Mendolonium

One of the typical symptoms of depression is a “loss of interest in normal daily activities”.  True to my typical form, my depression seems to be atypical in that I cope by being insanely (literally) productive.  I am sure that more sleep and relaxation would help my depression, but seeing as how that just isn’t going to happen I am rocking the Independence Days challenge:

Plant something:

• Tarragon seedling
• French thyme seedling
• Lemon thyme seedling
• Curry plant seedling
• Burgess Buttercup squash seeds x12
• Waltham Butternut squash seeds x12

Harvest something:

• Potatoes!  They were beautiful and crisp and so much fun to dig up and harvest with Thomas.  I loved seeing the look on his face when he realized that the earth was full of potatoes – it was as if he found buried treasure with every spud.
• Carrots
• Leeks
• Blueberries
• A few strawberries.
• 2 blackberries (Sounds unimpressive, I know.  But they are only the first two of hundreds on our bushes.)
• A few raspberries.  Fresh raspberries are amazing, must plant more.

Preserve something:

• Two batches of laminated dough for danish.
• 16 cups of marinara sauce.
• A lot more breastmilk.  Freedom in the freezer!

Reduce Waste:

• We threw a get together for some fellow parents and kids as well as a nice relaxing Memorial Day party and rather than succumb to the temptation of disposable or even compostable dinnerware we simply used our everyday plates and silverware.  Thank goodness for the dishwasher.

Preparation and Storage:

• Regorganized my baking ingredients to give me better storage and access for those that I use most.

Eat the Food

• Tonight I made a potato casserole using our leeks, our carrots, and our potatoes.  That simple meal made me feel that we have entered a new realm of self-sufficiency:  we can now make an entire meal using food we grew.
• With a nursing mama there is certainly a lot of eating in our house!  I don’t have as much time to make dinner as I used to so I have been trying to reduce our food waste by chopping up the veggies for a couple of nights worth of dinner when I have the time so that the vegetables don’t languish in the fridge and go bad because I don’t find the time to use them.
• Thomas and I have been having a ton of fun baking – with eggs.  We made scrambled eggs and Belgian waffles for dinner on Sunday night and also baked the “Best Fudge Brownies Ever”.

And it doesn’t fit into any category, but it is the most exciting development of all:   tonight the bee man paid us a visit.  Next week he is going to set up a device to remove  a bee colony from our chimney (that’s a story for another post) and then transfer that colony to a new hive in our backyard.  And you know what we’ll have then…HOMEGROWN HONEY.

Lest you think that I spend all of my time making up crude song lyrics, let me assure you that we’re still working away at the Independence Days Challenge and The Riot for Austerity (the subject of the next post).

Plant something:

• Dill (“Fernleaf”) seedlings x2
• Sage (not really a seedling, but a big 1 gallon potted plant I picked up at the farmer’s market)
• Italian parsley seedling
• Basil (“Large Leaf”) seedlings x2

Harvest something:

• Peas

Preserve something:

• Does 17 ounces of breastmilk in the freezer count?

Reduce Waste:

• I am on another one of my organizing sprees (all the things I meant to do in the three weeks before Henry was scheduled to arrive) and I am quite pleased that I have not purchased a single storage container or organizational “solution” but have instead used containers found in our garage to put everything (almost) in it’s place.

Preparation and Storage:

• Did a full reorganization of our linen closet which is where our first aid supplies lie (Nothing like a little threatened pandemic to keep one on one’s toes).  We’ve got everything we need to treat mild to moderate illnesses and injuries at home.
• Jeff set up our Big Berkey water filter.  We’re filling it up with tap water and using it as our everyday water filter, but in the event that we need it, it’s cool to know that we can turn bacteria laden mud into clean drinking water.

Eat the Food

• With a nursing mama there is certainly a lot of eating in our house!  I don’t have as much time to make dinner as I used to so I have been trying to reduce our food waste by chopping up the veggies for a couple of nights worth of dinner when I have the time so that the vegetables don’t languish in the fridge and go bad because I don’t find the time to use them.
• Thomas and I have been having a ton of fun baking – with eggs.  We made scrambled eggs and Belgian waffles for dinner on Sunday night and also baked the “Best Fudge Brownies Ever”.

It will probably be a slower year in our march towards independence, but I do think that we will stick with it.  There are so many things in my life that are unpleasant obligations – insurance companies, doctor’s visits, and changing toddler diapers.  But somehow this isn’t.  I am always happy when I am planting, cooking, or organizing and this challenge inspires me to take the time to do just that.

Henry

 My “little guy” weighed in at 9 pounds (!) this past Thursday (four weeks and one day old).  Clearly, my worries about an early birth resulting in nursing difficulties were totally unfounded. 

Thoughts on Being the Mother of Two

Short version:  It’s great!  I love Henry!  I love Thomas!  Children are awesome - I want lots of them!

Long version:  Both Henry and Thomas are utter perfection to me.  I love them both deeply and fiercely.  Love may be infinite, however, time is not.  Shockingly, meeting every one’s needs to my unreasonable perfectionist standards is proving to be impossible.  What I want is to spend hours every day going on adventures and baking with Thomas, while also finding the time to take hours for nursing, rocking, singing to, and gazing at Henry.  Oh and while I am at it I want the time to dig in the dirt for an hour or so, a sparkling clean house, to develop a new recipe at least once a week, and a pampering getaway for a hair color and a massage.  What I get is a preschooler exclaiming ”I want to hang on mama” while I nurse the baby, frozen macaroni and cheese from a box for lunch, and dyeing my hair myself in the bathroom at 11:30 pm. 

Viruses

I am pretty sure hell isn’t filled with fire and brimstone, but with snot.  We are all sick – again.  Last time it was bronchitis.  This time it seems to be a mild cold.  With a bit of luck, there won’t be a next time for quite awhile.  Given that Jeff and I are both home now, Thomas will be taking a leave of absence from preschool  – aka “the den of disease”.

The Incredible Edible Egg

After a year and a half of fantasizing about a fried egg sandwich, taking an hour or two to get through the grocery store as I scrutinized every label with the precision of one reading about how to diffuse a bomb, making some truly craptastic cookies, and thinking of chickens as “the enemy” it appears that Thomas is no longer allergic to eggs.  It’s a long story that I honestly have no desire to write down but the end result seems to be that he can safely eat the previously forbidden eggs, garlic, and pepper (sesame is still off limits).  Thomas had no reaction to ”food challenges” of baked egg, egg in pancakes, scrambled eggs, and finally raw egg (in the form of banana bread batter).  Not only does this mean realbreakfasts, royal icing, cheesecakes, pâte à choux, and cookies that actually stay together, but it means that Mendolo farms is going to get itself some livestock.  Oh yeah. 

Independence Days

Yes – I am actually still doing the Independence Days challenge.  My mom and dad were visiting this past week and I actually got quite a bit done with the help of their excellent preschooler entertaining and and baby holding skills:

1. Plant Something or Take Care of Something You’ve Planted:

• Watermelon (4 “Sugar Baby”)
• Cucumbers (1 “Diva, 2 Marketmore 76)
• Cauliflower (4 “Snowball Y”)
• Green Beans (12 “Nickel Haricots Verts”)
• Zucchini (1 “Round French”)
• Carrots (“Danvers”)
• Moved all strawberries to the front yard.

2. Harvest Something:

• Peas.
• Lettuce.

3. Preserve something:

• Not this week.

4. Prep something:

• Organized the boy’s clothing. 

5. Cook something new:

• Lot’s of cooking, but nothing new. 

6. Manage your reserves:

• Working on eating up items (i.e., cherries) that we preserved last year prior to them coming into season this year. 

Last summer and fall our tomato plants yielded enough fruit for us to make and preserve, four gallons of marinara sauce, 7 pints of salsa, and 12 pints of canned whole tomatoes.  Last week we consumed our last pint of sauce and our last pint of tomatoes and today I cracked open our last pint of salsa.   So I headed off to the grocery store to buy tomatoes for the first time since last May and it felt so odd.  I actually felt that I was cheating on my garden.  The conversation in my head went something like this:

Garden:  You bought tomatoes from a store!

Gina:  Well, just this one time, since you haven’t been able to give me any lately.

Garden:  You couldn’t wait another few months!  You just had to have the sauce!

Gina:  I’m Italian!  I can’t live without it.  A girl has needs, you know.

So today I took the ill begotten fruits and made sauce.  We’re all finally healthy as well so we’ve been getting into spring work mode.  Over the past couple of weeks we’ve:

1. Plant Something or Take Care of Something You’ve Planted:

• Bareroot strawberry crowns (about 36).  You know, it is not easy to lean over and plant things at 34 weeks pregnant, but I did it…only to discover the next day that crows had dug up about half the crowns and scattered them about.  (What the hell – they haven’t touched the mature plants with fruit 20 feet away, but they go after the dormant roots?).  I did not cry, but I considered it.  Sensing an imminent meltdown, Jeff quickly replanted the uprooted crowns and hopefully they will be none the worse for the wear.
• Leek seedlings (90).

2. Harvest something:

• A few strawberries.
• Parsley
• Peas.  So good.  I am never buying frozen peas again.

3. Preserve something:

• 1/4 cup basil (dried)
• 30 cups vegetable stock (frozen)
• 34 cups marinara sauce (frozen)
• 3 servings (24 total) butternut squash triangles (frozen)
• Clearly, I am stocking up (pun intended).  It seems like I am going to be having a baby in about six weeks (or five, or four, that would be awesome!).  I seem to remember that it was a challenge to take care of the baby and have time to cook and eat last time so I am attempting to make us up a whole bunch of easy meals or meal components prior to arrival of this little one.   Ironically, one of the items I made up last time prior to Thomas’ birth was quiche…delicious egg-y quiche.  And as it turns out, Thomas is violently allergic to eggs.  Sigh,  perhaps that explains some of the more difficult moments of Thomas’ babyhood.

4. Prep something:

• Set up a changing table in our room for the little one so as not to disturb Thomas for the inevitable middle of the night diaper changes.  Story of the week:  Thomas surveyed the changing table set up with neat little stacks of infant sized cloth diapers along with a small stack of disposables for the first few days.   Thomas, holding up a disposable diaper asks,  “What are these?”  “Paper diapers” (what we call disposables), I replied.  Scowling Thomas stated, “No paper diapers for my brother”.  (Thomas hates disposables and we never use them unless we go on a trip longer than 2 – 3 days).  I tried to explain that we would only use them for a few days and then switch to cloth and he was not amused and reiterated, “No paper diapers for my brother.  He like cloth.”  Glad he’s sticking up for his little brother already.

5. Cook something new:

• Slow Cooker Black Bean Soup, verdict:  quite good and ridiculously easy.

6. Manage your reserves:

• Purchased 6 months worth of pasta from Amazon.
• There are a number of food items (pasta, peanut butter, spelt flour, yeast to name a few) that I order in bulk from Amazon as they have the best price.   About 25% of the time, my order has arrived damaged.  Because Amazon only sells by the case, their policy is to send out an entire replacement case, for free, even if only one item in the case was damaged.  I am not sure if I just have a violent delivery guy, but I don’t mind because it makes food from Amazon a phenomenal deal.

7. Work on local food systems:

• Going to give away my extra leek seedlings to the neighbors.  I don’t have room for any more!