Did You Know?

111 pounds of grapes dries down to 4 gallons of raisins?
It takes about 30 minutes to pick that many grapes, and almost 3 days to dry each batch.
Black Manukka grapes make the world's best raisins.

Not New Furniture

The Iowa Grandparents are visiting right now- here with time for punkin chunkin, costume making, fall decorating and Halloween preparations. And in the spirit of preparing the house for their visit we recovered the dining room bench (which was tweed plaid with a giant rip so the boys could easily stick spaghetti fingers in and pull off bits of foam, you know, for fun) and the chairs (which were blue and purple chevron from 1942, probably, and, well, at least 50 years of stains). It was time.
And Joann was having a sale- I got two yards of decorator fabric for $12, instead of the $60 they were marked. And as much as I don't like Joann (for their ads, mostly- there are those emails nearly every day, and then the fliers that come way before the sale starts so I think I'm going to get that thing I want for 40% off until I get all the way to the register, past the aisle of candy, with three crying, fussy, antsy children- it's lame. Costco does the same thing.) it is practically next door, and there are always cute fabrics. And good deals.

The bench.

The top of the bench. Take a good look- by the time you see it in person it will indubitably be covered in spaghetti smears.

The fabric for the chairs.

And one of the chairs, finished!

Not quite the new dining room furniture I really want- 52"diameter round Mission or Shaker style pedestal table with leaves, simple little smooth (no grooves for goo to get stuck in) wooden chairs- but way cheaper and less hassle.

Easiest Summer Landscape Fix

The sunflower! Who doeasn't love sunflowers? Cheap, easy, fast growing, drought-hearty, invincible, cheerful, and self-sowing.
The first spring after we bought this house there were some sunflower self-sown starts in the garden, and a little problem of the big low deck needing something around it to keep a new toddler from thinking he could walk off the edge. Perfect! Our deck is surrounded now by sunflowers, self-sown, and they grow around the sand pit, too, making it a shady little hidden place all summer. Along side the driveway, where nothing was growing and I never water? Sunflowers, cheerful sunshine faces bobbing along in the breeze, peeking over the fence, saying hello to all who pass. There's always one or two who make it through in the veggie patch, and they are always mammoths, with stems I can't get a hand around, and huge flowers, bobbing over everything like massive, benevolent scarecrows (and at least as effective as the straw and overalls variety!).
Their charm doesn't end with summer, either. As the seeds ripen they become a forest of standing, waving, living bird feeders. Even after we pull them from the ground the fallen seeds attract birds, all winter long. And somehow, beyond amazement, there are always still way too many popping up again in the spring, pushing eager heads up and out, searching out the sun with us winter weary citizens. Because of sunflowers we've been able to delay rebuilding the deck, installing irrigation, rebuilding the fence, doing all kinds of more expensive landscape fixes!
Unfortunately my efforts to harvest the seeds have ended poorly, but still there is hope, and my own nest full of hungry birdie-mouths eager for "homemade" sunflower seeds. Maybe this year!

Free Museum Day!

Do you know about Museum Day 2009, when you can get free admission to museums just by printing off an admission ticket from the Smithsonian magazine's websitesite, right here? No, not just the Smithsonian museums- yeah, I know those are always free. If I lived in the DC kind of Washington we'd be there all the time. But we don't. We live in the other kind of Washington. Where Seattle is. Hey! Speaking of Seattle, the Experience Music Project is there, and guess what? They're participating in Museum Day! Uh, not that I'm going with the little ones, but it's a perfect kind of big kid and Papa rock and roll thing to do. For free, instead of the usual $15 for each ticket. Check it out- even if the EMP isn't your thing, there's lots of other Museums around the US participating.

Yogurt, Take Two

I've said before that we eat a lot of yogurt. About a gallon a week. I did a whole post some time back about making yogurt in the crockpot, which is so ridiculously easy, and so much cheaper than buying it, even in the big Nancy's yogurt containers I used to buy every week.

But then I melted the electrical cord to my crockpot, so it was out of commission for a couple weeks. Avery and Grandpa Randy fixed it, but it seemed like it was working better than it had been before- well, hotter, or faster, or something. The milk was getting cooked to the bottom of the crock. And let me tell you- yogurt with little chunks of burned milk in it is not a taste sensation you'd want to repeat! And pouring $5.49 in organic milk down the drain makes me sad. Very, very sad. Heating the milk on low worked better, but oh! so slow. So unbearably slow. So I started buying yogurt again. Ugh. I hate buying things I can make better and cheaper at home. Which is one reason why we hardly ever eat out unless we go to the city. Don't even get me started!

Then I remembered my friend Jennifer- she makes it in the cooler. So easy! Not quite as easy as the crockpot method, but more predictable, at least with my hyper-functioning crockpot. Just heat up the milk to 170, place the pot and all in the sink (or my big blue basin) and dump some ice around to cool it quickly, skimming off any skin that might form. Stir in the yogurt starter (and honey and vanilla if wanted), pour into containers, place in a cooler with jars of hot tap water. In the morning- lovely thick, creamy, smooth, burned-milk-bitless yogurt. Hooray!

Summer By The Numbers

Apricot syrup, blueberry jam. Jars full of summer- they even LOOK like sunshine, don't they?

This past week by the numbers:

320 books removed hastily from shelves as water seeped up through the carpet underneath. And then neatly put back, in tidy groupings which lasted about 1/2 an hour. 320 sighs from Mama.

180 pounds of cherries: picked, washed, stemmed, pitted, frozen, dried, fruit leathered, and soon to be jammed. I am SO done with cherries this year! Well, as soon as I make that jam, and some more fruit leather-it is delish, even if we are weary of cherries.

160 minutes we lasted at the Folklife Festival before we were too wilted and cranky and tired and in need of air conditioning and dim rooms and icy, slippery glasses of lemonade.

102 degrees Miles was for no apparent reason.

101 times I thought he might have West Nile Virus- all those mosquito bites on the 4th of July?

100 times I convinced myself not to freak out about it.

99 degrees when we went to Folklife this weekend. Cooler than past years, but really awful heat to bear just the same. Even with ice cream cones and a giant slip and slide powered by a fire hose and a big hill.

80 pounds of blueberries: picked, washed and sorted, frozen, jammed.

75 times I've thought about weeding the garden.

40 pounds of apricots: washed, pitted, canned, turned into syrup. More to be found, picked, dried, and made into fruit leather. Do you know anyone with an under appreciated apricot tree?

18 trips down said slip and slide.

12 pounds of raspberries: picked, washed, frozen. More to pick from our own bushes and made into jam. And dried whole, for granola. Maybe more to pick, over the mountains?

10 pm- average bedtime for boys this week of late nights, weird schedules, and innumerable chances to help Mama out!

7 tomatoes picked from our plants and eaten with silly happy grins on our faces. It's summer!

5 minutes spent weeding, er... making a completely unnoticeable dent in the overgrowth of weeds in my poor garden. Oh, it's sad. At least I had the foresight to plant the tomatoes on the edge, so they're first weeded! If that counts for anything, I don't know.

3 times our basement has flooded now, for 3 entirely different reasons. Still, it's three times pulling up carpets, getting out shopvacs and renting giant dryer-fans, pouring baking soda and vacuuming it up, tacking carpet down and putting everything away again. 3 can be a pretty big number, sometimes.

3 jars of strawberry jam eaten already. Guess I need to make more if we're to have any this winter!

3 lunches made entirely of ice cream. Shhh! Don't tell Papa!

2 plastic safari hats overflowing with candy brought home from a birthday party.

1 tired Mama.

Window Cleaner

*

This is the mirror in the upstairs bathroom of my house. I think it's quite cute, except for the damage all the way around the edges. I hear that comes from ammonia, which is in lots of commercial window cleaners. Which is one reason why I don't use store-bought window spray. Uh, that, coupled with the fact that I'm too cheap to buy something I can make for almost-free, and the fact that mostly the boys clean the windows in the house (which might also explain why the windows are all smudgey except for a wavy bit of clean right along the bottom).

Anyway, my neighbor and I were talking about homemade cleaners. I shared my recipe for laundry detergent, and she told me about the window cleaner her Aunt always made. And the next day she brought me a bottle of it and a recipe card. How nice is that?

What's even better is how well it works. Without ammonia. For hardly any money. Here you go:

Lady Lee Window Cleaner

In a gallon jug pour 3T. Prell shampoo (or any cheap shampoo- VO5 works fine, I'm sure Suave or something would do just as well and it's always on sale for 99c a bottle) and 1pint rubbing alcohol. Fill with water, then pour into a spray bottle. Don't add more shampoo than called for.

I know it isn't as "green" as plain vinegar window wash, but I've never been impressed with vinegar for windows- it does fine, I guess, but not better than soap and water, and this solution is no-rinse and works really well. And smells better than vinegar, to me at least. And it's cheap. Like me.

*Okay, okay, I suppose I SHOULD have cleaned the mirror before taking a picture of it, but I didn't. Get over it.

White Beans

White beans are in my menu rotation every 4th week. I make a whole crock pot full, over night, and in the morning they're ready to be divided up into neat 2 c. portions for the freezer, and turned into some of our favorite meals.
Like Chicken White Bean Chili. Jennifer has a great recipe. Here's how I do it, give or take: 4c cooked navy beans, 1 large onion chopped, 1 large can chopped green chiles, 2 garlic cloves, crushed, 2c cooked chicken, chopped, 1T. cumin, 1t. California chile powder, 1t. smoked paprika, 1/2t. crushed red pepper, 1t. oregano, salt and pepper to taste, chicken broth just to the top of everything, cook in the crock pot low heat 8hrs. Serve with sour cream, grated cheese, chopped tomatoes, cornbread. Of course this is another recipe I double (at least) and freeze.

White Stripes Bean Salad. (Not quite Salad Nicoise) This is what we're having for supper tonight. Make the dressing first. Whisk together 3/4c. olive oil, 1/2c. lemon juice, 1/4c. honey, 1 minced shallot, 1 minced garlic clove, 2T. minced basil, 1T. minced thyme, 2t. minced oregano, 1t. dijon mustard, and salt and pepper to taste. Cover a flattish serving dish with washed, torn lettuce (or arugula or watercress if little children won't fuss), tossed with 1/4c. of the dressing, then make "stripes" of the rest of the ingredients, nestled in the greens. 4c. white beans, 2 can solid tuna, 1 red onion, sliced, 1/2c. black olives, 3 medium tomatoes cut in eighths (or cherry tomatoes), 6 hard boiled eggs chilled and cut in quarters, 1lb new potatoes, cooked and tossed with 1/4c. of the dressing and chilled(or use a pasta, like bow-ties). Drizzle the rest of the dressing over everything, and sprinkle 2T. capers over it all. Pretend you're French. Sit at a little ironwork table and read a fashion magazine while eating this salad.
It seems like a lot of work for a salad, but you don't need to do anything else for supper, except maybe put out a baguette you biked home with from the bakery, and some wine. And you can do everything in advance. In fact, the cooking stuff you HAVE to do in advance, so it'll all chill, and the chopping you might as well do while you're cooking, so by the time supper comes around it's as easy as anything to compose your lovely salad, sit down to your lovely table, and enjoy your lovely self.

White Bean Dip. In the bowl of your food processor dump 2c. white beans, 1 crushed garlic clove, the juice of 1 lemon, salt, pepper, and olive oil to taste (3 T. maybe to start). Process til it's as smooth as you want. You can easily change the flavor up with fresh herbs or roasted red peppers. Thin as wanted with reserved bean liquor or water.

Cassoulet. I've only made once the authentic way- it was delicious, but also about $40, and thus way out of my price range for a single supper, and a lot of work, and thus out of my range as the mother of three young children. I mostly cook by instinct and memory now. But it was delicious, so if you've the inclination, or a cheap source for goose or duck, this is a mouth-watering recipe and article. I do love Saveur magazine!

Black Beans

Does anything indoors smell better than a pot of beans simmering away? Well, maybe (cinnamon rolls, roasting turkey) but I do love the smell of the house on bean day!

I've taken lately to soaking beans all day, and cooking them in the crock pot all night. That way they're ready in the morning to cool down before I portion them out (2c- about the same as a can of beans) and freeze them, and there's still time to reset the crock pot with the beans that I'm cooking with that day. Plus, the house smells full and yummy all night, so everyone sleeps really well and the boys wake up HUNGRY! and eat a good breakfast.

Lately I've been cooking beans on rotation: Black beans, Navy beans, Garbanzo beans, Pinto beans. I used to just cook black beans or white beans, freezing the extra, but I make hummus all the time and it seemed silly to keep buying those little cans when it is so easy and frugal to cook a big pot and freeze can-sized portions. And then the boys started asking for pinto beans, and refried beans like they get at Mexican restaurants, and I, being the indulgent Mama that I am, decided to add them in to my rotation too.

BLACK BEANS- We often just eat them right out of the crock pot, with a little sofrito-ish sauce (onion, garlic, tomato, green peppers, maybe some chorizo) mixed in, served with rice and sprinkled with cilantro and lime juice.

Black Bean Confetti Salad-in a salad bowl whisk the juice of 1 lime, 3 T. olive oil, 1T. honey, 1t. cumin, 1/2t. California chile powder, 1/2t. salt, 1/4t. cayenne, 1/4t. garlic powder. Then dump in 2 c. black beans, cooked, 1c. corn kernels, 1c. sweet onion, diced, 1c. red or mixed bell pepper, diced, 1c. cilantro, chopped, stir it all up, cover and chill. We like this salad for summer suppers with a big pile of lettuce, some chopped tomatoes, avocado, shrimp sometimes, salsa, sour cream. It's also yummy as quesadilla filling with melty cheese, as a dip for tortilla chips, or a side dish for grilled chicken or fish.

Vegetarian Black Bean Chili- Dump all together in a crock pot: 4c. cooked black beans, 1 large onion, chopped, 2 cloves garlic, minced, 2-3c. mixed bell pepper (or 1 160z. bag of frozen stir-fry peppers), chopped, 2c. corn kernels, 3c. tomatoes, chopped (or 1 28oz. can), 1T. olive oil, 1T. cumin, 1T. chile powder, 1t. paprika, 1/2t. cayenne, 1/4t. cinnamon, salt and pepper to taste. Add water just to the top of the pile, cover, and cook on low 8 hours. To serve ladle into bowls, top with chopped cilantro, chopped tomatoes, grated cheese, avocado, sour cream, salsa.

I always make a bunch of chili and freeze half. Then we eat supper and still have leftovers for lunches. Or I might use the leftovers to make Chili Pie- pour leftover chili in a baking dish, top with cornbread batter (I use organic masa harina so no GMO issues and more nutritious) and bake. Serve with all the usual chili toppings.

Black Bean Dip- Couldn't be any easier! In a food processor put 2c. cooked black beans, 1t. chile powder, 1t. cumin, 1t. onion powder, salt, pepper, cayenne to taste. Process til it's as smooth as you like. This is a great alternative to refried beans, an easy healthy dip for veggie sticks and tortilla chips, a good base for nachos and burritos. You can mix in grated cheese, sour cream, or salsa if you want to.

Project::Quilt 1 (In Progress)

In an effort to remind myself that (1) even basic sewing skills are better than nothing (2) I do get stuff done, almost every day (3) the Garnet Hill catalog is lovely, but I'd feel sad if anything from that store was spit up on, peed in, thrown up all over, or covered in a curious mixture of chocolate and sand, and that yes, in deed, these are things that happen to my bed more often than one might think, if one didn't have a house full of little boys I submit: my very first quilt, a spontaneous quilt, made out of a pile of handed-down mostly teal colored shirts, in cotton and silk, that my mother gave me, and that as much as I WANT to wear them, I just can't. All that teal! But my bedroom walls are teal, and I don't imagine painting will happen any time soon, and besides, even if I can't wear it, I kind of like the color of my bedroom- I just don't want to spend $500 for a new quilt that will inevitably be soiled by my trio of children. And so. A quilt that takes no careful planning, or measuring, that I can just sit down and sew a bit on, randomly picking pieces of cut-up shirts and creating something kind of sweet and certainly handmade looking, sewing, sewing until it's big enough. Did you know king size beds need BIG quilts to cover them? Still, I'm hopeful this quilt will be finished before too long. It's too fun not to work on it, and it's too devoid of my usual excuses for not making quilts to suffer neglect for long.

Asparagus

Ah! Spring just keeps coming on, doesn't it? We're flooded in asparagus here. As always it's hot and summer feeling now- as much as I love asparagus I'd hate to have to pick it all day long. That's brutal work. It makes it a little unbelievable that I can buy it bulk for 79c a pound.
We bought almost 70 pounds yesterday. Today the boys and I prepared 40 for pickling and froze 30 pounds. With Papa's help (after work) we had 26 quarts canned by 9:30, and the boys were desperately hanging on to "help" and perhaps not so coincidentally avoid bedtime.

Here's how I did it: 40 pounds asparagus, washed, ends snapped, then trimmed (we put up the trimmed bits- they're just as good, just not as pretty). I put 1-2 garlic cloves, 1 T pickling spices and sometimes 1/2 a jalapeno in each quart, then stuffed in the garlic spears. Filled almost to the top with boiling hot brine (2 gallons vinegar, 2 gallons water, 4 cups pickling salt), then processed in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. All of them sealed, though one jar did break in the canner.

It feels good, filling the house with food for winter. Canning, even preparing asparagus for freezing, is kind of a pain with little kids- my impatient part wants to just DO it, but they love to help, love to know they're needed, and so it becomes a project to last all afternoon and evening. But it's worth it, I think. They're learning to rely on themselves and their own hard work to get what they want and need, I'm practicing patience, and they went to bed tired but proud.

"I'm sure we'll see him again"

This is what the emergency room doctor said as he was clearing Miles to go home last night (well, this morning, technically, but whose counting hours?). I thought that was kind of pessimistic, but then this is the same ER doc we've at least twice, no, I'm almost 100% that he's helped us three times in the last year- when Miles got into the bottle of adult extra strength Tylenol someone left in reach and possibly un-child-safety-latched, just a few weeks ago when Miles had the fever of 105 for a week and we had two trips to the ER in two days. Perhaps the doctor feeling confident that we'll be back was just common sense, but please! At what point does an ER doc call child protective services? Five visits in a year? Six?
Anyway, this time Miles fell off a twisty slide he was climbing up, and dislocated his elbow- though I thought it was broken, and Papa thought it was a bruised arm and a tired boy. Once the doc got that elbow back in place it was only a matter of minutes before Miles was cheerful and amazed, happily waving and chattering to everyone in the hospital. Whew!

In other news- Papa came through with a really cool new camera to replace the one he killed last weekend. Thanks to Avery's careful research, heartily voiced opinions on the technical merits of DSLR , and careful reading of all of the lcoal store fliers and sales ads, they found a nifty little camera for me. I'm ready for summer photo ops!
We picked up 60 pounds of asparagus to pickle and freeze. 79 cents a pound, I think. A hot and steamy afternoon, family-canning style.
And it was 50% off everything at Value Village, and the boys are fully outfitted (except sandals size 3 for Avery) and they're ready for summer photo ops too!

Now I need to get chores done and somehow, someway, find a little time to figure out how to actually take pictures with my new camera! A fun kind of thing to find time for, I think. But at least now I can safely say, "I'm sure you'll all see us again!"

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Laundry Detergent is super easy to make. Really. It may be the thing that puts us over the top as weirdo homespun-homeschool-backwoods folks, removing us permanently from the ranks of the urban sophisticates, but what can I say? Making stuff is fun, making really useful things is empowering, and making things that actually save money is just smart. Besides, in these days of financial insecurity and economic woes, doesn't it just make sense to at least know how to be as self-sufficient as possible?

So... here's the recipe I use for liquid laundry detergent.

I have a 2.5 gallon stockpot which is the perfect size for this recipe, but you could also do the stove part in a regular saucepan, and dump it into a bucket.

HOMEMADE LAUNDRY DETERGENT

In a stockpot over medium heat whisk together until completely melted and incorporated:

2 quarts water

1/2 bar Fels Naptha laundry soap, grated

(or 1 whole bar of bath soap, like Ivory)

Remove from heat and whisk in until completely incorporated and slightly thickened:

1 cup borax

1 cup washing soda (not baking soda!)

Fill to 2.5 gallons total with hot tap water, stir to mix. If desired add:

1/2 -1 oz. essential oil

Let sit overnight undisturbed. In the morning your detergent will be cool, thick, and slimy. Hooray!

Use 1/4 cup per load.

Really- that's all you need. It's super concentrated.

This is not foaming detergent, so it's good for both top and front loader machines.

It's really thick, and we keep it in a big plastic bin with a 1/4 cup measure, but if you were to keep it in a pump or pouring type of container you might want to loosen it up with the stick blender. It doesn't seem to thicken up again if you do that.

And if you're in a hurry or just like powder better:

HOMEMADE POWDER LAUNDRY DETERGENT

In a food processor (or by hand) grate:

1/2 bar Fels Naptha

(or a whole bar of Ivory)

Pour into a container and add:

1 cup borax

1 cup washing soda (not baking soda)

Cover and shake to mix.

Use 2 Tablespoons per load.

FABRIC SOFTENER

add 1/2 cup white vinegar to your rinse cycle.

It really does work, it's super cheap, helps your clothes rinse really clean, and the smell leaves as the clothes dry.

frugality for the future

GARDEN:
Last year we had a good garden, but still I wasted a lot of space on things that don't quite work, or take up too much space for their yield. I'm circling items in seed catalogs right now with my garden goals in mind.
This year I want the garden to be chock full of (1)things the kids like to just pick and eat- tomatoes, broccoli, cucumbers, peas, green beans (2) things we eat a lot of- tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, turnips (3) things that are expensive to buy organic- broccoli, salad greens, carrots, cabbage, peas (4) things to easily put up for winter- tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, green beans. I like growing sweet and hot peppers, but they're abundant, cheap, and organic around here. Peanuts would be fun, but frivolous. Melons I always waste space on, I'm going to resist this year, if I can. They're cheap and all over the place all summer.
I also want to put in a strawberry bed, an asparagus bed, and plant some high bush cranberries or currants. I think a cutting bed of flowers would be nice, too, and a bed of annual herbs. With the new baby and wanting to paint the house I think taking out the awful rose bushes may happen, but not planting perennial herbs and kiwis til next year.

KITCHEN:
This year I finally started making yogurt- so easy, so cheap, so yummy I can't believe I haven't been doing it for years. Thank you Jennifer for encouraging me to tr it. Can you believe I make a gallon of whole milk organic yogurt every week, and when I strain it we end up with 3 quarts of Greek yogurt for $5, when Fred Meyer sells one pint for $6?! It's amazing.
This year I want to learn cheese making- ricotta and chevre are easy I think, but it'd be nice to learn to make mozzarella and some other cheeses that are hard to squeeze into the budget regularly. The kids also like kefir, as do I, and I'd like to get started making that, too. $4.69 for a quart is too steep for us to buy except for a treat. We plan to buy a bigger freezer, and stick it in the garage, thus clearing up space for bookshelves in the office and making sure we have enough room for lots of blueberries, asparagus, fruit, a side of beef, plus the other animals I want to get- a lamb, pig, lots of fish, chickens, and some venison. Having the freezer full of food is wonderful, and knowing we have healthy pasture fed organic protein without having to carve it out of the weekly budget is great, but it would be nice to have something other than beef in there!
I'd also like to find someone to sell us fresh eggs and raw milk on a regular basis, but I doubt that we'll save any money, just get more nutrition for the dollars we do spend.

HOUSEHOLD:
I also learned how to make laundry detergent. Again, a huge savings, and easy to do. This spring we're putting up laundry lines outside- I envision two T-posts with a hammock between and a shade cloth, and either a multi-line retractable clothesline from one post to the house/garage or a couple of clotheslines attached to the post with clips, so they can easily come down for the raucous playing that sometimes happens in the yard, maybe with cleats on the house to wind the line out of the way.
Getting Mymy out of diapers will be a savings, since he's been in 7th generation disposables for the last year+. The new baby will start in cloth, and hopefully not have the same skin and uncontrollable rash issues Mymy's had. I hope drying diapers in the hot desert sun will help that problem, as well as take care of the $10 a week for diapers we now spend.