A Birthday to Remember

A friend of ours made this astonishing cake.
Those veggies are FROSTING!

I love birthdays.  Yours, mine, ours, theirs…it doesn't matter; birthdays are one of my favorite things.  I like the idea that for one day in the year an individual can be loved on, feasted with, sung to, and given gifts.  Every one is worth that.  Of course, I realize that for some the loving may come from a pet, the feast may be a candy bar, the song may be on the radio, and the gifts may be green traffic lights and a pretty sunset; but, if that person acknowledges these things on their birthday, it is still a special day.  I think birthdays give each one of us an opportunity for reflection and hope.  Unlike New Year’s Day, when everyone around us is encouraged to acknowledge the annual passage of time, a birthday is personal, private even.  Only you have lived the exact moments of your days past and will experience the fullness of your days to come.  Only you know the wish that you make when the candles are blown out (or your head hits the pillow that night). 

Making A Kid-Friendly Wooden Puzzle

I have a posse of nieces and nephews that I adore.  The youngest of the bunch are twin boys who just turned one year old.  These toddling cuties have recently been my inspiration for a homemade gift.  Of course, I often find myself in the position of having an awesome project in mind that I have no clue how to produce.  It’s one of those yin-yang predicaments.  I’m the type of person that prefers to try new things, particularly when it comes to creativity.  But I’m also the type of person that likes a plan and wants to do things well.  This polarity yields itself to frequent occasions where I am eager to jump into a creative process I've never tried before AND equally freaked out because I have no idea what I’m doing.  Experience has taught me two things in these moments:  First, give myself as much time as possible to think through, research, and tackle the process.  And second, have a back-up gift idea should the outcome look like a kindergartner made it (not cool when the intended recipient is an adult).

This post is my experience making two adorable wooden puzzles for my incorrigibly feisty twin nephews.  Let’s hope the puzzles are played with more often as puzzles than as clubs! 

Totally Tomatoes: How To Can Tomato Sauce Starter

I've been known to go overboard with tomatoes.  I used to plant by the enticing mantra, "if some are good, more are better!"  In my first few seasons it wasn't uncommon for me to take up a third of my garden with staked tomato vines.  By July, I’d be scrambling like Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory conveyor belt – desperate to put up the overwhelming influx before the next wave tumbled into the kitchen.  Thankfully, the more seasons I have under my belt, the better sense I get for what we’ll actually use.  I've learned to reel myself in during planting so that later I won’t feel the urge to stash tomatoes left and right simply to get them out of my sight.  No matter what, canning tomatoes is a big job.  For me, the payoff makes it worth the effort -- the rest of the year I have the delicious luxury of canned garden tomatoes (in all their glorious forms) at my fingertips.  

Last summer I posted about one of my favorite finales to summer canning: salsa.  This year, the season has been wet and late, so our tomatoes are just now coming in strong.  I’m rolling up my sleeves and gathering pots and pans to re-stock my pantry with another canned-tomato staple – what I call “sauce starter”.  This simple recipe is the foundation for my soups, pasta sauces, and stews.  Though I've given a basic tomato-canning “how-to” with the recipe below, it is best to familiarize yourself with the guidelines from expert resources such as Ball’s Book of Home Preserving.

Summertime: All Good Things Must Come to An End

None of us wear just one hat.  Some folks adorn themselves with a veritable plethora and other folks stick with a classic and comfortable few.  While homesteader, farmer, food-lover, writer, and wife are the top five of mine you read about on this blog, a great number of hours in the year I'm also a teacher. So alas...though the humidity still makes my hair frizz and the garden is still pumping out its glorious produce, "summertime" for me has ended.   I'm off to another creative, inspiring, growing, challenging, and intellectual place --- the middle-school classroom!

No need for concern, I'll be continuing with plenty of homestead and kitchen activities to fill the blogosphere with my tales of hilarity, pontification, and how-to.

I spent the first moments of this beautiful muggy morning reminiscing about how much I've ALWAYS loved the first day of school -- and how awesome my grown-up insulated lunch box is.