New Year

I know it's cliched to start out the new year with lofty goals about being a better, thinner, healthier, richer, person, but, well I'm going to do it anyway. Except for the thinner thing.

I had a conversation with my cousins last year in which it came out that apparently everyone thinks I'm a put together, organized adult or something. Which is kind of hilarious to me, because most of the time, I feel like my life is a runaway train, and I'm barely keeping my fingertips on the caboose. Or, something that makes sense.

What it comes down to is I'm going to focus some of my energy into getting my life together so I can be at least a little like this persona I apparently present to the world.
Let's call it project get my sh*t together.  

The house
    Our house is over a hundred years old, and while that means its got some awesome features, it also has a ton of problems. For an old house, we have a good amount of storage, yet I always feel like I'm searching for places to put stuff. Part of that problem is the amount of stuff we have, and I plan on tackling that, but I like my stuff, I'm not going to part with all of it. 
     On the heels of the stuff issue, is the mess issue. I have a 3 year old, I know my house isn't going to be up to Martha standards, but I also don't think I need to have a deep down fear that someone may stop by before I've had a chance to take a couple of days to clean. Right now, my cleaning schedule is haphazard and consists of looking at something grody, realizing that I can't remember the last time I scrubbed said area, getting disgusted, then cleaning said area. For my own sanity, this must change. 

The garden
    My mother had not just a green thumb, but a couple of greens hands. The house I grew up in had amazing gardens, and I never realized just how much went into making them that way. Now, I have almost an acre of land, and every spring I am so excited to get my hands in the dirt. That excitement lasts until about June, when the reality of weeds and heat set in and I get over the whole thing. I'm going to try to improve on that this year. Peter's already thinking about what vegetables we're going to grow, and we're going to try to solve our groundhog problem (hopefully without ammunition), but since it's currently 22 degrees outside, this one is heading to the back burner for a while.

Work
     Ugh. I don't think I can actually improve on the technical aspects of my job. I do the best I can every day I'm there, and I AM only one person. What I can try to improve on is my attitude about my job. I really do like pharmacy in general, and retail in particular. I do not love the company I work for and the non-pharmacy crap that they pile on us to no end. However, the burn out inducing stress is not the patient's fault. I need to remember that.

Hobbies
    Until recently, I was a prolific knitter. Hats, gloves, sweaters, I made them all. My guest room is filled with bins of yarn. I have a spinning wheel and literal sheep worth of fleece. And short of the sweaters I've made for 2 babies, I've done nothing with it for 2 years. This needs to change. 
     I've been doing better with sewing than knitting, at least as far as actually doing it. I would like to improve on my actual skills though. I've been sewing for a really long time, but I was only "taught" the basics of how to run a machine, read a pattern, etc. I can make stuff that looks good, and fits ok, but I'd really like to know how to do those things well and correctly. 

So, there you go. Some areas of focus for getting my sh*t together.  

Valentine's dinner

So I kind of dropped off the face of the earth there. Sorry about that. I'm back now.

So, it's February, which may seem like the absolute worst time for a blog that is supposed to be about our adventures in local farm wares, but our CSA is actually STILL going on. Technically, it's not the same share that we paid for last winter, but the farm that we use decided to attempt a winter share this year, and we were lucky enough to catch the email in time to sign up. The terms changed slightly, we know have pick up only twice a month instead of every week, but the cost was adjusted accordingly, and the veggies are just as yummy. We've been getting a great variety of winter hardy vegetables, such as kale, spinach, winter squash, turnips and carrots. I'm still supplementing somewhat with things from the grocery store, but that's just because we eat so healthily, right? Well, a girl can try to fool herself at least.

Tonight, I wanted to make something somewhat special for my valentines. I mean, how else would they know how much I love them, if i didn't show it on this particular day??

Hallmark guilt aside, we did have a pretty yummy meal, while managing to be at least marginally good for us. My parents had given us some ham (no, they're not now raising swine, they had just found a good sale) and my go to for leftover ham is good old-fashioned homemade macaroni and cheese. Unfortunately, my mommy guilt kicks in when I start to plan meals without vegetation, no matter how delicious, so I decided to add in some greens (and oranges and whites)

Mac and cheese with ham,broccoli, cauliflower, kale and butternut squash

And you know what? It was DELICIOUS! It's not that you can't taste the veggies in there. I'm not really into the idea of hiding veggies so that kids don't know that they're eating them. Of course, I'm lucky enough to have a kid who will eat just about anything, my stance on hiding them may change.

The first of two servings

Of course, it IS a holiday, and I'm not a health tyrant. Gabriella has been wanting to make cupcakes for WEEKS, and we finally got it together today.

I've had some heart shaped cupcake cups for ages, and never broke them out of the packaging until today. This is one of those simple little things that I just love doing with the little Miss. She can definitely be a nudge, and scares the beejezus out of me with sticking her fingers near the mixer while it's running, but it's worth it.

I mean, how can you resist that "cheese" face?

And you may think that the cupcake that is super duper covered in sprinkles was Bella's doing, but you'd be wrong. The massive sugar overload was Peter's doing.

It can't be good to crave time off so much

I actually have a pretty decent schedule as far as retail pharmacy is concerned. Because I work the one 14 hour day, I'm off two full days during the week. I look forward to Monday and Thursday like nobody's business. Since this past weekend was my turn to work, I didn't get a ton of fun time with the munchkin, so yesterday, we decided to ignore the chores that should get done and have a fun family day.
We started the morning

at a local supermarket/restaurant, Dutchway. They have an awesome breakfast buffet which is normally a good deal (I think it's $6.99 for adults & $0.50/year of age for children), but had a special through July that it was only $4.99 on Mondays. I'm not sure the three of us could go to even McDonald's for breakfast for less than 15 dollars, and we definitely wouldn't have eaten nearly as much or as well.
I'm really bad at showing restraint at buffets, so since we all consumed approximately 80 million calories at breakfast, we then headed to Wolf's Hollow county park for some exercise. We did a combination of the blue and yellow trails, so we're approximating that we did about 2 miles of hiking.
Overall, the terrain isn't too difficult (says the one who didn't carry the toddler), but there are some steep hills

This picture really does not give that hill justice

We saw some wildlife

Big ass spider

Bullfrog

Crazy grasshopper hanging out on my leg

and some beautiful sights

Taken at Lover's Leap, although there isn't much of a leap this far into the summer. Maybe in the winter when all the plants are dead. Yesterday, it was so dense that we could hear the creek, but couldn't see even a glimpse of it

The bullfrog was in those reeds next to the little semi island

Peter was worried about my getting over the fords with dry feet since I only had sneakers and no boots. I reminded him that it's been in the high nineties for a week. The creek was quite low

I love standing on fallen trees over water

The best thing about the hiking trails in this park is that they are all in fairly heavily wooded areas. I didn't even bother with sunscreen, and it was relatively cool. It was a great way to spend a couple of hours together.

She's not in pain, she's saying cheese

Plus, even though Peter carried her for a lot of the hike, Gabriella did walk and run a lot. There is nothing like a tuckered out child for having an easy bedtime.

I wasn't kidding when I said I was born 200 years after my time

As I mentioned previously, SuperFresh had a great sale going on blueberries a couple of weeks ago. Between baking and eating, we went through most of our first 6 pints before the week was out, so I stopped by on my way home from work and got more. It was a crazy amount of blueberries for 3 people, but there aren't many things that Gabriella likes more than blueberries and peanut butter and jelly, so I wanted to make some blueberry jam.
I love making canned goods, it's really not THAT hard, but people don't do it, so when you do the general public seems to think you're amazing. I look for any opportunity to stoke my ego, trust me.
Anyhow, to make this jam you need

Fruit

Sugar

Acid (either lemon or lime juice)

Jars. Maybe. More on that in a minute

I decided to make one batch of blueberry jam and one batch of mixed blueberry and strawberry jam. For each one you need 6 cups of berries (the mixed I did in a 1:1 ratio, so 3 cups of each), 3 cups of sugar and 1/4 cup of the acid. Easy peasy recipe, just like I told Peter when he was concerned that I be able to remember and duplicate the results in the future.
For the actual jam making, you combine the fruit and sugar and cook over medium heat until it reaches the gelling point.

You then add the acid and cook for a few minutes. If you're afraid of canning, you could just refrigerate it and use it quickly, but since it makes a decent amount, it would make more sense to suck it up and learn how to can things safely.

Obviously, the big enemy with preserving food is bacteria. No one wants botulism. There are tons of resources out there which detail the correct methods to follow, so I'll sum up with clean equipment and a proper processing time at a full rolling boil if using a hot water bath method.

After boiling to sterilize, you keep the jars in hot water until the jam is ready to fill them

 After filling the jars, I boiled them for 15 minutes, then let them cool for  before taking them out of the bath. I'm pretty sure that every jar sealed as I lifted them out of the water.

The strawberry-blueberry mix set up a little better than the straight blueberry, but they are both definitely firm enough to use as jelly. I ended up with 5 half pint jars of mixed berry and 4 half pints of blueberry. We've enjoyed the mixed with peanut butter and on some delicious crepes stuffed with nutella and banana.

CSA potluck and the farm

One of the really great things about our CSA (and maybe all, but I only have experience with North Star), is how they try to make the CSA a community instead of just a place you show up to once a week to get vegetables. A prime example was this last weekend.
Every year at the start of the CSA season, they host a potluck dinner for CSA members. Everyone brings a dish and a blanket to sit on and Lisa and Ike provide the drinks, entertainment and a place to put that blanket. It's a lot of fun, and there are always a ton of delicious dishes.

Our contribution - Blueberry cake with lemon glaze

 Ooh, and in case you didn't know, Superfresh has blueberries on sale this week 6 pints for only $6.99. It's a lot, but you can freeze them!

Peter gets artsy with the camera

A father daughter team provide music

Yummy food

After we ate, Lisa convinced Ike to give one last garden tour. We've toured the farm a couple of times already, but this time we had the camera!

Peas

Tomatoes

Parsley being provided with dappled sunlight

The greenhouse where they start plants before setting them out into the real beds. They also have a row of tomatoes and cucumbers going so we got them way before they're usually available in this region

Peter is obsessed with these seed starting blocks

Enough so that he took a picture of the block maker

Squash

Onions

Garlic being allowed to go to flower so they can save the seeds for next year

Onions being saved for seed

Swiss chard

Bolted broccoli

Peaches

Apples

Hug!

Big weekend

One of the problems of working every other weekend, is that I end up trying to cram so much stuff into my weekends off. This weekend was JAM PACKED. As I mentioned before, we had a full house for dinner on Friday. My parents, Julia, Nick and Molly, plus my mom's friends Lainey, Dave and Claudia. We made it simple with hamburgers and hotdogs, pasta salad and more shredded beet salad. Good food and good company.

Saturday was something I've been looking forward to so much. We took Gabriella to the Philadelphia Zoo for the first time. There was a puppet workshop going on in the Treehouse, so we headed there first.

Bella got to make a paper snake puppet, which was really the only part of the puppet talk she was interested in. Not a big deal, we just played in the treehouse while Peter's parents and sister listened to the discussion. I did get to see Elmo naked though.

While those who are capable of sitting still were listening we:

Sat in a flower

Went down a slide

Sat on a caterpillar

Found daddy hiding in a frog

After the discussion, we got our puppet book signed by the author (I love getting books signed!) then it was off to see the animals!

We saw real hippos

And sat on a fake one

We got excited to see goats, and then petrified when they got close

Wandered the bird house

And saw a momma and baby giraffe

She wasn't overly interested in the zebra

But for some reason knew what a rhinoceros was

There was a polar bear playing with a stick

And a golden lion tamarind

More sitting on fake animals

Peacock just chilling out

It was a very long day, but little miss was a trouper until the ride back to Collingswood.

Then she gave in to her exhaustion

Sunday was of course Father's day, which since it's summer means party at Aunt Claire's house!

Gabriella liked the pool well enough last year, and absolutely LOVES her baby pool, so this was a big treat. She's going to be trouble because she did not want to get out, even once her poor little lips and arms were turning blue. Hopefully the water will be a little warmer when we head in for the Fourth. I got in, and it did feel good, but it would be even better if it were warmer, that's all.

Monday we mostly laid low, although we did get the new mailbox installed and the mountain of cardboard removed from the basement and bound for the recycling men. We went to dinner at my parent's house, since we had to return a yard tools that Julia and Nick had borrowed.

Bella goes to see the neighbor horses with her Pop pop