A week of simple pleasures

It was a busy-at-home, sick-at-home, trying-not-be-cranky-at-home week. The sun kept teasing us -- showing up when it was supposed to rain, and disappearing again just as we had our shoes on.

We had no plans between homeschool rollerskating on Monday (which looked a lot like this day) and a playdate Friday, which we sadly had to cancel after a mild cold snuck up on us. In between, we just tried to stay well-fed and peacefully occupied, playing outside in between rain showers, watching our favorite movies...

doing lots of puzzles...

reading to each other...


...and eating, of course. It was just a cold, thankfully, not the flu!

Whenever we're home for a stretch, life seems to revolve around food. Not that that's a bad thing! I was glad I'd planned two big pots of soup into my menu. I decided to try a new soda bread recipe from "The River Cottage Family Cookbook." It uses yogurt instead of milk, and boy was it yummy! I made it three different times, just because I could.


On Wednesday a man came by selling flats of strawberries, and how could we resist? We ate a bunch, and then decided to make jam out of the rest. They were getting mushy anyway. So my oldest (who hadn't caught the cold yet) mashed up a bowlful of strawberries, and we made strawberry preserves together for the first time. Thus, the extra loaves of bread!


The jars that we sealed in a water bath ended up with floating fruit. So, we'll see later how they turn out. But the unprocessed preserves we've been eating this week are absolutely divine. Scott even said it was the best he'd ever tasted!!


Can I tell you how much I love my husband? He has been working so hard around here on his Saturdays off -- building the chicken fence, loading and unloading two tons of compost, even folding laundry and washing dishes.

This morning he picked up our CSA produce, went to the grocery store, came home and took the boys out back to pick oranges, fixed the fence, came in and fixed the door to the oven -- sort of a necessity in this house, went to three more stores to find me canning supplies and local honey, came home and played Frisbee with the boys. And now, hmm, where'd he go?! Oh, well, I guess he deserves a minute to himself. Since I finally found enough minutes to myself to blog...

Hope you're healthy and enjoying your weekend!

Menu Plan Monday

Why is it that something as simple as menu planning can make such a huge difference in how the week flows? Last week I never got around to it, and ended up going to the store without a complete list just so we'd have lunch to take to park day.

Planning my menu for the week forces me to look at the big picture -- our planned activities, my budget, what's already in the fridge -- so I know how to make the most of our CSA produce, and where I need to fit in shopping and baking.

And it's so nice to be able to look at my list on the fridge in the morning and know just what to make for dinner that night. Or, to know that I actually remembered to take the chicken out of the freezer!


This week's menu:

Breakfasts:
Granola (make more on Thursday)
Oatmeal
Scrambled eggs and toast
Apple muffins
French toast
Sunday Waffles

Lunches:
PB&J
Cheese quesadillas
Leftovers
Spinach salad w/roasted beets, mandarins and walnuts

Dinners:
Monday -- Salmon w/ sauteed carrots and swiss chard, apple crisp.
SOAK RED BEANS

Tuesday -- Minestrone soup, multigrain soda bread -- deliver half to friends w/new baby

Wednesday -- Roast chicken w/potatoes, carrots and onions

Thursday -- BBQ chicken pizza
Bake cookies, make pizza dough

Friday --
Lunch/playdate: Fritatta w/bacon and swiss chard
Dinner for kids: chicken corn chowder
DATE NIGHT!

Saturday -- Dinner with friends (find out what to bring!)

Sunday -- Lentil soup

Head over to Laura's blog to see more great menus!

On my needles: Stripey socks

I would not have guessed two years ago that I would fall in love with sock knitting. Why would I want to spend hours knitting something I can buy for $3, and no one's really going to look at anyway? Well. Maybe because handknit socks are simply not the same thing as store-bought cotton socks. They're not meant to be hidden inside your tennis shoes -- they are an accessory!

I made my first pair back when I was still fighting PPD. Last year was a slow year for knitting, but I finished the above pair right after Christmas. I'm working on another pair in the same yarn for my middle sister, 'cause she liked it so much.

Scott gave me two skeins of really soft wool/possum sock yarn for Christmas, and I'm halfway done with the first sock in the brown/orange/purple colorway below. I'm still a pretty lazy knitter. Give me some pretty yarn and a simple pattern -- I'm too easily distracted by my noisy children to follow anything too fancy. Just a basic ribbed cuff, thanks.


The nice thing about knitting socks is that you can tuck a ball of yarn and some little double-pointed needles into your purse, and get a lot done while at the dentist's office. I've been at the dentist a lot recently, if you hadn't noticed. A few minutes in the waiting room, a few more in the office while the assistant sets things up, twenty minutes while the novacaine sets in... and you have a few inches of sock knitted.

Last weekend my friend Marlene and I headed downtown to our favorite local yarn shop to take a class on knitting socks from the toe-up. So far, I've done the traditional ankle-down variety. I'm not sure yet that I like knitting up any better, but there are a few advantages. For one, you can see exactly what size the foot is as you go. And I suppose it'll be easier to gauge when I'm halfway through my skein so I can get the longest cuff possible.

I'll let you know how the toe-up ones turn out when I'm finished.

I also started a little knitting project for my baby's third birthday. It's from this issue of Living Crafts. I LOVE that magazine! I'll share more as it comes together. And I'm wondering what this hat would look like on me in that blue/green/brown colorway in the picture above. My youngest sister gave me that for Christmas, and I haven't decided what to make yet.

(P.S. This is the Knitty.com article that got me started knitting socks!)

In the garden: Signs of spring

I really don't mean to make any of you northerners jealous when I talk about spring arriving in February. Try to remember that our spring ends in May when the 95-degree weather arrives.

Summer here is kind of like winter in the north. Except that we can grow eggplant and chili peppers. We stay indoors a lot. I do all my summer gardening before 9 a.m., or after 7 p.m. when it's shady. Summer is our indoors-or-in-the-pool season. Except, we don't have a pool.

In any case, it's not summer yet, and I'm happy to be enjoying spring, whether you're jealous or not!


We've been outside as much as possible on dry days. I go out to weed or take care of the chickens, and the boys beg me to jump on the trampoline with them.

I oblige, partially because they're so cute, and partially because I'm hoping to lose the 15 pounds I gained in 2008 by the end of April. Otherwise, I'll have to go shopping for a whole new summer wardrobe in a size I never thought I'd wear again unless I was pregnant. Wish me luck.

Scott built a new fence for the chickens this month, at my request. In November I had him put a removable chicken wire fence around the winter vegetable bed. But it seemed like a lot of trouble to do that around all the new beds, too.

As much I love to let the hens roam free around the yard, they've made quite a mess of my perennial beds. And the kids kept tracking chicken poop into the house. Plus I don't want them eating up my new plants when I put in the spring vegetable garden.

Last year I shooed the chickens away from the tomatoes as much as I could, but they got their fair share. They LOVE tomatoes. And carrot tops. They totally dug up the carrot patch. I ended up with two carrots out of the four rows I planted.

But I didn't want my girls confined to the covered coop, either, as nice as it may be. They need some uncovered area to scratch for bugs and weeds. Right now there aren't too many weeds inside their fence, because it was too well mulched.

I let them inside the winter bed a few days ago, so they could nibble on overgrown arugula and young dandelions. Of course, they thought the tiny new broccoli heads were tasty, too.