A Spring Week in Photos

We're roaring through spring like crazy here, and all the outdoors-y bliss that comes with is being fully enjoyed. The sunshine is bliss, after a very rainy winter and early spring.

The kids are wrapping up school subjects one by one, which is SO fun. I'm loving watching their sense of accomplishment swell as they realize they're almost done with subjects they've worked on all year. They're going to finish two subjects this coming week... geography, and perceptual growth, and as a result they're anxious to get started on next week, which is rather cute.

My week in pictures:


Am I the only crazy person who loves peanut butter on my pancakes? Frank certainly thinks so, and the look of horror and disgust on his face every time I dress my pancakes is so predictably cute, I often have two or more pancakes so I can see it again.
Every time I open my silverware drawer I'm met with my cheerful turquoise and red holds-bags-shutters bin that just makes me happy... yes, "holds-bags-shutters" is the technical term for those thingies.
I have one clearly insane child who likes her peas frozen, which requires me heating up her lunch, and then putting frozen peas on her plate afterward. Is this not very weird?

Resurrection cookies from here. Which were SO fun to make with my kids, and so very delicious. I think we might have to make them every couple of months, just for a good recap, and good eatin'.

I made them kind of biggish, because you have to plan out your cookie sheet if you only have one oven... as they're in the oven all night long, you can't be having more than one cookie sheet. Next time I'm going to make a bunch of them more smallish.

Things are bursting forth into life in the yard. The Balsamroot is blooming around town, the hills are delightfully verdant, and the skies are blue blue blue. All this makes me so happy, and all of my plants made it through winter, which causes me to sigh with relief... I never expect them to make it through winter. They've all got at least an inch of green poking out of the ground now, so hooray!

Today I got a path drawn for me to follow, and at the end of it was a sweet note from Kiki. :-)

I love the summer wheels on Frank's car. It's much prettier with those rims, and when he leaves it home for the day, I look out the window at it, and resist the urge to climb in the cockpit and drive it as fast I can. It's so pretty and I do love me a fast, pretty car.

And, before this post gets any weirder, I'm going to end with a photo of my zebra grass, which is, by far, my favorite plant in my yard. It went from NO green poking out at all on Sunday to this much green today, and before we know it, it will be full and gorgeous and stripey and tall and rustle as the wind blows through it. I love it.

Have a wonderful weekend!!!

A Brief Perusal of My Cookbooks

Or as brief as I am capable of being anyway. :-) This is by no means a comprehensive list... I have a good dozen more books than this, but it is a basic outline of what I have, and what I love about cookbooks. I've never actually met a homemaker or a foodie that doesn't enjoy a good cookbook. I feel like I have a good start on my collection, but you can bet that should I live to a ripe old age before I kick the bucket in my sleep, it will be at least double what I've got already before that happens. My wish list has several more on it, and the mere thought of getting rid of any I have makes me shudder in horror.

Cookbooks fall into three categories for me:

1. The kitchen/food manual
2. The Conversational cookbook
3. The Food Novel (That's not a technical term, just what I like to call them.)

Food Manuals are necessary kitchen items. It's like having your mom in book form on your shelf. They are what you refer to when you need to know how long to bake the apple pie you threw together from different recipe sources, the book you refer to when you need to know what temperature pork should be before you pull it from the oven, and how many tablespoons of butter you're going to need to make a roux-based sauce for 8 people. Other than that, they are generally speaking, not overly fun to read. I included the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving in the Manual Section of this line-up because it is an invaluable resource for anyone who does any home preservation of food. I cannot begin to recount the information I have gleaned from it, and the amount of knowledge it holds, or the time I spent pouring over it last Summer. It is truly an amazing resource, and worth every penny of it's reasonable price.

When you have any interest in BBQ, you own these two books. Peace Love and BBQ definitely falls into the Food Novel category, and How to Grill is a great resource for any step of the way in food grilling, as well as recipes for any kind of meat, cooked many different ways from around the world.

These are the two cookbooks I have that are historical in nature. I love them, and would love to add to this section of my collection at some point. It's amazing what you can learn from them.

These are not necessarily cookbooks per-say, but I included them because they are so valuable for anyone who gardens their own food, or who relies on their freezer to maintain a well-stocked pantry. The Complete Book of Home Freezing is from the 1960's and The Food Lover's Garden is from the 70's. To me, that makes them quite delightful to read, because folks just spoke different back then. The sexism in The Home Freezing book just cracks me up.

These are my all "fun" cookbooks. Do I need them? No, not necessarily, but I have learned so very much from them. Some are more conversational, like Rachel Ray's, or from Earth To the Table, and are enjoyable to read, but are mostly focused on the food and recipes. Others, like Nigella Lawson's How To Eat read like a novel-the recipes are there, but so also is her Love Affair with food. This is probably my favorite type to read--who doesn't love a great love story?! :-) As a disclaimer, Nigella's does have some language in it. That being said, it is one of the most delightful cookbooks I've ever read, and as I've been a fan of hers for years, I'm so glad I finally worked around to getting one of her books. Her love of food will rub right off on you!

The cookbooks below are so valuable to anyone who makes dinner every day, or close anyway. Simplicity is key, and while there are enough recipes in each one that you can usually create a few things straight out of your pantry, they are also the cookbooks I go to when I have items that need to be used, but I'm not feeling the creativity to do something quite as extravagant as Cat Cora would do. The Cook Once/Eat Twice is an EXCELLENT resource, not just for new recipes that will help you do just that, but also for reading through, and re-training your mind to look at your own recipes for ways to modify them to a Cook Once/Eat Twice set of meals. Every homemaker should have at least one Slow Cooker recipe book. I love Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker book, and have gotten many great recipes from that book. My dad actually got it for me, which we found funny, because my mom is an AWESOME slow cooker cook, and I've learned most of what I know about using a slow cooker from her. :-) And, one pot meals are the best, because then you only have to clean one pot. A lot of those can be adapted to the slow cooker as well, and quick cooking recipes are a necessity for any busy mother. The Taste of Home Quick Cooking book is good, although their recipes tend to have a lot of Velveeta, Campbell's Cream of Chicken Soups, and Cool Whip in them, which drives me crazy. I NEVER use those things, of course. EVER! (ducks head a little guiltily) Okay, maybe here and there, when unavoidable. But, not as a general rule... I appreciate Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals because her ingredients tend to be more healthful, but I'm usually at about 45 minutes with her meal preparation. Which really isn't bad, and my kitchen looks cleaner than hers when I'm done. The way that woman throws vegetable chunks around while she's cooking makes me very uncomfortable. If you have to throw food to get your meal done in 30 minutes, I'll take 45, thank you very much. (Love you Rachael!)

This is my book, which I titled on a day that I was feeling particularly snarky. As that's most days for me, the title stands.

This book BADLY needs some organization. One day I will get to it.

And, I always read cookbooks with sticky tab thingys. That way you can always find something that sparks your interest.

The other wonderful thing about cookbooks is that you can usually read them every couple of months, and come away with something new, depending on what you've eaten and what you've learned since you last studied the cookbook.

Thanks for joining me on my cookbook tour! Please share--what's your favorite cookbook? Why? What one do you use the most? I can always use another cookbook on my wish list! :-)

Have a great weekend!

Peaches, Pickles, and Pears, OH MY!

Yesterday I **think** I finished my canning for the winter. Last year was my first year doing it, and we enjoyed everything so much all winter long, I set out to do a lot more this Autumn. So, without further ado, here is my final list. I am publishing this so I don't attempt to can any more this autumn, it's quite addicting. But, if I publish my final list, it will annoy me to can again, and not have something on that final list... therefore, I won't can anymore. Clearly I have given this a lot of thought--I have to, because I love this canning business, and I am an ADDICT. Please send intervention.

27 Quarts of Peaches. (2-20 pound boxes) These are so easy to do, and wonderful... and my family is OK with them, but they mostly endure the Peaches only because I like them best... they are much more fond of the...

55 Quarts of Pears (5-20 pound boxes (100 pounds, eek!)-at 12 dollars a piece, these are a steal--60 cents a pd!) Last year I only did 20-something jars of these, and it was NOT ENOUGH! Kiki could eat these for breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day, if I let her. So, a few weeks ago we opened the first jar of pears that I had canned this year, and we each got about one piece... and she polished off the rest of the jar, raving about them all the while... so, I canned two more boxes last night. To eight of these jars, just for fun, I added allspice (as seen in the picture below) for a sort of spiced pear action. Pears are much harder to peel than peaches, but thanks to me complaining about it on FaceBook, and PegLeg taking mercy on me, I have a handy peeler thing on the way to me called a Rotato, that she swears by--Thank you SO MUCH, PegLeg! Also, if you like your pears in halves, instead of quarters, like I do, I suggest a melon baller for taking out the core. I feel they hold their firmness and shape much better in the canning process when I leave them in as big of chunks as possible.

16 Quarts of Spaghetti Sauce--my recipe, which has been under development for about three years now, and is finally most excellent, I think. :-) With the help of Food Network, hours of scouring the web for other people's Spaghetti Sauce recipes, and the icing on the spaghetti cake was some help with the herbs and spices from PegLeg... (bet you didn't know you were going to be blogged about today, huh, PegLeg?!) Other than the bulk of the tomatoes, onions, and peppers, garlic, almost everything in this recipe is from my garden, which is fun. The rest I bought from a nice lady here in E. Wenatchee who has a huge garden and runs a veggie stand in the summer... I think I made her day when I came and bought her out. :-)

7 Quarts of Stewed Tomatoes--Winter Soups---YUM! This is NOT going to be enough, I know it already. But, this was 65 pounds of tomatoes, and, I don't feel like peeling any more tomatoes this year, thank you.

Canning tomatoes actually does save money for me... I get them SO cheap fresh, and in bulk in the summer months, and the cans of stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, etc., are really expensive. Plus, I know what's in these jars, which I really like. I can can with love. Har har.

16 Quarts of Applesauce... 40 pounds of apple--YUM! So good with BBQ. I can get mixed boxes of apples for 7 dollars for 35-40 pound boxes... so this is a VERY cheap side dish in the winter, and delicious. I like to use my own Pumpkin Pie Spice mixture in my applesauce. However, using an apple/peeler/corer/slicer for 80 pounds of apples, NOT FUN! I am going to get a food mill next year.

21 Quarts of Apple Pie filling... Last year we got a box of ENORMOUS apples... I blogged about it here. Anyway, there's no way we could have eaten all those beasts, so I chopped up a bunch of them and stuck them in the freezer for pies... it was SO handy!! I used them constantly for pie, crisp and cobbler... so this year I decided to can it up, since my freezer space is limited. We've already tested it out, and this recipe is AWESOME, I am so looking forward to using these this winter. If you haven't tried ClearJel yet, you should get on that... it's some pretty cool stuff!
And, pickled green beans, and pickled carrots... most of which are from our garden. We LOVE these... and, with just Frank, me, and Debris eating them, usually go through a while jar whenever we open one for dinner.

All total, I have done 48 jars of Jam this summer... we are already down to 34 jars... amazing. But, homemade jam is TRULY the cat's pajamas... my family complains about it any other way now, and oddly enough, that makes me happy. :-) This year I did Blackberry, Raspberry, Strawberry and Rainier Cherry.

And, it must be said, many thanks to my Gramma M & Aunt G, who have shared many a recipe, procedure, and their love of food preservation by canning with me... and my mom, who has given me many of the tools I need to do the job properly.

And, just because family will want pictures, we started school this week... here's a picture of my darlings, who are doing wonderfully--we are having so much fun--I'm clinging to that right now, because I am sure it won't always be that way... :-)

Since Auntie Caca came to visit last weekend, each day this week one or the other of them has wanted their hair done like Auntie Caca did hers on Sunday.

Have a wonderful day!

Workin'

Well, I didn't really mean to take a blogging break, but that's just sort of how it worked out.

Here's why:

My Grandparents came to visit this week, and while they were here, we got a lot done... My gramma, bless her heart, took care of the house and kids, while grandpa and I worked outside. I dug out our creek bed feature in the front yard...
It looks oh-so-unimpressive from the picture, but let me tell ya, it was hard work. I'm well on my way to having pre-pregnancy stomach muscles again. Thankfully I've got a few more digging projects to finish that job off. :-)
Grandpa helped me (Maybe I helped him?) build vegetable planting boxes...

And, my very favorite thing about the week, Grandpa built the girls (with a tiny little bit of help from me) a playhouse! Our yard is well on it's way to becoming a desert, western themed landscaped masterpiece (hey, I can dream) so I asked him if he could make a fake storefront, old west looking thing for the girls, and he definitely came through! It's just got it's first coat of paint on in these pictures, I've got to get letters to put "General Store" on the storefront, and a few trim pieces, flower boxes, etc., to finish the job. The girls are IN LOVE with this thing tho, I foresee many happy hours ahead for them in this playhouse!

I got a bunch of free brick off of Craigslist for a BBQ patio, so I started digging that out... I LOVE Craigslist! I'm currently actively praying that someone in the Wenatchee area will put materials for a deck on there, cheap, or free always works... (my mouth, God's ear!)

And, yesterday afternoon our load of river rock came in the darlingest little dump truck you ever did see... I got almost all the creekbed in for the front yard. Some of the rock will need to go to the backyard too, but guess what? I gotta dig that section out first. Yep. Rock Hard Core Muscles and Arms, here we come. Haha.

Debris took to making smiley faces with the rocks... She was quite peeved with me when I unthinkingly threw her masterpieces back into the creekbed.

This is what it looked like last night... Grandpa also built me a bridge for over the creekbed. We are going to be doing mostly draught tolerant landscaping in the front yard, I am so excited to buy plants now!!!

And, needless to say, I worked my tail off yesterday, shovelling all that rock. And, smiling and talking to the 15 bajillion neighbors that walked by my house. I noticed a few funny looks, but I was working pretty hard and didn't think too much about anything other than moving rock all afternoon. Around 7 I went into the house to go to the bathroom, and happened to glance in the mirror at this:

HAHAHAHA!! Needless to say, I just burst out laughing, hysterically. Here I am, this horribly dirty rock moving urchin, pretending to be a normal adult human being all day. I love it.

And, I'll leave you with a few parting shots of Kiki and Debris, who tucked PapaPapa in for an afternoon nap, generously sharing their blankies with him, and then proceeded to interrupt the nap by giving him wet willies.

They used this poor "unsuspecting victim" to discuss and practice the merits of different wet willy technique to great extent.

Have a great weekend!!

Saturday fun...

Saturday was a beatiful day. We were originally going to go losting, but we couldn't really leave the house in good conscience. You see, basically since last autumn, it's been so cold out, and we've been so busy, we've just chucked whatever out into the garage, and slammed the door shut as quickly as possible. So, needless to say, it was a disaster of immense porportions. It was giving me heartburn just to walk through it. It was making me feel quilty and inadequate every time I had to take the garbage out. I was avoiding going out to the freezer because it made me crazy to wend my way through the mess. It was HORRIBLE.

So, Saturday morning Frank went out and attacked it, and I joined him after I'd wrangled Kiki from the sundress and sandals she'd put on at 8:00 am, and convinced Debris that she actually had to wear clothes in order to leave the warmth of the house. Simply wearing snow boots was not sufficient.

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this on my blog before, and I'm too lazy to check, but Kiki is absolutely nuts about fishing. Every day she asks me if she can go fishing. Every day she tells me what she really wants is to go ice fishing. If there should happen to be a fishing show on Versus, or the Discovery Channel, or any other channel, her nose is glued to the TV, and she is yelling and cheering and hollering, and the channel absolutely cannot be changed. Every one in the family has to come check out the "ginormous" fish the person is catching. She is already planning on going to Alaska someday to go fishing, and going to where ever it is that they go to get herself a swordfish, and so on and so forth. It is quite the obsession, already. I sort of hope she hangs onto it, because how cool would that be?

Anyway, she is anxiously awaiting the days until she can go fishing this spring, and so, while we were cleaning the garage, she pulled out her "boat" and her fishing pole, and did a little practicing.

Debris, meanwhile, discovered the neighbor's cat. It was approximately the same size as her. I don't, as a general rule, like animals overly much. That being said, I have never wished that I wasn't deathly allergic to cats, until I had Debris, who adores most animals with every fiber of her being.

After a short while, Kiki couldn't resist, and she came over to say hi too.Awwww...So after she dragged, snuggled, tortured, kissed and generally terrorized that poor cat for quite some time, she decided she needed to go in the house. Her sweatshirt? COVERED IN CAT HAIR. Absolutely covered. She looked like a cat. It is currently sitting in a pile in my laundry room. I'm getting asthma attacks every time I do anything more than pass through there. I need to get that sweatshirt cleaned, ASAP. Also, when I pulled the sweatshirt over her head, she got a mouthful of cat hair. HAHA! She screamed over that for quite some time. I finally had to wipe her tongue off with masking tape to get her to be quiet about it.

So, Kiki and her came in the house and got themselves some chips and salsa to wipe the last of the cat hair off Debris' tongue, and Frank and I finished up in the garage.

He assembled our mini-windmill...

Yay! I can't wait to put it out--once we figure out where we want it.

And, with that in mind, we discussed options for our lovely whiskey barrels...

And the saddle Girl J gave me. I want all our chairs in the back yard patio/deck to be saddles. If you have any saddles with broken trees, or otherwise unusable/dangerous to horses, let me know. I want them. :-)

And, to round out the day, I did inventory on my canned goods. I discovered canning last year, and I had SO MUCH FUN! I can't wait to do it again. Now that I have discovered this homey task, I believe that for me, the passage of time will not only be marked by days, weeks and months on the calendar, but by the ratio of full to empty jars on my canned goods shelf.

It's also been fun to see what my family likes. For example next year I will not do any peach jam. They don't hate it, but they'll never eat it if there is strawberry. I need to do approximately 50 jars of strawberry and/or rasberry jam. I'm not kidding... we've gone through 14 jars in the past 4 weeks. I need to do three times as many pears, and half as many peaches. But, they love frozen peaches, so I need to do more of those. I need to do twice as many jars of my secret stewed tomato recipe. I need to do more pickled stuff that is not cucumbers. Frank and I like those. So, pickled carrots, and pickled green beans will be done next year. I have enough pickled cucumbers to last another winter. And, I most definitely need to fire roast red peppers, and can those up in small jars... they are very expensive to buy in the store, and it's annoying to have to open a big jar when all I need is one roasted pepper. Besides if Frank smokes them over hickory for me, they will taste way better than store bought anyway. So, that was our Saturday... Happy Monday! I'm going to go de-cat-ify my laundry room, while holding my breath and blinking like a madwoman.

Doing what I love...

Today, I should have done laundry. But, recovering from a cold, designing wedding invitations for one of my sister's weddings and wrangling the hoodlums who are also recovering from colds left me with an extremely bad taste in my mouth with regards to the laundry. Actually, I usually have that to begin with for some reason. It's a very hard chore for me to get into.

Allow me to back up to Tuesday, when I ran errands. It snowed in the morning--enough to cover the ground. When I left home, we were wading through wet snow. By the time we'd driven out of the grocery store's parking lot, and were headed for Costco, the pavement was dry, and the sun was shining. Gloriously. And the whisper of spring could be heard in my soul, for the first time this year. So, handily enough, the hardware store was halfway there, and the girls and I popped in to get what we'd need to start our seeds this year. Ever since Tuesday, I haven't been feeling top notch, so this afternoon I finally felt good enough to plant away...

This is the neato book my parents bought me from a lovely used book store in Wyoming. It was published in 1970... I dearly love old books like this. The author was born in Italy (home of my favorite foods!) and spent his life in Washington--the Seattle area, so while we are colder here in Wenatchee, the seasons are more similar than say, someone from Texas, or something. Reading this book is very inspiring, as you can just tell the author loves to grow his food.
YUM! Salsa! Homemade Jalapeno Poppers! Spicy enchiladas! Mexican Coleslaw! YUM!

Yum!! Petunias! Oh, wait. Nevermind. Last year I spent too much money on Petunias. I don't like spending money on annuals, I'm cheap like that. But, Petunias are one of my favorite flowers, so I'm gonna see if I can grow them from seed this year.

Shasta Daisies, and Black-Eyed Susans. Draught tolerant. Very important hereabouts. And, very pretty flowers. :-)

Kiki and Debris have been quite excited about this planting business, they couldn't wait to help.

They were sitting on my lap while they were planting, so the pics are all a little higgledy-piggledy.

So much fun!

Very precise...

Can I plant these ones? Can I? Can I?

All Done!

Fennel:

Tea made from Fennel soothes Asthma/Bronchial Congestion and also Indigestion and Gas.

A compress soaked in Fennel tea is very useful for soothing tired/swollen eyes.

Fennel Seed is delicious.

Fennel has beatiful flowers.

A bath with Fennel tea will soothe sore muscles.

In the olden days, they would add fennel leaves to their baths to reduce body odor.

What's not to like about Fennel?

I bet you didn't guess you'd learn all about Fennels amazing properties today, huh? I bet you're glad you stopped by here. :-)

Oh yeah, sage too, which is delish. Debris scribbled all over my sage marker.

Hyssop:

Can be used as a tea or made into a syrup to relieve cold and flu symptoms. Which I had me some of that right about now.

A poultice of the leaves can be used to heal cuts and bruises.

Beautiful in the garden and in floral arrangements.

Can be added to salads and soups.

I also thought it would be fun as a lesson for the girls... so many pivotal points in the Bible involved Hyssop, what a fun history lesson!

And Cumin:

Can relieve Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

Fights inflammation, pain and swelling.

Aids in iron absorbtion.

Aids in digestion, and relieving gas.

I use so much cumin in the tex-mex and mexican dishes I make, I thought it would be fun to see if I could grow, dry and grind my own.

Mint Juleps. Yum. I'm also toying with the idea of making a soap or lotion with mint in it that will actually make my skin tingle. There's nothing more annoying than a minty soap or lotion that doesn't tingle. I have some mint stuff right now I haven't had a chance to try yet, so if that stuff tingles, I might not bother with making it.

Yay! My very own Cilantro. I love Cilantro. I might have to get a pressure cooker and make my own canned salsa this year. Don't trust salsa in a hot water bath canner.

Italian Flat Leaf Parsley. YUM! The most underrated herb ever.

And, so concludes my post about gardening. That is not all I planted. Just the highlights. Hopefully I can keep them alive---seems very strange to drop tiny little thingies in the dirt and expect great things from them. It worked last year, so every year I should get better at this, right?!

I noticed last year that the days I spent outside were the days I was the happiest in the evening. With that in mind I am going to attempt to spend more time outside this spring and summer. That will be better for my kiddos, as well.