Readjusting to the Suburbs

I’ve gotten less nervous about public speaking the older I am (and the more comfortable I am with myself), but I have to admit that when I went to church today and discovered I was going to be filmed by the local news, I was nervous!
I was scheduled to speak at our church about Dark Days. Something I felt fairly comfortable speaking about simply because the members of our congregation are very receptive to the topic. I attend a UU church and we often have speakers that are not only from other religions, but are there to discuss topics we feel are relevant to the principles the church holds. I have spoken in the past in regard to my surrogacy, so I was fine with stepping up to the pulpit again. The news though.. wow. Thankfully it’s just local They interviewed me some prior to the service, and then he recorded clips all throughout the service itself. The speech went pretty well so I don’t feel like I presented myself as an idiot, and the members were interested in some Q and A and discussion time after my speech, so it seemed to spark some good conversation. We then went downstairs to have coffee and talk more. I couldn’t have asked for a more open bunch. I love my church.

The evening has gone well too. Mom came to town for one more night and treated us to dinner out. We’ve spent the rest of this evening just lounging around and talking. Mom surprised me that she did a search on Amazon for my first children’s book (coming out this year through Scholastic) and it is actually available for pre-order! There isn’t a photo up for it yet and I plan to check on it. In the meantime I did see copies of some SeeSaw flyers and it is on there. Excitement has ensued!!

This Sunday has been interesting to say the least. Hopefully it means we’re looking at a good week!

January 15th, 2012 | Tags: dark days, scholastic, writing | Category: Religion, dark days | Leave a comment

I’ve been horrible about recording our Dark Days. I could blame it on the holiday, then the semester starting, my trying to catch up with stock in the store (trying to get ahead too), my upcoming speech at church, and the kids.. can’t forget the kids. The truth is that although I am still buying with Dark Days in mind, and cooking that way too.. I am doing everything last minute so never get a photo or write an entry. Most of the time it seems that I’m remembering dinner at 4:30, the kids are starving and my to-do list is a mile long. Hunting down the camera doesn’t even get on that list.

*sigh*

Regardless, we have eaten Dark Days meals. This past Saturday we had family over for a birthday party for my youngest. He turned 6. We had a ton of kids over and the house was wild from noon on. After the kids left and everything was cleaned up I realized I still had relatives over and people needed to eat dinner. Enter sauteed strips of chicken, red potatoes whipped with their skins still on with cream and parmesan (the cheese is unknown origin), and frozen sweet corn. We can get some pretty good corn around here.

Another day this week I made breakfast for dinner. Have to love breakfast for dinner, especially since hitting SOLE ingredients can be easy. Enter cheese omelets and bacon. I even roasted the bacon in the oven and not only did it come out great, it was super easy to pour off the bacon grease for upcoming use in the cast iron.

The other night I made Tyler Florence’s “Smothered Pork Chops” I’ve been on a pork kick lately and these were crazy good. I made an alteration to the recipe in that I used stock I’d made from the pork chops prior instead of using chicken stock. I would highly recommend this. I also made the best roasted potatoes ever. Easy and I will be doing this again.

So Dark Days are not dead around here, they’re just blind. No photos, just memories of good meals.

January 14th, 2012 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

This week I’m back to school, so I need to focus on food prep. I took last semester off so that I could decompress and decide what I was doing about classes. I’m going to school for nursing and we are trying to move, so my prior school selection became a ‘too far away’ option. Unfortunately deciding on schools and waiting for nursing school acceptance means not taking classes, otherwise I prospectively would end up taking something that I didn’t need. I’m now in a nursing program in Columbus, so everything is lined up and I’m back to taking classes.

Taking classes means focusing on time management. If we’re going to eat ‘real food’ vs prepared or processed, I have to have things ready. Cuts of meat prepped (I made meatballs the other day), snack foods around (even if it just means having fruit and cheese on hand), dough for cookies, pancakes for breakfast, etc etc.. I like to think that one day I’ll actually get a meal plan around so that I can become more effective. Maybe that should be my New Year’s Resolution…

Food prep can be grounding. Thinking of what we’re going to eat, making sure we eat well. It gets me thinking about what I can find local, or what we can afford on our $400 monthly food budget. Or what I should grow next year. Do you prep food, or do you wing it?

January 4th, 2012 | Tags: Food | Category: Food, Frugal Living | Leave a comment

The holidays completely threw me off in terms of keeping track of Dark Days. I feel like we were still eating pretty well, I was just lucky to remember to fix food. Taking pictures of it or blogging seemed totally out of the realm of possibility.

Tonight I made pork chops, they’re bone-in and the scraps are currently roasting away in the oven. Later, I’ll cook everything down for some stock. The chops were just seasoned with salt and pepper then seared in my cast iron pan. I’m loving the cast iron. My husband pushed it at me for ages and I was so hesitant. I will admit though, once I got used to not actually picking up my pan, it’s been my favorite pan to use.

Food wise, we have sides covered fairly easily due to the pile of veggies in our basement and still sitting in the garden. I have to admit I am sick of root vegetables at the moment, but that’s just the way it has been going. I plan to serve the new few meals with something else. I roasted a butternut before we left for Christmas and it’s sitting in the refridgerator. Maybe it will be tomorrow’s meal.
The potatoes were basic whites, whipped with whole milk, butter, and some chicken stock. I like adding chicken stock to vegetables because I feel like it not only gives more dimension of flavor, it ups the nutritional value. The carrots were simply steamed, and I topped the chop with some caramelized onion.

I’m happy to admit, I’ve now officially moved our family completely on to butter. We used oleo simply because I grew up using it, but I’ve been gradually replacing it with butter in pretty much everything. I tried to go all-out in the beginning, but we just weren’t used to the taste difference so it was throwing us. Gradual introduction worked better.

January 1st, 2012 | Tags: dark days, Food | Category: Food, Frugal Living, Gardening | Leave a comment

We’re planning on moving, actually tried to this fall. We didn’t get the house ready in time to list in the summer, so really listing it became more of an exercise in getting ready to show the house in the spring. You know, working out kinks.

We currently have a 4 bed 2 bath house on 5 acres. The space is great, the kids have their own bedrooms and we are lucky enough to have both a playroom and a craftroom. The living space is very open and we have plenty of room to have friends or family over. Plus the property allows us to do pretty much anything we want to. Animals, huge garden, woods and running space for the kids. The only problem is that we really need to move to somewhere more suburban. To think we originally moved here because we wanted to be rural..

My husband has Crohn’s (not diagnosed until after we moved out here) and it’s something we really have to be conscious of. He had 4 surgeries in 2007 and had a good long stretch with minimal reoccurance of the disease. A few little issues here and there, but nothing like 2006-2007. I can only hope we will never have another year like 2007. Ugh.
Anyway. We started a discussion this summer about maybe selling the house. The goal being to move closer to his work so that with the high gas prices he would be spending less in his commute. We also figured it would be nice to be somewhere that was more centrally located in terms of shopping. As-is we drive quite a ways to get into town.

The more we discussed moving, the more we really started to focus on things we should do in relation to his illness. Like find somewhere with a main-floor bedroom and so that he doesn’t have to go upstairs when he is sick (we are currently in a tri-level.) Somewhere that doesn’t involve him having to go upstairs to enter the house would be great (we once had to have a wheelchair ramp.)  A driveway that we don’t have to worry about if he’s sick in the winter (I shovel roughly 200 yards, he can’t do it because of the abdominal surgeries.)

The past month has gotten us even more conscious of the need. His Crohn’s is flaring again, the worst that he’s had it since ‘06.  My brain starts frantically reviewing the houses we’ve already looked at, assessing them to figure out the layout that works best. Which houses can accommodate storage of not just seasonal items but all of the food we put up. Need bins for potatoes, shelves for canned items. Yards are so much smaller than I’m used to. We moved from 1 acre to 5 acres and now we’re looking at less than a quarter acre. How much can I grow in that and still leave room for the kids and the dogs? Where will the compost go? Rain barrels? Can I squeeze in a coldframe or maybe even a small greenhouse?

Moving is so complex.

December 18th, 2011 | Category: Being Green, Frugal Living, Gardening, Home Improvement, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

We opted for another crockpot meal tonight (this entry is late in posting, the meal was actually on the 14th.) Chicken tacos are incredibly easy in the crockpot, and we no longer make them out of ground meat. We’ve found we prefer the shredded meat and it can be used in quesadillas as well as tacos or taco salad.

I threw 3 chicken breasts in the crockpot along with some chicken stock. (I pre-prepare the stock whenever we have a roast chicken. I then pour the cooled stock into icecube trays and once frozen I store the cubes in a gallon bag. This makes it so much easier to add to whatever I need it in. )
By using it in the crockpot we have soft, pull-apart chicken in a couple hours. I add the seasonings, shred the chicken, and leave it again to cook down the sauce.
In order to make this I did have to use an exception in terms of the seasonings. I also couldn’t use shells or tortillas because it always seems that if it’s organic it’s not local, and if it’s local it’s not organic. We shredded up a mix of cheese and used greens as shells.

December 17th, 2011 | Tags: dark days, Food | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I have two children, Lily who is 7 and Ben who is 5. To be honest, feeding these two little ones snacks that are nutritious and easy can be a challenge in itself. They don’t feel like the same things at the same time, or they spend all of their time mulling over what they want that it’s hard to actually get them moving. We try to have them graze during the day when they’re not at school. It’s better on the digestive system.

Enter: Smoothie Popsicles

This batch happened to be strawberry. We had a great haul this year (unfortunately not from our own beds, they were kind of lacking.) We have a couple local markets, one that is all week and is run by a Mennonite family, and one that meets on Saturdays in the town square. The family run market is great because it is near the kids school and a lot of the food they carry they grow themselves. They always seem to have a good amount of strawberry ’seconds’ and although they are not certified organic they do indicate they are ‘chemical-free’. I really wish I was able to get more from them this year, but they were rather popular this year.

Needless to say I have greatly taken advantage of the strawberries that did reach our house (and made it past the kids greedy fingers.) I made multiple kinds of jelly and jam, some with sugar and some without. I also froze a bunch so that we could use them for smoothies during the dark days.

These popsicles are so easy. We make our own yogurt so I always have some on hand. We add yogurt, honey, and fruit to the blender, give it a whirl, and add them to old-school tupperware popsicle molds that my mom passed down to me. The popsicles never fail to please.

December 11th, 2011 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Long title

I’ve been having a craving lately for red potatoes. Most specifically a recipe involving garlic, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. I do plan it for later this week, however.
Today I went easy again, I blame it on the weather and my inability to get motivated. The kids always love sauteed potatoes so this is always a winner.

I sauteed the potatoes in butter and a little bit of olive oil (a cheat, but it allows the butter to withstand the higher temps) added frozen broccoli that came from our garden, and a sharp cheddar that has been making regular appearances around here. The kids ate it as a meatless meal, I added (not pictured) a small leftover hamburger patty covered in the same cheese.

There’s still some of the meal left, but I’m thinking it will be perfect for Lily’s lunch tomorrow.

December 7th, 2011 | Tags: dark days, Food, local, meatless | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Ethically eating can be tricky, it involves actually asking questions and realizing that it’s not rude to do so. It means you have to decide what you’re comfortable with supporting, and what you’re comfortable with making concessions on. Eating with restrictions makes decisions even more difficult.

My husband has Crohn’s and not only does he have dietary restrictions (and is picky), but sometimes he has to have a modified diet when his system is not doing well. During those times we often have to resort to liquid, bland, or soft diets. This always seems to mean that liquids become jello (not a good food choice), popsicles (fake food for the most part), icecream (can make good choices here! homemade is so good), and soup (he really only likes canned campbells, ick.)
Blands or softs get him into better territory. Eggs (pasture ranged and local), cheese (more good stuff), potatoes (ours until we run out, then we can get local although organic is harder to find), crackers (sigh.. more bad), peanut butter (I can’t make myself spring for the expensive stuff, and the local isn’t really local)… All-in-all it’s not that fantastic on the  ethical eating front.

When he’s doing well food can be easier. Crohn’s patients do better when food is cooked down so as long as I’m on top of things I try to make sure we have things that are easy on his system. Crockpots are wonderful for this. I can go largely SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) with chicken tacos, roast pork, bbq chicken, and more. I sneak in vegetables, many of which we grow here, by adding carrots and onions to meatballs. Sweet potatoes go in our tomato sauce (although this is something I do after I open a can of homemade, I don’t know that they would be safe to can otherwise.) I’ve gotten pretty crafty over the years.

In the end, we don’t do too shabby around here as long as he’s doing well. I’m working on making the liquid, bland, and soft diets a little better. I think it’s going to be a matter of time and patience. His disease is flaring at the moment, so I guess it’s trial time.

December 7th, 2011 | Tags: crohn's, Food, local | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment