Hey good lookin, whatcha got cookin

Hubby and I have always enjoyed spending time in the kitchen - cooking, baking, canning and making candy. Making food from scratch ensures I know exactly what is in it and most of the time, it's less expensive than pre-made or restaurant prepared.  In California, we were extremely fortunate to live downtown, within walking distance of so many things.  We were just blocks from the food co-op and the farmer's market.  

Now that we live on the farm, we are about 12 miles from a grocery store.  What used to be a quick stroll to the store, now takes a minimum 45 minutes to pick up one or two things, and much longer for weekly grocery shopping.  The most practical thing is to keep inventory of the fridge, freezer and pantry so that each week when I am planning meals, I can easily add items to the grocery list.  If I forget to buy something, I know I'm not making a quick trip to the store, so being right the first time is pretty much my only option!  Download my grocery list and learn the art of checking off items as you run out.

That being said, sometimes a craving pops up.  Like on a cold rainy day, you might want to bake.  Or you open up the bread box to find that not only did he kids eat all the banana muffins, but there's no bread either. And you can't always predict when a batch of chocolate chip cookies are necessary.  (I like to keep at least a couple bags of chocolate chips on hand for this reason!)

When I bake, the first thing I like to do is gather all the ingredients in one spot on the counter.  Hubby used to be notorious for starting something and realizing we were out of one or two ingredients.  He would set out for the store, usually with a stroller and at least a couple kids, and be back in a few to finish his masterpiece.  Gathering all my ingredients first ensures that I'm not stuck in the middle of a creation, only to find I'm out I don't have all the necessary components.  This has become especially important now.  

Sometimes I start to gather ingredients and realize that I am out brown sugar.  Has this ever happened to you?  It can change your sunny attitude into a tailspin quick if you're looking forward to a tasty treat.  Here's where knowing how to make your own an really come in handy!  The last couple months more than ever, we have relied on these skills in the kitchen.  Hubby and I have made our own brown sugar, powdered sugar, buttermilk, tortillas, sandwich bread, pasta and refried beans.

Powdered sugar is probably the easiest to whip up in your home kitchen.  All you need is white sugar and a blender.  (If you won't be using all the powdered sugar immediately, blending with cornstarch will keep it from clumping.)  Simply measure the amount of sugar you need for a recipe and blend until it becomes a fine powdered consistency. 

Just as simple is brown sugar.  It only takes two ingredients!  Check out my photos and recipe below. 
 

Homemade Brown Sugar
-2 tablespoons molasses (if you're trying to make dark brown sugar, add more molasses)
-2 cups white sugar

Molasses is really sticky, so I love using the back of a little rubber spatula to mash the sugar.  It takes a little elbow grease, but comes together pretty quickly.

Purple Sparkles

Remember those free-range kids we're raising?  They are energetic, free-spirited, outgoing and adventurous, each in their own way.  We encourage the kids to run, jump and climb.  We sign them up for sports, dance and other activities as an outlet for all that youthful energy.  Each kid has started gymnastics before their second birthday.  And you should see the faces of the other parents when they see my kids climbing and jumping!

Along with all the benefits, such as learning independence, I knew that allowing the children to do gymnastics, to climb and jump, could potentially cause injury.  I can't tell you how many times I sprained an ankle or fell down while doing gymnastics and playing softball, so I'm actually a little surprised with how few injuries my children have sustained.  And up until now, only one of those injuries was kind of serious.  

Now raising kids free range does not mean we have no rules or limits.  For example, no gymnastics in the house.  This is one of the most frequently broken rules.  That brings us to last night.  All the kids love doing cartwheels in the house, especially while I'm distracted making dinner or doing laundry.  Last night our oldest (who will be 8 on Saturday) decided to take her cartwheel to a whole new level.  She stood on top of the coffee table, leaned over to place her hands on the ground... And that's when I heard the screech.  She was crying in pain.

This morning I spent 5 1/2 hours driving to and waiting at the doctor's office, driving to a specialist in Des Moines, waiting on X-rays.  The conclusion?  Lily broke her elbow, but didn't need surgery.  She will be in a cast at least 4 weeks.  It's been less than seven hours since her cast was placed and she feels less pain, but is uncomfortable because it itches.  And it's already been an adjustment for the siblings.  Little sister Addy was surprised that Lily won't be able to jump on the trampoline for several weeks.  Baby brother Tucker wanted to be picked up and snuggled by his big sister.  And little brother Sean wanted to sit on Lily's lap to play on computer.  Lily said this might be the hardest six weeks of her life.

Bright side?  Lily picked a purple cast and the tech even sprinkled glitter on it for her!  So she will be wearing purple sparkles for her birthday party.

first layer

purple cast!

it sparkles!

Little brother signing cast

Fresh n Fruity dessert

Sometimes after the kids go to bed, I need a little sweet treat.  Since the cave is full of apples we picked and the neighbor brought us some amazing peaches a couple weeks ago, I decided something fruity was in order. But I didn't want to spend a lot of time making pie, so i decided to throw together a crumb topping and bake the fruit.  Check out how I did this!

Baked Fruit Crisp
4 apples/peaches (8 halves)
4 Tblsp soft butter
4 Tblsp brown sugar
8 Tblsp rolled oats

Core apples.  Slice each peach and/or apple in half.  Combine butter, brown sugar and rolled oats.  Mix until combined.  Place fruit halves, skin side down, on baking sheet.  Top each half with a heaping Tblsp of crumb topping.  Bake at 375* for about 20 minutes, or until fruit is tender.  Serve warm with ice cream.

You can use any crumb/crisp topping that you like.  It would be great with chopped pecans or a little cinnamon!  And I'll bet it would be great with other fruits like plums and pears.  If you are making a single serving, you can bake this in a toaster oven.

I promise to work on my food photography skills...

but believe me, this is delish!

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Every move/new adventure has its mishaps.  Things get broken or lost.  Nothing is on schedule or goes according to plan.  Lucky for us, we only ran one day behind our estimated departure date and only a few things showed up broken.

But that does not mean the move has been entirely smooth.   

Aside from "losing" our 2 year old Sean in the corn, battling ticks and cleaning out the cave, we have encountered a few other harrowing experiences this summer.  You may have heard about the long and unusually moist spring in the Midwest this year.  The rain extended much into June, washing away many crops and overflowing some rivers in northern Iowa.  Here is southern Iowa, we received much of the same rain and humidity, causing a host of problems in planting summer crops.  And mildew.  This was a biggie for us, as many of the boxes we moved from California were stacked up in the workshop, waiting to be unpacked.  Stroller and car seat covers had to be washed, furniture and appliances wiped down.  Can you imagine your child asking for some toast, so you grab the toaster box, then lo and behold when you pull it out, it's covered in mildew?  Thank goodness for soap! 

 

Next comes the runaway fire.  Hubby and I took some old siding down to the burn pit and he used a bit of gasoline to get the fire started.  Everything was nice and contained.  Until the gas can, that was apparently a little too close to the burn pit, overheated and caught fire.  We were unprepared for this.  There was no hose attached to the hydrant, but several ice cream buckets strewn about from the kids' water play would have to suffice.  I began running back and forth filling buckets with water, all the while thinking, I'm going to have to call mom and tell her we caught grandpa's farm on fire.  Fortunately, we were able to contain the fire, with only a bit of singed grass and a melted gas can left in it's wake.

burn pit

singed grass

hydrant and buckets

A couple weeks ago we bought a whole hog from hubby's coworker and had it butchered at a local shop (no we're not ready to butcher out own yet!).  The kids were super excited, they love pork.  The stand up freezer was cleaned, mostly cleared out and super cold.  Hubby and I picked up the meat - pork chops, bacon, cottage bacon, sausage, whole hams, hocks, pork belly and more!  The freezer was practically full of all this deliciousness.  Of course we had pork chops and collard greens cooked with bacon that night for dinner.  they were amazing.

Two days later the kids went to the freezer to get otter pops.  They came running up the stairs excitedly, yelling.  The otter pops were not frozen!  Immediately hubby and I jumped up to check the freezer.  The meat was mostly frozen, though thawing quickly. I grabbed a basket and started filling it with the precious cargo to fill the kitchen freezer.  A sigh of relief that the kitchen freezer only contained some ice cream, frozen fruit and a few enchiladas.  We tossed all the ice into a cooler and made as much room as we could for the pork.  I threw a nearly empty bucket of ice cream at the kids and maybe yelled eat it.  There was just enough room for all the meat, except some sausage, which we threw in the cooler.  After some investigation, we are pretty sure a little person gathering otter pops slammed the large freezer door causing it to bounce open, thus thawing our food.  It was a close call, but we managed to save all the pork.  It's a very good thing, because have you seen how much my four little kids eat?!

Summer is pretty much over, but I am sure the excitement isn't over yet.  I wonder how many more unfortunate events will cross our path?

I love California

I love California.  It is beautiful with its hundreds of state parks and beaches, cold coastal waters and tide-pools filled with wildlife, mountains, rivers and lakes.  There are theme parks to explore, slopes to ski, vineyards to visit and so much in between.  But... I am so glad we moved to Iowa.  Sure I miss my friends, family and the wonderful diversity that lies in California.  I wonder if we will ever go back to our favorite patisserie in Pacific Grove or if my mom can send some of my favorite foods that can only be purchased locally at the Davis Food Co-op or Farmer's Market.

Now we have a new life in Iowa that I am falling in love with too.  One of the things that I love the most is our home.  Now this is not the house I would have designed and I wouldn't call it my dream home.  It doesn't have a gourmet kitchen or a hidden passage.  It doesn't have rustic wooden beams across the ceiling or gorgeous hardwood floors.  But it was built by hand by my grandfather.  Literally. 


For more than a decade after moving to the farm, my grandparents and their four children lived in the old farmhouse.  I heard stories about grandpa wrapping the house in plastic each winter to keep the cold winds and snow from creeping in.  I can only vaguely remember the black wood stove in the living room, the steep stairs to the second floor and sitting around the kitchen table eating grilled cheese and tomato soup. 

 I opened a drawer the other day and inside is a file labeled "house plans."  In the file is a hand drawn picture with labels written in pencil.  My grandpa was not an architect or engineer.  He was not a contractor or carpenter.  But he so loved my grandma and wanted to build her this home that didn't have snow creeping in, that he learned how to do it by reading books about plumbing, electrical and everything else. 

When construction began, I remember the fluffy pink insulation was so inviting, but forbidden.  My aunts, uncles, cousins, parents and neighbors were all on deck digging the basement, pouring concrete and framing the house.  There were wires and pipes to install, walls to sheet-rock and paint.  A roof to shingle.


And now it is our turn.  It is our turn to take care of the home built both physically and emotionally by my grandparents.  There's no lack of projects to keep us busy and there are reminders in unexpected drawers.  But that is what I am loving about our move to Iowa.

Future basement

Pouring concrete walls

Everyone pitching in

Grandpa smoothing the concrete.

Look at me helping build the house.

Groundhog Day

I'll bet you're thinking Groundhog Day is in February.  Right now we are in August, so what gives?  It seems to be groundhog day everyday in our yard.    We have what the kids call "the creature" (aka groundhog or woodchuck) living under our shop, burrowing in the yard and making appearances in the barn.  Sean wouldn't go out in the yard for a several days because he was worried about being bitten by the creature. 

We tried trapping the groundhog, but apparently they don't go for cat food like the neighbor thought.  Hubby tried shooting the thing, but is pretty sure he missed and the puppies have even chased him, all to no avail.  Although not the same animal, it's starting to feel like we are precariously close to a scene from Caddyshack...

Bill Murray, Caddyshack 1980

Caddyshack, 1980

Each morning, the kids like to point out the freshly dug mounds of soil in the yard.  They even like to stomp on the mounds.  Well we've been doing some research and are now prepared to trap the creature, enticing him into the cage with all his favorite foods.  If that doesn't work, there's always dynamite :)   

The Cave

We have a cave.  Ok really, it's a root cellar underneath the meat shed.  But my grandparents always called it a cave and that sounds way more awesome, so I am going to keep calling it the cave.  The cave was built by my grandfather in the late 70's to hold pickles, jam, other canned goods and homemade wine. 

When we arrived here this summer, after an unusually wet season, the cave was musty, dusty and full of water.  I decided that cleaning out this building was going to require some extreme measures.  I was going to have to take off my flip flops and put on some boots!

And so that is what I did.  It took several hours of me working in the cave while the kids "helped" their daddy upstairs in the meat shed, but now it is all ready to be restocked.  Canning is something the hubby and I have enjoyed for years, so we are looking forward to trying out all those new recipes and methods that Pinterest has introduced to us.

Here's me not wearing flip flops.