Home Remedies

I've learned some things in the last week. Practical, ordinary, daily things such as don't let the toddler eat blueberries in his best khakis and don't do anything with Sandia Green Chilies without wearing gloves.

Here's the thing though: we all have great hindsight. And it does no good to beat yourself up once the harm is done. What's called for in these situations is a little wisdom from grandma.

Here's what I learned:
1. pour boiling water through the back side of the fabric to remove fruit/berry stains. You may have to repeat a dozen times but the stain will, absolutely, come out. Just watch out for steam burns.
2. forget milk, butter, vinegar, lemon juice, baking soda, aloe, calendula, mechanical grease cutter, rubbing alcohol, bleach. None of it works. Wait it out with a bowl of ice water. My burn went away in about 12 hours.

So grandma's remedy didn't come through for me on the last one but the boiling water trick is sure fire. Does anyone else has some practical ways that grandma would have taken care of a quotidian problem? Please share your wisdom.

A Month of Cheap Eats

My husband challenged me to live on the food stamp budget for groceries. That meant taking my usual grocery budget of about $600 down to $250. And for the month of July, I came in at a grand total of $308. We still got a weekly organic CSA box, ate all organic fruits and veggies, as much local/organic everything else as possible, and paid $10 a gallon for local, raw, organic milk.

I cheated in tons of ways, though. That figure doesn't include any eating out or any of the stuff I already had on hand or got from my garden. Plus we were out of town until 4 July. So that's like four free days. We didn't have to skimp anywhere near what we would have if we were really living on food stamps. We're still shooting for a low grocery bill in August, so I'll let you know how it goes.

A few notes on how I cut my grocery bill in half:
We eat vegetarian most nights, and when we do have meat it almost never takes center stage.
I make bread, granola and yogurt at home, and we didn't buy snacky food like crackers, chips or granola bars.
Beans and rice.

My Google Calendar has all of the meals we ate (and some other random life events).

Meal Planning

Whilst serving stir-fry vegetables, tempe, and quinoa for dinner the other night, I learned the benefit of meal planning. My boys were much more inclined to quietly eat the meal set before them when they could see, posted on the fridge, that tomorrow would bring more 'manly' food to the dinner table.

As a side note, my brother-in-law, who is living with us this summer, has enlightened me to the fact that there are girly dinners and manly dinners. I knew this sort of. I mean, if I try to serve a salad, cheese, and crackers for dinner, I expect my husband to start foraging for something else to eat within the hour. I just didn't realize that the list of girly dinners extends to quiche, soufle, pesto pasta, vegetable stir-fry, roasted vegetables, pot pie, and most other meat stretcher meals. Hmm.

Since we are trying to eat only ethical meat and still stick to a reasonalbe food budget, I've taken to cooking meat a couple times a week and then scattering a litle pepperoni on one of Friday night's pizzas. Need less to say, that didn't quite cut it for the SEAL training brother in law. After many conversations about animal ethics, non-meat protien sources, the desired caloric intake, and the need for high-protien meals, we struck a shaky compromise that includes some tempe and some manly slabs of meat, some non-vegetable lasagna and some vegetable quiche.

Beyond providing encouragement to my boys during the less 'manly' dinners, posting my meal plans has also helped me streamline my grocery shopping and find dinner solutions at the end of an exhausting day. I frequently change the order of meals according to unexpected evening plans. I'm also open to changing up the meats and veggies according to sales at the store. But I have the week's meals planned and budgeted. Meat dishes are balanced with the vegetarians nights and leftovers are planned for the nights when we don't have much time to eat. And at the end of every week, no matter how weird the rest of the meals have been, we can always look forward to pizza.

I've also found sparkrecipes which allows me to input my recipes and it saves them in my cookbook and calculates nutrition info. Ever wonder how many calories or how much cholesterol your homemade meal contains? Well, wonder no more. I know I'm not the only one who goes through seasons of counting calories only to realize that the 4000+ daily caloric intake is probably a more likely cause of the tight jeans than the dryer! Anyway, I love this tool for those seasons.

I'm going to post my meal plans (when they look impressive and occassionally when they inlcude spaghetti and hot dogs night after night) because I'm always wondering what my friends eat for dinner so that I can stimulate the frequently lagging creative juices. What are your favorite meals? Would you consider putting the recipes in sparkrecipes and posting a link? I'll do the same for some of my favorite meals! These two weeks include a lot of meat. Part of the SEAL training compromise!

Monday - World's Best Lasagna and Salad
Tuesday - Leftover Pizza (from last Saturday)
Wednesday - Applegate Italian Suasages (only purchased on sale!) and Kim Chi
Thursday - Lasagna Leftovers
Friday - Curried Pork, Raisens, and Rice and Salad
Saturday - Homemade Pizza

Monday - Thai Mango Chicken and Quinoa and Salad
Tuesday - Leftovers
Wednesday - Pasta and Pork Chirizzo Sauce (homemade in a massive batch and frozen in 2-4 person quanities)
Thursday - Quiche and Salad
Friday - Homemade Pizza
Saturday - Leftover Free-For-All

And for fun, here's a fermented pancake recipe thats great for a weekend breakfast. Its from sally Fallon's cookbook Nourishing Traditions. Sort of. The yogurt instead of milk idea is from her and I pretty much used family recipes for the rest.

Daily Sun Tea & Eggs

Sun Tea

My new kick is making two canning jars of sun tea every afternoon. I love using the sun (rather than the stove) to make the tea. And I love the repetition of measuring out the herbs and water on a daily basis. My oldest loves to go 'check if the tea is ready' and bring it inside when he thinks it's done.

I use 1 Tbsp of dried mint and 1 Tbsp of dried lemon balm per 32 oz. jar. It's so refreshing on a hot afternoon with a dash of agave. Both of these herbs are very calming on your mood, as well as your digestive system.

Eggs

We're getting eggs on an almost daily basis now! It's crazy and I feel like a little kid whenever I go outside and realize that we haven't checked for eggs in awhile (like half an hour). It makes me almost giddy to walk over to the coop, squat down, lift the door, and peak inside. It's kind of like Christmas everyday. Although not quite as spiritually significant.

Easy Quiche Crust from Scratch

This recipe is copied from My French Cuisine. I copied it because it really was easy and wonderful and because I want to be able to find it again. :-)

This dough is called "pâte brisée" in French (pronounce "pat breezay"). It is the base for all quiche and pie recipes. If you take the time to make your own crust, your quiche will taste a million times better (at least!) than if you buy it ready-to-use.

The ingredients below are enough to make 2 thin crusts. Use one half of the dough right away and freeze the other half for your next recipe!

• 250 grams of flour (1 and 3/4 cups or a little over 1/2 pound, unbleached, all-purpose)
• 125 grams of unsalted butter (1 stick)
• 1 egg
• 1 tea spoon of crème fraîche (or sour cream if you can't find it)
• 1/2 tea spoon of salt.

The base ingredients are the flour, salt and butter. The egg and crème fraîche are here to help them stick together (plus the egg will give the crust a nice golden color).

1. First sift the flour over a large bowl and add the salt.
2. Cut the butter in tiny cubes. Incorporate the butter to the flour with your finger tips (you can't really use a spoon here... You could use a pastry blender but you'd loose all the fun of making your own "pâte brisée"). The dough will feel like coarse sand grains between your fingers.
3. Push the flour and butter mix on the sides of the bowl, digging a hole in the center.
4. Break the egg and pour it in the hole in middle of the bowl. Beat it a little with a fork then use a wooden spoon to incorporate the flour little by little. Add the crème fraîche or sour cream and mix again until the dough is homogeneous. Use your hands to knead the dough and form two balls of the same weight.
5. Place the balls of dough in plastic wraps and let them rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour before using or freezing.
6. Let the dough warm up a little before rolling it out.

Weeklidian Dignities

I'm planning on doing this on a weekly basis this summer. Anyone want to join me? It'll usually be Thursday mornings.

CANNED

And Oh Boy, Did We Can!
Jesse and I hit the project from 8am - 5:30pm with help from Danidoodle and Christie in the middle. Even with many hands, it was not light work.
A portion of a day's worth of canning. We made Ginger Rhubarb and Strawberry Rhubarb Jams and a plain Rhubarb for adding to other culinary creations.

We think Ezekiel was confused about what was getting canned. He climbed in and stirred himself with a wooden spoon for a while and then he and Og moved on to using the pot for music making efforts (ie: banging spoons and toys against the pot in order to create maximum noise).