Farm Share & Meal Planning III {the main course}

October 5, 2016March 8, 2018 by Katie | 1 Comment

This summer we have a weekly farm share that provides our family with a slew of fresh and local vegetables, meats, dairy products, and other goods. I’m doing a series of posts documenting how we’re using the food. You can read more about the share and our first month of meals here. And you can find our second month of meals here.

Officially, the boys and I were on the east coast for month 3, and the food I’m sharing below is from month 4, so we may have missed some late summer veggies, but we’re jumping feet first into fall and calling this month 3 of recipes. While we were away, it was Calder’s job to eat all of the food and blog about it…

This month seems to have been more plentiful than previous months. We’re seeing a natural change in what’s being harvested from crops with shorter growing seasons, like radishes and turnips, to some of the slower-growing crops, like corn and carrots. We’ve also been the lucky recipients of a full case of Colorado peaches. With all of this food, I realized that I have a lot more to share this month and am breaking the post up into two parts. Today I’m sharing most of the main course recipes and in the second post I’ll follow-up with desserts, canned goods, and fermented foods.

… and it’s so frustrating that the days are getting shorter as the veggie boxes are getting heavier!

Early in the month, I leaned on a couple of my favorite cookbooks, Jerusalem and Plenty, for new vegetable recipes. If you like to experiment in the kitchen and are open to trying new spices and food combinations, I recommend both books. Jerusalem includes meat and vegetable dishes, but Plenty is all vegetable.

I haven’t discussed it much on the blog, but I’m part of a cookbook club, and I’m excited to host our October meeting where we’ll be cooking from Jerusalem. I can’t wait to taste all of the dishes and document our meeting for a future post!

Meal Planning – Month 3

The table below lists the variety of foods that we’ve received for the past month. I don’t know the exact quantity of vegetables we receive each week (it’s a large grocery bag filled with veggies, and I would say it’s about 20+ lbs), definitely enough to feed our family for the week. During the month of September, the vegetables have been some combination of those on the list below. In the protein category, we receive about 3-5 lbs of meat each week, made up of a combination of the items on the list. The tofu and tempeh each arrive once per month. Under the dairy & misc. category, we receive the yogurt & cheeses each week, we receive 1 lb of coffee once per month, and approximately two canned goods each week. While in season, we receive fresh fruit and some variety of fresh herbs.

veggies	proteins	dairy & misc.	fruit & herbs
cucumbers	stewing chickens	herbed goat cheese	peaches!
green lettuce	hot German sausage	camembert	plums
carrots	italian sausage	yogurt	basil
cabbage	bacon	coffee	parsley
eggplant	ground beef	fruit jam	dill
onions	tofu	pickles	sage
zucchini	tempeh		edible flowers
summer squash	eggs
mushrooms
beets
chard
kale
kohlrabi
peppers
broccoli
leeks
radishes

Above each photograph, I list the farm share ingredients used for the dish and, where available, I’ve linked to the recipes. Where necessary, I also include some notes about that day’s meal.

Cucumber salad with smashed garlic and ginger (from Plenty) : cucumbers, onion, herbs

This was a delicious and refreshing side dish for a summer meal. It was a bit spicy for the boys, so we had plenty of leftovers, and I loved eating it on rye bread with humus (it was good that just typing that makes me was to make more right now).

Teryaki tempeh : tempeh

We liked this DIY teryaki sauce enough that it’s worth keeping for future recipes.

Chard with tahini, yogurt, and buttered pine nuts (from Jerusalem) : chard

Roasted eggplant with buttermilk sauce (from Jerusalem) : eggplant, peaches

This ingredient combination may seem odd, but it was amazing! So good, in fact, that we ate this dish at least three different times over the month. The original recipe called for pomegranate seeds, but since we had an abundance of peaches, I decided to experiment. Luckily, the odds were in our favor and this turned out so delicious that now we’re excited to experiment with other fruits. Pears? slightly cooked apples? definitely pomegranates.

Squash casserole : zucchini & yellow squash, goat cheese, eggs

I added fresh dill and dill goat cheese to the casserole, and I subbed panko bread crumbs for the crushed crackers that were called for in the recipe. I served this casserole with round two of the roasted eggplant and some sauteed paneer with Indian spices.

Scotch eggs! : Italian sausage, eggs

I only had a Scotch egg once in my life, but loved it enough that I was craving one three years later. If you’ve never had one a Scotch egg is a hardboiled egg wrapped in sausage, coated in bread crumbs, and deep fried. I barely had enough bread crumbs and vegetable oil to make this batch, but they turned out delicious and have me excited to make another batch!

Chard with tofu and black bean sauce, stir-fried rice : chard, tofu, onion, corn, bell pepper, carrots, eggs

For a while we were ordering Chinese about once a week from a local restaurant. That habit has transferred to our favorite pizza

veggie burritos with homemade peach salsa (more on that tomorrow!) : onions, green peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms, sauteed greens, peaches, chicken, green chili goat cheese

The next day, I used the leftover burrito ingredients to make an amazing burrito bowl for lunch : just pile everything into a bowl over the rice and enjoy!

Savory vegetable pie : collard greens, caramelized onions, parsley, mint, potatoes

I baked this pie on a Friday and we took it with us the next day on a weekend camping trip. It served as the perfect, portable lunch on both Saturday and Sunday, with many small slices eaten as between-meal snacks.

I didn’t follow a specific recipe, just looked at a few things and came up with this formula: place the bottom crust inside a pie dish, add the sauteed greens and mushrooms mixed with the caramelized onions and fresh herbs, add a layer of grated cheddar cheese, top with a layer of cooked diced potatoes that are lighted mashed/blended with some buttermilk (could sub regular milk for less tang), add the top crust, and bake in a 350F oven until done.

While I’m comfortable making quiches, this was my first savory pie. It came out so delicious (and easy to serve) that I’m excited to make a few more this fall and winter. I think they’ll be perfect for dinner-time picnics in the park or packed lunches on ski days.

Burgers, grilled corn, and kohlrabi salad (salad recipe from Jerusalem, but we didn’t love it) : ground beef, corn, kohlrabi

soba noodles with mushrooms : mushrooms, leeks

We had such a great combination of mushrooms this month! I don’t know the names of all of them pictured below, but as soon as we saw them, we were excited to do something special with them.

This dish is super simple, just sauteed leeks and mushrooms added to soba noodles in a miso broth. Its simplicity really lets the flavor of the mushrooms stand out, and their meatiness adds a nice hearty texture to the dish.

Salads : lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, peppercorn goat cheese

Nothing special here, just delicious simple salads. I really loved adding the peppercorn goat cheese to the salads (and the carrot soup), and am thinking that I may be hooked on this as a new garnish.

Light vegetable soup : onion, carrots, broccoli, green pepper, yellow squash

Carrot soup : onion, potato, carrots, collard greens, leeks, chicken broth (from the stewing chickens), peppercorn goat cheese

There’s nothing I love more than adding some good garnishes to a blended root vegetable soup. For this one, I sauteed the greens with leeks and garlic. After placing the greens on the soup, I sprinkled it with some of the peppercorn goat cheese.

Beet tart : sauteed greens, caramelized onions, roasted beets, goat cheese.

After seeing an apple tart where the apple slices were arranged in a rosette on top of the tart, I wanted to try to make a savory version using beets. This was my first go at it, and while it tasted good (we ate it all!), I think there’s room for improvement in both the presentation and the taste… I’m sure I’ll have an update with a recipe in a future post!

Pesto : basil

I don’t use a particular recipe for making pesto, although it would be handy since there are times where I forget key ingredients (cheese! garlic!). Calder doesn’t like pine nuts, so I made this batch with walnuts, and think it’s just as delicious.

And that’s it for the main courses. Looking back, we ate so well this past month! Tomorrow I’ll post the desserts, canned goods, and fermentation projects from the month.

Farm Share & Summer Meals II

August 10, 2016July 26, 2017 by Katie | Leave a comment

This summer we have a weekly farm share that provides our family with a slew of fresh and local vegetables, meats, dairy products, and other goods. I’m doing a series of posts documenting how we’re using the food. You can read more about the share and our first month of meals here.

Month two with the farm share and we’re still going strong! We’ve repeated some meals and gotten creative with others, spicing up our routine with dishes that are becoming fast favorites!

In the first post I explained what a farm share, or CSA, is and gave an overview of our particular share. This month, I’ll continue to list the variety of foods we’ve received over the past month and will post photos and recipe links to meals.

I was going to discuss our fruit and produce storage system, but this post on Design Mom does a great job of that, discussing many of the methods I use plus more! Instead, I thought it might be fun to start a discussion or just document how we approach eating with our two kiddos (ages 3 and almost 1.5).

Eating with Kids

Let me start by saying that we are lucky because both boys are generally adventurous and willing to try new things, both at the dinner table and in their day-to-day life. Also, they are great eaters (more on why this may be below), they come to the table hungry and willing to eat.

It wasn’t intentional, but over time, I’ve realized that I/we have some standard practices when it comes to dinner time.

I only make one dinner, never something special for the boys.
BUT if I know that something would be hard for them to eat (for example if it’s too spicy or hard for them to chew), then I do offer them an alternative form of what we’re eating. For example, we served them the shrimp tostadas below, but as separate ingredients on their plates (refried beans, shrimp, avocado, cheese), this also allowed us to keep the chorizo out if it was too spicy (Alex ended up loving it!).
AND I do allow for alternate meal requests if they’re asking for something that was leftover from the day before. For example, Alex loves the coconut curry and will sometimes ask for that for a few days.
Similarly, I’ve noticed that my boys are both starving by 5pm or even 4:30pm. Rather than give them snacks or try to make them wait for dinner to be ready, on some days I’ll serve them leftovers from the previous day as their dinner while I’m making that night’s dinner for Calder and I. Then they’ll still join us and sample that night’s dinner when it’s ready around 6:30, but they aren’t going crazy from being overly hungry or tired.
And of course, we love to have them involved with our food and food prep as much as possible. Alex cut all of the zucchini for the pasta dish below! And you can see some of my cooking-with-kids tips in this series of posts.

And on them being good eaters, we have a few theories.

Other than a mid-morning fruit and cheese snack, between-meal eating is not a common part of our day. I’m not a big snacker, and so I just never think of offering something to them. And as I said above, during the one time that could be prone to snacking (late afternoon), I just offer them an early dinner.
We don’t give them juice. The only thing we ever use juice for is to make some quick mini popsicles. Otherwise they never drink juice at home. I’m mentioning this because we’ve noticed that when we’re traveling or visiting friends and they have some pre-dinner juice, then they never seem as hungry for dinner. We’re starting to think that the sugar in the juice fills some of their calorie needs and raises their blood sugar, and so then they just don’t feel hungry for their meal…. and it’s not that we don’t give them sweets – you’ll see plenty of dessert ideas below!
We do let them try anything and everything in the kitchen. One of our favorite things to do is make “combo-soups” at the Whole Foods soup counter. Because why have just clam chowder when you could mix it with crab and butternut squash bisque (seriously, try it). This creativity carries over into our home. One night Alex asked to have refried beans (we had tacos for dinner) on his vanilla ice cream. Why not, sweetened beans are a common ingredient in Asian desserts. He loved it, and got an extra dose of fiber with his dessert!

Meal Planning – Month 2

The table below lists the variety of foods that we’ve received for the past month. I don’t know the exact quantity of vegetables we receive each week (it’s a large grocery bag filled with veggies, and I would say it’s about 20 lbs), definitely enough to feed our family for the week. During our second month, the vegetables have been some combination of those on the list below. In the protein category, we receive about 3-5 lbs of meat each week, made up of a combination of the items on the list. The tofu and tempeh each arrive once per month. Under the dairy & misc. category, we receive the yogurt & cheeses each week, we receive 1 lb of coffee once per month, and approximately two canned goods each week. While in season, we receive fresh fruit (so far it’s been a lot of cherries!) and some variety of fresh herbs.

veggies	proteins	dairy & misc.	fruit & herbs
cucumbers	pork chops	herbed goat cheese	sweet cherries
romaine lettuce	chorizo sausage	camembert	tart cherries
carrots	fryer chicken	yogurt	peaches!
cabbage	tofu	coffee	lemongrass
green onions	tempeh	fruit jam	basil
onions		tomato sauce	parsley
zucchini		ketchup	dill
summer squash		pickles
mushrooms
beets
chard
kale
kohlrabi

Above each photograph, I list the farm share ingredients used for the dish and, where available, I’ve linked to the recipes. Where necessary, I also include some notes about that day’s meal.

Miso-dipped Tempeh Logs + coleslaw wraps (scroll down within those links for each of the recipes): tempeh, cabbage, carrots

This was a meal that we took to the park for a picnic dinner. The wraps, using warmed naan, were the grown-up version. For the boys, I packaged their tempeh, slaw, and some extras (hard boiled eggs, fruit) in bento boxes, adding seaweed smiles to the logs for a bit of fun.

Breaded Pork Chops, Braised Cabbage & Roasted Vegetables : pork chops, zucchini, turnips, carrots, cabbage, onions

BBQ Pork Chops, Sauteed Kale, Beet & Green Bean Salad : pork chops, kale, onions, green beans, beets, cucumbers, parsley, goat cheese

Salad with Sauteed Shrimp & a Cilantro and Lime Dressing : romaine lettuce, cilantro, dill, parsley, basil, (hard-boiled) eggs, cucumbers

Chorizo & Shrimp Tostadas w/ leftover Beet & Green Bean Salad and Grilled Corn : chorizo, onion, cabbage, beets, green beans, cucumbers, parsley, corn

These were so delicious that we made them twice! The first time we used our salt-block on the grill to cook the shrimp (it’s so worth the extra time required to slowly heat the salt!) while the we grilled the corn. The second time we were pressed for time and just sauteed the shrimp in a cast iron pan on the stove.

Tofu Vegetable Curry (two months in a row – it’s a favorite!) : tofu, yellow squash, zucchini, green onions, chard, lemongrass

Pasta with a vegetable marinara sauce : canned tomatoes with garlic and basil, zucchini, mushrooms, onion

Roasted Chicken with Vegetables : chicken, sage, parsley, carrots, onion, turnip, golden beets

I’m a big fan of roasting chickens using this method of first searing the skin in a cast iron pan on the stovetop before placing it in the oven. After the breast side is seared, I remove the chicken from the pan, place all of the chopped vegetables in the pan and then put the chicken back on top. This way everything roasts in one pan and the veggies get to soak up the amazing juices from the chicken.

Chicken with Preserved Lemons & Yellow Squash Casserole : chicken, onions, yellow squash, eggs, goat cheese

This meal, and really, the farm share, taught me something I never saw coming : how to cut apart a whole chicken! We receive a whole chickens in the share, but I only wanted to use the legs to cook this dish. We already had two whole legs in the freezer and I wanted four. Cutting off the legs was easier than I expected! I’m happy to have the new skill, and am happy that I held it together while both popping chicken joints out of their sockets and cutting them (I can barely type that without squirming).

And the squash dish ended up being a bit of a (very delicious) experiment. I mainly followed the recipe above, but didn’t have any crackers in the house. So instead, I used toasted quinoa that I had on hand and some panko bread crumbs. I also added dollops of goat cheese in addition to the cheddar that the recipe called for.

So there you have it, chicken and yellow squash make for a delicious, albeit very beige, meal.

Salads! : hard boiled eggs, leftover roasted vegetables, leftover beet and green bean salad, cucumbers, herbs, lettuce

I know everyone knows how to make a salad, but I thought I would add these in case you’re trying to break out of a rut. I throw anything under the sun in my salads.

Omelette with mushrooms and onions : eggs, mushrooms, onions

Thinking ahead, we saved some of the sautteed mushrooms and onions that were going into the aforementioned pasta sauce and used them the next morning in these omelettes.

Kale Chips

Tart Cherry Cobbler (from Rustic Fruit Desserts) : cherries

Yellow cake with our favorite coconut buttercream and fruit : cherries with raspberries from our yard

Mini Peach and Cherry Crumble : peaches, cherries

This was a super simple treat that I put together for us one night. I didn’t want to make a big crumble, because we’ve been enjoying the fresh peaches, but I knew that we could spare 3 or 4 for a few mini crumbles, so I made three of these.

I added some butter, water, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the sliced fruit. Then I topped it with some of the vanilla crumble from Rustic Fruit Desserts that I mixed with a little bit of quick oats to beef it up. The crumble topping is a stand-alone recipe in the book that gets used on top of some of the desserts (my favorite is the cranberry buckle), and it makes enough that I always seem to have some leftover in my freezer, which is perfect for quick desserts like this!

Jam & Nut Struesel Bars : cherry jam

We get a lot of jam through the share (about a jar or two per week), but we’re still pretty slow jam eaters, especially since the boys are so small and aren’t devouring PB&Js yet.

While we’re happy to stock the jam away, I also wanted to find a way to use up a jar at a time in different desserts. Enter, one of my favorite easy desserts. I first came across this around the holidays when we actually had some leftover cranberry sauce in the fridge (that’s what the original recipe calls for). I now make these bars every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but this is the first time that it dawned on me to make them with jam as a summer treat.

I didn’t add the extra sugar to the jam (as called for with the cranberry sauce), and I did substitute some of the white flour for whole wheat to give it a nuttier flavor and some extra good stuff.

Man oh man, month two of the share was so good! The boys and I are heading off to the east coast, which means that Calder’s going to have to try to find a way to eat his way through the share, give away greens to friends, and come up with next month’s blog post! 😉

My mom has a share from a local farm on the Eastern Shore of Virginia/Maryland, and I’m excited to see what we come up with while cooking from her share for the next month. It’ll also be interesting to see how the shares differ at this time of year.

What about you? Have you discovered any new recipes, tweaked old favorites, or learned some new skills while cooking from a farm share? We’d love to hear about it! And how do you keep the kids happy while cooking?

A Farm Share & Summer Meal Planning

July 29, 2016April 16, 2019 by Katie | 4 Comments

{I’m always raving about our farm share in real life, so if this is old news to you, I’m sorry that I’m still blabbing – I just really love it!}

This summer we have a farm share, and in many (good) ways, it’s consuming my life. I dream about it. Talk about it to anyone who will listen. Spend a bit of time planning my meals and then even more time chopping ingredients, based on our weekly delivery.

The challenge to signing up for a farm share is being ready to cook with whatever comes in your box that week and not knowing exactly what you’ll be getting next week, so you can’t plan too far in advance. Since we’re about a month into our share, I thought it would be fun to share this experience with you. I’ve been photographing our weekly deliveries as well as the meals that I’ve made with the produce and meat, and I’m going to share my meal plans here throughout the course of our farm share season.

What is a farm share?

If you don’t know about a farm share, also known as community supported agriculture, let me explain. This is a farming business method where consumers are asked to sign-up and pay for their produce (and more) at the beginning of the growing season. The farmers use the investments from their customers to pay for the variety of costs they have to run their farm over the course of the growing season – anything from seeds and fertilizers to irrigation and labor costs. Then, throughout the growing season, everyone who has paid for a share in the farm receives fresh produce as it’s harvested. The share composition will change throughout the growing season as different crops go in and out of season.

By making that investment, the farms’ consumers are taking on some of the risk that goes with farming. If a big storm wipes out a particular crop, that loss doesn’t just fall on the farmer, instead it’s spread across all consumers and they will receive less or none of that crop. If it’s a great year for a particular crop, then all consumers will get more of that crop delivered in their share (two years ago I was overwhelmed by jalepenos and trying to figure out the best ways to preserve them).

This is also a great model if you like to eat seasonally and locally. You’re going to receive crops as they’re harvested, so the produce you receive will be as fresh as possible and it didn’t have to be picked before it was ripe because it doesn’t have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to reach you. As I mentioned above, the composition of your share will change throughout the growing season, this is exciting but can also take some time to get used to. It can be a bit boring when you’ve received a bunch of radishes each week for a month, (when really you’d only eat one bunch in a whole month!) but it pushes you to be more creative in the kitchen. Roasted radishes anyone?

Our Share

As I had talked about two years ago when moving to Boulder, one of the things we were so excited about was moving to a place with such a strong local-food movement. We are surrounded by farms, farmers’ markets, and enough farm-share options to make your head spin.

This year we bought a share from Grant Family Farms. It’s one of the largest CSAs in our area, and we were already familiar with them because they delivered to the office where C worked two years ago, so at that time we had bought a small share. This year we decided to go big, and we bought their “all-in” kitchen share, and admittedly we feel so lucky that we were able to make that investment. For about six months, we’ll receive a weekly share that includes vegetables, herbs, fruit, meat (pork, chicken, beef, lamb), yogurt, cheese, eggs, mushrooms, canned goods. It’s amazing!

Meal Planning – Month 1

This is the share that we’ve signed up for.

The chart below lists the variety of foods that we’ve received for the past month. I don’t know the exact quantity of vegetables we receive each week (it’s large grocery bag filled with veggies, and I would say it’s about 20 lbs), but it’s definitely enough to feed our family for the week. For the first month, the vegetables have been some combination of those on the list below. In the protein category, we receive about 3-5 lbs of meat each week, and thus far it’s been some combination of the meats on the list. The tofu and tempeh each arrive once per month. Under the dairy & misc. category, we receive the yogurt & cheeses each week, we receive 1 lb of coffee once per month, and approximately two canned goods each week. While in season, we recieve fresh fruit (so far it’s been a lot of cherries!), and some variety of fresh herbs.

veggies	proteins	dairy & misc.	fruit & herbs
asparagus	ground pork	herbed goat cheese	cherries
romaine lettuce	smoked pork slice	camembert	mint
bok choy	smoked pork shoulder	yogurt	lemon balm
radishes	bacon	coffee	sage
green onions	fryer chicken	canned tomatoes	thyme
onions	pork sausage	tomato sauce	parsley
spinach	ground beef	pickles	cilantro
summer squash	tempeh	fruit jam	dill
mushrooms	tofu
beets
chard
turnips
tomatoes

When I receive the share each week, I draft a list of menu ideas for the week ahead, trying to use up as much of that week’s share as I can, and planning for how I’ll preserve what we can’t eat (so far it’s just been putting some of the cherries and meat items in the freezer).

Over the past month, I’ve thrown herbs into salads, made my fair share of quiches, and had plenty of yogurt breakfasts, in addition, I’ve photographed some of the dinners we prepared and shared. Above each photograph, I list the farm share ingredients used for the dish and, where available, I’ve linked to the recipes.

Since I’ve photographed many of these dishes in the crazy moment between pulling them out of the oven and putting them on the table for starving boys, the photo quality isn’t the best, but I’m working on it :-).

Lasagna : pork sausage, spinach, tomato sauce

Vegetable Curry : tofu, carrots, scallions, summer squash, zucchini, cilantro

Salmon with roasted radishes, chard with caramelized onions, and leftover rice from takeout : radishes, chard, onions

Zucchini bread with chocolate chips, walnuts, and black sesame seeds : zucchini

Mushroom tart & roasted vegetables : mushrooms, sage, goat cheese, carrots, zucchini, onions, turnips

Roasted Root Vegetable Soup & Pork-filled Lettuce Wraps : ground pork, scallions, lettuce, beets, carrots, turnips, chard, beet greens, goat cheese

Mushroom & Zucchini Galette : mushrooms, zucchini, onions, goat cheese

Burgers & Salad : ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles

Herb Meatballs & Green Couscous : ground pork, onions, mint, cilantro, parsley, dill. *Both of these recipes come from cookbooks by Yotam Ottolenghi that I love – Plenty & Jerusalem.

Chicken, asparagus, and greens with black bean sauce : asparagus, chard, mizuna greens, onions, bacon

Bacon & Eggs or Smoked Ham & Eggs have become breakfast staples

This is just a snapshot of our first month with the farm share. Right now our fridge is packed with this week’s share, and I’m so excited about the menus I have planned. I’m going to continue to photograph and share. I know meal planning, especially with kids, can be tough, but I hope this will give you some inspiration, and if you really need a kick in the bottom, get yourself a farm share!

Midsummer Magic

July 27, 2016July 27, 2016 by Katie | Leave a comment

It’s the middle of summer, food is at its freshest, and the livin’ is easy, or at least it should be.

There’s nothing we love more at this time of year than the intense flavors and colors of fresh fruits, and there’s no easier way to enjoy them than to just throw them in whatever you’re making. Need some ideas? That’s why we’re here.

Last week I put some fresh raspberries and cherries in my mojito – smashing them up just a bit in the bottom of the glass before adding the rest of the ingredients.

Serve cubed watermelon with mint for a refreshing treat on a hot day. If you like that combo, you’ll love our watermelon mojitos!

And if your garden’s still overflowing with mint, make some aqua frescas.

Add fresh figs and blueberries to your mocktails (or cocktails!).

Throw watermelon and blueberries in your smoothies with a tea-based twist.

What about watermelon in your gazpacho?!

Any ripe berry would go well in these yogurt-based popsicles. These lemon pops are another refreshing option.

Yesterday Alex asked to bake a cake (nothing makes my heart melt faster than his request to do something in the kitchen!). He wanted a cake with “a blue middle and red paint on the frosting”. I let him add some food coloring to our batter, but then transformed his idea for red paint into a splattering of berries and their juices across the top. This is a basic yellow cake with our favorite coconut milk buttercream (scroll down).

Summer, and particularly July, is such a special time of year for us, and nothing tastes more like summer than perfectly ripe fruit; it’s pure midsummer magic. If you can get your hands on some, especially if you have the chance to get out there and pick berries, do two things : 1. eat as much as you can while picking, and 2. do something creative and special with the leftovers. You won’t regret it! xo

Garden & Pond Update

July 12, 2016 by Katie | 4 Comments

I’m documenting the growth, successes, and failures in our backyard space. It’s been about a month since I introduced you to the pond, and two months since I introduced the garden.

We have reached the height of summer here in the mountains. This is our hottest month, and while it seems dry out there, August is usually even drier. As you’ll see in the photos, there have been some real successes here in the garden, but what you don’t see is that there have also been a few failures/areas for improvement.

Fist, a surprising success : look at this clematis!

That vine grows in a small bed, that’s more like a container built into a little nook in our deck. It doesn’t have any irrigation, so the soil is extremely dry if not watered regularly. Last summer I was so busy with baby Luc, that I completely ignored this area. I barely watered it, and I didn’t care that the vine never grew (seriously, it grew maybe 10 inches and then died). Fortunately, with ample water, it came back in full force this summer and is covered in beautiful blooms!

I think that it also serves as a great reminder of the resilience of plants, and about how lush a garden can be with just a bit of care.

In the photo above, I’m showing off the echinacea that I planted this summer. I planted four of these around the yard (two in this bed and two near the pond). As you can see, these are successfully blooming, and I’m hoping to let their seed ponds fall into the bed for some self-seeding action. Unfortunately, one near the pond died – it suffered from a lack of watering and also an attack by our garden mice!…

The mice seem to be living in the beds along the deck, and I’m looking for ways to get rid of them or at least minimize their foraging. They’ve been eating some of the black-eyed susan flowers that I planted as well as the veggies in our veggie patch (so we haven’t been eating the vegetables, just to be safe). Any mice advice?

Behind the echinacea is an extremely large pot – I have two of these, and both are planted with a purple grass and those flowers. I’m totally blanking on the name of those flowers. It’s a nice combination that’s done well for me two years in a row.

The photo above shows one of my potting surprises. I planted these violas and pansies in early spring when I wanted something to fill the pot but knew that only something cold-hardy would do. I expected to fill the pots with something more heat tolerant once summer arrived, but these beauties keep flowering! They do look a bit leggy, but really not that bad, so I’m going to keep them here for a bit longer and then I’m hoping to transplant them to a shade spot under one of our Aspen trees, and see how well they do there (the violas should come back as a perennial).

As I surmised in my introductory post, we have raspberries that fruit on old growth (known as floricane-fruiting). Since I cut down all of the canes when we moved in (spring of 2015), new canes grew last summer and now they are all producing fruit! We have so many berries out there right now, only a small handful of really ripe ones so far, but more and more and ready every day.

I’m not sure what method I’m going to use for maintaining the raspberries. Part of me wants to cut down all of the canes again after this growing season (new and old growth), but that would meant that then we won’t have any fruit next summer. Or, I could go in and selectively thin the canes – cutting down the old growth and keeping the new growth. If I’m feeling ambitious and have the time, I may try this method… either way, I’ll keep you posted, and in the meantime, we’re enjoying this year’s bumper crop!

In the pond, our waterlilies are doing fantastic!… so is the algae! It’s a daily battle to go in and remove the string algae, but if I stay on top of it, the pond looks beautiful. We have these two lilies blooming right now, and I can see that the plants are multiplying – sending out new roots and plants within the containers. They seem to be such vigorous growers that I’m thinking about putting them in even bigger containers next year to encourage new plants.

The smaller plants floating around the lillies are the fairy moss. It’s growing well, but I think that next year I’ll order even more, because it’s not covering the pond as quickly as I’d like (I want it to cover the pond to help shade-out the algae).

A few of our other pond plants are doing well, but are still relatively small, so I’ll share updates on those in a future post.

I’d still like to add a couple of fish to the pond, but without more plant cover, I think they’d be immediate prey for the birds and other wildlife around our house…

I’m definitely highlighting the successes, because that’s what makes the gardening fun, and these are the areas my eyes turn to every time I walk out the door. Maybe I’ll share more of my “eh” areas in the next post. There are a few spaces where I was hoping to see big changes this year, but I’m starting to realize that I may have to settle for a slower evolution of the space.

Garden Update : The Pond

June 14, 2016June 14, 2016 by Katie | 1 Comment

Throughout this summer, I’m documenting our garden. How it’s growing, what we’ve planted, and any changes we make to the space. Here’s my introduction to the bulk of our flower and veggie beds here.

Ugg, we’re such lazy bloggers lately! I realized that if I didn’t put this post up soon, then I’d miss my window of opportunity for pond introduction photos. Without further ado ~

When we lived in PA, I experimented with a few water gardens on our deck. Click here to read more about those experiments and the Thai water gardens that inspired my experiments.

With this house we inherited a small pond. It’s not something that either Calder or I would want to instal in our yard, especially in such a dry area where it seems a bit frivolous, but since it’s here, I’m so excited to expand my water gardening to this bigger space!

The Pond

This pond is created using a waterproof rubber liner that is then covered with rocks. The pond is about 10 feet from our deck, and between those to spaces is a flagstone path with mint growing between the rocks (that’s what you see in the foreground above). The pond has a filter and pump system that pump water to a waterfall that’s about 6 feet high and 10 feet away from the pond. The water then trickles down a stream and into the pond. Last season we turned on the pump once (right after cleaning it), but then never used it again. This summer we’re hoping to tweak it slightly and use it a bit more, but I’ll discuss that feature in a future post.

Spring Cleaning

Both last year and this year we started the season by draining the pond and spraying it down to try to remove as much algae and silt as possible. I didn’t photograph that process, but realized I should next year. We learned a lot of things last year that made what was at least a 12-hour project the first time just a 2-hour jaunt this time.

We drain the pond with a big hose using this technique. You just fill the hose with water, submerging one end in the pond water and putting the other end at a lower point, letting gravity do the rest.

With a pond of our size, it takes a while for it to drain completely, so while it’s draining, I get to work removing the algae. I drag a large pitchfork through the water, picking up sheets/strings of algae that I then dump outside of the pond. As the water level goes down, I’ll hook another hose up to a water source and start spraying down the rocks on the side of the pond, trying to remove any algae and slime on them.

Once the pond is almost completely drained, you have to be careful that the draining hose doesn’t lose suction. It’s just a pain because then you have to fill it with water and get suction going again to get any remaining water. During this phase, I’m almost constantly spraying fresh water onto and between the rocks to wash out as much silt, slime, and algae bits as possible.

I don’t remove every bit of gunk from the bottom of the pond, but once I’ve done a fairly good job, the process is done and I start filling it again with fresh water.

Algae

If left unchecked, our pond came become overgrown by string algae. From what I understand, the algae is not a danger to us or other organisms, but cosmetically, it’s a bit unsightly and makes the pond look more like a swamp than an oasis.

One of the reasons that our pond seems to be a prime target is because it gets a lot of direct sunlight throughout the day, and just like other plants using chlorophyl to make their food, sunlight will encourage growth. I was told that I could eliminate the algae and have crystal clear water by adding bleach to the pond, but this is only a solution if I don’t want to have any other plants or animals growing in the pond (and if I don’t mind dumping bleach into the environment, which I do). There are a few other solutions, so this summer I hope to keep you updated with my algae successes and failures.

In addition to physically removing the algae (as described above) and using an algaecide (discussed below), I can try to physically limit the amount of sun reaching the water’s surface. One easy way to do this is by adding water plants that will grow on top of the water, so that’s what I’ll be experimenting with this summer.

Mosquitos

Because of the cool weather in the mountains and the lack of standing water in our dry climate, the mosquito population in the mountains is generally low. That said, we don’t want this pond to become a mosquito breeding ground. There are a few ways to avoid that.

Generally, mosquitos will successfully breed if they have access to the surface of still water and if nothing eats the larva. If we keep the waterfall on, this would agitate the water enough to deter mosquitos from laying their eggs. It’s unlikely that we’ll do that because of the noise, energy use, and increase in water loss that would happen. Another option is to cover the surface of the water in plants so that it’s hard for the mosquitos to lay their eggs. I’m going to attempt to cover most of the water with plants (more below), but it’s unlikely that we’ll completely cover the surface. If I do achieve relatively good plant cover, then I would love to add a few goldfish to the pond, and they would help to eat the larvae. So, there are some options, but they aren’t guaranteed to work at this point in our pond’s lifecycle.

So, for now, we’ve decided to add Mosquito Bits to the water. The mosquito pellets/dunks contain BTI, which is a bacteria that is toxic to the larvae and will kill them. The dunks are considered safe and non-toxic (when used correctly) for all other animals.

Plants

This year I’m hoping to do some experiments and expand the variety of plants that I grow in the pond.

Right now our pond contains two groupings of water lilies. Both are made up of lilies that I put in the pond last summer and they successfully spent the winter out there. Not only did they survive in our little pond, but they thrived, multiplying successfully in their pots. This year I repotted them and added another one that came as a dry root from Home Depot. I bought that one because it was so much cheaper than the live plants and I wanted to grow it as a test this year to see how well it does.

I’ve also added a curly rush, two canna lilies (from dried roots), and another mystery lily that I picked up in the pond section at Home Depot. You can see the leaves of the mystery lily just starting to sprout in the photo above. All of these plants live on the “margins” of waterways ~ along the edge where their roots may be submerged in water, but their stems and leaves aren’t. So I have them in pots near the surface of our pond. It isn’t the most beautiful presentation, but I’m hoping that the floating plants will disguise the pots, and if they plants are successful, then I’ll come up with a better solution next year.

I was going to use duckweed as a floating plant to cover the water surface, but I wasn’t happy that the batch I received in the mail. So just this week I placed an order for fairy moss (it’s the small floating plant growing in the photo above), and a couple of water lettuce (another floating plant that is larger, like a small head of lettuce, and multiplies like crazy).

That’s our pond in early spring. I’m hoping to get some lush growth from the plants this year. I would love to add a couple of goldfish, knowing that they will be super attractive treats for birds (thus wanting some good plant cover for them to hide under). We have a couple of frogs out at the pond now; we hear them but can never see them! Last year they laid eggs, so we’re hoping for another batch of tadpoles this year.

I’m excited to keep you updated as the pond grows and evolves this summer!

DIY Vanilla Extract

May 12, 2016 by Katie | 2 Comments

Vanilla is our ingredient of the season. So far we’ve made some vanilla-infused vodka (great for milkshakes!), a savory roasted chicken with vanilla bean, and some homemade perfumes with vanilla essential oils.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but today we’re finally hitting on the key ingredient in every kitchen – vanilla extract! Who doesn’t have a bottle of vanilla extract in their kitchen? It gets used in everything. In fact, yesterday the boys and I baked our favorite chocolate cake, and even that called for two teaspoons of vanilla extract.

My fist exposure with homemade vanilla extract was a few years ago when I received a bottle from my BFF for Christmas. It was amazing, and I cherished that bottle, wanting to use it but also keep it for ever because it was just so good. As you’ll see, DIYing your own extract is so easy that I probably should have reigned in my emotions a bit…

The key to make a quality vanilla extract comes down to two things : 1. quality beans and 2. time.

How-to

For this bottle of extract I used 8 Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans and 1 cup of vodka. Split each bean by slicing through it lengthwise, then place the beans in a jar, add the vodka (making sure that it covers the beans), and let sit for at least two months.

After that time, you don’t have to remove the beans. In fact, you can let the extract sit longer to get a richer flavor. And as you use the extract, you can top it off with more vodka to keep your batch going.

That’s it!

For how simple this recipe is, there are many ways to personalize it. Try different vanilla beans for different flavors (for example, Ugandan beans are supposed to have a more smokey flavor). You can also use different alcohols. I used vodka because it’s flavorless, so I would really only taste the vanilla from my beans, but you can substitute rum or bourbon. Personally, now that I have this bottle, I’m excited to experiment with a few more bean/alcohol combinations.

And if you just happen to have a big bottle of vodka sitting around, don’t forget that with a single vanilla bean and a few days, you can turn it into a smooth vanilla vodka! If you’ll remember, Calder made fun of my idea to make vanilla vodka, but the joke’s on him because that stuff was so good that it’s already gone and I’m thinking about making another batch (maybe with lime this time!).

Go Away! Natural DIY Spider Detterent Spray

April 5, 2016 by Sarah | Leave a comment

Oh spiders. I love them, but I’m also terrified of them. I definitely keep a handful of them in my house to get rid of little flying pests, but big furry spiders? GET OUT! This past week, we had to catch and release a spider every.single.night. They’re big, brown, and hairy and I’m sick of seizing up in fear every time I see one, so I made this natural DIY spider repellent. Full disclosure, today is the first day I’m using it so I will definitely report back to let you know how effective it is.

Apparently spiders are discouraged by strong scents like garlic, lemon, peppermint, citronella, and eucalyptus. According to my research, spiders also detest the taste of tea tree oil. While there are plenty of combinations you can mix up to deter spiders, here’s how I went about it:

Add 3 Tablespoons of Dr. Bronner’s Tea Tree Oil Soap & 5 drops of Eucalyptus Oil to a spray bottle and spritz it around all the windows and doors and other area where spiders may enter your house. Don’t spray it directly on spiders, I mean you could, but that’s just cruel.

You could also spray this solution inside, but I’d test an inconspicuous area first to make sure it doesn’t leave soap or oil stains your paint. It didn’t leave stains on my walls, but not all interior paints are created equally 😉 I chose Dr. Bronner’s soap because it’s biodegradable. Interested in other biodegradable bath products? Check out this post.

I chose to try this DIY natural spider repellent instead of using toxic chemicals (they’re harmful to kids, pets, plants, insects, animals, our waterways and the earth in general) because they’re just plain overkill. I think very few instances call for harsh chemicals to be used. Often times you can find a natural repellent to tackle your pest problem. Along with the DIY spider repellent, these are a few other tricks to discourage arachnids from entering the apartment.

Thoroughly clean around doors and windows inside and outside the house.
Clean up any clutter in the corners of the cupboards and house in general.
Turn off porch lights so as not to attract flying insects aka a spider’s dinner.
Move stacks of wood and other debris far away from your home’s foundation.
Seal cracks in the home’s foundation and under doors and around windows.
Dust often! Spreading signs of activity and life to normally sleepy corners of your house will prevent spiders from parking there.

Happy spider-free homes to y’all!

Vanilla Lavender Room Spray

March 22, 2016January 22, 2019 by Katie | Leave a comment

Vanilla is our ingredient of the season. So far we’ve made some vanilla-infused vodka (great for milkshakes!) and a double vanilla cake. Today we’re venturing out of the kitchen and using vanilla essential oil. If you like experimenting with essential oils, check out our archive of posts.

It’s been almost two years since we shared a room spray, which is surprising because these are so easy to make and do a fantastic job of freshening up a room without any of the overbearing artificial fragrances found in many store-bought sprays.

Whereas the rosemary and peppermint created an energizing combination, the lavender and vanilla combination in this spray provides a calming aroma. I added some fir balsam to this spray because I wanted something a little more complex. The fir balsam essential oil does a great job of bringing some of the outdoors in when it’s still a touch too cold to have the windows open here in the mountains.

To further enhance the vanilla aroma of the spray, I used our vanilla-infused vodka for the alcohol.

Ingredients and Hints :

3 ounces filtered water
8 drops vanilla essential oil
8 drops lavender essential oil
8 drops fir balsam essential oil
1.5 ounces alcohol (I used our vanilla-infused vodka!)
spray or misting bottle

Pour everything into the bottle, give it a good shake, and spray away! You will have to shake it before every use. Really, it’s that simple!

And as we mentioned in the previous room spray post:

If you don’t have the alcohol, you can use all water, but the aroma won’t linger as long.
Of course, you can use any combination of oils, and increase or decrease the number of drops depending upon how intense you want the scent to be

How to : Cultivate a Creative Life

March 9, 2016April 6, 2016 by Katie | Leave a comment

If you like this post, you may want to read Sarah’s post on how to Cultivate a Life of Travel, but be warned that you’ll have the sudden urge to buy a plane ticket or two!

We’re coming up on a year of living in our house, and I’m still organizing things. Unfortunately (for me) one of the last places to get some special treatment has been my office, but I just recently spent a couple of days unpacking the final boxes and during the process I thought about the things I do around the house to encourage creativity (mine, the boys’, and visitors).

Sarah and I grew up in a house that encouraged creativity in all aspects of life, and I’m working to do the same now, whether it’s trying a new recipe, playing musical instruments, working in the garden, knitting or sewing. So even if you aren’t “crafty”, I hope you’ll find some useful advice in this post.

A nature-inspired lifestyle blog.

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