Garden Update May 2013

Wow, with all of the wild swings in weather that we’ve been having in the Midwest, it’s a wonder that anything is growing!  Even though it feels like I obsessively check my garden every day sometimes to find little change that I can see, when I compare pictures taken ten days apart, I can see that growth is happening.  Here is my lasagna bed, planted with spinach and a variety of lettuces, on April 26:

And here it is today, only ten days later:

The chive blossoms are about to open.  This year I’m ready to make chive blossom vinegar when they do.  You just pick the blossoms and soak them in white wine vinegar for a few weeks, and then you have this lovely lavender vinegar.

I also have a little patch of sugar snap peas growing:

I finally got most of the back plot planted with beets, mustard greens, Fordhook Giant and rainbow Swiss chard, Dragon Tongue Bush beans, Uzbek melon, butternut squash, and Musquee de Provence Pumpkin.  I’m also trying to mulch with straw this year to keep the soil a bit softer.

We also tilled a couple of new beds and hand dug another couple.  To the west of our shed, we have a strawberry patch.  It doesn’t get sunlight until 12 pm, but the sun is so strong here in Kansas and lasts in this spot until 7 or 8 pm that I’m hoping it will be enough.  Last year’s experiment in the front planter was short-lived.  Several of the strawberry roots I purchased from Walmart never grew, and in the end, we liked vincas there better, so this year I tried Aldi strawberry roots – 15 for $2.49.  I ended up getting 35 roots out of two packages, and so far, all of them are sprouting leaves, so let’s hope the growth continues!

We also are planting some flowers from seed in plots off the back and front of the house.  It looks pretty bare right now, but I want to show it so that I have something to compare to later on in the season.

Favorite Frugal Recipe: Homemade Sunflower Seed Butter

We are now approaching almost one year since we first figured out that my son had undiagnosed food sensitivities, including wheat, cow’s milk, peanuts, almonds, oranges, and high-sugar-content anything (including even bananas!)  For awhile, I felt like I it was enough to just survive, but lately I have felt like our diet, although it is relatively clean, is also relatively boring.

One of the ways I am trying to spruce up my kids’ diet is to plan out their breakfasts, snacks, and lunches in advance.  It’s a lot easier to provide variety if you can plan for it.  But having options requires having different foods to work with.  It was much simpler back in the days of string cheese, graham crackers, Goldfish, and PB&J on whole wheat.  Sigh.

One big hit around here, though, has been sunflower seed butter, or “Sunbutter.”  For an 18 oz jar at Walmart, you can find it for a mere $6-7 – not easy on our budget at all! Thankfully, we have been blessed to be on an Azure Standard route where we can find sunflower seeds for $2/lb.  After searching on the Internet, it seemed very doable to make my own sunflower seed butter with a food processer and a little oil added in.  The extra oil is necessary because sunflower seeds have a lower fat content than peanuts or almonds, so while peanuts or almonds will break down and release their oils after a few minutes of processing, sunflower seeds won’t.

Here’s what I do to make our own sunflower seed butter for about $2 per jar:

Sunflower Seed Butter

Ingredients

2 cups of roasted, unsalted sunflower seeds (salted is fine too, just omit the additional salt)

1/2 tsp. salt

1 Tbsp honey

2-4 Tbsp oil of choice (I like to use olive or canola)

Equipment:

Food processor

Directions:

1.  Process the sunflower seeds in the food processor for about 2-3 minutes until they look like a very crumbly sand.  They should look somewhat like this:

2.  Scrape down the sides and continue to process for another minute or two.

3.  Scrape down again, re-cover the processor, and while it is running, slowly drizzle in about 2 Tbsp. of the oil and 1 Tbsp. of honey.  At this point, it should begin to ball up a bit and liquify.  If you like your sunflower seed butter runnier, continue to add the oil bit by bit until the consistency is right.

Makes about 1 3/4 cups.

*Note:  The consistency will not be that of the kind you find in the stores, but it still works well for us as a peanut butter substitute.  We have also used it in this no-bake cookie recipe with wonderful results!

**UPDATE:  You may want to check out this video on YouTube as well.  I haven’t tried it yet, but the video shows how to make sunbutter without adding any oil – the trick is to process it for 10 minutes.  I guess I didn’t have enough patience, but will try it myself and see if it helps.

The real truth about creativity

“I hate the idea that cooking should be a celebration or a party . . . cooking is about putting food on the table night after night, and there isn’t anything glamorous about it.”

- Christopher Kimball, “Cooking Isn’t Creative, and It Isn’t Easy”, The New York Times, October 11, 2012

Tonight, with the kids in bed and my husband off to study for final exams, I did what any good wife would do – well, not really.  I watched the Voice.  But afterward, I decided to follow through on making my first basic quilt square.

Awhile ago, my mom sent me a lot of her craft supplies when she was getting ready to move, including a wonderful assortment of quilting fabric and books.  I tried to make a log cabin pillow, and while it is definitely useable, the lines got more and more, shall we say, abstract, as I moved from the center outwards.  I realized that crafts and projects can seem simple in your mind, but once you actually get into them, all of your character flaws come out and have a party.

One of my weaknesses is that I am not precise when it comes to doing things.  In life, it’s not always an issue, because I’m not a surgeon or an engineer, but when you have to do something like sew straight seams time after time and piece them together, if you’re lazy on getting the first few seams right, it will come back to haunt you pretty quickly.

So tonight, I looked through some notes my mom had from a beginner’s quilting class and decided to work through them slowly, when I have time.  The first assignment in her class was to make a nine patch square, and the instructor noted in the handouts that it was important to start there because you needed to practice straight seams and getting the 1/4 inch allowance right.

As I worked slowly and botched a few of the first squares, I realized that this was part of what Christopher Kimball alluded to in his quote, only in a different way.  It is easy to think that any creative endeavor is fun and magical, and that most of the work has to do with the good idea.

Mr. Kimball went on to say in the article that, “Cooking isn’t creative, and it isn’t easy. It’s serious, and it’s hard to do well, just as everything worth doing is damn hard.”

I agree with most of that statement, except for this:  I do think cooking is creative, but I just don’t think it’s easy, because I don’t think creativity is easy.  Creativity is more than a good feeling or a magical moment of inspiration – it is the willingness to be calm when inevitable failures arrive and to learn from them.  It’s pushing through your weaknesses and being patient with yourself as you improve your skills.