THURSDAY; Gardening

Last Friday, we got the first real rain in about 6 weeks. Couple the lack of rain with the 100+ deg temps we'd had over the previous two weeks and you can imagine my garden looks rough (I'll get pics up as soon as I can). The rain on Friday and the repeat on Monday have helped start the recovery. We're still getting cukes, a few tomatoes, peppers and my current favorite, purple hull peas. The corn we planted in mid June is silking now as well, so in about 2 months, if it doesn't freeze first, we will have corn from our garden :o)

Gardening has been an interest of mine for a long time, but this is the first home we've lived in where conditions were right for a garden. We've been enjoying both the process of gardening and of course the product of our garden.

Currently, the garden contains mostly hybrid plants but we do have seeds for 2 and 3 plants that are open pollinated or heirloom plants. We have seeds (for next year) from a beautiful purple tomato and seeds for a purple bell pepper (it tastes like a cross between a sweet bell and a purple onion). We also have a watermelon plant, 28 or so purple hull peas and 32 onions that are non-hybrids.

What is the difference between a hybrid and an heirloom plant? Well, basically if you save the seeds from an heirloom, you will get another plant that looks and acts just like the parent. If you save hybrid seeds, you will get a plant that doesn't look much like the parent and that either produces little fruit or none at all. In other words, for hybrids, you must buy your seeds from a seed company every year.

Up until a few years ago, I didn't really care or understand why I would want heirloom plants. I believed that all plants were the same. But then I learned that before the industrialization of farming, we had tens of thousands of varieties of plants that were farmed and now we are down to only a handful of varieties per plant family. When you think of things in terms of eating having only a few varieties doesn't sound that bad, but when you consider the possible impact of a disaster on the existence of our species, the picture changes a little.

Relying on only a few varieties of plants is like putting all of our eggs in one basket, so to speak. Should we be taking that chance with something as important as our food supply? Biodiversity is important. And many heirloom varieties of plants are close to extinction. But if we plant them and incorporate them into our diet, we help ensure that they will be around for many years to come.

If you are interested in gardening with heirloom seeds, here are a few links where you can buy them.

Heirloom Seeds

Baker Creek Heirloom

You can find lots more by typing heirloom seeds into a google search. You can also get seeds by trading with someone who grows them. Mention your interest in heirlooms to other gardeners who may be able to help you. You can also buy heirloom veggies at some farmers markets and save those seeds.

WEDNESDAY: Leftover Magic

I'm a reformed food waster. I used to be really bad about throwing out food. We wasted at least as much as we ate. Terrible, I know. Things are different now, but its not always easy. We often live with (and maybe even gave birth to) people who don't like leftovers. This makes it difficult to save money and not be wasteful. Thus the need for leftover magic - transforming once served foods into something completely different.

My very favorite form of leftover magic is to create vegetable soup out of leftover veggies. Today I'll share our use for leftover broccoli. You will notice that broccoli cheese soup is on our menu very often. We're really blessed - our kids LOVE broccoli and so do we. Broccoli is served with dinner at least a few times per week and sometimes we don't finish up all that was prepared. A half cup of leftover cooked broccoli is really all it takes to make a nice broccoli cheese soup. Here's my recipe:

Heat about a tablespoon of oil (I use butter) in a sauce pan until it shimmers (for oil) or bubbles (for butter). Then sprinkle about 3 tablespoons of flour over the fat and stir to combine (if you've never made a white sauce before, this will look like a thick paste). Next, slowly add about 1-1.5 cups of milk, stirring to combine. Continue stirring over heat until this mixture thickens, adding more liquid if it gets too thick. Next, slowly add cheese, a little at a time, stirring each addition until completely melted before adding more. If you add more before the previous addition is incorporated, you might end up with stringy or clumpy cheese. Finally, once you have the cheese to your liking, add about 1/2 cup broccoli and stir. Once heated through, serve.

You can use just about any kind of cheese in this recipe. Because my littles really like American cheese, we often use it, but sometimes, we also use cheddar. This week, I'm going to try it with Havarti because we have some of it in the fridge that I need to use up before it goes bad :o)

You can also use less milk when making the "soup" and you get a nice cheese sauce to pour over leftover veggies to transform them somewhat :o)

Do you have a favorite Leftover Magic recipe? I'd love to know about it. You can post about it on your blog then link to it in the comments or if you don't have a blog, post your recipe in the comments. :o)

More Bloggy Organization :o)

My Mozilla Toolbar crashed two weeks ago and I lost all of my RSS feeds - . Slowly I'm finding things again. Since I'm working on organizing my blog, I thought I'd update my "favorites" on the blog, too. I'll try to remember to continue updating my favorites as I locate other lost blogs, that way, when (not if) my toolbar crashes again, I can still find my favorites. Check out some of my favorite places in the blog sphere in the list on the left.

:o)

TUESDAY: Homeschooling Link

We are big fans of Art in our home. We look at it, read about it and create a lot of it. Today's featured link (Masterpiece Art Instruction - Teach Art at Home) offers many curricula but what I love most about it is the newsletter. It contains a free project that so far (we've been subscribers for over a year) has always been wonderful, easy, creative and unique. I also love that her projects are art and not crafts. She offers directions for your child to follow, but your child still has lots of room for creativity. You can subscribe by clicking on the hyperlink above and visiting the site.

:o)

Bloggy Organization?

I try. Really I do. But its just not in me to be really organized. I have all of these big ideas for the blog, but most don't come to fruition because I lack organization, so I forget what I wanted to post about or forget to post all together. So, I'm going to try putting myself on a schedule.

Most "How To Blog" articles recommend that you pick a topic for your blog and stick to it. I tried doing that - my blog was supposed to be about my book business - if you read my blog for more than 5 minutes, you'll notice that its not really about my book business, at least not often. I've also thought about making this a gardening blog, cooking blog, eat local/ sustainable living blog, homeschooling blog, blog about my kids, frugal blog etc. I like to write about all of those things but to pick just one - I don't think I could do it. I'm one of those Jack of All Trades, Master of None kind of people. I don't want to write on only one topic. Here's where my schedule will hopefully help. My plan is to blog as follows:

Monday: Menu Plan Monday plus Making Money From Home tips, ideas and links
Tuesday: Homeschooling Links and Ideas plus a Book Review (for my book business)
Wednesday: Leftover Magic (recipes to use leftovers to make new meals)
Thursday: Garden Update
Friday: Independence Days Update plus Sustainable Living links

Do I think I'll do them all every week? Ha! Not likely. I'm betting that Menu Plan Monday and Leftover Magic on Wednesdays get done almost weekly and the rest, occasionally. I'm okay with that :o)

Menu Plan Monday - August 11

It has taken me all day to figure out what we're going to do for our menu this week. All day I've been contemplating the 25 lbs of chicken beef in the freezer and after 8 hours, I was still drawing a blank. When it was nearing supper time, I had to do something , so I opened the freezer and found several freezer meals (yay!) that I'd forgotten about. So this week for supper we're having:

Fiesta Chicken (again)
Turkey Meatloaf
Spaghetti
Cheese & Chicken stuffed shells with alfredo sauce

We'll toss in some steamed veggies and call it dinner :o)

Breakfast will be:

Eggs and ham
Baked Oatmeal
French Toast
Bagels and honey butter

Lunch:

Grilled Cheese
PB and honey or jam
Broccoli Cheese Soup

Snacks? Still drawing a blank. I'll update when I figure it out.

Want to see more menus? Check out I'm an Organizing Junkie for Menu Plan Monday.

GREEN BEAN DREAMS: Sustainable Superheroes

Can we consider ourselves to be living sustainable lives even if we are not yet "there". Are our efforts towards sustainability enough? A post on this subject had been floating around in my head for weeks, especially since I've been rapidly approaching burnout (I'll post about that later). Green Bean Dreams covered the subject better than I could ever hope to. Don't miss this great post.

GREEN BEAN DREAMS: Sustainable Superheroes