Pickles!

Today is a busy, busy day and, as usual, I have set completely unrealistic goals for myself.  I don't really have time to write an entire post but I love making lists so here is a list of a few of the things we will be doing (or trying to do) today!

...blanching green beans and chopping cucumbers and onions before breakfast...
...having a tea party using apple prune juice instead of tea...
...broadening my horizons from freezer jam to pickles and maybe even to cooked jam...
...freezing fresh green beans...
...staying too busy to change out of our pajamas...
...being amazed at the amount of kitchen carnage that came from making the pickles and canning them...
...telling Ruthie that the TV is broken so that Busytown and Wonderpets won't be her baby sitters today...
...marveling at the amount of creative play that resulted from the "broken" TV...
...considering blackberry cobbler versus tart versus jam...
...smiling at Ruthie's curls that have come back with a vengeance with the increase in humidity...
...grinning at the fact that Bryan's eyes may actually stay blue...
...cutting out fabric for a new little girl's sundress and another pair of big butt baby pants...
...finding a few moments of quiet to sip on some tea...
...mentally preparing for a long weekend at work..

Groundhogs at the Beach

May was a busy, busy month, as you can tell by the fact that I didn't post one single time.  The garden is going crazy and I will post pictures as soon as I can.  The zucchini and the squash are doing particularly well and we have been enjoying lots of fresh veggies.  Yesterday we got corn from our CSA and I introduced Ruthie to the incredible yumminess of raw sweet corn.  She ate two whole cobs!  I also made some zucchini bread from an allrecipes.com recipe.  It had chocolate chips in it which may sound weird but is actually fantastic.  It also allows me to refer to it as "chocolate chip bread;" thus making it sound infinitely more appetizing to my finicky Roo. 

Our May ended with a weeklong trip to the beach with the entire family and true to the DIY spirit of this blog, we made all our food ourselves.  Yes, for the first time in Schosser family beach going history, we did not go out for dinner.   Of course no beach trip would be complete without shrimp burgers so we did head over to the little walk up place in Salter Path for those a couple of times!  We brought a long all of our CSA veggies & blueberries for the week and made blueberry pancakes, blueberry cobbler, grilled veggies and kale lasagna.  Then Dad got hold of the grill and made all sorts of yummy meats including home made fajitas.  The best meal award, though, had to go to Isabel for an authentic Ecuadorian feast!  We had ceviche that was just incredible and she taught us her father's secret for making the best ceviche on earth.  For the unitiated, Ecuadorian ceviche is not like any other you may be familiar with.  It is not made with raw fish, but with cooked shrimp.  I found a recipe at www.cevicherecipe.org which is pretty good but does not include the Mera family secret!  It is basically boiled shrimp, red onions, tomatoes, cilantro, orange juice and lime juice, an amazing constellation of flavors.  I wish I had a picture to show. 

The best part of the beach though, had to be the time spent together.  I know it sounds trite, but we so rarely get a chance to sit back and just enjoy each other, especially with the extended family with us.  Of course it wasn't all rainbows and puppy dogs.  Bryan still wanted to nurse half the night and there were times I thought I'd have to throw Ruthie to the sharks but overall it was a great time.  I sort of miss being able to take nice romantic walks on the beach with my husband, but I wouldn't trade one single time watching Ruthie's crazy little kick-leg run in and out of the waves or Bryan's excited splashing for a hundred walks on the beach.

Now to get to work cleaning up that garden from a week of neglect.  Happy Saturday, everybody!

Tiller Day, FINALLY!!!

There it is, at long last, the tiller!  Mother Nature has been conspiring against me lately causing the postponement of tiller day until today.  Apparently there was some wedding going on that everyone else was interested in today, but not around here.  At our house today was Tiller Day!  As you can see I rented a good old fashioned front tine tiller.  That's the only kind this city girl knows how to use.  My mom goes on and on about how rear tines are so much better, but frankly, I'm not a fan.  I can't seem to find a way to get those rear tines to stay in one place and dig in, they just skitter across the soil.  With the front tine I can just lay back on the handles like a waterskier and force it to stay put.  The funny part of renting the tiller was everyone else's reaction to my renting it.  My husband asked me if I knew how to work a tiller...hellloooooo, this is not exactly my first dog and pony show.  I used to rent or borrow a tiller about twice a year before I moved here and started using raised beds instead.  Then the guy at the rental place asked if I wanted him to show me how the controls worked.  "Sure" I said, "it's been a while since a used a tiller."  He then proceeds to keep telling me to remind my husband to cut the gas on.  I laughed and said my husband was going to get it out of the car and then hand it over.  He wants no part of the tiller usage.  The man still insisted on reminding me of what to show my husband.  Whatever, Dude.  Just put the tiller in the minivan, jeez.

Then I waited for the kids to fall asleep.  You can see the monitor way in the background in the tiller photo.  Like I was really going to hear that thing over the tiller noise.  Fortunately they slept the whole time.  The whole process took about 45 minutes.  I have to say I'm pretty proud of it.  Now we just need a dog proof fence and we can get started planting.

Not bad for one day's work.  I have so many things that I want to do that I'm having trouble remembering what I swore to myself at the beginning of this...start small.  Baby steps.  I just want to get everything done today.  We've made a lot of progress though.  Now to get to planting.  In the meantime I've got a race to run.  Tomorrow I'm doing 10 miles in the local ultramarathon to raise money for our cancer center.  Hopefully I'll have the energy to think about tomato plants, etc, when I'm done!

Cupcakes, Tillers and Monkey Pants...oh my!

This afternoon I am hanging out in the living room floor with Bryan and Daisy, a cup of hot tea (flavored with my Aunt Brenda's yummy Passionfruit-Guava flavoring) in my hand, looking out the window every 3 seconds to see if Jessica has arrived with my CSA box.  We've made some interesting strides in our handmade endeavors this week.  First of all, Tiller Day has been rescheduled for Wednesday, April 27th.  This is, of course, weather permitting AND provided Bryan and the pager will let me get some sleep Tuesday night.  Bobby has made great strides knocking down the wall in the backyard.  As you can see from the pictures the kids and the dogs are quite enjoying their new, bigger yard.  They are also enjoying a new black lab friend from the yard behind us.  The squirrel population is NOT enjoying the partnership of these three dogs, however.  We've already found 2 dead ones and pried another out of Daisy's mouth...YUCK!  

So my homemade cooking goal this week was to try to make things that I am used to buying.  First let's say that I did draw the line at mayonnaise (the bacterial growth issue freaks me out) and Easter egg dye.  I had beets to use for the pink dye but when it came to yellow I couldn't figure out what in the world I would do with the yellow onions after I had skinned enough of them to get 2 cups of skins.  And blue, well, why would I want to do anything with frozen blueberries besides eat them?  What I did discover is that homemade Caesar dressing is fabulous, even without a coddled (a.k.a. raw) egg and that homemade croutons are totally worth it.  Croutons = bread cut up into squares, sprinkled with olive oil and roasted in the toaster oven for 5 minutes...what could be easier?  So yummy on the lettuce from our garden.  We're also continuing to make bread instead of buy it.  I've always loved to make bread.  I love the way it looks when it is a giant ball of dough rising on top of the stove and I love the smell of it when it is baking.  The bread machine is less delightful, but certainly makes it easy.  Then, yesterday, Ruthie and I made cupcakes for her school.  I started to buy frosting and cake mix but one look at the ingredients made me stop and stick to my homemade goal.  Thanks to The Joy of Cooking, yellow cupcakes with buttercream frosting turned out quite yummy and really, weren't that much more work in the end. 

Sewing has been quite the challenge too.  The monkey pants are from a pattern for "Big Butt Baby Pants" at one of my favorite sewing blogs www.made-by-rae.com.  They turned out cute but there is a definite learning curve there.   Either that or I'm just not that sewing savvy.  First of all, I made a 6-12 month size but my nine month old son is definitely more of a 12-18 monther.  Then I had trouble matching parts up and the edges ended up all wonky.  Fortunately the hems hide a multitude of sins.  Then if you look right at the crotch, the front and back seams are off by about a mile.  I ended up tearing out a lot of seams and redoing them.  Then at one point my sewing machine decided it had had enough and just couldn't go on until I cleaned it.  It was a mess.  Monkey Pants 2, the sequel, is well underway, however, and going much better.  Stay tuned. 

Please ignore Ruthie's just-woke-up-from-nap-pull-up-clad butt in the above photo.  Focus on the cute cloth diaper clad butt just below it! 

Today has been focused on Ruthie's school party.  I had such a blast hiding eggs and sugaring all the kids up with cupcakes!  Our CSA box has finally arrived and we have been blessed with more strawberries.  I think I feel some freezer jam coming on!   I wonder if the hospital would object if I mixed that up in my call room tomorrow :)   Happy Holy Thursday, everybody!

It came! It came!

Our first CSA box arrived on Thursday and we have been cooking like crazy ever since.  For the uninitiated, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and is a wonderful idea for people who want homegrown food but can't grow everything they want in a garden and don't always have the time or the forethought to hit the farmer's market.  Our first box contained collards, curly kale, sweet potatoes, turnips, strawberries asparagus and cabbage.  Our dinner the first night consisted of cheese pie (it's really a white cheddar quiche but we call it cheese pie because that's what Angelina Ballerina eats) sauteed collards, and strawberries with whipped cream.  You can see Ruthie enjoyed hanging out in the box while she licked the whipped cream off the spatula. 

 The fun part has been trying to find ways to use new vegetables.  So far the kale has been featured in vegetarian lasagna and kale and Parmesan risotto.  The asparagus was roasted and topped with kalamata olive vinaigrette and the strawberries have just been eaten up, no chance to make jam or marmalade.  Today I'm trying to work with the rest of the veggies.  We're making crock pot barbecue using pork tenderloin and George's Barbecue Sauce and then we'll have cole slaw and carmelized turnips to go with it.  The other half of the cabbage is going to be used to make Borscht, along with some beats I found at the store.  If any of you haven't tried Borscht, you should.  It is easy as pie and delicious.  Beware, it does make your pee pink.  It is also one of the prettiest foods I've ever eaten.  Just a big bowl of dark pink yumminess.  I'll have to take a picture of it when I'm done.

Well, for some reason the creative juices just aren't flowing and I am starting to feel the pre-call stress of trying to make my house tidy and functional with an abundance of decent food for Bobby and the kids (and ME if I make it back here for any meals tomorrow.)  So I'll leave you with a link to an interesting discussion of CSAs and Farmer's Markets and other summer veggie options.  Happy Monday!

http://www.kitchenstewardship.com/2011/04/18/monday-mission-where-are-your-summer-veggies-coming-from/#more-10702

Book Links

I tend to quote books, quite frequently, actually.  So to avoid any copyright infringement, here are some links to the three I have quoted thus far!


http://www.amazon.com/Little-Amber-Stewart/dp/0192727354/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302814865&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Groundhogs-Garden-Grew-Lynne-Cherry/dp/0439323711/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302815022&sr=1-1

www.amazon.com/But-Not-Hippopotamus-Sandra-Boynton/dp/0671449044/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302814978&sr=1-1

The Hog and the Frog Hurry Out for a Jog...

I won't say which of us is the hog and which is the frog but since Chubs is wearing green and I ate a big honkin' piece of red velvet cake two days ago I'll let you figure it out. 

Sadly, running is about the only productive thing I have done today.  I put in 4 miles pushing Chubs in the BOB which took at least one minute per mile longer than it would have without BOB and left me feeling pretty beat.  At least it was BOB 1 with only one child on board as opposed to BOB 2 which carries both of them and adds at least 3 minutes to each mile. 

Today is one of those days that has taken a very different course from what I was planning when I went to bed last night.  It was supposed to be "Tiller Day," the day I break ground on the our new, nicely marked off, 10X10 foot area of garden.  My husband, however, intervened with a very rational "is it really such a good idea to plant things right before we go on vacation."  Ummm, no...but that kind of rational thinking doesn't usually enter in to my whole shoot-first-as-questions-later approach.  So tiller day has been postponed until we get back and today became more of a Clean the Kitchen, Do Laundry, Get Ready to Be at Work for 24 Hours kind of day.

Yet somehow CKDLGRBW24H Day hasn't happened either.  Bryan's nap was cruelly interrupted by the fact that he spits up every time he poos and the lack of nap/prunes vomited out the nose has left him cranky.  He just wants to be held or nursed.  So we sit here the two of us, tummy to tummy.  He nurses and I drink my lukewarm beverage previously known as "hot tea."   We listen to the sonic booms from the fancy fighter jets practicing for this weekend's air show.  The laundry will still be there this evening.  It will probably still be there Saturday morning when I get home from work, interfering with my dreams of a productive weekend.  But in the grand scheme of things, who cares.  Right now I have this little moment with my baby boy and I'm going to enjoy it! 

Today is the Day to Start Small...

A blog.  I've been thinking about this for a long time.  When I'm at home I tend to have all these random thoughts and musings running through my head and I've noticed that I have a tendency to use Facebook to share them.  I keep thinking that maybe it would be nice to have somewhere else to record all these random musings and to be able to expand upon them a little bit.  I'm not much of a writer, that's my brother's area of expertise, but why not give it a whirl.  So today I am starting small.  My first blog post, and maybe a picture if I'm feeling particularly industrious.

Our family is "starting small" in other ways this year as well.  We're trying a bit of an experiment, a DIY experiment you might say.  Trying to see how many things we can truly do ourselves.  It's a bit of an expansion on a few of the things we already do:  gardening, cooking, cloth diapering, etc....  I guess a blog is a good place to chronicle our efforts.

The first and most important change is that our garden is growing.  We've marked off a space in the backyard for a much larger garden than we've ever had before.  We've also knocked down the wall in the backyard giving us more room and a place where we can finally have a compost heap.  We've subscribed to a CSA (community supported agriculture)  for anything we can't grow.  Hopefully we'll have more veggies than we know what to do with.  This will lead me to my next project:  CANNING!  Roo is my big garden helper and she loves it.  Her new favorite book is called "How Groundhog's Garden Grew" and it is the inspiration for the blog title.  Little Groundhog learns all about how to garden and cook and share the food with others.  Hopefully we will learn to be as productive as Little Groundhog. 

But today, as a character in another of Roo's books states, we are "starting small."  Homemade Ranch dressing, bread with dinner, washing diapers and maybe a few minutes to work on some monkey-print baby pants for Bryan, not a bad beginning.