local option I’m going to check them out. http://www.summitspiceandtea.com

Tea- Same deal as spices + some comes from Natural pantry, some from the Kobuk

Coffee- Azure doesn’t sell it. I am working valiantly to kick my expensive coffee habit. $50 to $100 a month on coffee is really ridiculous especially since it’s made with milk that is bad for me and sugars and flavorings not found in nature. I’ve tried the local roaster who sells at the Fling. I’ve tried some organic free trade beans from Freddy’s and Natural Pantry. My problem is that I have yet to find anything that doesn’t have that tastes-like-an-old-ashtray-smells aftertaste. We have a French press, we have a grinder, I buy only whole beans but I have to load in so much sugar and/or homemade chocolate syrup and milk that I’m getting too little caffeine and too much sweetened milk. Suggestions most welcome!

Vinegar for cleaning supplies and pickling - Costco. I’m sure that artisan made apple cider vinegar is superior environmentally and in taste but the price difference is HUGE.

Bulk Food Series- Part 1

2010-07-31T00:25:00.000-07:00

That first Azure Standard (or any other bulk natural foods) order can be mighty intimidating. I remember my first time and looking at all the bags and boxes and thinking "What have I done? Where will I put it all? I don't even know how to use some of it!!!"

If you are just making the transition from highly processed foods to a more whole-foods style of eating, please consider taking one step at a time. This is a concept completely foreign to my personality but I know it would have made it easier for me. The only possible exception to that advice would be in the case that you've embarked on something like the "Eat Real Food" challenge and just dropped off 90% of the contents of your kitchen at the food pantry. In that case, you need the real food, you need it all and you need it now!

As you are going through and making up your order, consider storage once all those 25 and 50 lb bags arrive. I didn't do that and for many months had a pantry full of 1 gallon ziplocs. It takes roughly 14 gallon bags to contain the grains/stuff from a 50 lb bag. Just FYI, if one fails to plan ahead, orders 6 50# bags of various grains, sucanat, rice, etc plus a variety of dried fruit and other goodies and then puts it all into said gallon bags, one's pantry becomes a random frustrating mess of bags and one begins to avoid cooking just to avoid the pantry... If the goal is to avoid finding yourself at the McDonald’s drivethru, making yourself loathe being in your own kitchen is not the most effective means of accomplishing that.

The large gray stackable bins with the flip front lids ($14.95 regular price, often used for dog food or recycling) hold up to 75 lbs of bulk grains, rice, sugar, etc. & I now have 4 of them. They go on sale at Fred Meyer periodically for $9.95. They are fantastic. I have another size of clear plastic tub which holds a 25 # bag of rice. WalMart ( I know- I hate going in there too....) has some thin rectangular canisters that hold perfectly a 5 lb bag of flour or cocoa powder and line up very efficiently on a pantry shelf.

Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams

2010-07-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

We'll definitely never be featured on "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" (if it even exists any more- TV free freak that I am, I couldn't really tell you without using google) but we are certainly eating some delicacies. Our beautiful salmon, caught by my intrepid fish slayer as they swam toward the mouth of the Kenai river, yielded several skeins of perfect orangy-red roe. I had never worked with roe before- I just knew I liked it in sushi and toast points with mayo and on potatoes with sour cream. Even though I love the taste and I know how incredibly nutritious it is I don't buy the stuff: Its expensive!

Now that I had the raw ingredients in hand I knew that I needed to figure it out and that I was not using them for bait. That would be like pouring a cup of 100 year old Scotch on a pile of corn when out deer hunting! I 'did the google' and got a basic idea then went to work.

First, I soaked the whole skeins in very salty warm water. I didn't want to cook them so I made sure that it was comfortable on my skin and that the salt was thoroughly dissolved in the water. I left them in that bath for about an hour before I began the next step.

The second phase is de-membraning. I won't lie: it's a pain. It took me over an hour to do the 6 skeins of roe and I lost about 20% of the eggs while doing it...and there were still a few little pieces left in there. It is very important to remove all of the vein and not leave any bloody bits in (according to internet articles- I have no idea why). I used the tip of my fillet knife to ease off as much as I could but the stuff doesn't go smoothly.

I placed my membrane-free eggs in a mesh strainer and rinsed them well and picked out big pieces of membrane I'd missed the first time then let them drain while I mixed up my curing brine. There are a variety of recipes out there. I used:

1 cup fine sea salt
1 cup sucanat
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup vodka
4 cups warm water

mix your brine ingredients in a bowl just a little bigger than your strainer full of eggs and make sure that the salt and sucanat are fully dissolved. Gently pour the eggs into the brine and add a little water if you need to make sure that all the eggs are fully covered.

I left mine to cure for about an hour then drained off the brine and packed the caviar into small ziploc bags. I made sure that the air was all pressed out but was careful to try not to break any of the little eggs. Then I placed those bags into another bag as an extra layer of protection against freezer burn and popped them in the freezer.

So far, I've taken one frozen bag out and used that roe. It was good in texture and taste and defrosted very quickly. It was also a big hit at the sushi party we attended last night.

Pictures coming as soon as the camera can be made to work properly.

A post on homemade lox tomorrow.

Goodbye Lily

2010-07-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

Our dog Lily died early this morning. In spite of not being much of a dog person, I'm sadder than I expected to be. She was a good dog, in spite of being a hairy beast who dug holes in the landscaping, and will be missed. So far Hunter (our other golden- they've never been apart in 8 years) seems to be pretty oblivious and the boys don't seem to understand but if we have to get out there and bury her (animal control isn't open yet for me to find out about cremation options) I think it will sink in. Not the Friday I had hoped for.

All Hail the Conquering Fish Slayer

2010-07-28T18:31:00.000-07:00

We went, we camped, he fished, I gutted and cleaned. And it was good. HM did a great job and I am so grateful to the friends who took us and taught us (and brought their bigger tarp and over-all more prepared camping setup). The huge neon yellow mid calf-length rain slicker (with the extra safe reflector stripes) got me a few snickers while setting up camp but, as the rain continued, the snide comments ("Hey! Did you bring us fish sticks?") turned to "That sure looks dry".

I now have eight beautiful red salmon fillets in my freezer, three more curing into lox in the fridge, and 4 little baggies of roe, also cured. Another pair of fillets is waiting for Bryan to pick them up. The roe with some dilled labneh is really heavenly. Making bagels in anticipation of eating the lox on Saturday is a strong probability. Fresh bagels, homemade lox, local tomatoes, homemade labneh, thin sliced red onions, and a sprinkling of capers....sounds like it might be worth every bit of the work! A bloody mary on the side might also be in order.

There were great lessons learned for next year too. Buy gear this winter out of season. Another pair of waders and boots, a tent or two, nets, another cabana tent, a cook stove, good sleeping bags and most important of all: at least one of those little stand-up tents probably made for solar showers. The porta-potties were vile, in addition to being kind of a hike. With one of those nifty little shower tents you could set up a honey bucket and skip the whole experience. You could have a place to pull of the wet nasty stuff when you come out of the water. You could actually use it as a shower tent. It looked silly in the sporting goods store but I think I get it now. Sleeping in the back of the Suburban worked pretty well for us but I can't imagine doing it without the memory foam pad. I'm the kind of girl who thinks that roughing it should certainly include an aerobed, at minimum.

The other big lesson: small boys can never, ever pack enough socks or clean clothes and it is likely futile to even try. But more socks are always a good plan.

Total Paradigm Shift

2010-07-23T19:30:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, my desire for more children vanished overnight. I knew I was done and was no longer tempted by rosy cheeked babies or darling toddlers. Grandchildren? Yes, Please! Especially if they are the children of my own sane, adult, married, and self supporting kids. I realize now that I've had another huge shift in my desires and priorities without even realizing it.

I don't want to move.Well, yes, I want to move to a smaller house with a mortgage that doesn't exceed half the gross national product of some small African countries. That move I still want to make but I don't want to move more than 10 miles away from where I live now. I don't want different friends, travel, adventure, excitement, to see foreign places.... just to stay home and make some jam and learn to catch some fish and maybe drive up to the hot springs in the winter or down to Homer for Concert on the Lawn. The farthest afield I want to go is Kodiak. I'd like to go out to Spruce Island but, antisocial creature that I am, would prefer to go when the hoards of faithful have gone off home and things are a little calmer. Not saying that the faithful aren't awesome or that I don't like gathering with others who share our religious beliefs - I just don't do crowds well.

This whole realization is a little scary because it seems like I was practically born with wanderlust. The desire to have a home to come back to has hit before on a small scale but I've never experienced an indifference to the idea of travel before. Sweden to Miss V's amazing school still appeals but more to learn the craft than to go to the place. As Gallagher would say, "Totally New Concept!" Who am I and how the heck did this happen?!?! Next thing you know, I'll be putting my kids in school.

Oh.

Wait.

That happens in a few weeks.

Well, here's hoping that the new me is somewhat less neurotic than the old one.

Canning

2010-07-20T01:02:00.000-07:00

this photograph inspires admiration, envy, and frustration (because its not in color!) I am longing to spend days in the kitchen canning jams and pickles and tomatoes and ketchup and veggies of all sorts. Last summer, 6 quarts of ketchup and a dozen jars of zucchini pickles were the extent of what I could manage (we moved in late July). There is something so secure and comforting to me about seeing rows of jars on my pantry shelves. I recently won a new canning book at another blog called "Putting Food By". Can't wait to get it!

A Salon article describes canning as just another hipster craft that doesn't actually save any money. If you're buying fruit at Whole Foods and factoring in the equipment costs in comparison to a jar of Smuckers then clearly the home canned stuff is going to cost more- maybe exponentially more. But if you are reusing jars across years, growing your own produce or purchasing cheaply in bulk and comparing your cost to the things you would purchase otherwise (assuming that you, too, are avoiding HFCS and sprayed fruits) the home canned jams are clearly the winner. My anticipated costs for 12 quarts of no-spray blackberry jam:

a box of jars- $8.90
12 lbs blackberries @ $1.55 - $18.60
6 cups sucanat - $ 3.32
1 oz Pomona Pectin @ $42 lb- $ 2.63
total- $ 33.45 for 12 quarts

I currently buy my jam from a talented local producer and supplement with a compromise brand at the store. We run through about a pint per week at a total of roughly $10 a pint average. 12 quarts would cost me $240 to purchase or $33.45 to produce. Jam can be done by anyone with a large stock pot- no pressure canner required. Even if I didn't already own ladles, funnels, and the special canning tongs or wanted to use twice as many smaller jars, the savings would still be significant.

Last year I calculated costs on my ketchup and found it was more than twice the price of purchasing a jumbo squeeze bottle of Heinz in the store but I think the flavor is better, there is no waste to recycle and I will have jars to re-use this year. My current mayonnaise making ventures are either a huge financial success or a terrible loss, depending upon what your priorities are. Production costs for a quart of mayo run about $5 for my homemade. I could purchase the same amount of Helman's for $ .50 to $1 less but if I purchased the only commercially available mayo that meets my standards (no soy, no canola, organic, GMO free, no transfats, no HFCS) I would pay $15 for the jar + shipping. Given the speed and ease of making mayo, I can't justify the price difference. Making mustard, however, is never going to happen. Organic, cheap, and acceptable mustards can be had for $1.50 a bottle through the co-op. Miss V expressed a desire for pickled peaches today but noted that the idea of being able to afford peaches and putting them in jars rather than eating them all out of hand, one after another, was a little offensive. Maybe we'll get a good sale soon.

What are you canning this year? Why do you do it?

Of mothers and daughters

2010-07-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time I was a young military wife riding a train across the Rocky Mountains with my husband and young daughter. The nearly-4 year old had been strictly forbidden from going to the lower level of the train without her parents because the doors could be opened but she had made a new friend a few rows back who encouraged her to come along on an adventure. When I opened my eyes from a catnap to see the child tiptoeing down the stairs I put an immediate stop to the game. While talking to my daughter, I was horrified when my mother's voice came pouring out of my mouth: "If that other little girl told you to jump off a bridge would you do that too?!?!"

I spent years defining myself by not being my mother but at some point in my mid to late 30s I was well enough acquainted with the realities of life and parenting to find some grace for her and see her as a person instead of an institution. Where I once considered "You sound just like your mother" to be a condemnation, it is now a compliment. We still have issues upon which we disagree but I think they are more differences in generational culture and perspective than anything else. Now I can see all of the wonderful qualities that made her a great mom- and I can see what a really difficult child I was for her to raise. I might have been a better candidate for some hippie artist commune than for life as the child of an Army officer and a civil servant but we all survived it and, now, I wouldn't trade my parents for the world. At 13, I would have sold them for a quarter with a flexible payment plan!

This morning my own 18 year old daughter was channeling me. Listening to her harangue her brothers through cleaning up one of their myriad messes was like hearing my own voice from another room, both the good and the bad. I hear my own demanding shrillness in her but I also hear strength, an ability to organize, and a refusal to be walked on by small children. She certainly has more grace for me than I did for my mother at her age and seems less bothered by being compared to me, for which I am very grateful. Watching children become adults is fascinating if you can step back for some perspective. Watching them take over the nagging for a morning to get the house back into order is priceless.

The other side is symmetrical!

2010-07-18T17:02:00.000-07:00

Miss V here.

I have fine tuned the blog and it now looks vaguely put together and fit for public consumption. The temptation to do this thing up as an ode to Twilight and HP slash was quiet tempting until I remembered that this is all my work and would reflect badly on me. Probably bad for my health as well.

Since I generally do unfussy blogs this is what you get. It is all even and uniform, the arial font is gone, and it all matches and looks purty. There will be changing banners for seasons and at some point I will do blurb art. Until then this will have to do and Mom will need to change her password next March or bad things may happen. :D

This should be exciting!

2010-07-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

I'm handing over the blogger controls to Miss V for a few hours and she is going to make my blog pretty. I gave her a couple of blogs to look at for some sense of what I like and now I'm turning her loose. See you on the other side!

Coming Soon

2010-07-17T19:54:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a series for people who are new to co-op ordering, cooking with whole foods, and using local food resources. Meal plans will be posted. That was the hardest part of switching to a Nourishing Traditions diet for me. Let me know if you have questions or requests! Group canning parties? Classes? Batch cooking swaps?

Our new charter school will have a potluck on the 9th of August and will open up a new Azure co-op buying club the following week. With luck (and permission from the powers that be) we may even be able to get Duane Clark to come sell his local grass fed chemical, hormone, and drug free beef and his friend's pastured pork at our pickup day. Ordering is not limited to families with children in the school. If you would like to order with us, please visit Azure and set up an account so that you can start getting an idea of what they carry and what you would like to order. Shipping is roughly $.35 per pound which is paid separate at the time of delivery.

Christmas Presents!

2010-07-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

Saw this today and nearly spewed tea on the keyboard because of the sheer awesomeness of it. Two small boys will be getting these for Christmas- We needed new swords and at least one new shield anyway. The red one just screams for a mod- Viking horns!

Its not making my "no new yarn" pledge any easier though. I want to go buy the yarn right now and start on these. You will note that my 'no new yarn' pledge did not include patterns. I've already happily sent my $3 zinging through the ether and now I own the instructions. I just need 3 skeins of Brown Sheep bulky(because of course I'm going to felt it!) and the will to finish my other stuff first. Must....knit....faster.....

The Song of Fred

2010-07-15T23:19:00.000-07:00

Fred is outside serenading. He trills and cresendoes but his tune is very, very repetitive. Nagging even. I wish that Fred would find a new house in a new neighborhood but he seems very well established here. Perhaps Fred is lonely- I have certainly never seen him with another. A lady friend might be just the thing to curtail his incessant musical interludes. A polite request seems to be a best first option in most neighborhood disputes but I am certain that in this case, it would be pointless: Fred is a squirrel.

I never thought that squirrels really made any significant sounds before I became acquainted with Fred. Nobody ever says "Chirp like a squirrel!". Unfortunately, Fred failed to get the memo. If we did not reside within the city limits and I were not so unwilling to garner negative attention from local law enforcement, I could solve the Fred problem in a very permanent way. If Fred's preferred trees were on the other side of the house- where we have no neighbors in residence and the structure is incomplete- I might chance it anyway. My northern neighbors would surely object to a .22 aimed at their house though so I resist the temptation. Besides, I've seen Elmer hunting Bugs and that never ends well for Elmer.

Pondering Poo

2010-07-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

Ew! Not that kind!

I'm thinking about ditching shampoo and conditioner. I've been happily wedded to my Pantene clarifying shampoo and volumizing conditioner routine for several years but Pantene just shot themselves in the foot with me: they changed formulas and stopped selling the clarifying shampoo. The new formula is icky. It makes my hair feel unclean and my scalp feel itchy and greasy. Certain persons of my acquaintance (generally those who live in my house and have neither the means nor the transportation to run out and purchase an alternative to whatever I toss into their shower) have also complained about the 'new' formula and experienced a sharp increase in dandruff like symptoms. yuck.

As with many other non-mainstream changes, it helps to know someone (or know someone who knows someone's mother) and have the process laid out for me. Sarah is such a daughter of a friend of a friend and wrote just such a helpful post. No matter how well this works out though, I'm drawing the line at deodorant.

Update: I tried just the baking soda part and it felt weird in the shower (we're all so used to the whole rinse-lather-repeat routine) but when I got out and dried my hair it felt great. I suspect that I still have a lot of the nasty chemical residue is my hair though because it went straight to oily/nasty feeling on the scalp in about 4 hours- but it did that with the pantene too. I now have a second squeezy bottle and some vinegar rinse mixed and waiting so I'll try again today. I used a baking soda paste as a facial scrub and that worked beautifully so I think that when my Burt's Bees facial mousturizer is gone I'm going to make some hippie tree hugger changes there too.

Yarn envy

2010-07-14T02:00:00.000-07:00

My mantra: I will not buy more yarn! I will not buy more yarn! I will not buy more yarn!

I have to say it a lot since Laura clued me in to the fact that there is a local yarn shop and it also has felting fiber and it is fabulous. I'm determined to finish the projects I already have yarn for before I spend money I don't have on gorgeous new yarn. The biggest problem of the moment is that I hate the way the yarn I'm working with feels. It's Candide & has a lot of vegetable matter in it and is so much rougher than my beloved Brown Sheep bulky. However, I bought several Christmas stocking kits on sale a few years ago and they need to be finished. It's not a big savings if you buy things on half off and then never use them! the biggest problem with my grand plan for self discipline and austerity is that I really do not understand the instructions for doing the heel, I've never done a heel, and I'm going to need to go to the yarn shop for help. I'm going to have to leave all cash, cards, and check books at home.

(Image from www.spinblessing.com- they carry all the kits I have and then some!)

So I will finish the stockings, use my other project yarn, make my dad's Christmas gift, and then and only then will I feel free to covet new fiber. I really want to make myself some felted boots for this winter. Badly. And the gecko mittens I found today. And some felted insulated carry bags for the kids' tiffins. And, And, And...

so much yarn, so little time.

Unmitigated Gluttony

2010-07-12T20:34:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in an earlier post that Miss V was making chicken pot pie tonight. Our guests are going to be in quite late so it was just the five of us- Miss V, SCS, T 1, T2 & me. We devoured the entire batch of this heavenly pot pie. Yes, I know that the frozen puff pastry isn't local, sustainable, soaked, sprouted, made with good fats, or in any other way an admirable processed food. I don't care. It was so, so, so good. I'm full but if there were more I would be eating it. T1 licked the pan clean. This stuff is incredible.

(photo shamelessly taken from the food network site with the recipe- ours disappeared before anyone thought to get a camera)

I warned you it would be random

2010-07-12T17:04:00.000-07:00

Summer is rolling along. Estee's at camp, Miss V is making plans for a big adventure, and I'm counting down to the start of the school year. 36 days people!! that last part is a great thing because T1 & T 2 are bickering non-stop and I just threatened to duct tape them to trees on the opposite ends of the yard. Its kind of a shame that they know I'd never do it but it did buy me 15 seconds of silence before they started giggling.

I got to skip cooking yesterday because we went to a wedding. A really wonderful wedding. The reception was a potluck, everything was made by friends or family, the whole thing was low key, low budget- and totally fantastic. This young couple chose to plow money into a 3 week European honeymoon instead of a catered wedding and thousands of dollars in floral, photography, and clothing expenses. It was still a joyful celebration with fantastic music, hours of dancing, and great food. I hope my kids choose to go that route- not that there is a lot of choice since I can't imagine squeezing a big wedding into our budget.

Tonight I also get to skip cooking and enjoy my guests- Miss V is making the chicken pot pie recipe from the Bobby Flay showdown with the Casserole Queens. She watched that months ago before we exiled the TV and has wanted to try it ever since. The chicken is already cooked and most of the veg chopped so it should go right together for her. Add a little salad, maybe a pan of brownies for desert and we're done!

Also on the cooking front, while digging around the 'net for a marmalade recipe to make best use of our 4 woody little organic oranges from the last CSA basket I came across a reference to a red onion-cranberry marmalade from Thomas Keller's "Ad Hoc at Home" cookbook. Now that I've read more, I want this cookbook. Our library system doesn't have it so I'll be putting in an inter-library loan request today. My orange marmalade search yielded a recipe which left me with weird chunky syrupy stuff. I'll be opening those jars and adding more pectin and re-processing later in the week. It's my own fault because I threw in a little rum for flavor and didn't adjust the pectin.

All the medical bills are finally in along with a little surprise from the IRS- as in "Surprise! you messed up your taxes 2 years ago and we want more money" so I sat down and figured out what we need to do to pay this stuff off. I also have to factor in brake work, winter tires, school supplies and activity fees, and Miss V's upcoming adventure....and we are now back on the envelope system. I'm also going to need to sell some colonial clothing but we should be out of the red by Christmas. Mostly. I think.

The Tomato Whisperer

2010-07-07T18:20:00.000-07:00

She was at the market again and accounts for fully half of our weekly farmer's market budget now that we know that she'll be there. Maybe 4'11' with her shoes on, head encased in a floral scarf and totally rocking the 'if it fits, it matches" aesthetic- she doesn't have enough English for me to discuss with her what sort of soil amendments she might be using. She can sure talk to those 'maters though. They are so fantastic that she could bring an interpreter just to let me know she's using DDT and I'd still buy my $20 a week. Yes- they are that good. They smell like proper tomatoes and they taste like sunshine. This is a big deal in Alaska.

My own garden will probably not be producing any tomatoes this summer. The plants are still barely a foot high, there are no blooms, the color is a little on the yellow side...its just sad. Between the moose and my own incompetence I doubt that I'll get anything from my garden this year. Thank God for the farmer's markets and the CSA box. I'm going to be out at Pyrah's again this year. Hopefully the cukes will be up soon.

Mayo Update

2010-07-07T16:59:00.000-07:00

Remember when I said I needed to make my own mayo so I could have the good stuff? I followed the instructions and did it in the fantastic new KitchenAid my daughter sent as an anniversary gift (love it. love her. so grateful.) with the whisk thingy. It came out really well. The only caveat is that I kept adding my oil blend (2/3 olive, 1/3 coconut) until I thought it was thick enough. When it was refrigerated it became a little too thick so next time I know to stop a bit short of Helmans consistency. I'd like a flavor that is a little less overwhelmingly olive-y too but I don't want it to taste of coconut either. The oil blend needs some work. Overall though I am delighted with how it came out, how little work was really involved to get a full quart (I tripled the recipe) and how affordable it was compared with ordering from Tropical Traditions. Love them but I live in AK and have kids who would put mayo on their jelly if I let them. That might be an exaggeration but not much.

Desperately Dependent

2010-07-05T15:52:00.000-07:00

The power went out for several hours today, reminding me of how energy dependent my life is. My kitchen life in particular. No power = no water, no refrigeration, no oven, no mixer, no egg cooker, no grinder, no vacuum cleaner, etc. It bites!

Since I have no desire to give up any of my gadgets I clearly need some alternative energy in my life. Solar panels, a wind turbine, some micr-hydro would be great but we found land we like and its not right on the river.

Name That Blog

2010-07-02T22:56:00.001-07:00

Miss V- who made me a fabulous new banner- thinks my blog needs to be re-named. I think I agree with her. I don't know what to call it though and I'm not 100% in love with her choice. Ideas?

Inspired

2010-07-02T16:09:00.000-07:00

I have quite a yarn stash and no mindless project on the needles right now so when I found this felted basket at Waldorf Mama today it was an immediate flash of inspiration: I can use all of my leftovers to make something similar (it just won't be rainbow striped). I'm thinking that I might use a piece of leather for the bottom too so it will better survive the sorts of abuse I routinely dish out.

If I were doing something more planned and less 'experimental' I'd be all over these from Noni Designs :

Too bad I need to knit up all those Christmas stocking kits I bought two years ago, find a positive use for my current stash, finish the unfinished sweater from a kit I bought 4 years back, and still do...you know...life.

First CSA Box!

2010-07-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

Is here and I'm excited. I got two heads of lettuce, a big bunch of broccoli, celery (without the leafy bits- boo!), some local purple and white potatoes, some lovely radishes, 4 oranges, and a bunch of what I think are horseradish leaves. I have no clue what to do with those! Suggestions welcome.... the nice folks at Glacier Valley CSA were kind enough to fix my mess up so I'll be getting one box a week instead of 2 next week and none the week after. The celery is a great opportunity to try out the dehydrator which was loaned to me- not much of a celery fan.

Thank heaven the box was good because the farmers market was not so super by the time we got there yesterday but we did get some tomatoes, some lingonberry jelly, lettuces, garlic, and bok choi.

I also got milk and cream today and have 7 quarts of yogurt doing whatever it is that turns milk to yogurt. Yogurting? Fermenting? Percolating? There's also some soft cheese doing its thing. No eggs so I'll have to resort to store eggs this week. Must replenish the granola stash too.

The sausage is nearly finished and HM will be home tonight. Yay! (update: "almost finished' was wildly optimistic. I am going to be filling casings until I leave for the airport and probably again tomorrow. I think I'll keep some in bulk form for Swedish meatballs)

Book Reviews- Radical Homemakers and Shop Class as Soulcraft

2010-07-01T00:40:00.000-07:00

Both of these were good enough that I really tore through them.

Radical Homemakers is based on a premise that I love: there is a choice other than serving the corporate masters. People can opt out, live well on less and create something real and lasting that nurtures the soul and declines to harm others. She talks about the extractive economy and how destructive it is for so many people and I can relate to her perspective. She also seems to think that life without health insurance might be more noble than life with- unless you live in a country with universal care. Having seen the bills for my daughter's cancer care I am extraordinarily grateful to have had good coverage. Our out of pocket expenses this year were limited to $12,000 of the $100,000+ cost. Certainly the cost might have been lower if there was no insurance and the market drove costs down or hospitals closed and doctors went out of business but would the technology and facilities that make my child's continued existence possible themselves exist if there were no insurance companies? I don't know. But we won't be dropping out of our plan anytime soon (like ever).

The idea that I can still build something really meaningful and that my kids can never know the brain deadening hum of fluorescent lights buzzing over one's windowless cubicle gives me warm fuzzies so for that alone, I think the book is worth reading. Its just not necessarily the one true path, the gospel, or a how-to manual from the universe. Borrow this book or pick it up used or get it through inter-library loan.

Shop Class as Soulcraft was fabulous. I'm giving out copies for Christmas- if I can wait that long. If you have kids, especially boys, you need to read this book. If you are involved in the education of children or the counsel of teens, formally or informally, you need this book. If you have the crazy idea that it would be good for people to actually make more of the things we need closer to home than a factory in China, you'll like this book. Part of the message is that the trades are not for dumb people, there is real satisfaction in solving real problems in a hands-on way with an objective standard for success, and that tradesmen often earn more than their student-loan saddled cubicle dwelling contemporaries. This is a book I would buy at double the price. It's high on my list of titles I think we should be reading in our Birchtree Book Club.

Holy Houses Batman!

2010-06-29T17:51:00.000-07:00

I did math today. I'm kind of a math nerd and I like math. I like the way numbers are orderly and predictable and, usually, when I do math I have a pretty fair idea of what I'm going to end up with before I start. My impromptu session with the calculator today was an unusual shock. It had never occurred to me before to work this particular problem so I went in without any ideas of the outcome.

The question I wanted answered was this: Roughly how much have we spent on housing over the course of our marriage? Rent on our first apartment was $500. Our house payments now are $2200. There were many years overseas where his housing allowance was in excess of $1600 a month. The answer to my question knocked the wind out of me: nearly $400,000. Of that amount I can discount $10,000 of equity in the current house. $390,000 up in smoke. At minimum wage working a 40 hour week and paying neither taxes nor social security, a person would have to work 24 years, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year to earn that much.

After I stopped hyperventilating, I started thinking about what I would do differently if I had it to do all over....and what I want to do now.

If I could go back to 1990 and hit the re-set button, we would have been in a cheaper apartment and the first year we would have spent ruthlessly paying off the debt that HM was dragging around from the ex-wife. The next year I would have rented the cheapest apartment I could find in a safe neighborhood, all of our furniture would have been second hand, and I would have saved like crazy. The third year I would have bought a piece of land for cash and taken out the smallest construction loan I could to have a very modest house built- maybe one of those Jim Walter's houses where you finish it yourself.

Since HM was in the military, and I wouldn't trade the experience of getting to travel, I would have kept that first house as a rental and had it paid off while someone else was in it & the army was paying our housing expenses overseas. Yes, those years would have been lost opportunity costs as far as housing allowance but there is more to life than just money. When we returned to the US, I'd do the same thing over again but- since I must be magic to go back in time- I would know to sell everything except the home I wanted to live in forever by 2006.

If I could find a young adult who would really apply what I've learned I would tell them this: Buy land. Pay it off. Save some more and build a tiny cabin for cash if you can, with a small loan if you can't and get that paid off in a year or two. Work two jobs if you need to, don't eat out, don't buy "stuff", live with an outhouse and beg showers at friends or join the gym if you need to. Paid for is way better than fancy. Start with a cabin with a bedroom under the rafters - 12 x 16, for example. Get your well and septic in, that cabin paid for, then start building a 'house' addition on one side and a garage on the other making your original cabin a big kitchen. You may be young and single now but eventually you're probably going to have a spouse and 2-4 kids. Trust me: if you build the house and its paid for before you acquire the toys, you won't need to sell the toys when the babies start to come along and you need a minivan. I would loan this mythical young person some books- Rob Roy's "Mortgage-Free!: Radical Strategies for Home Ownership ", Matthew B. Crawford's "Shop Class as Soulcraft, An Inquiry Into the Value of Work" , and Shannon Hayes' "Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture". There is plenty in that last volume I don't necessarily agree with but the central idea is that one can choose to live differently, on a smaller income and with greater happiness. I think that is far more realistic if one is free from large housing costs.

So what to do now?

I've known since the medical bills started rolling in that our house and financial balance is unsustainable for us. When you add utilities, it eats a little more than half the take-home pay and is on a 30 year mortgage- talk about a death pledge! There are rooms we don't use, kids are leaving soon, and its just too big. Also, as kids grow up, move out, and are no longer on our tax return, our tax burden climbs. I want to find a way to build for cash but I recognize that we are not 21 and 28 anymore and that we are attached to the creature comforts (plumbing!) and will not move into a small cabin with kids and no water. I'm still looking for a solution, a way through, a way to build a life with the freedom of security because honestly- if HM lost his job we would be totally hosed. I know that we will keep this massive house and rent it out to build more equity in hope of recovering the huge losses we took in the retirement account. I'm just not sure how to get my hands on land. I may have to wait another year. Patience is certainly a virtue but it isn't necessarily one of mine!

Local Food

2010-06-29T13:23:00.000-07:00

We missed the farmer's market last week and this week I get my first CSA box. I'm really excited to see what's going to be in there but the disconnect is in the delivery schedule: market on Wednesday, box on Thursday! There is some level of fear in this project....What if my box is full of cauliflower and rhubarb but no farmer's market for another 6 days?...but I'm pretty sure it will be OK. Our last visit to the market found me driving away with savoy cabbage in my basket and we all liked it. New things can be very, very good.

This week is also my turn to make the milk run and I'll be making sausage tomorrow with my new KitchenAid as well as turning the last of our current batch of milk into yogurt. I'm experimenting with the yogurt, trying to get a texture and flavor which mimics the Greek Gods Honey yogurt that we all love so much. When I strain it out to get that texture I get so little yogurt that it becomes really cost prohibitive in the quantities we eat. Greek Gods uses pectin in theirs so I'll try that. The gelatin thickening method was less than successful. We go through 5 32oz containers a week which requires 2.5 gallons of milk to make on top of the 4 gallons we drink. 5 containers @ 4.39 each is more than twice what it costs me to make and mine is not homogenized. I keep meaning to try cheesemaking & chickening out.

Speaking of chickens...must get the number to the chicken lady. I only have one left in the freezer. My beef won't be in until October and our half hog didn't last nearly as long as I hoped. We do love our pork! It seems that I run through about 5 lbs of lard a month which will be good to know next time I get leaf fat from Mt McKinley Meat & Sausage.

The next big issue- since my garden is just so, so, so sad looking that I don't expect anything from it- is going to be veggies. Pyrah's sprays but I don't know of anywhere I can go pick my own produce locally that doesn't use chemicals & I need a lot of carrots, cucumbers for pickling, and zucchini. I also need berries. Raspberries in crazy quantities, lots of strawberries, blackberries would be nice. Blueberries and lingonberries I can pick for free later in the summer. We use a lot of jam and, while I absolutely LOVE Christine's stuff at Apple Branch Pantry, I like making my own and I want to do some with honey, low methyl pectin and organic or wild grown ingredients.

I just read Laura's post on "50 ways to eat your veggies" and clearly need to post my no-nasties ranch recipe:

1/2 cup mayo
1/2 cup sour cream
1 cup plain whole milk yogurt
1 T dried Italian seasoning mix (rosemary, thyme, oregano)
1 T dried dill
salt & lemon juice to taste

stir it all together and watch it disappear. If you need to thin it down to use on an actual salad just stir in a bit of milk until you get the consistency you want.

Enjoy!

Vodka Pasta

2010-06-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

This originally came from a Patricia Wells cookbook "Trattoria" but since it entered the regular rotation and I'm more of a dump cook, some things have been lost in translation. This comes together in less than 5 minutes.

2 boxes penne or similarly shaped pasta
olive oil to coat your skillet- about 3 T for my large cast iron one
2-3 cloves garlic, very finely chopped or put through a garlic press
about 1 T crushed red pepper flakes
salt
1 can organic tomato sauce
1 can organic diced tomatoes
1/2 cup vodka
1/2 cup heavy cream
fresh cilantro, washed, leaves roughly chopped (or left whole)

Pour the olive oil in a hot skillet. Add garlic and pepper flakes and saute for a minute, being careful not to burn the garlic. Add a pinch or two of salt then dump in the tomatoes. Heat those until nice and hot then add the vodka. Stir that in well then stir in the cream then the cilantro. Turn off the heat. dip a noodle into the sauce and taste to see if you need more salt. I put the red pepper flakes on the table for the guys in my family since they like it when their food makes them cry. Toss your cooked pasta in the sauce and serve in shallow bowls with crusty bread, a salad, and a big red wine like an old vine zin or a Barolo. Consistently decent cheap (around $10) bottles that go well with this dish: Folie a Deux Menage a Trois and the South African Goats do Roam. Parmesan cheese is really gross on this dish- resist the temptation. Grilled shrimp or sausages are great in it. This recipe feeds 8 with no leftovers.

Why I'm Not Homeschooling

2010-06-27T19:57:00.000-07:00

More than a few people have been shocked by my about-face on my kids' education. I've homeschooled for years. More than 12 of them, to be specific. I've been part of the camp who espouse the idea that using the public school system in any form is un-Christian. I've heard a priest say that it would be better for a child to spend all his days at home watching old Loony Tunes re-runs than to be incarcerated in the Godless soul trap of a government school- and thought he might have a point. I saw no acceptable options so I kept going, accomplishing a little less and hating it a little more year in and year out, never admitting how much I disliked it even to myself.

I've also lived in denial about my adopted special needs kids, how severe their needs are and how irreparable. Rather than accept reports of unalterable mental retardation and mental illness, I decided that if I just worked hard enough, researched enough, and prayed enough I could fix it. That was a younger me. One without the battle scars of 10 years of living- literally- with insane people. One without a chronic illness. One with confidence in her own ability to make anything happen and a belief that it will all come out right. That optimistic young woman slowly turned into a bitter traumatized curmudgeon and I knew that something had to give.

Last year I started with one child - the one whose behaviors were so severe that I just had to have a window of time every day to accomplish something with the little ones. I knew that he wasn't learning anything from me and that, because of him, neither was anyone else. So into school he went. It was not great. The price of those joyous hours of peace was a death spiral of increasingly dangerous behaviors at home. By the end of the semester, he was in an acute psych hospital and headed for long term residential treatment. My other two incredibly difficult kids were out of the house for good, the 4th special needs child away at school for a while and still I saw that I just wasn't cutting it. The little ones deserved better. They needed to be part of a community of real people, to build friendships, learn some social skills. I went looking for options.

There were choices out there. If the local middle school were the only choice available to me for SCS, she would be staying home. I wasn't terribly impressed by our neighborhood elementary school for T1 & T2 either. I considered changing homeschool support programs and driving on- choosing one with more on-site classes. Then I found Birchtree. I liked what I heard. We had a great experience with Miss V in a Waldorf Kindergarten in Germany. I went and looked at Winterberry Charter School in Anchorage and was pretty much sold.

Now we've been part of the growing school community, participated in camp, been to meetings and I've even joined a committee on the Parent's Guild- and its good. My kids are happy. I am ecstatic. I like the teachers. I trust that T1's teacher will enjoy him and encourage him not just academically but that she will help him learn to fail gracefully and get up and keep going (he's got a bit of a perfectionist streak that gets in the way of joy sometimes). I trust that T2's teacher will help him with things like focus and diligence while still cultivating the sweet side of his personality and teaching him to love reading; that she will honor his imagination while grounding him in what is real. I trust that SCS's teacher will draw out the artist in her, encourage her love of literature and inspire interests in math and science- the areas of my biggest failure. I believe we have found a school where each of them will be nurtured as individual souls who are important. That makes it OK for me to step back.

I never expected to like such a hands off role in their schooling but then, I never used to believe that I needed to nurture myself. In retrospect I think that was as foolish as believing that there is no need to change the oil in the car as long as some still shows up on the dipstick. I need to heal from the years of living in a house with children incapable of doing anything other than hating me. I need to figure out who I am now. I need to be able to just mother the kids still here without having the pressure of teaching them on our relationship. I need to paint and knit and sew and write and love my kids and my husband, to rebuild my emotional reserves and to really learn how to dream again.

Best Decision I Ever Made

2010-06-27T18:27:00.000-07:00

Was getting married 20 years ago. 20 years. That seems like such a long time but it doesn't seem like its been that long. I'd like another 50 with him.

We went out for a fantastic dinner last night at Jens'- with cab rides to and from the hotel; spent the night in a lovely king room thanks to 3 young Korean men who were not excited about the prospect of sharing a king sized bed & happily took our double; then hung out at Barnes & Noble this morning with coffee and pastries for breakfast. We were glad to get back home to the kids (who all behaved for Miss V- not one phone call!) but the time alone was fantastic.

My other great anniversary gift, aside from time alone and being totally spoiled, was from GG. That Ice Blue Kitchenaid I was coveting? It arrived on my doorstep with a meat grinder. Its beautiful! Once I am really recovered from my not-so-great anniversary gift (a kidney infection) I'm going to make the rest of our hog into sausages and lay in a store of baked goodies for soccer snacks, lunches, and breakfasts. Thank you!

Before HM and I went off on our very quiet evening, we took some of the kids and went to the Alaska Highland Games. I suspect the pipe and drum band is in our future. We were also excited to learn that there is a Scottish Country Dance club here. We've done English Country Dance before and Miss V likes it a lot. I am a hopeless clutz but I enjoy the music and I enjoy watching it and I am willing to learn more as long as I don't have to wear stays. The HRG was absent which was a disappointment to those members of the family who are sorely missing playacting from different times but Miss V emailed and, we hope, will hear from them soon. There are rumors of some 18th Century activities to coincide with Independence Day celebrations here and we certainly have all the clothes!

Birchtree Summer Camp Circus Festival

2010-06-25T20:49:00.000-07:00

What a fantastic afternoon! The campers did a great job showing off all of their neat new tricks from this week of learning circus arts- juggling, Chinese yo-yo, spinning 'plates', spinning rings, and something where they balanced a ball on top of a tube (yes- that's the technical term).

After the performance families hung out, played, listened to great live music, bought goodies from the bake sale, popcorn, soup & bread, made flower fairies and daisy crowns, took aim with a slingshot, and kids had their faces painted with tiger stripes, butterflies, flowers, and spiderwebs. There was a puppet show and then more low key family fun. The weather even cleared up for us! I'm really enjoying getting to know the other families who are involved in the school and becoming part of this community. There are some neat people here!

As much fun as the festival was, the run-up to it was crazy. I experienced baking fails and knitted lamb fails all in the same day. I burned a cheesecake and my frosting just would not behave. I used this recipe for the vanilla cupcakes with lemon curd but....I used regular flour instead of gluten free flours (1.5 cups white and 1.5 cups whole wheat replace the first 5 ingredients). Then I cheated and used store bought lemon curd because it was already in my pantry and totally effortless. I used sucanat instead of white sugar- I don't have any in my house. The frosting was kind of a disaster. Miss V made caramels earlier in the week and the candy thermometer died, stuck forever at 218 degrees. Since I didn't have a thermometer and didn't have the time or inclination to go get one (since I was already behind) I decided to just wing it. I'm pretty sure that my syrup wasn't cooked enough but its hard to know by look when using sucanat. I also only had beaters that aren't really that great for frosting and I'd attempted to use the evil microwave to defrost my butter- since I was behind- and over-melted it. So I was pouring inadequately candied syrup into my egg yolks then beating in butter that's too warm and trying to compensate by adding more butter that was still half frozen. I finally hit a point of desperation and whipped a pint of heavy cream and folded it in with my fail frosting. That got me something edible and of decent taste but it was still kind of grainy looking and I kept getting chunks of butter in the end of my piping tip. This makes for some ugly piping!

It all seems to have worked out in the end- all the baked stuff sold. Some of the knitted things sold, others didn't but can go into the school store. One of my lambs ended up getting a last-minute crocheted tail and becoming a panther. The other one was being marketed as a polar bear last I saw. Neither of the hats had sold but I'm not too surprised- its tough to think of buying hats when its hot and the end of June.

There were beautiful silks for sale and crazy cute little gnomes. T2 bought me a beautiful scarf that I tied in my hair. Someone made a little felted house with two little dolls. So so so so cute! I would love to learn to do those. T1 got a Chinese Yo-yo of his very own.

Gluten Free Chocolate Cupcakes

2010-06-24T23:52:00.000-07:00

I needed to make some GF goodies for the Birchtree Charter School Circus Camp Festival and Fundraiser and went immediately to a favorite food blogger who has gone GF herself (for the most part) and also opts to bake with only sucanat, honey or maple syrup. I took a look at her lovely recipe for 'Simply Good Chocolate Cake' and - being lazy- streamlined it a bit. I ended up with one recipe's worth baked and awaiting frosting tomorrow & two more in jars as mixes.

My version works like this:

In a bowl (not your mixer bowl) combine:
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 cup (150 gr) rice flour
1 cup (130gr) sorghum flour
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
3/4 cup (150gr) sucanat or regular sugar

Melt together
3/4 cup (180gr) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips
1 stick (115gr) unsalted butter

In your mixer beat
2 large eggs
then add
1 cup (250ml) sour cream

beat in the chocolate and butter mixture then slowly add the dry ingredients, scraping down the sides and mixing until everything is well incorporated.

Plop (there is no pouring - this batter is thick) into 12 lined or buttered and floured (rice flour!) muffin tins and bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes.

I had planned to pipe on a cream cheese and honey vanilla frosting but found myself out of time and without cream cheese so I went with the Vanilla buttercream I was also using for the regular cupcakes.

Making the mixes was simple- just mix the dry ingredients well and put it in a canning jar. Cut a round of wax paper to put in the jar to completely cover the dry ingredients and then put the chocolate chips on top.

Print a tag with ingredients and instructions.

You just can't please everyone....

2010-06-24T22:30:00.000-07:00

Even when they're not home! I'm learning this. I can make small accommodations in lunches for things a kid really doesn't like (leave out the bananas in the fruit mix, don't put granola on the yogurt, etc) but I just don't have the time or mental energy to create different meal plans for each child. Tuesday's quiche was a hit with 2, OK with one, and not liked by the 4th (I have a loaner kid for the week). The loaner child was relieved that she wouldn't be having lunch at camp Wednesday so she doesn't have to have onigiri. One of the kids is just really not liking the cherries I put into the fruit mix this week but guess what? They're chopped, they're paid for, and they will be eaten. Cherries may grow on trees but the money to buy organic ones doesn't.

Yesterday's bento lunch in our Target Tifffins consists of round pork onigiri straight from the freezer, triangular salmon onigiri, a salad of the last of the farmer's market greens with a dressing of mayo, plain yogurt, and sweet chili sauce, and a boiled egg molded with the fish mold + a little squirter of soy sauce. The other tier contains a mini-cheesecake with a dollop of raspberry jam from Apple Branch Pantry, a Bonebel cheese round, and 3 little molded orange gelatins. T2 swears that lunch tastes better in the tiffin than in the box. Who am I to argue? The big girls also got smaller bento lunches packed in the cute boxes sent by my friend Jill (aka the bento fairy)-work schedules and appointments had us out running like crazy Wednesday.

Today was a simple lunch and mostly very popular: egg salad and chicken salad sandwiches, raw veggies with homemade ranch, yogurt and grapes.

Christine from Apple Branch Pantry is at the Friday Flings in Palmer every week & her jams and sauces are delicious, local, and HFCS free.

Mayo

2010-06-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I know I ought to do but fail to actually accomplish is the regular production of mayonnaise. I have at least one child who regards it as practically a beverage. I've never made it successfully in the food processor or blender- the only time it really works for me is when I whisk it by hand in my round bottomed copper bowl and, frankly, I'm kind of lazy and I need more quantity than that.

Today the Weston Price Foundation posted a link to this post on the Artistta blog about how to do it so it actually works and inspired me to give it another shot. Results next week, assuming I survive the allergy attack and tomorrow's big end-of-camp show and fundraiser.

A Le Creuset Giveaway!

2010-06-22T23:30:00.000-07:00

My new friend Laura (as opposed to my old friend Laura who will be just *thrilled* with that moniker & yes I know them both in real life) is hosting a giveaway on her blog for 5 of the Le Creuset individual tomato casseroles. They are so cute!

Gelatin Recipes

2010-06-22T00:57:00.000-07:00

Someone asked for a how-to on the homemade jello knock offs. Here are the recipes I made today. You can make jello out of pretty much any juice, add any fruit except raw pineapple and kiwi and something else- mango? You can use booze for a grown-up party- champagne with strawberries, layered Irish coffee, a tequila sunrise (with homemade grenadine) in a little individual mold. There are loads of options and unflavored gelatin is easy to work with. If you want more sweetener in yours just add a little more gelatin to balance out the firmness. This really does not take any longer than making Jello from a box. Enjoy!

Berry Gelatin Cups

2 cups water, hot
1/3 to 1/2 cup succanat or honey
a good handful of mixed frozen berries
2 Tbs unflavored gelatin + 1/4 cup hot water

Combine water and succanat and bring to a rolling boil to fully dissolve all the sugar. If using honey you just need the honey to dissolve totally in hot water. Add the berries and cook for a few minutes (3? 5 tops).

Whisk the gelatin into the hot berry mix. Ladle the berry gelatin quickly into silicone or foil muffin liners in a regular sized muffin tin. This should make about 8 of them. I then place the whole tray in the freezer. Once they are frozen you can transfer them into a ziploc or some sort of lidded container and leave them frozen. If you pack them frozen they will be thawed enough to eat by noon and keep other things cold.

To make twice as many with a creamy layer- add another 3 T of gelatin to the hot berry mix. Stir in 2 cups of yogurt (sweetened or not, depending on how much sugar your kids require) or sour cream or a mix of yogurt and cream cheese or sour cream and cream cheese or yogurt and sour cream into the berry mix. It will look sort of grainy and weird. Stir in the gelatin and make sure its all very well dissolved and incorporated. Ladle into cups or pour into a mold and chill or freeze. As the mixture cools and sets it will separate into layers, creamy on top and clear on the bottom.

Orange Creamsicle Gelatin Cups

2 cups orange juice
1/3 cup honey or succanat
1 cup heavy cream
3 T unflavored gelatin

Heat the orange juice and sweetener together until the sugar is fully dissolved . Sprinkle the gelatin on the hot juice mixture and stir to dissolve it then whisk the cream into the orange juice. It will not look real pretty! Very grainy and sort of a blah peachy color but the creamy layer will separate out for a layered effect. I got lumps and had to strain mine into a 4 cup measuring cup and then poured it into my little silicone molds. This mix did not do so well in the fish and crab molds (the little fussy parts broke off) but the flower molded ones turned out very well and the taste was declared good when the defective ones were 'liquidated'.

Update: this last batch I used fresh berries (strawberries, cherries, and a few blueberries) and cut the sugar to 1/3 cup. The color was sort of brown, the flavor was not so 'berry' and it set up too hard. Kids were much less excited than usual. I usually use the frozen berry mix from Costco of blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries but, shockingly, the bag was empty and a little trail of blueberry stains marks the floor of my garage. Lesson: don't just eyeball the gelatin if you're skimping on sweetener!

I'm linking this to Just Another Meatless Monday at "Hey What's For Dinner Mom"

New Books

2010-06-21T15:26:00.000-07:00

Books are one of my favorite things in the world. I've pared down a lot through the moves but I still love having them. I love the way they feel and the way they look and the way they smell. I don't get the appeal of a Kindle at all. Folks can feel free to save trees by not using paper for stupid stuff like junk mail but lets not stop printing books!

My Amazon order came Saturday. One of the books was for Miss V- Performance Without Pain since she hurt herself dancing a few years ago and hasn't really healed enough to do it again the way she used to. She'll have to review that one. It disappeared into her room.

Of the two books for me, it was hard to decide which to read first: Cold-Smoking & Salt-Curing Meat, Fish, & Game or Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture Radical Homemakers won the toss and I am enthralled. I've never been a big fan of feminism because it seemed anti-kid, anti-man, and anti-home. I like kids (on a case by case basis), men (usually more then women), and home. I don't like the idea that the market economy is the only one that matters. This book so far is all about that! The smoking book is exciting to me because there are no nitrates or nitrites used & as the mom of a kid with cancer I'm kind of paranoid about those but we love our sausages so much.

Beep!

2010-06-21T15:02:00.000-07:00

Last night, the smoke detector in T1 & T2's room started chirping. Its the only one I didn't replace batteries in shortly after New Year's. We got out the ladder, took it down, and discovered there were no more 9V batteries in the house. No big deal- all the others were working and one night should be fine. I set the smoke detector on the counter and it made not another peep. Prepped stuff, cleaned the kitchen, read some, went to bed.

2:30 in the morning I hear beeping. Repeated, shrill, insistent beeping. I get up to investigate (and I am not a happy person when woken prematurely) and find that it is the smoke detector on the counter. If you know me, my next action probably won't surprise you: I opened the french door to the deck, stepped out, and frisbee'd the thing out into the yard. I was shooting for the woods but smoke detectors are not particularly aerodynamic and I throw like a girl.

I heard no more beeping and returned to my bed where I remained happily until the alarm went off at 7:45. I got up and went out to start loading lunch boxes and making breakfast and heard the beeping. Two tones, alternating....and loud. Obnoxiously loud. So I sent T2 out to get it and then did what I lacked the presence of mind to do in the middle of the night: take out the dying battery!

Later in the morning Miss V looks at me and asks "What was that beeping this morning?" I tell her and she replies, "Oh! It woke me up at 7 and I couldn't get back to sleep. I thought it was two birds because of the different tones. I was just laying there wishing they would get on with having weird bird sex so they could shut up and go build a nest" .

I guess I should go get those batteries....

Come to the Dark Side- We have ...carrots?

2010-06-21T00:47:00.000-07:00

Today I stood in the organic produce section and chose pre-cut carrot chips over the fresh carrots with the leafy tops still attached. I know my choice was lower in nutrition and had more packaging. I'm sure they don't taste as good. They certainly were not local. But they were effortless! Since I walked past all the pre-sliced lunch meat, the sliced processed cheeses, the lunchables, the pudding cups, the single serving bagged chips, and the apple slices with caramel sauce and marveled at how easy and cheap it was to fill a kid's lunch box if you weren't real picky about what you were feeding them, I rationalized giving myself a pass on this one. I also rationalized the purchase of bananas here above the 61st parallel- organic and on sale. .99 a lb . My kingdom for good organic apricots at a decent price!

Update: the kids all complained about them. Dry, woody, flavorless and 'yucky' were the pronouncements. I'm debating between trying again with ranch dressing or just tossing them in the pot roast and getting real carrots for their lunch boxes on Thursday.

Gadgets

2010-06-20T13:15:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about the things in my kitchen that I really use, the things I would miss in a non-electric world.

Right at the top is my egg cooker. I'm the only person I know who has one and I adore it. The perfect gadget for someone with attention span issues- it turns itself off. T1 & T2 can operate it (they can also do their own laundry and T1 has recently learned to fry eggs). This little beauty does hard boiled eggs, soft boiled eggs and poached eggs. It makes a huge difference in my ability to get everyone out the door on time in the morning. I can use the poacher setting with a little extra water to turn out egg salad in five minutes with no egg peeling. It makes perfect medium cooked eggs for use in the bento molds. Best part: having soft boiled eggs often gives me an excuse to make egg cozies. Like these....

OK. Enough Cute. Back to appliances...

Number two on my list is the Rice cooker and it is a very close second. I borrowed one a few years ago assuming that it was just totally unnecessary and a waste of kitchen space and money. It was love at first steam. The one I first used was a Zojirushi, the Cadillac of rice cookers. I loved it, looked at the price, and promptly bought a Sanyo on Ebay for 1/3 the cost. It has served me well for nearly 3 years.

In a pot, I cannot make brown rice that anyone in my family will eat under any amount of duress. In the cooker, we all eat it happily. It makes perfect sushi rice. It makes cheaters risotto. It makes barley risotto. It makes soup. It has a timer! I can fill it with oats, water, sweetener and butter the night before, set the timer and we wake up to hot breakfast. However, Farina does not work this way- you get a 2 part mess of slimy water on top and slimy cement-like glop on the bottom. I can set it in the morning to have hot rice ready at 5 & it will be kept warm until I need it. Love my rice cooker.

Next on the list is my grinder. The whispermill died last winter and we started looking into replacing it. I would have just bought another one since they are supposed to be the best on the market. HM started researching- if it has a motor he will research it- and had me look at the KoMo line. I had never seen them before and had a few doubts but the reviews were excellent and it was just so pretty. It wasn't plastic and replacement parts can be ordered for simple repairs, the motor shipped back for a rebuild if ever needed. Greener, better looking, more versatile, quieter...and more expensive. I was inclined to be cheap but HM was strongly in favor of spending a little more for better quality so we did. I love my KoMo. It was worth every penny.

Here's a big jump from paying top dollar for great quality to buying what you can afford: The food processor. Last summer I had a rebate from Fred Meyer and they had a 20% sale going at the time when I went to Pyrah's U-Pick and brought home 50 lbs of carrots, 40 lbs of Zucchini, and 20 lbs of other veggies. I needed the food processor or the veggies were going to rot before I waded through them all. With my coupons and rebate, I paid about $60 for a cheapy 12 cup Oster and, looking back, wish I had done it sooner. It makes prepping veg and making short crusts a breeze. Much better than the blender for pesto.

Last on my list is the Bosch Mixer. It's ten years old now and has given good service but I have to say that I just don't love it. Its ugly and I'm not a fan of the center post. The planetary gear is going and when it does I think I'll just go to a Kitchenaid. A beautiful retro aqua one that I can leave on the counter and smile at when I walk past. Or maybe a Fire Engine Red one since they can be had with the larger motor. But the Bosch still gets a very regular work out. Bread. cookies. birthday cakes. macaroons.

The only things that I think I want are a dehydrator and a meat grinder. I don't know for sure that I would love a dehydrator enough to justify its cost so that will have to be a yard sale or craigslist find. The meat grinder will have to wait for the Kitchenaid unless I find a manual one cheap at a yard sale too.

What do you use most? What's on your wish list?

Dehydrator Giveaway

2010-06-19T19:36:00.000-07:00

I had *just* commented on a friend's Facebook that I need to find a dehydrator at a yard sale when I found the giveaway at Keeper of the Home. I'd love to win- but I'll keep looking at yard sales.