This Moment

This Moment - A Friday ritual inspired by Soule Mama. 

A simple and special moment that I want to hold onto and cherish.

If you feel inspired to do the same, please 

leave a link to your moment in the comments.

How to Teach Resilience in a Wild and Precious Life

Dinosaur School (teacher in orange)

A recent op-ed from the New York Times, "Raising Successful Children" talks about a study in which children that were praised for doing a simple puzzle and told how smart they were were more reluctant than unpraised children to try additional harder puzzles, presumably for fear of failing, and losing their status as "smart".  Failing is an important, let's say very important, skill in life.

I don't like that word "successful." It makes me cringe.  What I most want for my daughter is happiness.  I believe resilience is a key ingredient in happiness.

Miss B came up with whole dinosaur school idea herself and
class has been in session every morning this week.  I am a student too : )

Yet while there may be danger in over flattering, in the past I've noticed some children around me whose parents didn't praise them, seemed to doubt that their parents saw their value as a person. These children did not seem resilient, or more willing to try the hard puzzles in life, and they don't seem happier now.  How do you teach the importance of trying?  How do you teach that it's ok to fail?  I suppose by encouraging your children to try, and even though it pains us, to let them fail.  But also, importantly, to let your child see you trying and sometimes failing at a daunting puzzle or challenge.  To live bravely, to try new things, to put yourself out there for the things you love and be able to show and talk about the failures as well as the successes.

The last line in the article is just amazing.
"One of the most important things we do for our children is to present them with a version of adult life that is appealing and worth striving for."

Are you doing that?  
I'm trying, and I bet you are too.

"Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?"

- Mary Oliver, The Summer

Corn Husk Dolls

We're in the thick of corn season here and loving it!

Oh my word... I just heard a flock of geese fly overhead...a sure sign of fall (or spring when they're returning north, but in this instance definitely fall).

But back to the corn.  I didn't grow corn this year.  I remember reading somewhere that by the square foot it really doesn't produce as much food as other plants...and it's sort of a heavy feeder.  I'm not saying I won't do it in the future, but not this year.

There are a number of small farms in our area with stands selling corn and we have made it a goal to buy corn from each of them (or as many as we can) and then rank the corn as we go and come up with a 2012 Corn Award.

So far we've tasted from Spiller Farm and our local natural grocer...will have to follow up with them to confirm which farm the corn was from, and so far it's Spiller Farm. Next up is Wally's and Zach's Farm.  I used to get change from Zach when I sold cheese at the farmer's market years ago so I have a soft spot for him...also his stand looks just lovely filled with fresh cut flowers and all. We've been playing around with making corn husk dolls, something I've always wanted to do ever since I was a child and Miss B had the great idea of presenting the winning farmer with a cornhusk doll.  Too fun!

The dry husks have a wonderful sweet smell to them and I'm thinking of trying to make a couple little baskets.  It is important to dry the husks for a day or two before using them otherwise your doll will turn dark with mold...which happened to some of our earlier dolls (as seen below).  Here's the tutorial we used to make the dolls.

When you're first laying the husks out with the corn silk in the middle I'd recommend laying them so the husks curl away from the silk. Then when you flip the husks outward after tying the first string they will lay a bit more happily/flat.  We also generally stopped after we attached the arms, Miss B wanted them to be wearing gowns of course.  I like them unaddorned, but Miss B chose to embellish with markers.  I think white paint would look pretty neat too...maybe just two white dots for eyes.

Tomatoes are coming in surprisingly steady here.  We are eating them at nearly every meal...not breakfast yet, but we're still fairly early in the season, and I wouldn't say no to a spicy virgin bloody mary some morning.  With the tomatoes that are not perfect I simply trim out the bad spots, chop them up roughly and throw them in a ziplock bag in my freezer.  I will make these into tomato sauce later when it is cool, say late September or even October or November.  The scent of garlic and oregano and basil will fill my kitchen and these tomatoes will release their juice faster (because their cells burst when they went through the freezing process).  The heat from my stove will warm my home a bit which will be welcome then.  When the geese really have flown south.  So I feel like one smart cookie as I chop and freeze, chop and freeze during these hot days.

On another but similar topic here is a phenomenal post from Northwest Edible Life on making jam without pectin.  Makes me want to make more jam today!

Strawberry Balsamic Spread

This year we planted Sparkle Strawberries.  A friend in my permaculture group split a plant order with me and really with a name like "sparkle" how could I possibly go wrong? The directions said to not let them set fruit this first year, but rather to pick all the flowers so that the plants would put all their energy into making really strong plants...but I lack the will power to do that : ) We let them set fruit and enjoyed many a wonderful strawberry shortcake earlier this year.

When I see that the grocery store is running a special on strawberries...which they have been the last couple weeks, I buy 4 or 6 quarts and make this spread.  You could call it a jam or call it a syrup it all depends on how long you cook it. The shorter the cooking the more syrupy it is.  I generally end up with a somewhat loose jam so I call it a spread.  Here's my (also loose) recipe.

Strawberry Balsamic Spread

Ingredients
Strawberries
Sugar
Balsamic Vinegar

Homegrown spray free strawberries would be best, but if you buy the berries in and end up with nonorganic I would give them a good soak in a cool water bath (think a big mixing bowl) with 2 tablespoons or so of applecider vinegar.

Hull your berries.  Cut them in half if they're small, in quarters if they're large, and put them in a large deep pot (if your pot is too little you will regret it(!) as syrup will splatter all over your stovetop during the boiling period).  I generally use 4 to 6 quarts of berries at a time, but really the more the merrier.

Add the sugar. You'll think I'm wacky, but I don't generally measure the sugar I just give a glug from my sugar crock and then give a taste once it's all dissolved. The recipe on which this recipe was based called for 5 cups of sugar for 8 cups of berries (which seems to me like way too much sugar). Other recipes I've seen call for 1 cup of sugar for every 2 cups of berries, which seems better.

Stir the sugar in until it's fully dissolved and bring to a boil.  Then add a pat of butter to keep the foam down.  Turn the heat down to medium low, and then as time passes to low.  Continue to boil until you reach the desired consistency.  Generally I boil about an hour for jam. You want to be sure to give a good stir every once in a while to prevent sticking.  I tend to stir every 5 minutes or so. Once you are pleased with the consistency add the balsamic vinegar.  For my 4-6 quarts of berries I add 5 tablespoons.  Stir the balsamic in and you are ready to fill your jars.

While the jam is boiling down you should be preparing your clean jars, and lids in hot water.  Now's the time to fill them 1/2 inch from the top and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.  Syrup can be processed the exact same way.  Alternatively you could easily freeze this jam, but my freezer is plum out of room.

This jam is so, so good!  Great on toast, with scones, with fresh ricotta, a nice bloomy rind cheese, or a somewhat stinky bleu. Some are on their way out today as thank you gifts to some special lovelies.

My recipe is adapted from the Strawberry Balsamic Jam recipe in Well-Preserved by Eugenia Bone.  Another great recipe is at Savory Sweet Life.

Ok then, jam it up!

Weekending

It was a restful weekend here.  Just what we needed.  Friday night my dad drove the two plus hours to our house, installed a new low flow toilet (complete with nonslamming seat thank you very much) as a belated anniversary gift, and then headed back home in the morning before either Miss B or Mr. Be were even up.  Such a quick trip! We tried to talk him into doing it another time when he could visit for longer but he'd have none of it. Pretty nice guy huh? We are lucky indeed.

Speaking of anniversaries, ours was last week, 13 years baby! We had a special supper (steak, tomatoes from our garden and fancy cheese from Champlain Valley Creamery). Carleton, owner/cheesemaker, is an old cheese buddy from way back when and we love to buy his stuff when we see it.  His Organic Champlain Triple did not disappoint!

Miss B is always ready for a celebration and she made us a really sweet anniversary card and was basically beside herself with anticipation until we all sang "Happy Anniversary" to the tune of happy birthday of course : )  It was a really sweet and simple and wonderful evening.

Saturday we were all just exhausted. We wrote letters. We took naps. I read more MFK Fisher...love her writing! I made another batch of strawberry balsamic jam recipe and photos to come!

Sunday we enjoyed the paper with spinach croissants and enjoyed more rain as well. Then we opted for some physical activity (finally!) I don't think I even left our yard on Saturday! Mt. Agamenticus is nearby and we'd tried to go hiking there last year...but I don't know where the heck we got our directions. Last year we ended up on a desolate dirt road totally lost, and our car was literally swarmed with deer flies so we turned back and gave up for the day (er, the year really). We found better directions this time and actually found the parking lot near the Ring Trail - yay! Someone had had the brilliant idea of placing laminated storybook pages along the trail so that kids could read (or have read to them) a story as they hike along. Miss B was feeling a bit tired after a bit so the draw of finding the next page on the trail was a wonderful incentive to keep going.  Awesome idea!

Post hike slump.

Mr B's birthday is coming up next weekend.  Maybe Tiramisu?  He does love it.  Anyone have a recipe they'd recommend? I'm all ears people.

Happy Monday folks!

This Moment

This Moment - A Friday ritual inspired by Soule Mama. 

A simple and special moment that I want to hold onto and cherish.

If you feel inspired to do the same, please 

leave a link to your moment in the comments.

Coffee Roasting Cowgirl Style

By nature I'm a fairly thrifty person, and I try to do right by the earth, and the creatures (including people) living here.  Sometimes it can be tricky. For a while after we bought our house I was buying really cheap coffee at the grocery, I mean really cheap (although maybe not quite so cheap when I think of the small bag size). It had a handprint on the package (earthy chic right?) and it was just o.k. taste wise. One day I did a bit of research and couldn't find much in terms of information on where the coffee came from. I sort of wonder if perhaps it is off-roast coffee from other roasters. Anyhoo, as I was reading online I saw someone mentioned roasting their own coffee. What!? You can do what? A quick search and I found Sweet Maria's.  These folks have all the info you need to get roasting.

We do like our morning coffee, but we certainly don't go through as much as a coffee shop. I ended up going with Sweet Maria's 4 pound sampler which (even with the shipping) is not a bad price. For the roasting my plan was to use the popcorn maker we have...as it was on the list of ones that could be used to roast coffee, but that did not work out so well. Our popper works by shooting hot air up through the kernels from the bottom of the vessel. This same hot air basically blew the coffee beans right out of the popper, still green. Not the idea.

Now I'm on the lookout at thrift shops for a popper with the hot air coming in from the sides, but until then I'm roasting my coffee cowgirl style. Apparently cowboys (and gals I'm betting) would bring green coffee beans and roast them in a pan over a fire as they went along the trail. I am roasting in a stainless steel pan with a glass lid and it generally takes me 15-20 minutes (including getting rid of the chaff).

Here's how I Roast Coffee Cowgirl Style

I put my pot with lid on my largest burner.  My stove is gas so if you're working with an electric stove you may have to tweak things a bit. I put the heat on high and then figure out which variety of coffee I'm going to roast (this does not take long).

Pour between a third and half a bag or so of the coffee into the pot and put the lid back on. Note the time. Move the pot back and forth over the high heat. At about 5 minutes I generally hear the first crack and I can tell we're there by the caramel color and toasty aroma wafting out of the pot.

I keep moving the pan at high heat for another 2 minutes or so and then turn it down to medium. I see smoke coming out around the edges of the lid and hear the second crack and roast until I like the color. Remember the coffee will keep roasting a bit until it cools so you want to take it off the heat a bit lighter than you want the finished product to be.

I grab a potholder and dash outside with a couple metal colanders. I pour the beans into the colanders and then pour them back and forth between the colanders to cool them, and to get rid of any chaff.  Each time I pour them beans into the second colander give the first colander a good whack on the ground to get rid of the chaff left behind. This pouring and whacking is an auditory treat and might just be my favorite part of this process.  Once the beans are cool enough to touch you are done. Just put them in a jar with the lid not screwed on tight for at least four hours. I generally leave the lid loose overnight and then put it on tightly in the morning.

We grind our coffee each morning and then use a french press, but I took some of our home roasted coffee for a weekend in Conway, NH with my folks and the regular drip coffee my Dad made with them was out of this world, and it seemed to require less coffee than our french press. I actually might be looking for a drip coffee maker just for that reason.

Sweet Maria's has great instructions info on roasting your own, and I dare say they would frown on my method as utilizing too much heat, but that's how I do it, and we're happy with the results.

On another coffee note, one of the folks in my permaculture group reports that putting coffee grounds around the base of plants that have a tendency to become infested with insects can prevent such infestations. Possibly due to the plant taking up some of the alkaloids. He's going to give it a try with rose bushes to prevent the Japanese beetles. Wow, I certainly do have a Japanese beetle problem. Will have to drink more coffee : )

This fellow, Duane Marcus, uses coffee grinds to grow mushrooms in a 5 gal bucket. How brilliant is that? Maybe a good winter project when we don't have so much fresh food from the garden.

Wishing you a lightly caffeinated day.

P.S. This is not a sponsored post. I just love Sweet Maria's and wanted to share.