128 Square Feet Is NOT Enough!

This is it. This is where all the action happens.  Well, the gardening action,
anyway! These four beds, 4'x8,' are my entire garden. It's just not enough!
 I've been reading about "farming" in suburbia. I can do that! I plan
to double or perhaps triple, the garen. I want to see how much I can grow
and put up to feed my family of 5 while livin' the American dream in the 'burbs.

Morning Glory.

I planted my first morning glory seeds, Heavenly Blue, in 1999. I haven't planted a single seed since. That one plant has populated my ENTIRE yard. I have them growing on my 6' stockade privacy fence that runs the length of my backyard. They grow in my vegetable beds (grrr!), they grow randomly in the grass. I also have them growing along my front chain-link fence which I really like, as they take off about the time my perennial sweet peas are looking ugly. While I miss the blue color that Heavenly Blue provides, I enjoy getting various shades of purples, pinks, stripes and sometimes white. I love taking photos of them, especially early in the morning, like this one, where you can see the dew captured on the perfectly out-turned petals. Glorious.

4 Pints Gone!

After canning what seemed like 500lbs of tomatoes, I am now the proud parent of 18 pints of salsa and 12 quarts of pasta sauce. I had already done 16 quarts of pickles and 16 quarts of salsa over the weekend, so I'm on a roll. This is my very first effort in canning so I think I'm doing pretty well.

Ok--here's the salsa recipe, by popular demand. It's from the Ball Blue Book and I've noted my changes below the recipe.

Zesty Salsa 
yield: about 6 pints (I found that a doubled recipe is more like 14+ pints)

10 cups chopped, seeded, peeled, cored tomatoes (about 6 lbs)
5 cups chopped and seeded long green peppers (about 2lbs)

5 cups chopped onions

2.5 cups chopped and seeded hot peppers (about 1 lb)

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 tablespoons cilantro, minced

3 teaspoons salt

1 1/4 cups cider vinegar

1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce (optional)

Combine all ingredients in a large saucepot, adding hot pepper sauce, if desired. Bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. Ladle hot salsa into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Adjust two-piece caps. Process 15 minutes in a boiling-water canner.

My changes:

1. I used 2 cups of green peppers and 3 cups of red peppers for the "5 cups of long green peppers". If you use more greens than red, the salsa ends  up looking very green in color.
2. I used Anaheim peppers for the hot peppers. Keeping it mild means my 7 year old will eat it.
3. Garlic. Yeah, that's not nearly enough garlic. I used 20 cloves.
4. Don't skimp on the onions.
5. I don't seed my tomatoes. Nobody complains and I don't think it's a huge deal.

Enjoy! Let me know if you make some, I'd love to hear how it turns out.

To Can Or Not To Can?

That is the question that truly had not ever crossed my mind prior to 2010. My mother canned, my grandmother canned and I am scarred from them canning. Scarred because all I really remember about either of them canning is:

1. Canning is hot, sweaty work.
2. Canning makes you crabby. (see #1)

It seemed like a ridiculous thing to do. Why would someone even bother to can in 2010 when we can just run to the store and get whatever we need?

I'll tell you why. Because you can control what you eat a little more when you control what goes in the can (or jar, in this instance).

It also tastes better.

Canning is something I do for my family and also for myself. I'll admit it, canning is also social. I have a great friend, G, who is a canning expert and she has helped me immensely on my canning crusade. She's an extra pair of hands, a reminder to wipe the rim of my  jar, and someone to joke with while waiting 40 minutes for jars to process. She almost makes me forget that

1. Canning is hot, sweaty work
2. Canning makes you crabby (see #1)

Canning is a link to the past and a reminder to me of exactly how good we've got it today. Hats off to those ladies before us who actually had to do this to survive!

Granparents Are Tiring.

The boys came back yesterday after spending Sunday-Wednesday with Brad's parents. They went out to their cottage and out to a sand dune for a dune buggy ride and then back to their home. I hear they ate out 5 times in that time! Good for them, because we NEVER eat out.

The grandparents are evidently very tiring people because I sent Brett to bed at 8 last night and he was asleep by 8:15--and slept 12 hours! Brendan is our night owl and went to be at 10 (after watching "Dirt-The Movie" with me) and he slept until 8:30.

Independence.

Cute, right? Bryce copies everything his older brothers do, including dragging a kitchen chair over to the pantry to get a snack. At first glance, this is simply a photo of a 2 year old getting himself a treat. But when you know what's in my pantry-food allergy filled treats- no-ticking bombs, this picture turns scary. Yep. We eat things that Bryce is allergic to. We even keep them in our pantry. Flour and pretzels and cereals. Bryce has his things, too, that I keep in labelled plastic containers or in their original packaging & labelled.


What to do? Food allergies were easier when Bryce didn't eat anything but pureed foods. He showed no interest in what everyone else was eating for almost 2 1/2 years. Now he sees what we're eating and he wants the same.

 I know a celiac family that allows the non-celiac kids to take gluten treats for school lunch, but the rest of the food at home is safe for him. I know a peanut allergy mom who-gasp-keeps a jar of peanut butter in her cupboard for herself when her allergic child is at school. I know a mom of 4 who has one child with food allergies and EVERYONE at home eats ONLY foods that are safe for the allergic child.

Living with a food-allergic child is a fluid situation. We are ever-changing, ever-reacting to Bryce's allergies.

This photo is proof that it's time to put the non-safe foods higher up in the pantry. I want him to be independent and do things like drag chairs around, but I also want to avoid the Epi-Pen.

Anyone in the food allergy community care to weigh in? How do you handle "allergic foods" in your home?

Bacon Pie.

Ok, it's not a bacon pie. It's a chicken pot pie, made with a bacon fat crust. Yum. I wanted to make a chicken pot pie one day a couple of weeks ago when the heat had broken and we could actually turn the air off. I had all the ingredients-except butter for the crust. I checked out what type of fat I had on hand and I had a soup can full of rendered bacon fat in  my fridge. Turns out that 1cup of rendered bacon fat (frozen first, then chopped up and cut in with a pastry cutter) makes a pretty darn good pie crust.

Recipe? Simply swap out the butter for bacon fat. If you render it down and strain it, it will be free of the little specks and bits of bacon, like you see in my pie crust. But we're all bacon lovers here, so that's not an issue. I might cook the bottom crust first the next time I make this pie.

Step 2-make the chicken filling. This is a roux, made with chicken, a little onion, some peas, flour, chicken broth. Add your flour last, slowly, until it thickens. Throw in whatever veggies you'd like.

Put filling in crust, cover with top crust and bake. I baked this at 375 for almost 45 mins. Let stand before cutting.

Yum! This was goooood stuff. It fed us for one dinner and then lunch. Sadly, this is NOT something bryce can eat due to the flour in the crust. Still experimenting with a pie crust that is wheat/rye free. I'm hopeful I can come up with something for him.

Picasso? Degas? BRYCE!

Bryce can't talk much, but he sure can draw a picture of an apple. He's drawn one over and over again today on his Magna-doodle toy. They look the same every time-a nice round circle and then he adds the stem. Check it out:

The Backyard Is NOT Our Toilet!

I need to have a "quotable mom" label on my blog. I say the funniest things to my children. Well I think they're funny.  Gems like, "No Bryce-5 pieces of bacon is enough!" or another fave, "Beatings to commence in 5,4,3,2, RUN!". Good mom stuff.

Today's quotable mom gem is my title. I actually used those words, shouted at my middle boy. After watching him run from the living room, out the back door and into our yard, dropping trou while frantically leaping towards our shed, I realized what he was up to, and it just came out of my mouth.

Why did he run through the house and try to go outside? Well, it seems that "somebody" (probably another boy) got the downstairs toilet stopped up, the upstairs bathroom was in use and rather than wait he thought running outside was a better option than WAITING.

No. The backyard is not our toilet, I informed him.

Life With Boys.

Garden Harvest Update

I love coming home from vacation and checking out how my garden is doing. The garden seems to grow leaps and bounds when I'm gone! It probably grows no faster than when we're home, but because I'm not out puttering in it 3 times a day I don't notice it.

Anyhow, I was excited to go check out the garden after vacation. I was disappointed. The RABBITS have now taken to eating my beans! (I wondered why they weren't eating my perennials anymore.) Brad actually scared one out of my beans when we went back to pick. I have 16' worth of green beans planted and they were full of blooms when we left. Yeah. Gone. The rabbits chewed many of  them to nubs! We harvested 20 beans. Not 20 ounces, not 20lbs, 20 beans in total. Enough for the 3 bean eaters in the house to enjoy a small handful of them steamed with dinner.  Oh-we also picked 5 pickling cukes, too.

The tomato report? Zero. Zilch. Nada. Empty set. The plants are LOADED with tomatoes but they aren't ripening. I have 2 that have yellow "shoulders" but that's it. Sigh.

Fast forward to today (3 days later) and I wandered out to see what was up. (no boys were willing to walk away from the Wii to help me, little stinkers!) I had onions ready-18 of them!  Some were actually NOT ready, but some critte pulled a few out and left 'em. And--lo and behold--BEANS! I picked another 21 beans today and 1 pickling cuke.

I think I might just grow pole beans next year, to thwart my pests :)

Quotable Kids

Conversation on vacation last week:

We're all playing in the lake. Nearby are a stand of lily pads & flowers.
Brett: I'm going to go check out those flowers.
Me: Just smell them, don't pick them. They're protected.
Brett: (quizzical look on his face) Protected? By what-Frogs?
Me: laughing...No the government. You have to leave them there for everyone to enjoy.
Brett: Huh. (swims off to check them out)

That kid cracks me up!