It All Started With A SIMPLE Plan...

Today is my half day at work.  I have the morning at home all by myself.  

(It's not as glorious as I thought it would be to tell you the truth.)

I thought I'd give the house a quick once over since it is guaranteed to stay that way for at least 7 hours until everyone gets back home.  Shouldn't take me more than an hour. Tops.

I said to myself, "Self, where should I start?"  

"The kitchen" I said.  "It'll be quick" I said.  Just a few dishes.  And whip up some more ranch dressing mix to get the empty jar off the counter.  Easy peasy.

But then, I decided I wasn't super in love with the ranch dressing mix recipe I used the last time and maybe I should find a new one.  There are a million of them on Pinterest.  No problem.  I found one in a reasonable amount of time.  So, I'll just pull out the ingredients and whip this up.  Lickety split.  Over and done, right. 

 Wrong.  I found a few half containers of the same herb or spice and decided that would never do so I combined them.  Then I found odds and ends baggies of bulk spices I bought along the way and felt compelled to put them in nicely labeled glass jars.  Then I sorted everything back into its proper bins and went to put it away. 

 But the shelves were dirty.  Can't have that now.  So, I wiped off the shelves and rearranged everything.

OK, now it is an hour later and I still haven't completed my super easy ranch dressing mix.  Seriously.  I'm annoying myself right about now.

The recipe said to grind the spices together for a smoother dressing/dip.  So, out to the shed to pull out my newly acquired 1972 food processor so I can grind my ranch mix.  That part goes pretty quickly and without incident.  But then it looks like this recipe makes more than will fit in my original jar.  So, back to the shed for a bigger jar.  I pour the nice ground up herb packed ranch powder into the jar only to find out that it really wasn't that much after all and it will fit back into its original container.

Now, nearly two hours in, I have my little jar of ranch dressing powder complete, a nice clean spice cabinet and my second batch of dishes done for the day.  

I probably won't get the whole house done today.  Just a hunch...

The Best Tomato Sauce (in my humble opinion)

Yes, it is full on canning season here.  My dining room currently looks like I raided the farmer's market.  Which I kind of did....But anyway.

Last year, my friend Erin told me about this amazing tomato sauce her mother makes.  Her mother is and absolute genius when it comes to making something out of nothing, so when she told me about this great stuff her mom made when she visited last summer, I knew I had to try it.  There is no going back for me now.  This sauce is a staple in my pantry.  I have searched the world over (you know, Pinterest) and not found another recipe like this one.

Like a lot of recipes that are handed down in families, it is rather loose in its measurements.  The amounts of the ingredients can be adjusted to personal taste or what you have available.  I have found that while tomatoes are precious to gardeners, zucchini is abundant and can be had for almost nothing.

Henceforth, I put zucchini in my sauce to add bulk and stretch the tomatoes.

Here's how I make my version of Beth's Amazing Change Your Life Tomato Sauce:

25 lbs tomatoes

5 medium size green bell peppers

2 good sized onions

5 ribs celery

1/2 of a big zucchini (about 3 cups of shreds)

salt

Blanch, peel, core and de-seed the tomatoes.  Yes this is a lot of work, but it saves hours of cook time trying to boil out all the extra liquid. My tomatoes reduced from 25 lbs down to 15 lbs once all the extra parts were removed.

Roughly dice peppers, onions and celery. 

Shred zucchini, skins, seeds and all

Dump it all into a big pot.  Probably the biggest pot you have.  This makes a lot.

Bring to a boil, then simmer, stirring often so it doesn't burn on the bottom, until it looks sort of thick.

Turn off the heat and either puree with a stick blender, or pour in batches into a blender or food processor.

Return to giant pan and cook it down some more.  Once it's as thick as you want it, pour into hot quart jars.

Put 1/2 teaspoon of salt in each quart jar before putting the lid on.

Process in a water bath canner for 45 minutes.

Makes 7 1/2 quarts.

You can certainly make this in a smaller quantity.  I went big because as you may have gathered, we really like this stuff.

This sauce makes a perfect base for spaghetti sauce (add a little garlic & Italian Seasoning)

Chili (add your favorite chili seasoning)

Goulash (add a bit of paprika)

Tomato soup (add a bit of hamburger, garlic, and some cheese tortellini)

 Thank you Beth and Erin for teaching me so much about canning.  I don't know what I'd do without your wisdom :)

Gardening, Inspired by Gloria

I've been embracing my inner Gloria Dump lately. ( In case that name doesn't ring a bell for you, she's a character in one of my favorite children's books, "Because of Winn-Dixie" by Kate DiCamillo.  If you haven't read it or even watched the movie, I highly recommend it.  Anyway, Gloria Dump is a lady who has a wild overgrown garden full of everything.)  A few Sundays ago, we were working in the yard (one of my favorite things), tilling up some rough spots and planting grass seed.  While we had the tiller out, I asked Matt to please make a pass along the edge of the chicken coop.  The ground is so packed from foot traffic right there and its too shady for grass to grow, so on a whim, I made a little shade garden.

My masterpiece

It's really not much, but to me it was a really big deal.  Not because I divided some shade perennials that were already growing and moved them, but because I, by my own self, used power tools to make a wooden border around my little bed.  Yep, I made three cuts with a circular saw.  My first ever.  Turns out it's not so hard or scary.  Matt may regret teaching me how to work this particular device at some point in the future, Lord knows what I'll come up with...

So, anyway, it's just a little three sided box made out of some old rough sawed pine (leftover siding boards from our house) that I cut and screwed together to keep feet of all sizes away from the edge of the chicken coop.  It is filled with hostas, bleeding hearts and violets.  The plants are a bit droopy in the picture because I had just moved them and because the bleeding hearts are already done for the year.  I found the top to an old chicken waterer and felt that it needed to take up residence in my chicken coop garden.  The other thing in there is a white metal dishpan/shallow bucket thing with some big rocks in it.  All this stuff was just laying around, so I spent zero dollars to make my chicken coop just a little jazzier.  Someday, I'd love to have it be all spiffed up with flowers and art and neat stuff like that.  I feel like I'm one step closer to the coop of my dreams.  (I know, cough crazy lady cough).

The ladies wondering what all the commotion is.

My other project of the day was to do something with this great old enamelware dishpan I got for my birthday.  I love old enamelware.  It reminds me of my grandma.  This dishpan looked like the perfect vessel for growing something in.  That's the beauty of containers, I can either cook in them or grow something in them.  My two favorite things. :)

A good place for a gnome nap.

As it happens I was also working on spiffing up another container garden I have next to my clotheslines.  This little dishpan fits just perfect right underneath it.  Being a shallow container, I wanted it to go somewhere shady so I don't have to water it every 30 minutes.  So, I needed more shade plants.  Small shade plants.  Out came my trusty trowel.  We went around the hosta beds to see what was growing in with them.  I found a really neat vine, which I'm sure is some kind of weed, but I think it's pretty.  There were also violets and some red clover.  Oh and some moss.  Matt hates moss.  His dad hates violets.  They think they're a pain and they ruin the lawn.  I think violets are pretty and moss is so soft to walk on.  So, I was a renegade and purposely cultivated moss and violets.  To some, my little  container probably looks like a rusty old bucket of weeds.  To my inner Gloria Dump, it is just right.  Besides, if the plants freeze out this winter, I'm not out anything.

Now that you've seen my creations and inspirations, what makes your garden grow?

"Weeds are flowers too...Once you get to know them"  -AA Milne

My Favorite Muffins

A random picture of some flowers in the garden.
They have nothing to do with the muffins whatsoever, I just thought they were pretty.

It's mid-summer and berries are at their peak right now.  For me, that means that I'm spending as much time as possible picking all the berries I can.  We love berries.  Especially the wild ones.  Wild blueberries make the best muffins and pancakes because they're tiny.  That also means there is A LOT of berries in every cup. The kids and I went scouting for berries with my in-laws a few days ago. 

Our usual spots had already been hit pretty hard and the bugs were horrible!  Nevertheless, we came away with a few handfuls of wild blueberries and raspberries.  (As a side note, the wild hazelnuts look fantastic this year.)  Luckily, Grandpa has cultivated blueberries and raspberries available to us, so we still got enough to make a few batches of muffins and some to freeze for later.

Speaking of muffins, I've made these twice this week.  There's a batch cooling on the counter as we speak.  Whether they will ever cool to room temperature is anybody's guess.  The kids eat them as fast as they come out of the oven.

This is a recipe straight out of my trusty old Pillsbury Complete Book of Baking Copyright 1993 that my cousin rescued from the dump for me.  It is a treasured favorite.

Blueberry Raspberry Muffins 

(I added the raspberries because they were mixed together with my blueberries.  It was yummy. Nothing bad happened because I went rogue and added another kind of berries)

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon grated lemon or orange peel

1 cup (total) fresh or frozen blueberries & raspberries - do not thaw

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup milk

1/3 cup oil

1 egg, beaten

1 packet of raw sugar leftover from a trip to Starbucks (optional)

Oven 400 degrees

Mix dry ingredients and add berries, stir to coat berries with flour (so they don't sink to the bottom, in case you were wondering).  Make a well in the center.

Mix liquid ingredients together in a separate bowl.  (If you don't have any fresh lemons or oranges just layin' there, you can add a tablespoon of juice to the milk).  Pour liquid into the dry stuff and stir very gently, just until its all moist.  (Isn't that kind of a gross word? Moist. Its right up there with ointment on my list of words that gross me out).  

The dry ingredients were already mixed together by the time I thought to take a picture.
There are 2 eggs because I made a double batch the first time around.

OK, back to the recipe.  Once the ingredients are all semi-mixed together, put a good size glob in each of 12 greased muffin cups.and pop them in your preheated oven for 18-22 minutes.  Its perfectly acceptable for this batter to have a bit of a rest in the pans before it goes in the oven.  In case you should ever neglect to preheat your oven.  Not that I ever have, but you know, just in case that should ever happen to you.

My muffin batter hanging out on the counter.

Right when they come out of the oven, I sprinkle a bit of raw sugar on top.  One packet is enough for the whole batch.  You could use more, or you could skip it altogether.  Up to you.  Its really just for looks.

This is how many were left after lunch.  The plate was empty by bedtime.
Note: we did give some away ;)

P.S.  I highly recommend making these first thing in the morning, before it gets hot out.  And before your kids get up.  Just in case you'd like to enjoy more than just the smell of them. :)

The Great Spending Freeze

We are twenty-six days into our 31 day spending freeze.  I have been reading about it a lot and wanting to try it.  There is a handy dandy printable guide/worksheet/list (you know how I love a good list) at Living Well Spending Less.

I talked it over with Matt and he agreed to do it.  We went into it knowing that we had to plan for a wedding and a graduation.  We had just been to Sam's Club and stocked up on toilet paper and a few other things and figured we could totally do this. 

We knew that "spending zero" as in no dollars at all outside of bills was not going to happen.  We still have to buy feed for our critters, and a few basics like milk and bread.  I've been keeping every receipt for over 3 weeks to be able to tally up exactly how much we spent in the last month. 

The rules have been pretty straight forward.  No grabbing a pop/snack  at the gas station.  No Starbucks, no rummage sales, no visits to the greenhouse for great end of season deals on annuals.  I did barter for some new perennials this year from a local garden exchange group on Facebook, so that's cool.  We have stuck pretty close with not buying groceries other than perishables.  Funny thing is that we still have several meals worth of meat in our freezer and enough canned peaches to last until the Rapture.  Otherwise, side dishes are requiring more creativity.  I tried a brown rice/quinoa pilaf night before last.  (A friendly tip, brown rice takes far longer to cook than quinoa.  You might want to give the rice a head start.)

We have been pretty careful up until this past weekend. See, what we failed to plan ahead for was the 4th of July.  Independence Day is a pretty big deal in our hometown.  Everybody turns out for the festivities.  We didn't spend a lot (we usually don't anyway) but, we still bought some things.  Like $5 arm bands for the kids to go to the bouncy houses (unlimited jumping for 2 days).  And the kids each got a small item from the flea market.  We also went to a BBQ/birthday party at our friend's house. I don't know why I didn't set aside a little bit for this each week up until now.  It's not like July 4th is this brand new holiday or that I didn't know the kids' birthday party was going to be this weekend.

Some things I have learned from this experience:  I spend way more money than I thought on impulse purchases.  Random crap that I didn't need when I went to the store, but suddenly couldn't leave without.  We actually do make enough to be putting money into savings every month.  I truly didn't realize this before, even though I have always had a basic budget.  It seemed like something always "came up" and we'd just make it through the month.  This challenge comes with budgeting worksheets so you can write everything down and see exactly where your money is going.  Along with seeing that we have money for savings every month, I also regained hope that we'd be able to do some of the things we want to do to our house.  I also learned that I like iced coffee made at home, and it costs way less than buying it anywhere.

One of the other things that is part of this challenge is a full house clean/de-clutter/organize.  I printed the checklists, but did not do all of them.  I did do the bathroom one and threw away a bunch of old stuff out of there.  Otherwise, there isn't a whole lot of homeless stuff floating in our house.  We're both way too particular about keeping things put away and not keeping stuff that has no purpose. 

I did come up with a few things to sell as per the challenge.  Not a lot (see above), but some.  I also came up with some free things to do.  As it happens, our local library has free passes for several area attractions so I picked up some today when we made our weekly visit.

Now that our challenge is almost up, I'm really getting excited to go grocery shopping. I'm also wondering how long until we could feasibly do this again.  How often do people have "no spend" months?  I think I'd like to do this again sometime in the winter.  I wonder if my family would think I had really lost it if we made this a quarterly event.

While we didn't make a month without spending any money, we did do pretty well.  So, I'll call it a success.  Does anybody else out there do a spending freeze from time to time? 

I think I Might Be A Hippie

Isn't this a neat daisy?  It is 2 stems & blooms fused and growing together.

Spring is finally here in all of its rainy, blustery glory.  We've had lots and lots of gray days lately, but we've also had a few beautiful sunny days.  Sunny days are not to be squandered indoors.  That said, its been mud boots on and everybody outside as much as possible.

My snappy purple flowered mud boots.  Good for tromping.

Being outside means that I am giving the chickens and rabbits a little extra care, getting gardens ready to go and hanging laundry out on the line.  The first load of wash went out to dry in the breeze yesterday. Line dried sheets, my favorite!

Saturday's eggs in a pretty blue bowl. 

Yesterday Matt built me a cold frame YAY!!!  I have been dreaming about one of these babies for YEARS.  He just has to hinge the roof and put it on and then watch out.  My trays of dirt are just waiting to have spinach, kale and leaf lettuce in them and under glass. (Hippie clue #1, I want to grow kale. in a cold frame.)

Last week, our local grocery store had tons of fresh produce on sale.  I stocked the fridge with fresh button mushrooms, cilantro, spring onions, red, yellow and orange bell peppers, cucumbers and carrots.  To be cooking with fresh ingredients is just so pretty and enjoyable to me.  Its really kind of ridiculous how excited I got to make a big pan of eggs scrambled with fresh mushrooms, tiny chopped spring onions, red peppers and ham.  Even more laughable is that the next night I used all those same vegetables plus some julienne cut carrots in a saute with kielbasa and served it over couscous.  I've never made couscous before and it has kind of an exotic/earthy feel to it for me.  (Hippie clue #2, I'm all jazzed over fresh veggies and tiny pasta.)

My couscous/sausage/veggie concoction with some of my canned peaches from last fall.

Recently, I ordered a few essential oils.  Just a handful of small bottles that seemed to be the most common.  I've used them a little bit so far, but not much.  I read that lavender oil and lemon oil are good for chapped skin, so I mixed some up with coconut oil and put it on my face hoping to get rid of a dry patch by my eye.  And, I made some bedtime bath salts for the kids.  We are big fans of "salt baths" around here. (Hippie clue #3, I am collecting essential oils.)

My tiny collection of essential oils.  I'm pretty excited about these babies.

I'm really trying to be mindful of what I put into my home.  I try to buy the best quality food with the fewest ingredients as I can.  I'm also pretty picky about cleaning products and plastics.  I almost solely use glass food storage, plant-based cleaners, cloth napkins and non-paper plates/cups.  I was proud of myself for finding a deal on granola cereal at the store last week.  They also had a smokin' deal on pudding cups.  I have not purchased these things in years.  The kids have never had them before.  I thought oh what a fun treat for Natalie's lunch and bought four packages.  Then after I got them home I started to panic that I bought my children tiny bowls of poison.  I got over it and let them eat it, but probably won't buy it again.  (Hippie clues #4, 5 & 6 Plastic is pretty much banished from my kitchen. I bought granola cereal on purpose.  And pudding made me panic.)

Have no fear, I'm not going to stop shaving my legs or anything like that.  I have found as I have gotten older that I am very interested in the way our bodies respond to chemicals.  I also like the challenge in finding out just how many things I can do for myself.  Living in the country means that we can't run to the store for every little thing.  I mean, I could, but then I'd just spend a lot of time driving which completely defeats the purpose.  Hence, the quest to find what can we do on our own and what basic ingredients/tools will be most useful to us.  So, I guess there's worse things.  I'm ok with being a little out there...

Speed Cleaning and Mud Season

Well, its full on Mud Season here.  I don't know if other parts of the country experience this blissful time of year when the snow is melting but the ground is still frozen so the runoff gathers in every possible nook and cranny turning all unpaved ground into a big dirty sponge, but that is what its like here right now.  The moisture is great and I'll take this over howling wind and subzero temps any day (except maybe Christmas).

What Mud Season means for us is a lot of extra dirt tracked into the house and a ton of wet filthy laundry.  That said, I decided yesterday that I didn't want to spend my whole day off while the kids were at school cleaning house.  So I figured I'd try this whole speed cleaning thing that's all the rage on Pinterest.  So, I set a timer, started in one room and worked my way through the house.

I started in the kitchen.  Its the entry point of the house and gets the dirtiest on a daily basis.  I set the timer for 15 minutes, filled a sink full of hot soapy water and got started.  Here's the thing.  The dishwasher was full of clean dishes from the night before.  So, before I could start cleaning up the morning's mess, I had to put away all the clean dishes.  I also had just come in from the chicken coop and had a dozen fresh eggs to clean and box up.  By some miracle, I managed to get almost completely done when the timer went off.  Except the floor.  I was really praying nobody stopped by unannounced at this point because it looked like I could plant crops on that floor.

Next was the dining room.  Easy peasy.  In fact, I had extra time in there.  I went through all the rooms except the bathroom, because it needs a good deep clean.  Shoes and clothes aren't the only filthy things around here during the aforementioned Mud Season.  And we have hard water.  Great combo.

So, anyway, after going through all the rooms but one, allowing 15 minutes each for folding and putting and putting away laundry, I was sweaty and my house did look pretty good.

I enjoyed it for approximately 20 minutes until it was time to leave and pick up kids from school.

Now, a mere 24 hours later...

There are 3 loads of laundry to be folded, wet rugs in the bathroom, unmade beds, dirt tracks in the kitchen and more dirty dishes.

And I ask myself, what's the point?

The point is that I can't stand a mess.  And I like to have a plan.  This speed cleaning thing probably works better when you're not trying to catch up on a whole weekend's worth of housework and laundry.  It probably also works better when there's not 30 pounds of dried caked mud on things.  Overall, it was a success and I'd do it again.  It was nice to focus on one room at a time and not run around like I have the worst case of ADD in the world.

I could probably beat the pants off of my cleaning time today.  But, I'm not going through the whole house again.  I really need to get at the bathroom before people start to think they've mistakenly landed in a sketchy gas station.  Besides, the rest of the house is still much cleaner than it was yesterday.  Good enough for now.

If you'd like to read more about "the plan" here's a link to the blog I got it from.  She has lots of other great ideas by the way.  Living Well Spending Less Blog