What's on the Menu {August 12- 18}

I am trying to incorporate a lot from the garden, since it is doing so well. That's awesome, in theory, but it does add a lot more food prep time. The whole "seed to the table" philosophy is no joke! It's no wonder that a woman's life in the old days, or even in some cultures now, revolved around meal preparation! Some days I feel like that's me! Even if my hunting and gathering takes place at Giant Eagle. :)

So here's what we're eating this week:

Sunday: We ate some homemade salsa, compliments of my talented hubby, with chips, and snacked on leftovers. We had a heavy lunch so we weren't that hungry. And we have no children. I will remember with fondness the days where I ate chips for dinner around 8pm, as soon as I start having little ones. :)

Monday: Hubby has band practice, and so he'll grab something on the road after work. I taught after work and got home late, and ate warmed up pizza in front of the computer. Not much of a meal plan so far, eh?

Tuesday: We have small group on Tuesdays, and I am supposed to bring some sort of fruit dish. A great reason to do a little "research" on Pinterest later.

Wednesday: Baked tilapia, cilantro rice, grilled eggplant with tomatoes and feta

Thursday: Crockpot Italian chicken with potatoes and carrots

Friday: My friend Ashley is holding a Scentsy party at my place, and so I will be providing some appetizers and drinks. Hubs is fleeing the scene, and staying far far away from a house full of ladies buying pretty smelly things. I'm not sure what he'll eat. :)

Saturday: Lasagna Casserole, garlic bread, salad

Freezer/Make Ahead Items: I HAVE to chop up and freeze the banana peppers from our garden before they go bad. I will. I must. Also, shred and freeze that massive amounts of zucchini. Also, figure out something to do with our cucumbers. (Only one plant next year, I promise! They're everywhere!)

So, this is obviously not much of a cooking week for me! I am trying to let go of having guilt feelings during a busy week, and go with it. Enjoy this time in our lives where routine isn't all important. It's hard for a girl like me. :)




Linking up at: Money Saving Mom

little house in Ohio.

I've been busy with what I like to think of as preserving our harvest this week. In reality, it is probably 25% our garden success, and 75% grocery store produce to supplement. Because what seems like an awful lot of peppers and tomatoes isn't really when you start cooking it down. :)

On Monday, I had the opportunity to work at home. I had beautiful visions of working all day in half hour increments and slowly cleaning my house and doing my freezer cooking. In reality, I spent my day here:

Yes, that is an enormous pile of laundry to be folded. No, I didn't even get to that. The state database that I use for work  is the bane of my existence, and usually keeps me from doing a long list of important things while I am at my desk at work. I wanted to see if working at home would help that problem by allowing me to just concentrate. Nope. It sucks anywhere I go. I think I should come to terms with my loathing of that particular system.

Anyway, I did manage to make this for dinner:





I am so proud of this pizza because it is so very whole: homemade rosemary crust (with rosemary from our garden), homemade pasta sauce (with half store bought and half garden tomatoes, and basil from our garden), and topped with fresh mozzarella, basil (garden), and cherry tomatoes (garden). It was so yummy!

The rest of the week was spent doing a little cleaning and cooking after work each day, except for a church meeting on Tuesday and coffee with a friend on Wednesday. I am almost finished working through the huge box of organic apples that the hubs brought home. I turned them into 5 quarts of sliced apples (ready to turn into apple pie filling this fall!) and 2 pints of apple butter. I have one more "layer" of apples from the box to go. Ideas????? Below are a couple of pictures of my canning success. I hope. We'll know for sure in a few months!

That was pretty much how my week went! I am finding out that preserving food  is an ongoing process! No end in sight! 



abundance.

I was briefly watching the news the other day, and they were talking about the drought across America, and how it will soon affect food distribution. It's incredible to me that there are millions of people starving because of a real food crisis, as in, there isn't ANY food, but we choose to pay attention as soon as our grocery store prices may hike up. That's when we take notice of starvation.

But anyway, I don't want to rant on and on about the American attitude. I really want to talk about food. I read this article, which I thought really explained the chain of events that the drought will cause. What amazes me is that the solution to the problem that the government has laid out here was to a) throw money at it, and bail governments out of what could be a global food crisis, and b) genetically modify our food even more to withstand floods and droughts. This is an incredible contrast to the way the people handled drought, flood, and famine in the Bible. Repent, pray for rain, and settle in with your storehouses for some famine. And pray some more.

This has motivated me not just to try learning more things like canning, but also to start focusing on things like eating and buying local. I am not an expert in agriculture or economics by any stretch of the imagination, but if you think about it, the Midwest of America having a drought is going to cause a global food crisis. One region of one country. And do you know why? The corn and the soybean crop aren't prospering. Two of the ingredients that go into pretty much every processed food out there. And this will affect our beloved beef and dairy industry, because our cows are fed with corn. Which is bad for them, and bad for us. Can I just say yay for the farmers who grass feed their cows? Sustainable farming is called sustainable farming for a reason. Because the other way is not, in fact, sustainable. You will eventually have a global food crisis. Again, this is the simple version. I do not know all that there is to know about farming and food distribution around the world. And I am not downplaying the impact it will have on the world's truly hungry. I am saying we should be conscious of our food choices.We are so accustomed to going to the store and getting absolutely ANYTHING that we could imagine or desire. Wow. We won't know how to survive if we have a food shortage.

Our garden is doing very well this year, minus one annoying groundhog that is eating our tomatoes at an alarming rate. In older, simpler times, this would mean a good year for us. Also, we could just shoot the groundhog. And probably eat that, too. We wouldn't be relying on corn growing in Indiana to feed the cows in Wisconsin, so that we could have meat here in Ohio. We would either have a cow, buy meat from someone who had cows, or eat something different. We would not have a crisis based on another part of the world, or even of our country. The thought of how far we have come in our "progress" blows me away.

So, anyway, that is my tangent about food. I'm sure there are many more intelligent and informative things to be read about it, from many perspectives. I hope you do read about it, and share your thoughts. I hope to read more as well, and continue to make small changes in my life to decrease my reliance on the crops not faring well in the Midwest. I'd really love to read some opinions from sustainable farmers. In the meantime, let's pray for rain for these farmers with failing crops!

apple butter and small accomplishments.

So hubs brought me home 40 lbs. of organic apples yesterday. For $2! What a steal! He works at a produce distributor, and so he can get the "seconds" for practically nothing. Most of them are fine to eat, just have a spot here or there, so they get left out of the store orders. And even the ones that are a little spotty or over ripe are perfect for cooking. I hope that what doesn't get purchased by employees doesn't get thrown away! What a waste that would be!

Anyway, here are my apples....there are so many!!!! I started on a crock pot of apple butter, but that only used up like one layer. I am thinking of applesauce, apple pie, apple jelly, and frozen apples for cooking later.

I took Friday off of work, and on Monday, I am working from home to do an enormous stack of data entry that I want to plow through without being interrupted. Seriously, it's huge. I have really been enjoying this long weekend and focusing on my home, food, and my hubs. It's like a mini wife-cation. :) I know it might be silly, but I always feel so much better and ready to start the work week when I have a clean house, groceries, and something that I got done that I wanted to do. And I literally sleep better knowing the living room is vacuumed. Hubby thinks that it's in my head, and that it doesn't actually affect my sleep. But I'm sure he's wrong. :) Small accomplishments recharge me and motivate me to keep it going. I'm one of the few nutty people who think being exhausted at the end of a day off from doing all of "my" stuff instead of work stuff is awesome. Am I alone?

I'll let you know how the apple butter turns out!

Linking up at: A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa

Hopefully I am back to stay.

I got motivated to start blogging again, after settling after our move. Then our computer bit it. {Of course, backing up my pictures and documents was something I had procrastinated  on.} So, we decided to wait and save up to pay cash for a new one. It was hard, but worth it. And so, I come to you on my new laptop, with my new wi-fi hookup, feeling very up to date and techy, indeed. :)

I hope I am back to stay- blogging just got a whole lot easier with this laptop, let me tell you! I function a lot better when I can multitask!

I had the day off of work, and I spent it doing the wifey, housy stuff I want to do, but don't really have time to do. We have a pretty healthy garden going, so with peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini flowing in, I had a lot of freezer prep and preserving to do.

These are pictures of our garden about 3-4 weeks ago; it is a lot bigger now!

I bought about 10 lbs. of peaches clearanced out at Buehler's for $4, and needed to use them up right away. I decided on sliced, flash frozen for half of the peaches, and made the rest into crock pot peach butter. And it is delicious! The jar in this picture is what I set aside to go ahead and eat instead of can. I also froze 8 cups of zucchini, a bag of whole cherry tomatoes, and diced apples.

And, speaking of canning, this is my first time ever trying it! I used Ashley English's book, Homemade Living: Canning and Preserving with Ashley English. It was really helpful, with big, easy to follow pictures and instructions. I made tomato basil pasta sauce and then the peach butter for canning. The sauce only made 1 medium and one small jar! I definitely thought it would be more! The peach butter made 2 small jars for canning, plus the small jar I kept aside for the fridge.

That was my day! I love my job, and I know I would get bored fast being at home alone all day, but I absolutely LOVED how much I got done today by powering through and focusing on my home. I hardly ever get to do that!



Linking Up at:

Skip to My Lou , Sew Chatty , A Bowl Full of Lemons, Time Warp Wife

discouragement.

That's where I am.

I had started out so strong blogging about our new little life and nest, which I so love. I have so many romantic visions of this picturesque life- decorating, and gardening, and cooking- all the while blogging about our adventures. And it was going great.

And then we moved, which was was a lot of work. {Into an amazing little house that is so perfect for us!} And then work got really busy and exhausting for the hubs, which meant life got busier for me. And then work picked up for me, too. And then our life, as grateful as I am for it, wore us out.

We lament all the time about not having more time to do what we want and love. Like work on our house and yard, or take little weekend trips. Or for me, blogging and investing more time and energy into our home. Both of those things have had to take a back burner lately, with blogging coming to a halt, and my homemaking sort of coasting along. One thing that I am proud of, that I have continued to purposefully do, is cook dinner every night. Most of the time, ordering pizza on the way home from the office sounds like a fantastic plan, but we refrain. And it doesn't help that I love pizza. :)

So, that's where I am....tired, but slowly wanting to come back to the bloggy world that I love, and share our busy life with you.

It occurred to me this week that all of the blogs that I love, read, pull ideas from, and desire to mimic, are written by wonderful women....who are all stay at home mothers. I realized that their level of investment in their homes and families are the standard to which I hold myself sometimes, even though I am not in the same stage of life. It's hard for me to be okay with not having a clean bathroom everyday, or with being exhausted at the end of my work week. I always want to do more, be more, and have more. I would love to make all of my food from scratch. I really would. I want to have a clean house, a lot more often than I do! I want more energy, like everyone else does, no matter their stage of life. :)

But mostly, I want the peace that comes from accepting where God has you, at this moment. From being okay with your limitations. From realizing that the next phase of life will come with it's own set of frustrations and limitations.

Sometimes, when I was single, I would think, "I love keeping my home; I wish I had a husband to share this with." {Don't get me wrong, I didn't constantly think this. I really enjoyed single living, and I feel strongly about young women doing more than sitting around wishing for a husband!} Now, newly married, I think to myself, "If only I had more time to put into my home, and in doing things that I love." And, if I had more time, I would probably wish I had a child to love on and care for, or more things to fill up my time. Do you see what I mean?

Comparison is indeed the thief of joy, but not just the comparison of ourselves to others. It is also the comparison of ourselves to other "selves" that we used to be, want to be, will be, will never be, or wish we were.

So, today, I am kind of tired from working all week, and having allergies. My floor really needs to be vacuumed. It's 7pm, and we haven't eaten dinner, because hubby isn't home yet. I am glad that I am doing a few things well; I am sad that there are so many other things I would like to do. But today, I will try to accept where I am in life. Today, I will blog about doing a few things well, and juggling the rest with a day job that I happen to love.

Today, I will give myself permission to be imperfect.

back in the saddle.

Well, after almost two months off, I am finally back to the blogging world! I've missed it so much! {But I've also been enjoying going back to bed after the hubby goes to work!}

We've been working hard to make our new little nest into a cozy home. This is so much better than apartment living!

We haven't done nearly as much decorating and organizing as we would have liked, but we are getting there. I am at least 99% unpacked. :) The computer/craft/sewing/stockpile/storage room will likely stay a little packed up as long as we are here. When it is less disastrous, I'll share a picture!

Hubs has been working hard on the backyard {I've been helping!}, and we can't wait to have it done! Our goal is to have it looking pretty awesome by the beginning of summer.

The bathroom was our first and toughest project, and I am happy to say that with a few more final touches, I can reveal the makeover! I hate it so much less now. :)

I'm so glad to be back with you guys, and can't wait to share life with my readers once again!