Kitchen Reno: One Week Down

It's officially been one week (and a day, by the time I'm getting to post) in to our kitchen renovation. Over the weekend, Jamey ordered the exhaust hood and started relocating the duct work. The original kitchen didn't really have a hood, but instead a built in fan with a shelf over it. New plans call for a stainless decorative hood (no cupboards on top).

Today the sheetrock crew comes in and starts repairing. The big mess will get bigger. We left the plastic coverings over everything in the family room. I'm afraid to go home tonight. Elway is lit because he's locked up in the laundry room (the kitchen is his usual day-time hang out spot).

Last night Willa and I made no-bake cookies. They never actually formed balls (we're eating them with spoons), but they're delicious.

Here's what we used:

1 cup oats
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup honey
1 cup coconut
1/3 cup ground flax
3/4 cup mini-chocolate chips

Mixed it all together, dished it into a bowl (like chunky granola) and had it with a glass of milk as our night-time snack. Delicious!

Kitchen Reno Day 3

The $19.99 single burner hot plate is being put to good use. I bought it at Target, mainly because I couldn't think of a way to prepare oatmeal every morning without a stove. Both Jamey and Cam eat it daily. I buy oatmeal in 25lb bags through the North Linn Food Buying Club, and I didn't want to switch over to instant packets; mainly because I'm sure Cam would get hooked on the sugar!

We've enjoyed our oatmeal for two days, and last night, for the UNO game, we even made popcorn on this little contraption. It's much slower to heat than the gas stove we're used to, but it's doing it's job. Willa has requested ownership of the hotplate after the reno. She has visions of getting electricity in the yet-to-be-completed tree house/fort structure. She thinks after hooking her crib up with electricity, she'll be able to put in a mini-kitchen, so she and Will B. can experiment with snack recipes. I'm sure a mini-fridge request will also be in the works.

Kitchen Reno Day 2

I found myself turning around looking for a non-existent towel hanging on the non-existent oven door handle. Silverware is on the dining room table, food is in the pantry, microwave is in the family room. Craziness.

We had toasted bagels for breakfast, grilled cheeses on the George Foreman for lunch and salad with crock-pot veggie lasagna for dinner. Didn't even miss the stove or oven!

Kitchen Reno Day 1

Deconstruction Day.

The day I've been anticipating and dreading. Today all upper cabinets came out. Good-bye to the double ovens, the cook top and convection oven and the thing most likely to be a trash compactor (complete with trash from former owners). So long to the bright yellow and blue Mexican tiles. 

Before demolition this morning I baked a loaf of banana bread and browned some sausage for crock pot pizza soup; my final farewell to the stove top and oven. 

With the help of JP and Larisa, we knocked out our work in about 4 and a half hours. Not bad, considering it included three trips to Habitat for Humanity Restore in good ol' Rusty but Trusty. 

For the next six weeks (or so) we will rely on a grill, an old displaced microwave, our crock pot and rice cooker. I think we'll head out to look for a hot plate tonight. I can't figure out how we can do with out our daily morning oat meal!

Crock Pot Pizza Soup

2 cans of pizza sauce

3-4 cups of chicken broth

chopped onion & green pepper 

mushrooms (sometimes I saute in EVOO before, sometimes I just throw them in)

Italian sausage, browned

Put everything in to a crock pot. Cook on high 4-5 hours or on low 6-7 hours. To serve, put a handful of croutons in the bottom of a soup bowl, ladle in some soup, top with mozzeralla/parmesan cheese mix. Pizza in a bowl!

 

Slippy Slides & Spinach

On Memorial Day we planted what I think will be our last plantings (until fall plantings). Here's the tally of things we've planted:

• several varieties of lettuces - we've been enjoying them for close to two weeks!
• spinach: came in spotty, but it seems we're getting a decent harvest
• peas: dismal failure = replaced with more beans
• pole beans
• sweet corn (about 7 inches tall already!)
• cucumbers
• squash
• rainbow chard
• cantalope
• brussel sprouts (had to try them! they're so pretty)
• popcorn (not coming in too well at all)
• tomatoes
• onions (we lost quite a few and had to do a replacement planting)
• carrots (another dismal failure: we did a second planting on Monday with some new advice and hopefully better results)
• peppers
• basil
• red & white striped beets
• sweet potatoes
• regular potatoes: they're HUGE!

It's been so rewarding to eat our lettuce and to share it with our friends & neighbors! I can't wait for the rest of the harvests.

The other addition to the garden scene is the slippy slide. For a mere $40 at Target, this thing is going to provide endless summer entertainment. Will & Willa already had a 'fail or fun' game going on and Cam digs it, too.  To add to the water fun, Ev got out an old water tank. This tank was the original "pool party" for Larisa and her siblings when they were growing up on the farm. Now it's fun for another generation: the Fu-lympics were a featured event in our afternoon gardening session. If only I'd gotten in a few laps to train for the Pig this weekend!

Gardening tip of the day: We are putting crushed egg shells around and in the tomato and pepper plants. Both of these are fast growing plants that strip vital nutrients from the soil. The calcium carbonite in the egg shell is one of the nutrients the plants need.

30 Day Challenge

In my 'other life' at Coe, I'm leading a summer development program called "13 Things to Think About."
The first post in the program introduced a quick TEDtalk by Matt Cutts, Google Engineer. Matt talks about trying something for just 30 days. Check out Matt's short talk HERE.  My 30 day challenge for May is to stop eating after 8:30PM.

On the surface, I thought this sounded sort of cheap for a 30-day challenge. But when I stop to think about it, I think it's a good starter for me. It's about improving my over all health. It may seem like a small thing, but this will be a big deal for me. I'm a terrible snacker. I snack when I'm not even hungry. The kids have a "night-time" snack between 7:30-8, and I snack along. Then I tend to have another snack close to my 'night-time' between 10-11. Sometimes, in my moments of insomnia, I'll snack around 2am.  I've read many times that it's good to give your digestive system a nice long break every night. Mine rarely gets any break!

I'm certainly not off to an impressive start (I am committing to this on May 7 - so I'll have to carry on my 30 days in to June!). No more night-snacks - starting NOW.

Waiting for Rainbows

Another beautiful Sunday on the farm. We've been collecting newspaper and grass clippings in an attempt to mulch down our rows and avoid so much weeding. I think we need bigger yards!

In addition to mulching, we did a bit more planting. More carrots and rainbow swiss chard went in tonight. It was so exciting to see itty bitty green leaves popping up through the soil! The beginnings of our delicious salads. Can't wait till these are big enough to cut off and put on our plates!

Will and Willa took over watering duties: rather than fill buckets and carry them to the far side of the plot, they decided to fill the wheel barrow, wheel it over, and fill the buckets from that. It may have sounded good in theory, but I'm not sure it was so great in practice. They did succeed in getting themselves completely soaked. We're still looking for the best solution to watering: the far side of our plot is too far away from the spout to run a hose. Unfortunately, this is where we planted things that like a lot of water.

We topped off the evening on the porch again. Last weekend was a fishing weekend for Jamey. He came back with lots of fresh walleye, so tonight was fish taco night. Larisa and I fried up the fish, squashed a couple of avocados and opened up a bottle of Riesling. It was also Iowa Valley Food Coop delivery week, so I had some fresh spinach and greens, but this meal would have been SO much better with our own fresh greens and cilantro! Soon!

Let the Growing Begin!

This year, instead of renewing our CSA membership, we're going on our own! Well, not on our own, exactly - just without an expert! We're doing a collective garden with our friends, the Bickels and our new friends the Rogers'. Larisa's parents have two acres just outside of town. They're no longer interested in maintaining their large garden themselves, so we're taking over.

So far - SO FUN!

March 30: it only took us about 30 minutes on a sunny Sunday afternoon to plant three long rows of potatoes. It's a week earlier than suggested, but we just couldn't wait to dig in.

April 6: Jamie, Larisa and I, along with our offspring headed out on the school's early out day to plant salad greens, spinach, peas and onions. We're planting in first-year garden area, so there were some clumps to contend with, but we rocked that dirt!

Unfortunately Jamie and her kids had to leave, but the other Jamey (with a Y) and Cam and J.P. showed up shortly after. Terri prepared us a delicious post-planting dinner: homemade pizza pockets, from-scratch sauce and an awesome salad. Larisa pulled out a bottle of wine and some interesting beers and we sat on the porch and feasted. It was such a beautiful evening - good food, good friends, good conversation, (mostly) good kids - I'm looking forward to more of these (and eventually feasting on our own bounty!).

FreezeFest 2012

Last year, our friends, the Bickels had their first 'FreezeFest'. They decided the month of January was a good time to reflect on their spending habits as a family. During the month of January, 2011 the Bickel family put a self-imposed no-spending restriction in place. They liked the results, and this year asked if we'd wanted to join them. Sure! We decided FreezeFest 2012 would run from February 1-29. What does this mean for the Family Stro?

• no going out to eat. PERIOD. No after-church brunches, no Friday-night Tomaso pizza feasts, no Brewed Awakening coffee stops after Saturday morning basketball games
• no RedBox or Family video rentals, no early-show movie theatre trips
• no entertaining ourselves at Barnes & Noble with treats and a few books, or picking up the next chapter books for Willa and cooking mags for me at 1/2 Priced Books
• no lunches out or on the way back from the gym for Jamey
• no stops by Brewed for Monday Mocha (or Tuesday's latte or Wednesday's latte...) for me

We're in our third week and we've done pretty well. By far, it's had the most impact on Jamey and me. Jamey was typically eating out or picking up lunch 3-5 times a week prior to FreezeFest. A tray of sushi from the big HyVee or a Blimpie's sub on the way back from a noon workout were very common. Taco Tuesday at El Super Burrito was a standing date. For me, my theory of just one or maybe two coffees a week had lately turned into four-ish, or maybe five or six counting weekends. And by coffees, I mean the $4 cups consisting of a little coffee steamed up with lots of frothy milk, whip and syrups. 

Willa has expressed her dislike of Freezefest on several occasions, mostly when we've had to remind her why we aren't going out for pancakes after church or coffee after basketball. What I hope we're instilling in her with this little exercise (and ourselves) is that going out is a special treat and privilege. We'd become reliant on ordering a pizza or picking up meals from China Express on a night that seemed too busy or too tired to come up with our own meal. Now we're excited to remind ourselves what a nice treat it is to head to Tomaso's for a Detroit Deep Dish Mombo Combo.

Less Impact Person

Last night I watched the "No Impact Man" documentary. No Impact Man is Collin Beavin, a writer living in New York City, who decided to try to have zero net impact on the environment for one whole year. He kept a blog, which eventually turned into a book and a movie. It was his intention to write the book from the beginning - environmentalist critics opined that publicity for a book might trump his quest for clean living.

Whatever your outlook - the experiment was fascinating. Mostly, because it also involved his wife and toddler daughter. I could never go that far, but it's making me think. And that's exactly what Collin was hoping to get out of this (at least from the environmental altruistic side of things!). So I'm thinking about my baby steps to "less impact person".

Already we've switched out the light bulbs, use the programmable thermostat and have water aerators on the shower and the faucets. I use re-usable grocery bags (mostly...but I can get better at keeping some in the car for those unexpected stops).

As I was pondering my next steps, I realized just how often I get coffee in disposable cups. I'm so sad to admit, but I rarely carry my mug with me. If I get coffee AFTER I get to my office, I always use my own cup. But Brewed Awakenings is between where I park and my office. The cup is usually in my office.

So, my vows toward less impact:

• no more coffee in disposable cups - my own mug or no coffee
• less reliance on paper towels and more integration of cloth napkins
• begin searching for a tandem bike for Willa and I to commute to school/campus this spring
• as soon as the ground thaws, put up the collapsible clothes line that's been taking up space in the garage since last July

Baby steps. Baby steps.

Summer of Food

Two books are pulling me in this week:

Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution" (acquired from the Cedar Rapids Public Library) and "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver.

These books are working in tandem, challenging my assumptions and thoughts about food. Even what I though was good food. In an early chapter of "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" Kingsolver says we (Americans) "like the idea of vegetables" more than the actual things themselves. I find myself reading this book late into the night, and thinking about ways that I can adjust my families food consumption to follow more natural growing seasons. I am also starting to figure out how I can get more foods that are locally produced. Obviously farmer's market has gone a long way in our raw foods intake: I've totally eliminated fresh vegetables from the grocery store list. Now I'm working on fruits. We love fruit. Sure, I'm starting to get the early Muskatine melons, and local blueberries and soon we'll start seeing apples. But it's hard to resist the bananas, grapes, avocados and pears that I know travels thousands of miles to reach the Target grocer.

I'm on my second recipe in "Food Revolution". I think I'll need to buy this book myself. I want to actually get into the revolution - to get the two friends to try a recipe (who will them get two other friends...etc until we've changed the world! eradicated childhood obesity and diabetes! eliminated HFCS from our daily intake! put MacDonald's out of business!)

As for the recipes; two thumbs up for the two I've tried. We had delicious banana-cinnamon oatmeal for breakfast a few days ago. Quaker Oats is only a few miles from my house, but I love that my oatmeal contained five ingredients, all recognizable in that natural state, rather than the 26 ingredients listed on the back of my box of pre-flavored oatmeal packages.

We also had meatballs & sauce (I choose to serve on rolls with fresh mozzarella made at Acoustic Farms in Springville, IA). The meatballs were delicious - made from a combo of ground sirloin (red meat is a rare ingredient in my house) and ground pork (also picked up at farmer's market). It was the marinara that blew us away though. We have become entirely too reliant on marinara, and her relatives, from jars. While this recipe still relied on canned tomatoes, it tasted so fresh and delicious that I might not be able to open a jar for a long, long time. And since it was relatively quick, I hope I don't actually open a jar for a long, long time. I love that I walked out to my herb patch and plucked out some basil, oregano and parsley, walked back to my kitchen, rinsed the leaves and tossed them into saute. Onions and garlic were picked up at market. I made enough to keep a bit out for tonight's menu (flat bread pizza) and to freeze about a pint & a half for future use.

I haven't decided what to try next, but I'll post pictures. The marinara, with it's purple onions, red tomatoes and bright green basil was not only delicious, but beautiful!

No More Boboli

As it turns out, our Spring Break's never align. Coe takes spring break early, because we have a May Term, meaning we end our Spring Term during the first week of May, then have a three-and-a-half week short term (usually reserved for travel abroad courses). Summit, on the other hand, follows the CR Public Calendar, and since their school year doesn't end until mid-June, spring break is later.

So, while trying to balance work, Jamey and I must also balance Willa. This year Jamey and Willa road tripped to Colome, SD to visit Jamey's family for a few days. Before they left, however, we had plenty of fun in Cedar Rapids. First, Willa attended an art camp at "The Shop Next Door" - she loved it! Watch their site - Heather says an art class for "mother's day creations" is in the works and will be scheduled for May 1.

My favorite activity with Willa, though, was a flat bread making class we attended at Prairie Woods. To be honest, I almost skipped it. We'd been out at Wikiup Hill with the Bickels, hiking all afternoon. It had been cool and windy and we hiked quite a ways. We got home at 5pm, and the class started at 6, plus it was a three hour class (all standing) and Willa usually goes to bed by 8pm. But she was so excited for it, and insisted she wasn't tired. And, I thought it would be fun...turns out I was right!

Our instructor teaches at the Kirkwood Culinary Arts Program and also did breads for Blends in downtown Cedar Rapids (before it closed). She was incredible! And best, she was great with Willa and Reddin, the eight-year-old attending with his mom. We made two foccocias, two types of pizza crusts, and five or six varieties of crackers. All were delicious! I even sampled the crackers with sauerkraut, and while I will never ever make these myself, I'll admit that there weren't awful (can't quite say 'good').

Now, I'm convinced I need a big mixer. I'm sure my breads could be just as good as Jean's if only I had the big mixer. In the meantime, though, I'll keep trying and keep experimenting. And no more packaged Boboli crusts at our house!

Preparing

Yesterday was one of the CR Downtown Farmer's Markets. CR does these on the first Saturday of the month, but of course we missed a few due to the floods.

With the weather starting to turn, I've been thinking about 'putting up' some vegetables. So at market, we bought extra sweet corn, green beans and peppers. This stash, along with a bag of tomatoes and peppers from Mike, seemed like a good start. I chopped green beans that we'll use for soups; I sliced up hot peppers for chili, I made a little tomato sauce from finely chopped green peppers, tomatoes and basil from my pot out back, and then cut corn from the cob and bagged it. If the weather holds, maybe I'll do some more of the tomato sauce.

I love the feeling of having these things stored away for the winter. I reminds me of Ma and Pa and the girls filling the attic in the Big Woods of Wisconsin full of onions, pumpkins, squash and potatoes. It also reminds me of summers on my grandparents farm. They would plant several acres of sweet corn; on the perfect weekend, aunts and uncles and cousins would join together to put up the corn. Your job depended upon your age and gender: usually the men and younger kids were in the fields picking corn and then sitting on the back of Grampa's old yellow pick up shucking corn. The women and older kids would be in the kitchen, blanching corn, cutting it from the cobs and filling bags. I enjoyed the outdoor work the best. By the end of the day, we'd leave with coolers full of bags of bright, beautiful corn for our freezer. I don't think I ate corn that came from anywhere other than my grandma and grandpa's fields until sometime in high school. 

Putting up my own corn, reminded me of the fun and family togetherness of those days doing corn on the farm.