This past Tuesday, our family gathered for our final “Tuesday Night Dinner” of the season. We were planning to keep the dinners rolling through the school year, but my oldest is finding herself quiet worn out after a full, big-girl day of school. And with dance and tumbling now under way for the fall, we thought it best to take a bit of a break to allow the girls some down-time.
Here is a little glimpse into our evening this past Tuesday…
A sure fire sign that fall is upon us is when we start to find apples popping up here and there at the farmers’ markets. Last week, we found our very favorite farming family at market with their tables loaded down with the most beautiful apples. There were Cortlands, Jonathans, Honey Crisps, and Crimson Crisps. Each more delicious than the next.
With all of this goodness to choose from, the girls and I decided it was high time to start making apple sauce. So yesterday, with much fanfare and hullabaloo, we began our apple-sauce-making soiree.
The girls did all the work, while I took pictures and drunk in the sounds of 2Cellos on the IPad. They used our very favorite apple peeler/corere/slicer to do the majority of labor, and then took turns adding some yummy local honey and spicy cinnamon to the mix. We make our apple sauce in our slow cooker, so we just set it and forget it 🙂
A few hours later, once the aroma of the sweet and tangy apples, floral honey and spiced cinnamon fill the air, we have the perfect apple sauce for our family’s liking. Fall is here.
Upon our return from Disney, it was to the garden we went for some fall harvesting and some more planting. We came home to our second round of beans, ready and waiting for us on the vine. They were a very welcomed surprise after eating a bit too much non-homegrown food on our trip.
There were also about 80 tomatoes begging to be picked, and a whole lot of raspberries ripe and ready for a little princess to pick for her afternoon snack.
We then set to planting our new beds with some cold-hardy greens. We are hoping to add a hoop house or some type of low tunnel over these beds once the frost sets in. (Even though that seems very far off at the moment, as I listen to my air conditioner humming at this precise moment, when it is a whopping 90 degrees again today.)
Amid the labyrinth of power lines and close proximity to our neighbors, we are slowly but surely developing for ourselves a bit of a suburban homestead paradise all our own. When we took possession of this property four years ago, we were given a perfectly blank slate to work with because the previous owners had just filled in their in-ground pool. This left us with a lovely, flat, fenced-in canvas that we are now able to glean a great deal of food from.
{Before. Late July 2012.}
The gardening space we previously had contains 12 4X8 foot raised beds and one 4X16 foot raised bed. Then just outside that space we have a smattering of lavender and rhubarb and some heirloom perennial flowers. Last year we added 2 apple trees, an asparagus and strawberry patch, raspberry bramble and an herb garden to the mix.
And now, here we are…
I am so thrilled by how the space turned out. I must say I was a little skeptical for a while there, when the vision in my head did not seem to match what lay before me. But with a bit of digging, a little building and a whole lot of hauling, I am satisfied to say the very least.
We used the beautiful circa 1850 barn timbers I mentioned in a previous post to create a more permanent border for the existing asparagus and strawberry patch. We used the remaining timbers to create a brand new perennial vegetable bed that will soon be home to more rhubarb (rhubarb wine here I come!), asparagus and Jerusalem artichokes.
We then added three additional 4X8 foot raised beds and one 4X4 bed. This fall these beds will be loaded with cold hardy annual vegetables that we then hope to cover with a hoop house of some sort. We are crossing our fingers this will give us delicious, fresh vegetables year round. We also plan to add some gorgeous tree stumps around the fire pit for prime seating for those s’more-roasting evenings right around the corner.
This past weekend we opted to stay close to home because many of us in our little household of four were getting over the lovely beginning-of-the-school-year sniffles. It always seems so odd to me to have a cold in the middle of a ninety degree heat wave, yet that was our particular situation this weekend. So with lemon tea and honey in hand, we set to having a fun-filled weekend none the less.
The first pumpkins of the season made an appearance at Friday’s market, so we had to buy just a couple. The girls worked hard all of Saturday morning, digging out the seeds and preparing for some roasted goodness.
While the girls worked hard on the pumpkins, I got busy making my homemade granola. We were able to purchase some delicious home-grown oats from Hazard Free Farms, which helped to make the granola extra yummy.
I also tried another treasure from Grandpa Dit’s recipe box: piccalilli. I must say, standing in the kitchen over a giant pot of boiling veggies on a ninety-seven degree day was not one of my brightest ideas, but the final result was quite tasty.
And I chopped the day away, getting food ready to put by in the freezer for the winter months. Andrea Hazzard, from Hazzard Free Farm, gave us a great suggestion for preserving watermelon. Pour boiling water over a bit of honey, making honey water. After cooling down the honey water, pour it over diced watermelon until all watermelon is covered. Then freeze it for enjoyment in the winter months.
Rajah enjoyed finding a new hiding spot. Oh my.
And Tyler enjoyed some brewing time. He concocted a batch of caramel creme ale. Yummy.
I have also been hard at work in the backyard, continuing with our garden expansion. I am so excited to bring you the finished product in tomorrow’s post. Hooray! See you then.
If you may have noticed in this post, or this one, or maybe this one…We are surrounded by tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes…Oh my! Last week we stared at the tomatoes filling every container available in our house and covering every horizontal surface of our kitchen and tried our best to formulate a plan.
Try as we might, there was no way this family of four could consume all of these tomatoes on our own, at this moment. So preserving was our solution to our overabundance, and preserve we did. We made tomato paste. We cooked up some good ole Italian tomato sauce. We dried. We froze. We’ve got tomatoes in all forms now, safely tucked away in the larder and in the freezer for enjoyment over the winter months.
And now as I peer out my kitchen window, there is whole new crop ready to be picked. Ah. The tomato fun never ends 🙂
We have yet another project in the works. In an effort to add more perennial and annual growing space, we are again (for the forth year in a row) expanding our garden.
We are trying to keep renovation costs to a minimum so we are repurposing materials we already had on our property. We were also lucky enough to obtain reclaimed timbers from an old barn to create some raised beds. (Remember the ones we were going to use for a new dining room floor? Enter new idea.)
As you can see, it is definitely still a work in progress. Hopefully, I will have pictures of the completed project soon.
Mom (standing with hands on hips, a bit overwhelmed): What am I going to do with all of these vegetables?
Five-year-old Preservation Expert: Mommy, there is a lot of stuff here.
Mom (hands still on hips, a bit more overwhelmed): Yeah. Got it. I’m still trying to figure out what to make with all of it.
Five-year-old Preservation Expert (with a look of absolute clarity): I know! I think we need to have a canning day! Like, a whole day when all we do is can and freeze stuff for winter.
And so continues a day in the life with a very young child that just gets it. Of course. Why wouldn’t we put some of this food by for when the bounty is less? Sometimes it takes youth to open our eyes to what is right in front of us. Wonderful suggestion my darling girl.
Here is a walk through our day of food preservation…
{A wonderful new idea I got from this magazine. What a fabulous idea!}
{Salsa, salsa and more salsa}
{Got to love hot pink fingers for a day.}
{I struck gold this week! I found my grandfather’s recipe box in the back of my parents’ pantry. It contains all of his old canning recipes, including his bread and butter pickles, my favorite of all his canning greats.}
One of my favorite times of the year has arrived, and that my friends is peach time! I love fresh peaches so much in fact that I only eat them when they are in season, in their absolute prime, in the middle of the August heat.
We buy our peaches locally from a family fruit farm where they grow all of their own peaches in their orchard, and they are to die for. After the market last week, we ran home and got to work on my favorite pie on earth: Grandma Dit’s Peach Pie.
I still remember being in about forth grade and I was home sick from school because I was running a high fever. It was late fall, the time when most schoolchildren begin to fall ill, and I found myself buried beneath the afghan on the couch, watching reruns of Saved By The Bell. My mom asked me if there was anything she could get me to eat that would make me feel any better. I told her the only thing that would heal what was ailing me was Grandma’s peach pie. There were no fresh peaches available in late fall in Rockford, Illinois, so my mom did what any good mother would do. She improvised. She went to the grocery store and bought a pre-made peach pie. I took one bite, spit it out and said, “This is not right. It’s not the same. Never mind.”
I don’t know why this story has stuck with me for so long, but I think it is because there is no replacement for real, in-season peach pie, using my grandmother’s recipe. So here goes…
I make my own crust (recipe found here). Then I fill it with delicious sliced peaches.
I add about 10 tiny dollops of butter on top of the peaches, and then create a mixture of 1 cup sugar, 4 tablespoons flour and 1 teaspoon cinnamon. I scoop this mixture over the peaches and butter so the entire pie is coated. I then add just a touch (about 1/4 cup) of water to the pie. This creates a delicious custard-like consistency. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes and then reduce the heat to 325 degrees for 45 minutes.
I truly hope you enjoy this recipe that I hold so close to my heart. Enjoy!
Here in the Fagan house, we LOVE mushrooms. Because of our love of this delicious treat, we have tried our hand at growing mushrooms multiple times with limited to no success.
But, it appears the tides have turned. And it all began with a roll of toilet paper.
My brother-in-law surprised my three year old (perhaps the largest fungi fan in the house…seriously!) with a very creative birthday present: A TeePee Pink Oyster Mushroom Kit from Fungi Perfecti.
Since we had attempted mushroom growing in the past with limited luck, I was skeptical to begin the process again. But low and behold…it worked! We now have beautiful PINK oyster mushrooms, growing out of a roll of toilet paper!
I would highly recommend trying this project with young kids (and let’s be honest…big kids too). It was so interested to learn about the entire growing process of fungi, and then to watch the mushrooms grow (and grow VERY quickly) right in front of their eyes.
{We took step by step pictures of the entire growing process. Enjoy! }
{After three weeks in a dark cabinet.}
{After sitting in the fridge for 2 days to start the fruiting process, we then let it sit on the table in our dining room and after 2 days this is what happened.}
Making of a Home 