Raising Our Own

Valentine Giveaway!

2012-01-27T17:38:00.000-05:00

I wanted to spread the word about my dear sister's fabulous new soap-making biz - Soap Sudsations - plus show my readers how much I love them, so I'm combining the two into a Valentine Giveaway! :)

Here are the hand-made, emollient glycerin soaps that the winner will get - a gorgeous frond soap:

One of these adorable Peace soaps - who couldn't use some peace, love, and clean underarms?

And a sweet little leaf soap:

These soaps are not only works of art, but they lather beautifully and have great scents. To see more of Monica's super cute soaps, check out her website at SoapSudsations! (Pssst, her husband makes amazing boxes for the gift sets that are a lovely keepsake after you've used up the soaps...so I recommend buying the gift sets.)

To quality for this giveaway, just leave a comment.

For extra entries, do any or all of the following:

~follow @SoapSudsations on Twitter, and let me know your Twitter handle in your comment here if I don't know you already

~re-tweet this giveaway to your followers on Twitter; again, let me know your Twitter handle in your comment here if I don't know you already

~blog about this giveaway – this will net 2 extra entries - give me the link to the post in your comment here

~LIKE the Soap Sudsations on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Soap-Sudsations/255967871101924 - and comment on her Wall that you’re entering this giveaway

I’ll put all the entries into a random drawing on Monday, February 6^th. If I have a way to contact the winner – through Twitter handle, or on SoapSudsation's Facebook page, or if you left a contact in your comments - I will get in touch with you. If I have no means of contacting the winner, you will have one week (Feb. 13th) to get in touch with me to let me know your mailing info.

*Giveaway is open to those living in the U.S. and Canada

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Happy Chinese New Year!

2012-01-23T09:01:00.004-05:00

Or Happy Lunar New Year, whatever you prefer.

It's the year of the Dragon - oh yay, that means I turn 48 this year. I am, of course, thrilled. This puts me that much closer to that coveted AARP membership.

I have to apologize for not visiting some of your blogs recently. Our wonderful satellite internet provider has determined that we're overusing bandwidth and has downgraded our internet speed to that comparable to dial-up. And by "wonderful" I mean some choice four-letter words that I can't write here since this blog is rated G.

In order to get our speed back, we have to cut our bandwidth use down for a month. Even if we didn't have to cut our bandwidth use down, it is next to impossible to load pretty much any blog using dial-up speed...especially the blogs that have BIG gorgeous photos (you know who you are). I'm only keeping up with my blog posts mostly by doing them whenever I get to go somewhere (like our public library) where I can get free Wi-Fi and scheduling them to post for future dates.

Some happy new year indeed.

On the bright side, hubby roasted a 5-spice duck for dinner and it was most excellent!

Will you do anything fun for the Lunar New Year? Did you even know it was the Lunar New Year? ;)

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Obsessed with birds

2012-01-16T09:09:00.006-05:00

Robin's posts about the books she's reading inspired me to post about all the bird books we have in the house.

Because we're a family of birders, we have, um, just a few books on the topic, as you can see - click on the image to pull it up larger if you're curious about all the titles:

The only guide that's missing in this pile is the Kaufman Guide which is ds1's favorite and we keep it in the car so that we can reference it anytime we're out and about.

And because I won another haiku contest from WildBird magazine on Twitter, we will have a Peterson's guide to add to our stash soon!

Right now, we also have 2 bird books that we borrowed from the library. As if books weren't enough, we also have a bunch of birding magazines:

So, what do you think? Just a little obsessed? Maybe for some future posts, I'll compile my art books, knitting/crocheting books, the craft of writing books and science fiction books. :)

What about you? Do you have a hobby that you love and have too many books and magazines of?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Monday mish-mash

2012-01-09T09:14:00.002-05:00

Just a few random thoughts...because I can.

I tried making yogurt for the first time with store-bought yogurt as starter instead of the powder starter that I normally use. And, it worked! It's good to know it really could be done (by me).

And you wanna know the potent potable equivalent of heaven? Alcoholic Creamsicle! Take my word on this. I accept thanks in the form of checks (or cheques in case of my fellow Canadians).

Totally unrelated, but it would appear that the renters across the road are determined to keep their backdoor light on 24/7. The light was off for a couple of nights - oh bliss! - but now it's back with a vengeance. I suspect that because they left the light on all the time, the bulb finally burned out and they replaced it with one of higher wattage. Great.

As my neighbor to the east once lamented (about the even worse light emanating from their neighbors on the other side), why do people move out to the country and light their property up like football fields?

But in the good news department, my good friend Michelle has re-started her blog! Go check out "Within The Hive"...and her new blog, "Pages from My Mind". Michelle writes thoughtful and well-researched posts that you won't want to miss!

Want to share a random thought or two with me?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

The food...oh, the food

2012-01-02T09:00:00.002-05:00

What better way to start the year than with a post about food?

Hubby made a nice batch of sauerkraut with our cabbages this winter - about 4 gallons' worth. Our cabbage crop doesn't always cooperate, so we're thrilled when it works out.

And I discovered the best banana cream pie recipe in the King Arthur Flour cookbook. I went for a graham cracker pie crust this time and it was perfection in a pan.

How did you start your year?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Looking forward

2011-12-26T09:00:00.004-05:00

Today is Boxing Day in Canada and also the day of my last post for the year 2011. This year, I won't bemoan the speed at which the year passed by (because I think I'd already done it enough during the year, and in most of my emails to friends).

Instead, I'll leap right to the part where I publicly humiliate myself again by telling you what I intend to accomplish for 2012.

I'd already mentioned one of my plans on my other blog (which is not as scary as Coraline's Other Mother) - to take the entries in the book "The Skeptic's Dictionary" and write a speculative-fiction (the genre formerly known as science fiction in my world) short story inspired by each entry.

Another plan I have for the year is to do a bird drawing each day. A colleague of hubby's gave our boys an old page-a-day calendar a couple of years ago thinking that the boys would like to check out those birds. We have about 6 bird identification guides (and many more encyclopedic bird books that weigh enough to kill small animals) that Son1 studies religiously, so the loose pages of an old calendar doesn't do much for him. Therefore, I'm going to use those pages to sketch a bird a day from, like artists go to the Louvre to copy the works of old masters to hone their own skills by. The art in this calendar is by David Sibley, and he's considered a master in the bird art world. I'm really bad about knowing what to draw and being inspired enough to do it, so this should work out well for me...provided I actually keep up with it.

As for knitting, sewing and crocheting, I'll go easier on myself this year: if I finish 4 projects total, depending on the size of the project, I'll call it a good year.

Hubby has grand plans for 2012 too, not the least of which is eating Vegemite every single day. It's good to dream big.

How about you? Any major goal(s) you want to accomplish for the next year?

Have a safe and fun New Year's...and see you on the flip side!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Looking back

2011-12-19T09:00:00.008-05:00

At the beginning of the year, which feels like yesterday but is actually about 352 days ago, I had publicly declared that I'd complete 6 sewing projects and 6 knitting projects this year. Was I too ambitious? I may never know because true to form, I stopped keeping track half way through the year and don't remember what I completed. Why is it that I can never keep good records? For some reason, people think I'm organized. I don't know why because I certainly never try to give that impression of me.

Of the things I do remember, here's a run-down of the sewing projects. I started off with the fleece jacket with the Darth Vader pattern fabric. Turns out it's a tad too small for either of my boys and they've not worn it even once. So, I'll be giving that away. I sewed 2 gift bags for my sister to use with her soaps, started sewing a laundry bag that I never finished, and hemmed several pairs of pants for hubby and my FIL.

For knitting, I made a pair of socks for me, a pair of baby socks for hubby's cousin's baby, am almost finished with another pair of socks for me, and am almost done with the third panel of a rug that I'm knitting with yarn I won from Robin's Rurification blog. Here are 2 of the panels, done (each panel measures about 1' x 3.5').

So, not exactly 12 projects total completed for the year (unless I completed other things that I can't remember...which is very possible), and I know I could do better, but why beat myself up for not doing it all?

Besides, what's more important is that I baked a lot too. Lots of loaves of bread

and cookies and kuchens

and stollen

and more!

Also important was that I home-schooled the rugrats. Here is Son2 in his science group (I've blurred the faces of the other people in the photo for privacy reasons). I'm very grateful to my friend THS (to the left) who lead this co-op. I merely had to clean up our house before and after. :)

The chemistry lab I have to run by myself (materials courtesy of Meg who kept everything so well organized!). Son2 is doing it with Son1 so I won't have to repeat it again in a couple of years. I already have to redo the biology and physics labs with Son2 when the time comes. Sooo looking forward to that. ;P

In between the above listed things, I did some writing too, mostly thanks to the whip-cracking efforts of my critique group gang leader, Russell James (who has a terrific novel out that you can win on Goodreads.com).

Did you have resolutions this year? Did you keep up with them?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Virtual Cookie Swap

2011-12-12T09:27:00.007-05:00

My Kids Eat Squid is doing a Virtual Cookie Swap this year for the holidays, and I've been invited to the party! I'm so excited...what shall I wear? Judging from my recipe, I guess I'll be wearing butter. And I'll probably be wearing it - right around my waist - until I start working out daily.

I got this recipe probably close to 30 years ago from a friend of my sister's. I only make it once a year because it is the epitome of decadence (by which I mean "fat"). Here's the recipe, with a few more notes underneath:

Whipped Shortbread

2 C unsalted butter, softened
1 C icing sugar
3 C all-purpose flour

1) Beat butter until creamy
2) Blend in icing sugar
3) Add flour and beat for 10 minutes
4) Drop dough by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet
5) Bake at 325 F for 20 minutes
6) Cool cookies on rack

Makes about 72 cookies

Beating the batter for 10 minutes is only necessary for an old clunker like the Sunbeam mixer with the dual metal beaters. In a work-horse like the KitchenAid mixer, 5 minutes of beating is more than enough.

Be sure you remove the cookies from the baking sheet and onto the a cooling rack within 5 minutes of taking them out of the oven. Once the cookies cool completely on the sheet itself, you won't be able to remove them without breaking them.

(cookies, pre-baking)
Use a thin spatula to remove the cookies from the baking sheet. These cookies are ultra delicate (wouldn't you be if you were 30% air and 70% butter?). Even after they've hardened a bit after cooling off completely, you'll still need to handle them with care.

Crumbly goodness!

Here are the other folks doing the Virtual Cookie Swap - go visit them!

Blog: My Kids Eat Squid

Cookie: Nutella

Blog: GarlicGirl

Cookie: Peanuty Peanut Butter Cookies

Blog: Laura's Delicious Food

Cookie: Raspberry thumbprint cookies

Blog: Boston Food Swap

Cookie: Old-fashioned molasses cookies

Blog: Frugal Kiwi

Cookie: Chocolate Marshmallow Raspberry Cookie Delight

Blog: MarthaandMe

Cookie: TBD

What about you? What's your favorite holiday or general cookie to bake or to eat? Hope you find a fun new recipe at this swap to try!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

And the award goes to....

2011-12-06T11:17:00.001-05:00

Since the Academy won't let us say "And the winner is..." anymore. Oh, but this isn't the Oscars.

Sooo, today's The Day. I was supposed to spend the morning baking cookies, but instead worked on how to do the drawing for The Clean Giveaway.

I counted up all the entries: one for a comment, one for following Carrie on Twitter, one for Liking the Under The Willow Facebook page, one for each re-tweet of the giveaway. So here they are, the entries (and yes, I did get some butter on the paper...oops) - Jaime, Stace, Janet G, Michelle, Kathy x 6, Squid (for My Kids Eat Squid) x 3, KP x 4:

All cut up and ready to go in the bag:

Son2 helping me pull out a name:

And the winner is.....

Stace!! (I know you're all in awe of my fabulous iPhone photography.)

Since I know how to get a hold of Stace - I am a regular stalker of her blog - I'll go notify her now. It'll make her day; my presence has that effect on people. Hah.

Thank you to everyone who entered and played along, particularly Kathy who helped re-tweet this several times to her many followers. I urge you all to go try Carrie's products even if you didn't win!

And for those of you who are looking for a seriously hefty giveaway, check out:
http://www.theculinarylife.com/2011/win-a-le-creuset-deep-covered-saute-pan/

Have a great week!

BREAKING NEWS this just in: Stace has generously donated her prize to Kathy in the spirit of the season and because she was seriously impressed by the number of entries Kathy had. Thank you, Stace!!!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

A clean giveaway*!

2011-11-26T09:00:00.006-05:00

(Please tell me you got the pun!) Anyone who knows me in person knows that I'm obsessively clean about certain things: floors, sinks, toilets, and bathtubs. I could let windows go until it appears to be perpetually foggy outside and it wouldn't bother me much. The things I obsess about are things that we're in constant contact with the most. Window?! Pu-lease.

So, you can imagine my giddiness when my order of Laundry Soap from Under the Willow came with a sample of Carrie’s newest creation: Cottage & Castle, an all-purpose cleanser.

Regular readers may remember – if you’re not forgetful like I am – that I’ve raved about Under the Willow’s products, in particular her Laundry Soap, which come in a range of scents.

Anyway, I’m always game for trying new cleansers, especially earth-friendly ones. So I used Cottage & Castle on my bathroom sinks, bathtub, and Corian kitchen sink.

Cottage & Castle comes in a powder form. The directions are simple: sprinkle, then scrub with a wet washing cloth, rinse. Carrie also sells microfiber cloth; I used a sponge and that worked great too.

I don’t have granite bathroom sinks and my tub is just fiberglass, but Castle & Cottage did a fantastic job on all those surfaces. It also made the tap and spigot shine, shine, shine! And a little bit went a long way.

The ultimate test was on my Corian sink. The instructions that came with the Corian countertops said to use only non-abrasive scrubbers and Bon-Ami cleanser. Well, guess what? Cottage & Castle worked at least as well as Bon-Ami, plus, it has an incredible scent!

I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m a scent gal. Scents calm me, make me smile, or transport me to a far-away time or place. So having that lovely, but not overpowering, scent in Cottage & Castle definitely did it for me. I don't normally smile while I'm cleaning, but Cottage & Castle put a smile on my face.

In honor of Small Business Saturday, I’m offering one of my readers a chance to win a package of Cottage & Castle. You can see for yourself what a great product this is!

If Laundry Soap is more your style, you may choose to get a package of that instead, if you win.

To quality for this giveaway, just leave a comment as to whether you’d like the Laundry Soap or Cottage & Castle.

For an extra entries into the drawing, do any or all of the following:

~follow @CarrieGarvin on Twitter, and let us know your Twitter handle in your comment here

~re-tweet this giveaway to your followers on Twitter; again, let me know your Twitter handle in your comment here

~blog about this giveaway – this will net 2 extra entries - give me the link to the post in your comment here

~LIKE the Under The Willow Page on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Under-the-Willow/201527673599 - and comment on her Wall that you’re entering this giveaway

I’ll put all the entries into a random drawing on Tuesday, December 6^th. If I have a way to contact the winner – through Twitter handle, or on the Under The Willow Facebook page, or if you left a contact in your comments - I will get in touch with you. If I have no means of contacting the winner, you will have one week (Dec. 13) to get in touch with me to let me know your mailing info.

*Giveaway is only open to those living in the U.S.

Good luck!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

I won!

2011-11-23T15:46:00.000-05:00

My Kids Eat Squid (I know, what a great blog name, right? And, it's always fun to read...great recipes too!) had a giveaway for a gorgeous handmade cutting board a couple of weeks ago - you can read the post here. Anyway, lucky me, I won!!

The board arrived today. The wonderful folks at Cutting Board Art sent it to me via FedEx. You should have seen hubby's eyes light up when I opened the box. :)

It is a solid, well-contructed work of functional art. I think the kids will be fighting over who gets to inherit this. If you're in need of a great cutting board, pop over to Cutting Board Art and check out their products.

So, thank you again, My Kids Eat Squid and Cutting Board Art!

Speaking of giveaways, don't forget to come back on Saturday. I have one of my own to do. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Creamy Apple Kuchen

2011-11-18T16:05:00.001-05:00

In honor of apple season (even though our apple harvest this year is non-existent), I'm sharing this Apple Kuchen recipe that I originally got from Family Fun Magazine.

I'm having a total senior moment, and can't remember if this is the recipe I brought to a neighbor's Oktoberfest party. The apple dessert that I baked for the party got rave reviews, so I hope it's this one. :}

But before I give you the recipe, I just want to announce that since I now have over 100 followers, and also because November 26th is Small Business Saturday, I'm going to have a Giveaway on that day that will let you have a chance to win a terrific product from one of my favorite small biz! Be sure to come back and enter. :)

Creamy Apple Kuchen

3 C apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
1 T lemon juice
1 1/4 C sugar, divided
1 t cinnamon
1 C butter, melted
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 t vanilla extract
1/4 t salt
1 1/2 t baking powder
2 C all-purpose flour
1 C light sour cream
1 egg

Heat oven to 350F and coat a 9x13" pan with nonstick cooking spray. In a medium bowl, combine apple slices, lemon juice, 1/4 C sugar, and cinnamon, stirring to mix. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the melted butter and remaining cup of sugar. Add the 2 beaten eggs and vanilla. Stir in the salt and baking powder, then add the flour. Spread the better into the pan (it will be thick), then top it with the apples/lemon juice mixture.

Combine the sour cream and remaining egg in a small bowl, then pour the mixture over the apples (won't fully cover them).

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until cake is lightly browned around the edges and the topping is set. If you like, you can sprinkle a little cinnamon and sugar on top.

Store leftovers covered in fridge. Serves 12.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Linzer Thumbprint Snowballs - a recipe

2011-11-09T10:18:00.001-05:00

I realize I've been sporadic with my posts. As all of you busy folks know, that's what happens when life gets in the way. I will try my darndest to post once a week on a set date...haven't decided what the best day of the week is yet. Any suggestions?

My friend Michelle requested the following recipe from me. She thought they were really tasty. :) I'm just thrilled when people enjoy my baking!

Linzer Thumbprint Snowballs

2 1/4 C flour
3/4 C walnuts, finely ground
1 t ground cinnamon
2 t grated lemon peel
3/4 C sugar
3/4 C (1.5 sticks) butter, softened
1 egg
1 t vanilla
1/2 C raspberry jam [I had no raspberry jam in the house so I used Trader Joe Organic Strawberry Jam]
powdered sugar

Lightly grease cookie sheet. Stir together flour, walnuts, cinnamon, and lemon peel. Beat granulated sugar and butter in large bowl on medium speed until creamy. Beat in egg and vanilla until fluffy. Gradually stir in flour mixture. Shape dough into 1 inch balls. Place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet. Press thumb in center of each to make indentation. Fill each indentation with 1/2 t jam.

Bake at 350F for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden brown around edges. Immediately remove from cookie sheet; cool completely. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Makes about 4 dozen.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Chemistry - it's what life is about

2011-11-07T14:28:00.000-05:00

Chemistry is on my mind a lot lately since I'm running a high school chem lab course for my kids (using the Prentice Hall text by Wilbraham, Staley, Matta, and Waterman and the accompanying Small Scale Chemistry Labs manual that I bought from my friend Meg (Get In, Hang On), to whom I'm forever grateful for her guidance).

To go with the course, we're also watching the excellent High School Chemistry series with Frank Cardulla as the instructor from The Great Courses.

I actually meant to post this during National Chemistry Week, which I thought was in November. I totally missed it because, this year, NCW was back in October. Go figure.

I never liked chemistry much when I took it in high school and university, but now, re-learning it with my kids, I discovered that I love it! Homschooling is so cool that way. On my own, I never would have re-learned chemistry and found out just how much I enjoy it.

And in case you think chemistry is dry and dull, here are a couple of really funny chemistry jokes:

Water versus....

and a version of the sulfuric acid joke from a commenter on this site: http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1663/07/05/

Sir John Minnes was a chemist…Sir John is no more.

For what he thought was H20…
Was H2SO4…

Heh heh...morbid but funny.

So if you hated chemistry when you were growing up, I highly recommend you re-learn it! You may be pleasantly surprised.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Spirit of Halloweens Past

2011-10-31T09:01:00.002-04:00

The boys with their "pukin' pumpkin"

I'm positive I've done a similar post to this in the past. In fact, I'd bet money on it, but it's been a few years now, and who the heck ever actually searches my blog, besides me?

So, it's time to do another Halloween-costume-reminiscing blog. My boys haven't dressed up in years, but I used to be pretty creative in the costuming department if I do say so myself...before middle-aged brain and laziness set in.

The first Halloween that Son1 was around for, I made him a Super-baby outfit:

Poor Son2 always got the hand-me-downs:

The second Halloween of Son1's life, I made a Gingerbread Boy outfit for him, which I don't have a good photo of, so here's one of Son2 wearing the Gingerbread Boy outfit when he was around 2 years old. Son1 wanted to be Scooby Doo that year, so that's what I made for him (I'm pretty proud of that face that I drew free-hand!).

The next Halloween, when Son1 was around 3 yrs old, he was a Ladybug (with a lollypop dangling from his mouth).

The toughest costume I had to tackle was when Son1 decided that he wanted to be a goldfish. Goldfish?! What? Son2's in the back with the used-ladybug costume.

Then there was the less than memorable zombie phase. Where Son1 got the idea that he wanted to be a zombie was beyond me. And there's Son2 with the old Scooby outfit...

One of the costumes that I was the most fond of was also the last one I made. Son1 was wearing the LEGO brick costume that I thought turned out pretty cool. Son2, on the left, was wearing an elephant costume that my sister and her husband got for him (maybe they got tired of him wearing hand-me-downs?).

And that's it. That's the history of Halloween costumes for my kids. Hope you've all had a fun Halloween!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

A-birding we will go

2011-10-28T09:32:00.002-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, hubby was invited to give a talk at Northern Illinois University, so we tagged along to do some birding around the Great Lakes area.

Our hotel in Aurora was next to a pond so the kids and I did some birding outside while hubby was giving his talk. There weren't too many birds there, at least not that we could see, although we heard plenty. We spotted Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets. We suspect many more were hiding in the tall reeds.

The next day, we went to the FermiLab and walked around, hoping to see birds there. Unfortunately, we didn't see a whole lot, but we had some nice walks.

Some fluffy wildflowers...not sure what they are.

Chicory is one of my favorite "weeds."

Son1 had been reading up on Monk Parakeets descended from escaped pets that now populated areas within Chicago, notably the Hyde Park area. He persuaded us to stop at a little park near the University of Chicago to look for them. We walked all around the park and didn't see any, and were just about back to the car again when we heard a squawking sound. Looking, there was a Monk Parakeet right above us. I tried to use the PS Express app on my phone to crop and sharpen the photo, but it's still not a very good one:

Maybe you can see it better in this photo?

After leaving the Chicago area, we went to explore Indiana Dune National Lakeshore. We were last here about 15 years ago, and it's shifted a bit.

Here are the guys dumping sand out of their shoes after we came back from the beach trail.

We didn't see anything at all on the beach trail, but saw lots of wonderful birds (including a Lincoln Sparrow, a Swamp Sparrow, and a large flock of Wood Ducks) at a marsh trail at the Dunes.

All in all, not a bad birding outing. And I think this is the part where I put in a plug for the Great Backyard Bird Count, Audubon, and WildBird Magazine to get you hooked on birding!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

It's beginning to look a lot like...

2011-10-25T17:44:00.000-04:00

Well, not really. Luckily. Or hubby will want to move farther south.

But, it's never too early to make Snowball Cookies! This was my mother-in-law's recipe. She used to make it for Christmas every year. One year, she told us that she made them because they were my hubby's favorite cookies. Hubby said, "I never said they were my favorite cookies!" My MIL insisted he did; hubby insisted he didn't. Anyway, it then became a running family joke. Every year thereafter she'd say to him, "I made your favorite cookies!" I miss my MIL.

Snowball Cookies

1 C butter
1/2 C powdered sugar, sifted + extra for rolling cookie in
1 t vanilla
2.5 flour
1/4 t salt
3/4 C pecans, chopped

Preheat oven to 350F

Cream butter in large bowl just above medium speed. Add sugar and cream until light. Stir in vanilla. Sift flour and salt together; mix in. Stir in nuts.

Shape into balls. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes. Roll in powdered sugar straight out of the oven (I never do this part now, and we prefer that way). Roll again when cooled.

Naked cookies waiting to be covered with sugar:

Here one is, rolling in the sugar (not as much fun as rolling in the dough) :

Makes about 36 cookies (I roll small cookies so I usually end up with around 90 cookies).

These are so good that I can't stop eating them once I start. I'd have to say that they're MY favorite cookies! Hope you enjoy them too.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Remembering Mom

2011-10-23T13:40:00.001-04:00

It's the one year anniversary of my mom's death. Although we were never one of those mom-daughter pairs who are the best of friends, we also were never one of those mom-daughter pairs whose relationship is fraught with strife.

We had our arguments over religion, whom I may date, and even how often I washed my hair. But, we also had many fun talks about life in general, and gossip about relatives and friends.

I miss my mom for many reasons: her amazing cooking (she only learned how to cook when we moved to Canada when she 35 years old), her ability to translate Chinese for me, and her interest in our homesteading efforts. I know the pain will lessen with time - it has for me with the death of my wonderful mother-in-law - but I will still miss Mom for those things.

Me and my mom circa 1967 at the Hong Kong airport:

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Coconut Cream Pie...oh my!

2011-10-21T18:05:00.000-04:00

Hubby won't let me, but I would eat pie everyday if I could...savory pies, sweet pies, or even eat pie crust on its own, like my mom used to.

A couple of weeks ago, I made a coconut cream pie. Wow, was that ever good. Here's a photo of the toasted coconut, set aside, and the filling in progress:

The recipe I used is from Mark Bittman's book, How to Cook Everything.

Coconut Cream Pie

1 pie crust (I use the one from the same Bittman book; it's the best one I've ever made)

3/4 C sugar [I always reduce the amount of sugar called for]
2 T cornstarch
pinch salt
3-4 eggs, separated
2.5 C whole milk
1 vanilla bean or 2 t vanilla extract
2 T unsalted butter, softened [though I'm not sure why it needs to be softened since you're just putting it into the hot filling]
pinch of Cream of Tartar
1/4 C confectioners' sugar
1 C dried sweetened or unsweetened shredded coconut

Toast the coconut by placing it into a dry skillet over very low heat and cooking, shaking almost constantly, until it begins to brown. Remove from pan immediately [with a gas stove, I just remove from heat and leave in pan].

Pre-bake pie crust [according to the directions for the pie crust recipe you're using] and start the filling while the crust is in the oven. When the crust is done, leave the oven at 350F and cool the crust slightly on a rack.

In a small saucepan, combine sugar with the cornstarch and salt. Mix together the egg yolks and milk. If you're using a vanilla bean, split it and scrape out the seeds; stir them into the milk mixture (reserve the bean itself to make vanilla sugar [recipe in the same cookbook on p. 682]). Stir the milk-egg mixture into the sugar-cornstarch mixture over medium heat; at first whisk occasionally to eliminate lumps. Then stir almost constantly until the mixture boils and thickens, about 10 minutes. Stir in the butter and toasted coconut (and vanilla extract, if you're using that) and set aside.

Make the meringue: beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt and cream of tartar, until foamy. Keep beating, gradually adding the confectioners' sugar, until the mixture is shiny and holds fairly stiff peaks.

Place the pie plate on a baking sheet. Pour the warm filling into the warm crust. Cover with the meringue, making sure the meringue comes in contact with the edges of the crust. Note that the meringue will hold its shape so you can decorate it if you like.

Bake until meringue is slightly browned, 10-15 minutes. Cool on a rack, then refrigerate; serve cool.

Speaking of pies, I noticed last month that I had 100 followers and to celebrate, I was going to have a giveaway of the Pillsbury "Easy As Pie" cookbook. However, apparently someone was at the wrong party, realized this, and left. So, now it's back to 99 followers, and no giveaway.

But if it ever goes back to up 100 followers, I'll offer that book! ;)

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

It-that-has-yet-to-be-named

2011-10-14T16:56:00.000-04:00

I don't think I mentioned it on this blog, but my friends on Facebook know that we bought a new tractor recently.

For those who were asking for picture of it, here's an action shot:

Stace (Stace's Space) named her Kubota "Tallulah-belle"; I'm thinking we'll just leave it as "it-that-has-yet-to-be-named", or "Voldemort" for short (though, come to think of it, it's more of a Darth Sidious coloration).

Now she's ready for her close-up, with hubby at the wheel:

But it's not all macho-tractor stuff around here. There's also the other goodies, like this bounty from our garden (except the carrots) that hubby used to make a Thai curry dish for dinner the previous night:

Starting at the top, going clock-wise: kale, eggplant, basil, carrots, patty-pan squash, summer squash, and kohlrabi. Good eats!

Have a great weekend!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Tomato pie

2011-10-12T21:38:00.001-04:00

What do you do when you have too many tomatoes to just eat on their own but not enough to can? You make tomato pies (lots of them).

I had a tomato pie recipe, once upon a time, in a little tomato cookbook, but I didn't like any of the other recipes except for the tomato pie so I ended up giving the book away. When I had to make tomato pie this month, I searched for some recipes online and cobbled together my own, which turned out to be the best tomato pies I ever made.

A friend asked for the recipe, made it, and also gave it two thumbs up, so I thought I'd share. Be forewarned it's not exact.

Tomato Pie

Estimate how many tomatoes you need for X number of pies. You cut the end off each tomato and squeeze the excess fluids out before roughly chopping it. I also let all the chopped pieces sit in a colander to drain some more. Tomatoes exude so much moisture!

I made 2 9-inch pies, so I'll give you my approx measurements for 2 pies.

pie crusts - I used the recipe in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything book

Toss the tomatoes pieces into an appropriately sized mixing bowl with:
1 c mayo
1/2 c grated cheese (I only had provolone; most recipes I saw call for cheddar or gruyere)
1 c breadcrumbs
3 T seasoning salt (I used Jane's Mixed-Up Crazy Salt or whatever it's called, but you can just use regular S&P or whatever)
1 t cornstarch
2 T flour (I don't think it hurts to add more of either cornstarch or flour as that will help it thicken nicely)
3 eggs (I'd use 4 next time)
a handful of roughly chopped basil

Mix thoroughly and pour into crusts. I didn't pre-cook the crusts, and they held up beautifully because as I said on Twitter, it is The Perfect Crust! ;D

Bake at 400F for 10 minutes. Turn it down to 350F and bake for another 20 minutes or until the center is not longer jiggly.

I hope you'll try this recipe! Let me know (via the email in the upper right) if you have questions or if you have any comments.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

But before the pie...

2011-10-06T15:25:00.000-04:00

I want to show you the terrific things I'm using; I promise it won't be TMI!

I've been getting Product Body's Crush on You subscription, and have to rave about it. Joanna's scents have been outstanding, and Crush is the thing to use if your hands always dry out when you wash them. Crush is the only soap product that moisturizes my hands as I wash. It's much more than just a soap; it's a yummy scrub too. This is the current "flavor" (pardon my lousy photo) -

And continuing on the fabulous products theme, Under the Willow has re-opened shop! Carrie makes fabulous soaps, laundry soaps, creams, and lip balms with delightful scents that remind me of home: cozy, comfy, and inviting. This is what I got in the mail yesterday - not shown is the Twilight Sky scent laundry soap, which I had already put away and used 3 times today:

My only concern is that when I have the Cupcake lotion on, I may want to keep licking my hands, like a cat...LOL!

I sure know some talented ladies!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Autumn gardening

2011-10-04T13:05:00.000-04:00

How did we commemorate the beginning of October? By gardening, of course!

If you're not out there weeding and planting and tending this time of year, you won't have a nice fall/winter crop to harvest. You don't need a fancy greenhouse either, just some row-covers if you plant cold-hardy crops. If you want to go the fancy greenhouse route, check out Eliot Coleman's books to learn more.

Here are the kids, weeding (before harvesting tomatoes and peppers); no, they don't always have goofy grins while weeding, but they don't complain about having to do it either:

So what are we weeding and tending to? Well, there's choi sum:

and lettuce:

and carrots:

and don't forget the cabbage (although that was planted a while ago) :

Another nice fall crop is kale. It's highly cold tolerant. Hubby grew 2 different varieties this year:

We're also harvesting some end-of-summer crops like potatoes (no pic, sorry) and sweet potatoes:

Sweet potatoes as big as footballs (with the density of bowling balls) -

Here's a more mature choi-sum that hubby's been harvesting already:

Hubby re-planted some summer squash after vine borers killed our squash plants earlier this summer. We've been getting a really nice harvest from them. Both the patty-pans:

and the summer squash:

Because we needed room for the new plantings, hubby pulled out a bunch of volunteer dill plants and I hung them up to dry. Who needs Halloween decorations when you have these?

I hope you're running a nice Autumn garden yourself! Next up: tomato pie recipes.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Life's been good to me so far!

2011-09-24T22:13:00.001-04:00

Thank you, Joe Walsh. ;)

Well, life for me is generally pretty darned good, but this month, I won me some goodies!

The first is this book "Cooking for the Birds" that I got from winning a haiku contest offered by WildBird magazine ( @WBeditor ) on Twitter.

This other set of goodies is actually for ds#1 who is the main birder in our family. The nice people at Audubon Guides (@AudubonGuides) found out that my 15 year old is an avid birder and sent a package for him, no strings attached! I have to say I did buy their birding App, but it was on sale for a great price and I was going to buy it anyway.

Their Mushroom App is on sale right now for half price, so you budding mycologists should get yours now.

Speaking of getting freebies, a friend gave me a large bag of grapes, so I got to make some jam. YES! Thanks bunches, Carol! ;)

After making jam, I painted my front door, after having serious red-front-door envy (thanks for nothing, Amber and Sherrie).

I experienced a moment of panic when I realized that it was middle of September and I hadn't started chemistry labs for my older son yet. Thanks to Meg's materials, I had no problem getting going on them. I decided that because ds#1 doesn't have anyone to do labs with this year, ds#2 can do them with him. Ds#2 would be in grade 8 if he were in public school, while ds#1 would be in grade 10. However, doing the labs together reminds me of just how far apart they are sometimes. While ds#2 works pretty much at grade level, ds#1 works at the level of at least a sophomore undergraduate, if not as far up as senior. This is lab 2; the colors aren't food coloring or markers. They were all chemical reactions:

This little guy made me smile. It was hanging out outside our bedroom window. Duude, you're not camouflaged with our screen. I can see you! Silly stick insect.

And because Suzanne asked about them, I have to share photos of the mixing bowls I inherited from my MIL:

The one on the far right is the yellow Pyrex dish I use for pretty much everything. The one on the far left is a blue Pyrex bowl in the same set. Here's a close-up (pardon the gunk on it...I had butter and shortening in it just before I took the photo) :

Alas, I don't have another bowl in the set...but I would be totally happy to receive one as a gift! ;)

Another thing that makes me happy is when a dessert works out. However, even when it doesn't work out, it still makes a decent breakfast. This Coconut Banana Cake was just so-so. I think if I'd used all cake flour like the recipe asked and also used a fresh coconut, it would have been pretty darned good. Man, I haven't had a fresh coconut in forever. I miss living in the tropics sometimes.

If you want to try making this yourself, here's the recipe, from The New Good Housekeeping Cookbook:

Lemon curd filling - homemade or store-bought
2.25 C cake flour
1 C sugar (I always halve the amount)
3/4 C shortening
1/3 C milk
2.5 t baking powder
1 t vanilla extract
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
2 eggs
1 C mashed ripe banana (about 2 bananas)
1 Coconut (about 2 pounds) or 1 7oz pkg flaked coconut

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour 2 9" round cake pans. Into large bowl, measure flour and next 9 ingredients. With mixer at low speed, beat ingredients just until blended. Increase speed to medium; beat 2 minutes, occasionally scraping bowl.

2. Pour batter into pans. Bake 25-30 minutes, until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. Cool in pans on rack 10 minutes; remove from pans and cool completely.

3. While cake is cooking, prepare and shred enough coconut to make 2.5 cups shredded coconut. Wrap shredded coconut in plastic wrap and refrigerate (along with remaining coconut).

4. In small bowl, with mixer at medium speak, beat heavy cream until stiff peaks form.

5. On plate, place 1 cake layer, rounded side down; evenly spread with lemon-curd filling. Top with second layer, rounded side-up, lightly pressing cake onto filling. Frost side and top of cake with whipped cream; pat shredded coconut into cream. Refrigerate cake.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

The deepest cut

2011-09-13T22:24:00.002-04:00

I swear I don't like the new Blogger interface...but maybe I'm just being old and crotchety. Nah...couldn't be me.

Once when we were at the Farmer's Market and I was buying a chicken from Schacht Farm, I asked Mandy about the chicken parts they offered, and she confided in me that many people don't know how to cut up a whole chicken. I found that hard to believe, but then again, my mom had never taught me how to cut up a chicken either.

In fact, you know who taught me how to cut up a chicken? Alton Brown. Yup, thanks to the Fry Hard II: The Chicken episode (Season 4; episode 45) of Good Eats and the excellent dino-cam, I am now some sort of chicken-cutting expert (by "expert" I mean I've not lost a finger or sent myself to the hospital for stitches yet).

So, the BEST way I can think of for you to learn how to cut up chicken is to get your hands on that Good Eats episode and watch it. If you can't, then the second best way is to read that episode chapter in Brown's book "Good Eats: The Early Years".

The third best way is to read this post.

If you're still reading, then I'll assume you either really like me, or had to settle for third best. Either way, I guess I have some 'splaining to do.

We bought a chicken from our local health-food co-op because we ate all of our last batch and our next batch won't be ready for butchering until late November. This was on sale, and since the date was fine, hubby got it.

Here it lies, all rinsed and ready for a cutting lesson. I was sorely disappointed that they don't include innards. I do love me some fried heart and gizzard.

What I do first is cut off the wings. You can either cut off the tip, middle, than drummette or cut off all three together and then separate them. I used to love to eat the tips, but now save them for making stock. The key is easily cutting off the parts is to learn some anatomy and know where the ball-joints are. Cutting through those is a lot easier than trying to cut through bone.

That leads me to another point (no pun intended) - the best knife is a sharpened knife. Alton Brown also has a Good Eats episode on sharpening/honing one's knives. You must watch it. As he, and other chefs have, said: dull knives make accidents.

So here I am down to the drummette:

Next, I cut off the drumsticks from the carcass, and I also cut the meat off the drumsticks themselves because that's another chicken-cutting truism: bones make the best broth. My kids have never understood the allure of eating a drumstick anyway, but even if they did, I'd have to deprive them of these delicacies at home because broth is more important than the fleeting gastronomic happiness of my children.

Here are the drumstick bones in the bowl of the slow-cooker, along with the wing tips:

And here are the good pieces of meat in a container ready to be marinated before frying. You may notice I didn't try to strip the wings of their bones. This is for several reasons: 1) I don't trust myself to do fine surgery with kitchen knives on slippery meat, and 2) the amount of time it'd take for me to de-bone these pieces would be much better spent on wasting away on Facebook or felting belly button lint.

Next, I tackle the breasts: feel for the breastbone and cut slowly and carefully along one side of it using small strokes. Keep peeling back the meat as you cut.

Repeat on the other side of the breast. Because I want "finger"-sized pieces for frying, I cut up the breast into several smaller pieces.

The only remaining chunks of meat are the thighs. Thighs are much hardr to cut off since it's not as easy to find their joints. But, feel around for it; it's worth the time to find it to cut through.

Here's a different view of the joint:

Now, this...this is the part we all fight over. No, not really; I try to sneak off with it when Scott's done frying the chicken. ;) This is what Alton calls the "oyster" of the chicken. Best dang little piece of dark meat on the bird.

Another view of the "oyster":

By now, the bird is pretty much picked:

So I toss the carcass into the slow-cooker bowl with the other bones:

This is hubby's favorite seasoning, so I put it into the bowl and fill it with enough water to cover most of the carcass:

I use the same seasoning on the pieces of meat to be fried:

Then I add buttermilk into the pan of meat:

I mix it up so everything will be coated and seasoned and let it sit for a few hours. Before frying, hubby dredges the pieces in flour.

...and was rewarded by hubby's stellar fried chicken, mashed potatoes & gravy, and green beans:

As for the broth, after cooking for many hours in the slow-cooker, we strained out the bones, picking off the last of the meat and saving it, and then used the broth to make chicken congee. Nothing gets wasted.

Unfortunately, the chicken was not nearly as flavorful as the ones we butcher ourselves. We've not found any chickens for sale that are as tasty as our own. But, fried chicken is fried chicken, and still pretty darned yummy!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

This blog has lasted longer than some marriages!

2011-09-05T14:47:00.000-04:00

That's kinda sad about the marriages, but pretty amazing about my blog.

Apparently, my first post on this particular blog was made back in March of 2006. Despite the many times I've wanted to stop blogging and have a real life, I've kept on keeping on...and here I am.

Some people keep track of their number of posts; me, I can't even keep track of my kids' names or ages. I'd like to say I've got better things to do, but the truth is that my memory has left me for a much younger woman. Now that IS sad.

Speaking of sad, here are a few photos of the devastation crows and raccoons left in their wake. They destroyed the corn: (hm...this actually looks like a photo of pre-devastation...whatever...)

They destroyed the musk melons:

They destroyed the yellow watermelons:

They had left the Moon & Stars watermelons for a few days longer, but have since eaten them too.

It's enough to make a grown gardener cry. Yet hubby bravely plows on, (no pun intended; he doesn't plow) sowing seeds to start lettuce and beets and more:

I guess you can't be a gardener if you aren't optimistic. So I'll leave you with a fun quote about the optimist by Oscar Wilde, "Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll.
The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!"

Mmmmm....doughnuts....

Next time: how to cut up a whole chicken!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Pasta perfect!

2011-08-31T11:01:00.000-04:00

I can't believe my sister who has not one, but two...count 'em: two...pasta makers, and has never told me how absolutely amazing - understatement of the year - homemade pasta is! And, it was so easy to make too, much less fussy than cheese. It took a long time the first time, but I was able to whip through it my second time, even listening to a fascinating audiobook while making it.

As promised, here's a pictorial tutorial on how to make pasta using a pasta machine. You could always just use a roller and a knife, but I like that the thickness is predictable with a machine. We bought an Atlas from Lehman's (where I also got a couple of case of those fabulous Weck jars).

Shiny, Captain!

Attached to the island, with the room temperature eggs:

A close-up of the teeth end of the machine - to make fettuccine and a smaller something-lini size. ;)

Ok, enough drooling over the sleek metallic lines of the pasta maker, let's get on with the recipe.

You start out with one pound of flour...the recipe that came with the pasta machine said "soft flour"...if you can find that, great. If not, use AP (all-purpose); that's what I did and it comes out just hunky-dory, thankyouverymuch.

Ta-da...1 pound by my very cute little Escali scale.

You crack 5 room-temperature eggs into the flour...

and work them in with a fork until fairly well incorporated:

Knead the flour with your hands until it all comes together. The first time I made this, it came together pretty nicely. The second time, not so much...it was a bit scaly looking on the outside, but don't worry! (Or in the words of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Don't Panic!) By the time you cut them into little chunks and run it through the rollers, everything will look great.

If, while you're kneading, the dough looks too wet, add a bit more flour. If it looks too dry, add a touch of water (but don't over-do it).

After it's all kneaded, roll it into a small log and place on a lightly-floured surface. Cut a chunk off the log...not too big, as you can see:

Cover the rest of the log with a towel. If you're using a rolling pin, you can just roll it out like pie dough at this point, as thin as you want. If you're using a pasta maker, follow its directions. Mine says to set the setting at 1, and run your dough through it about 5 times. After each time you run it through, flour the dough in the middle, and fold it over before running it through the machine again.

After you've run it through setting 1 about 5 times, increase the roller to the next setting, and run the dough through once on that setting. You can do this all the way up to 9 (or whatever it is on your machine). And dust with flour as needed.

When you've got the dough to the desired thickness, put that long stab on your floured surface and cut into 10" long segments. Put each segment into one of the cutting rollers, depending on how wide you want your noodles. I did fettuccine:

Here's another pic to show you just how long a slab of dough can get:

Anyway, if you're lucky enough to have a pasta rack, you can hang your noodles on that to dry. I don't have one, so I had to lay them out on a towel, and toss them every so often with some flour so they wouldn't stick to each other.

Continue the above steps with each subsequent chunks cut from the dough log until all gone.

Hubby cooked them up that evening with a simple garlic-butter sauce. We had it with fresh cherry and grape tomatoes from garden.

I don't think I need to tell you that it was incredible! The texture and flavor of handmade noodles are so much more interesting than the dry stuff you buy at the store (which has its merits; I'm not knocking it).

It is so truly simple, I urge you to give it a try!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Announcements

2011-08-25T15:26:00.001-04:00

Announcement #1

My sister did it! She has started her own biz making super adorable soaps! Check out her creations at Soap Sudsations. Here are a couple of her soaps that I'm in love with:

(Just in time for Halloween too!)

Announcement #2

At another blog that I frequent, the author said that she was turning off comment capability due to too much spam. I've actually been pretty lucky and have not had spam (though occasionally I'll crave Spam), but her decision got me to thinking that I should turn off my comments too. One, I'm a compulsive answerer and turning off comments will save me from having to answer every comment; and, two, people are busy enough and can barely find time to read this blog, let alone comment, so I'll save them from feeling guilty for not commenting because I am that kind of a generous, thoughtful person...heh.

Of course, you can still contact me via Facebook or Twitter (if you know me at those places) or at birders4-blogger (at) yahoo (dot) com - taking out spaces and putting in the appropriate at and dot symbols. Or not. Totally understand if you don't wanna talk to me!

On to other topics...I realized that I hadn't written an update on my progress for my New Year's resolutions. Honestly, it's not that I've been slacking off. In the past couple of months, I've knitted a face cloth (easy, I know, but it still took time), and a pair of socks with the beautiful yarn that dear Tanya O. bought for me (little Sage chose the color):

Currently, I'm starting to work on knitting a rug with the wool that Robin gave away at Rurification. I'm sort of winging it, but hope that it'll mostly turn out all right. :} As well, I'm taking some online classes from Craftsy - sock knitting (to learn a different technique), jewelry making (to hone my skills), and basic crochet (to have a refresher course that's available 24/7...I'm hoping to take another class with Robin, but I can't have her 24/7. ;> )

I have fallen behind on my sewing projects, I'll admit. But my plan is to sew some bags for my sister's soaps. I love easy projects with satisfying results.

Also pretty easy, but takes forever, is canning tomatoes. We did our first batch of 13.5 quarts:

Then, too, I've starting making fresh pasta! Next up, I'll post a little tutorial on how I did it.

How about you? Have you kept up with your New Year's resolutions?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Pep talk and pickles

2011-08-20T17:02:00.001-04:00

Pep talk
I was going to post this to a friend on Facebook, but thought that it's good advice for anyone else who may be going through rough times:

Be good to yourself: there are lots of external forces (people, institutions, etc) that are always trying put you down and pull you down. You need to be your own best advocate, and fight your self-destructive tendencies, so you can fight their destructive tendencies.

Pickles

I don't recall if I've ever posted the recipe for tsukemono, a Japanese pickle, before, but since I've had a lot of requests for it, I'm going to post it. Many thanks to my dear friend, Grace, who gave me her mom's recipe. I've modified it for sodium content, and added notes on how else we've changed it, but it's pretty much the same recipe otherwise.

Tsukemono

1.5 C water
1.5 T salt

Bring water and salt to a boil (we actually just heat up the water slightly in the microwave so that the salt dissolves easier, but we don't boil the water so we don't have to wait as long for it to cool back down again).

Slice cucumbers to 1/4 inch thickness. (Hubby then puts the slices into a big container of ice water; this helps to keep the pickles crisp. Let the slices sit in the ice water until the salt water has cooled down.)

Drain the slices, and cover them with the salt-water brine. Leave for 1.5 hours. Drain and rinse.

1.5 C water
1/4 C rice vinegar (use regular if you can't find or don't have rice vinegar)

2 t sugar
1 t MSG (we don't use that at all)
ginger, grated - use as much as you like to taste - Grace uses 1 t ginger paste
garlic, sliced - use as much as you like to taste
red pepper, crushed - use as much as you like to taste

Bring water, vinegar, sugar, and msg to boil and then let cool (again, I'd microwave it just enough to easily dissolve the sugar). Put the sliced cukes into a jar* (or jars). Add a few slices of garlic, grated ginger, and crushed red peppers in each jar. Pour the vinegar brine over the cukes to cover. Refrigerate. May be eaten the same night.

Here it is, in the fridge:

And peering into the jar of green goodness:

*Jars - we usually use Ball jars for canning, but with making refrigerator pickles, we love the Weck jars.

German-made and with the cutest shapes, they're as much a work of art as they are practical. We get ours from Lehman's Non-electric, but if you live in Vancouver, you can get them at Gourmet Warehouse on Hastings. The Wecks have rubber gaskets and metal clips. Apparently you can do regular canning with them, but hubby doesn't want to because the glass lids won't pop down like the metal ones do, and he wouldn't know if it'd sealed properly.

We have two different sizes/shapes, but I'd collect them all if I had the money!

Hubby also made refrigerator dill pickles, but I personally prefer tsukemonos. :) Have you canned pickles yet this summer?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Water, water, everywhere...and same with vermins

2011-08-13T17:51:00.000-04:00

I saw the best quote the other day from Trent Hamm of The Simple Dollar:
"We all make mistakes in life. The thing that separates successful people from others is how we handle those mistakes." It's the one lesson I hope the kids come away with if they remember nothing else I teach them.

Speaking of lessons for my kids, one of the ones I keep reminding ds#1 of is to not waste water:

Source: eLocal.com

Clean water is something that we should never take for granted.

~~~~~
We've enjoyed several meals of yummy sweet corn...

until the evil raccoons somehow got into our fenced garden (something they'd never done before) and destroyed the rest of that one bed. Luckily, we still have another bed, or two. One of those is surrounded by an electric fence, so they should fare better.

Raccoons, or some other pest, also swooped in on our Asian pears. One day our 2 trees were loaded with fruits, nearly ready for picking, and the next day, not a single fruit was left on either tree. Nada. If we catch the culprit, it is stew meat! Grrrr. The tree branch in this photo was so loaded with fruit that it had snapped off.

Luckily, there are other things we are able to harvest and process - more basil, for instance:

And here's hubby making the pesto, after I washed all the basil and the jars and lids, and the kids stripped the leaves.

A good friend, Tia, brought over two pullets that they didn't want anymore after her girls were done with their 4-H project. Meet Vader (guess what that was named after?) and Tawny (as in Sigourney Weaver's character from Galaxy Quest). Ds#1 gets the credit for these names. Do they look like they're doing a Rockettes' dance or what?

Our old hens had pretty much stopped laying due to the heat and their being broody, so we look forward to finally having some homegrown eggs again. Thanks, Tia!

In other exciting news, we'll be getting a new tractor soon - a lovely red Kubota! Hubby had looked at John Deere, but the dealer in town was surprisingly unresponsive, with the manager acting like he didn't really want to make the sale. The Kubota dealer in the town south of us, on the other hand, was so helpful and eager that hubby decided to go for it. Plus, the size and features that he wanted were cheaper with the Kubota. Can't wait!

Do you have any exciting gardening purchases?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

An old post I forgot to publish...

2011-08-08T09:09:00.001-04:00

I'd written it back in early July before our trip to Vancouver; so, this will be your Monday treat...hahaha!

--------------------
I've never liked snow peas (I know, what kind of Chinese person AM I??), but have always loved other kinds of peas, our favorite being the edible pod types because of less waste. Until such time we get a hog to raise, I don't think we'll ever grow shell peas. It pains us to throw the entire husk away. Look at these lovely little edible pod peas!

This was our first big basil harvest; we made 9.5 pints of pesto. Good eats ahead!

Not all is hunky-dory in the garden though. There's something wrong with our onions. They have mottling on the green parts, making them look like aloe plants, and aren't growing very well.

Anyone else have problems with their garden this year that they can't attribute to insect pests?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Get ready to be inundated

2011-08-02T22:40:00.001-04:00

Because it's always feast or famine, people!

No, sorry; it's actually because I tend to put things off and then throw everything into the pot...or the blog post.

So, let's rush through our Vancouver trip. Luckily for you, unlike some of my friends who are good about taking a million photos each time they go on vacation, I think we (the kids, hubby, and I) took a total of maybe 30 pictures. And I'm not sharing all of them - you'll be grateful to know that, for example, I'm not sharing the photo of the dead caterpillar ds#1 found in his salad or his stunning photos of various slugs they found while hiking.

Speaking of hiking, no trip to Vancouver is complete without a trek to Lynn Headwaters in North Vancouver:

Now that ds#1 is feeling more confident with birding by ear (and is really good with IDing by sight), we're doing more and more birding outings. We went to Whytecliff Park, which we hadn't been to in years, and were rewarded with lovely views and some unusual birds.

Hubby likes to bring the boys to wholesome places for birding too (click to see larger photo):

That place (Wreck Beach, in case anyone wants to know) is pretty gorgeous though:

We also went to check out my mom's headstone at her grave site. My sister and I helped our dad order the tombstone back in November. It arrived in February when I was already back home, so this was the first time I've seen it. Dad wrote out the Chinese characters that they used to make lettering with. I think it looks pretty nice. And I think it's pretty generous of dad, who is an atheist, to honor mom, who was Catholic, by putting religious symbols on the stone.

Besides Lynn Headwaters, a trip to Vancouver would not be complete without eating authentic Chinese food...and lots of it. My kids have gotten really fond of chicken feet now, so we order it at every dim sum:

This next item was a first for the boys (and hubby) - and a warning to the squeamish: you might want to skip down to the garden photos - care to guess what it is?

If you guessed "duck tongue", you are absolutely right! Most older cultures still adhere to the "waste not, want not" ideal.

The funky thing is that inside of a duck tongue is some sort of bone or cartilage which makes the tongue stiff. Consider this is your anatomy lesson for the day. Traveling is very enlightening.

We're back home now, in not-as-exotic southern Indiana. But, we have fresh food back home, so even if we don't have anything unusual, it is all tasty. Here's hubby between the broccoli and corn:

And what was hubby doing with a pitchfork, besides posing as model for an American Gothic revival? Digging potatoes, of course!

A few more random garden photos...summer squash that got too big while we were away in Vancouver enjoying the duck tongue:

More corn because we can never get enough:

The frisee, gone to seed...but look at how pretty the flowers are!

Not as pretty as the frisee flowers, but lovely in its own way is the asparagus forest:

Hubby put our indoor banana tree out in the garden where it's been enjoying the killer heat and humidity. I'm glad something is.

Aren't the cherry tomatoes adorable?

Well, enough of my babbling for one post. I plan to post shorter, less gross posts more regularly. (Was that confusing to use less and more within 2 words of each other?)

If I've not already visited your blog, tell me about your vacation/summer/garden, and I'll swing by for a look-see!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Quick!!

2011-07-03T16:47:00.000-04:00

You have a few more hours to get in on my friend Robin's yarn giveaway! These were dyed and spun by her and are gorgeous. And even if you don't want yarn, you should check out her blog anyway because she is one amazing lady who does all sorts of wonderful homesteading stuff.

Ok, now I'm really gone on my break. ;)

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Come closer!

2011-06-30T18:01:00.002-04:00

When veggies are this beautiful, you just have to have close-up shots.

Our cabbage heads have been medium-sized, tasty and lovely:

This is the first garlic bulb we harvested. Doesn't that look as stunning as anything in the Louvre?

Things look a bit wild in the garden, but the weeds are actually well under control, a pleasant surprise.

And here are some of my favorite weeders: the boys!

We're getting close to making a big batch of pesto soon. Seems like we never make fewer than 5 pints at a time.

It is that time of year when we start processing food - freezing, canning, dehydrating. This means it's also a good time to take a blogging break. I'll be back reading blogs and posting in August, I hope. :)

Are you processing your veggies? Will you be taking a blogging break too? Have fun with whatever you plan on doing for the next month or so!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Gardening - flowers and food

2011-06-25T13:46:00.002-04:00

Some of you may have noticed that we don't spend a lot of time on ornamental gardening. We used to grow showy annuals, but with less time to spend on gardening and more mouths to feed, we've focused our efforts on food over aesthetics. If we grow plants that don't feed us, we try to focus on ones that are perennial and/or feed birds.

Hummingbirds are rather fond of hosta flowers (the deer love the leaves too, but we're certainly not encouraging that). My MIL used to grow many varieties of hostas; she had a shady yard that only shade-loving plants could do well in. The ones we have now had been dug up from her garden. It's a nice way to remember her.

My MIL knew all the varieties names, but I can barely remember my own kids' names.

I haven't talked much about the herbs that we grow by the house, so here are photos of a couple of them. This is oregano:

The lemon balm also does well.

Garlic chives have taken over much of the space around our water garden, although I don't think you can see it well in this photo. This space has become a bit wild in the past few years. We used to have water lilies in the pond, but now it's mostly algae. The frogs still love it and I guess that's all that counts for now.

Hubby, with the kids' help, fixed our old chicken tractor! Now I have to find time to stain it.

More on the never-ending rabbit saga - see the cuke plants they've turned into stubs?

This one is for Michelle (Blog of the Soap Pixie) because we were talking about darned deer and the damage the cause (hey, that make a good rock band name: Darned Deer and Devastation...ok, maybe not).

Yes, the peas are ready! Putting the kids to work:

I may whine about weeding and hubby may complain about having to having to foil deer and rabbits every year, but I'm very grateful to be able to grow about 40% of our own foods on our land. There is a food shortage in many parts of the world, causing high prices and food riots. Incidentally, some may think that food costs are high in North America, but it's nothing compared to what percentage of income it comprises for some people in other parts of the world. A couple of good articles to read about food shortage are:
A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself
and
Where is the 21st century approach to feeding the world?
Of course, one can't really talk about changing climate and hunger without also talking about two other related topics:
Fastest sea-level rise in 2,100 years linked to climate change
and
Overpopulation: A key factor in species extinction

Now that I've thoroughly depressed you (welcome to the despair that resides in my heart), I hope you'll have a lovely weekend!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Random thoughts just coz I can

2011-06-19T18:42:00.003-04:00

Hubby was at a dinner at a professional conference this past spring, and white asparagus was served. Someone wondered what it was, and someone else confidently replied that it was parsnips. Dh refrained from going WTF? because it was a professional conference after all. LOL! No, really, he's just generally tactful; the yin to my yang. I am known for many things, but being tactful and diplomatic is not one of them.

Anyway, hubby told the person who first asked that those were white asparagus, and that we grow them. Whereupon someone else wondered if white asparagus was a different variety. I'm here to dispel that notion just like dh did that evening. White asparagus is just asparagus grown covered so that it doesn't get to photosynthesize. People who grow frisee do the same thing to them because whiter frisee is less bitter. See the white spears in front of the others? Those were covered by leaves before they were picked.

I won't even bother with a clever segue, but want to thank Robin (who writes the wonderful Rurification blog) for encouraging me to make cheese. She recommended the kits from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company so I got one and made mozzarella twice already! There were one or two mistakes in the instructions, but overall, it was a great experience and fairly easy. This was the stage where the curd formed and I cut it with a knife.

And here it is, done! Ta-da! Very tasty it is too.

Third random thought: we have a black snake that has decided it likes to keep company with our tools in the shed. Great. Don't get me wrong; I love snakes. I just prefer to know where they are in proximity to me and that they aren't dangling over my head. I don't like things above my head and I don't like it when people walk behind me. Oh wait, this isn't a random thoughts post after all. This is a post about Teresa's irrational phobias!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

How does our garden grow?

2011-06-15T14:51:00.003-04:00

Before I get into blathering about our garden, I want to give a shout-out to Product Body's fantastic Giveaway! Head over to The Soap Bar blog to find out how to enter; Joanna's products are incredible! You can thank me later. ;)

Thinking about the nursery rhyme leads me to suspect that Mary wasn't the one being contrary; it was probably the garden pests who were contrary! (Unless, of course, you take it as the political allegory that it is and from the view point of Elizabeth I, Mary was rather contrary; but I hate talking politics.)

All sorts of things conspire to make your garden a failure: rabbits, voles, aphids, caterpillars, chipmunks, and, yes, even birds. They blithely nibble on your plants and berries, snipping off and killing young shoots before they have a chance to realize their dreams of becoming a full-blown plant. The garden is a sad, rough place to raise a seedling.

Still, we persist, year after year. Or hubby persists, and the kids and I help to nurse his eternal optimism.

So to answer "how does our garden grow", I thought I'd show some photos of the progress. I think I took these photos Tuesday morning (June 7th). These are by no means all of our garden beds. Some are still empty (well, maybe just one or two are), and some I just didn't take close-ups of (example, cucumbers, squash, grapes).

A sweeping view of the south garden, outside of the main fenced garden. Our dilapidated chicken tractor is at the left-hand side. Hubby fixed it now though, so I'll have to show a photo of his handiwork some other time.

Looking inside our main fenced garden...it's hard to take in all 27 beds in there at once:

The bib lettuce, co-existing with the frisee:

The lettuce, nearly bolting, with some beets in the foreground, not quite big enough yet. Interspersed are dill that keep self-seeding in our garden.

Speaking of self-seeding, here's a volunteer lamb's quarters:

The cabbages are doing beautifully...

In fact, dh used one for cole slaw:

...but the broccoli is just getting started:

One day soon, we'll get some peas:

More frisee, cohabiting with the celery this time:

The asparagus are still going strong, amazingly:

as are our garlic, which won't be ready for harvest for another month:

Our strawberries are pretty much done:

But other things are just getting started, such as eggplants:

and sweet potatoes:

Regular potatoes:

Lima beans:

Peppers:

Tomatoes:

And green onions - front - (this is the half bed inside the main garden, and not the six beds outside the fenced area) and basil - back:

Dh made some yummy meals again. This was a faux gyros with brown rice instead of pita, and our tomato sauce instead of chopped tomatoes (since our tomatoes haven't ripen yet). Complete with my homemade Greek yogurt and homegrown asparagus:

This was just using up some left over dilly new potatoes. Dh made a homefries sort of concoction, topping it with one of our eggs.

We're actually low on eggs right now. The heat shut most of the chickens down, and one hen went broody so she's not laying. *&^% freeloaders. We might have to dispatch with this current group and get a bunch of new ones. Unfortunately, ds#1 is rather attached to one of the hens, Licorice...actually most of the hens except for Four of Five...so we may have to keep them for longer. I never knew he was quite so sentimental.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Something creative, something blue

2011-06-11T20:00:00.002-04:00

Seems like my kids' friends are so busy with homeschooling stuff that they rarely have time for playdates anymore. Some days, I feel like I have more playdates than they do!

Once or twice a month, I have lunch dates with my girlfriends (now that the boys are old enough, I can leave them unsupervised for a couple of hours occasionally). I got together with my neighbor/friend, Allison, this past week for a jewelry-making/lunch date. It was fun! I got to work on something I never allow myself the time for at home because something else is always more important. My poor writing is sometimes relegated to the same low status on my to-do list, unfortunately.

Anyway, I got to finish off a necklace the string of which had broken many years ago and that I had never gotten around to re-stringing. Here it is, with the matching earrings I made:

Since that didn't take very long, I also had time to make a couple more pairs of earrings. Well, sort of - I didn't bring enough findings over to Allison's house and couldn't put the hook on this pair of earrings:

But, here it is, all finished (and blurry):

The other pair I made was blue. I don't make too many blue things, nor do I wear many blue things, except for jeans. But, I do like the myriad shades of blue:

The kids, well, they do get to see their friends, but often only in the context of their co-ops, clubs, fieldtrips and classes lately. A dear friend of mine organized a field trip to Angel Mounds, in Evansville, Indiana, also this past week. Being the bad mom that I am, I rarely remember to bring my camera. Luckily, having an iPhone means never having to say "I'm sorry" or going without image-capturing capability again. So here are some poor quality pictures of a fun day.

A photo of part of the site, with one of the mounds in the far distance:

The kids descending from stairs that go up one of the mounds, supposedly the one the chief had used:

The kids also got to try out some flint-napping, which, predictably, I forgot to take photos of, and some soil-sifting for artifacts, very similar to panning for gold:

Close-up of ds#1's butt:

Not only did the kids get to play archaeologist for a day, they are also now officially Canadians! Having jumped through the long, somewhat arduous hoop, of applying for proof of their citizenship (because I'm Canadian), we now have their citizenship cards!

YESSSS! Hubby told them that they will have to learn the Canadian anthem. ;)

And speaking of kids, we've been trying to find ways to get rid of household pests...just kidding, kids...sort of. Here are a couple of links for you in case you're also plagued with ants (or some other vermin):

Repelling pests the natural way (via Natural Home and Garden) and Natural Ways to Get Rid of Ants from Your Home from Care2.com.

Well, I had better go finish writing a story for my SF critique group. No rest for the wicked.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

I know why Elmer Fudd hates Bugs Bunny

2011-06-04T19:05:00.004-04:00

There's a curse on our garden, and its name is Rabbit.

I thought hubby was going to cry. He planted 6.5 beds of onions and when they were tender little sprouts, rabbits went through the beds outside of the fenced part of the garden and systematically nipped off the stems of each one.

You can picture it: the *&^% critter nipped off one, went "YUCK!" and dropped it, then moved on to the next, nipped that, went "YUCK!" and dropped it, and so on down the line. It's like the scene in Chicken Run where Rocky fell into every single pie, except you sub in rabbit for Rocky, and decimated onion for pies. And it's not funny.

Here's one example of an onion that never recovered. You can see the part still in the ground at the tip of the circle hoe.

Luckily, some were hardy enough to come back. You can see the nipped part and the healthy part in this photo:

But before you think it's all drama in the garden, we do get some chuckles out of it...e.g. this funky clover-shaped strawberry! Sight gags never fail to elicit some laughs.

After you finish laughing, you can try drooling. ;) I'm so grateful hubby is a good cook! Here's a sardine penne with sun-dried tomatoes and green beans, served with a salad in a sun-dried tomato vinaigrette. Except for the sardines and the penne, everything came from our garden.

This meal features less stuff from our garden (only the dill, the asparagus, and the celery in the crab cakes are grown by us). But it's oh-so-good, nonetheless: crab cakes, dilly new potatoes, and asparagus in a light butter sauce.

And speaking of tasty stuff, hubby is addicted to Vegemite. We just ordered two 400g jars from Simply Australian. I have to wonder how many non-Aussies are buying huge jars of Vegemite??

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Someone please give me back a month of my life

2011-05-27T15:05:00.001-04:00

How did the month pass by so quickly? How did the three weeks that my sister was visiting for fly by?

Well, it wasn't as if we slept through 3 weeks or drank ourselves silly through it - although we did try the latter. We weren't even just sitting around scratching our butts either! In fact, we were pretty productive.

We cleaned out my art room so now you can actually walk into it!

We made soaps together - or, more accurately, my sister made soaps mostly on her own after doing one set with me. She turns out to be super at it! Sooo, she's taken over my soaping biz (such as it was, or wasn't). Woohoo!! I know she'll do well.

My sis also finished off a latch hook rug project that I started 17 years ago...no kidding...I'm pathetic.

Not to be outdone, I finished the pair of socks I was knitting for ds#2:

Together, she and I tried out the tortilla press I bought in Vancouver last fall.

Here they are, flattened out and resting:

My sister fried them up in the Le Creuset pan that I love:

She also helped harvest strawberries, which was not entirely altruistic as she wanted to eat some good, home-grown berries. ;)

In between working hard, we also enjoyed some great meals courtesy of my talented dh - meals such as this vegetarian Thai sesame noodles with grilled asparagus (yeah, baby, that's our home-grown asparagus!!) marinated with a soy-sesame sauce:

She's now safely back home, despite the crazy mid-west weather trying to foil her plans (yes, we survived the severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, thanks for asking).

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Writing contest at The Pond!

2011-05-04T15:07:00.000-04:00

The Blonde Duck is hosting a very fun writing contest for kids and kids-at-heart over on her blog! Yes, Virginia, there are prizes too. :)

While you're there, read some of her fantastic stories!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Just a little "Yes!" and an annoucement

2011-05-01T18:59:00.000-04:00

According to Wikipedia's entry on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, I have the original UK paperback cover version! See?

The three bookmarks are there because ds#1 was presenting it to his Teen Book Club and marked passages he wanted to share. That's my boy! ;)

And this is my odd segue into announcing that changes are a-coming. I want to revamp this blog to something that is a bit cleaner, hopefully drastically reducing the clutter on the side. More importantly, because I have my official blog to talk about my "official" pursuits, I'll make this a blog that only covers topics related to homesteading pursuits and other house and home things, such as baking. So, I may, sadly, have to eliminate my Douglas Adams references. Although, occasionally, I might just type titles of his books for no particular reason.

Last Chance to See.

Like that!

Consider it my literary Tourette's of the Adams sort.

As well, because my sister will be arriving soon for a long awaited visit, I won't be blogging for a while. I'll try and read my fav blogs every so often, but I won't be a stalker. I can see some of you breathing sighs of relief at that. ;)

Hope your weekend has been nice, and have a wonderful May!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Projects

2011-04-29T22:38:00.001-04:00

Remember my resolution to complete a knitting and sewing project each every couple of months? Well, I didn't quite accomplish my second knitting project for April because, guess what? I learned (or re-learned, more accurately, since I first learned in grade three) how to crochet! I took a class from the very creative Robin at one of my favorite local stores, Yarns Unlimited.

So, I'm half way through a pair of socks for ds#2 but I've also started on a crochet project that is waaaaay over my head. This is how much I've done so far:

And this is what I'm trying to make (from the Amazing Crochet Lace book by Doris Chan).

Why, yes, I was dropped on my head a couple of times as a baby; why did you ask?

Close-up of the funky yarn:

I'm not nearly as ambitious on the sewing front. I made a gift bag for one of my kids' dear friends. Sam's birthday is coming up and we're giving him some Star Wars themed gifts in this Star Wars themed bag that I made. Bet you can't guess what Sam likes.

Speaking of sewing, the one piece of equipment...well, two, really...that I am very glad I bought are the rotary mat and rotary cutter. These have made cutting fabric so much easier. The photo below shows what I used to trim the sleeves on my FIL's shirt. He wore the elbow out and asked if I could turn it into a short-sleeve shirt. Piece of cake with my rotary mat and cutter!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Secret garden?

2011-04-23T21:46:00.000-04:00

Hubby went out this afternoon - between periods of thunderstorms; boy, are we ever having crazy weather! - and picked a huge bag of kale!

I'm looking at it thinking "where the heck did this come from when last I looked at the garden, all our seedlings were under 3 inches tall??"

But here's this amazing kale, with leaves as big as my hand:

Yet the stems were tender:

Does hubby have a secret garden I didn't know about? As it turned out, this was kale that self-seeded in the greenhouse and had grown up over the winter months. I was in the greenhouse watering the seedlings last week when dh was at a conference, and I didn't even see the kale. They don't call me Sherlock for nuthin'! D'oh.

Hubby also picked the cilantro that had self-seeded in the greenhouse:

And we had both for dinner...wilted kale in an Asian marinade and a cilantro sauce for our home-made wontons. Yum!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Food, glorious food

2011-04-18T21:09:00.001-04:00

Yes, folks, we had our first asparagus of the season this past weekend! It was a small harvest, but it was so tasty, my mouth still waters thinking about it.

I've seen some other blog posts of people's gardens and I have to say they look a lot better than ours, but I still think ours is lovely, if only because it's the one we get our food from. :) Ds#1 took these photos and didn't zoom in as much as I'd like, but you know what they say about beggars. This bed has beets and spinach.

This one has a variety of lettuce and frisee:

The garlic is looking mighty fine! We mulched them tonight with last fall's leaves.

And the strawberries are blooming:

A close-up of the pretty lettuce:

Asparagus, pre-picking:

Some broccoli and cauliflower (we don't usually grow cauliflower in the spring). I'm going to convince dh to grow some purple cauliflower for me after reading about it at My Kids Eat Squid.

Celery was never my favorite veggie, but it does kick up egg or tuna salads. There was an article on Care2.com recently which talked about the health benefits of celery, so now I'm glad dh grows it.

This looks like a stray onion that over-wintered by accident.

More strawberry blooms...

We moved the chickens out of their usual fenced area so the grass can grow back. After a whole winter cooped up there, they had cleared out pretty much all the green stuff. We moved them over to the east field where they feasted on lots of lovely grass and violets. I love our electric fence.

This is the &^%$ rooster. He's a bit of a dweeb. We've not had a really good rooster since Don Juan, who was "trained" by our friend, Jami. I think instead of running her lovely business, My Edible Eden, she really should go into training roosters to be nice chickens because she has a real talent for that! :)

I've been toying with the idea of closing up this blog and focusing on my "official" blog. I know that I should write every day to keep my writing muscles flexible, but my writing muscles are actually a little bit sore and I'm starting to realize that non-fiction is not my thing to write even though it's my favorite thing to read. Just a little warning in case you show up one day and the blog is gone. :}

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Winners!

2011-04-15T17:42:00.000-04:00

For some reason, the title made me start humming Steely Dan's Deacon Blues.

Seems that Alina is the only one who wants a Juggling kit, so she's the winner of that first giveaway. ;)

As for the second, here's what the Magic Eight Ball (Random.org) picked:

The Blonde Duck! Since there were multiple comments from the same people, I just assigned 1 to Blonde Duck, 2 to Robin, and 3 to Alina. My sis, Epicure, doesn't count. She only wants the soaps and socks I make, silly girl!

So there it. I know, that's about all the excitement I can handle in one day too. I'm off to notify the winners, and then I'll take a nap.

Have a lovely weekend!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

If juggling isn't your thing - giveaway, take 2

2011-04-11T20:43:00.005-04:00

I thought that since only Alina wants a juggling kit, I would offer a second giveaway more suited to a wider audience. And it's exciting too! See?Who wouldn't give his/her left arm to own this Scholastic set of Writer's Desk Reference and How to Spell Like a Champ? Well, now you don't have to give up your left arm; you can win this instead, and save your left arm to fist-pump the air when you're holding this delectable pair of books in your grubby right hand.

I'll do a drawing for this on Friday right after I pretend to do a drawing for the Juggling kit and award it to Alina. Heh. So leave a comment, say anything at all (just keep it G since it's a family-blog), but be sure to have some way for me to find you to tell you you've won.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

A giveaway!

2011-04-11T09:32:00.002-04:00

Spring cleaning is a wonderful thing. It allows you to come across items that make you scratch your head and go, "what the heck was I thinking when I bought this??" Nothing like feeling like an idiot who has wasted money to put me in a mood for a giveaway, I always say.

So for all you who are juggling so much - kids, jobs, hobbies, etc, etc, I have the perfect thing for you: a brand new Klutz juggling book and balls kit! (What the heck was I thinking when I bought this?) Not only was that a fun play on words - juggling...*giggle* - but it could relieve your daily stress by helping you focus on a new and different activity. And if that doesn't work, you can wing the balls at the person who is annoying you (please note that the book probably doesn't recommend this).

To enter, please leave a comment about what you normally do to relieve stress, e.g. learning Klingon swear words. Please make sure I have some way to contact you (unless I already know you and know where to stalk you) when you leave your comment - blog addy, email, direction to send smoke signals - so I can notify you if you win. My mind reading skills aren't what they used to be.

I'll be consulting with the Oracle at Delphi - or if I can't get a flight to Athens, I'll use Random.org instead - on Friday afternoon to pick the recipient for this amazing (snort) prize. Bonne chance!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Will it ever be Spring?

2011-04-08T18:04:00.000-04:00

What comes to mind when I say "Spring"? I hope you said "horseradish harvests!" because then you'd be right. Dh and the boys harvested the previous weekend and then dh made a nice batch of horseradish sauce. Here are the roots they harvested:
Our favorite way to eat horseradish sauce is to put it on top of fried eggs, but it also makes an incredible veggie dip when mixed with sour cream (our horseradish sauce is pure horseradish roots and organic vinegar). Jars of the stuff:
We keep the jars in the fridge and freezer and don't can them. I'm not sure that they can be canned, if you know that they can, please let me know!

Dh started some seeds - spinach and lettuce - outside before we left for Spring Break. Right after we got back, he started seeds indoors - bib lettuce, various onions, and various tomatoes. Here they are all cozy and happy on their heat pads and under the grow lights:
He also started some stuff in the greenhouse, but darned if I can remember what. *sigh* And because these are totally not enough, he also stopped by Mays Greenhouse for more seedlings and White River Co-op for seed potatoes.

Mother Nature must have heard my whining because it is starting to feel like spring these past couple of days. Yay!

What have you started from seed?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

I heart Amber...and I heart food!

2011-03-29T16:32:00.006-04:00

Half of you who come here already know Amber - she is one talented lady who seems to have boundless energy and skills. And if you don't already know her, you really must check out her blog: Amber's Ambry. You'll thank me for turning you on to it...probably more so than you'll thank me for sharing cookie recipes with you, but I'll do that too (at the bottom of this post). :)

Amber and her very cute, and equally talented, apparently, boys made the sweetest bird seed ornaments, which I just had to have because I love to spoil our birds. Heh. Aren't they cute and perfect for the holidays?

I first knew Amber for her soap-making skills, and she never disappoints:

Amber made this incredible hand-balm that is so emollient, it actually speeds the healing of paper-cuts! I kid you not. I have empirical evidence!

Because no blog post is complete without the mention of food, and because I don't want you to think that I didn't bake at all during my months off from blogging, here are some pics of FOOD.

These are magnificent Magnolia Bakery chocolate cupcakes. They were one of my best batches yet!

I was making a lot of the no-knead artisan bread for a while. Here is a slice that became an experiment in seeing how Vegemite (on the left) differed in taste from Marmit (on the right). Dh and the boys definitely prefer Vegemite.

Because the sweet potatoes kept so well in the utility room over the winter, I was able to make a sweet potato pie:

As a healthier change from Coconut-Cranberry Chews, I made some Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies instead. We definitely preferred the former, even though the latter has heart-healthy oats in it.

So there ya have it...my past 2 months reduced to two blog posts, and missing all the really juicy stuff (that's in my other blog).

I'm now back in full blogging force and am looking forward to reading everyone else's blogs again!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Numba one son turns 15!

2011-03-27T17:07:00.000-04:00

I have a back-log of a couple of posts; I'd started writing them, but because I wasn't really blogging, or reading blogs, I never posted them. So in the spirit of "feast or famine", I will dump them on you in a matter of days. ;) Here's the first:

It's not possible because I haven't aged a day since he was born. I am still in my early 30s as far as I can tell.

Yeah, I lied. The kids have aged me beyond recognition. I'm just a shell of the vibrant person I once was.

I lied yet again. The truth lies somewhere in between: I'm not 32 years old - my age minus 3 months when ds#1 was born - but I'm not decrepit either. I hate the idea of staring at Five-Oh, but I look forward to my AARP membership for those fabulous discounts! What am I complaining about anyway? At least I'm not a grandmother. (The idea of being a grandparent in my 40s really makes me queasy.)

But this isn't about me, even though I do go on. Ds#1 turned 15 on the first of February. We got hit by an ice storm that day, so we never took him out for a special dinner, nor cooked him one, as is our tradition. In fact, our power went out for about 21 hours, and I didn't even make him a cake until the weekend.

He chose Mocha Chiffon, and it turned out pretty well. I got the recipe from the Company's Coming cookbook I got from my mom's stash of cookbooks after she died.

Mocha Chiffon Cake
2 1/3 C sifted cake flour
1 1/2 C granulated sugar
1 T baking powder
1 t salt
1 T instant coffee granules
3/4 C hot water
1/2 C cooking oil
5 egg yolks, room temp
1 t vanilla
1 C egg whites, room temp
1/2 t cream of tartar
3 oz semisweet baking chocolate, shaved thinly

Preheat oven to 325F. Wash angel food tube pan in hot soapy water to ensure it is totally grease-free. Sift first 4 ingredients into bowl. Make a well in the center.

Dissolve coffee in hot water. Cool.

Put cooking oil, egg yolks, vanilla and cooled coffee into well. Set aside. Don't beat yet.

Beat egg whites and cream of tartar until very stiff. Set aside.

Using same beater, beat egg yolk-flour mixture until smooth. Fold 1/4 at a time gently into egg whites. Add shaved chocolate. Fold in. Pour into ungreased 10" angel food pan. Bake in oven for 60-70 minutes. Invert pan until cake has cooled. Frost with frosting of choice.

And on a completely unrelated thought, here are the socks I finished knitting in January. I'm staying on track with my projects resolutions so far, but I don't know how much longer I can keep it up with more writing and critiquing on my schedule.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Resolutions

2011-01-11T20:48:00.000-05:00

Umm, no, not that kind.

And not that kind either...although if you would like one like that, go to Galileoscope. :)

No, you know the kind I mean. The kind that everyone makes around this time of year and look back a couple of years hence and go, "what the heck was I thinking, making rash promises to myself and anonymous strangers in cyberspace?!" You can probably surmise that happened to me.

Foolishly (because, really, what other reason is there?), this year, I made another open declaration of my new year's promises to my (slightly drunk, perhaps) dewy-eyed self over at the Soap Queen blog, and also at Eric Maisel's Focus Journal e-list.

Yeah, I will never learn. I didn't realize I was forever the optimist. I always thought I saw the glass as half-empty and really needed a good scrubbing to get the water spots off.

One of the things I had promised myself this year is that I would complete 6 knitting and 6 sewing projects, allowing myself a couple of months for each of the knitting or sewing projects.

Ok, I cheated a little bit and started on some projects in December, but LATE December so it was almost like January. I worked on them a little bit every day, like I had promised myself (and the entire world), and I am very happy to report that I finished a couple of projects already...both today!

One is a hat for one of my guys - they'll have to fight over who gets this one. Blue is a highly popular color among dh and the boys...go figure.

I also made a fleece jacket for ds#1 with the fabric that I bought from EG (of Gassner Custom Soaps). Check out the ultra-cool Darth Vader fabric!

To top off my unusually productive day, I made my alma mater's famous cheese scones. Wherever you are, Mark Seymour, know that you have my undying gratitude for introducing me to these delectable goodies.

I'm sure somewhere out there, someone is going to say, I'd like the recipe for that! Fine, make me do extra work.

UBC Cheese Scones
"Our most popular scone, it has been served daily at UBC as long as the old-timers here can remember. For best results, be sure the cheese is really nippy"

3 C AP flour (750 mL)
1/2 C sugar (125 mL)
5 t baking powder (25 mL)
1/2 t salt (2 mL)
3/4 C butter (175 mL)
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 C milk (250 mL)
1 C grated aged cheddar cheese (250 mL)

1. Preheat oven to 450F (230C).
2. In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients.
3. Cut in butter to resemble coarse oatmeal.
4. Add milk and cheese to slightly beaten egg and stir unto dry ingredients.
5. Place dough on a floured surface and knead lightly (about 12 times). Pat dough into desired thickness and cut with a 2" (5 cm) cookie cutter.
6. Place on a greased cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes or until lightly browned.

This recipe supposedly makes 14 scones. However, I alter it a bit and make about 40 smaller scones. Firstly, I do steps 2 and 3 in the food processor. I also don't knead the dough, opting instead for a drop scone, using a tablespoon. We prefer the rustic free-form shape of drop scones. If you make tablespoonful drop scones, you should only bake the scones about 10 minutes.

Dh brought these to a morning coffee chat session at his department one time and they were gobbled up in a hurry.

* * * * * * *

I discovered a couple of weeks ago that I had forgotten my writing class (Sci-Fi at Gotham Writer's Workshop) lasts for 10 weeks instead of 6. It begins on Wednesday, so I guess I will be hiding out for longer than I thought.

Hope you are all keeping warm and safe - well, those of you in colder climes anyway. See you in the spring!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

The Grandmaster LEGO Chronicler: Set Review: 7135 Takanuva ("Stars")

2010-12-26T19:22:00.000-05:00

Nope, I don't have anything interesting to say, but ds#1 has another nice review up on his Bionicles blog, and I thought I'd mention it in case any readers of this blog also have LEGO/Bionicles-obsessed children:
The Grandmaster LEGO Chronicler: Set Review: 7135 Takanuva ("Stars")

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

C is for Cookie; that's good enough for me!

2010-12-22T11:14:00.000-05:00

The boys needed cookies for an exchange at their teen holiday party, so I baked oatmeal chocolate chippers (bottom of photo) and, one of my favorites, Chocolate Almond Bites (top):

I know you are lusting after those cookies, even with my lousy photo, so here's the recipe:

Chocolate-Almond Bites

2 C all-purpose flour
1/2 C unsweetened cocoa
2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature (2 sticks = 1 C = 1/2 lb)
1/2 C granulated sugar
1 t vanilla extract
1/4 t salt
1 C toasted almonds, finely chopped

1) Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a baking sheet. On to a sheet of wax paper, sift flour with cocoa. In a large bowl, with electric mixer on high beat butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt until pale and creamy. Beat in flour mixture, then almonds.

2) Shape heaping teaspoonfuls of dough into balls and arrange on baking sheet. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, or until firm. Cool briefly on the sheet before transferring to a rack. Store in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

One thing I like about this recipe is that it's not very sweet; I don't have to half the sugar like I normally do for recipes. I think this freezes reasonably well in case you want to make it a couple of weeks before you need them.

Good as that cookie is, some of you are actually waiting for the following: stollen!

I'm following in my friends' footsteps and making stollen every year now. If you missed it previously, here's my tutorial from last year.

Hope you'll try making the cookie or stollen. :)

I am going to be taking a blogging break for a bit. I've signed up for a writing class again this January/February, and that will eat up any spare minutes I have left in the day. See you back here sometime mid to late February...unless I have some fabulous news I want to share. LOL!

Wishing all my dear blogging friends a wonderful holiday season with your loved ones!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

She was a good dog

2010-12-12T16:06:00.001-05:00

The death of a pet is always hard, but it's even harder when it's an unexpected death. Our dog died suddenly yesterday morning, apparently due to massive internal bleeding. The vet thought it might have been a ruptured spleen, but would need an autopsy to find out. Since our dog hadn't birthed any puppies, we didn't need to know to protect any future generation, so we declined the autopsy so that we could have her intact to bury at home.

We are still reeling with shock, which amplifies the sadness.

Despite my occasional grumbles about her, our dog was exceptionally smart. English shepherds are bred for intelligence and bidability rather than for some superficial exterior trait, and she lived up mostly to their reputation. She was a great frisbee dog (I regret never having taped a footage of her catching frisbees) and could tackle an opossum fearlessly. She could also chase down rabbits and eat one in 3 bites. She was both a good guard dog and companion.

Heckuva way to end a year.

The dog at 8 weeks old when we first brought her home.

We'll miss you, Gali.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Chickens go in; apple pies come out

2010-12-06T14:13:00.000-05:00

Those of you who have memorized Chicken Run by now will be cracking up over the title; the rest of you will have to go rent Chicken Run to watch! =)

No apple pies, alas, due to not having apples. But I was in the mood for pies. I wanted to make a pecan pie because we had a really poor one on Thanksgiving, and we had to get the memory of that one out of our palates' minds. So, I baked my usual "Honey Pecan Pie". Honey is a lovely sweetener whereas corn syrup just imparts too cloying a sweetness.

It is the easiest recipe too! I anticipate some of you will ask for it, so here it is:

Honey Pecan Pie

1 C honey
1/2 C (1 stick) melted butter
3 large eggs, lightly beaten

1/8 t salt
1 t vanilla extract
1.5 C chopped pecans
1 9" unbaked pie crust

Mix first 5 ingredients together, stir in pecans, and pour into pie crust. Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

Easy, no?

I also made a sweet potato pie because we have a bunch of sweet potatoes in storage.

The pecan pie was delicious, as always. Will eat the sweet potato pie today! Mmmmm!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Craving carbs

2010-12-02T21:17:00.000-05:00

Tis the season, and weather, to crank the oven up to 450 degrees F and bake some bread!

Mmmm...chewy, sour-doughy, and it tastes really yummy with the Vegemite we got at Jungle Jim's. :)

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Consolidating yet again

2010-11-30T21:14:00.001-05:00

I've already consolidated my TwoTadpoles.wordpress blog here, and now I'm adding the Project 365 one too. Simplify, simplify...that's going to be my motto from now on. :)

So here's my photo of the day:

We put up our holiday decorations this weekend. This is our tree in its new LED glory!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

What I'm thankful for

2010-11-26T23:29:00.000-05:00

My mother's death taught me something: people can be separated into three groups when a death occurs.

The first group are those who, upon learning of your loved one's death, will immediately send their condolences, either via online methods or a snailmail card, and some even send thoughtful gifts (like the one in the photo above).

Those in the second group will say, "ok, but what about my needs; you haven't answered my question yet." These are people who must believe the world revolves around them.

The third group of people choose to ignore it, refusing to acknowledge your loss in any way. I'm not sure what to make of these folks.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for all my friends (online and IRL) who fall in the first group. Thank you for your good wishes and love; I am grateful to have all of you in my life!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Recent ceramics fun

2010-11-13T05:59:00.000-05:00

Tadpole2's Funky Vase:

Tadpole1's Sweetgum plate:

Me, I'm on a jewelry kick - 2 plant-imprint pendants:

Farewell to Mom

2010-11-10T20:21:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in my last post, we were out in Vancouver to visit my mom in September. We found out from her hematologist during that visit that her myelodysplastic syndrome had morphed into full-blown leukemia and he warned us that she could go anytime. Since returning home, my mom took a turn for the worse, and passed away on Oct. 23rd.

We weren't able to make it out to see her again, but were glad that we spent quality time with her in September. We were also glad that she died as peacefully as one could hope given her condition.

My sister wrote a beautiful tribute to her on her blog, but I'm afraid I don't have the words in me right now. It's been an exhausting 2 weeks in Vancouver for mom's funeral service and burial, and to take care of various tasks that are necessary after someone's death. I'm eternally grateful to my sister for being there to help dad through this time; I could never have taken care of everything (or anything) without her.

There are a million things to catch up on at home too. We've been away almost the entire autumn so far, and it's amazing how far one can fall behind. Once I'm caught up, I'll post more vacation photos.

Hoping all of my blogging friends are keeping well!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

What goes U.P....must be Michigan!

2010-10-23T15:56:00.002-04:00

**Correction (a.k.a. Dummy alert): in my rush to be clever with the subject line, I forgot to take into account that the photos below are from the Lower Peninsula. Dh read this post and said, uh, we weren't at the U.P. yet on the first 2 days. Duh.

Dh has always wanted to visit the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and our cross-country to Vancouver trip was the perfect opportunity to see the U.P. This first photo was taken at Saugatuk Dunes St. Pk.

The next day became cloudier and windier, which are not perfect conditions to visit Sleeping Bear Dunes, but there we were anyway. SB Dunes was nice, but not the amazing place that dh had expected it to be. It was very poorly labeled for a National Park. Still, we enjoyed ourselves despite gale force winds putting sand into every opening in our clothing. I found sand in my jacket pockets several weeks after this visit!

Cloudy skies make for great mood photos though, even those taken with just our iPhones.

Can you see the "sleeping bears"?

Yeah, it was as steep as it looks.

I figured that showing photos a little bit at a time might be easier both for me to upload and for you to plow through. So, there is it: the first 2 days of our trip. :)

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Didja miss me?

2010-10-18T20:45:00.000-04:00

Not only was I hiding because I had projects to work on, but we were also on a 5-week cross-continent trip, partly for a homeschooling vacation, and partly to visit my ailing mom.

We got back a few days ago and are still settling in. Can you guess one of the places we went to from the photo above? More pictures to come!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

"I love deadlines..."

2010-09-01T18:18:00.002-04:00

...goes the Douglas Adams quote. "I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." Joking aside, I do work well with deadlines; self-imposed ones work all right, but external ones kick my butt in gear.

I have several major projects that I really need to work on right now, some of you will know what they are. :) I'm very excited about all of them, but it does mean that I need to not spend as much time on the computer. I need to reduce my Facebook habit to visiting, say, just once a week, my blog posting to maybe once a month, and my blog reading to approximately the same frequency. I'll really miss reading your blogs; I'm so inspired by all my creative blogging friends, but I need my 9 hours of sleep a day and I need to cut back somewhere.

Before I take a break to tackle my projects, I'll leave you with some home and garden photos. We bought a 27 gallon pot from Lehman's last year because we were tired of using up all four burners to cook tomato sauce every time we canned. See a normal large sized pot next to it for comparison:

For the cherry and grape tomatoes we harvest, we like to dry them in the dehydrator. We did 4 or 5 (lost count) dehydrator-full of them. I think we'll have enough sundried tomatoes to last us 5 years.
Our basil harvest this year has been less than spectacular. We had a decent first harvest (made about 8 pints of pesto), but this second harvest was pathetic. It's been a dry, dry summer.

Our yellow raspberries have also not fared well in the dryness. Still, we got a tasty few, some of which are here on a rice pudding I made:

The first squash plants were decimated by vine borers, but the second growing has been spectacular!

Dh weeded and mulched the blueberries and it now looks pretty good.

Glutted with cukes, as usual. So, we made a ton of pickles. Used the mandolin to slice them up. That thing scares me. Dh's cousin had to go to ER after slicing herself on it.

But don't these look yummy? ;)

So, see you in a bit my friends...I'll be baaaaack before you know it!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Dr. Perricone Advanced Face Firming Activation update

2010-08-27T16:59:00.001-04:00

I've been using the Dr. Perricone's Advanced Face Firming Activation cream I won from the lovely Joanna of Product Body (her blogs are The Soap Bar and Product Body Blog) for about a month now, so I thought it was time I wrote a review update to my previous post.

Per the directions, I applied the cream after I wash my face in the morning. I don't always remember to apply it in small circles like I was supposed to because this old dog is more used to applying cream in broad strokes. If I'd remembered every single time to apply in small circles, perhaps my face may have shown more improvement? I can't say that for sure, but I'll be continuing to use this product and will try harder to remember the circular stroke technique.

One of the first things I noticed about the cream is that it is not greasy, which is an important attribute for a cream that I apply during the day because who wants a shiny face that looks like one's sweated profusely? I don't.

It's also a light cream, which is another important characteristic because after applying cream, I put on a tinted sunscreen (Jane Iredale's, in fact...I love it), plus a face powder with SPF. If the initial cream is heavy, it'd feel like I'm wearing a mask, and it'd drive me nuts. More nuts than I already am.

Another thing I noticed right away is that the cream smells faintly like papayas; it's a delightful aroma.

I'm lucky that, for my age, 46, I have few fine lines and not very large pores on my face, two of the things that this cream is supposed to help with. But, it seems to me that after a month's usage, my pores appear to be even smaller than they were before. I still have large crow's feet whenever I smile, but I would say that I also have somewhat fewer fine lines under my eyes too (that's the area where my concealer tends to crack and makes my face look like the Sahara).

You really only need a tiny amount of this cream each day, so a 2 fl oz bottle like this one will last you a long, long time.

My only quibble is that the pump doesn't always behave and can shoot out a bit more than I need. However, I've found that to be the case for all pumps. My kingdom for a sensitive and precise pump mechanism!

I'd like to thank Joanna and Dr. Perricone again for the opportunity to test-drive this product. It certainly has my recommendations!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Favorite Family Time Activities

2010-08-24T18:33:00.000-04:00

We're a homeschooling family; we spend many, many quality hours together each day, every week, throughout the year. Some things we all enjoy doing together more than others, of course. Here's a list of five of our favorite family time together activities that you might find fun too!

1) Making paper - dh has an aunt who love our handmade paper, so she's always requesting we do this. Paper making is a simple enough task that even the youngest kids can help out, for example by shredding paper. I have YouTube videos on how we did this: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

2) Making soap - melt and pour soaps are super duper easy! You can get high quality melt-and-pour soap bases and molds from Bramble Berry, or at your local craft store (e.g. Michael's, Hobby Lobby). Bramble Berry also has some excellent videos on how to make melt-and-pour soaps on YouTube.

3) Gardening - my kids have learned so much about growing, harvesting, and the different types of weeds and pests (plus organic pest control) by gardening with me and dh. Plus, they know now how hard it is to get food to the table, and will never be wasteful.

4) Playing board games - an oldie, but a goodie. We play all sorts of board games, from Rivers, Roads, and Rails, to Scrabble, to Pictionary. We don't play competitively - that is, we rarely keep score - but we play in such a way that the kids want to learn and excel.

5) Hiking - not only is it fun to learn tree identification and how to not get lost in the woods, but it's also great exercise. Plus, when we're not scaling mountainous trails that leave us out of breath, we are constantly talking, joking, and laughing together.

So that's it! Our 5 favorite family together time activities - hope you'll be trying some of them.

Disclaimer: I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and LEGO blogging program, making me eligible to get a prize pack. For more information on how you can participate, click here.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Vancouver - a photo-heavy post

2010-08-03T14:30:00.002-04:00

Yeah, yeah...it took me forever to finally post this. Life gets in the way of a lot of things, but it's all good.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I must have a tome of War and Peace proportions here. Hope your connection is fast because there are a lot of photos to load!

In June, we took a trip to visit my folks and sister in Vancouver, per usual. My mom had been ill for a while and this was a trip mainly to see her. As it turns out, she's has recovered from her near-death experience pretty well and was perky, quirky, and, best of all, willing to cook.

So I begin my Vancouver post with, what else?, food. When we arrived, Mom was at dialysis, but she had made one of my favorites: salty pork and thousand year old egg congee. See the gelatin-y brown mess that is stinky egg manna?Mom also picked up a couple of starfruit, which no longer has a *wow* factor due to being over-circulated in North America. Still tasty though.
One of the best things about Vancouver is the wacky Asian foods there. We try to hit T&T, an Asian grocery store, at least once while we're in Van. Yum...cow stomach, anyone?
A grocery store with tankfuls of live fish...now, why doesn't our local Kroger carry these things?

My sister (not me for a change) craved this, so we bought a big, honking jar of it and pretty much polished it off in less than 2 weeks.
After eating, and eating, and eating, and...you know...we took some walks and hikes. This is Minnekata Provincial Park:
And look! They have bears at the park. We always hike loudly in B.C.
No visit to Vancouver would be complete without one slug photo.
This is my old elementary school (ecole, en francais) that I'm still not fond of after all these years. I did grades 6 and 7 there. My poor sister was warped for grades 2 to 7. They were doing renovations to make it more earthquake-proof.
Walked by a comic book store downtown, and thought of all my geeky FB friends.
The Vancouver Art Gallery...I'd not been in it since a pre-dh date.
We finally broke down and got a whole durian.

You know, it really isn't bad tasting, but you have to plug up your nose to eat it. It's like a sweeter, and stinkier, version of pawpaw.
And it has giant pits.
This is the building where they had the speed skating event of the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Right next to it is a new development going in. It will be modern and amazing and many of the nicer apartment/condos were going for a cool $1M and up.There were a lot of funky sculptures around town by Chinese artists. This is the tai-chi cut-out sculpture.
But back to the important things, like chocolate. Stopped by a really cool store called Chocolate Arts where they have a giant chocolate dinosaur in the window.
Bought a box of very pricey, but very tasty chocolates from them. According to my sister, they use Valrhona chocolates. Excellent!
Because we watched the recent winter Olympics with the boys, we thought a trip to Whistler with them might be a fun thing to do to see where they did the skiing and bob-sledding events. Click on the photo below to see the sign in English and a Native American language called "Squamish".
Stopped at Porteau Cove Provincial Park; the scenery is fantastic:

A view of the Stawamus Chief as we head toward Squamish:
At Shannon Falls Provincial park:
Another view of the Chief from within the Park:

Finally at Whistler:

What's a girl to do when she can't get her hands on an elephant ear? Buy a beaver tail! (That's dh's hand for size comparison.)
Black Tusk on the way back to Vancouver from Whistler:

Then, just a whole series of pretty snow-covered mountain photos...partly for Tom in response to his Norway photos. :)

Oh, and a corresponding sign, on the way back to Vancouver (click to enlarge)...
We always head to Spanish Banks, close to my alma mater, UBC.

My kids love jellyfish, so Mom tries to order it for them when we go out to eat.
Gratuitous Stanley Park shot...
Had dinner at The Teahouse at Stanley Park. It was The Teahouse for years and years, briefly changed ownership and name to Sequoia Grill, but now it's back to The Teahouse. Never let it be said that people aren't sticklers for tradition.
This was my truly incredible meal of sablefish at The Teahouse.
Ds#1 took a pic of his equally amazing meal there too. It was a smoked salmon flatbread.
Evert visit to Vancouver we take a hike at Lynn Headwaters. This is a steep area that one has to rappel down:
Lots of tall conifers...
There's an open area where we usually head back:
Some lichen covered rocks...
Funky mushrooms:
The guys usually take a bike ride from Steveston. They rode all the way to the skating oval in Richmond.
An cormorant sunning itself by the waterfront:
Ds#2 imitating bizarre statues at Coal Harbour:
Lunch at one of our favorite sushi places, Tsunami Sushi. The boys (all of us, really) like the floating boats that the selections come on.
My sister eating mini cupcakes by the waterfront:
More waterfront photos:

This was the Olympic "bonfire"...

A green roof:

Saw the biggest-*ssed cruise ship at the harbor; it was like 4 city blocks long!

Since I started this post with food, it's only fitting that I should end it with food. My mom likes to get these pastries - they're filled with bbq pork and taste so good fresh out of the (toaster) oven:
I hope this was a lot less painful to look at than it was to put together. ;)

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

The best things in life...sometimes do come free!

2010-07-19T21:35:00.006-04:00

If you're thinking it's taking me forever and a day to get the post about our vacation done, you're absolutely right. Maybe I'll get it done before my next vacation...

In the meantime, I want to say a very belated THANK YOU (and it does warrant all caps) to the wonderful, talented, beautiful, and clever (have I got in enough flattering adjectives yet?) Joanna (The Soap Bar blog, and Product Body Blog).

Jo had a giveaway post for to-die-for bottle of Dr. Perricone Advanced Face Firming Activator back in May. And guess who won?? Yes, you may all envy me now!I've not used it yet because it's only been 3 weeks (only, hah!) since we returned home...and...uh...geez, I don't know what my excuse is. But I will start using it tonight and I will let you know if I start to look like I'm reverse-aging. Please, no Dorian Gray or Benjamin Button jokes. LOL!

Thanks, Joanna and Dr. Perricone, for this terrific opportunity to try a product that people rave about!!!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Back home again

2010-07-01T15:58:00.003-04:00

Sorry I've not been visiting your blogs lately, but we've been out of town visiting family in Vancouver. And I had to start by saying sorry because that's just what we Canadians do (as Catherine O'Hara said in the closing ceremonies of the Vancouver Winter Olympics). Just got home last evening and photos are forthcoming. Here's one I took with the iPhone, which would be really funny if I had a zoom lens. The shop on the left has the great name of "Fatty Cow Seafood Hot Pot". Love it.
"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Author, author!

2010-06-14T21:42:00.001-04:00

As some of you know, I write. Not for a living, although I've sold a few things to magazines (Ladybug, Babybug, Outdoor Indiana). Because I write, it stands to reason I enjoy reading too.

For daily doses of whimsical stories, I read The Blonde Duck's blog. Here, I'd like to highlight other writers that I have some connection to, real or tenuous. :)

One of the most delightful authors I've had the pleasure to meet in real life is Helen Frost. I took a workshop from her at an IN SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Publishers) conference and will remember it always for her wisdom, terrific ability at imparting knowledge, and warm personality. She is an amazing poet!Another wonderful Indiana author is Elsa Marston. I've taken a class and a workshop with her, as well as attended a talk given by her. She is a brilliant lady.
This next book is interesting because it's a beautiful collaboration: written by April Pulley Sayre, also a fellow member of the IN SCBWI (whom I've not met yet, but hope to soon), and illustrated by Annie Patterson, an inspirational blog-friend.
Douglas Florian is also a blog friend. His poetry is way cool, and his art is incredible. I highly recommend his science-poetry books for any child on your list!
The incomparable Lisa Yee is now both a blog-friend and a Facebook friend. She keeps her fans in stitches with her hilarious insights and thoughts on every topic under the sun. Someday, I hope to meet her in person. :)
We once attended a talk given by Lawrence Krauss. I am still speechless with awe. I love this book of his:
Remember when I said "tenuous"? Well, this one is it. I follow Phil Plait on Twitter. Lame, yes, but that doesn't mean this book isn't a darned good read. And most of the general population could stand to read it:
What have you been reading? Share some good books with me!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

My blog's on a list!

2010-06-11T12:07:00.003-04:00

And fortunately, it's not the FBI's Most Wanted list. Hah!The folks at Construction Management Degree did a 50 Best Homesteading Blogs post and included this blog! Check it out and find some other good homesteading blogs to read too. :)

Thanks again, Construction Management Degree!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Another peek at the garden

2010-06-01T22:50:00.001-04:00

Dh finished reading the current issue of Mother Earth News yesterday and put it down with a sigh. "Except for that one article on raising a family dairy cow, not much that I don't already know in all the other articles," he said. I smiled proudly at him and said, "you've been gardening seriously for about 18 years now and have read a lot of books and articles in many magazines during that time; no wonder you've learned nearly everything you need to know!"

Me, I have no such problem. With my poor memory and lack of the depth (and breadth) of reading dh does, it's all new and wonderful to me. I may have discovered the secret to a continual child-like delight in the world. ;)

Anyway, on to the good stuff: photos! I was out weeding the other day, and took before and after photos. The onion bed before weeding:The onion bed after weeding:Little green apples in one of our apple trees:
The tomatillo plant that hadn't been put into the ground yet:
Eggplants, waiting to be planted too:
Wild blackberries all over our property:
A view of our garden, facing west:
Face south-west:
Remember this bed from my previous gardening post?Well, here it is, now, all grown up! Choi sum, lettuce mix, and spinach.
Tomato seedlings looking puny in their re-mesh cages, but they will spill over the top in a few months:
The potatoes have really taken off:
Beets. Pretty and edible - tops and bottoms.
Ahhh, broccoli! We froze many pounds last night.
Pepper seedlings (mulched with our leaves) looking puny in their cages, just like the tomatoes! Dh uses normal tomato cages for peppers and made his own giant re-mesh cages for the tomatoes because normal tomato cages have never been able to handle the size and weight of a healthy tomato plant.
Cabbages are beautiful but don't do that well for us in the spring (too hot too fast):
Frisee, cabbage and gai lan:
Garlic galore:
More onions (sweet white, sweet red, and yellow storage):
Walking onions - we never seem to use them, so if any townies are reading this, please feel free to ask us for some:
Blueberries!!!
And last but not least, our friend, C, gave us a couple of chickens...and that brings our current number up to 5. But, since stupid Gaia thinks she's broody, she's not been laying for a while now.

We've not named these ladies yet because if they don't produce, they might just be accompanying some dumplings at some later date:
"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Memorial Day

2010-05-30T14:45:00.007-04:00

In Canada, we have Remembrance Day, which is a tribute to veterans similar to Memorial Day*...except we don't do the whole barbeque-ing thing. It's a much more somber day in Canada. We traditionally have 2 minutes of silence on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. We also buy plastic poppies to wear on our lapels/collars, expressing our support and appreciation of veterans (the proceeds supposedly go toward helping veterans in need).

Where did the poppy symbolism come from? The poem, "In Flanders Fields". I would like to share this with you for the American Memorial Day:
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

For more on In Flanders Fields, go to the Arlington Cemetery website.

*Meg_L mentioned in the comments that Remembrance Day is more like Veterans Day, not Memorial Day.

Trent of The Simple Dollar blog (an excellent blog, by the way) has the following to say about Memorial Day, and it's a very similar sentiment to mine:

Memorial Day is pretty much just confusing to me. It’s theoretically a day to honor fallen soldiers, but most people just go on vacation or play in the yard.

What happened to Decoration Day, which is May 30 of each year? That’s the original date created to honor those soldiers that have served our country in times of war, started after the Civil War. As the Civil War veterans began to pass away, it gradually turned into our modern day Memorial Day, which mixed some notions of American exceptionalism together with a convenient three day weekend at the beach. To me, that really waters down the point.

Charles Ives’ poem Decoration Day captures what I wish this day was – and what it could be. But it’s lost amid the jet skis and the barbecue grills.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams