Unfortunate Weekend Events and A Week of Ham

Our weekend didn't turn out at all like we expected.  We had planned a nice visit here at home with my sister and brother-in-law on Saturday afternoon, with them staying overnight in the RV, then on Sunday we were going to join up with my niece and her family, as well as my daughter and son-in-law and spend the day at the zoo.

Instead, shortly after they arrived, my brother-in-law fell ill with some episodes of dangerously low blood pressure and he and sis spent the entire weekend in the hospital, with us making a few trips back and forth ourselves.  My BIL is 68, and has a known serious heart problem, but they ruled that out as the cause right away.  He is also diabetic and I think they have determined that some late and missed meals on Friday and Saturday, as well as some late medication, were the main reason his blood pressure was plummeting.  His blood pressure has since stabilized and he should be released today after one more precautionary test on his heart.

Because of the sudden change in plans, I have a ton of food in the house.  In anticipation of our weekend, I had baked a large spaghetti casserole for our meal on Saturday, prepped ahead a big pan of breakfast enchiladas, and I had thawed a half ham to cook today.  I also bought several kinds of individual-wrapped snacks that I had planned to take with us into the zoo.  Of course, very little of the prepared food was actually eaten, and I still have that ham to bake today.

I invited my daughter and son-in-law over for supper last night, so that took care of half the spaghetti casserole, and I individually wrapped half the breakfast enchiladas and stuck them in the freezer.  They'll go with us on our first camping trip in two weeks, along with the pre-packaged snacks.

Here's what I plan to do with the ham:

Monday:  Baked ham, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, asparagus, rolls.

Tuesday:  Ham with parsley sauce, boiled potatoes, green beans, salad.

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Wednesday:  The rest of the Baked spaghetti casserole, garlic toast, salad, home-canned peaches.

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Thursday:  All-American Ham and Cheese Roll, potato cakes, corn, asparagus.

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Friday:  Hawaiian Ham Quesadillas, tater tots, salad.

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Saturday:  Ham and shrimp pasta, garlic toast, salad.

Last Minute Meal Planning

This coming week is spring break for Kat.  We were supposed to be on a mini-vacation out of town all week, but more snowy weather and a work situation changed those plans for us.  I can't get outside to work in the garden, either, so I thought this week might provide a good opportunity for me to publish a few posts to this neglected ol' blog of mine.

These changes in plans have thrown a monkey wrench into meal planning.  Thinking we'd be out of town, I had nothing planned for our suppers this week.  We have to eat, and fortunately, we're stocked up on just about everything, so here's what I came up in a hurry:

Sunday:  Balsamic venison roast, mashed potatoes, peas, green beans, coconut cake.

Monday:  Lasagna, garlic toast, corn, lettuce and spinach salad, coconut cake.

Tuesday:  Bratwursts, potatoes au gratin, sauteed Swiss chard, green beans, coconut cake.

Wednesday:  Leftovers from the three previous meals.

Thursday:  Barbecue chicken kabobs with spicy bacon rub, potato salad, steamed cabbage, green beans.

Friday:  Fried fish (spoonbill), homemade french fries (recipe to come), coleslaw, home-canned peaches.

Saturday:  Kung pao pork tacos, lettuce salad, home-canned peaches (although we have tentative plans to go out with friends instead)


What's on your menu this week?

And by the way...today is our 13th wedding anniversary.  We decided to go out last Friday night instead of tonight.  We even splurged a little...after all, we're worth it.

Ready, Set, Garden!

Gardening has begun at Haphazard Homestead!

I now have a new printer and have begun using the garden planner I purchased earlier this year.  I have mapped out our garden on grid paper, but I also like mapping it on an aerial photo (this one's from Google Earth) and pasting it into a drawing program to add the ground features.  It just gives us a more realistic perspective, I think.  All the white boxes or lines are our planting areas, both raised and in-ground beds.  If they aren't labeled, they are still empty.  It should also go without saying that the beds are absolutely not-to-scale.

Shane and I have been simultaneously planning on paper and planting in soil.  So far, we have planted a largish potato patch, two new gooseberry bushes, as well as transplanting about 75 strawberry plants to a new pyramid.

While I'll try not to neglect the blog entirely, you can expect that posting will be more erratic for a while. I apologize in advance for absences that are sure to happen, and will post if/when spare moments and inspiration coincide.

February Resolution Review

Since Shane will be home and our weekend will begin tomorrow, and since the last day of February is today, I decided to write my Friday post today.

I set some goals at the beginning of the year, so I thought I'd give a quick monthly update on my progress in February. 


Reading: 

• Goal - 18 Books and more than a year of Mother Earth News and Hobby Farm Home back issues (and yes, I've let the subscriptions to those magazines expire).
• February Progress - Read 2 books (5 of 18 total), and 5 of the  magazines (6 of 38 total). 

The books I read were:

• Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
• During the Reign of the Queen of Persia by Joan Chase

Crafting:

• Goal - 12 completed projects, preferably one a month, with one being a quilted item and another being knit socks.
• February Progress - Started and completed one toe-up knitted socks. ( 1.5 of 12 total)

I taught myself to crochet around the age of 12 or 13.  A few years later, I taught myself to knit.  I don't consider myself an accomplished knitter, and think it's more difficult than crocheting, but I usually do alright.  These socks were probably the most challenging knitting project I've tackled.  The work itself is not difficult, but just finding a pattern I could make sense of took days.  I made irreparable mistakes causing me to start over several times, but with each re-do, the quality improved.  A few nights ago I was determined to finish the sock, but come 2:00 a.m. when the yarn was about to run out, I completely forgot to consider that I needed a stretchy bind-off.  I bound off in a traditional way and couldn't get the thing over my foot.  So, I had to rework that, and now it might be too stretchy, but at least I'll be able to wear it (and learned a stretchy bind-off to boot!).

The sock isn't without flaws, by far, but it will be wearable, and I'm looking forward to finishing the pair.  What's more, now that I have a clue what I'm doing, I'll probably make more socks in the future.

My first sock!  It's in Paton Kroy washable wool
sock yarn; the colorway is Clover Colors.

Gardening: 

• Goal - Organized planning, leading to an organized garden.
• February Progress - Our printer quit working and I haven't replaced it yet, so I haven't been able to use the garden planning downloads I bought.  However, I've been planning all the same.  I know what we will be planting, in approximate quantities, and have ordered seeds.

Diet/Nutrition:

• Goal - To switch over to less harmful types of sweeteners and/or reduce sugars in our foods.  To grow more of our food in our backyard.
• February Progress - I have to admit that I haven't made any progress toward finding less harmful sweeteners since last month.

In other nutrition news, I've started making kombucha tea and tibicos soda (aka, water kefir) again after letting both go dormant for a few months at the end of last year.  Since re-establishing the habit of drinking a cup of one or the other -- or both -- daily again, I've felt a noticeable improvement in the way I feel.  To me, they are like safer, more natural energy drink and they are good for your gut.  IMO, they taste good, too.


Fitness:

• Goal - To join a local yoga class better flexibility, balance and overall health.
• February Progress - I have not found a different yoga class to join and to be honest, haven't given it much thought.

Finances:

• Goal - To pay off our RV.
• February Progress - A little.  When we first bought the RV, I padded our first two monthly payment by about $90, rounding it to the next hundred dollar amount.  For the next five months, though, I wasn't comfortable doing that.  We are in a position now that I can start paying extra again each month and even start catching up on the five months when I wasn't able to pay extra.  Every little bit helps.

Garden Planning - Step 2 - Buying Seed

Knowing how much to plant each year is the hardest step in garden planning, I think.  As far as I can tell, no matter how I choose to calculate amounts, I'm going to get them wrong. That said, I still think it's better to work on this step and at least have an idea, rather than to just forge ahead blindly.  After all, neither a truckload of zucchini nor a spoonful of peas will do me much good.

I started out by taking my initial list from Step 1 and considering how much we eat of each.  This isn't an exact science, and some calculations will be less brain twisting easier than others. 

One way to figure amounts is to determine how many times a week your family eats a vegetable, multiply that by the number of people in your family, then by 52 weeks a year to determine your annual consumption in servings.  It's easy enough to Google to find out how many servings are in a pound of that particular vegetable, but if you can find even two websites that remotely agree on how many pounds per plant that vegetable will yield, please send them to me, because I couldn't find them.

Another way to plan is to remember how much you planted last year.  Every year we plant about 8 square feet of lettuce.  We don't plant it in rows, we just broadcast the seeds.  Every year I'm certain it won't be enough to satisfy those early spring cravings for fresh salads.  Every year it ends up being too much and bolting and/or getting bitter before we can eat it all.  Every year the excess becomes cheap filler for the compost pile.  In an odd way, this works for us, so why fix what isn't broken?

So this is how I proceeded, best-guessing my way through the roster of things we'd like to grow, and ultimately moving a few more things off the planting list and onto the purchasing list.  Once this list was finalized, Shane and I compared it with the seeds we already have on hand and know are good, then we ordered the rest. 

At this point in our gardening experience, I don't feel qualified to recommend specific varieties or seed sources. I will tell you that most of the seeds we already have on hand came from Hometown Seeds in a promo pack I received a few years ago.  Our seed potatoes were gifted to us (thanks, Melinda!).  We ordered the rest of what we needed from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, both because they sell non-GMO seeds and because they are located in our home state.  We have just a few things left to buy; we'll probably get those from local nurseries.  You'll have to do your own research and make the decisions that are best for your family.

Next up...I plan the layout of the garden while I wait for the snow to melt.

Garden Planning - Step 1 - Knowing What You Eat

I've mentioned before that I bought a neat-o perpetual garden planner download from Northwest Edible Life, and have all intentions of using it this year, but our printer pooped out last week.  Until I can find a replacement printer for cheap or find time to take the file to be printed out at a printer-outer shop, I'm stuck with old-school pencil and paper.

I had to do a little research to remember, but I've determined that this will be our fifth season in the garden.  In the past, we've grown a little of this, a little of that, and whatever sounded interesting.  It's a fun way to garden, and a great way to learn what you like, don't like, can grow well, or can't grow at all.

This year, though, we're approaching gardening a little differently.  There will still be plenty of variety and a bit of novelty, but we're really going to focus on growing what we eat most.

With that in mind, the first step in this year's plan was to write down everything I could think of that we eat that is plant-based.  From tomatoes to dry beans to rice to tea to pineapple.  I used a seed catalog or two to help me remember everything and I wrote down things I know we can't grow simply because they might jog my memory about things we can grow here.

Then I went through and crossed off anything that we can't grow in our area (things like citrus, tropicals, coffee) and anything we don't have room to grow (grains, mostly) and things I'm just not ready to try yet (grapes, mushrooms).

Once that was done, I considered our family demand.  How often do we eat these foods?

There are several vegetables, fruits, and berries that we eat often and grow well for us.  Because these are on our menu several times a week all year round, these will be the biggest money-savers and nutrition-givers.  They will stay on the list.  Frequently-used herbs also stay at the top of the list.  For some reason I'm not very successfully at growing herbs, but if I can get successful, then cha-ching!  Big savings!

Several crops will grow well for us, but we don't eat them as often.  They'll be planted if we can work them in, or dropped without regret if we can't. 

Some foods are better for us to purchase, either because we don't eat that much of them, we have tried growing them before with little or no luck, we know they won't grow here at all (coconuts, anyone?), or we don't have room to grow them even though they will grow here (wheat is good example).  Unless we just want to try a couple of these crops for the fun of it, they won't make the cut.

The end result should be a fairly accurate list (below) of what we'll be planting this year.  Your list will vary depending on your appetite, gardening zone, skill level and space limitations.


Already-Established Perennials:
Asparagus
Rhubarb
Strawberries
Blackberries
Elderberries
Raspberries
Sunchokes

Definitely Will Plant:
Green beans
Lettuce, variety
Onions, bulbing
Garlic
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Dry beans
Carrots
Beets
Zucchini or other summer squashes
Onions, green (scallions)
Spinach
Swiss chard
Bell peppers
Cucumbers
Radishes
Cilantro
Parsley
Basil
Thyme
Oregano
Cumin

Will Plant If It Works Out:
Sweet Corn
Peas (shell-out and snow varieties)
Kohlrabi
Cauliflower
Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Celery
Eggplant
Cabbage
Napa cabbage
Collard greens
Jalapeno peppers
Winter squash (butternut, acorn)
Ground cherries
Watermelon
Okra
Sunflowers
Ginger
Summer savory
Sesame (for seeds)
Gooseberry bush(es)
Peach tree(s)

Be prepared.  Next week, we start talking numbers.

Monday Meal Plan

I haven't done a weekly dinner menu on the blog in a long time, so I thought I'd do that this morning.  All the turkey leftovers are gone, and I now have several jars of canned turkey stock in the pantry for future meals.  It's time to start eating some of the venison and pork in our freezer.


Sunday:  Copycat of Macaroni Grill's Penne Rustica. 

This was actually a leftover makeover, but not from Thanksgiving.  We went out last Wednesday night for a belated birthday dinner for Shane.  Without getting into much detail, we were all disappointed with our meals from a well-known chain steak house.  Kat ordered a Parmesan-crusted chicken dish, but brought most of it home as leftovers, which eventually found their way into this dinner. 

I made a few changes to the recipe.  I subbed in a cup of turkey stock for a cup of the cream (and used half-and-half instead of cream to begin with), I added quite a bit more garlic, and omitted the shrimp since we didn't have any in the freezer.  This turned out to be a nice baked pasta dish and quite the improvement over the original chicken dish from the restaurant.  We served it with a green salad and bacon-cheddar scones.

Monday:  Venison chili with corn chips, sour cream and shredded cheddar; peanut butter sandwiches; celery/carrot sticks. 

I call this one of my school lunch dinners, because we always had peanut butter sandwiches and celery/carrot sticks at school whenever we had chili.  I need to get a chili recipe posted on the blog.  My chili used to be ultra-simple:  ground meat, tomato soup, packaged chili seasoning, chili beans.  Lately, though, I've been using tomato sauce and pinto beans grown and canned from our garden, as well as chili seasoning I put together myself.  I need to get those changes on paper -- or on blog, as it were.

Tuesday:  Pork Chops with Onion-Mushroom Gravy

Here's another recipe that used both canned soup and dry soup mix, but that I've changed to include homemade versions instead.  I should probably get those changes recorded, too.  This dish will be served with potatoes and Brussels sprouts, but I haven't yet decided on the recipes for those.

Wednesday:  Texas Chili Cheese Bake

This is a fun dish using leftover chili layered over toast and shredded cheese, then broiled quickly to heat it through.  We'll probably have leftover Brussels sprouts and some home-canned peaches or apples to go with it.

Thursday:  Chinese Steamed Pork Dumplings, Egg Drop Soup, Garlic Green Beans, Almond Cookies

I'll be trying my hand at Chinese steamed dumplings.  If they turn out alright, I'll post the recipe.

Friday:  Kansas City Steak Soup with Venison, Cornbread, Home-canned Fruit

This is a family favorite but I'm trying something new this time:  I'm going to make a HUGE batch and pressure can it.  I've done a lot of pressure canning this year (pinto beans, green beans, chicken stock, even fish), but it will be my first time canning something like this with so many ingredients.  I can't wait to try it!

Saturday:  C.O.R.N. (Clean Out Refrigerator Night)

In other words, I'm taking a night off!

Changing Seasons

The 2012 camping season is over for us.  You can read a couple of new posts about our last camping weekend of the year at Haphazard Homestead on the Road.

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With camping season over, summer is "officially" over for us, too.  As we move into fall and look ahead toward holidays and cooler weather, I've decided to take on two challenges for October.

The first is that I'm going to join in with Erica at Northwest Edible Life in an October No-Spend Month.  I think Erica is attempting an across-the-board reduction, but I've decided that I want to limit my challenge to grocery and restaurant spending.  Those of you who were readers of my old blog know that I can get a little carried away with numbers, but I promise not to do that this time.  My goal is to spend as little as possible at the grocery store and for us to not go out to eat at all in October.  I'll post my updates on Fridays and keep them simple. 

One exemptions right off the bat:  We will be paying the meat processor for pork already butchered and waiting for us to pick up as soon as the cured cuts are ready. 

If you'd like to join in, please do.  It's my understanding that this challenge is less about austerity and more about being mindful of and deliberate in your spending habits, whatever they may be.

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The second challenge I'm going to join is "All Done by December 1" at Happy Simple Living.  According to the Happy Simple Living blog, "The idea is to do some advance planning about the aspects of Christmas that are most important to you and your family, followed by some easy tasks and organization. The goal? To have every do-ahead task done by December 1, leaving you three glorious weeks to have the best celebration ever."

If you'd like to join in, click over and sign up for the e-mail updates.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

First the bad.  Kat has been under the weather since she woke Saturday morning.  She had headache, tummy ache and fever Saturday, then headache without fever yesterday, and tummy ache without fever today.  I think it might be a mild flu bug.  A different school district in the city closed down today because of flu, so I guess it's going around.
 

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Now the good.  Even with a sick kiddo, we managed to have a pretty nice weekend.  We got a lot done around here, but still had time to relax with some movies, a jigsaw puzzle and some reading.

Shane had an unexpected three-day weekend.  His job site was shut down on Friday because they were waiting on materials. He took advantage of the day off by working outside all day.  He tilled the soil in the raised beds and broke ground for some new beds for this year.  He tilled in some horse manure into all of those areas and also added some wood chips to some of the beds to keep the soil loose.

He disassembled part of Kat's play fort, with her permission since she has never really played on it much, and will use the parts to make who knows what.  Right now, a couple of pieces are positioned to make an a-frame lattice, but I don't know if they'll stay that way.

He spent more time outside on Saturday and Sunday, burning yard debris in the chiminea and re-working some of the ornamental beds in the front and on the sides of our house.  Nothing was planted yet, but a lot of areas were readied for both edibles and ornamentals.

As for me, over the weekend I tackled that basket of filing, did my grocery shopping, did my weekly household accounting, and I tried my hand at making 30-minute mozzarella cheese using this recipe.  That was a lot of fun.  I thought it wasn't going to work out, then all of a sudden the texture of the curds changed and there was the mozzarella.  I did learn that it's next to impossible to take photos while making cheese, but here is one of the finished product.

Homemade mozzarella.

I made a couple of very homemade pizzas for supper.   I made scratch crusts, sauce from last year's garden tomatoes, pepperoni I made from some of the venison in our freezer and topped it all with the homemade mozzarella.  I had read a couple of times that the cheese wouldn't melt right, and I can confirm that now.  It really doesn't melt at all, it just gets soft.  But oh well, it tasted good, and that's what really matters. 

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And finally, the ugly.  Here are pictures of our back yard right now.  This time of year, it's ugly, ugly, ugly, and that the weather was gloomy when I took these didn't help.  By June, though, it will be quite pretty.  Our back deck is especially ugly right now.  The rails came off when we thought we'd put a sun room there, and the plastic resin lattice we had as skirting wouldn't hold paint and kept blowing down, so we took it off. 

The plan is to put a new back door in our house (it's waiting in our garage) and then to eventually remove the deck and build a new one.  The door will go in as soon as weather and time allow, but we have no idea when the deck project will happen.  At the very least, we'll put some basic railings back on for safety's sake.

Eager to start planting.  Can hardly wait to get the camper out, too.

Wood chips and manure to be tilled in.

Tilling the raised beds.

Back yard in winter.  Anyone want to buy our old pop-up?

Junk-covered patio, wood pile, clothesline.

Our big, fat, ugly deck must go.  Rain catchment tanks off to the right of it.

So that was my weekend.  I actually enjoyed it this time. We struck a nice balance; I hope we can do that more often in the future.

What did you do this weekend?

Gardening Has Begun

We noticed the tree trimmers were working in our neighborhood yesterday, so Shane stopped and talked to one of the workers on his way home.  The guy just happened to be a crew lead and just the man Shane needed to see.  He arranged to have a load of wood chips delivered bright and early this morning.  They showed up around 7:30.

The load of mulch was free, because it saves the company the money and time they would have spent hauling it back to wherever it is they haul it back to.

We'll be using our mulch in flower beds, tree rings, etc.  The finer stuff might go into some of are veggie beds to help keep the soil loose.

If trimmers are working in your area, stop and ask them for some chips for mulch.  The worst that can happen is that they say no, or charge you a small fee.  Who knows, though?  You might just get it for free.

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Yesterday Shane also picked up a truckload of horse manure.  It has aged enough that it can go straight into our raised beds and flower beds.

His crew is waiting on materials and are at a stand-still on the job site, so he has an unexpected day off.  He's getting ready to till in that manure as I type this.

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We're in Planting Zone 6, but we've had a very mild winter; the ground hasn't even frozen this season.  We're thinking of going ahead and planting peas this weekend or next.  After scouring the Internet, I've found adages such as "peas in by Valentine's Day" and "peas in by President's Day".

In the past, our peas haven't done well.  I think we've been planting them too late.  If we plant them this weekend, we'll be 2 to 3 weeks early, but I think we're going to take the chance.  The seeds are from last year (but still good), so we won't be out anything but our time if they don't grow.

We are also thinking about planting them in succession, some each weekend, so that we'll have "insurance" if the earliest ones fail.

Anyone else, especially Zone 6 readers, planting anything yet?

Taking Stock

Do you keep a kitchen or pantry inventory?  I like to have a running list of the foods we have in our pantry, fridges and freezers (yes, plural).  It makes menu planning easier and helps keep me from buying things we don't need.

My list isn't always perfect, but it can usually give me a pretty close idea of what we have.  Well, since Thanksgiving (and since Shane came home from working out of town for quite a while), I've completely lost track of what came in and what went out in terms of food.  It's kitchen madness, I tell ya!

Kat goes back to school today and I've got nothing better to do (really??), so it looks my pantry list just got moved to my to-do list for today.