Cooking School (part 1?)

Another response we’ve made to the uncertain economic status these days is to reduce dining out. This really bums me out on one hand because I’m a minor foodie. I love to have a great meal from someone else’s kitchen. On the other hand it has been fun to remember how much I love to cook. Now that HJ is home from school it has been nice to have someone to cook with since He is up north. We all love gyros so dinner tonight was gyro inspired: Lamb meatballs with Couscous and Tzatziki and homemade lemonade. It was really fun to cut our own fresh mint, rosemary and flat leaf parsley for each component of the meal; it was too bad that I didn’t have any fresh garlic to pick. I really enjoy watching her learn to cook. It is nice to see her confidence and skill build. Now I just have to teach her how to clean up after herself but cleaning up the kitchen was a welcome chore in this case!

I don’t often use a recipe when cooking, although always when baking!, but here’s generally what we did:

Equal portions of ground lamb to leanest available ground beef

1 or 2 eggs

2 cloves garlic crushed and minced

Good handful of chopped fresh mint

Good handful of chopped flat leaf parsley

½ to 1 t of chopped fresh rosemary

Probably a ¼ to a 1/3 cup plain bread crumbs

Mix well with your clean hands and form into meatballs. We cooked our batch at 350 for 40 mins. In the past I have gone 375 for 30 mins. They just need to cook. You’ll know when they are done.

Couscous – so easy!

Equal parts boiling water to couscous, cover and let stand a couple of mins. or follow directions

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tomato diced

Small handful of fresh mint and parsley chopped

Drizzle with good olive oil to taste and sight

Tzatziki

16 oz plain yogurt – you can drain in a sieve overnight if you can plan ahead, I can’t.

1 cucumber peeled and seeded then dice
Good handful of chopped mint with some parsley thrown in
A splash of rice wine vinegar

1 clove of garlic crushed and minced or as much as you like to your tastes

Dinner in under an hour - Yum!

Victory garden sure sounds better than Recession garden.

Okay, I know, my garden isn't a Victory garden but with this whole recession hysteria I just need a prettier verbal image for my first vegetable garden in 16 years than "Recession garden". (see recession hysteria here)

Our migratory summer schedule has generally precluded us from any substantial gardening over the years but I decided that it certainly couldn't hurt to give it a shot again. He hasn't ever really done much veggie gardening so even though he wouldn't be here for the summer harvest I decided to buy starts early this spring and do a small planting just for his visual delight.

4'x8'x18" raised beds filled with 5 years worth of household and yard compost 4 weeks later

You may notice very few white strawberry blossoms in the strawberry bed. It pained me so to snip them off to encourage good root growth this first year so much so that I made my mom snip them off for me. I will be happy about it next summer when I can go out to the garden after work on a warm summer afternoon and pick nice big warm from the sun strawberries to snack on!

my easy herb garden wintered over really well with our strange weather this year.

When I get home in August I plan on direct sowing my fall and winter garden. Hopefully he will come home to a garden full of fresh yummies in September and October and even a few may stretch into the later winter! Check out this fabulous winter gardening book. I think it's out of print and pretty spendy but you could luck out and run across it somewhere for cheap. Spinach, Kale, beets, carrots, lettuces, onions, garlics, potatoes, broccoli and cabbages are all great cool weather crops - there really are a great number of cool maritime weather crops to plant for the fall.

I really want a nice big berry patch too. Tayberries. They are so uncommon here in the states. They are going to be my mission for next year!

Work Work Work

HJ goes to a “work” college which means that every single student works in some capacity on campus a minimum of 15 hours per week. First semester she was assigned to the campus safety crew. They worked out of an office and were available by phone or handheld radio for potential campus emergencies or basic situation. As a brand new freshman and a new student to the area I was surprised to find out that she often drove fellow students off campus into the surrounding area to various appointments and such in a school van. She even once drove a student into a neighboring county for an appointment.

Overall I expected that this would have been a great job for her, not that any particular aspect of the job suited her but because most often there wasn’t anything pressing in their office and so there was a lot of time available to the student workers for school work and study. Boy did I turn out to be wrong!

Second semester she had some sort of hubbub with her crew boss and she was able to get onto a different work crew. She got onto the landscaping crew. At her groovy eco conscious school this is a very popular crew and hard to get onto. Being part of that crew has impacted her college experience like I could not believe a job could. She is outdoors every day working a physical job in the open air. She loves her job! She now loves her school and her community and she feels truly a part of it. It has turned out to be a life saver for her. She had really been struggling with not feeling part of the community even in to second semester and was really contemplating a transfer. I am so happy for her that this work crew has welcomed her in such a specific way and that she has learned from being a part of it.

When she got home this weekend she said that she really wasn’t quite ready to come home and that some of her work crew actually stay on a work contract over the summer. I teased her that she could be on the landscape crew here at home no problem and no contract required! (I am in dire need!! Weeds weeds everywhere!!)

She said that she understands now that helping maintain something and working on building something with others invests you in it. It builds community something that we are all looking for. She says she will gladly be on the landscape crew here at home! We’ll see how it fleshes out – and I only have her for a few days before she heads north to go fishing. I’ll work her while I can though!

Lord be good to us, for the sea is so wide and our ship is so small.

Yesterday was the first day of the season for fishing. He sounded more excited about fishing than I have heard him in many seasons; maybe it was the "pep talk" we had after receiving the student's tuition bill, or maybe it was the drawings for a proposed art studio in the back yard or maybe it was just the beautiful surroundings. For whatever reason, I am thrilled! I have to dig way back in the memory banks to remember the excitement that permeates the town on those days leading up to the opener but it was also nice to find a couple of pics in my folders that my daughter took the season before last coming back to town after a successful fishing period. I imagine the weather they had yesterday was equally nice as He said he even put sunblock on!
I think it is about time for me to join Him again. It is such a thrill to see the fish hit the net and haul in the net full of glorious blue and silver salmon. They are such beautiful fish. I never got very good at picking the net but I'm not to old to learn. Watching Him do this job He is so good at makes me so happy. He is such confident man on His boat and on the water. It is His element. He said he cleaned the boat out good enough for a girl this season so hopefully when I get up there in July it'll just need a freshening up in order to welcome me aboard! I am sure that our girl will not tolerate much of a mess overall so there is hope. I am so excited for her to fish this season. My hope is that now as a pre adult she will look at this season with fresh percpective and see the possibilities in it. She is such a wild at heart girl... and a turd bird... she sure makes me smile!
My respite is almost over. She will be home from her first year of college tomorrow. I am so proud of her growth, her accomplishments, her bravery and her spirit. She inspires me. She also drives me nuts and I am going to enjoy my clean and quite home tonight like you can't believe!

Dear Sweet Mabel

So there it is. It is finished. It is gifted and it is soo satisfying. I took this pic a bit wonky to aviod the glare that you'll see on the ones farther down. This is my dear sweet Mabel, my grandma, when she was 17. It is my most favorite family picture of all. This is the culmination of all the daydreaming I had for this shadow box. I am so thrilled to have actually finished it and given the gift! So often I struggle with the finishing.

It was a trully happy Mother's Day.

Gotta love Thursdays!

Thursday is my day to play hookie! And what a day today is shaping up to be! I spent the morning pressing, measuring, primping and finally taking pictures for my new Etsy shop. Yeah, another shop at Etsy. I have learned a few things so far on Etsy and this new shop is hopefully going to be a better or more inclusive reflection of me.

When I first thought about opening a shop there I read in the FAQs and How Tos all the various suggestions and advice they offered. Of course I took their advice and named my shop according to their suggestions. They recommend a name that reflects the type of items you will sell in your shop and therefore I came up with ReduxPapers because I planned on selling reused repurposed paper in various incarnations. Fast forward a few months and I don't want to only list my paper escapades. I love so many arts and crafts that I just can't be held down to just paper!

Enter "HandAnd HeartWorks". All works of my hand straight from my heart! So I might list my hand woven boucle' scarves or maybe a hand knit one now and then. I have a few woven bags and pouches that should finish up nicely too. There will be reused and repurposed vintage linens that will find new lives. I'm actually pretty excited about both shops now. My stash in the work room holds more than just paper and now I can follow whatever creative moment that strikes!

The other creative moment that struck this morning was Banana Bread! My favorite is this whole wheat recipe out of an old Sunset Quick Breads book. So I think it is time for a cup of tea and a slice of heaven.

Do you Librivox?

This time of the year when He heads North to go earn our living we each settle into our own independent ryhthm. Now that the student is away at school I can see that I will have an even different ryhthm on my own. I have already mentally lined up a few after work projects in the work room; I am most excited to finish up my Mother's Day gift. I'll post more pics as soon as it is complete. I have also lined up the next book I am going to listen to in the work room at Librivox. My girl and I are Jane Austen nuts so I have selected "Memior of Jane Austen" by James Edward Austen-Leigh.

If you aren't familiar with Librivox you have to check it out. It is a free site to listen to public domain books. I believe it is all volunteer maintained and recorded. Some readers are more pleasant to listen to than others but there a couple of thousand books available so I always seem to find someone whose voice I enjoy. Their search feature leaves a bit to be desired but if you know titles and authors you can find anything. I really wish you could search by genre. I don't always remember an author's name but I know what type of literature I like to read. Even though I don't know most of the titles when I search through the catalog I am not afraid to listen a bit and move on if I don't like what I am hearing. I'd love suggestions if you know of any good recordings in their catalog!


I love that when I am working away on what ever project whether it be sewing or knitting or doing paperwork at my desk I can also "read" a book. Can't think of a much better way to spend a free afternoon!

Rummage Sale Season

Man, I used to be a serious garage and rummage saler. I swore off of them over 5 years ago when we moved into this house. We lost about 800 square feet from our old place. That's alot of stuff to get rid of and then not replace. Unfortunately I think I'm a "stuff" kind of a gal. With the opening of a shop on Etsy that was my permission slip to go to second hand stores again but I have been resisting garage sales. That is until last weekend. I have been craving old doileys and embroidery and I think the only real place to find them for a good deal is at a garage or rummage sale. Well, like I said I haven't been to a sale in more than 5 years and wow, folks have really raised the bar for garage sale prices! I can't believe that I had to pay like 4 bucks for a pretty beat up, faded and stained doiley because the woman's mother in law spent so many hours crocheting it! Nonetheless I paid more than I had ever expected to for some fairly cute stuff last weekend.

I haven't been to a rummage sale in even longer. Somehow I just never hear about any and I only find them by chance. Well, I saw an ad in my little local paper the other night for a rummage sale at the little Unitarian church up the road from my house. I was earnestly hoping for some great embroidery or sewing supply finds. Alas no. But I did find a couple of pretty cool books. I am going to make another paper bunting from one of these children's poetry books and I think I need to make some new envelopes. It certainly wasn't a huge score but it was a start!

I spent the morning working on my Mother's Day gift. It is an idea I have had for several years but I only recently found the shadow box frames I had purchased with this in mind. Here are a couple of pics in process. I am super excited how it is coming together. I think I'll head to U-Frame It this weekend for a matt, I think with an oval opening for my sweet Grandma Mabel.

It's been a really long hard day of crafting. It must be nap time...