I don’t know about where you live, but around here the flu has been going around again. In fact, in one of our homeschool activities, since the new year began we have had two weeks where over half of the families were out due to illness. We’ve been fortunate in that we haven’t been hit by some of the bugs going around. This is how I make all of my chicken stock during the Winter, to help ward off the nastiness.
[Read more…] about Changes- Immune-Boosting Chicken Soup
This past Spring, I joined Herb Mentor and stayed with them for a few months, learning all I could about the use of herbs. One of the tips I picked up is that you can soak an herb in vinegar and use that in your cooking.
I’m always looking for ways to get medicinal herbs into me in ways that don’t resemble forms of torture. I know some of you laugh, but some of herbs I use are especially difficult to get down and I’m the type that can swallow anything. I am totally not picky when it comes to the taste or texture of what I have to swallow, a skill I learned while I was so ill and going through chelation. I found that some of the less palatable root herbs, like dandelion and burdock root, are easily done in vinegar without it becoming a mind-bending flavor.
So I began using the burdock and dandelion vinegars in all sorts of dishes, including uncooked things like my quick honey mustard dip (recipe below). So far, no one has noticed any change in flavors or made any comments. I now soak all of my apple cider vinegar in burdock or dandelion prior to use.
This summer has proven to be incredibly busy, much busier than I expected. A few weeks ago, I felt like the Lord was tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to get organized quickly and declutter as much as we can. We have some elderly family members who might need assistance, and we need to prepare for that possibility. So I have kicked myself into high gear, trying to school on our year-round schedule, do my job and handle the garden and daily chores in addition to the extra workload this presented. And we have managed to accomplish everything on a shoestring budget while we save for some needed car and home repairs.
Despite spending time gardening and even expanding our garden, we have lost most of what we planted. What the Mexican bean beetles and squash vine borers didn’t destroy, the chickens did when the town mowed down a post of our garden fence when they were tending the ditch with their machinery. The chickens got in and decimated what was growing in short order. What we have left is some green tomatoes we hope will ripen, about 5 sunflowers that are now over 10 feet tall, and we’re waiting now to see how the potatoes did. The onions are still tiny, despite supposedly being close to time to be pulled. We have replanted the winter squash on Monday and we’re now organizing to put the fall and winter garden in.
The last few weeks I have spent time at the farmer’s market, buying wholesale. The Lord has plopped some incredible deals on produce in our lap. While canning I worked a full week of VBS at our church and managed to wear myself out between the two. We processed our extra roosters over a period of two weeks and sent them to freezer camp. We cleaned out the freezer that needed defrosting and got everything organized in an effort to have enough space to hopefully purchase half of a cow this fall. I found I had one whole shelf full of stock bones that I need to use. I also got all of the remaining meats grouped by type, to better help me plan our meals and use what we have wisely.
I have started setting up ‘centers’ for everything I do at home, where everything needed for that project is centrally located to where the work is performed. I have created centers for laundry, baking, dry goods in use, personal care, herbs, school and work, gardening and more. This inspiration came from listening to Vicki Bentley at the NCHE conference Memorial Day Weekend. Vicki is an excellent speaker, and if you ever have the opportunity to hear her, I highly encourage you to do so. I would be willing to drive to a conference just to hear her speak, she gave so much inspiration, encouragement and practical advice. (You can purchase MP3s of Vicki’s presentations from the conference here.) Her chore and star chart information alone has been a huge help to me in getting my kids motivated to do chores and take initiative without being asked. Vicki said in one of her presentations that if you spend just 5 minutes looking for one item every morning and every evening, you waste over 60 hours a year. I have found that I am going up and down the hallway and the stairs too often because things are not centrally located, and I wish to free up that time so I can accomplish more.
For the baking and dry good centers, I took one cabinet and placed my measuring cups and measuring spoons along with mason jars of xanthan gum, salt, baking soda, baking powder on the bottom shelf. In racks hanging below the cabinet are all of my spices. Each spice has a label on the lid so I don’t have to hunt for the correct one. The rapadura, flours and dry goods are located behind me on a baker’s rack. Each item in stored in a quart to half-gallon size mason jar with a labeled lid. I do not have to take extra steps in the kitchen, saving me time and energy. We also reorganized and deep cleaned the kitchen.
For the laundry center, we reorganized the laundry room so that we now have a rotating system for the clothes hangers, separated by type. Each day when we get dressed, the empty clothes hangers get hung on each bedroom doorknob. One child is tasked with the chore of retrieving all of the clothes hangers, taking them downstairs and putting each hanger where it belongs. This has solved the problems with wrinkled clothing and additional ironing time because it had to be hauled up the stairs after coming out of the dryer while we hunt for the clothes hangers that fit the item. And you know any time kids haul a piece of clothing, it’s bound to wind up wrinkled. 😉 All of the different clothing and fabric types now each have their own bin to facilitate quick sorting and washing of the laundry. We finally installed the utility sink that we purchased in 2007 in the laundry room.
For our school supplies we use daily, we repurposed a rolling cart which is now located within reach of my computer. We also located a bookcase and the filing cabinet beside my desk in order to facilitate school, bill paying and handling my job. Now, when mail comes in, I can handle it immediately and drop it right into the correct file folder in the filing cabinet. Paper doesn’t have to be handled twice, nothing gets lost and I don’t worry about any bills or other important paperwork getting missed. We located a locking cabinet with doors in an unused area of the living room that holds shoe-box sized rubermaid containers. These boxes contain our items that are in pieces, such as the math blocks and flashcards, as well as the games and the small-piece items such as K-nex and Legos.
I updated my household binder (Flylady style) and created binders for family recipes, every mailer I have published, our school records, and the gardening and homesteading records. I also have one binder where I keep info on ideas or things I want to try, build plans for potential projects and the like.
I obtained two rolling carts, one for each child. These carts now hold the library books and are parked beside the homeschool cabinet. These carts are incredibly handy and stop the problem of having to haul the books to the car and into the library, breaking my back. This has just about eliminated our hunting for a book that is due and it keeps the books out of the kid’s bedrooms.
I created two memory card boxes. I used the Simply Charlotte Mason Memory System and made one for our scripture verses and made one for the myriad of other things I wish my children to memorize. We have included everything from family members phone numbers to poems, science and history facts, songs and more. These boxes set atop our rolling school supply cart.
I still have to get the dining room chairs recovered so we can reclaim our dining room table. We are also looking for an effective storage solution for our canning jars, both full and empty. Both of these projects are likely going to take some cash, so I’m looking for the most workable solution that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
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KerryAnn Foster runs Cooking Traditional Foods, the longest running Traditional Foods Menu Mailer on the internet. KerryAnn has over nine years of traditional foods experience and is a former Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader. Founded in 2005, CTF helps you feed your family nourishing foods they will love. Each mailer contains one soup, five dinners, one breakfast, on dessert and extras. You can learn more about our Menu Mailers at the CTF website. For a free sample Menu Mailer, join our mailing list. You can also join our forum to chat with other traditional foodists and learn more.
I haven’t blogged much in the last month because we have been working hard to get our raised garden beds built and extended onto some new ground. We are effectively trying to double our vegetable garden space despite being limited by the steep topography and shade from all of the woods. Once we are done, we will put in some new beds in a different area of the yard for the herbs and perennial plants. We also had an extended visit from my grandparents and my grandmother came down with shingles while they were here. That sent me into a tizzy of work, trying to get ready with extra food cooked and the chores and gardening done ahead in case the kids caught chicken pox from her. Their 14-day incubation period ended on Wednesday and they show no symptoms, so I assume they did not catch it from her. We will still continue to watch them until this coming Wednesday, just in case. So the last few weeks have been very busy but very productive.
Living in Western NC, our last frost date is mid-April but we don’t put out the warm weather vegetables until Mother’s Day weekend or after. This past weekend was too cool to plant out (under 55 degrees at night) and The Farmer’s Almanac lists today and tomorrow as the favorable days to get the hot weather plants into the ground. So I will spend tomorrow trying to break the new ground and get the grass/weeds up, finish spreading the 15 cubic yards of topsoil into the new raised beds, amending with azomite and greensand and then transplanting the plants out that were hardened off earlier this week.
I will be transplanting tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, winter and summer squash, zucchini, lettuces, melons, hibiscus and a good number of herbs. We will also be putting beans, cowpeas, carrots, lettuce and okra into the ground. None of my beets sprouted, so we will try those again later in the year. Once things are transplanted, the weeding, feeding and soil work on a large scale begins. We also have 5 roosters and a few hens to butcher soon and need to get the outside equipment set up for that. Since next Saturday afternoon is taken up with another scheduled activity, I hope we can accomplish culling the flock next Friday and Saturday morning, as Jeff normally gets off in the afternoon on Fridays.
On the personal front, my husband was able to get a new job in April. He was laid off one year ago today. Eleven months of unemployment was very difficult and the downturn in the economy has greatly affected us. I am grateful that the long period of unemployment is over and that God provided Jeff with a job at a company where he is happy and fits in well. The last year was a good opportunity to fine-tune my penny pinching endeavors and it helped me to weed through some strategies that, while they work, they take up too much time in comparison to the money they save to be useful to me on a regular basis.
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KerryAnn Foster runs Cooking Traditional Foods, the longest running Traditional Foods Menu Mailer on the internet. KerryAnn has over nine years of traditional foods experience and is a former Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader. Founded in 2005, CTF helps you feed your family nourishing foods they will love. Each mailer contains one soup, five dinners, one breakfast, on dessert and extras. You can learn more about our Menu Mailers at the CTF website. For a free sample Menu Mailer, join our mailing list. You can also join our forum to chat with other traditional foodists and learn more.
Child of God, woman, wife, help-meet, mother, daughter, friend, cook.
Chief cook and bottle-washer, housekeeper, laundress, cook, maid and nanny.
Small business owner, author, forum admin, cook, homeschooling mom, celiac, church member, traditional foods advocate, Attachment Parent, gardener, cook, chicken-mama, hobby homesteader, homebirther, student of herbs, midwifery enthsiast, cook. Chelation patient. A survivor, not a victim.
Knitter, crocheter, scrapbooker, baker, cook, seamstress, facebooker, blogger, cook, and very soon we’ll add political campaign volunteer to that list as a dear friend runs for a local office.
And, today, I was a woman wearing entirely too many hats.
Some of these hats are permanent, some are temporary. Some of them look great on me; others, not so much. Some I’m more than ready to kick to the curb. Some of the hats fit too tight, some are too big and I still need to grow into them. Some I have a total love-hate relationship with. Sometimes the hats get stacked too high and become heavy, giving me a headache. And, sometimes, they all come tumbling down and I have to pick them up and start over again.
This week has been rather stressful. Taxes, mounds of business paperwork and a staggering amount of personal business were the focus as we try to wrap up a very difficult 2009 and move forward. All on top of what I normally do in a day’s time and the constant drum of, ‘what’s the next meal, what’s the next recipe, what needs to go into the mailer, mama I’m hungry again!’ I’ve been largely homebound for about a month thanks to the weather combined with my workload. Cabin fever isn’t pretty, but putting it on top of a stress-fest is really a bear. Earlier this week, hubby told me he wanted to take the kids out today for them to make me a Valentine’s Day gift, as we were not able to do so prior to the holiday thanks to the nasty white mess that keeps falling snow. I jumped at the chance for a little peace and quiet and gladly shooed helped them out the door at lunch time.
So today I have enjoyed several very quiet hours where I chatted with my mom on the phone without interruption. I did a little housework. I took an uninterrupted shower were I was able to shave both legs before either being pulled out of the tub because someone needs me or running out of hot water. Not once did I hear a little tap on the door with a small voice saying, “I need to go potty!” Then I sat down and read what I wanted to online to encourage me to be the best wife and mother I can be. I didn’t read about food, I didn’t think about food, I didn’t eat any food save some chocolate chips. I blissfully ignored the existence of recipes, taxes and paperwork for a whole four hours. I didn’t work while it was quiet, I plugged in my battery, turned the power button off and recharged myself.
I am very much a person who enjoys solitude and being alone to recenter herself and rub two synapses together and create a complete thought without interruption. When I’m worn down, just a small amount of quiet can put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. Now I’m ready to happily greet two smiling, paint-covered children when they walk back in that door to tell me all about how much fun they’ve had with Daddy and show me their creations. And I can do it with a smile because I took some time to do absolutely nothing but remove all the hats.
What is your favorite way to rest, recharge and remove your hats?
Here’s the varieties I’m looking into planting this year in my garden. I’m trying to pick high-yielding veggies appropriate for our zone, which is 6a/7a. My seeds come from Fedco, Bountiful Gardens and Baker Creek. I also do some trading with friends.
I’m not doing corn this year due to space limitations as compared to yield. Collards are one of the few veggies I will not eat. I think I’m going to leave out the rutabagas, too. I also decided not to grow another monster Candy Roaster squash plant this year due to the space, as well as any grains. Now I must plot the garden out then pick both culinary and medicinal herbs based off of how much space remains once I fit all of the veggies in. Then I will make a list of how many plants to start and on what date.
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KerryAnn Foster runs Cooking Traditional Foods, the longest running Traditional Foods Menu Mailer on the internet. KerryAnn has over nine years of traditional foods experience and is a former Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader. Founded in 2005, CTF helps you feed your family nourishing foods they will love. Each mailer contains one soup, five dinners, one breakfast, on dessert and extras. You can learn more about our Menu Mailers at the CTF website. For a free sample Menu Mailer, join our mailing list. You can also join our forum to chat with other traditional foodists and learn more.
