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.

Syrup Sunday and Squash Flower Pancakes

Early in our marriage Weldon and I realized that breakfast had a myriad of bothersome time-constraints.  Plain eggs, homemade yogurt, or some other quick bite just didn't do justice to the variety of options that should have been at our fingertips.  So, we decided that on random Sunday mornings we would celebrate this oft-rushed meal.  We called it Syrup Sunday.  Whatever was on the menu, it would be drizzled with straight-from-Vermont pure maple syrup (locally purchased from an organic farm/orchard during our family's annual October reunion).  Waffles, french toast, and pancakes graced our plates.  It became obvious that pancakes won out as our favorite...so we had a household-sized IHOP on our hands.  Blueberry pancakes, peach pancakes, strawberry pancakes, banana pancakes, and the list goes on.  This weekend we were inspired to have a Syrup Sunday after visiting Weldon's aunt and uncle's garden on Saturday morning.  At one point, his aunt nonchalantly asked, "Do you want any squash flowers?"  With our own squash plants falling prey to vine borers, I jumped at the chance and instantly put a Syrup Sunday on the docket for the following morning.  "YES!!" Weldon exclaimed at his good fortune.  Below is my tried and true pancake batter recipe with an adaptation for squash flower pancakes. Here's hopin' you find a Syrup Sunday in your future!

Land, Ho!

This month will go down in my history as a major "FIRST".  I bought land!  I married into 40 acres that Weldon already owned; but these 30 acres we eyeballed, calculated, negotiated, and signed on the dotted line for together. This post is about land ownership -- an integral part of our homestead -- but it is just as much about a more subliminal subject: money.  In a day and age when this topic is politically hot and socially taboo, our culture is motivated by excess and plagued by financial illiteracy.  I'm no financial expert, but in the last five years I've taken my education into my own hands in a desperate search for balance, simplicity, and security.  So far, I'm living on the smallest paycheck yet, but with a greater sense of abundance and the most financial freedom I've ever had.  Had we not had enough of our greenbacks in a row, we never would have been able to scribble our signatures on a deed when the right moment fell in our lap.

The Quirky World of Kombucha

Sweet Tea (Right) meet Kombucha (Left)

Kombucha (Kahm - BOO - chuh) sounds like the name of an alien queen about to launch an inter-galactic attack.  Fortunately for you and me, it is actually a fizzy, refreshing beverage that's simple to make at home and, like all ferments, carries a litany of health benefits (Sorry, no vaporizing laser guns). Weldon brews a batch of this fermented black tea nearly every week.  We typically gulp the last drop just in time for the next batch to be poured up and chilled in the fridge. While some fermented drinks also create alcohol (think of grain-based beers or fruit-based wines), kombucha is not an alcoholic ferment.  It's bubbly zing has a tasty finish that resembles a yeasty apple-y cider -- though go figure, it doesn't contain any apples.  It's a healthful and delicious treat for anyone.  Despite its exotic name and persona, kombucha is one of the easier ferments to undertake, in my opinion.  If you're interested at all in incorporating fermentation into your culinary skills and dietary enjoyment (and health!), I highly recommend kombucha as an introduction.  Soon, you may find yourself collecting crocks and jars to also make sauerkraut, pickles, vinegars, and more!  For more detailed reading about fermentation including specifics about kombucha, anything by Sandor Ellix Katz is a MUST.  The recipe below is derived from Katz's Wild Fermentation.

How Does Your Garlic Grow?

Once upon a time there was a little girl who ate raw onions like apples, broccoli by the head, and garlic bread by the loaf.  As a tween, she thought it was cool to wear a t-shirt which read, "A Clove a Day Keeps the Devil Away."  She grew up healthy and strong (and routinely knocked out entire villages with her dragon breath).  Now she is living happily ever after in her garden where she grows onions, broccoli, and tons of garlic.  THE END...sort of.