Hippy Wine

After much dawdling, I finally got around to starting my first gallon of rose hip wine today. I've actually had these rose hips in the freezer for a while, being that I was 4 ounces shy of the amount required for the recipe that I wanted to use. Not able to ever lay my hands on more, I decided to make up the 4 ounce difference with the rose hip's botanical cousin, an apple.



I sliced, crushed, sugared and added water to these lovely hips (and half a yellow delicious apple) and set them to steep in the primary fermenter for 24 hours. Tomorrow I'll pitch the yeast and in a few days we'll see what we see. If this batch works out, I'll post the recipe here along with my fudges and observations.

On a related note, the hubby is starting another batch of beer today as well - a Czech/German Pilsner, he tells me, as if I'd have any idea at all what that meant. I figure that between our parallel booze brewing efforts, we will have a few lovely intoxicants to imbibe in the months and years to come.

Freezer Raid

I've been blabbering on a lot lately about cleaning and purging, and today's victim lucky recipient was our chest freezer. I went a-diggin' in there today to remind myself of what treasures lay within and hopefully spark a little creativity in terms of cooking and consuming my frozen goodies before spring and summer bring a whole new crop of edible delights. I found a LOT of things that I had forgotten that I had stashed in there and am kind of excited about getting to use them all in the next few weeks and months. Some of my newly re-discovered treasures-

*Six whole Red Rock Crab! - Crab cakes, anyone? :)
*5 pounds of blueberries - I knew that I had some in there. I just forgot how much.
*A honkin' bunch of zucchini
*LOTS of wild berries - huckleberries, salmon berries & wild blackberries. I'm going to try making a sorbet out of some of these.

I also found a few packages of sliced nectarines in there from last summer. What a treat to stumble on in January! And so, I am sort of knocking together a frozen dessert with these nectarines. It's basically an "ice cream pie" with a cookie crumb crust and homemade nectarine frozen yogurt, made of course, in the handy-dandy Kitchenaid. Here she is, my lovely freezy-pie -




I'd post a recipe, but I didn't really use one. So in lieu of a proper recipe, here's a quick rundown of what I did to make this lovely little treat -

1. I smashed some Meyer lemon cookies that we had lying around, mixed in a little butter and pressed them into the bottom of a spring form pan. Baked it at 350 for 5 or 10 minutes. Cooled it.

2. Mixed 2 cups plain Greek-style yogurt with 2 cups of whole milk peach yogurt, plus the thawed nectarines, a few tablespoons of maple syrup and some cinnamon & ginger.

3. Threw the yogurt mixture into the ice cream maker.

4. Poured the newly made Fro-Yo into the cooled crust and chucked it in the freezer.

That's it! I'm pretty darn happy with how it came out, but the kids weren't so keen on it. I think the yogurt was just a little more tart that they wanted in a "treat". Picky little beasts. Oh well, more for mama! :)

Purge time is nigh

I've been bitten by the spring cleaning bug. Project number one - as always - is the girls' rooms.

I considered posting a pair of before and after pics here just to illustrate the magnitude of this task, but I'm WAY too embarrassed about the state of their junk pile rooms to put photographic evidence out there for all the world to see. Suffice it to say that this afternoon I removed one garbage bag full of trash and one full of toys and other stuff destined for Goodwill, and I barely scratched the surface.

The bedroom and playroom have reached this state because of a perfect storm of laziness & disability on my part (I've had 2 surgeries this past year), pressure from my inner-pack rat (Don't throw that away! You'll need it again...eventually.) and my youngest daughter's seriously serious case of kleptomania. Seriously. She once bawled me out for throwing out a rock that she had in her bed. If she were allowed, she'd save every last ribbon and scrap of wrapping paper from every present she's ever been given. She saves the feathers that her parakeets shed, the wrappers from her candy, etc. It is a problem.

So when I ask the girls to clean their room, I also usually ask them to purge a set amount of stuff, say 5 items or maybe a paper bag full. For the oldest, this is no problem at all, especially if there is a reward offered, such as a new toy or a trip to the ice cream shop. The little one is another story entirely. Every scrap of paper and broken McDonalds toy has deep, meaningful memories attached. We have bargaining and tearful pleas for mercy which usually end in her melting down and mommy pouring herself a glass of wine or three. It's an ugly scene.

Well today was zero-hour. Knowing the begging and whining that would ensue, I did a pre-cleaning purge of their room while they were at school, then asked them to "clean" (HA!) what was left. Little do they know that still more of their stuff will be moving on out tomorrow while they are at school. Theirs isn't the only room that will be undergoing the no-holds-barred sorting and purging. The closets and cupboards are up next, but all will get their turn in good time, myself included. Right now I just need to try and muscle through the not so fun part of wading through junk and dust bunnies. Soon enough I'll be reaping my rewards in the form of cleanliness, calm and simplicity, but for now, it's headlong into the heap. Pray for my safe return!

This is not a stunt!

I've been struggling to find my energy and motivation to get up and get things done around here lately, mainly in the garden, but also around the house. I'd really like to organize and simplify, since physically ordered things in my environment seem to have a direct impact on reducing my mental clutter.

In my search for motivation & energy, I've upped my vitamin D intake, bought some fresh flowers for the house and have taken to reading more books on the subject of simplifying, taking control and otherwise sorting out one's life. Unfortunately, more and more of these books that lure me in with their supposed tales and tips of a streamlined and fulfilling life are really just "stunt books".

Two of the best known of these stunt books are Julie & Julia, and my beloved Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. In A,V,M, the author challenges her family to adhere to a relatively strict set of rules for living a low impact lifestyle for a set period of time - one year. Though I really do love that book and found it highly motivating at this time last year, in the wake of its success, a landslide of less than stellar copycats have hit the market and I just keep on falling for 'em, only to be disappointed by how shallow and insincere that most of them turn out to be.

The latest such book touted "live better with less!". Naturally, I had to check it out. Yeah... no.

The author chose one item/service/habit to give up for one month at a time for a year. Some of her sacrifices included giving up reading the New York Times for a month, not eating chocolate, not swearing, etc. Another title follows a woman's "experiment" to live her life per the doctrine of Oprah. While there's nothing wrong with experimenting with changes in one's lifestyle and habits, I find these sorts of choices being represented as meaningful or worse still as "sacrifice" to be downright offensive. If you want to try something new in your life, go for it! If it works out, great! If not, well, it was worth trying. However, not every half-baked crack at being a vegan, buying a farm or giving up coffee deserves a book deal. It completely devalues the actual sacrifice and hard work of good folks trying to improve their lives and change the world for the sake of bettering it, not for just landing themselves a fat paycheck.

Veggies on the Sly

I successfully snuck a parsnip into tonight's mashed potatoes, completely unnoticed by anyone, hubby included. Woohoo! I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I'll sneak their veggies and vitamins into them however I can.

I only wish that our foray into green smoothies had gone as well. I honestly didn't mind drinking mine, but the girls claimed that they could taste the spinach, and declined to drink more than a single sip. I'll keep tweaking the formula to see if I can come up with something that they actually enjoy the taste of. I'm also going to be on the lookout for a gently used vitamix blender, as my kitchenaid blender just can't liquefy the leafy greens completely enough to make a truly smooth smoothie.

Even if I never get the kiddos to come around on the green smoothie thing, I will continue to sneak clandestine veggies into every little thing that I can until they are brave enough or old enough to appreciate the taste of vegetables. If they only knew how many greens and veggies that they "don't like" went into the spaghetti sauce that they LOVE, they would pass out.

My Dangerous New Toy

This past Christmas I received my much longed for ice cream maker attachment for my Kitchenaid stand mixer. Last night we finally broke it in.



We made the standard vanilla ice cream recipe, and in the last few minutes of the freezing/mixing phase, we threw in some diced canned peaches. Oh, mama...



It is SO GOOD. The only downsides to having this miracle device in my home are:

A) We're going to gain some weight.

B) Spontaneity is not allowed. You have to chill the freeze bowl for at least 15 hours before using it, and the cooked custard (at least for this recipe) needs to cool for 8 hours before throwing it in the freeze bowl to mix. So, you basically need a whole day's advance notice in order to whip up some ice cream.

C) The ingredients are pricey. We spent about $7 on the ingredients for this batch. Had we not had our own eggs - this recipe calls for eight yolks - it would have been more.

Having further perused the recipe booklet, it's looking like sorbet will be a lot simpler and cheaper to make, not to mention way less fattening, therefore I see us eating more sorbet than ice cream, but it's nice to have options. I've got so many potential flavors in mind that I don't know where to begin - espresso & Irish cream, tiramisu, huckleberry sorbet... It's a good problem to have.

Blackberry Battle Royale

I am posting these pictures of the back of my garden to shame myself into whipping it into shape.




Garden of Weedin' indeed!

It's too bad that it didn't occur to me to take a true "before" picture before I started whacking away at the evil wild blackberries. Then you could have appreciated it for the jungle 'o thorns that it was/sort of still is. In addition to the uninvited and VERY hard to kill Himalayan blackberry, we also have ourselves a giant clematis in need of something to climb, and an out-of-control female kiwi (who also would benefit from having something to climb) who probably needs a trim, though, because I'm terrified of killing her, hasn't received one. It took me about an hour to remove one wheelbarrow full of blackberry vines before I had to take a little self-imposed time out/ice cream break. And here I am delaying my return to battle further by telling you my tale of prickly woe.

The plan is, after clearing out the invasive weeds and other unchecked plant life, we will attempt to assemble and erect the pergola (from a kit) that I bought over a year ago. Oh, yes, we have great plans for this sad little patch of weeds. Hopefully by summer's end, we will have transformed that little corner of chaos into a peaceful little garden hideaway. That's the plan, anyway.