Strawberries and jam

Such an absolutely perfect weekend. First we hosted a Friday potluck, then a Saturday at the farmer's market, spent time in the yard planting more herbs (4 kinds of basil!) and veggies and the evening at Cirque du Soleil. And then an impromptu strawberry picking expedition on Sunday lead by the world most adorable strawberry spotter. The strawberries were gorgeous at the farmer's market this weekend I developed an obsession with picking strawberries this spring. My indulgent husband let me hijack our other plans.

Child labor

We've been playing the game Orchard in which a rascally raven steals your fruit. Joey was very concerned that we needed to get to the strawberries before the raven came and ate our fruit. If you have a 2 - 5 year old, you need Orchard. Joey loves it and it's tolerable for us to play over and over and over...

Lifting 25% of his body weight in fruit

Berry boys

Anyway, we picked 8 lbs. of strawberries. We had another 3 lbs. from the farmer's market in the fridge. So that's 11 lbs. of berries. Ummmm, yeah. Clearly, I was a little excited to see them in season again.

I've put up 10 jars of jam and have plans to freeze most of the rest. Now that I'm over my fear of canning, I really love it. The jars look so pretty lined up in the pantry and Joey had a blast using the potato masher to smash the berries. Well, smash and eat. Look here for more info about canning. I love busting out all the weird shaped jars I inherited from my Grandma. They are perfect for jam!

Garden Boots

Hey, Joey.

Yes, Mommy.

Let's get dressed and go outside to water the garden.

OK, Mommy. I'll get ready. 

Silence

Joey, what are you doing?

I'm ready to go now!

 

My child - nude except for his gardening boots and a camera. 

Welcome Spring.

Happy International Women's Day

And if you haven't read it, you might want to check out the first White House Report on the Status of Women since Eleanor Roosevelt lead the effort in the 1960's. Spoiler alert: we're still a long way from equality.

Parading, parenting, and participation

Mardi Gras 2007

Instead of parading today, which is what any reasonable person would be doing, I'm feeling a bit down in the dumps since I have to be at work. I need glitter and king cake.

Instead, I'm at the office. Wait, you say, isn't it spring break? Yes my friends, but since I'm now in the land of professional studentism spring break just means time to catchup on all the work stuff I can't get to in a normal week including grading three weeks worth of papers. Chuck laughs at me when I complain about the piddly amount of grading I do.

So today I'm preparing for a series of participatory evaluation workshops for the project I work on. Since I have time this week (See: Spring Break), we've scheduled 5 workshops with our community partners. After a series of meltdowns this morning with Mr. J involving markers and shoes, I realized that many of the lessons of participatory research are basically the same as my parenting philosophy:

• Respect the process
• Meet people where they are instead of where you want them to be
• Acknowledge that you cannot instill a desire for change or action from the outside
• Knowledge comes in many forms - classroom and experiential
• Realize that perfect is not possible or desirable
• Long term commitment is the only way to make improvement
• Granola bars can restore goodwill and
• When all else fails make a joke

Also, patience. And more cake. Happy Mardi Gras!

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.