Moolie - Happy Thanksgiving :)

[moolie]

moolie will you adopt me?! That looks delicious...ALL of it!!!

Aw, thanks WBF

I work at home so I have some time flexibility when it comes to being in the kitchen, and yesterday I felt like doing special for my family for V-day. So I made extra of everything (except dinner, because that's a special cut and expensive--that meat cost me $6.50) for the freezer.

 

[rathbone]

A picture is worth a thousand words? Most definitely. This was a visual treat, and helps me make the decision that I will try making marmalade. I am after all, in possession of fresh citrus in my yard

 

[moolie]

Glad I've inspired you

My marmalade recipe is pretty simple: peel the outer coloured part of the citrus peel with a knife and slice thinly, section the fruit into a bowl and squeeze juices in as well, measure. Put a small plate into the freezer to test for gel later. Boil fruit sections and juice hard for 10 minutes, then add sugar in the same amount as the fruit you measured (e.g. 4 cups fruit/juice, add 4 cups sugar). Boil hard for another 30 minutes or so, stirring occasionally, till a dab of the mixture dropped onto the frozen plate "wrinkles" when you push it to one side (there are videos online for this test). Ladle into sterilized jars and process for 10 minutes in boiling water bath.

 

[rathbone]

That doesn't seem too overwhelming. I am going to try it.

 

[moolie]

So I've been reading along on Rathbone's "plastic roses" thread, and realized that I have a similar story. Bear with me, as I need to set it up. A number of years ago I came into the kitchen first thing in the morning to find a small wine glass in the middle of the kitchen table filled with Lilies of the Valley from behind our back fence. They came with the house, didn't bloom every year, and may still pop up now and again (we don't live there anymore) but my husband noticed them that morning when he took the garbage bin out for collection day and picked me a bunch. It was just a regular every day spring day, but it was something super special to me--Lilies of the Valley are his favourite flower and one of my favourite scents.

Yesterday was the 19th anniversary of when my hubs and I first started dating, so we always do something special for each other on the day AFTER Valentines Day to remember that anniversary. V-day is nice, and we usually have a special family dinner and dessert, but for us it's just another Hallmark day when it comes right down to it. We've always done something special on the 15th because it is a more meaningful day to us.

So yesterday I gave hubs a card I had made along with a crystal glass from the set we had picked out for our wedding registry when we got married almost 18 years ago. We never got any crystal, or china--mostly practical things like toasters (3!), coffee makers (3!), towels and linens and kitchen items like lots of Corningware French White casseroles (we still have just about everything except the odd piece that has broken, a few worn out towels and sheets, and the excess toasters and coffee makers that we gave to friends). Anyway, I digress--I thought it was a cute gift and I got it for a song on eBay when I was looking for something else a few months ago. It was actually brand-new, a display glass from a store that had closed.

But what my post is about is the card he made for me. We're coming into gardening season and he gave me some flower seed packets for Allysum and Canterbury Bells along with some plant markers and THIS card below (please pardon the cellphone photo)--what a total sweetheart, he remembered how much I loved the little glass of flowers all those years ago! He actually said he tried to find some bulbs/corms (whatever they grow from) for me at the nursery, but no dice this time of year.

 

[snapshot]

That's so sweet and thoughtful!!!!!!!! He's a keeper!!!!

 

[rathbone]

It really is the little things that make life so sweet.

 

[Denim Deb]

If you weren't in Canada, I'd ship you some LOV! I have a ton of it in my side yard, and really need to thin it out. But, I don't think I'd be allowed to send it to Canada.

And, the card is very nice. That was so thoughtful of him.

 

[moolie]

Been super busy lately and have been neglecting the journal, so here's an update of recent events in my life:

My 2 girls (14 and almost 16) just got back from an Easter Weekend Youth Mission trip to Tijuana Mexico to help build an orphanage. Their eyes were opened to how most people in the world live and how living in true poverty does not keep people/children from experiencing joy in their everyday lives. I know their experience will have an impact on how they live the rest of their lives.

We've just finished a big spring house clean and closet purge, items we didn't need went either to the thrift store or our recent church garage sale. We've decided to paint our very "greige" home and picked up some paint during a recent sale at Rona Home & Garden. We moved into this house almost 4 years ago, and the sellers had painted it very neutral--the kitchen, 2 bathrooms, and family room are a "greige" colour, while our front living room and 3 bedrooms are a warm neutral called "light mocha" as per the paint can they left for touch-ups, but I wouldn't call it anything close to brown--more of a pale yellowy beige. I'm really really really tired of all the neutral!

So I bought a blue colour that is kinda "robin's egg" but more blue for the front living room and family room and a coordinating paler blue for the kitchen, my older daughter picked a pretty mauve for her room and my younger daughter picked a pretty pale apple green for her room, and we will paint our room a blue that is the colour in between the living/family room and kitchen on the paint colour card. We think the blue will look good with our hardwood floors and oak cabinets, although I'm contemplating painting the cabinets white because I prefer white cabinets and our cabinets are original to our 30-year old house and are looking a bit tired. We'll see after we paint.

I've also picked up a few inexpensive posters and prints over the past few months from etsy and local poster stores, and printed some old family photos and photos from trips we've taken that I want to frame to add to our "art" collection and jazz up our soon-to-be painted walls even more

My indoor-planted seeds are germinating all around me and I already have visions of a beautiful garden! Over the next few weeks I'll be planting early spring cold weather seeds out into the hoop green house. Can't wait till gardening is in full swing, but know I need to temper my enthusiasm because we can get frosts right up till early June here. Our mild winter and lovely spring so far really have me thinking that we're further into the season than we are!

A lot of what I/my family do along the lines of "self-sufficiency" involves growing food (as above) and storing/preparing food so a few updates along those lines:

I just took an inventory of our summer canning from last year, and we are just under having used half of the tomato sauce and canned fruit (peaches, pears, fruit cocktail). We still have lots of pickles (cuke, beet, dilly beans), various veggie relishes, and jams--what we put up last year will probably last us 2 years so I need to do less of those things this summer or try new flavours. My ongoing winter pressure canning of "convenience foods": soups, stews, meats, baked beans etc. has been going well and we're well stocked with all of those. So nice to just pull jars off the shelf for lunches and to make dinner prep quick and easy!

We continue to bake our own bread from home-milled hard red and hard white wheat (we've found we prefer the flavour of the hard red or a mix of the two that is heavy on the hard red) and our 6-gallon grain bucket collection includes both types of wheat I've mentioned along with oats and rice as well as black, kidney, pinto, and navy beans. So nice to have our own stock of the basics (home-canned foods as well as dry) when planning meals.

Yogurt making continues and I think we've got it down to as much of a science as is possible with something that is a living process, we had to give up on milk-kefir because we found it was upsetting my older daughter's digestion (she was experiencing severe constipation and acid reflux, and when we removed things one by one from her diet it was the kefir that was affecting her--so much so that the day she had some again after 2 weeks off she had really bad acid reflux again). We didn't let our grains go to waste, but passed them on to others who wanted them. Not sure why my daughter had such trouble, as she loves all dairy products and eats home-made yogurt every day--nothing else has ever affected her.

I keep on with my modified "once a month" cooking, and in addition to our home-canned convenience foods I never have an excuse to not have dinner on the table every evening. I don't always do a whole month of meals, but I do ensure that we have at least that many stocked up--usually more like two or three months of meals like we have at the moment.

 

[snapshot]

That's a great update!!!! You do so much of what I want to when we are settled. Especially pressure canning convenience foods! I hope your garden does wonderful this year!