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We have a Garden

11 Thursday Jul 2019

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Tonight I harvested an entire salad – lettuce, celery, carrots, and cucumbers!  That, plus the peas that went into the main dish made for an interesting discussion at dinner.

This was year one.  So, over the next few Thursdays I’ll go back to the beginning and bring you up to speed as to where we are now including costs, space, and plantings.

In the meantime, I have learned a few things so far:

  • Do not plant peas and broccoli next to each other.  When I pulled out the spent broccoli plants, I lost a few pea plants that had hooked onto them.
  • Celery doesn’t like this space.  We had a smaller garden at a previous house that celery did very well in.  But, this space is much sunnier.
  • The chipmunks like our strawberries.  We’ve gotten next to none to reach edible stage intact.  Interestingly, they haven’t touched anything else.
  • I need brackets for the vertical supports.  That’s probably obvious from the picture.  My first pass didn’t quite work, but I have a new plan (most likely for the fall when we have better access).
  • The pumpkin plant is taking over.  The above pictures were taken a week ago.  It’s gone way further since then.  Pumpkin was not in my original plan, but our kindergartner brought one home from school and the carrots hadn’t taken in one square so I threw it in.  Thankfully its not taking over anything really important.
  • I gave up on watering one square at a time as needed.  Hence, the sprinkler in the picture.

So, there’s a sneak peak.  We’re getting way more produce than I thought we would when we started.  Some things we will plant less of next year; some things we’ll plant more.

I read Mel Bartholomew’s book and took square foot gardening rather literally.  We have six boxes that are 4′ by 3′.  Honestly, I think this is plenty for us even though his book states this should only cover the adults.  Either way it fits the space well so I’m not feeling the need to expand any time soon.

The Week in Review: Week 45, 2018

15 Thursday Nov 2018

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It was an interesting week with some school holidays and the end of the fall soccer season.

The public school kids didn’t have school on Tuesday, but preschool was open.  On Thursday though they were back at school and preschool was closed for conferences.  So, I had someone home every day.  There was also no school on Monday for Veteran’s Day.

We had the crossing of the seasons in sports:

  • The first week of baseball winter workouts thankfully didn’t conflict with the last week of soccer.
  • Our oldest had three baseball practices, one soccer practice, and two soccer games.
  • Between the next few we had two more soccer practices and three soccer games.  It was rainy and cold for the last Soccer Saturday.  The older ones finished out their seasons on Sunday which was colder, but not rainy.
  • Our youngest went to gymnastics class.
  • The middle four went to swimming lessons.

Most other things were standard events for us:

  • We had another math night (there is one per grade per year).
  • The twins went to math morning (weekly).

I’m slowly finishing up those things I postponed until preschool started.  This week it meant I got a haircut for the first time since March!

I also took some of the boys to use their birthday gift cards, which had the added bonus of giving me Christmas ideas.

I continued cleaning out. Look at all these WikiStix creations!

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On the downside, the dishwasher sprang a leak (photo at top).  They came out once to assess and are scheduled to be back today with the part to make the repair.  Hopefully now the wood floors underneath will dry out and re-flatten.

What Protein do we Have on Hand?

01 Thursday Nov 2018

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This post contains affiliate links.  However, I chose to try the meat share and paid for it myself after hearing about it from friends.  If you live in the greater (like an hour+) Boston or New York City area, you can give them a try and get $10 off your first order.

Our first Walden Local delivery arrived on October 16.  This is a meat share program.  You sign up for the level of the program – everything from grind only to custom, types of meat you want to receive (beef, pork, chicken, and lamb), any dietary restrictions, the number of pounds per week (roughly 5-30), and the number of people you are feeding.

We went with a 20 lb custom mix of beef and pork for six people.  As it turns out six is the maximum you can sign up for on their website, but we eat like 5-6 adults currently so that works for now.  Custom still doesn’t mean we get to choose exactly what we get.  We choose the categories we would be happy to receive and they send a mix of those things.  I’m told they are very responsive to emails and other specific info.

So, what was in our first delivery?

They sent a cardboard sheet with some guidelines, a small notebook, and two recipe cards.  Apparently they send 1-2 recipes per month that go with your meats.  We tried and liked both.  It’s all packed in a large reusable cube with two interior liners and dry ice.  The cube, liners, and guidelines get returned for future use at the next delivery.

 

Our delivery totaled 21.5 lbs (yes, the bag is marked):

  • Boneless pork belly – I’ve never cooked this so it will be an adventure.  I’m not sure we’ve ever eaten it either, but maybe at a restaurant.
  • Two boneless pork shoulder roasts, about 1.5 lbs each – This seems small for us.  I’m not yet sure whether I’ll cook what we got and hope I’m wrong or break it down and braise it with some loin chunks I have on hand as I would usually do with pork shoulder (normally without the loin chunks though).
  • Three beef flat iron steaks – This is another cut we don’t have at home.  But, I can see fajitas calling to me here.  Ideally we’d grill them outside, but we’ll have to see how the weather goes.
  • Eight blueberry breakfast sausages – We weren’t sure what to make of these, though apparently they are very popular.  We tried them last weekend and were pleasantly surprised.  I wouldn’t order extra, but I’m not going to put them on my not deliver list either.
  • Three hot Italian sausage – We could grill these or cook them inside.  Given the time of year, my leading idea is to make a Sunday pasta sauce with meatballs and sausage.
  • Three “pastrami”-style beef sausage – The options are similar to the Italian sausages.  If we cook them inside it will be two separate meals so I can keep track of them.  Not everyone in our house likes spicy.
  • Six pork chops – We don’t often have pork chops at home because they are dry.  These were thicker and nicer than typical grocery store options.  We cooked them using the recipe card and they came out quite nice.
  • Two beef chuck roasts, about 3 pounds each – These screamed pot roast, which we do from time to time in the winter.  I used the recipe card (except Instant Pot instead of slow cooker) and it was very tasty.  We did have some leftovers which I used for sandwiches for the kids later in the week.

All in all, it was a good variety.  We wouldn’t normally eat this much sausage so I’m going to have to see how that is going forward and likely come up with some new things to do with them.  But, what we’ve tried so far was indeed tastier than similar products bought at the grocery store.

Now, for better or worse our freezer was already pretty full when the Walden Local delivery arrived because the fall meat sales have started.  So, this needs to be eaten down also and not lost among the new goodies.  I’m not going to go through all the proteins as I buy them each month, but until this comes down a bit I’ll let you know everything we have on hand each time a Walden Local delivery arrives.

 

First, we had chicken nuggets and meatballs.  We will continue to have these available, though I hope our chicken nugget consumption will go down shortly when soccer season comes to an end.

Breakfast:

  • 2½ boxes of breakfast sausage
  • One box of bacon = two meals for us

Beef:

  • Two 2-lb bags of browned 80% ground beef
  • Eight NY strip steaks
  • Beef bones; one stock set
  • 8-10 hamburgers worth of 80% ground beef (not shaped)
  • One package of bone-in beef shanks

Pork:

  • Leftover pulled pork; enough for one meal for the kids
  • Four pounds of pork loin chunks
  • Eight sweet Italian sausages
  • Three half pork loin roasts

Chicken/poultry:

  • Four packages of chicken thighs with bones and skin; one package = one meal for us
  • Four 1.33-lb packages of ground turkey; two packages = one meal for us
  • Six packs of thin-sliced chicken breast; 4-5 packs = one meal for us
  • Four packs of boneless/skinless chicken thighs; 4 packs = one meal for us

Seafood:

  • Some salmon filets
  • Some tilapia filets
  • One bag of shrimp; 1 bag = one kids meal

 

The Week in Review: Weeks 40 & 41, 2018

16 Tuesday Oct 2018

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Because turkeys mean fall.

Clearly I missed some posts last week.  On the other hand, I feel like I got a lot accomplished, not necessarily all of which will be reflected here.

In kids sports:

  • The middle four had swimming lessons each week.
  • By a mix of schedule and weather, our oldest only had four baseball practices.
  • We totaled four soccer practices and seven soccer games.
  • Our youngest went to two gymnastics classes.

Soccer has now moved to it’s “Under the Lights” late fall stage so all soccer practices for us are 7:00-8:30 pm.  This provides a whole new level of dinner complexity, but will only last a few weeks.

Other happenings:

  • Collectively we had two doctor’s appointments.
  • I attended another Back to School Night.  There’s one more next week.
  • I went to a friend’s for dinner which was a nice variation from normal.
  • We had a few play dates among the younger five kids.
  • The kids had a day off from school.
  • As a result of the day off there was only one math morning.
  • The youngest had visiting day and her first day of school.
  • We had visitors over the weekend.
  • One child attended a birthday party.

The big bout of productivity came in the continued cleaning out.  I finished putting away all of the sale items.  As part of that process I separated out items to donate to various charities.  Those items still need to be sorted and actually donated.  I also listed a number of items on online yard sales with much success.

Sold:

  • Two pairs of women’s pants
  • One Halloween costume
  • Two pairs of hockey gloves
  • One pair of hockey elbow pads
  • One pair of hockey socks
  • Two travel booster seats

I also returned a shirt and gave away an infant tub and infant car seat.  And yet, the clean out continues.

Fall 2018 Freezer/Pantry Challenge

13 Thursday Sep 2018

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So last year I did both freezer and pantry challenges and updated you throughout the year on how both were going.  Thankfully, I have many fewer items this year that need using up (although some readers will notice a few things on the list again) so I’m putting the lists together.  Also, since I have next to no proteins on the list, I’m hoping/planning to move through these things faster.

Most everything this year is in the freezer so the pantry list is really short:

  • Coconut oil: I bought this originally to make granola which I haven’t made in the last year so we’ll see where this goes.
  • Veggie straws: I have one bag left over from summer when we take these to the pool.  I opened it today to send some into school for snacks.  Only two kids eat them.  Sticking to Thursdays (which are they best day to send these as snacks so they don’t get crushed), it will take me a few weeks to finish off the bag.
  • Bag of mixed nuts:  I think I’m just going to have to open this and break out the nutcrackers come holiday season.  They have not expired.

That’s it there!

The freezer list is a little longer, though not nearly as bad as last year.  Clearly not everything in the above pictures is on the list (see my free pint of ice cream in there).  These two freezer compartments are the most loaded with listed items though.  The other two are rather neat.  So, here’s what we have:

  • Beef bones: for stock
  • Hamburger and hot dog buns – one package each: Probably going to thaw these and use them for sandwiches as BBQ season is largely over.
  • Pre-made hamburgers: We weren’t fans of these and we have about 10 lbs left from what we purchased for our big summer BBQ.  I’m going to try cooking them up and draining them (80% vs our usual 90%) to use as regular ground beef.
  • Twelve (8 + 4) egg whites: There are a couple of options here, add-ins for sous vide eggs or macaroons being the most likely.
  • Nine cubes of cilantro in chicken broth: This goes with a specific recipe which obviously I haven’t made enough of recently.
  • Eleven servings of butternut squash ravioli: Clearly I could eat these faster, but they feel more right in the fall than the summer.  I will get to them all eventually.
  • One serving of mushroom ravioli: I need to sell this to someone as its not my thing.
  • One gingerbread loaf: Clearly I need to thaw this when we have a shortage of desert options.
  • Four bagels: We’re working through these.  They’re all sliced for easy toasting.
  • Three blocks of cream cheese: I can’t think of anything to do with these besides cream cheese frosting, ie carrot cake.  My kids aren’t super interested in this though so I have to time it right.
  • Chopped walnuts, slivered almonds, and chopped pecans:  These are odds and ends that could be used up.  The walnuts and pecans I do use from time to time.  The almonds are left over from granola making so either I’m back to that or I need to come up with some baked goods to use them up.
  • Some frozen celery sticks: These should go with the beef bones, and other things, for stock.  I just need to remember that!

Summer 2018 Recap

05 Wednesday Sep 2018

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Because I knew most of our summer would be occupied with baseball and swimming, I didn’t set myself that many goals.  But, here’s what I did set out to do.  And, the mid-summer update.  So, let’s see how that last month went.

On the schedule this summer:

  • Swimming lessons for the middle four will run most of the summer.  This also results in our spending lots of time at the pool.  We missed two swimming lessons: one because it rained and one because it was painfully hot so I decided to leave for our 4th of July trip a bit early.
  • Our oldest has one week of baseball camp.
  • The oldest three have one week of track camp.
  • Kids B-D have one week of tech camp.

Somehow I never did list the baseball team.  We made all the baseball games and practices, as well as a few lessons.

We have a list of day activities for days in between.  And, hopefully we’ll get some movies in on rainy days. (Thus far we’ve had only one.) We did get in some movies: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, all the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, Avengers Infinity War, and Skyfall, among others.

We traveled to DC.  We went for mini golf and bumper boats.

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I need/want to accomplish the following:

  • Finish up school/spring sports:
    • Dry all soccer cleats and put away
    • Clean all sports water bottles (3)
    • Empty back packs
    • Clean lunch boxes
    • Clean all school water bottles (8)
    • Check status of all items in preparation for next year
  • Keep the woods from encroaching on our yard
    • On one side we have a five leaf vine thing and the plant in these pictures.  This second plant looks sort of like ferns when kept trimmed, but it puts out creepers that wrap around trees, thicken, and eventually kill the trees.  I think I did a pretty good job keeping this side in check.  I may need to beat it back some more next year though. 
    • On the other side we have the same five leaf vine, raspberry plants, and a different sort of climber.  This one doesn’t strangle the trees, it just creates a net over them that doesn’t look very good.  There’s also poison ivy on this side, which I am very allergic to, so I’m less brave about tackling things.  I had someone come in and remove the bulk of this as my only option was to bag it for the yard waste truck.  They removed the volume of an entire commercial truck!  I sprayed the poison ivy a few times and did make some progress.  There’s much more to be done.  Unfortunately after their work was done, first we traveled, then it rained, then it was very hot.  Maybe next week I can get back to it. 
  • Throw out/donate/sell/etc. another 465 items.  This counting thing has been working well for me.  I had planned to do this again in the late fall, but there’s enough kicking around now that I’d just assume move it along.  I made it!  I went in chunks as shown.  I missed one item in these pictures, but clearly got most of them.  Clearly there’s a bunch for paper recycling.  The bottom picture is all fabric recycling.  The “5” will go to Goodwill.  The other two did hit the trash.  The lower picture is a mongrel collection that completed the 465 items.  I added my Pampers points so I can get rid of the packaging.  Everything else is broken in some fashion.

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  • Tag 465 items for the fall tag sale.  My rules for above were that it has to get out of the house within the time period.  Since the tag sale isn’t until the end of September these items don’t meet that criteria.  As a result there are many things that should be leaving our house that aren’t going anywhere yet.  But, tagging needs to happen sooner rather than later.  I’ve set aside a number of things, but haven’t actually tagged them yet.  I need to get moving though because the sale is at the end of September.
  • Prep for the 2018-2019 school year.
    • Purchase a new lunch box and water bottle (I actually found one in our collection of freebies that he’s happy with.) for the incoming kindergartner.
    • Complete preschool paperwork for the youngest.
    • Pay bus fee.
    • Purchase school supplies after the lists come out in mid-August.
    • Check fit of soccer cleats for four kids.  Upgrade as needed.
    • Check fit of baseball cleats for oldest.  Upgrade as needed.

 

2018 Summer Goals: Mid-season Update

09 Thursday Aug 2018

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I tried not to put too much on my summer list this year.  And, thus far I think things are going fairly well.

  • Scheduled activities:
    • Swimming lessons, baseball camp, and track camp are done.
    • Tech camp is almost done.
  • Rainy day movies turned into Heat & Air Quality Alert days.  We’ve had very few rainy days.  But, we did watch:
    • Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 1 & 2
    • Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
    • Skyfall
  • School/spring sports tasks are done because I did clean all the lunch boxes.
  • I’ve stayed on top of the upper side of the yard (with the five leaf vine and fern-like things).  I’m trying to pull out all of the vine and thus far I’ve gotten everything I’ve seen.  I can’t take out the fern-like plants because they’re coming from conservation land.  It takes a relatively quick weekly trimming to keep them at bay.  I’ve also continued to find poison ivy here which I spray when it’s not too windy.  But, I doubt I’ll get all of that this year.
  • On the downhill side, I’ve made some additional progress but its very slow so I’m bringing in reinforcements.  I’ve kept it in check, but it needs to be thoroughly taken back and it’s mostly our property (no conservation land) so this is more doable.  There’s more poison ivy here so that’s been getting in the way too.
  • Throw out/donate/sell/etc. another 465 items:
    • 69 items so far, officially.  I returned one item (left), I sold a baby gate (not pictured), I donated a piano bench (not pictured), and I used two socks to protect one child’s feet during a long pool day (not pictured).  The second picture shows a cardboard “sword” that had worn out, two Toys “R” Us cards, a shirt that no longer fits right to donate, and some blackout curtains that never really blocked enough light that will also be donated.  The socks with holes are self explanatory.  On the far right are a mix of fabrics for recyling: a crib sheet and pillowcase with holes, a cheap oven glove that arrived as an ad in the mail, a fabric cover for a new sheets set, a shirt that’s so yellow as to no longer be useable, kid’s jeans with holes in the knees, and a pile of underwear.
  • Tag 465 items for the fall sale.
    • I haven’t tagged anything yet, but I have set aside five boxes of things to tag and identified a few large items.  Not sure how many items this is.
  • Prep for the 2018-2019 school year.
    • Not much here.  I’ve started a list, but the school lists won’t arrive for at least another week.  And, I try to save shoe shopping for as close to the end of summer as possible.

 

The Month in Review: Weeks 28-30

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

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Again this is not quite a month, but hopefully next week I’ll give an update on the Summer Goals as a whole.

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I’ve mentioned many times that our summer has been dominated by baseball thus far.  That isn’t strictly true, but it feels that way because it is usually during dinner and because one might plan for an evening game only to have it rained out and rescheduled so you have to think about it again.

  • It’s been 20 days since my last update.  16 of those have included baseball in some form – game, practice, lesson, or camp!
  • Swimming lessons have continued multiple days a week for the middle four kids.  They wrap up this week.
  • We attended the summer company party.
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  • One child went to kid’s night at the pool.  I couldn’t interest the other two who were eligible.
  • I’ve continued pulling unwanted plants on the perimeter of our yard.
  • I’ve made some progress towards the toss & tag goals.  More on that next week.
  • We’ve watched a few movies and just generally tried to be unstructured and spontaneous.

 

 

2018 Summer Goals

19 Thursday Jul 2018

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I realize summer is about one third gone, but I have been working on some of these things and if I put them all in writing they’re just more likely to get done.  Certainly we will do more than this, these are more the big hitters.

I consciously tried to keep us less scheduled than last summer.  Last year a number of interesting options came up after we’d signed up for other things so we got over-scheduled.

On the schedule this summer:

  • Swimming lessons for the middle four will run most of the summer.  This also results in our spending lots of time at the pool.
  • Our oldest has one week of baseball camp.
  • The oldest three have one week of track camp.
  • Kids B-D have one week of tech camp.

And that’s it!  Should be very manageable.  We have a list of day activities for days in between.  And, hopefully we’ll get some movies in on rainy days. (Thus far we’ve had only one.)

I need/want to accomplish the following:

  • Finish up school/spring sports:
    • Dry all soccer cleats and put away
    • Clean all sports water bottles (3)
    • Empty back packs
    • Clean lunch boxes
    • Clean all school water bottles (8)
    • Check status of all items in preparation for next year
  • Keep the woods from encroaching on our yard
    • On one side we have a five leaf vine thing and the plant in these pictures.  This second plant looks sort of like ferns when kept trimmed, but it puts out creepers that wrap around trees, thicken, and eventually kill the trees.  The righthand picture shows some that have been cut.  You can see the marks on the tree where other bands have been.
    • On the other side we have the same five leaf vine, raspberry plants, and a different sort of climber.  This one doesn’t strangle the trees, it just creates a net over them that doesn’t look very good.  There’s also poison ivy on this side, which I am very allergic to, so I’m less brave about tackling things.

       

  • Throw out/donate/sell/etc. another 465 items.  This counting thing has been working well for me.  I had planned to do this again in the late fall, but there’s enough kicking around now that I’d just assume move it along.
  • Tag 465 items for the fall tag sale.  My rules for above were that it has to get out of the house within the time period.  Since the tag sale isn’t until the end of September these items don’t meet that criteria.  As a result there are many things that should be leaving our house that aren’t going anywhere yet.  But, tagging needs to happen sooner rather than later.
  • Prep for the 2018-2019 school year.
    • Purchase a new lunch box and water bottle for the incoming kindergartner.
    • Complete preschool paperwork for the youngest.
    • Pay bus fee.
    • Purchase school supplies after the lists come out in mid-August.
    • Check fit of soccer cleats for four kids.  Upgrade as needed.
    • Check fit of baseball cleats for oldest.  Upgrade as needed.

 

The Month in Review: Weeks 25-27, 2018

11 Wednesday Jul 2018

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Admittedly, this is not an entire month.  But, “weeks in review” didn’t sound quite right so here we are.

The chaos of the end of the school year has let go for the somewhat more relaxing pace of summer.  We still have things to do, but not as many (especially on the weekends), and not as early in the morning which just makes things seem more relaxed.

The last Review post went up on the last day of school.  Since then we’ve:

  • had 7 baseball practices plus 7 baseball games, all for kid A.
  • had four swimming lessons for each of four kids.
  • hosted one BBQ and attended two others.  This feels very summer-like.
  • attended one birthday party.
  • grilled ribs and baked beans.  Finished with s’mores.  Again, very summery.
  • spent four days with relatives.

I’ve been working on my project to take some of the plants attempting to encroach on our yard.  More about that on Thursday.