Pickled Tomatoes

Thanks to the Ball Blue book, I found something to do with all my sungold and sweet 100 tomatoes!!!! There were four jars, but Heather took one home last night!

Tomato Harvest

Got up and out of the house early this morning so we could beat the heat and tend to the tomato jungle. When we were done we carried a whole hod-full up to the house to be sorted. Below are all the ripe ones, freshly washed and draining in my very bright sink.


In our work, many green tomatoes fell off the vine. They are now ripening by the back porch.

I'm wondering - are the semi ripe tomatoes in the bag enough of a catalyst to hasten ripening, or should I go get a ripe banana to add to the bag?

First beet Harvest

This wee 8 ounces is my first beet harvest. It is also the bulk of my first beet planting, which sadly did not do well. I look forward to the beet relish I am making from Janice Cole's Chicken and Egg. I think it is time to plant a fall crop of beets!

Saturday Sandwich

This one makes me happy for and yet miss Puckstopper. He has been in North Carolina for a week visiting his Grandmother. Together they took a class and received their scuba certification. Today they are diving on a shipwreck. We pick him up tomorrow at Logan. It will be great to have him home again. Happy Saturday - it's a glorious day in Maine!

Bread and Butter Pickles

A family favorite, I put up six pints of bread and butter pickles yesterday. I must say though, that I should have added a dash extra sugar when I added a dash extra vinegar to cover them in the pot. They are almost Bread and bitter pickles! None the less, a crowd pleaser that makes my tuna salad quite lovely!

Out with the old and in with the new...

This is baby food that was just evicted from our freezer. This baby food is over 4 years old. Why have we kept it so long? Maybe because it was the last vestige of our beloved the Dairy Queen and Queen Lactina.
Our baby starts Kindergarten with in two weeks, and there is no better way to get ready for months of lunchboxes x 3 than to can!

So...

Out with the baby food and in with the blueberry jam! We are blessed!

Chicken and Egg

My mother-in-law gave me this for my birthday and I am SO excited!

10 Tips to Eating Sustainably

My brother in law sent me a copy of Natural Awakenings this spring. It's a free booklet he gets monthly in Connecticut. This list is from it's March 2011 edition. There's a lot of "top ten" lists out there, but I have had this little scrap of paper saved for a while, so without further ado....

10 Tips to Eat Sustainably, Healthy, and Smart
1. Buy certified organic and local when possible.

2. Always choose certified organic when shopping for the "dirty dozen":
peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, pears, grapes, spinach, lettuce and potatoes

3. When buying local, but not organic, ask the farmer, "Why not organic?" He or she may be doing something close.

4. When joining a CSA, ask the farmer if he or she ever adds non-local food to the basket. If so, ask where it comes from and how it is produced.

5. At a farmer's market, ask the management how they choose their vendors. Must they be local or certified organic? How are they screened?
* this totally does not apply at my, or similar, rural farmers markets *

6. If buying "natural", learn how the producer defines it. The government has a very vague definition of what "natural" means.

7. Eat less meat. This lowers your resource consumption significantly.

8. Plant something edible - anything from a garden to a window box.

9. Learn about good sources of healthy foods available each season.

10. Take a cooking class. Eating prepared and processed foods is not sustainable and poor for your health!

And now... I just stumbled upon a lovely blog - Lemonbasil - that I shall now follow - but here's a lovely post about How to Eat Sustainably On a Budget!

Our Largest Radish Ever

This is apparently called a Spanish Radish. I am struggling to know what to do with it. There are several more where this came from, but I didn't have the bravery to look too closely this morning.





















Help me Rhonda!

Subsidize Vegetables! Tax Soda!

Ah! I recently used food subsidies as a project for a decision making and problem solving class I took! We could have totally written this article!
No we couldn't have. We are not New York Times writers.
Anyway, I was enthralled to say this least to see this on my NPR news feed!

Please go read this informative article by Mark Bittman. Link is below, but hiding. Sorry.

Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetables

Fill my plate...

Half full of fruits and vegetables!!!!













I am entirely too excited about the new USDA food icon for balanced eating!
What a better reason and opportunity to buy more of the local fruits and vegetables that are increasingly available at this time of year.

I wish Gillespie Farm was still producing strawberries. Shamefully, I ate every last quart I bought and didn't make any jam. I not only didn't freeze any fresh strawberries either, but also used the remainder of last years stock to make sorbet during our heat wave, which has made our usual bumper crop of red raspberries and blackberries tiny and water deprived. Sigh.

I must return to our latest sorbet churning on the counter - peach cherry. Yum.
Thank you Bangor Daily News for this great blog picture and your article.

Eat Maine Foods!

With great improvements on their map and website navigation, this website is only getting more helpful for those of us who are seeking local farms from which we can buy our food. I am adding them to my Twitter feed as well.

Saturday Sandwich

I bet you can guess what we did to escape the heat this afternoon!?

PLANET BOX!!!!

OMG! Check these out! I am so flippin' excited to have found them! Now I just need to find a couple hundred bucks so I can buy one for each of the kids before school starts!

Planet Box Lunchboxes!

Old Farm Letter Head

Favorite things

We fit together like puzzle pieces.

What caterpillar is this?

This caterpillar was found on the trunk of a dying Ash tree that SP cut down.


















For all intents and purposes, we were pretty sure by appearance not to touch it. Those hairy caterpillars can leave some nasty rashes. I have a video of it but I am not sure they will upload.



















The funny thing about it though, is that when we used the stick to move it back onto the wedge we noticed the red underbelly that was edged in some flecks of almost chartreuse green.


We took these picture on a piece of the ash wedges Shane cut out, because it was SO unbelievably camouflaged on the tree trunk. See!


















I'm still asking, what they heck will this guy turn into?

Sunday Sandwich

Finally, a picture again! This one to commemorate tomorrows important event.
No not the 4th of July. It is the 5th birthday of Baby! How time flies!

Summer Soltice Fire

Chive Blossom VInegar!?

Who knew!

A few of my favorite things

Fresh strawberries, lots of cheese, and my friend Dawn who gave me the excuse to buy even more cheese than the recipe called for. A weekend full of friends and lots of time out front playing croquette, on my new favorite household installation.

Happy Summer Everyone!

I am sorry I am a not so often blogger as of lately. Life has swept me up in it's usual windstorm. Kids and classes are mostly to blame. I will do my best to catch up, but even the Saturday/Sunday Sandwich is a thing of the past. I am not too sure why, but SP has not been feeling the mojo. I keep taking pictures of my favorite things, but never manage to blog them. Good things in good time, so they say?

A few of my favorite things

This morning I took a nap - one of those solid get back to REM sleep moments. I love naps, just about as much as I love sleeping. It's my hobby. I love it. It is one of my favorite things.
Some of my favorite things are old things, items handed down from prior generations.
Here is one such favorite that I used to add a little jazz to the Easter dinner table.




























I am a big fan of multipurpose belongings and to reuse things for new uses. This tea cup is offset - an indent to the side for the cup, and a generous plate to store things on. For Easter, I used the cup for the grainy mustard for the ham and the plate side for the sour cream and horseradish sauce.I also love tea so when tea collides with aged belongings - we have a fit for another favorite thing. For the royal wedding, I used these for lunch tea alongside a silver platter of cucumber sandwiches. I love cucumber sandwiches. My mother taught me how to make them. My mother taught me a lot of things especially some of the things I hold near and dear, like this set of my favorite things.

















I'd give them back in a heart beat if I could bring her back from Heaven.

A few of my favorite things

Yes, that is my one beloved Lilac that is busting out spring on Easter Sunday.
That is also my three beloved children (from left to right) Pickle, Puckstopper, and Baby.
And no, no matter what I ever tell you or them or otherwise, I don't have a favorite. All love.

Today I

... went outside and ate sorell from the field, picked winters rocks out of the garden, and walked barefoot down the road with Baby. He went to work hammering nails into a board when we got back to the house.
















It was a beautiful day outside, allowing a quiet pensive time to process a lot of big events to over the past daysweeksmonth. Death does that to you. They say death comes in threes, so I hope the OBL death is the last for a while, tho that one I will not shed a tear. For the victims I will and hope that they will now rest in peace and I will gain strength from the coming season.

Spring is here in Maine, May arrived with glorious weather. My forsythia is in bloom so the time of flowers in bloom all around is just beginning.




























There's an early May flower in the grace - cute, white, and carpets the back embankment.
I need to figure out it's name. It always brings a smile to my face when I see it. I am going to go ask Ellen now. :D

I hope the change of seasons and greater exposure to sunlight will help me embrace all the endless possibilities of our future and guide me into the smartest decisions possible. This economy stinks and making sound decisions is daunting.

The Auction Hat

I have made a hat that, if it doesn't sell on Etsy if I ever create a sellers page, I will be putting up for the silent auction for the Hockey fundraiser. It is made of the angora Noro blend, the warmest of this hat design.

Yea, I am a hockey Mom on top of everything else. I will also be auctioning a custom made one to go along side.




More information to soon follow about the custom made hats.

My Noro Hat and the first I sold!

My hat is the one on the right. The hat on the left is a "duplicate" of my hat, and the first hat I sold. I love how these are both the same angora blend and dye lot Noro hats, but each is unique - truly a surprise every time.




















I love making them. I am currently making a 100%wool Noro Kochoran, like Daughters hat but in hue's of blue and green, for Daughter's Godmother Mia.
Here is the yarn I started with




















And here is my work thus far - oh I need a better camera than my iPhone!

Happy Easter!

Sunday Sandwich

Apparently, the shine has come off the apple. This is the 3rd one in a row with no picture. :(

Saturday Sandwich

Make a purse out of Grocery bags!

I love this! From another blog post:
http://mimoknits.typepad.com/knitting/2008/04/grocery-bag-pur.html
Please go check it out!