The Making of a Home Shop

August 26, 2013August 25, 2013 / makingofahome / 2 Comments

I am so incredibly excited to announce the official opening of the Making of a Home Shop! It has been nearly two years since I began writing this blog, and after a great deal of thought and consideration, I have decided to branch off and sell a few of the items I often discuss with you in this space. I am so thankful for each and every one of you who join me here each day, and I hope you enjoy the new and exciting things I have in the works for Making of a Home.

Come on in, and welcome to the Making of a Home Shop!

Our Summer Kitchen

August 20, 2013 / makingofahome / 1 Comment

With the garden flourishing, there is a lot of action in our summer kitchen. Thank goodness for the cool temperatures that graced us last week! It made the whole idea of standing over multiple pots of boiling liquid all day a lot more tolerable.

Grandpa Dit’s Bread and Butter Pickles were first on the to-do list. One of my favorite canning goodies.

Preserving sweet peppers for winter. I take the time now to dice the peppers, and then freeze them in plastic freezer bags. Then in the winter I can just pull them out and add them to anything calling for some sweet pepper love.

A new one for us: Jalapeño Jam. It sure smelled good while making it. I guess we will see how it tastes in a few weeks. Fingers crossed.

After harvesting our rhubarb, I chop it up and freeze it in freezer bags so we can enjoy this spring and summer treat all winter long.

Our tomatoes are finally starting to ripen. I must say, our tomatoes are kind of lack luster this year, which is very disappointing because putting by tomatoes is my most favorite produce to preserve. But here is one nice sized basket I was able to garner from the garden last week. I made tomato sauce with this collection, and then froze it in our deep freeze for the winter months when throwing pasta in a pot and adding a jar of homemade tomato sauce is just what those little school girls want for dinner.

B.L.T.s I would be hard pressed to find anyone who does not think this sandwich tops the list of greatest summertime foods. The bread is from Banana Cherry Bakery, the bacon is from the hog we purchased from this farmer, the tomatoes are from our garden, and topped off with a touch of homemade mayo. (I use Jamie Oliver’s mayonnaise recipe from this cookbook.) Oh my. Delicious.

And we all know that when you eat those salty B.L.T.s you need something sweet after, right? We whipped up a batch of this amazing cinnamon sugar popcorn. Wow. It has quickly become a staple at our snack times this week.

The makings of our dinner from last night, and breakfast this morning. I love the fullness that this time of year brings. Such garden abundance is truly a blessing.

At This Moment

August 19, 2013August 18, 2013 / makingofahome / Leave a comment

At this moment, I am…

~labeling all kinds of school supplies. I still cannot believe school starts this week. Where has this summer gone? My stomach is churning as I think about it.

~harvesting rhubarb from our garden. I’m hoping to whip up some rhubarb squares later this afternoon. Yum.

~transforming a portion of our playroom into a library for my little book-lovers. More on this revamped space later this week.

~re-reading Catching Fire. Oh my. I forgot how much I love this book.

~loading up the van with needed supplies for the school garden. We are setting up an outdoor classroom space today, just in time for the start of the new school year.

~wishing we could add some more days (or weeks really) to this fleeting summer.

~hoping each of you has a wonderful start to your week.

Kids with Cob

August 6, 2013August 5, 2013 / makingofahome / 2 Comments

This weekend, for my husband’s birthday present, we journeyed up north a bit to the Angelic Organics Learning Center for a “Kids with Cob” class. We had been wanting to attend a class at Angelic for a long time now, and I am so very happy we finally had a chance to attend. We had the most wonderful afternoon, learning about building with cob, getting messy, and playing with the animals.

It’s so amazing to watch the little ones soak in so much information and knowledge, while immersed in creative activity. And best of all…the kids (and adults too) got to play in mud all day. What could be better on a beautiful Friday afternoon?

I encourage anyone living in the Rockford area to take advantage of the Angelic Organics Learning Center and all of the wonderful classes they offer in regards to holistic and sustainable living. You are sure to leave with lots of great information, and even more amazing memories.

Cherry Pomegranate Frozen Yogurt

August 5, 2013July 31, 2013 / makingofahome / 1 Comment

It seems that it has been some time since I have shared one of my recipes in this space, so today is the day my friends. Today I bring you yet another of our family’s experiments with a cow’s milk dairy free recipe. My girls just love this frozen yogurt recipe I concocted, and I hope you and your family enjoy it as well. It is incredibly simple, so you can whip it up on no time for a fun, summer snack.

Cherry Pomegranate Frozen Yogurt

10 oz dark sweet cherries (these can be fresh or frozen and thawed)

1/2 cup honey

1 cup 100% juice pomegranate juice

1 cup yogurt (We use goat’s milk yogurt, but any yogurt would work great.)

Add the cherries and honey to a blender. Blend until smooth. Next add the juice and the yogurt. Pulse a few times in the blender until combined. Pour the mixture into your ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer’s instructions. Enjoy!

*A note about all my recipes: I use all organic ingredients, local when available. I use non-homogenized milk, and all of the dairy we use is from animals raised on pasture. I also use oils that are non-GMO verified. All our meat is raised locally on organic feed, and our beef is grass-fed, grass-finished. All our spices and cane sugar are fair-trade certified and purchased through a cooperative.

This Week in my Garden

July 25, 2013July 24, 2013 / makingofahome / 2 Comments

It’s crazy what can happen to a garden in a matter of weeks. For so much of the summer, our garden is green. Lettuce, kale, arugula, Swiss chard, peas, beans, carrot tops, etc. But now…now is when the real fun begins. Color.

The raspberries are starting to produce juicy crimson fruits, tomatoes are moving from green to a pale red, and blood red beets pop from beneath the surface of the soil.

Join me today for a walk through our garden…

Just Peachy

July 24, 2013July 22, 2013 / makingofahome / 6 Comments

The time has arrived again. My favorite food time of the year. Peach season. There is nothing that ignites more excitement in my taste buds than those handheld orbs of deliciousness. We are extremely fortunate that my in-laws have a beautiful peach tree on their property that has produced a record number of peaches this year.

So, it has been all things peaches in these parts, my favorite of all being peach pie. If you are interested in my Grandma Dit’s peach pie recipe, you can find it here. Enjoy!

Beans, Beans Everywhere

July 17, 2013July 15, 2013 / makingofahome / Leave a comment

One thing is for sure, we have a LOT of beans coming through our kitchen door these days. So many beans in fact that there is no feasible way to eat them all. Enter “Operation Dilly Bean.” If you have never eaten a pickled bean, a.k.a. dilly bean, you must make it your duty to eat one this year. A dilly bean earns a solid ranking in the top 3 list of pickled veg in my book. Yum.

This past Sunday found me hovering over the kitchen island chopping beans and breathing in vinegar fumes, with visions of dilly beans dancing in my head. The past few years I used a dilly bean recipe from this book, but this year I decided to mix things up a bit and try something new. I used the basic pickling recipe from this cookbook, and based on how great Miss English’s other recipes are, I’m sure this one will not disappoint.

Our System

July 16, 2013September 1, 2015 / makingofahome / 1 Comment

When we created our garden five years ago, we sectioned off a very small portion of our gardening space with chicken wire and created a compost pile. Since that time, our composting operation has been evolving because to be perfectly honest…it never really worked as well as we felt it should.

When we visited Growing Power in Milwaukee, Wisconsin a year and a half ago, we were inspired by the vermicomposting system Will Allen set up, but we were never able to get the results from our worms that he seemed to be getting. It was not until this past winter when I read Will Allen’s book Good Food Revolution, that I realized our mistake. We were overworking our worms. We were filling our vermicompost with loads of food and paper scraps and they simply were unable to keep up. While reading Allen’s book, I discovered Growing Power’s secret: Growing Power allows their collected food scraps to partially decompose first, then add the worms to the mix. Bingo.

So, after many a year of trial and error, I believe we finally have a system set up that will work. Because as Will Allen says in his book, he can predict a garden’s growing success based on “how much attention has been paid to creating fertile soil.”

We place our compostable materials (food scraps, grass clippings, leavings, paper shred, egg cartons, coffee grounds, etc.) in the wooden boxes. (We cover our boxes with burlap just to cut down on the bugs and smell, but it still allows the compost to breath.) We try to turn this pile over every couple of weeks. Once the scraps begin to brown and break down, we move them to the red garbage can, and/or the blue plastic bin, and/or the black tower. These bins have some holes drilled on the sides for aeration, and this is where our worms are. (The black tower is an actual vermicompost bin we purchased a few years back. The benefit of this type of bin is that liquid can drain off the bottom and can then be used to make compost tea.) Once the worms do their work we are left with compost the consistency of coffee grounds. This compost can then be added to our garden.

All Things Garden

July 15, 2013 / makingofahome / 2 Comments

With July now well under way, we find ourselves amidst the heart of our growing season, with a list of chores longer than we could ever hope to complete in a day. Although I can sometimes get frustrated by this endless to-do list, I am reminded that the jobs of a garden are never actually done, so therefore I need just to work through each day, doing what I can to tend to this growing space of ours.

In honor of this height of garden productivity, I’ve decided to designate this week as “Garden Week” here on my blog 🙂 I hope you all enjoy this fun little adventure through our week of gardening bliss.

To start things off for the week, I wanted to give you a little taste of just what our garden is looking like. Off we go…