My sister-in-law takes beautiful photographs. Like the ones she took of my children, Cedar and Ashton.

Crunchy Chicken talks about Edible Eco-Lawnscaping. I especially like reading the comments from all kinds of people doing creative things with their yards.

I found a parenting website, The Authentic Parent, with some useful and motivating articles. Getting Out of the Way is one I really enjoyed.

This is so strange and beautiful.

Jess

This week brings another build-up of kitchen projects. I like keeping my family well-nourished, though often it seems like I spend a LOT of time in the kitchen. I've been working on doing one project each day rather than all of them at once, but this day I ended up with a counter full of food-waiting-to-be-made. Here is what I made:

Raw Milk Yogurt- I've never had my homemade yogurt turn out like supermarket yogurt, but this batch is really yummy. I heated about 6 cups of milk on the stove to 110 degrees F-- warm enough for the bacteria to proliferate but not so hot that the enzymes and bacteria present in the raw milk would be killed. I then boiled a tiny bit of water, dissolved 2 teaspoons beef gelatin into the hot water, and mixed the gelatin, vanilla, xylitol and stevia (to taste), and a small container of Brown Cow yogurt in with the warm milk. The mixture went into my yogurt maker (but a yogurt maker is not necessary), incubated overnight and then went into the fridge. In this article "Mother Linda" talks about heating or not heating yogurt, and she makes hers without a yogurt maker.

Chicken Stock-I've read that not only does stock have lots of minerals easily absorbed by our bodies, but it also nourishes our digestive systems with its gelatin. Every week I roast a whole chicken, eat the meat, and toss the bones, along with the organs (I would throw in the head and feet, too, if I could find some), into the stockpot. I add some vinegar, some veggies, and let it simmer (covered) overnight. In the morning I pour the stock into jars and refrigerate and/or freeze them. I use the stock for our morning oatmeal, for soups and sauces, and for drinking (with salt added). Here is an article about stock, which includes recipes for chick, beef, and fish stock.

Kimchi- I usually only make sauerkraut, but I'm trying to branch out. I used the recipe from Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods. I cut up about half a head of cabbage (I was supposed to use Chinese cabbage), a few radishes and a couple carrots and let them soak in salt water overnight. The next morning I mixed up a paste of chopped onion, ginger, garlic, cayenne pepper, fish sauce, and kelp and mixed the paste with the drained veggies. I put it all in a jar, weighed it down by setting a glass with water on top of the mixture, and let it sit out until "ripe". Matt really likes it. There are several recipes at Love That Kimchi, and The Ultimate Kimchi Recipe looks like it's worth trying.

What projects are on your kitchen counters this week? What kind of foods do you prepare on a regular basis?


Related Posts:
My Kitchen, Land of the Living Dead
What's In the Kitchen Today?
My Kitchen, Land of Projects

Jess

I've been doing quite a bit of learning lately about food. The more I learn about food, the more I realize the far-reaching implications of the seemingly simple choice of what to eat. Food is so much more than what I buy at the store and cook for dinner-- how I choose to eat is how I vote for what exists in the world.

Three books have influenced my recent thinking about food. Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma gives an in-depth picture of the detriments of modern industrial food, from GMO corn to feedlot cattle to caged hens to pesticides and even to industrial organic, and offers a creative alternative through ecological farming and being connected with our food through its life, death, and preparation. Pollen challenges us to think about what we're eating in terms of our own health, public, animal and environmental health, politics, ethics, and sustainability. In his words,

"But imagine for a moment if we once again knew, strictly as a matter of course, those few unremarkable things: What it is we're eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what, in true accounting, it really cost."

Nina Planck, in her simple book Real Food: What to Eat and Why, shares her knowledge and experience with eating local, fresh, traditional foods. She believes rather than eating industrialized food, which threatens our health, our environment, and our connection to the pleasures of food, we should be eating "real" food (meaning old and traditional foods), including raw dairy, grass-fed meat, eco-friendly fish, ecologically grown fruits and vegetables, good fats (including olive oil, lard, butter, beef fat, and coconut oil), eggs from pastured hens, and unrefined sea salt. Her guidelines are based, in addition to her own extensive research, on the work of Weston A. Price.

The latest addition to my library, and my favorite of the three, is Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection, a book graciously sent to me by Chelsea Green Publishing Company. Jessica Prentice's book, I think, sums up the above perspectives and adds to them with her beautifully written thoughts about our connection to nature, seasons, and one another through food. In addition to sharing a variety of seasonal recipes, Prentice also talks about food traditions of indigenous cultures throughout the world, traditional methods of food preservation, our dependence on petroleum, and healing through community. I'll let her words describe her book:

"When we begin to heal the broken relationships in our food system, the nutrition of our food begins to improve. Animals are treated humanely when we understand that we are in relationship with them-- that they are part of a whole we, too, belong to. Once we accept that we are all connected, and that we want those connections to be strong, flexible, and resilient instead of severed, torn, or frayed, healing becomes profound and multilayered."

And all three authors LOVE Joel Salatin and his ecological farming.


Thanks to these influences, I feel more knowledgeable about what foods I want to look for. I've been asking more questions at my local butcher and egg supplier about how the animals are raised and what they are fed. I've been glad for my garden, and interested in finding local fruit this summer. I do often feel frustrated with some things I don't know how to find or afford, like good quality butter and fish. And I don't know much about eating locally/seasonally. But I also know I am on a path of learning, and I am grateful that I can learn more every day. I will keep reading books (soon I will read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) and thinking about how, where, why and what food to eat.


Related posts:
Life Without Groceries
Plenty: An Experiment in Eating Locally
The Future of Food

Jess

Our living teepee is up and ready to be covered by growing things. I planted morning glories and sweet peas around the perimeter, and clover in the center. Sunflowers are beginning to grow along the fence behind it. I feel excited for it to be surrounded and covered by flowers.


Related posts:
Garden Progress- May 2008
From Lawn to Nature's Playground
Garden, Not Lawn

Jess

Even though I don't seem to find more than a few minutes once a week to garden, my garden seems to be growing! The photos below show a portion of the big veggies right now (cold season crops-- peas, carrots, broccoli, cabbage, onions, and spinach):





The squash suddenly decided to grow, representing itself with lots of volunteers in addition to sprouts from the 3 different times I re-planted seeds. Now I have no idea which seedlings go with which squash:



Some things (beets, kale, and eggplant) are getting eaten:



We've been picking and eating from our strawberry patch:



How is your garden growing? Successes? Failures?


Related Posts:
Garden Progress- May 2008
And So It Begins...
Lasagna Gardening

Jess

Thanks to Freecycle, we got some worms! The interesting thing about getting the worms is that Kathie, the Montana blogger who found me on the internet and whose worm composting class I attended last week, was the one who originally gave worms to the woman who gave me worms today. You are showing up in my life in all kinds of ways, Kathie!

We drilled holes in the bottom and top of a plastic bin, set the bin on a large tray (to catch any water-- "worm tea"-- that drains through), put some veggie scraps in the bottom of the bin, and covered the scraps with damp strips of paper bags/newspaper. The worms will turn all of the material into rich, nutritious compost for houseplants and the garden beds. When we fill the bin to the top with organic matter, we'll put another bin (with holes in the bottom) right on top of the organic matter in the bottom bin. We'll start filling up the new bin, and the worms will migrate from the bottom up through the holes into the upper bin, leaving ready-to-use compost in the bottom bin. Does that make sense at all? The bin stacking method makes it a lot easier to use the compost without having to dump it all out and dig through it to separate out the worms.

The best part is that Ashton is really excited about the worms. This could be a great learning experience for them.


Related posts:
Community of Bloggers and Worms
Garden Progress- May 2008
Turds to Tomatoes: Composting Humanure

Jess

I've been taking piano lessons for about a year. My husband is my teacher. It is going well; we have power issues every now and again, but mostly we work well together. Part of the reason our lessons go so well is because of the method he teaches. It is a playing-based approach called Simply Music. I haven't taken piano lessons before, so I don't have the negative experience with it that many people have, nor can I speak about the difference between this method and the usual approach; but I can say that Matt's students have fun, enjoy their lessons, get satisfaction out of their rapid progress, and hear comments from their friends and family about how astounding it is that they play so well in such a short time. I like learning to play: It is relaxing and focusing, I think it improves my intelligence, it is empowering to be able to play this instrument that used to be so intimidating, and I get to write my own beautiful songs.

We've been through a lot of changes over the last 3 years since having our first child. Before we had kids, we floated around working jobs to pay the bills without really knowing what we wanted or why. Then, after we had our unexpected baby, over time we've been getting more and more in touch with our life purposes. I went from college student, to AmeriCorps member, to waitress, to realizing I wanted to stay home with my child. By being a stay-at-home mom I've been more challenged and fulfilled than ever before. Matt went from college student playing in different bands, to bread baker, to carpenter, and over the past year has been realizing that piano is the only thing he wants to do.

When we decided I would stay home, he became our sole breadwinner, which pushed him to be creative about how to make enough money (preferring to make the most money he could in the least amount of time). He started putting himself out into the community by joining several bands and advertising himself as a wedding/event pianist. Then a friend told him about teaching Simply Music, so he took the at-home training course and started getting students. A year later Matt has his own successful band, is often invited to join other bands, has a booked summer, and has around 20 piano students.

To make up the rest of what we need for our bills, he's also been doing carpentry, a job he generally finds unfulfilling. Lately Matt has been realizing that in order to truly succeed at his music career, he needs to take his foot out of the carpentry door. It is a safety net that holds him from putting himself fully forward into music. We knew that sometime there would be a transition from carpentry to full-time music, and we've been nervous about it. Life has led us, sooner than we anticipated, to the turning point of taking that step and trusting we will succeed. Matt is in the process of deciding to let go of his carpentry job and go for getting more students and more gigs. We are afraid-- what if he doesn't get students? What if we don't have enough money? What will happen to us without the fall-back job? What about the debt we had committed to paying off this year?

Scary and exciting. Stepping into the unknown is so scary, but we know it is the only way to succeed. Please wish us well over the next months as Matt tries to recruit piano students. Because of his summer gigs, we can afford for him not to do carpentry for the next 2 months, but after that he will need to have enough students to get us by.

Check out this review of Simply Music in The Old Schoolhouse homeschooling magazine.


Related Posts:
Jess Loves Matt
Confessions of a Mother
Healthy Family, Healthy Community

Jess

Thanks to Danielle for discussing in Simple Living the Easy Way what it means to her to embrace technology while reducing her impact on the earth. I have a hard time hearing people talk about how we all should go "green", give up technology, change everything about our wasteful lives... and do it NOW. I appreciate hearing a balanced, realistic perspective based on how we got where we are, what the implications might be of our all-or-nothing solutions, and how we can integrate all of the useful parts of our way of life. For all you Matrix fans, this post brings the man vs. machine struggle into real life! In the same way that Danielle is considering why she uses which machines, I am prompted to think about what I am really wanting for my life, what choices will keep me closer to my higher purposes and what will draw me away from them, and how I can use technology in a way that is in harmony with the earth.

I like Path to Freedom's idea that maybe I don't need bananas, although I'm still wondering how and where to find local produce here in Montana, considering I don't have fruit growing in my backyard garden. I'm on the lookout!

Beef heart, anyone? Kelly the Kitchen Kop has informed us that beef heart tastes just like ground beef. I think I'll try some.

I find myself loving and rebelling against Tansy's update on the Independence Days Challenge. I want to be that productive in my life, so her post motivates me to start logging some of the things I am actually accomplishing. Yet I cannot fathom how anyone with small children could possibly accomplish that much, so her post stirs up some self-pity and self-accusation. Tansy, if you're out there, will you tell us how you do it?

Jess

Last night I had a cool experience. I got to meet a fellow Montana blogger, whose blog Two Frog Home I love to read, by taking her class on worm composting. Wow, I just saw that she blogged about me today! Kathie is great, she shares many of my passions, and she is a wealth of knowledge about gardening, worms, canning, and much more. And thanks to her, I'm looking forward to starting my own worm bin. It's really simple to do: It only requires some plastic buckets, shredded newspaper, and veggie scraps, and from those few ingredients you get an abundant supply of nutrient-rich fertilizer. I want healthy plants (the healthier the plants, the healthier the people eating the plants), and I like the idea of year-round ready-to-use compost (although besides putting it on house plants, what do you do with worm compost in winter?). Kathie also mentioned that worm composting is a good way for homeschoolers to provide lessons for kids-- a bucket of worms is not only fun to feel and play with, but it can turn into a variety of valuable learning about science, gardening, nature, etc. Looking forward to more learning and sharing with you, Kathie.

Jess

I was lucky to find this little book, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, at the thrift store one day. I love it. It is an integration of my favorite parenting perspectives and techniques (John Gottman's emotion coaching and Love and Logic), it is simply written with lots of examples and descriptive images, and it is has exercises to practice for each lesson. The authors' purpose is to offer us new skills and patterns that will enable us to respect our children, support our children to be caring and responsible, live without blame and accusation, express our feelings with sensitivity, and help us all to feel good about ourselves.

The book takes us through 6 different areas of focus: 1. Helping children deal with their feelings; 2. Engaging their cooperation; 3. Alternatives to punishment; 4. Encouraging autonomy; 5. Praise; and 6. Freeing children from imposed roles. I learned the most from the chapter on praise. The book says that sometimes praise can have the opposite effect of what we intend by producing self-doubt rather than self-esteem. When someone tells me, for example, that I "look great," I think, "Yeah right. I haven't lost my pregnancy weight and I barely fit into these pants. You should have seen me 2 years ago." The praise got me right into my issues. But if someone tells me "those pants are really flattering on you," I think, "Cool. I'll wear these pants more often!" In the same way, we can encourage our children by being specific and descriptive with our praise. The authors show us how to describe what we see, describe how we feel, and sum up the child's praiseworthy behavior with a word.

I'm looking forward to coming back to this book again and again.


Related posts:
Our Children Are Our Best Teachers
The Intentional Family
Winning at Parenting Through Trust

Jess