Christmas update

I really don't realize how much I rely on the internet until we don't have it anymore.  We went for about a week with really intermittent internet availabilty, and then finally none at all.  I do any new product research, blog reading, recipes, looking up phone numbers, etc. on the internet.  It's weird to search out my paper telephone book or hope I wrote down my favourite recipe, or try to remember the time of that meeting. 

Anyway, we're back online and faster than ever.  It's amazing how our service gets a free upgrade every time I call Telus.  Even if you don't need anything from them, call once in a while to see what you really should be getting for your money.  I'll bet our speed was supposed to be increased years ago, but they didn't do it until I had a problem. 

We continue to be busy over here preparing for Christmas.  I think most of my presents are made, but there are always a few that get held over until the last minute.  I'd like to finish those this week.

I made the cutest lunch bag ever for my neice this week (see it over here at homemade by ev).  I can't show you some of the other things, but it's been fun.  Now I've got to head over to the post office and send a few things away or no one is getting my work for Christmas.  I'm thankful for a few January birthdays in our house because all of the unfinished presents get given then.  Keep that in mind when planning your family!

This weekend is our community league's 2nd Annual Winterfest celebration.  I'm hoping for a bit of fresh snow for the outdoor activities that I've helped arrange, but it will be fun even without. 

I'll be spending the whole day at the hall on Saturday crafting with people, eating, carolling and having fun.  Consider dropping by if you've got time and get in the Christmas spirit!

Also, if you're in Edmonton, the First Baptist Church Choir Concert is at 7:30 pm tonight (109 Street, just south of Jasper Ave).  It's always a beautiful evening of music, with strings, pipe organ, piano and about 40 voices.  Besides being in the regular choir, I'm singing a song with the girls and three friends.  It was a nice gesture for the choir director to include kids in the concert this year (she likes to keep everything pretty professional), but she invited the "choir babies" to sing.  Four of the five young girls were with the choir through our pregancies and breastfeeding days and now they are old enough to sing beautifully.   Come out and here us!

Inspiration

Although we are all thinking of and planning Christmas presents, none of our latest crafts have been for Christmas so I can still share them here. 

Yesterday was our last day of Zumba.  The community league offered 10 sessions over 10 weeks, and Laura, Beth and I learned to dance and had fun with our 68-year-old instructor.  Her energy was inspirational, for sure, and I thanked her for her patience with us by making this necklace for her. 

We'll be hiring her for another session in the spring, but until then a small group of us will be exercising to videos.  I need "buddies" to motivate me to keep up.  Together, we've exercised at least twice a week and we don't want to lose the momentum.  I still have a Spa Lady membership, but I've only gone twice this fall because we have found other things to do.  The late snow this year was great for outdoor exercise.  That season is over for now though. 

And today Beth and I discovered how inspiring a day off of school and an hour or two in a fabric store can be.

After a session of interviews with her teachers (who were all terribly impressed with her brilliance!), Beth designed and made her first article of clothing today - a $2 t-shirt.   Sometimes sewing doesn't pay, but this time it did. 

Only a 12 year old can wear horizontal stripes.

I found some beautiful fabrics for a bag for my older sister.  I had to say that kind of publicly to make sure I make it before I lose steam.  Someone keep me accountable!

And I saw some beautiful fabric for another bag that I promised a friend months ago. 

This is the bag that comes with the standard Scrabble game. 

Gorgeous, yes?  Well, no, but it works.  Ours does, but I managed to melt and burn a friend's bag this summer in a terrifying camping accident.  Sarcasm  is tough in print.  Try burning one of these bags sometime.  It does a very unsatisfying smolder without bursting into flame at any point.  I suppose that's a  good thing, but it still didn't leave a bag that you'd want to use anymore.  

I'll be sending this in the mail.  It's pretty, but I wouldn't recommend burning it either.  I suspect it might melt too.  It's pretty with a bit of shiny bling, so it still beats the old bag hands down. 

Now I just have to get it into the mail.  Hopefully that won't take a couple of months.  Anonymous reader, I'm hoping the subtle photography will make me accountable on this little task.

Gifts on my mind

I think it's a bit unfair that I expect other bloggers to blog every day.  Or every other day, at least.  I love to have new things to read.

I don't always have anything new to write though. 

I've been thinking about Christmas gifts a lot lately.  Last weekend I sat with Rosa at a table at a craft sale selling all sorts of things that we had made.  I had hoped that our first snow would make people think of Christmas, but it didn't.  People were still shopping for themselves.  The vendors seemed to buy the most stuff from each other.  I sold a few necklaces, and a few more on commission, and I spent just as much at the other booths.

We did sign up for one more craft sale though and I've been busy sewing up a few things for it.  I think people will be thinking of gifts by the time December comes. 

Because I try to make most of our gifts (and so do the girls), I've been seriously thinking about the presents I want to make.  Most involve the use of my sewing machine, but I've got a few other skills as well.

I have nothing to show you here because I've started a new blog just for my sale items.  A couple of people suggested that I hand out cards directing them to my blog and sell things from there.  I hope to have it all set up well before the next sale, but you can look at it now. 

         homemade by ev     (there's a new link at the top of my page too)

I've also been dreaming up ideas for the girls at Sew, Mama, Sew.   I rarely visit there during the year, but every November they do a daily gift list with tutorials.  If you haven't been there yet this November you can spend some time catching up.  It's great fun and has a ton of good, easy ideas.

New toy

I don't mind having kitchen toys if I use them.  I thought my pasta maker might become one of those unused toys, but I've made lots of pasta with it.  Especially since I have yet to see gluten free lasagna on any store shelf. 

This current new toy cost more than I think I will use though, so I only bought one quarter of it.   Rosa and two other deer hunters will own the other three quarters.

I don't know though.  Today's little experiment was really exciting.  I know it's odd to get excited about squeezing raw meat and seasonings into pig intestines, but it was awesome.  And I don't aspire to normality.

I had defrosted some chicken for last night, but last night's supper went a little differently than planned.  Yvon had a meeting I'd forgotten about and, while I escorted one child to piano lessons, there was no one to cook supper at home.  Tuna from a can dumped into my pre-made salad sufficed and satisfied most food groups and hungry tummies in a rush. 

Anyway, the Power Fist box sat in our hallway for over a week taunting me.  "Try me, try me!" it whispered every day.  Fine.  Raw chicken that had to be used, casings in the fridge waiting for a bigger sausage-making day to happen, some pork fat waiting for the same.  It looked like I had everything I needed. 

Although I had borrowed the KitchenAid attachments to grind the fat and meat, I wanted to try it with my own tools if possible.  My ancient cast iron meat grinder worked just fine.  It's maybe coarser than the KitchenAid grinder, but I don't mind that. 

The last time we made sausages, we used the KitchenAid attachment which injected a lot of air in the casings and required two people with constant vigilance.  I can't say I enjoyed the stuffing part of the process.  However, the Power Fist didn't break one casing, I had only a couple of air bubbles to pop, and I did it easily by myself while twisting the links.  I thought maybe I'd have to wait until the kids came home to help, but it wasn't hard to manage.

Before I forget, here's the recipe I used.  You can do it yourself without putting it into casings.  It's a tasty mixture made into patties too.  I ended up with enough stuck in the sausage tube to have a bit for lunch.  

Rosemary Chicken Sausages

2 lbs chicken             (I used deboned thighs)
1/2 lb pork fat           (dirt cheap from your favourite butcher)
1/2 cup dried apples
3 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley
1 tsp pepper
1/2 Tbsp salt          
1 Tbsp chopped dry rosemary
1 cup powdered skim milk
Bit of ice water (maybe 1/4 cup?)

Grind the meat and fat together.  Mix in the rest of the ingredients, except the water.  Re-grind the mixture.  Using your stand mixer or by hand, knead the whole mess together, adding water to make it a soft, stringy consistency.  Fry a small patty to see if you're happy with the seasonings.  I was.

Rinse the casing in cold water and gently feed it onto the sausage stuffer tube.  Tie a knot in the casing.  Load up the sausage press and slowly start to fill the casing.  The first one is where most of the air went, so I popped the first sausage with a sharp knife to let it escape.  Apparently a natural casing self-heals, so you aren't left with a hole-y sausage.  Keep going, holding back the casing so it doesn't feed too fast.  Knot the end, pop any holes and twist your links. 

I don't know if any of you will ever make sausage, but if you do and have questions, I can go into more detail one-on-one.  I know almost all of you on a phone-call basis. 

Next time I'll plan ahead and have some dried apricots to include like the original recipe included.  Or maybe cranberries would be good.  The sweetness of the apples is good, but there wasn't enough of it to really notice. 

Maybe I'll use the sausage stuffer more often.  For reference sake, it took about 1 1/2 hours to make it, although making more would not have added too much time.  A lot of the time was setting up and reading the manual, searching for a recipe, and cleaning up the tools after.  My next sausage venture will be 15 pounds of pork sausage with a friend.  I can't wait to do it again!

Processing blahs

I've still got apples in the basement going bad (I hate wasting food!) and tomatoes in bins and in the freezer that I'd prefer to be in jars. 

However, I'm feeling done.  I don't feel like boiling the big canner up again.  I think I'm just going to use them as they are and if some go bad, so be it.  I've got the processing blahs.

On the other hand, I'm hoping to try making sausage again tomorrow with a friend.  That's a totally different process though, and I'm excited to do that.  I now own 25% of a sausage stuffer, so I hope to get better at it and do it more often. It will probably get it's own post later.

When I was complaining to a friend about my lack of tomatoes this year...No, that's not quite right.  I was complaining that I had a lot of small tomatoes that would never fill 50 pints and that's what I figure we use in a year.    Anyway, the subject of cooking came up.  She couldn't imagine how I would use all those tomatoes. 

"What do you cook that uses so many tomatoes?" She asked.

"Umm,  chilli, spagahetti, stew... I don't know exactly.  I just know they get used and we like them."

I don't think well on my feet.  We don't eat that much chilli.  I just have clear visions of opening jar after jar of tomatoes over the winter and dumping them in "stuff".  What is that "stuff" though? 

This week I decided to get back to menu planning and dutifully wrote out my meals for the week before shopping.  It made shopping easier and I don't think about food all day wondering what I'm making each night.

Lasagna, taco salad with salsa, a lentil stew, chicken quesadillas (with salsa again) and hamburgers.  Hmmm, tomatoes with five of the meals.  Question answered.  I love to put tomatoes in everything.

I'm down to this bin (and the bottom is now visible) and one more like it.  They are ripening faster than I'd like this year, but they won't go to waste.  Instead of painfully peeling, boiling and processing them, I'm just using them fresh.  Clean them, stick them in the Magic Bullet and put in the fridge until I need them, saving some for fresh salsa, hamburgers and eggs.  I don't cook fancy schmancy stuff, so I don't mind the seeds and the peels aren't noticable to mean once whizzed in the Bullet.

On the other hand, I probably do have to do something more deliberate with those apples or just admit defeat and throw them out.  Last year the kids "went off" applesauce, but it seems to be a popular lunch choice again this year.  That means dragging out the processor.  Poo.  I just can't wrap my head around the idea of throwing them in the compost bin.  Life would be easier if I could.

My "other" garden

So, this year I had access to part of a garden down the block from my house. 

Although I was late getting it in (while waiting for approval to use it), weeds took over while we went away on vacation, and it was tougher to keep up with it because it wasn't under my nose the way my own yard is, there were some successes with this plot.  For one thing, I had no bugs or pests at all the way I did at my own house. 

I grew corn!  The cobs were small, but every corn stalk produced one cob.  Other than watering it, the corn was super low maintenance, very tasty and we fed between 5 and 7 people from it five times and froze two meals.  Not spectacular maybe, but more than I've ever managed.  And eating corn half an hour after picking it is just the best.  Of all the veggies I grow, corn is the most effected by freshness.  As soon as you pick it, the sugars in the corn change and it's really quite noticable. 

The potatoes were crappy, but I was warned in advance that potatoes were grown there in the past and were very scabby.  I had a few seed potatoes given to me though, so I threw them in anyway.  They weren't all that scabby, but there were very few of them.  I think that a neighbourhood kid raided them once too, leaving a few potatoes laying on top of the soil. 

The leeks were planted really, really late.  An afterthought, really, but they weren't bad either.  Again, really low maintenance.  We ate a meal of peas as well. 

The star of the show were the rows of carrots.  I'm absolutely terrible at thinning carrots.  I think the weeds worked in my favour here. 

We couldn't really see the carrots among the weeds after our holiday, so the girls and I just pulled a lot until we could see what we were doing.  Once the row emerged, we hoed between the rows and kept hand-pulling the weeds within. 

It worked.  I harvested quite a few meals and they were larger than the carrots in my own garden. 

I didn't mean to make this an inventory of my freezer, but it does help me to remember what worked and what didn't.  I'll read this post again next year and know how that plot produced. 

The renter in the house is a lady with plans and ambition but less follow through than a garden requires.  That meant she planted a lot but weeded only once, had an awesome strawberry patch but never once picked them, planted tomatoes but again never picked any of them, and had some awesome cabbages, but just when they were at their peak and should have been picked, she allowed the slugs to totally eat them. 

And she never cut her small patch of lawn. 

I personally didn't care during the summer what she did with her area of the garden.  It was a pity that her stuff all was wasted, but it didn't effect my own area. 

But then the neighbour told me that she was recommending that the home owner get rid of the garden and plant grass.  She had picked the strawberries a few times and mowed the lawn every time it bothered her.  She figured it would be easier for the renter to mow than maintain a garden. 

But grass?  The rented doesn't cut grass as it is.  I gave the neighbour a meal of carrots and asked her to reconsider.  I can't see how there is anything to be gained by planting an unused lawn.  It won't be cut again, and just create more work.  I selflessly volunteered to garden the plot again (you caught that, right?) and I sure hope they don't plant grass.   With permission to garden there again, I can properly plan what to plant and make sure I start enough seed and get it all in a few weeks earlier.  We'll see what happens next spring.  I really liked the extra produce and the actually even liked the long farm-like rows. 

I think I'll write the renter a little note of thanks and slip it in her mailbox tomorrow and hope for the best.

Too little too late

 Unless I'm with close friends or with the hippies of the new millenium, I usually lay pretty low about the ladies in our yard. However, today they deserve a post of their own and my readership of 2 is likely sympathetic to the backyard chicken.

For the last few months, the ladies haven't been producing very well.  Usually one a day between the two of them.  That's not terrible, but for a family of five it still means a regular supply needs to be purchased from elsewhere.  We've been happily eating from a farming friend of Rosa's, but we always prefer our own.  Our ladies have freedom over the backyard, eating weeds and bugs and mice (if they are quick).  That makes for darker, tastier yolks and the eggs are really big as well.  Well over the extra-large egg standard.

In the spring I've keep them cooped to give my garden seedlings a chance to grow to a defensible size, but then they are out again.  I think the problem with the lack of eggs started in August.  Some days there was nothing.   Well, they are getting old.  Production is expected to decrease, right?  But it did seem weird. 

One day, in the prickly squash plants, I found an egg.  Who knew how old it was.  I floated it in water, comparing it to a fresh egg and it definitely floated differently.  Out it went. 

So, I fully expected to find a hoard of old eggs in the garden somewhere once I cleaned it out and the leaves died back.  Nothing.  The back garden is totally cleared and I found nothing. 

Yesterday, I heard quiet clucking in the unused sand box area.  Under a table (part of Alice's kitchen setup for mud cakes and dirt soup) I found this.  Clearly Alice has moved beyond dirt soup this summer.  She could have been making real, edible, scrambled eggs instead.

Seven eggs!  Two fresh, and five will be whacked with a shovel in the compost and immediately buried. 

Anyway, the title of the post is "Too little too late".  Due to age, low productivity, dwindling numbers, and an expected hard winter ahead, this is their last day with us.  They are moving to their retirement home in the country this afternoon and I hope they get along with their new friends.  It will certainly be warmer in a more heavily populated coop and they won't be judged for their lack of productivity.  I just hope their country cousins don't make fun of their city-slicker ways.   Will they recognize a hawk or a coyote?  Do they have the instict to run for cover? 

Good luck, Heeny Monteeny and Jambon!  We'll miss you around here, but I think you'll be happy.  And now we can be sloppy about gate latches.