Taking a break!

Dearest Readers,

I am taking about a week's break from the blog.  There will be a ton of traveling and holiday gatherings... and let's be honest, you don't have time to read this either.  ;)

Hope Yule have a fun time this week!

Puppy PMS

Stormy has been acting a little strangely for 2 weeks.

At bedtime (10-11pm), we usually say "get your dragon!" and Stormy will pick it up and head to bed with us.  Now, she grabs her dragon between 9:30 and 10pm, and wanders the house crying and staring at us until we follow her to bed.  Then when we try to go to sleep, she will grunt and huff and flop dramatically back and forth on the bed for up to a half hour.  She's sleeping more, showing more frustration, and is a lot more cuddly... does she have PMS?

I've been watching for it, but she hasn't started her first heat yet.  Her mom started around 1 year old, so Stormy is due to begin it now.  In the meantime, I guess we must just endure her 10pm whining.

Dragon in mouth, she sneaks up behind you and stares. 

1st Day of Retirement

Happy "retirement" to me!

Well, I do still have one day on Jan 6th, but it is a low-stress party day, so I am not truly counting it.

As this day has come closer a feeling has grown, and I had a difficult time figuring out a label for this feeling.  This week I realized that it is the feeling of "starting a life adventure with Ryan."  It is really similar to the countdown to getting married, the search for the right puppy, planning for the move into our new house.

It still doesn't feel real... it feels more like an extended vacation.

Let the adventures begin!

I have lists upon lists of the projects I want to work on, basically a giant business plan for the next few years of life.  But before I start Phase 1 of this plan, I have to complete Phase 0.  Phase 0 includes things like complete relaxation, catching up on sleep, picking up a morning exercise habit, visiting family, and enjoying the holidays. 

On that note, I will spend the day walking around the local downtown area with my mom, and visiting a new friend who has a shop down there.  The friend has a style similar to my planned Etsy store, so it was interesting to see prices for the different items.

Our first green salad!

It was already getting summery by the time our backyard renovation was complete this year, so I didn't have much luck growing greens.

However, the beds are now full of 'em... mustard, radish, flat-leaf parsley, bull's blood beet, kale, chard, garlic.  All appear to be able to survive temps down to 22 degrees F.  I was finally able to make a huge salad out of all the greens.

Those bull's blood beet tops are so pretty!  My favorite "green" so far.

And then, tossed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar....

Mmmmmmm.

It was a pretty zesty salad... like one of those bagged herb salads with all the bland "filler lettuce" removed.  SO GOOD.

Is there anything still surviving in your garden?

Stormy's 1st Birthday

1 year already?

What to get for a puppy who already has way too many toys?  A meaty raw mammoth bone!

Stormy is completely in love with devouring her bone.

It is hard to believe that she's already a year old, since it seems like just yesterday she was small enough to use a throw pillow as a bed.

Last of the Summer Harvest

When the forecast said there was to be a hard frost, I decided to harvest a bunch of herbs and the rest of the tomatoes.

An herb tree?

The top is marjoram, a gallon o' green tomatoes, mint.  The bottom is the basil... didn't realize there was so much of it in the garden, since it was hidden under the tomato jungle!

I ended up drying the herbs, since our freezer space is tight.  The marjoram goes really, really well in turkey soup.

The tomatoes are lounging on the countertop, and I'm hoping they'll ripen!  If not, I suppose it is time to learn how to make fried green tomatoes or green tomato relish.

Do you have a favorite recipe for green tomatoes to share?

Spare the Freaking Air

It's turning into a Spare the Air month.

It's been a Winter Spare the Air day practically every day over the past few weeks... and definitely every day that I have Ryan home.  Once it got super cold (the coldest it's been in this area for years, I hear), and optimal for a nice toasty fire, we were ironically not allowed to actually use the fireplace.  As of today we've had 10 Spare the Air days in a row... it broke the consecutive-days record at 5 in a row last week.

This is incredibly frustrating for a lot of reasons that I shouldn't go into because I will rant for several paragraphs.  The most important reason is that fire has always felt pretty spiritual to me, and it sets the tone for the winter holidays.  Now that there's a fire goddess in my life, it IS spiritual.  I just want a freaking fire in the fireplace while I am relaxing at home with my husband and enjoying the season.

And so, I must find creative alternatives.

I removed the bulb from my salt lamp and replaced it with a flickering one that mimics a candle.  All the paper links I remove from the chain go into the fireplace, and the salt lamp is nestled amongst them.  When you turn it on, the light glows and flickers warmly, and the curls of paper could possibly be branches.  A space heater adds to the effect... as does a giant pile of make-believe.

Complete desperation.

There are also flickering fake candles about the house... but I definitely need more!  My asthma can't really handle real candles 24/7, but the warm glow makes my spirit happy, so I'm thankful for the technology.

The paper chain is symbolic of the last of my ties to the university.  Part of the plan is to burn it on the night of December 21st, which is my first day of "retirement" and also Yule Eve.  Here's hoping the air quality is better by then!

Reducing the food budget in 2014

It would be silly of me to reduce food costs only through buying dry goods in bulk.  Having wiggle room in the budget is nice, so these are things I have been brainstorming as potential ways to save some cash:

Find alternate, cheaper sources for meat and plants.

• Buy part of an animal directly from a farmer, freeze for the year, if less than $2/lb.
• Join a CSA or visit farmer's markets to find veggies cheaper than $1/lb.
• Raise Japanese (Coturnix) quail?  It isn't really that cost-effective just for organic meat, but eggs are 40% cheaper, and we can go through a LOT of eggs.  (Plus free manure to compost for the garden.)

Eliminate waste.  I am ashamed to admit, food waste happens in my house!  When both people in the household are working 12-hour (or more) days, it means a lot of veggies and leftovers go bad because we are just too darn tired to care.  This is probably where we could most easily/quickly save money.

• Invest in a deep freezer, buy fresh ingredients in bulk when on sale.
• Keep a bag of veggie bits (old stuff, cut-off ends of onions, etc) for use in stocks.
• Learn the art of the casserole, to use up leftovers.
• Use all parts of the animal.  We've been experimenting with making chicken bone broth lately, which is delicious.  The puppy also loves treats made out of the organs, and a tiny bit of bone broth sprinkled over her food really whets the appetite (for this reason I leave onions/garlic out of the base broth).
• Can, freeze, or dehydrate all extras.

Max out the garden to the extreme.  My ambitious goal is to grow half our fruit/veggie needs for the year, 456lbs.  So far with amazing neglect the garden (4 tomato plants, 1 mint, 1 oregano, 4 chards, and 1 papaya squash) has produced 119lbs of veggies in up through August 2013.  It is probably just dumb luck, but since I'd pay $1/pound for non-organic stuff, this is pretty awesome. 

• Use 5 times the space as in 2013, including new garden beds, currently-unused areas, and indoor and outdoor pots.  They say you can get 0.5lb per square foot usually, or 1lb with really intensive gardening.  Currently we have about 200 square feet of nice beds recently put in, and only 70sqft of it was fully used.  If I truly get my act together, we will have another 200 square feet prepared for next spring.  It is theoretically doable!
• Succession planting = more harvests per year
• Square-foot gardening = more plants per garden bed
• Preserving extras:  canning, dehydrating, freezing for later in the year (so far I have 4 gallons of tomatoes canned, and 1 gallon in sun-dried form!)
• Long term goals, such as planting fruit trees/bushes:  fig, pomegranate, lemon, blackberry.

If 2013 is any indication of harvests to come, 2014 should be plentiful.
(The bucket pictured above holds 2 gallons.)

Make our own beer, cider, and mead.  We do this on a very small scale (about 10 gallons a year, mostly used for gifts).  We already have the equipment and carboys, so the only cost would be ingredients.  This will cut our alcohol costs by half... and the husband does like the expensive stuff.  ;)

Compost.  Random newspapers and inedible foods go in here.  I've been doing this for a few years with a small, neglected vermiculture tub in the kitchen.  Recently I've been more attentive to the tub, and the worms are beginning to thrive again.  Free fertilizer = more free garden food.

Eat less.  Easier than it sounds!  Even though I have lost 95 pounds so far, I have been stuck at the same weight for a while and could stand to lose at least another 20.  Maybe this will give me the little push I need.

Make coffee and breakfast for my husband (and myself) every morning.  At $0.26 per 8oz cup for coffee, this is a much cheaper option than stopping by Peet's.  For the cost of the protein powder we currently drink for breakfast, I could make giant omelettes filled with veggies and bacon.

Go non-organic with oil and animal products.  This would save about $1 per day per person ($730/year).  I don't want to do it if we don't have to!  When I was on a small income during/after college and trying to pay off school loans quickly, I practically lived off of Bisquick, fake sliced cheese, frozen high-carb veggies, eggs, bagels, Mountain Dew, and coffee, on about the same budget.  This time around, it is going to be SO much healthier.

How else would you create more wiggle-room in the budget?

The Short Chain

Egads, it's been a while without blogging!  The last week and a half has been a little busy.  Okay, a LOT busy. 

I have just a week left until "retirement," and a week left to prepare for Yule/Christmas.  I've been busting my butt to get everything done in time, with a priority given to work, and it looks like everything's on schedule. 

 Wow, I can't believe the end is nearly here... my paper chain is so short!!  It used to touch the floor.

Things I neglected to blog about (but probably will in the near future!):

Update on Hard Freeze

To my delight, tonight I only found ONE branch on the parsley that was spoiled.  The mustard greens, kale, garlic, beets, radishes, chard, and remaining parsley are doing just fine.   Not sure how leaves can go from a crushed dark green back to normal, but it's probably best not to ask too many questions.

I covered most of the plants with extra Christmas tree boughs since I don't have any light blankets to donate... it's supposed to get even colder tonight, down to 23F.  The sprinkler system has also been turned off for the season.   I've never done a fall crop before, so I have no idea if covering is actually necessary at this temperature.

In any case, I'm just glad I got to harvest some more herbs and eat our first big from-the-garden salad.

Hard Freeze

Uh oh.  There was supposed to be a hard frost last night, so I harvested a bunch of stuff, but left the plants that could withstand a hard frost.  Didn't think about the sprinklers going on and coating everything with a thick layer of ice.

I'll update soon about what was salvageable.

A Year of Fruit

I would love to have fruit available year-round.

Ideally, we'd have plants that are either bushes or trees so that they only require one planting and then mostly take care of themselves.  This is the first time we've had land of our own, so planting now will give us years of tastiness.

Last night I sat down and worked out what we currently have growing and their respective California harvest seasons, so we'd know what else to plant.  So far only the plums and apple give a lot of produce, though the landscapers trimmed them intensely so they are currently recovering and don't have a lot of fruit this year.  It'll be 3 years before everything is mature and at full production. 

 Our first burgundy plum begins to ripen, June 2013.

Here are the general harvest times of our fruit:

• Lemon, improved meyer:  January - May (though I was told that in our area it is nearly ever-bearing)
• Blueberries:  May - July
• Plum, burgundy:  July - August
• Plum, unknown type:  August - September
• Huckleberries:  August - September
• Apple, pippin:  September - December
• Pomegranate:  October - January
• Buddha's hand citrus:  November - January
• Mystery citrus:  who knows?

I'd still like to add a fig tree (Sept - Oct), which does really well in our area, and blackberry vines (May - July).

We accidentally ended up with fruit throughout the whole year!
How did that happen?  The gardening gods must have been smiling upon us while we were picking trees and bushes over the last year.

I'm having a hard time believing that the goal is already met.  Mission complete.

What kind of fruit would you grow?

Magical Turkey

A girl's gotta have leftovers.

This time last year, I remember opening the fridge and wondering how we ended up with no leftovers after Thanksgiving.  It had never happened before!  It is kind of sacrilegious in my family, to not have leftovers.

And so, my husband ran to the store to get the smallest turkey he could find, and I roasted my first bird, after Thanksgiving.

It was totally gross.  The innards were chilly and squishy, the skin kind of sticky and slippery at the same time.  I had seen it done every year, but had just never handled it myself.  It made me nauseated to handle a whole carcass and stuff its butt with herbs from the garden.


But then, something kind of magical happened.