First Day Of School

Today was Charlotte's first day of preschool for this year. She brought flowers from our garden to her teachers (just like my mom did for us each first day of school). She has grown so much this past year. She has come out of her shell and really blossomed. I'm so excited to see what this year holds for her. My big girl.

Chest Freezer Inventory

We have a crazy amount of cooling appliances in our house. We have 2 full sized refrig/freezers and a chest freezer. You'd think it would be too many... but we use them all almost to capacity.

In our kitchen fridg/freezer I keep things we use every day. The freezer is used for veggies for dinners, popsicles, juice concentrates, and chicken broth.

We keep another fridge/freezer combo in the playroom. The fridge is used to store my bulk flour and baking needs as well as overflow from the kitchen fridge. It's nice to have the room to stock up when things are on sale. The freezer section is used for meat and the tomatoes from my garden for the time being.

Then we have our chest freezer. I love this freezer since it holds so much and keeps it so cold with minimal freezer burn. The downside is that it's hard to know what's in the bottom since it's covered with stuff.

Today I decided to do an inventory of what's in there and keep that list posted on the freezer so I can mark things off as I use them. I'm hoping this helps things to be used instead of being stored forever. I got it done in about 10 minutes and thanks to my wool mittens, my hands stayed warm.

Here's a pic of my full freezer:
Here's everything laid out on the floor ready for counting.

Inside I had: 5 loaves of store bought bread

3 half loaves of homemade bread

8 bags of garden green beans

1 gallon jug of water/ice (you never know when you'll need a ice block for a cooler.

2 containers of lentil soup

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6 bags whole blueberries

7 bags whole strawberries

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1 2 c. bag of cherry puree

1 1 c. bag of cherry puree

1 Lg. bag of peach slices

6 4 C. bags of peach puree

1 2 C. bag of peach puree

1 qt. container of butternut squash

6 1 C. bags of strawberry puree

5 2 C. bags of strawberry puree

***Why so much puree, you ask? I plan to make flavored applesauce this fall and whatever I don't use in applesauce, I'll use to make more jam**
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I love these little baskets that fit at the top of the freezer.

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In one basket I have all my jams:

Strawberry- 3 Lg, 2 Med.

Peach - 6 Lg, 3 med, 11 small

Blueberry/strawberry 2 med, 4 small

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In the other I have my applesauces and fruit butters:

Applesauce: 6 Lg. 1 med.

Applebutter: 17 med.

Peachbutter: 3 med.

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I'm so glad I did this today. I didn't even remember that I had peach butter. I'm going to use it to make my applebutter muffins. I can't wait to see how the flavor changes with peach vs. apple butter.

To Frog or Not To Frog, That is the Question

Okay, I need some help here. I want some honest opinions.
I'm knitting a hat for a child and I thought by combining a pink wool with a pink/camo sock yarn, I'd get a nice cozy hat with some interesting colors. I'm not sure if I like the results. I don't want to knit further until I know if it's pretty or if I've been staring at it too long.

So, please tell me, should I frog this (meaning rip it out) or is it pretty). Please be honest! Remember some child, probably mine, will be walking around in public with this on her head.


The colors are pretty true to what they look like in person. The camo colors are a light to medium grey-olive green.

The Four Legged Family Members

In this corner, weighing in at 5 pounds, we have Oscar the Chihuahua. He is the sweetest Chihuahua I have ever met. He loves everyone! Even children. We adopted him when he was a young adult so we figure he is about 8-10 years old. His true love is Jon. Oscar follows Jon around when he's home and when Jon is working, Oscar sleeps. About 4:30 each day, the daycare kids leave and Oscar takes his place by the front door.... watching... waiting.. for Jon to come home. He'll stay there for hours sometime on the days when Jon works late.
Oscar also "sings" with you when you howl. I've never seen a chihuahua howl but he does.

Here's my sweet Gracie. Can you tell how annoyed she was with me for taking her pictures. She's the boss of the 4 legged creatures around here. I found her in a dumpster when she was 12 weeks old.... that was 10 years ago. I've never been one to love cats but I love my Gracie. She doesn't like to be picked up because it wasn't her idea. As soon as I lay on the couch though, she's laying on top of me waiting to be scratched. When I was pregnant, she would not leave my side.... she had to lay with me constantly. She's very tolerant of children. She'll let them read books on her head, poke at her eyes, rub her fur in the wrong direction... she doesn't care as long as she doesn't have to move from her comfy spot.

Oscar has been known to chase a kitty or two but when Gracie turns around and stands her ground, you have never seen a more terrified dog in your life!

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And then there is Lucky. He looks pretty cute, doesn't he? Jon got him as a kitten the week after we started dating. That makes him almost 8 years old. Lucky is from another planet. We're convinced he hears voices. He follows Jon around (along with Oscar) everywhere.... even into the bathroom to wait by the shower door until he comes out. He eats his food, Gracie's food, and even the dog food. You can't appreciate how fat this cat is from his pictures. He's a good 14-16 pounds. He is NOT tolerant of children... or even adults sometimes and isn't afraid to bite. He licks nylon webbing, likes to jump up in doorways to try to scratch the door frame, and likes to smack sleeping animals. He's .... umm.... unique!

Butternut Squash Soup

This is my favorite soup. It's simple, delicious, and good for you.



You'll need about 4 cups of butternut squash puree for this recipe. That is usually 1 really huge squash, 2 medium squash.... or 3 tiny baby squash grown from my garden plus 1 I got from the
farmers market. Cut the squash in half, scoop out the seeds, lay them cut side down in a baking dish, cover them with foil. Bake at 375 for 30-45 minutes or until you can easily stick a fork all the way through the flesh.
(notice I tried to peel the one on the right.... gave up after only a second or two. It's much easier to bake it)
Let the squash cool and scoop out the flesh of the squash. Set it aside while you get the onions ready.



In a med-large pot, melt 1 Tbsp. butter and 1 Tbsp. oil (I used Olive). Then add 1-2 chopped onions (depending on how much you like onion) You want to sweat these... not brown!


You should hear them quietly sizzling but no loud frying sounds. These are going to take a while to get as soft as you need them to be. Remember... NO browning!


If you want a slightly sweeter soup, you can add a chopped apple to your soup. I used a pink lady apple but any will do. You want these really soft too so cook them along with the onion.

After the onions (and optional apple) are REALLY soft, put these in the food processor (with the pulp from the butternut squash. Add chicken broth if you need to in order to make a smooth puree.


Add the puree back to the pot (over med heat) and stir in chicken broth (reduced sodium or homemade... recipe next week). I think I used about 3 cups. Just keep adding chicken broth until it's the consistency you like. Taste for salt. If you used store bought chicken broth, you may not have to add any salt. My chicken broth didn't have any salt in it so I added about 2 tsp.



Bring your soup to a boil. HAVE THE POT LID NEARBY! When this comes to a boil, if it's as thick as mine, it will send hot soup flying from the pot! Keep the lid on while it simmers and take it off the heat long enough to stir it from time to time. Taste it for salt and then check to make sure you can't taste any bits of undercooked onion. If you can still taste/feel onion, cook it until you can't any longer. Then it's ready to serve!

I'm lucky that the rest of my family won't eat this... more for me!!

Veggies, Rainbows, and Crazy Kids

Yesterday morning at 7am, we saw a gorgeous rainbow that stretched across the sky. I could only get half of it in the lens at a time. I haven't figured out how to take pretty pictures of rainbows with my camera. This is the best I could do.



I went back to the farmer's market Sunday afternoon hoping for some good deals.

I bought 3 butternut squash, a cantaloupe (which unfortunately had no taste) and a hothouse cuccumber at regular price.

Like my shoes? I left them in the picture so you could see how big the squash were.

Not as pretty as last weeks peaches, are they? But they were CHEAP!! $5 a box (1/2 bushel) for bruised/over-ripe peaches!! I bought a box and turned them into peach puree (to be added to my homemade applesauce next month). From this box, I got 28 cups of peach puree!! Not bad for $5.

Charlotte helped me go out and harvest tomatoes the other day. My roma plants look so sad but the fruit is still ripening and looks great so I'm letting them go. Notice how great my Big Beef tomato is doing on the left. Good ol' hybids.

So far I have 7 gallon sized bags of roma tomatoes in the freezer waiting to be made into sauce.

Who needs blocks?

What do YOU wear on your head while watching TV??

Mittens, a hat, and a medieval helmet liner??

My hands have been kept happily busy with small projects lately. Who is behind mittens #1 and #2?

It's Evan! Too bad we still can't find his nose.

HAT

I was looking for a hat that had ear flaps but I wanted the hat to be a 2 needle hat and the ear flaps to be simple. Here's the pattern I found that was almost perfect. Since I was looking for a size to fit a three year old (my kids have big heads), I used a size 8 needle and cast on 90 stitches. I knit for 6 1/2 inches before decreasing. It worked out really well. With the ear flaps, I used size 10 needles and followed the directions as is. I used Cascade 220 for the blue and the red is Lion Brand wool.

MITTENS

I love this pattern. I used it to make Charlotte mittens last year and they fit really well and kept her hands so warm.

I made the cuffs of Evan's mittens longer (2"). I love long cuffs since it helps them stay on and keeps their wrists warmer.

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ADULT MITTENS
Evan still wanted to model these for me. These are knitted using the same Countryside Magazine pattern as these were. If anyone wants a copy of the pattern, feel free to leave me a comment and I can scan it in and email it to you. It's a 2 needle mitten. I used Cascade 220.

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CHILD'S HOOD WITH A MANTLE

This pattern had no picture with it so I was knitting blind. I thought a winter hat with a built in neck warmer would be perfect for really cold days (trips to PA). I didn't know when I was knitting this how much it would look like a Medieval helmet liner thingy. I used Patons wool for this. I followed the pattern without making changes (strange for me) and was surprised how small it turned out to be. I'm not sure how much this will get worn. I think I would have liked it better if the actual hood part was a bit bigger and came down on his face a bit more. Maybe adding increases after the ribbed neck would have helped.

Peach Freezer Jam

So, I know I declared that summer was officially over the other day.... but here's one way that I make sure that it's always summer in my freezer. I made ~20 cups of Peach Freezer Jam. I bit overboard you say? Well, I had about 1/3 of a bushel of peaches leftover from last week's farmer's market run and they all were turning really ripe at the same time. So, in about 45 minutes during naptime, I made jam. It's really easy. Here's how I did it.



I use Ball Fruit Jell Freezer Jam Pectin. I found it in the baking aisle of SuperWalmart near the gelatin. I've used it this year to make Strawberry Jam and Strawberry-Blueberry Jam. This was my first time making Peach Jam.


Here's how I peeled all of those peaches in about 10 minutes total. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Put in a few peaches at a time. Leave them in the boiling water for 30 seconds to a minute.

Put the peaches into ice water to stop the cooking.

The skin comes off so easily. Not only is this method super easy and quick, it leaves that bit of rosy peach flesh on the peach that usually would have gone into the scrap bin. It makes the jam have a rosier color.

I put the peaches right into the food processor with a Tbsp or two of lemon juice and pureed them. If you like your jam chunkier, you can just use a potato masher.

Measure out 4 cups per packet of pectin (there's 8 cups in the pot above). For thicker peach jam they recommend bringing the peaches to a boil before adding the sugar and pectin. Be careful though. This mixture was thick so when it boiled, it sent hot, molten peach pulp flying up from pot.

Add sugar (I used 1 cup per 4 cups peaches but the recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups), and the pectin. Stir really well. Follow the package directions.

Here's my kitchen with all of my counter space being used for "Peach Jam 2009". When I watched "Julie and Julia", I loved seeing how tiny the kitchens they cooked in were. I think if I had more counter space, I'd just find more junk to pile on it.

Here's a closeup of a peeled peach. Love that color!

After 4 batches of jam, I figured I had made enough so I put the leftover puree in a freezer bag to be mixed with applesauce next month and a bag of sliced peaches for a mid-winter crisp or pie.

***Note: The jam didn't set up very firm. It's thick enough to use and it's really tasty but next year I'll try cooking the peaches longer before adding thickener to see if it helps it to set better.**