Pears and Porcelain

I try to do a morning "tea time" where we sit and have a snack mid-morning.  The kids see this as a break in school, but actually it's a way to do a read-aloud book while everyone is sitting (to eat) and I get little interruptions (because there is food in their mouth).  This is how reading aloud from chapter books works in this house.  It's the only way I've been able to make it work.

We are currently reading our way through Strawberry Girl which is not actually just about a girl, but 2 feuding families, the Boyers and Slaters, living down South I'd say about a hundred years ago, and the children are stuck in the middle of the fight.

One family, the Boyers, hardworking and eager to make all things beautiful, set out to improve their land, and do the unthinkable: farm strawberries.  They are set back several times by their neighbors, the Slaters, who let their cows and pigs roam freely over the untouched land.

The Slaters don't believe in feeding animals, when they can find food themselves in the wilderness.  Their children are unkempt and rude.  The father gambles and drinks away any pocket of money they encounter, leaving the mother to try to fend for herself and the children, which has hardened her greatly.

When the Boyers decide to fence in their strawberry fields, to keep their neighbor's animals out, the feud escalates.  As the Slater family begins to fall apart from within, the Boyer family ends up being there to catch them, with open arms of love and grace.

Yes, it's a heavy children's book, but it teaches compassion in a way that I think kids can understand.  Silje has read it many times, but this is the first time for the other kids.

I said I "try" to do tea-time every day.  It ends up being about 3 times a week---4 times on a excellent week.  Other days I just set a bowl of peanuts on the table and call it good. (Before anyone dares to think that we have such an idyllic homeschool day every day.)

We were having a bit of a rough morning this particular morning, though, so I went all out and brought out the honey-vanilla pears I canned last summer.  I only got 6 jars done, so these are especially precious.  It was actually the first jar we opened of them.  They were good, but the honey was very strong.  The kids had no complaints about that.

We were out of hot chocolate mix, so I made some from ingredients we had around the house.  This, of course, made tea time late, and the last 20 minutes or so were of me saying 73 times "It's not tea time yet!!!  I know what the clock says but it's tea time when I SAY it's tea time!"  Followed by the digging deep for patience: "I'm making something really special!  Hang in there and it will be worth it!"

Ahem.  I was trying.  It all ended well, and with grace.  The kids were delighted at the spread in the end, and sat quietly as I read about the Boyer's trip to town.

My mom gave me this teapot for Christmas.   I made the mugs for the kids around the same time.  I got the children's sized mugs here, and used porcelain pens to draw, so it ended up being a pretty cheap project.  They each got their own little tree (I'm no artist with a pen) as well as their name, and a little heart at the bottom of the mug.  It was really easy, except for the whole, deciding-what-to-draw-without-making-it-look-stupid part.  It required hours of Pinterest study.

To really change the mood from the dreary attitude infecting our house, I brought out my grandma's little china fruit bowls, which they really liked.  There's something about china dishes that makes the kids sit a little taller and feel special.  (Also, I've learned that if I light candles at supper, everyone hushes down and instantly become thoughtful in their speech.  I don't do it often.  It's one of those in-case-of-emergency things in my mom tool box.)

What are some things you do to switch around bad attitudes hanging over the house?

New Chapter

I'm slowly catching up from the canning season.  (Pictures above are from last week.)  My freezer meal stores are empty as I've used them up on canning days, and so I'm trying to stock up on them again before harvest season on the farm begins.  I have piles of laundry in every bedroom that have been needing to be put away and I'm starting to notice all of the dust and webs that have been acquired these past weeks.  I can only catch up so much each day, but I'm getting there.  Progress is being made.

Still, the majority of the tomato canning is still yet to be done.  I plan to make them all into sauce.  For now, I'm putting them all whole in the freezer like a bunch of hard cue balls, and will thaw them out some weekend soon for a big last hurrah of canning.  I'll have to do that before we get our pig.  (A friend is butchering his pigs and offered us one…so time to find more space.)  Oh, and the apples are ready.  We'll see how far I get there.  I want to have more applesauce made every year, but I'm so burned out by the time they are ripe, that I never get as far as I want to, and most end up being given away or go bad.  I hope to get at least a little done.  Applesauce is actually very easy, and it's my kids' favorite.

Our first day of school went so well yesterday.  2 things that lead to it's success were: I was uncharacteristically organized.  That helped a lot.  Also, David has been able to do his reading independently.  I wasn't sure if he would be able to, but he just jumped right in.  He did so much reading this summer on his own for fun.  Last year we spent so much time working through his eye tracking issues that made reading slow and painful.  Now that we have spent time with some therapies training his eyes to keep their spot, which was the problem all along, he's reading like crazy.  I'm just so happy about it.

I don't have to sit by his side and pull him through just one more page.  He read a chapter from a 3rd grade reader with no pictures, all by himself, and thought it was so funny he raced over to me to tell me every detail.  (The book was Frindle, by the way.)  I was just so excited about that.

Elias is so different from his big brother and sister.  He has his own styles and quirks, but I can tell already that he's going to be a great student, and has a huge appetite for learning new things.  He's so eager, it's so fun.  He's such a deep thinker, that he thinks carefully about everything I say, and often won't respond for a long time.  When he does, it's so well thought out, it's worth waiting for.

Apple Cider Vinegar - How to Use It, How to Make It

It's nearly apple season!  The kids have started to grab some apples off the apple tree during their play time, and I know that applesauce making will soon be commonplace in the kitchen.  I experimented with making apple cider vinegar with apples from the store earlier this summer, and now I'm all set to make some big batches for the first time now that apples are ripening in our yard.

We go through bunches of apple cider vinegar around here.  Here are some basic uses:

-Add to chicken water.  This works to drive the chickens to drink more, which is good for general health, and also serves to keep the chickens intestinally healthier.  Just a little capful or so per gallon or two is enough.

-Homemade salad dressing Yum! (with other ingredients in a recipe involving an oil of course.  Don't just pour apple cider vinegar plain on a salad.  Yuck.)

-Pour into a small bowl and leave on counter when processing lots of garden produce to prevent the fruit flies from overtaking the kitchen.

-keep full strength in a small spray bottle in the first aid box.  (I use a travel size spray bottle)

• We use this as a natural spray on sore throats for humans.  It tastes nasty, but nothing scares a scratchy throat away faster.  I prefer a cup of tea, but if that doesn't work, time to pull this out.  I learned this from a homeschooling podcast, as the mom talked about dealing with reading all day long to your kids, and how it's hard on your throat.  It really works.
• We also spray this on the dogs every few days in the summer if the flies won't leave them alone.  Both dogs have gotten sores from flies in past years, and we've found this to be a great addition to their flea/tick medication.  We have on occasion use it on the cats too, but they will really hate you for it, and they normally keep themselves free of flies much better than dogs anyway.
• We use it for bullying with the chickens.  Occasionally there's a chicken who is constantly bullied by the other chickens to the point that all of her neck feathers are missing.  Sometimes it gets to the point of getting bloody or scabby.  Once chickens see blood, it only gets 500x worse.  Then they really go in for the kill.  So in the early stages, or the recovery stages, we spray full strength apple cider vinegar on the neck.  Not only does it cleanse the area, it gives the bully who dares peck on the wound a huge mouthful of yuck.  Chicken bullying slows down in a hurry after that.

So want to know how to make it in a Weck jar?  Just like other fermentation, you're going to need the jar, a cover that fits, 2 metal brackets, and a glass cover that is for the Weck jar a size smaller to hold the apples under water inside the jar.  I've found that this process works really well in a liter size tulip jar, with an extra lid from, say the 1/5 liter mold jar.  

Step 1: Give all of your kids an apple for snack.  If you have 5 kids like me, this works great.  This might have been about 2 days worth of snack scraps.  Honestly, I don't wash these scraps or anything.  They go straight from the kids' sticky fingers to the jar.  Or you can make an apple pie, apple sauce, etc.  Basically you're looking for any apple scraps: cores, skins, etc.  If you want organic apple cider vinegar you need to use organic apples.

Step 2: Put all apple scraps gathered into a liter size Weck tulip jar, with an inch or two of headspace.  

Step 3: Cover completely with water, and lay the extra small Weck jar lid on top of the apple scraps to keep them under water.  

Step 4: Put regular glass lid on top, DO NOT PUT ON THE RUBBER RING, but DO put on the metal brackets so that glass lid doesn't move off if the bottle gets bumped by accident.  You want it covered, but not air/water tight.  So leave the seal off.  The fermentation process releases a gas.  So you want air to escape, but no air to get to the scraps.  The weight inside will push the apples underwater so they cannot get the air, and it will allow the excess gas to escape without any pressure building up.

Step 5:  Store jar in a cool, dark place (warmer than a fridge, but out of the sunlight.  Walk around your house and look for a dark safe place not close to a heat source.  Ours sat on the cleaning product shelf in a back hall closet).  Leave for 3-7 days.  I've left mine on a shelf for 2 weeks by accident and nothing bad happened.

Step 6: The jar will now look cloudy, and there should be a foam around the top.  If there is mold, scrape it off, and discard.  That means that it was stored in too warm of a place, but all is not lost.  In this picture is was just broken up apple seeds that didn't strain out, and I just picked out with a spoon.  Just discard the mold, if you get any.  The white foam is good.  That's the "mother."  Think proofing yeast for bread…it means you have good yeast going on there.  It's the fermentation process eating up all the sugars in the apples.  At this point you want to strain out and discard all of the apple pieces, and keep the precious liquid and foam that is nearly your apple cider vinegar.

Step 7: Find a smaller Weck jar, and wash in very hot, soapy water.  I used 2 mold jars that were 1/5 liter size, because that was the closest to grab when I was doing this.

Step 8: Pour that precious liquid, with foam and all, into the clean jars, cover with lid and metal brackets, but again NO rubber seal.  Do not heat up the liquid.  You are not canning them, and you don't want to sterilize this liquid, or you will kill off all the yeast.

Step 9: Put the jars holding just liquid back to that cool, dark spot it you were storing it before.  

Step 10: Leave on the shelf for about 6 weeks.  It will darken, sometimes develop more foam, settle with "stuff" floating around the bottom, and eventually get that strong vinegar smell.  At that point, you can add the rubber seal to your Weck jar, (optional, it doesn't matter) and store wherever you store and use your apple cider vinegar.  The yeast has eaten up all the sugar, and is now shelf stable.

So yes, it does take time, but not your time.  The only time "work time" required for this project is washing jars, and pouring water over apples.  Most of the "work" of making apple cider vinegar happens all by itself on a lonely shelf.  It's just another way to get something free out of food scraps.  :)

Fermenting Foods

I was first introduced to fermented foods a couple of years ago by my midwife as we were discussing my history of testing positive for GBS (Group B Strep) during my previous pregnancies and various methods to treat GBS naturally.  I had literally never heard of them, until she started naming a few: sauerkraut, yogurt…etc.  I guess there's a lot more: water kefir, dairy kefir, kombacha, and of course you can ferment several vegetables.  Dairy kefir has been my kids favorite, and it has made a huge impact on their health.  Solveig calls it "pink milk" because I get her strawberry kefir.  She also likes "purple milk" which is flavored with blueberries.  Both are found in the yogurt section of most grocery stores.  I am more anxious about getting probiotics into this particular child of mine because she got an awful rash all over her body the first time she was on amoxicillin, and I would really like to avoid giving her another antibiotic ever again if possible.

Enter probiotics.  I haven't tried them all yet (and am a bit scared to) but everything I have tried has been good, so I really shouldn't fear.

Since I've learned nutritionally about good gut health, and how it effects depression, behavioral problems, in addition to stomach aches, acid reflux, etc.  Some studies are now linking it to seasonal allergies as well as a long list of health issues.  I'm learning that your gut acts as a filter to any toxins on your body.  If that's weak, multiple organs can be effected.  I heard that we should be aiming for 85% good bacteria in our stomach and 15% bad bacteria.  For most Americans, it's flip flopped.  Every time you take an antibiotic, all of the good and bad bacteria is wiped out, and you need to rebuild the system afterwards, so to speak.  Otherwise, the bad will soon start gaining on the good and that's when sickness relapse happens.

While I know that probiotics come in pill form, I'm a big believer that food always trumps supplements when it comes to nutrition.  To confirm this theory of mine, one lab test showed that 2 oz of homemade sauerkraut has more probiotics than 100 probiotic capsules.  Pills are fine, but they don't have the same power.  Now, this one is super, super easy to make.  You don't need to eat a lot for it to make a big impact on your health.  However, common store bought sauerkraut is sometimes pasteurized, or heated first to kill off ALL bacteria (good and bad) before it hits the shelves, which kills the majority of the nutritional impact.  So homemade is really the way to go in this area.  Don't worry, it's ridiculously simple and easy and most of all: cheap.

So I've been on the hunt to give my family a diverse offering of fermented foods so we feed that gut lots of different kinds of healthy bacteria to keep that immune system and filter-for-the-body going strong.  I've been looking at fermentation crocks, but they're expensive.  They can get into the hundreds of dollars!  What a crock.  (Hardy har har.)  When researching what a fermentation crock is, you'll find a whole string of websites showing you how to make one, or make do with what you had like they used to do in "the olden days."

Here's what you actually need to ferment vegetables:
1) a container to hold the vegetables and water
2) a food safe weight of some sort to hold the vegetables under that water.
3) some sort of cover that won't allow things to get into your water, but will allow air to be released

That's it.  Pretty complicated, huh?

As food ferments, it releases gas, so you don't want the container to be air-tight or it could "explode" or break on you.  (This often happens in wine making.)  Also, the vegetables will rot if they can be exposed to the open air, so it is important that they don't have access to air.  The easiest way to do that is to push the vegetables underwater.

People get really creative with this, and use plastic Ziploc bags filled with water as weights, and the most common thing is to buy some sort of valve to convert a mason jar into a fermentation device.  That way air can escape but not get in, so you don't have to worry about the vegetables staying under water.

I still hold to the truth that simple is often best, and as I was shopping in a kitchen store, and came across Weck jars for the first time, I lightbulb went off in my head that even though these are canning jars, they have every element needed for a great fermentation crock.

a container to hold the vegetables and water
(liter sized Weck tulip jar)

a food safe weight of some sort to hold the vegetables under that water
(a glass Weck lid, made for the smaller Weck jars)

some sort of cover  that won't allow things to fall into your water, but will allow air to be released
(the tulip jar lid and clamps WITHOUT the rubber sealing ring)

Voila.  A fermentation crock.  Under $10 if you use the Weck jars.

Here are 2 different things I've fermented in here with lots of success, though I'm also working on a batch of apple cider vinegar too, and when that process is complete in a few weeks, I'll show you how to do that too.

Sauerkraut:
I'm not a huge fan of sauerkraut, actually, but I'll try anything homemade.  I made this out of purple cabbage just to make it more inciting for the kids (okay, and more inciting for me).

Step 1: rinse and chop up cabbage

Step 2: fill jar 3/4 full of cabbage, and add water with 3 Tablespoons salt per head of cabbage.  (I used less salt since I could only fit half the cabbage in my jar.  I chose granulated sea salt.)  You can add onion and/or apple, or whatever else you want to season with. Some people add caraway seeds for flavor.  Just don't fill more than 3/4 full.

Step 3: carefully place the clean, smaller lid made for the smaller Weck jars on top of the food, inside of the jar, and make sure it's pushing everything under the water.  I pushed down hard to make all the air bubbles in-between the cabbage rise to the top.

Step 4: put on bigger glass lid, and metal clamps (do not use rubber ring that comes with the jar, as it will make it air tight and you don't want that.)  The metal clamps aren't fully necessary as you could just place the glass lid on top and let it be, but I didn't want any of my kiddos tempted to take off the glass top and just play around in there.  The metal clamps are simply extra security.

(optional step here: place jar in a small bowl, because everything is going to expand over the next few days and water might overflow onto your counter.  I may or may not have learned this from experience.)

Step 5: Place on counter in kitchen (room temperature) for 3-5 days, until fizzy bubbles form on top.

Step 6: Move to the fridge and eat as often as you like.  This will last for quite awhile.  (I took it from the fridge for this picture.  That's why there's condensation on the jar.)  Our jar is already half gone after a week.  It's good stuff.

You can also do this with other vegetables like carrots.  This makes for a very tangy snack, and the kids of mine who like carrots and/or pickles like this.  I don't have pictures for this process.  Sorry.

This stuff is gold in my house.  It's truly a must during the flu season especially.  This has been really good on burgers, meat sandwiches, and we've found we really like it on top of pulled pork, or pork chops, as that bland sort of meat could use some kick.

Ode to Weck Jars

Like everyone else who is on Pinterest, I have a love of mason jars.  Luckily for me, I have inherited a whole wall of them.  This year I have a pressure canner, in addition to our big pot for water baths, so I'm planning on expanding all the things I can.  I want to move beyond jellies and jams and get into broths, meats, soups, salsas and vegetables.  I have no more freezer space.

In my research of all things canning, I came across some people talking about "Weck" jars.  I recognized them instantly, because I had seen a few at a kitchen store in the city, and fell in love with them immediately.  I didn't realize back then that they were actually canning jars.  I just thought they were really cute jars.  I had seen them used on a blog to store homemade chai tea leaves as little gifts.

So here's what I found out about Weck jars.  They're the German version of the traditional canning jars.    They've been around for over 100 years in Europe, so it's not exactly like they're the latest thing.  You can water bath can with them, pressure cook with them, bake in them, etc. etc.

The more I looked into them, the more I loved the simplicity of their design and the quality in which they are made.  These things are so cute!  They come in some great shapes, and I'm getting a bit obsessed with them.

The mason jars break from time to time.  I give my canned goods away as gifts, and don't expect the jars back.  My supply goes a little down each year.  So, I've decided that when I replace them as needed, I'm replacing them with Weck jars.  (Of course, they will break just like the mason jars, but I still just love them.)

There are only to "cons" that I have found in using a few Weck jars this season:

1) It takes some extra care to put the rubber rings on the caps before putting the caps on the jars.  It's not hard to do, but it is a bit trickier than just slapping on the cover of a mason jar and screwing it on.  You have to hold the rubber ring on the cover with 2 hands, being careful not to let the ring fall off.  You can try as many times as you like, so it's not like you have to get it in one shot.  It just takes a little extra care.

2) I can't write on the lids with permanent marker like I can with mason jars.  I actually need a label.  Until then, I'm storing my goods in an organized fashion, and labeling the shelves, not the jars.  I'm still on the lookout for labels I like.  I do like that I can see through the lids, and just feel more assured that there is not mold growing, and everything looks fresh.

The additional "pros" that I have discovered since starting to use these jars in canning are:

1) These jars make a super tight seal.  The rubber rings are thick and sturdy.  The metal clamps are the same.  It just feels solid and quality made all in all.

2) I can stack these jars easier than the mason jars.  That may just have to do with the spacing of my shelves in our cold room, but I can fit more on my shelves.  I like that.

3) I like how there is no little curve on the top when trying to get out jelly or apple butter, or anything else.  The straight sides make for less waste and less tedious scraping.

One of my favorite aspects of these Weck jars is that I have figured out how to use them to do some great fermented foods.  I've figured out how to turn them into fermentation crocks without any extra materials or manipulation.  So far I've used them to make fresh sauerkraut, homemade apple cider vinegar and lacto-fermented pickled carrots for some cheap, fresh probiotics.  More on that on Thursday…

This Week

It's been a bit busy.  I think I have enough material for blogging to last me a month or so from just this week.

-Silje turned 10.  

-Elias and Solveig are attending preschool VBS this week.

-We're picking strawberries every other day like crazy.  The crop is huge and beautiful this year!

-We're trying to preserve or eat up these strawberries before they go bad.  Strawberries dipped in dark chocolate, strawberry pie, strawberry rhubarb pie, strawberry jam, strawberry-rhubarb jam…it's been busy.

-We had to take Missy to the vet to get her stitches out.  There's a story there.  It was an adventure.

-Our basement flooded.

-We lost a huge amount of our flock of laying chickens in a predator attack.  We had tied Missy up in the barn before her vet appointment in hopes of keeping her out of the mud and the wound clean.  The predators took their opportunity of Missy missing and took many.  We're not even sure how many yet.  Missy is so upset about it.  I can't even begin to tell you her stress level shown the morning after.

-There was a massive, scary funnel cloud in the sky, close enough to hurry us to the drying-out basement for an hour or so.  (It never touched down, and remained no closer than 10 miles north of us.)

-Knut is extremely busy on the farm, and nothing seems to be going right in that area this year, which is an added stress.

-One of our cats had kittens.  Only 2, but they are beautiful and doing well.  We've been looking for them, and David and Elias found them while cleaning out the summer kitchen (toy/garden tool building outside) as a surprise for me.  They have been named Cheetah and Posie.

I'm trying, and failing, and trying again, and again, and again to live in the moment, and enjoy these precious times these kids are giving me this summer, and not get swallowed up by activities.  I've been saying "no" so often to things that I'm questioning all of it.  Well, part of me questions saying "no" to activities.  The other part of me thinks I'm not saying it nearly enough.

One day, when I was feeling particularly defeated, Solveig came into the kitchen where I was preparing supper and asked me to hold her.  I picked her up, and she held my face about 1/2 inch from hers and said, "Dance with me."

"Rockin' Robin" happened to come on our Pandora station, which is Solveig's favorite song, and she can't stand not dancing through it.  So we danced.  These habits are important.  She saved my evening.

Those are the sorts of things I can say "yes" to and not question one bit.

Yarn Along

I nearly finished the Lady Pearl sweater, but I pulled back a bit to play with some of the colors and shaping a bit more.  I specifically use the word "play" because I sort of intended to play from the beginning, and I'm really enjoying myself.  I'm sure there's probably an easier way to do it, but this part is just easy stockinette stitch, and I wanted to try the shaping out 2 different ways from the beginning.  I tried the easier way first, and after I tried it on, I decided that the second option would lay nicer.  In theory that is, because now I'm trying out the second method.

I specifically picked Swans Island yarn for this type of "play."  This stuff is heavenly.  The last few months I've been working on a pattern collection, and it's easy to get in the "get it done" drive.  The more I stress about it, the more I desire to get into an artist mindset instead of a managerial mindset.  It's much less stressful, and I find more joy in it.

I've been fearful lately that I need to pull back on knitting, as it seems to have gotten in the way of me mothering more and more.  I get stuck on a design, and obsess about getting it done in the timeframe I allow myself.  Sometimes I wonder if I should be putting out designs at all.  But then I realize that the knitting isn't the problem, the priorities are the problem.  So I'm pulling back deadlines, and focusing on what needs to be focused on in the house.

That still includes turning on my artistic brain and getting something just right from time to time.  It's about claiming sane moments instead of adding stressful ones.  This time of year, though the opportunity to do that doesn't come as often.

For reading, I've been looking through this amazing cookbook (The New Midwestern Table) that is new to our home.  I love cookbooks, and stupidly decided to wander into the cooking section of a bookstore with Silje a few weeks ago.  I know how bad I get in that section.  I could not put this book down.  I brought it home with me that day not only because I wanted to keep reading it, but because I knew I would be reading it 100 more times.

This is such a beautiful book.  It's 400 pages, hardbound, with 200 recipes in it.  Oh, the recipes.  First they're based off of midwestern food.  So many times I pick up a cookbook from New York or Texas, and I simply cannot get the ingredients listed.  This cookbook is based off of foods I can get.  There's a whole chapter on lake fish for goodness sake.

Not only are all the ingredients ones I can get locally, but they're real food ingredients.  You see, she scoured church cookbooks and family cookbooks, and went to restaurants all over the midwest, all the way up into Canada, and published the best of the best, with her own twist to them.  So many of those cookbooks have recipes that include cream of something soups, etc.  No, this chef picks real food.  I'm not saying they're all healthy food, but they're made from real ingredients.  I really appreciate that.

I also love the pictures in this book.  I would sit down with it just for the pictures.  It's not just of food pictures, but she captures the whole midwest culture in these photos.  You see blue collar workers eating down home cooking, and old kitchens with grandma's old bowls.  Plus, so many of the recipes have a history, and that history is told right alongside the recipe.  She talks a lot about the immigrant culture, from the early Scandinavian and European settlers to the modern immigrants of Hmong and Somalis to the midwest, and how that all effects the foods and flavors that we eat.  I cannot put this book down.

Yesterday was Knut's birthday.  For his birthday breakfast we had the "Cardamom Caramel Rolls" from this cookbook.  They were the best caramel rolls I've ever had in my whole life.  There's about 199 more recipes in here that I'm dying to try.  OK, I'll be honest.  There are about 180 recipes in here that I can't wait to try.  There's a few that I know won't be my thing.  But still, 180 new recipes in my arsenal isn't a bad thing.  I'll take it.

Oh, and the recipes go into detail.  I like that.  She doesn't just tell you what to do, but why it needs to be done that way.  I'm a curious rebel.   When someone tells me to do something a certain way, but doesn't know why, I'll do it the opposite way just to see what happens.  So I love the explanations of why certain ingredients or methods are used.  It feels like you have an experienced relative in your kitchen with you, telling you exactly how great-grandma did it, and why she did it that way.  It's enamoring.

Linking up with Ginny's Yarn Along.

I'm Blessed

We are brimming with life over here.  I wrote in my journal of gratefulness: "spiders: hard eucharisteo."  It's from the book One Thousand Gifts that talks about giving thanks for the things God gives us, even the things that we don't love.  It's part of learning to give thanks in all things.

Yes, with the summer months comes quite a bit of life, bugs included.  I see it wherever I look.

My strawberries are getting big.  I see the raspberries starting to form too.  Plus, some herbs for tea I've been working on the last few years are really starting to take off!  I think this year I get to figure out how to dry chamomile, peppermint, and echinacea as well as a few herbs for cooking.

I've been trying to "get rid of" a bunch of things in our big freezers in preparation for the big season of putting away.  I realized that last year I had started making rhubarb juice for the purpose of making rhubarb jelly.  Then my body went on strike after the car accident, so I put all the juice in the freezer to make into jelly later.  So I took out the 2 huge gallon sized bags full of rhubarb juice and made jelly all one morning last week.

It felt so redemptive, as silly as that sounds.

So that night, I was trying to think of what else I could make and put away before the berries kept me busy for a few weeks, making strawberry and raspberry jams, pies, tarts, etc.  I went to my canning wish list, and saw that I needed to put away some "Minnesota Summer" jam as well, and had all the ingredients on hand for that, so I made 16 pints of that the next day. (I did modify the recipe this year and used unflavored gelatin instead of strawberry jello.  I found it worked better when added the gelatin at the beginning of the recipe than the end otherwise the gelatin wasn't dissolving well.  I just decided that I didn't want artificial red dye in my homemade jams.  I plan on playing with this recipe further next summer.)  PLUS I had some bread and caramel rolls going on in the kitchen that day too.  I figure if I'm stuck in the kitchen watching fruit boil, I might as well have something to do as I watch it.

The kids helped me move the play kitchen into our kitchen so that the little girls could stay close as I canned and set bread out to rise all day Saturday.  There's nothing worse than having to stir something boiling for exactly 6 minutes, and your toddler runs off and you wonder what sorts of things she could get into for 6 minutes.  I like to keep them close.

It was the most perfect summer day to be in the kitchen.  It was rainy, but not blowing hard, so the kitchen windows were open.  The scent of lilacs right out the window and the fresh rain just wafted in and mixed with the scent of baking bread and sugary jam.  It was just heavenly.

I haven't had a day like that in over a year.  Sure, I went to bed hurting that night.  Happy, though.  I felt so alive.  I know I can't manage to work like that every day, but I was able to for one day, and that gave me such a high.  I felt like I had lived the day as an overcomer verses a victim and it was time to rest.  There's nothing like taking your pain and telling it to shove it.

In the most, Christian, blessed way, of course.

I'm so blessed.

Imaginative Play

The rain has driven us inside once again.  I'm busy making all sorts of summer canning plans.  Of course I'm planning way more than is actually possible.  Maybe I should instead call it summer canning "dreams."  I've learned to keep my canning plans, and meal plans for that matter, in a secret notebook.  I have to keep it especially secret from Knut and Silje.  Both of them love to read my cooking plans and they get so excited.  But then we end up home late one afternoon, and I don't have time to make a certain dish.  Perhaps the girls refused to nap or I backed out of an expensive ingredient at the grocery store, or plain forgot to get it.  I just can't stand the disappointed look they give me if they see that I had "carmel rolls" written out for a breakfast and they wake up to toast because I just didn't get to it.  "A plan is not a promise" is not just something I have to explain to the kids.

There's a million reason my meal plans fall through, and projects don't get done.  I've learned to make the grand plans anyway, because then at least some of them happen, and some are better than none.  So I'm in big, secret dream mode now.

I'm anticipating the garden treasure like crazy now.  I see those strawberries beginning to form.  I saw the rapid growth the tomato plants had this week.  I've now tasted the asparagus, and lily of the valley is not perfuming the whole house with it's fragrance.  (Just to be clear, lily of the valley isn't edible.)  I feel like a kid before Christmas.  Oh the things we will make with the cucumbers and the pumpkins, and the black beans, and the green beans, and the beets and carrots, and the…

It's going to be fantastic.  At least anticipation and the stuff we get to will be fantastic.