Homemaking Organized Blog

Archive for May, 2011

I’m sorely behind in updating about what is going on in the garden. I’ll try to remedy that here.

What’s Growing

-strawberries, June bearing so the flowers are out

-peas, I started these babies in March but still no flowers

- swiss chard, a new one for me. Rainbow lights or something variety

- mini Bok Choi. I have a few of these already starting to go to flowers. We ate some last night.

- Lettuce.  I love lettuce so I have tons of kinds going. Pom pom is the only name I can remember. Both head and cut and come.

- Potatoes. Purple Viking. Growing well.  These are yummy. We also found a rogue potato plant in my Mother’s yard from last year and I’ve transplanted it to ours. It’s either Purple Viking or German Butterball

- Onions, red zepplin, walla wall, and some white one’s the name of which I’ve forgotten

- carrots,

- garlic, for fall harvest

- Tomatoes, Brandywine, Black from Tula and some Oregon variety

- cucumbers, pickling and I will plant the non-pickling ones on Friday

- Peppers, some sweet something or other.

-Herbs, basil, thyme, lemon thyme, oregano, chives, parsely (curled)

One would think we never need go to the grocery store again with all of this growing around but due to the fact that you have to take into account plant failures, pests, just a few plants in pots and raised beds, we really don’t have that much. But boy it is fun and rewarding!

 

So I have a new freezer and I’ve been spending some time hugging getting to know it. I’m a little shocked that after emptying the above the refrigerator freezer into it that it is more than half full already. I think that’s pretty telling of how packed my above the refrigerator freezer was.

So here are some great tips and resources I found that might help you too.

Organization

I knew that although the freezer came with two hanging baskets the real job is organized below that. The stuff at the bottom. After reading around I discovered that those plastic crates you find in office supply stores can work pretty well. I have an 8.8 cu ft freezer and was able to fit two of these in there. I designated one of those for raw meats and the other for prepared meals. I will admit that I have a tiny bit of frost on the sides of my freezer and when I pulled up one of the crates it grated against that little bit of ice and ssshhhhiiiivvvveeerrrrrr it was like nails on a blackboard. I can still ‘hear’ it now… ssshhhhiiiivvvveeerrrrrr

I also have smaller baskets that I’m using for butter, veggies, fruits, and my specialty flours (buckwheat, barley, graham, teff) . I have room for a few more baskets and I know I’m still getting accustomed to the whole thing.

 

Filling it Up

My goal for the freezer is preparing those meals that will help save time in the future and storing good buys and excess from the garden.

For great tips on preserving your foods from all sorts of sources I found this site Pick Your Own it’s about pick your own farms, how to can, freeze, dry and more.

For ideas on what kinds of meals to put away I have quite a few resources, mostly books. There is this nice article to give you an idea of what you can put away.

Then these are the books I’m using for recipes.

Frozen Assets Lite and Easy: Cook for a Day, Eat for a Month: I’m like the way this books is organized. By mini sessions by meat. For example I’m eyeing the ground turkey mini session. It’s all laid out with recipes, shopping lists and preparation instructions. I never thought our menus were so light but I could work with this book.  I’m checking it out from the library.

Make-A-Mix: I don’t use all the recipes in this book but I do like the cookie and the baking mixes. I own this one.
More Make Your Own Groceries: This is an excellent book for freezer cooking and making staples. I have no idea why it is so expensive on Amazon. I own a copy. There are two editions, 1 and 2. I have both. 2 is the cover of the link and 1 has a yellow cover. They are both excellent.

Keeping Track

For keeping up on what’s inside I printed up a new sheet from my planner (yes I use Vintage Household Notes too) and put it in a sleeve. For now I taped it to the top but I’m looking at other ways to attach it. I opted for writing the ususal suspects in pen and then hash marks in pencil for how many I have going there.

I hope some of this has been a help to someone.

PICS

 

I feel silly.

I’m hugging the thing like I’ve never seen an electric appliance before.

I just bought a chest freezer.

It’s about time.

I’ve been asking for one for many years.

I guess maybe it was because I requested it as a birthday present.

My husband never thought I was serious.

My mom never thought I was serious.

My sister just laughed.

Other family members gave me blank looks.

Friends sympathized said they would drop hints.

Finally I told my husband I would buy the freezer from my very small biz earnings.

He saw I was serious.

He talked me into a bigger freezer saying the family (that’s what we call his earnings) would chip in.

We talked about ordering half a cow. We settled on helping out an elderly family member by preparing many meals we could deliver.

He picked my babyup today (we saved on delivery. Gotta love Sears)

I’m hugging it.

This is how I used to get by.

 

As the days get longer I’m sensing a new rhthym to our routine. As spring sets in Sweet Peanut and I both decided we need to get up earlier to accomplish more (neither of us are morning people). Our normal pattern is to wake etc. have a very long breakfast and do a lot of other chores before starting the school day. Sometimes we’ll even run all of our errands before coming home and finishing school. Now we’re having devotions, a bit of school and then taking a really long break that includes breakfast, exercise, cleaning, maybe an errand and then back in class.

The days are also longer, our garden is growing and we’re itching to finish up classes. This year I have to remember not to waste the summer and accomplish a few things besides lazy days and a touch of gardening.

I don’t know if travel is in our near future. That’s on the table.

Things to put into our Summer Plans

1. Continue to build upon skills learned this year in kindergarten (I love BJU they have a set of workbooks and reading books for that)

2. Pack the freezer with pick your own and onions from the garden (I planted a lot of onions)

3. Peanut asked to learn piano

4. Teach Peanut to rollerblade (Wahoo!)

5. Continue to fine tune house (I’m still Spring Cleaning).

6. Regular library programs, zoo visits, trips to friends etc.

Well it’s been on my heart and mind so here it is.

Not  a busy summer but a thoughtful one.

Question: Are you finding you want to change your schedule too?

Tools: I found this nice resource the other day.

 

When I saw the BrytonPick Floss I knew I wanted to do a review.

I’m very specific about my floss and my flossing but often when eating out or at a friends I wish I had some floss with me (is that TMI?). I also wanted to see if the BrytonPick Floss would be something my sister is interested in. She has been very big on floss since we were little and I thought this would be a cute little something to throw in with her birthday present (I did give it to her).

So when the little package came I thought a good time would be to try this out while monitoring Peanut’s bath. I like to multitask here.

First I read the directions thoroughly. Made sure to stay away from my gums, opened my mouth etc. And made note of the fact that this is in fact thin sheets of steel.

The first thing I did was cut my lip. That was very tragic for me and disheartening. It’s like a papercut you know.

After that I probably didn’t do that good a job with the whole flossing thing but here is what I will note.

1. This is very convenient for carrying around in your purse. Nice, flat, and small. I keep a very small purse so tiny things are a plus for me.

2. It did in fact floss my teeth. I won’t go into gorry details but it did work.

3. Apparently it takes some getting used to so I have to give it some time. I did not like the gum cutting thing at all. Floss is supposed to get below your gumline so that could be a downfall. Although this is supposed to be for on the go and not a substitute for your regular flossing routine. But note: Be Careful of lip

4. I’m not sure how it works on popcorn but that could be the real test.

You can purchase your own BrytonPick here

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Note to Self:

Tuesday May 10th get yourself a free scoop of Haagen-Dazs ice cream. Go to one of the nationwide participating stores between the hours of 4 and 8pm on Tuesday May 1oth.