My Garden

Aaahhh...my garden.  I love my garden.  Even more this year than normal because I'm fully invested in making the most out of everything I can grow.  I put up food every year by drying or freezing things but this year I'm adding canning to the list of ways to preserve the bounty.  I want to make my own pickles, salsa and dilly beans (just like Shannon's)...not to mention tomato sauce, canned tomatoes, relishes, applesauce, pie filling, etc. etc. etc.

Please note my extremely stylish scarecrow...made out of old Levis (too small unfortunately) and a Tommy Hilfiger shirt that I was giving away to Goodwill.  Best dressed thing on our farm...


I began planning the garden in March and started all my plants from seeds I ordered from Territorial Seed Company...awesome!  It smelled like a greenhouse in my kitchen for about 2 months...not awesome.  But we put up with it knowing that the end result would be worth the extra can of febreeze.

I want to start saving my own seeds as well so I chose seeds that came from only open-pollinated or heirloom plants so they will reproduce correctly.  Wonderful varieties with names like Indigo Rose tomatoes and Burgundy beans and Country Gentleman corn.  Yummy!

I've been diligently trying to keep the weeds at bay...weeding by hand and using a hoe.  No, not a Kardashian, just the garden implement.  It's time consuming but I enjoy it because my hands get dirty and my mind gets clear.  I like that I am being active and proactive all at once.  My physical labor will help us eat better later this season and for the whole year to come.  Plus, because its such simple work, my mind has time to run.  And run it does....it runs through my to-do lists (yes, lists plural), work stuff, house chores and the projects I have to finish.  And, if I work long enough my mind will get clear of all those things and actually get to that place where my creativity gets buried.  And that's when I come up with some of my best ideas.  And all because of dirty hands.

Tonight we got the first spoils from my hard work:  a mix of heirloom lettuce, spinach and arugula.  Wa-freakin-hoo!  Oh, and the first of our strawberries too.

So, here's to a bountiful garden, healthy eating, stocked cupboards, dirty hands and creative minds!

Defective Lady Bits...

The warranty on my lady bits has run out...I think my particular model only came with one good for 35 years because at that age I began to fall apart.

Three years ago this month I found a lump in my left breast.  Nothing big, just a weird little lump hiding down on the underside of my boob.  I went into the doctor and she could feel it too.  Great.  After an inconclusive ultrasound I was sent for my very first ever mammogram.  Aces.  As if my boobs weren't flat enough after nursing three kids, let's squoosh them some more.  And there it was, a little white spot looking back at me from the tech's computer screen.  I didn't even need her to point it out to me, I could see it from across the room.  Superb.  So, over the next three weeks I had more ultrasounds, more mammograms and a failed biopsy.  It was finally determined that it was not considered cancerous and I would just need yearly mammograms to keep an eye on it.  Sweet...and this time I really mean it.

Later that same year I decided to finally have an uterine ablation.  It was either that or a hysterectomy and I chose the lesser of the two evils.  For those that don't know what it is, it's a procedure that cauterizes the inside of your uterus into charred barren wasteland.  Like the post-apocylptic set of The Road or The Book of Eli.  Ok, right here would be a perfect spot for some kind of a joke about Viggo Mortinsen or Denzel Washington being inside my uterus, but I digress.  I'll just lob that one up there and let you hit it out of the park in you mind.  Anyway, I know the doc used some thing more high tech than this but I just always pictured him with a blow torch and welding mask.   Oh, also, if there happen to be any guys reading this...right now would be the time when you should bow your head and thank God for giving you your manly bits and not lady bits.  Seriously, your upkeep & maintenance program is so much better than ours.  And you can pee standing up.

Fast forward to last Friday and my yearly mammogram.  Same old, same old...15 minutes and a pink carnation later I was on to other errands and the rest of my day.  It didn't cross my mind again until the hospital called Tuesday and said I needed to come back in because they had found something 'abnormal' in my right breast.  But, she said, "you have young, dense breasts so it can be hard to diagnose"... wait, did she just compliment my boobs in the same sentence as telling me they were abnormal?  Um, thanks, I think.  Maybe I'll use that next time I'm trying to flirt with my husband:  "Hey  babe, get a load of my dense breasts."  Hubba hubba.

This morning I went back to the imaging department to have more squooshing done.  After the doc reviewed the images he determined that it was just normal breast tissue and no need for any further testing.  Quite good news for my boobies.  And good news for my husband too...since he has grown rather fond of them and I've always said that if they ever do find something serious I want them taken off.  Really...I'm not attached to them.  They have done their job:  I caught myself a husband and they have fed three kids.  Now their main goal is to just offset my hips and make me look somewhat proportional.  Without them I strikingly resemblance a pear...or a raindrop...or something else that is much heavier on the bottom than the top.

So, it's all good for now.  I'll keep up on the maintenance programs for all my lady bits and hope they don't all go defective at once.  And even with the expired warranties, I still got flirted with at the grocery store on my way home today...well played, defective boobies, well played.

Not quite a foodie...

Today is my last quiet day for several months.  My husband is at shift, all 3 kids are at school and I am enjoying it.  It's rainy & windy outside so I don't feel guilty for spending the day indoors, my office work is caught up for the moment and I figured out how to play my iTunes through the surround sound!  Bonus!

So...what am I doing with these few precious hours?  Baking.  Cuz I like it.  I enjoy being in the kitchen and creating good (hopefully) things for us to eat.  So far today I've made individual apple pies with carmel icing and apple cinnamon rolls with the same carmel icing.  I really like the icing, ok?  Well, truthfully, only half the apple cinnamon rolls have icing because I ran out.  And I may or may not have run out because I was eating it on graham crackers while waiting for the dough to rise.  Or maybe the cats ate it.  But probably it was me.

The apple pies were supposed to be homemade pop tarts but I figured if I called them that the kids would want to eat them for breakfast and while I have fed my kids some interesting things for breakfast, I do have standards people!  Although, in a valiant effort to offset the icing, I made the crust whole wheat with flax seed.  On the great nutritional balancing scale that has to be worth something, right?  Plus the applesauce filling was my homemade low-sugar applesauce.  See, that's nutrition!  Maybe they will be breakfast tomorrow morning...

The apple cinnamon rolls turned out really well.  It's a new recipe and the dough was really soft so I thought I had messed it up but they turned out nice and light.  Again the filling was my applesauce with grated apples added to it and then cinnamon sugar sprinkled over that before rolling them all up.  Nummy!

I posted my food pics but I'm not really a 'Foodie".  I don't spend my days experimenting with new cooking techniques and ingredients.  I just like to bake.  And I make a mess when I do it.

No Martha Stewart kitchen here...there are no perfect plates of carefully shaped cookies or vases of flowers or bowls of fruit too beautiful to eat.  Almost all of my plates are chipped and my favorite vase is an old molasses bottle and we have an empty fruit basket at the moment (payday is tomorrow...yeah!).  Mine is a small kitchen with minimal storage and comically sloping formica countertops.  And there's a melted spot in the linoleum where I spilled hot candy syrup two Christmas's ago when making hard candies.

But my kitchen can produce lots of great and imperfect treats and meals.  It's where I put up countless quarts of applesauce and corn and berries and jam.  It's where my kids are learning to cook and bake.  Every Thanksgiving it's full to the brim...every inch of counter space is covered with pots and pans and platters.  And, most importantly, it's where we all hang out.  Even when we have company over,  everyone seems to just hang around the kitchen and visit.

So eat your heart out Martha...my kitchen is awesome.