Beginning the Spring Garden

Most of my garden-savvy friends have already started their spring gardens, but I’ve only just started seedlings the last week or so.  I’m doing well this year to have even started seedlings before the last frost date, though, which is in line with my 2009 gardening goals.  So this is how exciting everything looks so far:

 

 

That tray has four sets each of green bell peppers, red bell peppers, Marconi sweet peppers, Roma tomatoes, eggplant, sweet basil, sage, and something else that I can’t remember because I lost the diagram.  Cayenne pepper, maybe?  I’m sure I’ll figure it out when/if it decides to grow.

 

There are still many seeds to start, and some will be direct-seeded when the days are consistently warmer.  These are some of the seeds I still have laying around:

 

Zucchini (2 varieties)

Lettuce (Lolla Rossa and a mix)

Cucumber (one variety for eating, the other for pickling)

Golden California Wonder Bell Pepper

Watermelon

Honeydew

Various beans, peppers, tomatoes, and herbs

 

I also planted five bare-root raspberry bushes, but I’m not sure if the conditions are just right.  They’re supposed to be in well-drained soil, so I put them in raised mounds at the highest point on my property.  If one survives, I’ll be happy!

 

I’ve chosen these particular fruits and vegetables because they can be pricey when buying the organic versions.  I’m also hoping to can lots of tomatoey things so I don’t have to buy them in cans lined with BPA.  Most of all, it’s exciting to eat food that was grown a few steps away from my house. 

 

Hopefully I’ll have some seedling pictures to share soon.  What are you planting this year?

Kitchen Prep/Baking Day

I’m not very organized with a lot of things, but over the last six months I’ve forced myself to make a weekly menu plan, stick to my grocery list (I’ve always made one, just never stuck to it), figure out what prep work is involved in the week’s food, and set aside time once or twice each week for food preparation.  If I don’t do these things, I find that we not only spend more money on food and create more food waste, but we also don’t eat as healthfully. 

 

I make no claims to having it “all figured out,” but having a few hours each week dedicated to kitchen prep has been such a blessing.  Here are some things typically involved in some of my kitchen prep days:

 

- First, make sure all the ingredients are on hand and locate all necessary storage containers.  This is important because it really sucks to go through all this effort just to find you don’t have a way to properly store everything.  I use three-cup sized plastic storage bowls (yeah, plastic is bad, but I can’t afford anything else right now) for darn near everything, so I usually have to sweep the kitchen beforehand to locate bowls that are holding things that could really be kept in a smaller container.  I never seem to have enough three-cup containers!

 

- Chop vegetables that won’t turn within three days.  I have two prep days during the week, so I only need to do enough work on each one to last half the week.  This usually involves chopping a couple onions, some celery, carrot, and bell pepper.  I don’t prepare garlic way ahead of time because it loses too much potency.  Also, when I buy celery, I dice the whole thing the first time I need some and store it in the freezer – I only ever use to sauté into a soup base or  to add to a roast, so I don’t need the crunch.  The vegetable scraps are saved for making vegetable stock or to add to a bone broth.

 

- Pull any items out of the freezer that I will need to use in the next three days.  I have to make a conscious effort to do this, or else it will be late afternoon before I realize the chicken or whatever isn’t thawed.  This is mainly because I prefer frozen items to thaw slowly in the refrigerator; meat that has been “quick-thawed” doesn’t taste right to me.

 

- Roast a whole chicken for dinner.  Prepping a chicken (or leg of lamb, pork roast, etc.) to roast in the oven is quick work and ensures a hot meal will be ready when you’re worn out after all the kitchen prep you’re doing.  It also guarantees you’ll have the raw materials for making a large batch of bone broth afterwards.

 

- Start soaking beans, seeds, etc. for cooking or sprouting.  Sprouting is new for me – I only started doing this a month ago – but it’s so easy!  I’ve sprouted chickpeas and lentils so far, and I’m going to try almonds or chia seeds next.  But that’s another post…

 

- Portion out and season meat for the freezer.  Sometimes I find really good deals on grass-fed ground beef, so I buy lots of it and separate it into ¾ pound portions or make hamburger patties.  For the hamburgers, I season them appropriately, shape them, and place them all in a freezer storage bag separated by wax paper.  Very convenient!

 

I’ve also been trying to establish a baking day – or at least add it into my general kitchen prep time.  Right now I just bake whenever I have the whim or whenever we run out of bread.  Last weekend I really had the baking bee in my bonnet, though, because I made two batches (that’s ten loaves, y’all) of freshly-milled wheat-spelt sandwich bread and a batch of banana muffins.  It’s kind of hard to reconcile baking with the general kitchen prep, though, because this is how my kitchen looks after an intense baking session:

 

 

 

What do you do in the way of kitchen prep?  I’d love to hear any suggestions!

Part of the Real Food Wednesdays blog carnival at Kelly the Kitchen Kop and Works-for-me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family.

Occupying Toddlers While Cooking

This is why toddlers need something to do while I slave away in the kitchen:

 

 

I don’t write very much about my children, mainly because I write as a release from what I do for twelve hours out of the day, but it seems germane to a discussion of healthy cooking to hash out what to do with the little ones while preparing those healthy meals.  Ideally they would just play quietly amongst themselves while I tie on an apron and get down with my bad June Cleaver self, but those of you with kids know how unlikely that would be!

 

So here is a list of things that work for us – each one doesn’t work every time, but I just cycle through this stuff until something does.

 

-         Peeling garlic.  My daughter (3 years old) is a pro.  I usually have to start it for her, but she loves helping Mom with one of the base ingredients of just about every meal.

 

-         Sifting and mixing.  I doubt this idea is new to anyone, but it usually works well for us.  If you’re worried about the kids messing up dinner, just give them a bowl of their own ingredients to mix and make a mess with. 

 

-         Also related to this is sorting and pouring – give them some small cups or bowls and chopped vegetables, dried beans, or pasta and let them have fun!

 

-         Counting practice.  There are so many things to be counted – tablespoons of oil as they go into the pan, cups of flour being poured into the mixer, etc.  Or use some chopped veggies or dried beans (like in the last example) as manipulatives in simple addition and subtraction problems laid out on the counter.  Toddlers love to count!

 

-         Food storage percussion time.  This one is obvious, but it works really well with my fourteen month-old!

 

-         Setting the table.  My daughter likes to do this one piece at a time, so I let her place each dinner plate, salad bowl, napkin, fork, water cup, etc., as well as any other accoutrements like bread and butter.  She is quite meticulous and will arrange and re-arrange each piece several times.

 

-         Talking about the food being prepared and why we have chosen to eat it.  I’m no nutritionist, but I can give a basic defense behind everything – good or bad – that I choose to eat.  I tell them that the eggs are full of vitamins and protein to keep us healthy and strong, plus they’re a great source of fat for my dairy allergic daughter.  I explain that we can’t have cantaloupe right now because it would have to be shipped from far away Chile and wouldn’t taste very good, but that the blueberries in our freezer are available to us because we froze them after we picked them last summer.  Of course they don’t understand all the underlying concepts, but at least they are getting some knowledge hooks that will help them make these connections on their own as they get older.

 

 

If you think this is a short list, you’re right!  I would love suggestions, so please pass along any you have.  

2009 Goals: Cooking

My goals for this category are closely intertwined with my gardening and sustainability goals (coming this weekend), so you’ll probably see some connections.  And as always, advice is coveted!

 

1)   Learn how to make sourdough bread.

 

I didn’t think my dreams of grinding grain at home to make real bread would’ve come to fruition in 2008, but God is gracious!  The next step is to learn the art of sourdough.  I have many web and physical (cookbook) resources on the topic, and I’ve got everything I need to begin, so I’m going to give this a try at the end of January, just before the garden gets underway.

 

2)   Learn how to lactoferment.

 

I’m totally clueless in the food preservation department, so I feel like I need to master something in that area.  Since lactofermentation is the only form of food preservation that increases the nutrition, why not start there?  (I also want to learn how to can tomatoes this summer, but only because I can’t live without my spaghetti sauce and salsa).  Two things I want to attempt are kimchi and sauerkraut.

 

3)   Buy less processed food.

 

We’ve never been big on a lot of processed food, but I do have a few standbys, for convenience’s sake – Rice-a-Roni Mexican Rice and plain Cheerios are the two that come to mind.  I make my own Mexican rice about half the time, but I still haven’t found a recipe that makes my family want to gobble it all down in one sitting.  I still haven’t tried the one out of Alice Waters’ Art of Simple Food, so that will be next.  The Cheerios are the main snack food of the littles, so I really just need to come up with some better – i.e., less processed, more nutrient-dense – snacky kind of item that I can make once or twice a week.  The older kids eat nuts, but my son can’t really chew them yet.  I’m going to scout around for ideas when I set up next week’s menu plan, then hopefully try out one new thing every week.  By summer, I would like to eliminate the Cheerio snack in our house!

 

4)   Eat out less.

 

We made it a goal last year to only eat out once per week, which is still a lot, but a big improvement over our entire lives previously.  This year we’re aiming to stick with that, since we had some periods where we really screwed up.  If we can do it, then next year we can try for once every two weeks.  Not only is eating out expensive, but most likely, the food will not be as nutritious as something we could make at home!

 

That’s all…but any suggestions are welcomed!  If all goes well and these are accomplished mid-year, then, by golly, I’ll establish some more goals.

 

This post is a part of the Nourishing New Years Resolutions Carnival at the Nourishing Gourmet.

Reading and Writing Goals in 2009

I’m still not feeling like cooking, or even writing about cooking, because dinner has become such a fiasco lately.  My orange chicken is super easy, but a clingy son and a daughter who is egging on said son make for an extremely irritated mother.  So I’ll share my recipe the next time I make it.

 

Let’s change the subject and talk about books.  Not bestsellers, but dusty old texts that are sometimes referenced in popular culture but actually only read by a few people during the high school or college years.  Classics.  These are the sorts of books I love, even if I slog through them sometimes.  For the last three years, it’s been hard to find a lot of time to read, and when I do, I end up reading nonfiction about some aspect of food.  Now, don’t get me wrong – I love me some Michael Pollan – but I need to lighten things up a bit.  For me, that means revisiting the Aeneid and reading Don Quixote for the first time.  I realize this is not what most people think of as light reading, but it’s a much-needed departure from the serious issues at hand.   In a year’s time, I’m sure I can squeeze both of those in.

 

My writing goal – 500 words per day – is not writing for this blog, necessarily, but I’m sure some of it will end up on here.  Every year I try to do NaNoWriMo but fail miserably.  I finally realized that my failure was due to a) not writing on a regular basis (and I called myself a writer!) and b) only sporadically writing more than a few paragraphs at a time.  This should be an easy goal for me, since I currently write at least 300 words per day, so I’m hoping to bump this up sometime in the middle of the year.

 

What are you reading this year?

2009 Goals, In-Depth: Spiritual Life, Parenting, and Personal Finance

I’m forcing myself to delineate my 2009 goals here so the people I know can hold me responsible.  So here’s more on the first three areas…

 

1.     Spiritual life

 

I need to find a time of day to read the bible (and do a few other things) without distractions.  I’ve been trying to do this at night before I go to bed, but that’s the problem – I’m too tired from the day to make it worthwhile.  I could wake up early and do this stuff – which is what a lot of productivity resources recommend – but I’m just not very good at doing that, either.  I have to start working (as a mom and as a babysitter) by 7:15am, so I’m lucky to get out of bed by 7.  The kids’ afternoon naptime is the best possibility right now, and if I can aim for just three days a week, this goal might be attainable.

 

2.     Parenting

I need to get back into structuring the day for the kids, so I will set aside a time (how about one of those afternoons during nap?) to plan out a week’s worth of activities.

3.     Personal finance

 

This last year was our best fiscal year ever – we are completely without consumer debt, we paid off my student loan, and now we’re just left with Husband’s student loan and the mortgage.  I’m still working, but completely from home, so if we can continue to pay off debt, we can work less.  With that being said, we realize we need to save money toward a minivan (eew, I can’t believe I just wrote that!).  That will be done with:

 

·        A few extra (occasional) babysitting commitments

·        The tax return

·        Eating out less – meaning once per week or less

·        Putting any overbudgeted money into savings (for instance, I budget $500/month for groceries and gas – if I spend less than that, the difference goes into savings)

This will all be done while maintaining another goal that I forgot to include in my last list – not shopping at Wal Mart.  This may sound contradictory to some of you – saving money and not shopping at the behemoth big box retailer.  But I will discuss this further when I detail my other goals.

Any other suggestions for achieving this set of goals?

Goal-Setting 2009

I’ve been trying to hash out my goals for this year, and I’ve come up with several categories: spiritual life, parenting, personal finance, reading, writing, gardening, cooking, and sustainability.  Maybe I’m being overly ambitious?  I’m going to try to keep the goals very simple, though, which is something I’m not very good at – keeping things simple.  Here’s what I have so far…

 

1.     Spiritual life

·        Read my bible three times per week.  This doesn’t sound like a lot, but right now I’m doing it a lot less than that!

 

2.     Parenting

·        Be more organized about planning out the day. 

 

3.     Personal finance

·        Save half the money needed to buy a new (to us) vehicle (about $5000).  This is a little ambitious, but our largest car – a 1995 Honda Accord – will likely not work for us at some point in the near future when it needs an expensive repair or our family outgrows it.  We just want to be prepared if/when one of those things happens!

·        Eat out no more than once per week.  We’re almost there, but we really need to renew our commitment to this.

 

4.     Reading

·        Re-read the Aeneid.   

·        Read Don Quixote for the first time.

 

5.     Writing

·        Write 500 words per day.  I set a goal earlier this year to write something daily, so I want to up the ante.

 

6.     Gardening

·        Start earlier this year.

·        Learn more about canning/buy a pressure canner.

 

7.     Cooking

·        Make sourdough bread.

·        Learn how to lactoferment.

 

8.     Sustainability

·        Continue to seek out more local food sources. 

·        Reduce plastic consumption.

 

Many of these categories overlap, and most of the goals need to be fleshed out further to form a plan of action.  So I will be working on that over the next couple of weeks! 

 

Are any of you working on similar goals?

A “Stop Doing” List?

I checked my Twitter feed (for the first time in awhile) today and came across something interesting from a California friend my husband and I hung out with last night.  He’s at a conference in Atlanta and simultaneously Twittering some of the highlights, one of which was about productivity:

 

“there’s infinite work, but finite time.” “create a stop doing list”

 

Of course, this goes completely against my typical busybodiness, but that’s probably a good thing. I have so much on my plate lately, but maybe some of those things are not worth my time and attention.  So here’s my impromptu “Stop Doing” List:

 

1) Stop trying to keep the house in show-ready condition all the time.

It’s not like our house is on the market right now (or any time in the foreseeable future, for that matter), but I have this annoying clean demon that lives inside of me and wants to sweep up every minute crumb in sight.  You would think that having two small children would’ve helped relax some of this by now, but it’s been programmed in my head since I was a kid (thanks, Mom and Grandma!) that cleanliness is the equivalent of godliness.  I know they meant well, but there’s more to life than housekeeping piety.

 

2) Assure myself that I don’t have to live 100% sustainably by tomorrow.

My mind tends to get overloaded with changing ten major things at once.  This week, it’s milling my own flour for breadmaking, finding alternatives to every single disposable item I use, declaring independence from breakfast cereal, and preparing my garden beds for spring.  (That wasn’t ten items, but I’m sure there’s more I’m not thinking about right now.)  Really, if I could just focus on one or two things at a time, I would get so much more done.  Multi-tasking is not always productive! 

 

3) [Stop worrying] about tomorrow…

…for tomorrow will care about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.  Matthew 6:34, anybody?