Independence Challenge - Week 33-34

Roast Beast (lamb) from Christmas Day, now starring in lamb curry.

It was a weird two weeks, with assorted holiday celebrations, so I have ended up rolling two weekly posts into one.

I am feeling conflicted about our celebration of Christmas, not sure if it was practical or self-indulgent. I may post more about those thoughts later, but for now I am going to just move on to what I am feeling more sure about.

I had some bloodwork done for a check-up on my thyroid disorder. When I got to the doctor's appointment, the test results were missing. After some tracking, it turned out that my vials of blood had not been labeled properly, and the safety protocol called for destroying them. So, I had to get the blood drawn again. Upside: not only did they cancel the charges for the original bloodwork, they gave me the second round for free. I got $200-300 worth of uninsured bloodwork for free. Merry Christmas to me! I am still pretty healthy in important ways - normal blood pressure, normal blood sugar, lipid profile not bad for a fat girl.

Planted: Nothing, but I worked on a garden plan for next year. Participated in a seed swap.

Harvested: Thyme, still usable under the snow.

It just might really taste like sunshine!

Preserved: Made 3 half-pint jars of Sunshine Jam with a pineapple and a lemon. Very nice marmalade-type texture for my first citrus preserves. Thanks for that recipe, Meadowlark! It makes a great holiday gift.

Now, I just have to perfect some biscuits to go with jam. DD12 got me two new steel half-sheet pans and silicone baking mats to go with them, so that biscuit-making might just have gotten easier. I can use a sheet plan as a work surface, to contain the flour and rolling-out mess, and maybe for kneading bread, too. Having only a 2'-square counter surface (that familiar yellow Formica in all my photos) has really been cramping my style.

Cooked: DH made pasta sauce for us while we were at Christmas Eve services. He made quiche for us Christmas morning. Lamb is DH's family tradition, so he also cooked a juicy roast leg-of-lamb for Christmas Day. He made a new cornbread and sausage dressing we didn't like - but that's what cooking experiments are for. DD16 made mac-n-cheese that we re-heated in slices for days. I guess part of my Christmas joy is that other people do lots of cooking!

I'm doing pretty well with my oatmeal challenge. I have been eating oatmeal 4 out of 5 days, skipping only the morning when I fasted for bloodwork, and Christmas morning. Made oatmeal for Mom, too, when she was here for a few days.

Tried my first batch of granola, full of nuts and dried fruit from a recipe in Vegetarian Times. Tastes good, and I put it in a jar for sprinkling on hot cereal or yogurt. It is too loose for eating out of hand. I need to experiment with recipes until I find a version that can be snacked on more easily, either by acting like trail mix, or being cut into granola bars. Note to self: no peanuts in the next batch - they taste weird with yogurt and oatmeal.

Stored: Whole almonds, sweet potatoes (only .49/lb). One of my mother's friends passed to us a frozen turkey she was given at work. Pork was on sale at the market stalls: ham hocks, a smoked ham end for soup, a lot of pork bones to freeze for later stock-making. Everyone buys pork for New Year's Day, so the butchers have cheap bones.

Visited Redner's Market for a few things: saltines, clementines and butter on sale, potato smilies for DD12. Found a new local brand of smoked kielbasa from Schuylkill County. At $3.50/lb it was a little more than my usual $2.29 store brand (probably private-label Hillshire). Not pastured, but it's a step in a better direction, a local product from a local biz. We like all sorts of sausage. A pound is a good amount for 3 adults with pasta, beans, etc. It has been an adventure looking for local stuff. The ideal would be sausage from pastured or game animals, nitrate free, from local producers. Oh, and affordable enough to buy bulk for my freezer. Dreaming!

Prepped: DH bought another cider bucket, a dozen re-usable ceramic-cap bottles, and a bag of corks for us to reuse wine bottles for our hard cider project.

We bought a sleeve each of plastic pint and quart deli containers to make our fridge and freezer storage work better. Our quaint collection of tupperware and yogurt tubs runs out regularly, and poor labeling results in waste. We hope the clear containers of uniform size will help with all that. I use jars a lot, too, but they don't stack safely.

Look at this old bread bag! When did bread cost 35 cents?

I picked up a big box of pearl cotton crochet string from Freecycle, along with a bag of embroidery hoops. Some of the spools of cotton where wrapped in plastic bags. One bag was a blue-printed bag for Harbison's Sandwich Bread from Texas. It had no UPC, no nutritional information or ingredient list, and a sticker for 35 cents! The girls immediately started braiding friendship bracelets and cell phone fobs.

We drained the top bucket into the bottom one with a rubber tube.

Managed: Down in the cellar, we moved the cider from the primary fermenting bucket to a secondary fermentation bucket. We tasted it, and it was more like apple wine than the bottled commercial cider we used to drink. We are not sure if we let it ferment too long, or if this is what real hard cider is like, or if it needs to mellow. I will do more research in the homebrew forums online. It sure has a kick! There is no doubt that we have produced an alcoholic beverage. We will let it mellow for a month, and start a new batch with brown sugar, to see how that affects the taste. We immediately got ideas about using it like cooking wine. A friend from church is saving empty wine bottles for me, which will make it easy to share. We will reserve the new reusable beer bottles for household consumption.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled: DD12 made a batch of colored play dough for three of her friends at school. That last-minute play dough recipe on Women Not Dabbling in Normal was a really timely reminder for me. DD12 said everyone was impressed that she knew how to make play dough. She also made bundles of cookies she baked herself, to take to teachers, wrapped in reused tissue paper and cotton string with handmade gift tags.

Local Food: Found a guy at the Fairgrounds Market that has pastured eggs from Lancaster County, but they are $4/dz. I only have room for 3-4 dozen eggs, max, but eggs are a big protein source for us and we can go through 1-2 doz a week, more during the holiday baking season. Since the summer producer market closed, I have been pressed to find a source that is not "too far to drive for eggs." I need to learn more about how long I can store fresh eggs, and how to freeze them, so I can make a larger purchase from a source I want to support.

I answered a Craigslist ad giving away a banana box full of hundreds of greeting cards. I send cards to church members who are sick or bereaved. But here's the really great part... it led me to a thrift shop I have not visited in a few years, since I thought it closed. The new owner has had it for about a year as a non-profit, taking donations and regularly giving free clothing to city folk that need it. She has regulars that she saves clothing for. We can work with her at our near-by church food pantry. It turns out she used to run a local organic warehouse, and still has connections with bulk food sources. I can't help by think I was meant to run into her as I plan to start a new bulk-buying group. She gave me some new sources for pastured meat (omnivore!), but even she drives to the Philly area to visit Trader Joe's and Whole Foods stores. She is savvy enough to use Craigslist and other online tools. And she runs a thrift shop! My favorite thing. It's my new place to take clothing donations. I am going to ask at church for people to gather the men's socks, belts, boots, and pants they need most.

Learned: Signed up through Meet-Up for a local entrepreneur support group that meets for a weekly diner breakfast. I plan to get help with the business and marketing plans for my rain barrel business. I know what I am supposed to do - I've had three small businesses that worked out pretty well - but it's too easy to skip the written-plan steps that help you later. I hope the group will help keep me on-task.

I volunteered to be an interviewer for a hunger project:, which I hope will both help policy-makers, and provide me with more personal knowledge about local food security:

Starting in January, Berks County will be participating for the first time in a nationwide study, Hunger in America 2009, sponsored by Feeding America, the national food bank network. The Greater Berks Food Bank and the United Way of Berks County are partnering to manage the research study in Berks County to get an accurate and more in depth understanding of how many people need help getting enough food to eat, what their circumstances are, and what parts of the county they come from. The research results will help in future planning efforts to help those who are hungry.Volunteered at the local United Way to be volunteer interviewer for a Hunger Survey to be performed at food pantries and shelters in our area. The goal is to gather statistics about the hungry in our community.

Gratuitous silverware photo: I like this old grapefruit spoon that
I keep in a jar of House Seasoning (salt, pepper, and garlic powder).

Independence Challenge - Week 30

Cider jugs lined up and waiting for us to sanitize the "primary fermentation" bucket. Note the elegant metal computer desk that has become a kitchen storage fixture. I hope to find a small corner cupboard or utility cupboard to replace that. I'd love to have storage for small appliances and the cast iron collection.

I got a cold the day after Thanksgiving, so I have not accomplished as much as I hoped over the holiday break. I have not met my goal of being ready to have my mom move in by the end of this month. Hopefully, by Christmas. It's hard to re-organize your whole house, while still carrying on the regular daily stuff.

We did have a nice holiday of cooking, visiting with family and friends, watching films, and relaxing at home. And we did mop up a couple of half-done projects. It's December 1st, so the kids will want to start our paper Christmas tree project this evening. It's kind of a reverse advent calendar; we add something every day until the star goes on top on Christmas Eve. I'll take photos as that develops.

Planted: Nothing.

Harvested: Cabbage and lemon thyme.

Preserved: Started a bucket of hard cider fermenting. I'll make a separate post about that with photos. The apples are not organic, but Weaver's uses an Integrated Pest Management program that minimizes spraying, and their cider is UV pasteurized, not heated, so it should be good for making hard cider.

I jarred up horseradish I grated from a root. Peeled it, grated and ground it in the food processor with some white vinegar. It made about a pint. DH leaned over and took a big whiff while it was still in the food processor - really cleared his stuffy nose! People say it will only keep its heat for a few months in the fridge. I want to plant some, and make it part of our late fall routine.

I made my own cranberry sauce. It was so easy; just a cup each of water and sugar, simmered with a bag of berries. It made about 2/3 of a quart jar that I am keeping in the fridge. Next time, I will jar it in pints and water-process it. Found a new cranberry sauce-filled muffin recipe to try this week.

I made a big mistake that cost me 3 quarts of really good chicken stock. I had once accidentally frozen a quart of stock in a jar, and it didn't break. So I thought, "Hmm, why not use my reusable jars, instead of plastic bags? I can just move jars right from freezer to fridge as needed." Wrong! All three were broken the third day, I guess after freezing really solidly. Wasted jars and stock. I made 6 quarts of new turkey stock. In quart freezer ziplocks, thank you.

Cooked: Wednesday night there was an interfaith Thanksgiving service, hosted this year at our church. There were Muslim, Buddhist, Baha'i, Hindu, Christian and Jewish guests. I baked a Parsnip Spice Cake. I know a bit about kosher cooking, but I know almost nothing about the Halal dietary laws that Muslims observe. Just enough not to use lard or alcohol-based vanilla extract. I made a label for the plate on the refreshment table, listing the ingredients - so, whether the guests were vegan, vegetarian, Jewish, or Muslim, they could decide for themselves whether to eat it.

It's not a new recipe, but I took an all-local Cornbread Pudding to the family Thanksgiving feast in Philadelphia. When you are not the host, you don't get leftovers, so on Sunday night I roasted some turkey parts and made some pie, so I could have leftover turkey sandwiches and pie. And I had more pie and turkey sandwiches today. :-)

DH caught me roasting a butternut. 'What's that?" "Pumpkin," I said. 'No it's not. It's squash! I don't like squash." "You like pumpkin pie, and pumpkin is a squash, and most pie pumpkins look more like this than jack-o-lanterns - you just never see pumpkin except out of a can." "Still. Not eating it." Which is how I ended up baking sweet potato pie. I'll make pumpkin muffins with the other orange stuff. ~sigh~

Stocked: Hair conditioner, copy paper, packing tape. Parsnips and unshelled walnuts.

I got sucked into Wal-Mart, originally in search of a $13.95 haircut. I already go there once a month to get a $4 prescription refill. But once you are in, the prices are mesmerizing, and you end up buying conditioner, copy paper, and tape. They had sweet potatoes for $.38/lb, green beans for .99/lb, and .68 sleeves of celery. I see how people end up shopping there, even as they mutter, "I hate Wal-Mart." You hate that you want to buy things. I'm so torn - Wal-mart is our nation's largest retailer, and they are making an effort to sell local and organic products. Shouldn't I try to support that? But the organization as a whole is the most non-local thing in the world. When I get a new Rx, I will switch to Target, who I hear has a similar $4 program. If I don't go in there, I won't have to deal with the ethical conflicts.

Friday, I bought almost nothing on "Buy Nothing Day." Just two matinee film tickets and a bag of Swedish Fish, for my mother and I to see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Holocaust-themed film are never feel-good, and this one was immediately followed by a ladies' rest room full of weepiness, but it was good to go to the movies with her.

On Saturday, a friend of DD15's came to visit for the afternoon. They live in Maryland, but were doing a holiday road trip in our area, and the kids wanted to go to a movie and hang out. It was all arranged via text message and Facebook. I had never met his mother, but I couldn't just let her wander around unhosted, so DH and I took her to lunch, and then she came with me to Weaver's Orchard. I bought half a bushel of our favorite Honeycrisp apples for eating and 7 gallons of cider (5 for the bucket and 2 for drinking), as well as Crispins and McIntoshes to make applesauce, and some other fresh veggies. My new friend also bought apples and veg. Her son has a severe peanut allergy, so she is very mindful about food. When we came back to Reading, we toured the GoggleWorks art center while we waited for the kids. Then we showed them the nightime view from the Pagoda. She told me about a big book sale event in Annapolis, and I told her about our AAUW book sale. I don't know if DD15 and this boy will date, but at least I made a new mom-friend!

Prepped: DH got space blankets for the bug-out bags; they came in box of 12. He also bought forearm lifting straps for our general equipment supply. These straps allow you to use the leverage of your whole forearm to lift things, instead of relying on your hand strength to grasp. That's a great tool for people with hand disabilities like my arthritis. He also bought us a boning knife and a new pepper grinder - I looked for used items, but these are really essential cooking equipment for us, and it was worth buying new to get exactly what we needed. The knife really made a huge difference in meat carving.

He also got four packages of military-style emergency rations for our bug-out bags. They have a five-year shelf life, so I have to figure out how to remember to rotate those. Ugh - we may have to eat them in five years. Each vacuum-sealed brick has six 400-calorie portions of "pleasant lemon vanilla flavor" stuff. Maybe I could put cubes of it on the coffee hour snack table at church - hee hee!

Managed: The sweet potatoes in the cellar are getting shriveled. I have not been using them fast enough. I think I better roast them all and freeze chunks or puree. The squash look fine. I just roasted the first one. The white potatoes are slightly shriveled, but not bad, and we use them regularly. The onions look good. I have not gotten the cellar thermometers I meant to get, and we have been using the clothes dryer for towels, sheets, and jeans - bottom line, I think the cellar has not been as cold and damp as needed for good root storage. The local harvest comes in long before the cellar is chilly enough.

I've been eating the little bits out of the freezer - four pierogies, a lone burrito, that kind of thing that accumulates in the upstairs freezer. I must find time to really re-organize it this week. The stuff in the front comes and goes briskly, but I can't remember what is in the back.

Funny how many things get done here by people wearing
pajama pants. I don't think the worms noticed.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled: We finally got the worm bin started. I will make a separate blog post for that. The poor worms hibernated in the fridge for more than a month. They were still alive, and I hope they warm up and start making little worms very quickly.

Family/Local: Doing some research to prepare for the food security seminar for youth, and the food discussion group at our church, both of which will start in January. People are definitely interested. Heard about a Three-Bowl Ritual that focuses on food waste awareness - might be good for a group activity.

Learned: Signed up for a December 2nd webinar about Small Farm Incubators. It will be good for me to better understand the obstacles to small farm operations, if I eventually want to build a buying co-op with local suppliers.

Library: I'll put this in the "library" section since it contributes to our journaling and documenting. DH got a fancy new Canon camera. His aunts wanted to give him a graduation gift in May, and they finally agreed on a camera. DH is a writer, and might be able to sell more freelance work if he can also supply photos. Our older Kodak EasyShare DX7590 camera now officially becomes "mine" and I plan to find a macro lens for it on eBay. It's hard to take garden and food pix without a close-up lens.