sustainable living

Busting Out

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Yesterday my oldest daughter came to me and said, “This entire weekend has been a lamb weekend!”  Although this winter has been extremely mild, and March came in much like a tame lion instead of a ferocious one, I would definitely agree with my daughter that this weekend marked the beginning of the “lamb time” of March!

We ventured outdoors and spend the large majority of our weekend there.  We played, we organized, we made plans for summer.  It was truly a wonderful weekend where we were able to feel the warmth of the sun our skin, and hope that this beautiful weather is here to stay.

I hope you all enjoy this Monday morning!  Have a wonderful week!

 

Reflection

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What I will remember about this week:

~Our first sprouts peeking out from the soil.

~The pitter patter of tiny feet running on hardwood floors.

~My husband brewing beer outside in 30 degree temperatures…and wearing shorts.

~My two little girls shedding their coats in a local greenhouse and then dancing in the middle of the perennial flower section.

~My eldest, with her petite red nose, sitting at the kitchen table breathing in the vapors of lemon ginger tea, hoping the steam will help her sniffles.

~The sounds of childhood wonder spilling into the hallway as my little ones are fully engrossed in their imaginative play.

~My tiny two-year old, donning a bear hat and pink leotard, attempting to skip around the skipping circle at her weekly dance lesson.

~Having an “Oh La La Beauty Day” with my girls, soaking our feet in our newly made lavender bath salts.

~My youngest, with hands on hips, observing the living room of my sister’s house and saying, “I like this place.  It so, so cool!”  (Even though she has visited hundreds of times…ha!)

~The girls, in their PJs, sitting at their picnic table enjoying the 60 degree day while Daddy grills out.

~Looking out my kitchen window, noticing the snow is now fully melted, and knowing that spring is right around the corner.

Yes, this week was one of greatness.  I hope your week was filled with wonderful memories as well!  Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

Simple Solution

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In keeping with the theme I seem to have started this week, I wanted to pass along an extremely easy recipe that my family uses at least once a week.  I try to make my family’s bread from scratch, but as we all know, making yeast breads can sometimes be very time consuming. On those nights when time is scarce, I always reach for this recipe.

Mix together 2 cups self-rising flour and 1 cup local stone ground wheat flour.  (I also add in 1 scoop of Garden of Life’s Super Seed.  This, of course, could be left out.)

Then add 12 ounces of your favorite beer.  (Maybe you were so inspired by Monday’s post on home brewing that you have some homemade brew on hand to add!) Mix in the beer and then pour the batter into a loaf pan.

I like to sprinkle a bit of brown sugar on the top at this point.  But you could definitely leave that part out.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes.

Enjoy!

Brew Master

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As a family, we try to make as many of our meals from scratch as possible.  We bake our own bread, make our own pizza crust and love to can our own sauces and veggies.  So it seemed like a natural progression to begin to make our own beverages as well.

My husband has recently discovered home brewing and I’m pretty sure he has found a new love!  And I must admit, as skeptical as I was in the beginning, there is something just awesome about knowing that the brews our family enjoys on holidays and celebrations is crafted by our hand.

I am not much of a beer drinker myself.  I would much prefer a good glass of red wine, so we are thinking we may begin an adventure in wine making in the very near future.  Hopefully I will have an update on that soon!

“I want to make my own thing!”

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These are the words that ring throughout our home at least three times a week.  My girls just love to cook and/or bake “their own thing” and yesterday was quite the large step for my oldest daughter.

In the past, she had been content to mix random ingredients together, put it in our counter top convection oven (with Mommy’s help of course), and eat her creations.  Now with that said, she has done quite a bit of experimenting with various flavors and has come up with some delicious combinations, but the creations were random none the less.  But yesterday she said to me, “Mommy, I want to make my own thing, and I want it to be an actual recipe.”

So I decided, why not throw caution to the wind and let her completely take over the kitchen.  With a little bit of my help reading the measurements, she made cut out sugar cookies completely on her own!

Now the crowning moment of this adventure was when it came to the topping for these cookies.  My little five-year old gazed up at me and said, “Mommy I think I am going to sprinkle a little sugar, cinnamon and rosemary  from our garden on top of the cookies.  That way we don’t have to use food coloring or sprinkles with the yucky chemicals.”  (Oh she had just made her mama’s day with that one!) And an fyi…the cinnamon and rosemary combination is one of those flavor combos she came up with during her previous food experiments.  And let me tell you, it is really delicious!

Once she was done with her sprinkles, she sat back, looked approving at her creations and said, “Perfect.  It’s just like Jamie Oliver’s pumpkin muffins when he sprinkles lavender flowers on top for sprinkles!”  (My how this little one impressed me yesterday!)

Pumpkin Scones

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As promised yesterday, here is the recipe for the pumpkin scones I made on “Seed Starting Day.”

Mix together the following ingredients in a large bowl:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 tablespoons sugar

4 tablespoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Using a pastry cutter, add 1/3 cup cold butter cut into small pieces.  Make a well in the center of the mixture and set aside.

Next mix the following ingredients in a medium bowl:

2 eggs

½ cup heavy cream

¾ cup pumpkin puree (In the fall my husband halves pie pumpkins and scrapes out all of the seeds.  He then roasts the pumpkin halves on the grill until soft.  I then scoop out the meat of the pumpkin, run it through the food processor, and freeze it for later use in recipes.  This is what I used for this recipe.)

Add egg mixture to dry mixture all at once.  Then stir with a fork until just moistened.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and flatten into a circle.  Then cut the dough into wedges.  Separate the wedges as much as possible.

Brush the  wedges with a bit of additional pumpkin puree and sprinkle with additional cinnamon and sugar.

Bake at 400 degrees for 12-14 minutes.  Serve warm.  Enjoy!

2012 Seed Starting Day

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Ever since we started our garden three summers ago, the third weekend in February marked our “Seed Starting Day” for the year’s garden.  This past Saturday marked this occasion and a wonderful day was had by all.  As I said last week, I was feeling the need to get in the soil and grow something, so I was very happy to see that day pop up on our calendar!

We normally start the morning off with some sort of yummy breakfast, made with products from last year’s harvest.  This year I made pumpkin scones, and they were delicious!  (This recipe to follow in a post later this week.)

Then the girls drew pictures of what they thought would happen to the seeds once they were planted.

Here is my five year old daughter’s drawing.  She said, “This is a picture of a pot, with the plant marker and a few sprouts coming up.  The sun and rain are coming down on the sprouts.”  Such the gardening expert!

This is the drawing my two year old completed.  She said, “This is a plant with a rainbow.” She is on her way to garden expert status very, very soon I’m sure.

This year for our seed starting mix, we took a five gallon bucket and filled it up half way with compost from last summer.  We then mixed in one small package of coir (coconut husk fiber), which helps to retain moisture much like a peat mixture does.

We mixed away until we had a nice ground mixture, perfect for seed starting.

Then my husband and girls got busy planting tomato seeds (Amish Paste, Martino’s Roma, Speckled Roman, and Italian Heirloom…all my favorite tomatoes to make tomato sauce with in August), basil seeds and Butterfly Weed seeds.  The girls were really able to contribute to the effort this year and it was awe inspiring to see those little hands working the earth, and instinctively knowing how to plant these small seeds so that they will later grow to provide us with a bounty of vegetables.

We keep our seeds in our craft room in our basement.  My husband hooks up fluorescent shop lights that can be moved up as the plants grow.  He also hooks the lights up to a timer so that the plants can get 14-16 hours of light per day.  We also put an oscillating floor fan in there with the seeds to help prevent mold or fungus from growing on the surface of the soil.

Upstream

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“To get through the hardest journey we need take only one step at a time, but we must keep on stepping.”

-Chinese Proverb

Last week I attended a meeting with a small group of like-minded mothers, trying our best to raise our children in the way we believe is best, despite our current cultural trends otherwise.  One of the women at the meeting raised her hand and said she and her husband often talk about the difficultly they have raising their family in this counter-cultural way and that sometimes it just feels like they are swimming upstream.  She said that her husband constantly reassures her that their journey is only making them stronger.

But aren’t there times when we all would rather do just that?  Just go with the flow and stop swimming.  Choose the life of ease and be done with all the strength and effort it takes to constantly go against the grain.  Wouldn’t it just be easier to go to the grocery store and buy that can of pasta sauce instead of standing in front of an 18 quart pot of boiling liquid on a ninety-degree August day?  Wouldn’t it be easier to just sit in the drive through line, while texting friends, and then order a burger and fries?  Wouldn’t it be easier to catch up on the celebrity gossip and carry on a light-hearted conversation with a group of moms at the mall?

This weekend there were times when I felt this pull to just sink into the couch cushions, and be swept away by what the majority of our culture views as normal. I felt a tug to be drawn away into the abyss of pop-culture, of who is dating whom and who is wearing what.   I thought about how much easier it would be to be thinking about what someone had just posted on Facebook, instead of where we should purchase our eggs and chicken from this year because the farmer we formally purchased these goods from is no longer raising chickens.  Wouldn’t it just be easier to take the blue pill and flush that red one right down the toilet?

But it was when I tucked my beautiful girls in bed last night and looked at their innocent faces, those faces that rely on me for everything, that I began to feel more like myself again.  They are my reasons, two very important reasons, I get up each and every morning and choose to go about life the way that I do.  They are my reasons for continuing that forward breaststroke in the stream that constantly seems to be giving its last-ditch effort to thrust me back in the other direction.  They are my reasons, that no matter how tired, worn out, and run through the ringer I feel, I cannot give up.

I hope each of you is given a renewed sense of hope and faith on this Monday morning to do what you believe is right in your life, despite what our culture tells us is normal.  Have a wonderful week!

A Bit of Spring

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This morning I feel a bit remiss because as I peer out my kitchen window I find a fairly hefty amount of snow fell overnight.  The garden that was showings signs of early spring just yesterday is now covered with a thick layer of snow and the earth is hardened once again by the cold temperatures.  Even though we have had a very mild winter, the need to delve into the soil and plant something is seeping into my veins.

I often find myself feeling this way on these cold February mornings and I think today I have come up with a temporary solution for my need to plant something, anything.

The girls and I grab a few Mason jars and go to work.  We will sprout some seeds this morning!  You can purchase sprouting seeds at just about any garden center and all it takes are those seeds, cheese cloth, a Mason jar and water.

Simply follow the directions on the back of the seed package and in about 4 days you will have lovely little sprouts to add to salads, stir fries or smoothies.

I wish you all a wonderful weekend filled with fun and family!  Enjoy!