the herb garden

Lookee, lookee!! I got my paws on a working camera! Finally. So what's the first thing I did when I could at last take pictures again? Why, take some embarrassing shots of my overgrown herb garden to show you, that's what.

 So yeah. That's my "herb garden" from the front. The part people see when they walk up to our front door. Oh the shame. The bushy line running right to left across the bottom is a volunteer pumpkin that came up. We let it do it's pumpkin thing, and it's pretty much taken over the whole yard.

This is my herb garden from the back. This is actually a raised bed, done in cinder blocks, which you can't see for all the grass. There's cilantro blooming there in the center of the photo. There's also sage, horehound, strawberries, lavender, fennel, borage, and some other stuff that you can't see. No one can see it. 'Cept Jesus.

Look! Basil! It managed to beat out the rogue pumpkin and some crazy agressive morning glories for a little place in the sun. Considering that it's had zero attention, other than picking it to make yummy stuff, it's done surprisingly well. 

Oh, look, and there's some dill! The dill also did very well this year. Again, no credit to me. 

 Rosemary. I had to use a machete to find it. Oh dear.

One of the reasons my herb garden is such a mess. We had such horrible luck with pumpkins this year, and this guy came up, and thrived, so I let it be. And it repaid me with general weediness, and butt pumpkins. They're not really butt pumpkins. That's just what Davey likes to call them. They have some other, much more pleasant sounding name for sure, I just can't remember what it is. 

 Truth be told, the herb garden is not a total loss. These are the random flower seeds I threw out into the bare dirt this spring, just to see what would happen.

 Magic happened. That's what.

And look! I'm about to have me some zinnias!

I'll be back soon with more pictures - the critters need a little face-time, too!

weekly goals.

So... yeah. Ummm. This is embarrassing. I didn't accomplish a single solitary goal I set for myself last week. Oh dear.

Here's the deal. We'll just pretend that didn't happen, and focus on all the stuff I DID get done last week.
I made hot sauce from our home-grown peppers - super tasty and recipe to follow soon.
I mowed the lawn with lots of help from Davey.
We got 3 new chickens, promptly lost two, but found one still alive the next morning and hanging out with the rabbits. I named her Lucky.
I actually tried a recipe that I pinned on pinterest (oven-fried chicken... it was actually pretty good)
I spent a lot of time on pinterest.
I pickled beets, peppers, and cucumbers. And burned my fingers on hot peppers. Ouch.
I also made tzatziki sauce and baba ghanouj (the only reason to grow eggplant).
This making things from scratch bit is taking up a lot of my time.
I'm totally ok with it, though.
Davey tilled the cornfield. (ok, so maybe, technically, I didn't actually get this done. But it probably wouldn't have gotten done this week if I hadn't said that it absolutely HAD to get done before he could go play at Baby Falls with all his guy friends. So I'm taking the credit. My game, my rules.)
I watched the Hunger Games and was woefully disappointed in the ending, thinking that that was it.. but then someone told me that it's only the first of 3 movies, so I forgave it. For now.


So, as you can see, I had a week chock-full of good accomplishments. And now for this week's goals:

plant the fall garden
make bagels
make mozzerella
clean the toynado in Punkin's room
tame the jungle growing around our front porch.
list some crafty stuff on Etsy! (I'm getting the use of a real, working camera this week, so that will make this goal a little more accomplishable. Is that even a word? It is now.)
electrify the chicken coop.


I could go on, but I'm afraid to make any more goals for this week, seeing as how my track record is not so good on this so far. I'll consider it a major win if I get even just a few of these things done. Err.. hrmm.. I mean, yeah.. I'm gonna get all this done! I'm a winner! Yeah! Or something like that..

What about the rest of you? What are your goals for this week?

a little update, and some goals for the week

Whew! The last few weeks have been a handful. Mostly in a good way. We've pretty much had no internet access for the last month, so, you know, I've been pretty much a total wreck. I've got a lot of good posts in the works about stuff going on around here, so stay tuned, provided I can avoid any more technological troubles.

Also, I'm not sure what happened, but BOOM, summer's whipped. I mean, it's not quite fall yet, not really, but summer has definitely lost all his chutzpah, and I don't walk out the front door and immediately wither into a sweaty, disgusting mess. Also, I can cook in my kitchen without turning into a sweaty, disgusting mess. I might even be convinced to work out in the garden again now that it will take a little while before I turn into a sweaty, disgusting mess. I'm sure summer still has a couple of hot days or weeks up his sleeve, but the point is, he's losing. It's over. Fall is on her way, and there's no stopping it. Amen.

In other news, I decided pretty much on a whim right this minute, that I am going to start posting some weekly goals on here every Monday, and then report back at the end of the week about what actually gets done and what doesn't. Hopefully this will keep me blogging regularly and getting some projects done. So. Here goes:

This week's goals:

try my hand at making bagels

make mozerella cheese (yes, please!)

get the fall garden planted

roast sunflower seeds

get some crafty stuff photographed and listed on ETSY



Here goes nothin'! What are your goals for the week?

(MIY) teriyaki sauce

(Make it Yourself!)

It's my mama's birthday today, and in honor of that occasion, I'm hosting dinner at my house tonight: jerk chicken, per her request. Davey, myself, and my mama LOVE jerk chicken, in all it's spicy-hot glory. But my dad and gramps are more on the wussy side of the heat spectrum, and voted for something a little less intense. Dad requested teriyaki chicken. For years I used Soy Vey teriyaki sauce, mostly because it's Jewish teriyaki sauce, and how can you not love that?! and also because it had great quality ingredients and yummy flavor. Sadly, grocery stores out here don't carry it, so I decided that this week it was time to make my own. So, I did what I often do in these situations and just sort of guessed at what might make the sweet/savory teriyaki flavor I was looking for. And it couldn't be any easier. Here's the recipe:

Juice of 1 can pineapple (can be rings, chunks, crushed, whatever. In my case, it was chunks)
5-6 chunks pineapple
1/4 cup tropical juice blend, or orange juice. Whatever makes your skirt fly up. I happpened to have both, so I used 'em.
soy sauce to taste
1/2 tsp ginger
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup brown sugar or honey
1/4 cup sesame oil
splash of rice salad vinegar

run the whole thing thru the blender til the pineapple and garlic are pretty much pulverized, and then add in 1 tsp sesame seeds. It makes the sauce look pretty. This is pretty much my dream sauce, and I'll have a hard time choosing between it and my favoritest favorite jerk chicken tonight. I'm guessing I'll solve this predicament by eating both. It's a cruel world, but I get by.

chicken blues

I knew something was wrong when only 3 chickens greeted me. Looks like a fox (or foxes?) got in last night, my fault because I forgot to close the coop. And of course they got my 3 favorites - the blue wheaten amaracauna rooster, our welsummer hen, and Camilla, with the crooked beak and the plucky attitude. That leaves us with 2 RIR roosters and 1 amaracauna hen. Not promising in terms of egg production. So I guess we start over again. Again.

Make it yo'self!

Sorry for the poor picture quality. I had to take this photo with my dumbphone (tm), because all cameras in a five mile radius of my house appear to have crapped out, all at the same time. It's a gov'ment conspiracy, ya'll!

Not really.

And while I'm hangin' out in disclaimer-ville, I might as well mention that even though I'm about to get all preachy about homemade, good for you food, I am not, have never been, will probably never really be a whole food, real food, paleo, vegan, etc, etc. My kids eat at McDonalds sometimes. I LOVE "chinese" food. And pizza. In any form. When we go to church, the whole family hits up the cheeseball bucket. Orange fingers are practically a Wednesday night tradition. What I'm trying to say is, I am not on a bandwagon. What I am is cheap. Well, more like broke, but it adds up to the same thing. So. On to the good stuff.

A few weeks back, just before we had a wet, rainy, no-internet-because-satellites-apparently-don't-work-in-the-rain episode, I decided that it was time to start making a lot more of our food from scratch - A. because I want to, 2. because it usually tastes better, and C. because, as I mentioned, I'm cheap. I started thinking about foods that we buy cheaply, and how that equals less quality, and more unpronounceable ingredients, and made a list of things to start making from scratch. Then I spent 2 weeks wailing and gnashing my teeth because of the aforementioned internet outage. And deciding that I really need to invest in some good cookbooks, gardening books, and books with lots of pretty pictures, because if we ever lose internet for good, I will be adrift in a sea of emptiness and pinterest withdrawal.

Ahem.

Anyhow. The internet is back up, and so I've been on the hunt for recipes and whatnot. And I've been trying out some fun stuff, like homemade yogurt - which is about the easiest thing in the world, and tastes so much better than storebought (I'm about to say that alot, just a headsup). There's a nice tutorial here:

http://www.theartofdoingstuff.com/how-to-make-yogurt-from-scratch/

Today I made the wheat crackers at the top of the post, because I've had a serious hankerin' for crackers and none in the pantry. And these are super yummy. I just ate about half of them with some homemade pesto. Oh my goodness. I used a mix of wheat and white flour and subbed 1/4 cup of wheat germ for part of the flour, and it was delicious. The whole process, start to finish, only took 30 minutes, and cost pennies to make (compared to 3 bucks a box. Nabisco can suck it!). They taste so much better than box crackers. Here's the recipe link:
http://www.kitchenstewardship.com/2010/02/05/finer-things-friday-homemade-cracker-recipe-at-long-last/
(I noticed that this same website has a lot of recipes that look interesting)

I've also been making bread (lots of bread!), pesto, and lots of other sauces, on top of the summertime canning and preserving. It's easier on the grocery bill, and on our health (and tastebuds!). I've never been much of a label reader, because seriously, who has the time? but just the other day I made a coconut cake for my dad's birthday, and read the ingredients in the white frosting can. If I had any powdered sugar in the pantry, I would have thrown that junk right out and made some real frosting, with real, pronounceable ingredients. It doesn't seem like that big a stretch to me that the less processed food is, the healthier it is for you. And if it tastes better, too, then why not make the switch?

I've challenged my self to "make it yo'self", so I'll be trying to post a lot more recipes and showing what has worked (and what hasn't!) in the homemade food department. In the meantime, if you're interested in healthy and affordable food - give it a try! It's amazing how easy and affordable a lot of staple foods are when you make them yourself!