Oh the weather outside is frightful

If only because it's bouncing between 40 and 80. This holiday season is going to rock. Joey is at a hilarious age and is enjoying singing and making cookies and wrapping presents. We decorated gingerbread houses last week and he gives everyone who visits a tour of the gingerbread house. Fun time. 

We are making more than half of the presents we're giving this year. It would be more, but we realize that not everyone is excited about homemade presents. The volume of flour, sugar, butter, and chocolate we are going through is a little frightening, but it's usually exiting the house as soon as it's made and not sticking around to stick to us.

So far, I've made and gifted peppermint bark and anise seed biscotti for my office. I also made rice bags wrapped with a lavender lotion bar from Imagine Lavender Farms, this hat, and this hat for some friends. None of which I bothered to document with pictures. Ah well.

There is much elving afoot but since the only people who read this are probably the recipients of said elving, I'm not revealing anything. We have many bowls of concoctions brewing in the kitchen and many jars filled with yummies sitting on shelves. I'm knitting and sewing late into the night with the company of snoring dogs and a fire. Happy holidays indeed.

Thank you and goodnight

Joey with one of our freakish November eggplants. Global warming, anyone?

I'm going to be dead honest. I had wanted to write a post about being thankful and all that we have and all that we owe to the rest of the world as we sit in our place of bounty, but I'm too exhausted.

Basically, I/we haven't posted for over a month because we have been moving so fast that one or the other of us falls asleep on the couch in the middle of work every night. I think we've moved well past the burning the candle at both ends metaphor and just hurled the candle straight into the fire.  

So what I'm really thankful for is a few days to breathe. We are making a very conscious effort to have a smaller, simpler holiday season. One filled with more peace and joy and less frantic late night knitting.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Super Sunday (cooking) Slam

This evening, after I put Joey to bed I:

Pasteurized the milk
Made yogurt
Made bread this way
Made granola
Setup the slow cooker for tomorrow dinner
Blanched tomatoes for Tuesdays dinner

And I finished this book.
Then I had this beer.

And now I'm going to bed.

{This Moment}

{this moment} from Soulemama- A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see. 

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

 

Yeah, There's an App for that

 Not much to say about this other than, why didn't I think of that.  The Pickin' Chicken app for the iPhone and iPad will help you select the breed that best fits your needs.

Pasteurization, Pasteurizaaation (a la Carly Simon)

 One of the few things we still buy from the grocery store is dairy. I'm interested in changing that, but it's a little bit of a hassle at present. We got our milk from Miller Farms in La Costa, TX. It's a bit of a drive, but there are several groups that do local milk coops. Raw milk is legal in Texas and these folks are licensed for sale.

A couple of thoughts on raw milk: many people advocate drinking raw milk as is, unpasteurized. I'm not down with that. Call it paranoia if you like, but a safe milk supply was a huge stride in public health. I'm rather unwilling to give my family unpasteurized milk unless I milked the cow myself. Since that's not happening, we are only using the milk after being pasteurized or cooked in some way.  I'm not a food safety nut, but I have a healthy respect for the germs that used to take people out on a regular basis. Plus, all my epidemiology classes used food borne illness outbreaks as our sample data. It makes you aware.

Making yogurt

We made the most fabulous yogurt from this milk. Admittedly, I usually make our yogurt from 1% milk and this was seriously whole milk, but the yogurt had a cream layer on top like the fancy organic brands. Oui la la. The way I make yogurt requires heating it to close to 180 degrees anyway, so we didn't need to pasteurize it ahead of time.

Cream top yogurt

Rigged double boiler

 With all the kitchen equipment I have (yogurt maker anyone?) you'd think I would have a double boiler but I don't. This is what I've been using to make yogurt - our big cast iron dutch oven with a smaller pot inside and a cookie cutter jammed between the two handles.

 It works. To pasteurize, you either heat the milk to 150 for 30 minutes or 165 for 15 seconds. I can't ever hit the temperature quite right so I overshoot and it ends up at 165 for much longer than 15 seconds. Milk boils at 174 degrees so you have to watch it pretty closely and use a double boiler to help ward off scalding.

After you heat it all the way, you need to cool it down quickly. I put the whole pot in a sink full of ice. Notice that I use a thermometer this whole time. You are aiming to get it down to 40 degrees quickly, but that doesn't usually happen until I stick it in the fridge. Tasty, tasty. And local goodness.

Tales from the Coop: Cleaning Day

Cleaning day is the chickens favorite day!

About every two weeks I clean out the old hay, clean the coop, and add new hay.  The rest of the day, the chickens spend their time straightening and organizing the straw.

Happy chickens are the best chickens.

Evening Routines

The initial frantic rush of projects, due dates, cranky mornings, and  forgotten tasks that accompany the beginning of a new school year has passed so Mr J,  Jenny, and I have settled into our fall evening routine.  Jenny and I do not live or die by the routines but we try to keep to a similar schedule most days because it a) helps Mr J calm down for bed and b) keep me from plopping on the couch and turning on the TV.  Most importantly it keeps us active together as a family and keeps us happy.


Here is our typical evening.

3:30-5:00  Everyone arrives home from our various schools.  Mr J goes straight to coloring and we tend to do straightening and decompressing.

5:00-6:00  Chuck and Mr J play in the yard, care for chickens, water the garden, and chase eachother/dogs with the hose.  Jenny cooks dinner and joins us outside the pots are simmering.

6:00-6:30  We all eat dinner as a family around the table.
6:30-7:30  We have family time.  It usually involved dancing to the iTunes library,  puzzles, me acting like the youngest member of the family, and Jenny saying "Be Safe".  As a side note,  if you ask Mr J what a cow says, he states, "Moo".  If you ask him what Mama says, he states, "Safety First".  Go Figure.

7:30-8:30  We go for an evening walk. This helps us fight the urge to turn on the TV and it winds Mr J down for bed.   Sometimes we scoot this time up a little to make time for baths.  He is related to me, so we don't stress too much about baths.
8:300-on  Jenny and I get back to work grading papers, writing lessons, and reading journals.

Farm Update: Eggs

Its been far too long since I've updated about the chickens.   I am checking for eggs two or three times a day: the pre-dawn check never yields eggs but I am feeding anyways, the home-from-work check is most fruitful, and the evening check will occasionally have an egg. 

On average,  we receive three and a half eggs a day.  Once in a blue moon, we will have a five-egg day.  Since the eggs are slightly undersized, we do a good job of eating all of them.  Every once and a while we will send half a dozen or so to a neighbor or friend.

More, more pumpkins

While running errands this weekend, we drove past a pumpkin patch. Guess who insisted we stop to get a "Really, REALLY, really big pumpkin."

Yes, it was Chuck.

O October, how I love thee

Just when you've started to develop an unforgivable grudge against Texas for hot weather, it gives you October.

Hot enough for a brief swim, cold enough for a sweater in the morning. 

At last.

A Pile 'O Books

We've got lots of great autumn books. Mr J is OBSESSED with pumpkins again. We have lots and lots of books about pumpkins to satisfy his pumpkin needs. Aside from pumpkin books, we have three that he's been really enjoying.

The Apple Pie that Papa Baked
This is a beautiful simple book that Joey loves.

Pumpkin Moonshine

Autumn: An Alphabet Acrostic
This book is lovely. Each illustration is sweet and detailed.


I love seasonal books and fall is the best for books that Joey loves!

The Artist in Residence

"Color with me!"

From the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep, the littlest artist demands a viewing audience. Colored pencils, crayons square and round, and scissors are laying in piles under the table and on the furniture.  

We paint, we sculpt, we make a colorful mess. He's happy. We're happy. And we're learning how to get all sorts of colors off the floor and furniture.

Every Thursday morning, he takes an art class with his Nana. He loves his art school. There are lots of great books and websites about art with kids. These are a few of our favorites:

The Artful Parent

Stubby Pencil Studio

Scenes from a Weekend

If you show a boy a giant bug...

He's going to need a muffin the size of his head...

and then he might need to assemble 4 puzzles.

Hoping you had a lovely weekend.

School Garden

For about a year,  I have been working on creating a school garden with a few other dedicated teachers at my school.  It is fun work, but keeps us busy.  We have transformed an unused balcony located off of the Kindergarten classes into a real gym.  Here are a few pictures of the garden from early on.

We are currently growing cabbage, radish, pumpkin, tomato, broccoli, mint, basil, rosemary, lemon, and a few other goodies that are escaping me.

It's raining hens

What do you do with a toddler when it rains all weekend? 

Dance in the rain.