get ready, get set...

It's go time around here.  After my early November birthday I always feel like I am on one of those moving sidewalks at the airport.  I can walk or run and go faster than ever, or...I can stop moving but still be carried along by forces beyond my control.  The holiday season is a busy time of making, traveling, cooking and celebrating (birthdays and holidays).  I want to remind myself to focus on what is important for our long term goals and to not get caught up in trying to get "everything" done perfectly.  
All of these heavy thoughts surely came about while crafting some new work to put in my etsy shop.  Sneak peak:

grocery challenge

To jump right back into things...

Heather, from Beauty That Moves, has inspired me to take stock, take note and see if we are up to the October Grocery Challenge.  Considering that October is already 1/3 over, and that we have been out of town the past 4 days, I may take the challenge into November.


October is always a time of abundance from the garden.  The last tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and the first of the fall crops like turnips, beets and greens.  In Champaign we are lucky that the first hard frost usually occurs around the end of the month.  I love the longer growing season here and remember our Ames, IA garden always being done by now.  

Although my tomatoes didn't do as well as last year (squirrels, stink bugs, drought), they are still producing several ripe Cherokee Purple tomatoes per day.  The 80 degree weather is helping with this, I think.  And although I didn't get as many tomatoes canned as I would like, I have done a lot more than last year!  

The butternut squash are from the Market and from a friends garden.  We have made canned tomatoes, green beans (Abby's favorite), cornichons from Mexican Sour Gherkin cukes, regular pickles made by Ian, hot salsa, dilly beans, Sunshine Chutney (my own creation), jam: raspberry, cherry, pear apple, and peach, and cinnamon rings (I just canned them and Jason's mom did the hard work!). Last years applesauce in on the top left.  We also have garlic from our garden and herbs that will be cut and dried when we get back from Minneapolis: lavender, rosemary, sage, parsley, oregano and thyme.

There is also the fun side of stocking up, which is the making of fermented or steeped alcoholic beverages.  Jason brews beer, some with hops from our back yard!  And I have made cordials the past couple of years.  Here is pear cordial steeping down in our basement laundry area:

While these aren't the prettiest pictures of our "stocking up", they document our work and help me remember for next year.

Back to the grocery challenge.  Feed our family on $400 a month.  If you read the comments on Heather's original grocery challenge post you will see a range of opinions on how much it takes to feed a family of a certain size in a certain part of the country with certain foods.  For us, we live where food prices are relatively low and have 2 adults and one almost 3yo.  The only health concern is Jason's cholesterol, which means less meat, cheese, salt and high fat food in general.  While we can certainly do $400 a month, it means more planning for grocery shopping and extra food prep time for whoever is cooking dinner.  We eat mostly organic food and very little convenience food in our house: no canned beans, soup, prepared sauces, etc.  Eggs and chicken are from a friend's farm and are healthier, and cheaper, than from the store.  I make our own yogurt about every 2 weeks from local milk.  We don't eat dessert very often and I eat bread about once or twice a week (I'm not a bread person!).

Challenges for us: snacks for our 3yo Abby, lunch meals (I don't like lunch!  can't we just skip from breakfast to dinner???) and menu planning.  Sometimes the menu planning goes well, sometimes not.  We aren't rigorous enough and often something gets in the way like we need another ingredient or we have another errand to do.  

So I will keep you posted on the grocery challenge every Monday, along with Heather at her blog.  I encourage you to join the challenge too!  It doesn't have to be $400 per month but can be anything related to groceries that you think needs improvement: more fruits and veggies per day, less processed food, no dessert, whatever you want.  Come on, everyone needs a challenge once in a while!

emerging from hibernation

It has been a particularly brutal winter.  Peoria set a total winter snow-fall record and I'm sure Champaign came close.  The garden has been covered under several inches of snow for most of the past 2 and a half months, which is great for the strawberries, garlic and perennials that rely on the insulation.  Not so great for a 2 year old and her mama who just want to go OUTSIDE!


So, let me show you what we have been doing the past couple of months.

A little baking, building, cooking, knitting, sewing, playing in the snow and reading.  Hopefully by the end of the week we will be outside enjoying warmer weather and cleaning up the garden.  This fall did not leave much time for cleaning and storing the garden hardware so it has to be done now.  

Seeds will also be started tomorrow and pictures of the tiny green shoots are soon to come!  

summertime

It has been raining here every day for the past week or so. This is good for the garden but bad for leaky basements like ours. Luckily I have been able to put in some time weeding, picking and planting in between the rain showers.

Market day has been a lot of work these last three weeks.  I am finally working out a system to help the process of getting ready and setting up go more smoothly.  It is an early day (up at around 4:45am) but it is so worth it.  I get to meet interesting people who want to buy my food or flowers and this gives me such a kick!  Talking about recipes or where my garden is or what my customers are growing always makes market day interesting.

I have been putting in some sewing and baking time when the rain was falling or the baby was sleeping.

I made an orange cake and a fava bean/pasta dish that are traditionally from Sicily for a visit from my Mom and Dominico.  We also had bruschetta, cheese and wine...buon appetito.

I made Abby a summer dress using the Flower Girl Dress pattern from Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross.  The errata for this book should be read before attempting any of the patterns.  I have found reading people's flickr comments on their photos of the projects from this book to be helpful.  It was a headache getting this dress together but I think Abby makes any cute dress fade right into the background!  There is another dress in the works from the same book but it is not cooperating with me at the moment and is stuck in the closet until further notice.

The last photo is a new market apron for holding my change and phone while I am at my booth on market day.  I took the old, ugly apron I had and used it for the pattern.  Cute and functional is a good combination!

Hopefully I will get a chance to update at least once a week with the goings-on around here.  Right now in the garden we are watching: small green tomatoes grow, sunflowers wave on their 6 ft stems, blossoms on all the flowers ready to bloom and onions starting to bulb above the soil.  The garlic scapes have been cut and sold and the foliage is starting to turn brown, which means garlic is almost ready for harvest.  Last year I harvested the garlic too late and lost many heads to rot.  This year I aim to keep some for seed and for eating and sell the rest. Have a great rest of the week and see you at the market!

All about Abby

Abby usually loves being out in the garden with me. She will happily dig in her "spot" in the herb garden, which is now dangerously close to the newly planted basil, while I do other tasks. When I noticed the radishes were getting too big, she helped me pick some for a dinner salad. Abby likes radishes! We found this out over the past weekend when Abby and I visited Grandma Kathleen in southern Illinois.


We had a great Mother's Day weekend playing in the park, going to the bookstore and watching Abby color with Grandma's pencils.

We also went to an estate sale down the street from Grandma's house where she found two new comfy chairs.  It was a busy, windy, fun weekend!   We are looking forward to Grandma's next visit to Champaign!

Around the house and a trip

Lately around these parts we have been....

Doing lots of diapers because we (meaning "I") finally put the kabosh on buying anymore disposable diapers.  We were just using them for overnight but still....I wasn't comfortable with even that amount of waste going into some landfill somewhere.

Waiting for the peonies to open!  Peonies are one of my top 5 favorite flowers and I just love the anticipation they are creating right now!

Hanging out.  Enjoying the warm weather, soft pillows and the evening sun through the front windows.

Watching the potatoes grow.  I love potatoes.  They are the one food I could eat every day for the rest of my life.  We have Yellow Finn, Desiree, Carola and some random red, white and yellow potatoes that we bought at the coop.  Digging potatoes is a little like fossil or mineral hunting for me.  And if you haven't dug potatoes, you should try it!  I hear they are really easy to grow in a barrel or big container with lots of straw in it.

This weekend we will be visiting Grandma Kathleen in southern Illinois.  We are taking the train and will be back on Sunday.  See you back here next week!  Happy Mother's Day weekend!

Etsy shop update

I have updated my Esty shop with some new buntings and zipper pouches that are perfect for summertime and all the festivities that come with it!

Check it out!

Or you can click on the cool pink, tiger Etsy button at the bottom right hand of the page!

Tomatoes are in!

Because I planted 23 tomatoes today (and 2 hostas) I do not have any photos.  My brain is too tired to find the camera and my arms are much too tired to hold the camera.  Watching/entertaining a 16 month old while trying to plant this many tomatoes amounts to what I imagine an expert in combat maneuvers must think.  "OK, don't step on the baby tomato, step over here.  Walk on the grass, walk on the grass, walk on the.... let's go over here and play with this fantastic toy for a minute."  And on it went until I looked up and noticed I only had two more to go.


Thankfully our friend Marin brought her dad, Charlie, over for dinner and he entertained the two girls while I finished up the final push and watered the little plants.  


Now I am contemplating my garden notebook and the fact that I may have to wait until some of these tomatoes actually set fruit until I know what they are.  In all of that tactical maneuvering some of the actual variety names became misplaced.  Hoh, hoh.  I do know that we will have some Super steak, Juliet, Sugar cherry, red grape, Marglobe, Roma, Better boy, Brandywine and Pink lady.  I put the cherry tomatoes on the outside where little finger will be able to reach them just fine!


I would love to here what you are planting in your garden right now!