The gingerbread house!

As you may recall last Christmas we made a conscious decision to simplify the holiday season.  We did not get a Christmas tree, we did not overly decorate the house, we did not buy a lot of "stuff" and we did not send out Christmas cards.

This Christmas, we're doing much of the same (although we did buy a tree from a local tree farm).  We made most of our gifts (as did my older brother and his wife apparently--can't wait to try the peach sauces!) and I did not send out cards again (I don't think there is a good picture of the three of us anyway from this past year). 

Bud is now sitting on my lap dictating the following sentences...
 
We did however, attempt our first gingerbread house.  The result below is all edible as gingerbread houses should be.  The recipe (and templates) for the house came right out of Joy of Cooking.   Bud and his dad tastefully decorated the house and the yard, complete with a version of the Phillies baseball park called Citizen's Bank Park.  The outfield was made of strips of apple flavored licorice.  The other side of the lawn contains a garden (made from nerds) and a dog made from left over gingerbread and Good n' Plentys with a gumdrop head.  Notice the bowls of leftover candy in the back of the picture.  We have continued to consume this sugar throughout the weekend giving us all sugar highs and subsequent sugar lows (and snarly attitudes).  Tonight, at least, my darling husband will be making homemade chili, which should revive us in time for the last work and school week before the holiday.  

      

Growing up, my father (B's Grandpa Karl) often got carried away with the annual gingerbread house.  By the end of the gingerbread era in our household, we had a totally furnished and well-lit two-story gingerbread house complete with dormer, stained glass windows, and a working chimney.  The yard included picket fences, forests (made from upside down ice cream cones), driveways, automobiles, children building snowmen, and pets wandering around.  I believe we even had smaller graham cracker houses encircling the main house for other folks to live in.

It was always a sad day on January 1st, when the three of us kids would unceremoniously smash the house (or village, as may be the case).  Then, to the horror of my parents, we would greedily eat the stale and not so tasty pieces of gingerbread, frosting and candy.  I am surprised that none of us came down with salmonella poisoning (you have to watch out for that Royal Icing) or some other bacterial infection!  

(and now  Bud starts writing the post from my perspective, showing off his fabulous typing and spelling skills)

My son thought the gingerbread house turned out to be incredible. Even though his first thought for the ginger bread house was to make it the White house. He got a little carried away (like my father always did). My son got inspired for the white house when we went to the Eastman house to see the gingerbread collection. After we went to the Eastman house my son was just amazed by all the neat things we saw.

In addition to the gingerbread house we are making all sorts of cookies. In fact when I finish my blog post (which my son is proofreading) we are going to decorate the cookies with green, blue, white, red, yellow, and a few other colors of icing. Right now we are going to decorate the cookies! 

Well, we just finished making cookies. I will tell you how it went! Well first my son and I went out to the kitchen where my husband was making Chili. We had peppers near us and my husband decided to eat one. He was coughing and his throat was burning and he had to eat bread and get water and he was doing that for 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile my son was laughing his head off and couldn't breath he was laughing so hard because my husband's mouth was burning. My son said "Dad you are quite weird" and that set me on the track of laughing. My son laughed for about 10 minutes and he was rolling on the floor and all that. Well after that it turned out pretty good. Me and my son made all the cookies and decorated them and my darling husband was OK.  That was most of what happened when we were making cookies.

The Floor

Floor pictures, finally!  A little background: we wanted to tear out the carpet, because it was completely disgusting, but we weren't sure what to do with the floor (and we weren't even sure what was under the carpet).  In the long term, we want to put down wide pine boards as that's what's in the rest of the house.  But we don't have the money or the time right now.  We ended up using milk paint followed by tung oil.  The following briefly describes the process.

Sadly, I don't think I have any of when the utilitarian carpet was down, but just think school corridor or church basement and that's what was on our kitchen floor.  The red part (to the right) was not covered by this carpet.  Thankfully, said carpet was not glued down and the plywood underneath, while painted, was in relatively good condition.  By the way, all the scrapes on the red area are due to the door opening and closing. 

This is after we sanded the whole floor (we brought some furniture back in as we had the floor like this for about a month or so). We used a drum sander and an edger.  It took us about three hours (6 person hours) to sand it down.  We weren't too concerned with getting rid of all of the old paint, because we wanted the finished product to look old and distressed anyway. 

A spinning friend had mentioned the use of milk paints as a floor covering.  It's an old-fashioned paint made from milk and lime.  It comes in powdered form and then you add water.  The colors are all historically based (which is a good thing when we're talking about an 1840's farmhouse).  Unfortunately, not many places sell the true milk paint anymore.  I ordered ours online at The Real Milk Paint Company, but there is also the Old Fashioned Milk Paint Company.  The burnt umber color I ordered was dark upon application.  It dried to a really light color though. 

So this was what the milk paint looked like when wet.  It dried to the point where it was a light cocoa color, and you could see the grain of the plywood beneath. 

I purchased two gallons of PURE Tung oil (NOT the tung oil solvent that you find in hardware stores) from the same place I bought the milk paint.  I then mixed in a solvent in a 50:50 ratio.  We didn't want to polyurethane the floor because it's toxic and it gets such heavy use, which would mean we'd have to sand and repoly the entire floor every so often. Once the solvent in the Tung oil evaporates out, the floor is kid and pet friendly. If we need to touch up, we can, without any prep work.




The instructions said to keep applying coats until it doesn't evaporate off the floor within 20 minutes.  For this particular floor, that meant four coats.

I immediately wiped down the floor with an old rag, and then we tried not to walk on it for two days.  Ideally, one should not walk on the floor for a couple weeks, but really...come on...it's a kitchen floor!  We were careful not to track in (much) dirt, but it's a farm, and we have dogs and a nine year old boy!

We brought down the braided rug that was in our bedroom and put it beneath the table.  It works really well, since our (plywood) cabinets are blue too.






We also had a smaller blue braided rug that we put by the fridge.  And I had a beige runner (which you can sort of see in the background of the picture to the right, which we have between the sink and our chestnut work table.





In a perfect world, I would have waxed the floor after putting the Tung oil on, but it's not a perfect world, and for a confluence of reasons, the floor is not waxed at this moment.  At some point in the summer, I can imagine putting another application of Tung oil down and then waxing it.  But it looks good and seems to be holding up well.   It is going to get wear and tear, but after all, it is just a floor. 

First Fridays: December wreath making

Where has the time gone?  I have two posts in my mind (one is on the kitchen floor, the other concerning turkeys and toilets) but obviously have not written or published them.  And, right now, it is December 2nd, which means it's  First Friday post time!

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to go help a neighbor make wreaths to support our sustainable living group (and to learn how to make a wreath).  The wreaths were going to be auctioned off in the annual village "Adorn-a-dore" contest which supports our local community art gallery in town.  So, it had to be at least a decent looking wreath.

What I discovered, is that using grape vine as a frame is the BEST THING EVER (well, at least when it comes to making wreaths).  It is the most forgiving natural material I have ever met.  You can use it dry or wet, and you just keep twisting the vine upon itself until you have the shape you want.  Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of the wreaths we constructed for the auction, which had a high bid of at least $75 (our informant left before the auction ended), but this morning (when I should have been studying pathophysiology) I spent about 45 minutes making a wreath for our household. 

The options for materials are endless, but I used evergreens, rose hips (holly or winterberry would also obviously work), some sort of dried seed pods, and white wool.  Here's are some photos to inspire you.  And I do want to remind everyone that I have ZERO creative or artistic talent.  I am an analytical, in-the-box thinker, and this was actually not that difficult to do, thanks to the grapevine. Also, the only "non-natural" part of the wreath is the little loop of wire attaching it to the nail.  There are no plastic or metal frames, wires or ties.  Again, thanks to the grapevine.

You can twist the grapevine into a variety of shapes.






Adding some greens.  I used two varieties from evergreen trees we have, but don't ask me what varieties.  One was more prickly than the other, that's about all I can say!  I just sort of wove them into the grapevine.





Adding rosehips and some seed pods. 





I added sheep's wool to add some white to the red, white and green.  Not sure what I think of it though. 

Happy wreath making!

Paying tribute to Public Radio

What a busy couple of weeks!  I really don't have time to write, but I feel guilty about keeping a blog and not updating it regularly.  Who the heck knows where I got this guilt complex in all matters of life, but I do, so here's a quick run down of the past week (just think of all the future blog posts): 

Cricket died.  Mochacino was welcomed into the family.
Paper on prions just going dandily.
Pork is delivered and so is the lamb.
We hope you enjoy your bacon and ham.
The Dems swept the elections, at least around us.
Say "no" to hydrofracking, let's be sustainable and just!
"No" on prop 26 in Mississippi came through by a wide margin
In-vitro, and women's rights pulled through yet again (although it shouldn't have to be a fight).
A weekend well spent at a doula training course.
You can learn more about doulas at www.dona.org.
The weather has been surprisingly sunny and mild.
I hope this doesn't mean we're in for winter, wet and wild!


And I believe I have just used up all of my stores of poetic creativity!  Sorry, I'm not an English major (or minor).

So, as I was driving in my new Mochacino (2009 Subaru Legacy, AWD, manual) to Boston for the aforementioned doula course, I was able to enjoy not one, not two, but three public radio stations.  I had gotten out of the habit of listening to NPR because my local station (WSKG, 91.7FM) just doesn't carry a whole lot of variety.  It has the news, Fresh Air with Terry Gross and All Things Considered with Michele Norris and Melissa Block, Cart Talk and Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me,  all of which I love.  I also enjoy listening to the BBC to get a more objective perspective of what it going on in the world.  But mostly, during the day, and in the evening, the station plays classical music.  I certainly have an appreciation for classical music (having played it for 10 years in my youth), but I need some variety when driving the very long stretch of I-90. 

Sadly, central upstate NY just doesn't have the population to support 24 hours of quality programming from NPR.  When they have membership drives, the station is asking for 600-1000 new or renewing members and maybe tens of thousands of dollars.

When I reached Albany, I was able to switch to WAMC, 90.3FM.  When my darling husband was courting me way back when, I would drive home Sunday evenings listening to a Celtic music hour and then a World music hour, neither of which I think is on the air now.  I also enjoy catching the Round Table, although sometimes I got so frustrated I have to turn the radio off. 

Coming up past Worcester, MA I  finally was able to get in WBUR, 90.9FM which I believe is the pinnacle of public radio.  When WBUR does fundraising drives, it asks for millions of dollars.  I was enjoyed approximately 6 hours of NPR radio over the weekend as I was commuting from Cambridge to Beverly for my doula course.  I particularly enjoyed The Splendid Table, which is about all things culinary (including what to do with that winter squash glut), and Living on Earth, which I believe was discussing the vortex form that sphagnum moss spores take when they burst from the moss at 65mph (making them among the fastest moving plant particles).  The programming made me appreciate what Public Radio can achieve if it is supported by listeners.  I know I sound like I belong in a fundraising drive, but I do honestly believe we need to support this organization.  If you do listen to NPR (and this includes you satellite listeners), please consider paying your dues so that the fabulous programming can continue. 

First Fridays: November

I was having a difficult time thinking about what crafty item to showcase this month.  I will get to the fiber-art eventually, but this month I think I'm going to introduce you to an international program for students called TREPS.   It teaches kids entrepreneurial and business skills; skills they can use for a lifetime.  One of my largest grumblings over the state of our education system is that kids are just taught content and seemingly (to them) abstract skills.  They aren't really taught why these skills are important nor how they can apply them.  This is where TREPS can help.  When the  program was first introduced, I was initially skeptical, but the results  (the products, the enthusiasm generated and the business acumen developed) have shown me how valuable this program (and others like it) can be.

Our local school's PTO introduced and ran the program.  For six weeks, kids went through a series of workshops to develop a marketable item.  At the end of the workshops there was a Marketplace where the kids sold their products.  The young brain harnesses so much creativity and if they are given a positive framework in which to channel that creativity, great things happen.

At the Marketplace last year (which coincided with the Village's winter carnival weekend), middle schoolers were selling all sorts of amazing products that they had made themselves.  Some were constructed from scratch, while others were value-added products. Here are a few of the more interesting ones to get your creative juices flowing in time for the holiday season (photos are from more professional websites, but the kids' products were just as good).

*Recycled and sculpted LPs in the form of clocks, napkin holders, coasters

www.retroclassics.etsy.com

*Lip balm made from local honey

*Wool felted animals

www.needlefelting.brighterplanet.org

*Homemade dog biscuits

*Homemade fudge

*Beaded jewelry

www.engravable-jewelry.com

 So, if you think you are crafty, creative or industrious, think again! Unleash your creative powers!

On the Move...

I know I was "supposed" to have a post about the floor redo, with lots of photos.  I just haven't gotten around to actually going downtown where there's a faster internet connection to upload pictures.  It will get done eventually.

Things are slowing down a bit on the farm.  The pigs and lambs went to market today.  We'll be dispatching the rooster later this week (whom I lovingly called "Fitzwilliam" after Mr. Darcy until he started attacking us), and then we'll be hosting our annual FarmAid party this weekend.

Things are also slowing down with my running, as I  hurt my foot on Friday after my first attempt at a 5.2 mile run.  It was a cool, cloudy day--perfect conditions for a run-- and while I've been running since the middle of July, the 5.2 miles was a stretch.  Our valley is very hilly--I have no idea what it is like to run on flat ground--and usually I run only between 2 and 3 miles.  After the run, I felt pretty good but then Saturday I woke up and realized that the outside edge of my right foot was very sore (okay, running friends, any potential diagnoses--I don't think it's plantar fasciitis).  This is the first time I've taken more than one consecutive day off, and I'm feeling a little bit guilty about it.  However, considering that I can't even walk all that well on the foot, running would probably not be in my best interest.

I never considered myself a runner and the last time I ran regularly was in high school many moons ago.  To tell the truth, I really detest running.   I've never understood the "runner's high" because I certainly haven't felt "that good" after running.  But this summer, while I was sitting on the porch reading a novel (the protagonist was a runner) I figured I should get off my butt and do something more active.  Following my older brother's logic, running seemed the obvious choice, primarily because it's cheap and accessible.  I started very slowly (kind of following the Chi Running technique) doing a run/walk around our "block" which is conveniently just about a 5K (3.1 miles).  Over the past 2 months, I've slowly taken out the walking stretches to where I am only walking about a 200 yard stretch that is in the middle of a 1 mile climb.  I've also found other routes in town to stave off boredom, some of which are flatter than the "block" (my very supportive darling husband thinks it's rather ridiculous that I drive somewhere to run) and I also found a running partner with whom to run at 6am every other weekday (which my very supportive darling husband thinks is a ridiculously early hour to go running at, especially since it's dark and cold). I was running about 5 days a week until this weekend. 

So now that I'm laying low for a bit I suppose I will have just a little more time to work on nursing school essays, microbiology notes, Spanish practice and maybe even just sleeping in for 10 more minutes in the morning.

Finding Time

When I left my job last spring to go back to school, I knew that I could at least substitute teach on days that I didn't have classes myself, thus keeping myself busy and earning a little bit of money.  So I signed up as a sub in the neighboring district.  It is now the middle of October, and I have not yet gone in to a classroom.  This isn't to say that the district hasn't called me.  In fact, I get multiple calls  some days.  The problem is two fold.  First, it is an automated system that calls me, and it only calls at certain hours. If I'm not present to pick up the phone, the system moves on. For half those hours in the afternoon I am in class.   In the morning, I usually am running. 

The second, larger issue is that I find myself so busy that I can't take the day to sub.  Between processing squash and apples, moving sheep fence, taking various pets to the vet, and redoing the kitchen floors, I simply have not been able to devote an entire day to subbing. 

Which brings me to the larger point of, "How did we manage before when I was teaching full time?"  I have no answers for that.  I think the old adage, "We do what we have to do" is fitting.  Somehow, we do manage to get it all done.  I like to believe that our brains know how to prioritize and can shift things around when needed.  This may be why our floor got done this year, but the cellar storm doors did not.  Or why I will spend three hours trying to inject a sheep with meds when she is sick, but otherwise I wouldn't have foreseen having three hours of time available in the middle of my day. 

In light of this, perhaps I am not finding time to sub because it's not a priority any more.  I have found far more pressing and/or interesting things to do with my time.  I did happen to find time in my schedule to enroll in a doula workshop out in Boston in a few weeks which I'm looking forward to.  For more information about doulas, you can check out www.dona.org.  Obviously, I am a big proponent of using a doula during birth, and studies have shown a strong correlation between doula use and labor time (25% shorter labors when supported by a doula). And,  many insurance plans do cover the cost of hiring a doula. 

Find some time in your busy life to enjoy yourself.  Just tell your brain to make that a priority!

First Fridays: October

I know you're all expecting me to do something with wool, and I probably will, but not this month!

For October's first Friday, I am showcasing a project that is certainly fun, and truly simple to do.  I call it the "Paint Chip Collage" but I'm sure it has another name and while the concept is not original (I learned about it from my mother about 10 years ago, but I think she found it in Real Simple), each product is certainly unique!

The collage below was actually assembled and given to me as a wedding shower gift from my bestest childhood friend (I had made one for her for her wedding shower two years prior).

The beauty of this project is that it is almost no cost, and the intent is to individualize it as much as possible for the recipient.  It all comes down to the unique names of paint colors.  Have you ever given the names of paint chips much thought?  Next time you're at the hardware store, pick up a few.  The ones in the photo above include "Bridle Path", "Island Palm", "Sailboat White", "June Wedding", "Ocean Breeze"; all phrases that are associated with me and/or my relationship with my bestest friend!  While it's not easy to see the names (and you may not even particularly like the colors), you know that the combination is an accurate description for the person receiving the gift!

When I was overseas for about a month several years ago, I had friends and family send a paint chip (that I had picked out and put into stamped envelopes) to my darling husband (we were dating at the time) every couple days.  I have not yet actually made that collage (7 years later), but he still has the chips. 

Simply glue the chips onto some stockcard and frame.  Voilà!, a non-foofy, interesting, eye-catching piece of personable artwork!

In the middle

Last week, my darling husband and I attended a lecture by Roald Hoffman, the 1981 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.  The topic was indigo (the dye) and it's cultural and historical significance.  After the lecture, my good friend Eileen sent me his interview transcript from NPR's series, "This I believe" (June 16, 2006), which I re-post here.  It's a succinct explanation, similar to my own philosophy of life.  I think many of us can be very reactionary at times, and I think that perspective often backs us into a corner or ends up working against us.

I believe in the middle. Extremes may make a good story, but the middle satisfies me. Why? Perhaps because I’m a chemist.  Chemistry is substances, molecules, and their transformations. And molecules fight categorization - they are poised along several polarities. Take morphine. Anyone who's had an operation knows what morphine is good for. But it’s also a deadly addictive drug. Take ozone - up in the atmosphere, a layer of ozone protects us from the harmful ultraviolet radiation of our life-giving sun. But at sea level, ozone is produced in photochemical smog, it chews up tires and lungs.
Chemistry - like life -- is deeply and fundamentally about change. It’s about substances, say A + B, transforming, becoming a different substance -- C + D ... and coming back again. At equilibrium -- the middle -- all the substances are present. But we're not stuck there. We can change the middle; we can disturb the equilibrium.
 

Perhaps I like the middle, that tense middle, because of my background. I was born in 1937 in Southeast Poland, now Ukraine. Our Jewish family was trapped in the destructive machinery of Nazi anti-Semitism. Most of us perished ... my father, three of my grandparents, and so on. My mother and I survived, hidden for the last fifteen months of the war in a schoolhouse attic by a Ukrainian teacher, Mikola Dyuk. We were saved by the action of a good man, that school teacher. Sad to say, much of the Ukrainian population in the region behaved badly in those terrible times. They helped the Nazis kill us. And yet ... and yet, some, like Dyuk, saved us, at great risk to their lives. I couldn’t formulate it then, as a child, but I knew from our experience that people were not simply good or evil. They made choices. You could hide a Jewish family or you could choose not to. Every human being has the potential to go one way or the other. Understanding that there was a choice helps me live with the evil I experienced.

Being a chemist has allowed me to see plainly that things – politics, attitudes, molecules -- in the middle can be changed, that we have a choice. Being a survivor I can see that choices really matter, all part of this risky enterprise of being human. The middle is not static -- my psychological middle as well as the chemical equilibrium. I like that. Yes, I also want stability. But I believe that extreme positions – all reactants, all products, all people A bad, all people B good, no taxes at all, taxed to death – are impractical, unnatural, boring ... the refuge of people who never want to change. The world is not simple, though God knows political forces on every side want to make it so. I like the tense middle, and I am grateful for a life that offers me the potential for change.

Hoffmann is a gifted speaker, and you will not be disappointed if you ever have the opportunity to attend one of his lectures.

Dealing with CSA mono-vegetable glut

So the question that I have heard a lot of is this summer is "We just got a lot of ___________ from our CSA.  We can't eat it all/we're bored sick of it/we don't know what to do with it".

Obviously, no one wants to throw food away or even compost it, feed it to the pigs/dogs/chickens etc.  So here are a few long-term, easy storage tips.

First, get yourself a good food storage book.  Whenever I have a question, I consult Mike and Nancy Bubel's Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables. It tells you the best conditions to store each type of food in, and also which varieties are the best keepers. While the focus is on root cellaring, it is important to note that you don't need an actual root cellar in order to root cellar (did that make sense?).

So here's my short-list of autumn glut CSA foods and what to do with them.

Potatoes:
Immediate use:  The nice thing about potatoes is that they'll store short-term without you having to do anything other than keeping them in a dark place.  In the fall, we make potato pancakes, fried potatoes, skillet frittatas, and of course mashed potatoes.  If there are some good-sized ones, we make crunchy potatoes (twice baked potatoes) with lots of goodies in them.
Storage: White potatoes store well at 36-40 degrees F with 90% humidity.  If you have a nook in your house that can meet those conditions, great.  To increase the humidity, take any organic material (leaves, straw, shavings) or sand and soak it. Pack your potatoes lightly, as ventilation is a good thing.
I also mash potatoes and store them in quart size containers and freeze.  This is a great option if you have the freezer space!

Tomatoes: Don't refrigerate them!  Keep them on the counter and they'll be happy for a week or two.  We bought three crates at the farmer's market this summer, and they were fine just sitting on the table until we could process them.
Immediate use:  Salads, sauces, stuffed tomatoes, casseroles, pasta or rice dishes, in egg dishes. We make fajitas a lot, so I always add a couple then.
Storage:  Two easy methods:  Sauce them (if it's a roma or other paste tomato) and then freeze in quart size bags.  Or, just throw a bunch of whole tomatoes in a gallon bag and freeze.  The skins will come right off when you thaw. You could even core the tomato before freezing.  You can also can.  Please remember to add 2 TBSP of lemon juice to each QUART (1 TBSP to each PINT) because today's tomatoes are generally not as acidic as yesteryear's.  You can use a hot water bath (no need for the canner).  You can also prepare pizza sauce or salsa and then can (or freeze) those.

Winter Squash (including pumpkins): 
Immediate Use:  Again, these have a really long shelf-life at room temperature so there is no pressure to use them.  Yay.  The problem I find, is that I get sick of eating squash after about two weeks,  so I put them in the baskets that hang from our rafters and forget about them.  Then in January, I look into the baskets and there are a half dozen shriveled up squash specimens that probably don't contain many nutrients. 
Baked squash is always easy, and it's even easier in the crock pot.  You can mix mashed squash with mashed potatoes to cut the squash flavor if you're not a big fan.  You can make squash bread (always a huge hit in our household).  You can also stuff the squash with a meat casserole type thing and then cook it.  You can also use the puréed squash as a substitute for the oil, eggs and water when baking cupcakes etc. from a mix.
Storage:  So I tried canning these suckers (since I'm running out of freezer space) and I think it would work, but it's very labor intensive as you have to skin the squash without cooking it first.  Then you must blanch the squash and then you need to use the pressure canner for 90 minutes, which I don't like using.
So, the easiest way to store for us (aside from hanging it in the baskets) is to cook the squash, scoop it out, and then freeze it.  I'm hoping that by storing it in this manner right off the bat,  I won't have any shriveled up squashes come mid-winter.

Carrots: 
Immediate uses:  We always have carrot sticks cut in the fridge.  We find them particularly helpful if we're having an unpalatable vegetable according to Bud--he can munch on those instead. If you have a juicer, use it here.  Carrot muffins are yummy (so is carrot cake).  I actually use carrots in my roasting pan to support the chicken instead of using a rack.   In any soup or stew you can add carrots.  In fact, a mixture of carrots, celery and onion is the classic mirepoix--the base for any stock. One of my favorite salads is simply shredded carrot and shredded beet mixed with a light vinegar and some seasonings (unfortunately, my darling husband is not a beet fan).
Storage: Theoretically, these are stored at 32-40 degrees F with 90-95% humidity--very similar to potatoes.  I store mine in the same place (an unplugged freezer turned on its side in the basement with shavings in it).  Just layer the carrots with the organic material between them.  The carrots should be close to one another, but not really touching.  Store only the largest, most regularly shaped ones.
I also will blanch and freeze diced carrots to add to a mirepoix later or to a vegetable medley as a side dish. 

Hardy greens (spinach, chard, kale, collards):
Immediate uses:  I'm a big fan of sautéed kale, onions and pepperoni.  I'm sure you can do a similar dish with spinach.   In my opinion, these hardy greens are best when slightly wilted over your stovetop.  They are also great in soups, stews and pasta dishes.  You could also make a yummy spinach dip with some sour cream.
Storage:  You can actually freeze these.  You'll want to blanch them for a couple minutes beforehand.


Good luck and may there be no more glut!

Why dehydrate?

This year, has certainly been a phenomenal one for apples.  In the interest of preserving as much food as possible, as quickly and safely as posssible, we are dehydrating or saucing most of our apples.  Second only to the dutch oven, the dehydrator is one of my favorite kitchen tools. 

This model from Nesco probably cost around $85 (it was a gift).  The gift was actually given to us jointly with another friend (there really is no need for every single household to own a dehydrator, as most of the year, you don't need it).  Dehydrators also come in a box shape but I haven't tried those.  Do get one with the fan on the top though, as they are much easier to clean (if the fan is on the bottom, all the little pieces of food that fall through the cracks in the trays get caught there). You can always buy additional trays, although I wouldn't suggest working with more than a stack of 8 as the drying will become uneven.

Anyway, the apples in the picture above are all from our trees (or trees alongside the road).  They are truly beautiful and delicious.  For the first time in my recollection we won't actually have to buy any "fresh eating" apples as these untended trees are producing great fruit as is (I know, I keep harping on this point, but it is rather spectacular). 

My darling husband and I have basically been running the dehydrator every night with its trays full of apples.  To prepare, he peels the   

            apples and I slice.  I drop them in a bowl of water mixed with several tablespoons of lemon juice to keep them from browning (not really a necessary step as the taste remains the same, but they do look more attractive when not brown!).  I really like this brand of lemon juice as it's fresh squeezed (read: NOT FROM CONCENTRATE) and is organic. 

We lay the apple slices on the tray.  This was done very quickly (about 3 minutes) in the essence of time, but you can spend all the time in the world arranging them so that there are no spaces between the slices and everything looks very geometric. 

 The trays are stacked, the cover put on and the timer set for about 8 hours at 135 degrees F.  The picture to the left shows the finished product.  I think most models of dehydrators shut off automatically when done, so there's no need to get up in the middle of the night to check!

The four trays (probably made from 15 small to medium apples) yielded about 1 1/2 quarts of dried fruit.  I store them in Mason jars or plastic bags.  Storing them in Mason jars (no need to seal or anything) allows you to see if they are truly dry.  If condensation starts appearing on the inside of the jar you need to dry them more (or eat them) because they will mold. 

We have also used our dehydrator to make liver treats for the dogs, "sun-dried" tomatoes, dried mushrooms, fruit roll-ups (lots of fun and super easy), and beef jerky.  All of these items have a considerably long shelf life (months if not years) and the beauty of it is that there is no need to refrigerate, freeze or can!

Hurricanes, floods and a day of rememberance

I've been meaning to post for several days now, but "things" keep happening around here, which either change the focus of my blog or keeps me so busy that I have no time to blog.

Ten days after Hurricane Irene swept through here, the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee did a number on the Binghamton area.  We weren't directly affected aside from losing power (again), having the basement flood (again), and having a "weather related" day off from school,  but the county was declared to be in a state of emergency, and thousands of folks along the Susquehanna River have lost their homes, their farms, their livelihood.  The neighborhood where I lived when I went to grad school was completely underwater, and I'm sure the house I lived in did not escape damage.  Some of the aerial shots bring back vivid memories of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those who are suffering from this event.  If you would like to help, you can go to the South Central New York Red Cross chapter website here and the Northeastern New York chapter website here  (Irene recovery).  As United Methodists, we also give through the United Methodist Committee on Relief.  One hundred percent of your donations go to help people in need as the administrative costs are covered by the local churches through annual collections. You can direct where you would like your donations to go with various advance numbers. 

So in church today, we were faced with the local tragedy of the flooding as well as remembering the national tragedy of 10 years ago.  All of us over the age of 15 have both personal and collective memories of that experience.  I remember walking through the computer lab at the school where I was teaching  and one of my colleagues saying "a plane hit the World Trade Center".  Thinking it was a little 2 person Cessna or similar I didn't dwell on it.  However, as the events unfolded, I remember leaving the school, going back to my apartment, and trying to get a hold of my brother who lived within walking distance of the Pentagon.  I remember learning about a family neighbor who was killed.  And I remember thinking as the day turned into a week and the week turned into a month, "what the hell am I doing teaching kids how to use microscopes when all of this is going on? How can we focus on objective lenses when thousands of people have lost their lives, when our country has declared war on "terrorism", when there is this cloud of helplessness and hopelessness hanging over the entire nation?"  I felt that my role as an educator was so insignificant to what was happening and I did not see any intrinsic value to what I was doing in the classroom.

This afternoon, in between trying to sew together another recycled feed bag, fill water buckets for the animals, and collect windfall apples for drying, my darling husband, Bud and I decided to trek down to a Celtic Mass of Peace in memory of the events of 9/11.  There is little we can do or offer to those who have lost loved ones either in the attacks or in serving our country subsequently, but listening to the orchestra and choir while sitting next to my family quieted my heart and my mind, at least for the moment.

First Fridays

Many cities and towns across the country have a First Friday celebration where local shops stay open later in the evening, allowing for folks to mingle with the artists and craftspeople and to hopefully buy some of the artists' fine work.  I never have enough "stuff" to sell at farmers' markets or even at a cooperative artists' guild (of which there are two in my area), but to inspire readers, I will be posting a new useful, crafty thing every first Friday.

This month's topic is the feed-bag-converted-into-grocery-bag.  There are several websites which outline this process.  One can be found here and the other is found here.  But if you google "recycling feed bags into grocery bags" a gazillion and one sites pop up.  Who knew?  I first learned about this at my spinning group where a 4H leader was doing this with her group.  I saw the finished bags in the 4H pavillion at the County Fair and they turned out really well.

Anyway, you do not have to be an expert sewer to do this.  I honestly do not get along with my sewing machine.  We have a very fragile truce which lets me do simple things (like make curtains).  Anything more complex, including quilting, and it balks (or I balk). I don't know anything about the specific types of stitches  or thread I should have used, but I did change to a size 18 or 19 needle (the largest, green one) because I was working with this feed bag material.

 So, my starting piece was a chicken feed bag that had looked something like this (okay, it looked exactly like this except that there was no feed in it).   

The finished product, after consulting the websites linked above, and spending about 45 minutes with the machine, looked like this:

 

For those of you who are expert seamstresses, I did not have a ruler or other measuring tool with me at any point during the making of this--it was all sort of eye-balled.  Also, the seams are by no means even or pretty-looking (which is why you don't get a close-up shot).

The bag hasn't really been tested yet aside from putting a couple jars of pickles, and a half gallon container of milk in it (those were the heavy things in my fridge), but I think it will do okay when I take it to the Farmers' Market tomorrow.

I'm thinking these would make great gifts (except for the price of the thread, and the electricity used by the sewing machine, they're free) especially if they are filled up with other crafty or homemade goodies.  

Happy sewing and TGIF!

Irene Visits...An Update

Hurricane Irene made it up to the Northeast corner of the country yesterday.  As predicted by the forecasters, we woke up to some relatively substantial winds and rain coming from the North.  This meant that we, as opposed to Boston, got the front side of her (or what was left of her at that point).  The power went out at the farm around 7:30 in the morning.   The village center where the church is still had power when we arrived for service at 10, and one of the congregants was actually making sloppy joes for coffee hour to use up some meat.  In the middle of the second hymn, the lights dimmed, and we knew power failure was in the near future.  A few moments later, the organ stopped playing and we were left singing a Capella for a couple stanzas before a volunteer moved to the piano in time for the next verse.  Bud went to grab some of the candles normally reserved for Christmas and Easter, and we went through the rest of the service in candlelight.

Back on the farm, I spent much of the afternoon playing board games with Bud, reading, and spinning wool.  We do have a generator, and plugged the fridge in for a few hours.   I wasn't worried about the freezers, as they tend to maintain a cool enough temperature a few days as long as they aren't opened.

There was some substantial flooding in our basement which we pumped out sporadically with the generator throughout the day.  There's also a spot near the chimney that leaks when there is a hard rain.  It's right where Belle, the mutt, normally sleeps, so she wasn't so keen on being displaced (better than being rained on, I suppose).  We also had leaking on our first floor on the North side.  This was highly unusual, as the water has to make it down an entire floor inside our walls.  We concluded that the attic vents on that side were getting pummeled by the rain blowing in sideways all day and the water was getting in that way.  The ceiling is wood, not plaster, which makes us a little less concerned than we would be otherwise.  

After dinner, my darling husband and went up to the sheep pasture to repair some of the netting that had fallen down with the wind (the sheep were not very motivated to go anywhere). 

We all went to bed around 9pm, and woke up to no power and no phone (and no cell service).  We also had a very warm refrigerator (the only thing we ended up tossing were left over burgers, which the pigs enjoyed). While I went on my morning run, I was able to survey some of the damage.  Several large trees had come down (one on top of a neighbor's home), and there was no power anywhere (except for the filthy rich weekenders down the road who apparently have a whole home generator and had all sorts of lights on!!!).

The power did come back on shortly after I returned from the run.  We would have been okay for a few more days, but it would have been irritating.   However, just after midnight on Tuesday morning, the hardwired smoke detectors started beeping, indicating that the power was out...again.  It was quite a rude awakening, as I had only fallen asleep an hour earlier.   Also, I wasn't exactly sure how to turn them off, since they were hardwired, and my brain was not fully functioning.  First I had to find some light, but had stowed all of the flashlights and lanterns away during the day assuming that the power was on for good (I know, when you assume, you only make an ass out of "u" and "me").  Anyway, I blindly felt my way down to the basement steps where I had hung the (battery-powered) Coleman lantern.  I wandered back upstairs in the fluorescent glow of the lantern, woke up Bud with the harsh light (who was very dismayed to hear that the power was out, but even more annoyed by the beeping of the smoke detector) and proceeded to tear out the wires from the back of the smoke detector (don't worry Mr. Code-Man, I didn't break or cut any wires, and we'll put everything back together when the power comes back on). Really, the most worrisome aspect would be  of this second outage is keeping the fences charged.  The pigs, particularly, are curious critters and wouldn't have minded won't mind going exploring. Our two solar chargers may or may not be recharging their batteries effectively at this point.  NYSEG is not giving any estimates about when the power will come back on, but they are warning it could be next week.  Bud mentioned that it was like going back in time and being "old-school" (this is his new favorite phrase) and he was quite content not to have to bathe.  I, however, am taking full advantage of being back on a college campus and showering at the gym here.

In closing, here is a lovely picture of the storm descending on the North Carolina coast.  A FB friend posted the picture.  I don't know the photographer myself, but I think he should definitely enter this one in a photo contest!

Photo by David Hutzenbiler