I’ve gotten into sewing clothes recently, and, naturally, had to try my hand at quilting as well. To make it easy on myself, I went with two of these gorgeous charm packs by Moda from a collection called “Gyspy Girl.” This quilt is a baby quilt for my blue-eyed Evelyn, and is a perfect size for her crib.

Something about this collection really resonated with me – like the very name suggests, it is so distinctly Russian, making it a perfect choice for this Russian-American (newbie) quilter.

I didn’t use a pattern – just arranged the rows carefully side by side again and again until I settled on the look I liked. Because I prefer things tastefully loud (aka borderline gaudy), I deliberately avoided adding any white space in between the charm pieces.

I pieced half of this quilt together back in the winter, and because of the move and the costumes I was busy making for the first-grade play at my girl’s school, I let the rest be until a few days ago. But once I picked it up again, it only took a couple of hours to stitch together the remaining half and quilt the whole thing on my home machine with wavy lines – something I’d wanted to do for a long time. I used a walking foot with my Viking, and everything went swimmingly.

As far as the quilting lines, I just eye-balled the whole thing without marking the fabric first.

Go ahead and say it – it’s pretty darn good for a beginner who didn’t sew until late November.

I opted to bind the quilt by hand (which means stitching one side of the binding on with the machine, and stitching the other side down with an invisible stitch by hand), using this wonderful tutorial from the endlessly-informative Diary of a Quilter. Although the tutorial is for machine-binding, the process is the same until it comes down to  the second side, and I am really grateful to Amy for walking me through a painless way to join the binding together and create those perfect corners. And although people have told me repeatedly that it would take a while, I thought it went extremely fast, especially since my hand-sewing was way advanced already.

Here’s the reverse side – when the fabric is right, I actually prefer the reverse side to the top, especially when it comes to using it for photo props.

In retrospect, I have to say that I found quilting to be great fun, with my favorite parts by far being the fabric selection, the machine-quilting and the hand-binding. I am a little less enamored with piecing everything together.

My next project will involve a Kona Solids Rainbow jelly roll, which I will use to make a twin-sized quilt for my older girl’s bed.

I am also thinking of ordering a layer cake of the same collection as Evelyn’s and doing the extract same thing for my own bed.

Would you say I’m a quick study?

Ten years ago today, at the ripe age of 23, I’ve come to the United States to fulfill the three topmost goals of my life:

1) To marry Jacob, my one true love – the man of incredible intellectual gifts, kindest heart, and the degree of dependability I had not previously encountered in any man that’d crossed my path.

Centered and confident, Jacob struck me as someone blessed with a crystal-clear vision of life – the vision that matched my own with uncanny precision. We were two pieces of a puzzle, made to fit together perfectly.

Yes?

2) To become a citizen of the United States – the country that I knew was made for me, and I for it.

3) To settle in a rural area.

Ten years later, the American Dream has offered everything I’d imagined, and so much more.

And that’s what this country is all about, friends – the opportunities are aplenty, if you have the clarity of mind to see them, and the courage of heart to reach for and grab them.

Whew! This remodel business has kept me busy for the past week or so!

Among other things, I made two trips to a Home Depot an hour way, and visited numerous places right here in my town in search of various fixtures and other small and big things that will need to go in the new construction.

But here’s a quick look at the destruction and construction that took place so far:

This is my house, before. The old siding that you see in the photo is now history, as we’ll be residing.

It’s amazing what you find in an old farmhouse like ours once you start taking things apart. Note especially the iron pipe of Damocles that we discovered in the ceiling right above our entryway. Talk about skeletons in the closet – or ceiling, as it were. The whole thing’s gone now. Whew.

This will no longer be the entryway, btw.

Behind these studs is the space where our downstairs bathroom used to be, immediately next to the entry way:

Here’s a look inside:

It was icky and sausage-like, and used to house our only shower for years.

The bathroom was really in the porch-like addition, making it perpetually cold in the winter. It used to share a wall with a miniscule laundry nook, which you can see here also, right past the window.

Here’s the same space, looking the other way. The studs and the addition are now gone.

Instead, this whole area will be added on and turned into a bay with windows lining the wall, and this is where our new dining is going to be.

Here’s another look at the former laundry nook.

Instead, this will now open into the addition, which will include a spacious entryway that flows into the kitchen area, and a mudroom, which we didn’t previously have.

Here’s what you used to see when you came in the house – this here is the skeleton of the old kitchen and the dining room. The chimney you see in the middle was actually encased inside a hideous wall that divided the kitchen and the dining. Here’s what the wall looked like:

By now, the wall itself has been taken down, and the chimney is about to follow. For eight years the whole thing has been an ugly obstruction in my life. After the remodel is done, this will all be a big, happy open floor plan, with a 4′x 7′ granite leviathan of an island in the center.

The wall to the left of the sliding door is a part of the kitchen perimeter, and where those tools are piled, we are now going to have a cabinet to house my vast cast-iron and other cookware collection. The cabinet top will be a lovely, full-rail 2 x 3 feet maple butcher block, and there will be a window added right above it – crucial for taking photos for my blog, and for brightening up the island. I am so excited to now be able to look out at the driveway as I prep my dinner.

Next to that cabinet goes the stove, and next to it the sink – right under those lovely big windows on the right.

This is the same area, but now you are looking the other way. Here is the rest of the perimeter – the same as the old perimeter, but with new custom-built Amish cabinets, better lighting, a big pantry cabinet, and other improvements.

These windows here are new as well.

Here’s what you see looking the other way – the stairs going to the second floor, which has a bathroom with a newly-added shower, and our four bedrooms. The way upstairs and the opening into the living/kids’ playroom had been sealed off.

The section of the house you see above used to be our dining room and will now be the extension of the kitchen – a bit of a transitional and sitting area.

It includes a great window/sliding door going onto a wonderful big deck we’d built a year after moving in.

To the left of the photo is the wood stove that heats our house, and we plan to re-use it. Why wouldn’t we? It just needs a new coat of paint, and there’s nothing like it.

Here’s what the playroom/living room looks like:

Nicely sunny but not too sunny, with southern exposure. Aside from a coat of paint and a new centrally-located light fixture where there was none, it will not see much in the way of change.

Now here comes the improvement/construction part:

This here used to be a closet, and now it’s a… basement entrance! Our indoor basement door used to be this huge trap door in one of the downstairs rooms, which I’ll show you in a moment.

It was ridiculous!

The stairs here are getting fixed up a bit, but otherwise we are re-using the old stairwell that used to go down from the trap door.

The basement stairs are now directly below the stairs going up.

This is a section of the side room I just mentioned. We used to call it “the cold room,” and it mostly accumulated stuff that wasn’t in use. But with the removal of the trap door in the middle, it is now being changed into three highly functional spaces – the new bathroom, to replace the one we tore off, a spacious laundry room, and my office, which is what you’re looking at right now – right there past the studs. My office used to be in one of the bedrooms upstairs, which is becoming the girls’ room.

This is the entrance into that room – it will now be turned into a small hallway, leading into the bathroom and the new laundry, while my office will be accessed on the other side, next to the basement door.

Now here comes the exciting part:

Ta-da!

And it’s off.

No more old bathroom and laundry! Hello sunny new addition!

It really is pretty exciting!

In other news… I’ve been teaching myself how to knit, and lo:

I’ve moved past scarves and into hats! I even knitted these without a pattern. They might not be perfect, but the kids love them!

So does my ego. My ego likes them very much.

Also, look what my tiny Evelyn can do now:

She’s getting sooo big!

Ever wondered what kind of beef cuts you can get when buying directly from a Salatinisque small farmer?

Both my husband and his parents raise and market such salad-bar (i.e. grassfed) beef, and have it processed (i.e. slaughtered and cut-up into usable pieces) at a local butcher shop.

Although buying in bulk from a farmer can involve an initial investment of several hundred dollars, it really isn’t that much if you consider that you’re buying an entire year’s supply, bypassing the middleman, and gaining the rare in this day and age certainty in the quality and purity of the meat on your table.

If you are into that sort of thing, you’ll quickly find that buying directly from a farmer is far more economical than getting grassfed beef (or pastured pork) one piece at a time at your friendly neighborhood Whole Foods.

Buying directly from a farmer can happen in a couple of ways:

1) You buy a quarter (or a half, or a whole) of a steer from the farmer, who delivers the animal to the slaughterhouse/butcher shop at a designated time. You then pay the farmer for the so-called “hanging” weight of the animal (or the section of the animal you are buying, like, say, the front quarter), which refers to the weight of the carcass minus the head, skin, feet, and guts. You then call up the butcher and give them your preferred processing instructions, as well as pay a separate, weight-based processing fee on the pick-up. The good news is, this allows you to get your fancy steaks and burger all for the same price. The bad news is, you are paying for some dead-weight bone and fat that will get discarded, although you can also request the bones for your dog and the fat for your wild birds, soap-making, and/or rendering and cooking. If you do want these things, be sure to communicate it clearly to your butcher (the same is true for the internal organs you may wish to keep for food, such as heart or liver).

2) You buy already-processed, packaged meat directly from the farmer at a higher, cut-based price (although it really works out to be fairly close in the end). This is nice because you don’t have to worry about talking to the butcher, as the farmer has already done it for you, and you are only paying for the meat you are actually going to eat, albeit at a higher rate. This approach also allows you to only buy what you need at that time, although the farmer might give you a special deal if you buy in volume.

As it happens, I just got done processing some product photos for my in-laws’ website and can offer you a glimpse of the kinds of cuts you can anticipate. Although this list is by no means exhaustive or exclusive, the assortment below is pretty typical:

This above is a T-Bone steak, the lesser brother of the Porterhouse, below:

The T-Bone and the Porterhouse are both cut from the same muscles – the tenderloin and the sirloin (separated by a bone), but the tenderloin section on the Porterhouse is notably larger.

If you wish for your tenderloin to be kept whole instead of being cut into steaks, be sure to tell this to the butcher explicitly.

In addition (or instead of) ordering T-Bone and Porterhouse, you may wish to tell your butcher to turn some or all of the aforementioned muscle sections into the following two kinds of steaks:

The tenderloin steak…

And the New York Strip, above.

You could also request some of each of these four varieties, plus save a small section of the tenderloin for grilling whole.

Rib steak… (bone-in rib-eye). It needs no introduction.

Behold the shanks, cut from the the legs. These are great for braising, and my family always fights for the delectable morsels of marrow in the bone section – the ultimate Russian-table delicacy.

No pink slime here! Ground beef usually gets packed into one-pound, one-and-a-half-pound, or two-pound tubes. I find the one-and-a-half-pound package to be perfect for my family of five.

Yummy burger patties… Grassfed beef is not as fatty as corn-fed, so I like to add extra fat to my burgers, with blue-cheese being my absolute favorite way to go.

Top sirloin steak…

I *think* this is a half of a sirloin steak too. I like to trim it and pound it for chicken-fried steak.

Prime rib roast… (personally, I tell my butcher to turn that section into rib steaks instead). Alternatively, they may carve the meat off the bone and roll it into rolled-rib roasts, secured with twine (which I personally have difficulty cooking).

Stew meat! Endless possibilities.

Sirloin roast…

Short ribs! Braise them or use them as soup-bones for homemade stock.

Round steak! This is not the kind of steak you can slap on the grill – it is much better when used for braising dishes, such as Swiss Steak.

Rolled rump roast (I personally just have the butcher grind that part, cause burger is far more useful to me).

Chuck roast! Great for pot roast.

Now, if you are interested in some of this delicious grass-fed beef (or chicken or pork) and are in the La Crosse or Viroqua area, these can be purchased directly from St. Brigid’s Meadows, my in-laws’ operation. Here’s their price-list and contact info. Give’em a holler!

1. It’s April, and spring has its foot firmly in the door! The snow is melting steadily, if slowly, and all of the early spring birds are back to delight me with their sight and sounds. Even grackles and red-wing blackbird are the harbingers of good news in my book.

2. The work on my house has began! The drywall and hanging ceilings all around the space that is about to be remodeled have been removed, revealing some rather worrisome surprises – in retrospect, that is. For instance, they have uncovered an old, precariously-attached heavy cast-iron toilet pipe of Damocles in the ceiling right above the entrance, and also some disturbingly-wrapped old wiring. Dear God, I am so glad we’re doing  this.

3. We’ve finalized (read, “I’ve finalized”) our kitchen design, and after some while of driving about the countryside and gathering estimates from both Amish builders and conventional custom-cabinet places, I have settled on a particular Amish cabinet shop (owned by a colorfully-named Chester Heshberger out on County P). I decided to choose that route because:

- His construction is more sound.

- His work has a slightly-more rustic look, but still very polished.

- Working with an individual can be really nice if they
(and you) can communicate well.

- He quoted lower than the mainstream place.

Be advised, however, that not all Amish cabinet-makers offer the same quality, so be sure to shop around.

I also decided that my cabinets will be oak, cause it’s sturdy, rustic, not too light in color, has a great grain pattern and character, and is the least expensive.

4. After talking to different people, comparing numbers, and some extensive soul-searching, I am starting to zero in on the counter tops for my new kitchen, both for the 4′x7′ island and for the perimeter. Considering the feel and the availability of each material, the cost of those materials, the installation costs, and my very tight budget, I am thinking about running some very-smooth laminate around my sink (I have some in my rental and I am loving it – something I didn’t previously think I was capable of), and then having granite on my island (which will serve as both the breakfast table and the primary dough-rolling surface for me and my kids). I plan to purchase the granite piece remnant from the local stone dealer and have it cut and sanded unpretentiously by my contractor (done in this way, the granite total will be exactly the same as having cheap laminate custom-cut for that same space). In addition, I am going to have a (similarly remnant) Boos-outlet butcher block immediately to the left of my stove, which is also really cheap (the outlet store is down in IL and my husband’s cousin travels down there for work).

If there’s the time and place to be tyrannical, counter-top choices are it! Especially for pathologically-tactile people like myself.

5. Even when you hire other people to do much of your building, remodeling is still a lot of mental work for the owners, especially if hiring an architect and or/kitchen designer is both outside of your budget and an utter ideological anathema. But I’m having fun.

My husband, on the other hand? I am not so sure.

He’s being a good sport though.

See you on the other side!

I hadn’t considered making my own lip balm – or lotion, for that matter, until my seven-year-old daugther couldn’t find yet another misplaced tube of Dr. Bronner’s Sun Dog – our go-to chapstick (made from a formula developed by a company right here in Viroqua, Wisconsin). That’s when she asked me if I could make some of our own – the kind of thing she came to expect.

After studying the ingredients in the all-natural tubes I had at home, plus some experimentation, I am now ready to share with you my absolute most-favorite homemade variety, involving wonderfully emollient jojoba oil, avocado oil (which I chose for its lightness), luxuriously-chocolatey cocoa butter, and sweet-smelling beeswax.

If you guys have been following my blog, you’ll know that we are about to embark on a three-month long remodel of my home – a fairly large country house on ten rolling acres, located within 1/4 mile of Viroqua, Wisconsin – a Mecca of organic agriculture, “handmade,” humanly-scaled, privately-funded educational and other kinds of initiatives, and a large food cooperative with an incredible selection of non-conventional foods, pharmacy, and body products.

This is my actual house. It looks large but the space inside is far from perfect, at least downstairs, so it’s about to be made slightly bigger with the addition that would expand the kitchen and provide the space for a mudroom. We will also be removing some oppressive walls and dividing a presently-unusable, large catch-all room into a very functional office and laundry space (the upstairs, which has four bedrooms and has recently been fixed up, will remain unchanged).

Because this project includes the removal of a part of the house (the section with two windows and a door to the right of the photo above), we opted to rent a three-bedroom house around the corner, where our rural highway hits the town.

In short, I absolutely love it here. And although living in town is something I would NEVER do in the long term, the rental, which is on a double-lot, has a sizable backyard (nothing like living on ten acres, of course), three spacious bedrooms (one of which is used as my office/sewing space), huge living/play room with plenty of southern light, big kitchen, and the benefit of being within a five-minute walk from our farm, where we stop daily to feed the cattle and “walk” the dog. It is also on the same school bus route, which was another important consideration in choosing this particular spot.

Here’s a look inside:

This is my crafting corner – the sewing-machine table (as you can tell, my machine is not yet unpacked), crafting supplies, and my camera equipment live here. My computer table, from which I am typing, is to the right.

A walk-through baby gate in the living room. I haven’t had a walk-through baby gate before and it’s awesome! Just got it.

Evelyn’s upgraded pack’n'play – larger than the one she had before (thank you, Stephanie!). She’s not usually in it, though, because the living room is completely closed off and serves as a giant play pen for her.

A hilarious fake fireplace – my kids haven’t stopped playing Santa since we moved in!

Laundry room (with my own washer and dryer).

The kitchen! Totally functional, especially for someone who grew up with the extreme space limitations of a Soviet apartment and, a as a result, can tackle the most ambitious projects regardless of the available counter footage. But this here is actually pretty ample – though not as grand as my future bourgeois kitchen .

Because the water from our well on the farm tastes fresh and wonderful, and the city water tastes anything but, we had to get a filter for the kitchen faucet. The water coming out of it is really good!

My flour lives in this five-gallon pail, because I buy 25 lbs at a time.

My blender has to be out at all times! Now you might think that I am the kind of mom who makes smoothies… the greener and crunchier, the better.

NOT SO!

This baby is for blending my daily virgin margaritas!!

How about that.

Dish rack – we do all of our dishes by hand, the fact that gives me an enormous sense of moral superiority.

Just kidding! I just can’t stand loading and unloading a dishwasher.

No way, man.

The kitchen table – I love this giant Western window!!

Living in town means… curtains!

What’s curtains?  We don’t have any back at our house. Don’t need them!

“If you think I’m cute, you shouda seen my mom ten years ago!!” That’s what it really should be saying.

I love this doorless, wooden closet – perhaps it’s not good from the standpoint of dust accumulation, but I love the looks of it.

Many of our clothes are kept in these plastic tubs borrowed from a friend – they serve as makeshift drawers. I like it. The tubs are all sorted by family member, and by whether they are appropriate for town or for home.

Finally, this is what the outside look like – not really suburban, but our backyard is pretty big, as backyards go.

For a temporary town dwelling, it’s kind of nice!

It’s still cold and frozen here in the Western Wisconsin (and, mind you, I enjoy that very much), but pretty soon the maple will be running, the taps will be dripping, the buckets will be overflowing with sweet sap, and the delicate, sweet smell of boiling maple syrup will fill the air.

OK, we don’t actually boil our syrup here at Compostella farm, but we tap a couple of trees for drinking, and use local maple syrup extensively in recipes. It’s the matter of regional pride.

Because I love all things maple, I’d like to direct you to a few useful posts on maple-tapping, sugaring-off, and cooking with maple syrup – like delicious maple butter, Azerbaijani baklava with a Wisconsin twist, snow taffy, and more!

1. If you have sugar maples in your area, consider tapping them this year to gather and drink the delicious, nutritious, subtly-sweet maple sap. My kids love it, and it makes for a wonderful seasonal activity and tradition.

This is what the sap looks like.

My maple-tapping tutorial can be found here:

Maple-Tapping 101

2. Make some syrup! Here’s how:

How to Boil Maple Syrup at Home

3. Maple Butter!

An utterly delectable spread that’s great on bread and baked goods. Seriously, you owe it to yourself to try it!

4. Sugar-on-Snow (a.k.a. Maple Snow Taffy)

Quick, make some before the winter’s over! Your kids will think you are the coolest mom (or dad) ever.

Works for me.

5. Maple Creme Brulee!

A classy company dessert, and a good recipe for the crunchy.

6.  Azerbaijani Baklava with Maple Syrup

Made with thick, hand-rolled pastry rather than store-bought phyllo, this one is a special treat.

Why yes, I am a hand-rolled pastry tyrant. Homemade puff pastry, for instance? It’s easier than you think! Saves money, too.

7. Maple-Glazed Roast Chicken with Caramelized Onions

Yum and Yum!

Do you have your own favorite things to do with maple syrup? By all means, share!

I don’t have a particular purpose for this post other than to share this photo of my two younger kids. I have three in total, and it’s always fun to watch bonds grow and form among the siblings.

No, really, it is.

This Cyrus here is no longer just the little brother – he is the big brother now, too.

(He likes to make faces for the camera.)

Can you tell?

This is my son, Cyrus.

Cyrus would like to introduce you to his machines.

The machines have names. We live in the Amish country, though, so the machine names are all Amish.

Meet Yoder the front-ender-loader,

And Johnas the backhoe…

Jacob the dump truck… He tricked his brother into trading his birthright for a load of gravel. And not a very big load, either.

Jebediah the bulldozer…

Anyone else sees the deep irony of this?

The steamroller needs an Amish name! Help us out with that?

This giveaway is now closed, and the winner is:

#5 Sabrina Barton

Congratulations, Sabrina! You will soon be receiving an email from me, asking for your mailing info.

Thank you all for participating! It was so fun to read about all the different ideas.

—————-

Here’s the quilt I’m making for my baby girl. It’s my first-one ever!

Not the girl.

The quilt.

For fabric, I chose charm packs by Moda, from a collection named Gypsy Girl.

I couldn’t resist the name.

I couldn’t resist the stunning fabrics.

And the colors.

And the distinctive East-European feel.

I simply couldn’t have chosen anything else!

Aren’t the fabrics gorgeous?

Here’s what the entire collection looks like:

Today, because spring is just around the corner, because I think these fabrics would be terrific for making Easter skirts or dresses for little girls, and because I want to thank you for stopping by my little corner of the internet, I am giving away either one of the following (the choice is up to the winner):

• A Gypsy Girl charm pack (a set of 42 5″ x 5″ squares), which includes an assortment of fabrics from the collection,

OR

• A yard of Gypsy Girl fabric of your choice – just browse these Etsy offerings to see what kind you like the best.

Myself, I absolutely love this blue below:

I am going to use it as backing for my quilt.

I also love this one – I think it would be perfect for a little-girl skirt.

Or a big-girl skirt.

There are just so many cool things you could do with either – besides skirts and dresses, you could also make an apron, a table runner, some colorful hot pads – you name it.

Use it to make something for yourself, or make a terrific gift for someone special in your life.

To enter, just tell me what you’d make with your loot if you were to win!

One entry per person, please.

The giveaway will close at midnight CST on Sunday, March 3rd. The winner will be announced here the following day.

Disclaimer: The giveaway is sponsored by The Girls’ Guide to Guns and Butter. It contains no affiliate links. Amen.

You know you’ve been initiated into dog ownership after you’ve had to de-skunk one.

This is my dog, Olive. Like in Olive, the other reindeer.

We haven’t had Olive for very long – she used to belong to our cousin and his wife, and came to live with us following their move into town.

(Can you even say “our cousin” when it’s really your husband’s?)

Olive is an exceptionally sweet family dog, who is a wonderful companion to kids… and a fatal menace to small animals (with the exception of our own cats or chickens) that have the misfortune of wondering through our homestead. Maybe she is hoping to make her own private covenant with God, cause she keeps on tearing those things apart.

Olive, the other Abraham.

You can see where this headed. One fine day (in February, no less) the inevitable happened!

The mark of Cain has been bestowed!

You gotta keep in mind now that I’d never owned a dog prior to Olive, and that I had never, ever given a dog a bath. I was all-around unprepared – physically, psychologically, and otherwise.

I wept.

I tore my hair out.

I shook my fists at the heavens.

I swore in every one of the six languages I once knew how to speak.

I swore in German.

I swore in French.

I screamed every one of the foreign words you heard in the Russian fireball video.

Let’s just say, this is not the type of vocabulary you gonna wanna use around your mom.

But then I began to put things into perspective.

I wasn’t, after all, in the middle of a genocide against my ethnic group.

Or in a building hit by said fireballs.

And the asteroid DA14 *just* missed our planet.

A little skunk spray wasn’t the end of the world. Nothing like a passing asteroid to make you mean that literally.

So I picked up the phone, called my vet, threw together the de-skunking recipe she suggested, and washed my dog in the downstairs shower.

For the record, I had cracked the window open.

I washed her collar, too.

Then I washed the shower.

And threw away the clothes I had been wearing while washing the dog.

And the towel I used to dry her.

(I also wore my rubber gloves, purchased originally for field-dressing deer, and my muck boots).

And you know what, it worked! She no longer reeks, and only smells vaguely of skunk if you bury your nose directly in her hair, and only in the area of direct impact, i.e. her neck. I expect this to wear out soon enough so she can begin spending some time indoors again.

One more note before I share the recipe with you: because this solution is based on hydrogen peroxide, also used to bleach hair, my black dog might be just a shade more brownish in some areas. But since that hair will replace itself eventually as she molts, I am not concerned.

And she still looks like herself.

Disclaimer: I ain’t no vet and cannot be held responsible for the results of this treatment. This is just what I did per my own vet’s recommendation, and it caused no adverse reaction in my particular dog. Use at your own risk.

Here’s what all you’ll need:

Good luck!

Few things are more satisfying to the body and the ego than homemade lotion. In addition to the obvious benefits of being more economical and free from mystery additives,  it works far better than its store-shelf counterparts, which, more often than not, leave my skin feeling dry and overall unsatisfied. Do you ever have that experience?

As an added bonus, making lotions yourself allows you to give your moisturizers fresh, natural scents like coconut, lavender, and chocolate – a far cry from the artificial, lab-manufactured fragrances.

Let’s start with a few lotion-making Q & As:

How do you make a lotion?

Unlike salves, which are made by melting beeswax and oil together and allowing everything to set into a spreadable mass, smooth, easily-spreadable, snow-white lotion is made of water and oil, emulsified together with the help of beeswax (or manufactured emulsifying wax).

Making lotion requires a blender, and a technique I am about to show you.

Is it cheaper to make your own than to buy it at the store?

If you prefer high-end, natural-ish, paraben-free organtic lotions (many of which are still loaded with unpronounceable ingredients), it is most certainly cheaper to make your own. All you really need is oil, beeswax, and water.

Will this lotion feel different from store-bought?

Yes – because it contains no drying alcohol often found in boughten varieties, this lotion will leave some oily residue and feel a little greasy until absorbed. Once it’s absorbed though, your skin will feel soft and supple and not one bit dry.

Personally, I don’t mind that it feels greasy after the application as far as my face and body are concerned, but I find it too greasy for my hands. To remedy this excess greasiness, I simply rinse my hands in water without soap immediately after applying, then dry them. This simple step leaves them soft and not one bit oily. A happy medium, and, again, so much more effective – and affordable – than what I used to buy.

In short, because this lotion is fairly rich, you gonna wanna use a smaller amount.

How does the lotion keep without preservatives?

For a limited amount of time. Which is why I store mine in the fridge, where I know it will be spoilage-free for at least a month. .

Is this lotion-making a messy process?

Regardless of what you’ve read elsewhere on the web, the clean-up is easy if you take time to wipe all lotion-making equipment with paper towels prior to washing it in hot water and dish-washing liquid.

How long does it take to mix up a batch?

Not more than ten minutes, and it can be used immediately after.

What kind of oils can I use?

Any kind of cooking or body oil you have – but some are greasier than others.

If you wish to use coconut oil, which is wonderfully fragrant and moisturizing, be advised that it will stay solid below 76 degrees, so it needs to be mixed with some non-solidifying oil. Plenty of people use coconut oil directly from their cupboard as moisturizer as well.

What else can I add to my homemade lotion?

1) cocoa or shea butters

Personally, I found that the oil, water, and beeswax emulsion really benefits from the addition of either shea or cocoa butters, resulting in a smoother and quite a bit more nourishing product.

Cocoa butter is especially amazing because of its rich, decadent chocolate aroma, and cocoa-butter-based lotion needs no additional fragrances.

Shea butter on the other hand is completely odorless, which makes it a great candidate for when you want a fragrance-free lotion, or if you wish to scent it with an essential oil which would otherwise clash with the cocoa scent. If you want your lotion to smell like pure lavender, for instance, shea butter is the way to go.

You can also use straight-up shea butter directly on the skin, which is great for chapped areas.

2) glycerin or honey

Both glycerin and honey are humectants, which is the name for substances that help retain moisture. Adding a bit of glycerin to a lotion gives it a pleasantly slippery feel, but be careful not to add too much or your lotion will feel sticky. A little squirt is all you need.

Glycerin can be either vegetable (i.e. plant-derived) or the regular kind (made from animal or petroleum-based oils, as far as I understand). Regular glycerin can be found at drug stores and vegetable glycerin is often sold in food co-ops and such.

3) aloe vera gel

You can also substitute the water in the recipe with bottled aloe vera gel, which will make your lotion really smooth and slippery like store brands. By contrast, lotions made with plain water will feel more like body butters.

4) oatmeal water

Boil NON-instant rolled oats in water for a ten minutes, allow to cool, strain out the water, and use it in place of regular water in your lotion. Another way to get a nice, slippery lotion!

5) rose water

Substitute the water in the recipe with rose water for a faint rose scent.

6) green tea

Substitute green tea for the water in the recipe.

7) essential oils

If you wish to use your favorite essential oils, add a few drops to the water prior to mixing it with the melted wax-and-oil combo. I am wild and crazy about lavender, for instance, and make at least some lavender lotion on a regular basis.

Does my water need to be distilled?

Not necessarily. Personally, I just use my regular hard water from the well on my farm – the same water we drink every day – and it works just fine. If you only have unfiltered, chlorinated city water, you may wanna go with distilled water instead.

I’ve tried making lotion before but it later separated. What gives?

Your water and oil-beeswax mixture need to be about the same temperature as you are combining them.

Will lotion-making win me treasures in heaven?

Not anymore than a gluten-free diet will, as neither is a moral virtue in and of itself.

Now let’s take a look at the actual process!

These are the ingredients I used in this sample batch:

Avocado oil, jojoba oil, cocoa butter, and beeswax, which I like to grate off a leftover beeswax candle piece. You can buy your beeswax in bricks, which, along with exotic oils, can be found on Amazon.com, at food-cooperatives, and Mountain Rose Herbs.

A little bit about the ingredients pictured above:

beeswax - in addition to its role as an emulsifier, high-quality beeswax adds a sweet, vanilla-like aroma to your homemade products (something you notice especially in lip balms, where you use a lot of it).

avocado oil - a rather light, odorless oil with great moisturizing properties.

jojoba oil - thick, rich, odorless oil that it is incredible in lotions, salves, and lip balms, giving them a silky feel.

cocoa butter - the same stuff that’s used in the making of white chocolate, and my absolute favorite, as it imparts both luxurious feel and divine chocolate smell to your lotion. I couldn’t recommend it more.

Here’s what cocoa butter looks like. It is rather solid and needs to be scraped out of the container to be added to your recipes. It costs a little bit to buy this amount, about $8, but given the quality of this product, and the fact that you only use about a tablespoon per recipe, the price ends up being reasonable.

Beeswax! It will need to be grated. I use my regular hand grater, which I afterwards wash in hot water and dawn while helping myself along with a metal scrubber. But, again, beeswax is edible, so any residue shouldn’t be a problem.

Although I didn’t use it in either of the recipes in this post, I love adding lavender essential oil to my lotions whose ingredients do not already have a fragrance of their own. If you wish to add essential oil to yours, add it to the water before blending it with the oil and beeswax.

Now on to the process. First, the ratios:

Your base lotion-making formula is as follows:

• 1 part oil
• 2 parts water (or rose water, green tea, aloe-vera gel, etc)
• 1/4 part beeswax

To this, you can also add:

• 1/8 to 1/4 part cocoa or shea butter, if using
• a few drops of essential oil or oils of your choice – add them to the water prior to incorporating.

In this particular recipe, for example, I’ve used 6 tablespoons of avocado oil plus 2 tablespoons jojoba oil (1/2 cup of oil total), 2 tablespoons cocoa butter, 2 tablespoons beeswax, and 1 cup of water.

Next, the method:

The first step is to melt together your beeswax, oils, and cocoa or shea butters, if using. I prefer to do it in a microwave, using a mason jar in which I intend to blend and store my lotion. It takes about two minutes on high for everything to melt completely.

However, I understand that some people seeking to make their own lotion are doing so out of the crunchiness of their hearts and despise microwaving. If this is you, or if you simply don’t have a microwave, just melt everything together in a double boiler.

Whatever your values or melting preferences, continue to heat your mixture until there are no solid particles remaining.

Allow your mixture to cool slightly before using, but not all the way to room temperature.

Next, stick your immersion blender into the beeswax-oil mixture and run it while slowly pouring in the warm water (your water and oil need to be about the same temperature). At first your mixture may resemble cheese curds floating in water, but press on and watch everything transform into a smooth, white lotion.

If some of the water ends up not being incorporated, just pour it off and blend what remains. No biggie!

If you only have a jar blender, melt your oil and beeswax in a mason jar, allow to cool, add all the water at once, and screw the blender blade base on like you would a lid. Did you know you could do that?

Now allow the blender to blend everything for about a minute, or until you arrive at the lotion consistency.

Just be sure to wipe your blender blade or attachment well with a paper towel prior to washing, which will absorb and remove most of the oily/waxy stuff.

You will end up with something like this!

Here’s what it will look like on your skin.

(I apologize for the view of my hand.)

And that’s it!

Enjoy!

Here’s the printable recipe for you:

Ever heard of shirred eggs? I first learned about them from The Commonsense Kitchen, a cookbook by our good friend Tom Hudgens.

More specifically, my husband, who was once Tom’s student over at Deep Springs College, was the one who introduced us to this recipe, as it is he who cooks breakfast around here every morning.

I know.

I love shirred eggs, which are oven-poached in muffin tins in a generous splash of heavy cream, and I love that they are both festive and completely fool-proof to prepare, requiring no boiling cauldron or dedicated vessel.

Here, let me show you:

All you gotta do is preheat your oven to 325 degrees Farenheit and coat a few muffin-tin cavities with non-stick spray (if you are crunchy, brush them with melted butter instead).

I am not crunchy.

I choose non-stick spray.

Go Pam!

Sure, it might not be great for you in the long run.

Also, a fireball could strike your house at any time.

I’ve made my peace with these facts!

It’s OK if you disapprove.

Next, splash about two tablespoons of heavy cream into each greased cup.

Break an egg into each cup and sprinkle it with salt and pepper (which I forgot to do with this particular batch).

Now stick them into the preheated oven for 8-15 minutes, or until the top is somewhat set (if you like runnier yolks, you can pull them out a tad sooner).

Slide a knife around each egg and use a tablespoon to remove them from the pan.

They are a dream, really. Serve them with bread and butter, or, if you feel inspired, with some of this delicious blender Hollandaise sauce.

Here’s your printable recipe:

]]> http://girlsguidetobutter.com/2013/02/perfect-shirred-eggs/feed/ 0 http://girlsguidetobutter.com/2013/02/around-the-farmstead/ http://girlsguidetobutter.com/2013/02/around-the-farmstead/#comments Tue, 19 Feb 2013 21:41:16 +0000 Sofya http://girlsguidetobutter.com/?p=23161

After buying skeins of yarn at the store, I sometimes like to wind them by hand into a ball before starting a project.

I learned how to do it as a little girl, and I really love them.

Do you like to do that too?

Well, not that kind.

With my Yooper side of the family, we are no strangers to pasties around here, but this especially lovely version of the recipe was adapted from the recipe given to us by our friends Kris and Eric. You can find the complete recipe here.

Enjoy!

When you have a baby girl, it is only natural to want to put cute things in her hair and otherwise make her identifiable as such.

My girls, though? Neither wanted to keep them in at this age.

Maybe a satin rosette, baby? Homemade?

No way, man.

Which is especially hard to watch when you are a Martha-Stewarty mommy and make these yourself (luckily, my older girl loves to wear all of these all the time, now that she’s in school).

Sometimes she keeps them in for a little bit, but mostly they just annoy her.

I made a whole bunch of these, actually, but some got lost. A great use for scraps, right? Make your own using this tutorial.

It’s a little better with the ones on the back of her head.

Oh well, someday.

Carhartt and Carhartt-type jackets are everything to a farmer.

I also find them incredibly sexy – the more rugged, the better. Like rough hands, they suggest experience and competence, and I value that type of thing.

Don’t ponder that one too much.

They are also expensive to buy, and it’s only right to repair them when you can,  but I haven’t been able to perform any heavy-duty repairs before I was given my sewing machine this past November.

Enter a heavy-duty Viking:

New binding at the bottom, and new pockets, among other things.

It’s not couture, but it doesn’t need to be, as these aren’t little girls’ clothes. But these repairs are durable.

So this here has been my Valentine’s Day gift to my husband.

He loved it!

I am so glad I’ve gotten into sewing – of all of my hobbies, this one is both the cheapest and the most useful to the people around me. And here’s something else – creating original patterns, conducting repairs, and generally trying to figure out how to make the pieces of the puzzle fit has been incredibly good for my brain (which needs to exercise more than ever now that I stay home with young kids), and the kind of patience and determination that is required to complete a bigger project is most definitely good for the character.

Oh and the sanctimony? There’s is nothing like it.

If you are looking for a quick’n'easy last-minute Valentine’s dessert idea, this one is for you! I threw these together yesterday as a bit of a trial run for tonight’s Valetine’s dinner with company, and I thought they were just terrific – goey, chocolatey, a little crispy on the outside, and extremely quick and easy to prepare.

Here’s the printable recipe:

Then comes…

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

My tiny Petunia is now one! Thirteen-and-a-half months, that is.

She’s not walking, but she’s chatting up a storm – very much the pattern with my babies.

She’s not so sure about this whole camera business.

Oh my, why do you have such big teeth?

The really neat thing about having children six year apart is that they are growing teeth at the same time! For an Anthroposophist inside me, this is a pretty powerful experience.

“Lookie what my mom made!”

The little guy is about to start playschool-type-thing for a couple of mornings a week. He’s getting a bit of a cabin fever at home.

In other news, I’ve just finally organized my yarn, fabrics, and my kids’ embroidery stuff.

Why, yes, I buy cheap yarn.

This is an easy scarf I am knitting for my son. This pattern is so lovely – and extremely easy for a beginner like me.

Here are the rainbow jelly roll strips, waiting to be turned into a quilt for Josie. I’ve actually pre-washed them so the final quilt is flat rather than puckered (is this the right word?). All forty of them.

Meanwhile, my seamstress skills are growing rapidly. Like REALLY rapidly. So much so, that I’ve stepped up to completely outfit my daugther’s first-grade class for their class play. While I found most of the costumes ready-made in the school stash, I still ended up sewing about 10 different things and mended nearly every garment that I had found, as well as washed and pressed everything. I also crocheted eight red balls to stand in for apples used in the play. While the costumes were absolutely elementary, it was a biggish project for me, but I had the time, the skills, and the tools, and decided to not delegate any of it. I think everything turned out quite nicely, and my girl got to feel proud of her mom. It was an ego trip of a lifetime!

And how was your week?

What common household, pantry, and beauty items do you make yourself instead of buying? If you got a moment, I’d love for you to share, as I am always hungry for new ideas in this area!

Here are a few things I make rather than buy (note that we also raise and hunt 100% of our meat and a bulk of storage produce, but that’s not what I’m talking about here):

- Laundry detergent – my favorite thing ever. I make an easy powder version which is nothing but 2 C of borax mixed with 2 C WASHING soda and a bar each of fels-naptha and ivory soaps, grated (because it makes me feel morally superior, I hand-grate all of mine). I then just put all ingredients together in a covered container and shake. Use ONE TABLESPOON ONLY per FULL load. It costs next to nothing and lasts a couple of months in this family of five, which includes three young kids between the ages of 1 and 7, a rather dirty housewife, and a farmer husband. Now Fels-Naptha is a pretty strong laundry bar (normally used for pre-treating stains and such), and if you are sensitive to this type of thing, you may want to go with something more innocuous like all-ivory.

- Lotion! That’s a new one, man. A homemade lotion is nothing other than a super-easy emulsion of oil (you can use cooking or specialty skin oils), wax, and water, blended with a stick blender. I use my own well water, beeswax, a few drops of lavender essential oil, and so far I’ve used almond and sunflower oils (the sunflower oil version is lighter – and far cheaper). If you are interested, a quick google search will return recipes aplenty. Now, it does feel greasier than bougthen, but I don’t mind it, and my daughter absolutely adores it! Note that I keep mine in the fridge and love the temperature.

- Lip balm! The easiest thing ever. Just melt two parts of oil (olive is fine) with one part grated beeswax by volume together in a small jar, let the mixture cool until set, and go right ahead and use! I simply melt mine in a microwave and then store it on the counter. I made mine a couple of months ago and it still hasn’t gone bad.

- Bubble bath – it’s just a little shampoo mixed with with water.

- Play dough – easy to make with kids and fun!

- Pasta sauce – we live on a farm and grow tomatoes, so.

- Apple cider (something that my husband does).

- All of our frozen winter vegetables, such as sweet corn.

- All of our jams, syrups, and jellies, such as these raspberry preserves and elderberry jelly.

- Pickles (but only in the summer)

- Puff pastry! There’s just no comparison, man.

- Candy! Chocolate truffles, peanut brittle, hard candy/molded suckers, and maple snow taffy – candy-making is my forte! Apple-dipping caramel too (no melting of bougthen caramels involved)!

- Ice-pops, like these berry-yogurt ones. Yum!

- Kombucha (when I make it).

- Bread – we go through a 5-lb loaf in a matter of a day or two, so yes, I bake my own – and you know what, I find it to be FAR more nourishing than any boughten version, not to mention fresh and delicious at a mere fraction of the price. Plus, you simply won’t find bread as good as I (and you) can make at home in any store in this town, period.

- Yogurt – we use about a GALLON to a gallon and a half per week, so I’d be a fool to pay twice the price for yogurt when I can buy milk and make my own. And it tastes 1000 times better.

- Jerky – done with ease in my dehydrator! And, again, fresh venison jerky tastes 1000 times better than the store variety.

- I can also make this delicious venison pastrami but don’t make it very often.

- Fruit leather during the summer – ditto.

- Ice-cream, including this blackberry, no-cook vanilla, and the five-minute berry ice-cream made in a food processor!!

- Salad dressing

- Chicken and beef stock – we raise cows and chickens, so an ample supply of bones is a given.

- Pita bread and other flat breads, including this grilled naan.

- Pizza crust!

- Baby food! 100% of it.

- My husband also makes most of the wine we drink and use for cooking as we have a large vineyard. It’s not world-class, but it’s cheap!

I also know how to make butter, cream cheese, and feta cheese, but these two, I decided, are not worth the effort for the price. Also, homemade cream cheese is not as smooth in cheesecakes, and I decided that I prefer mine smooth and perfect.

I also recently began to teach myself how to knit and sew (I crochet as well, but I’ve known how to do that since the age of five or six), and I can’t BELIEVE how CHEAP it is to make something moderately high-quality in a matter of days or even hours. Now, I am a total beginner, and so far haven’t ventured beyond dressy girl skirts, easy quilt tops, dress-up skirts and capes, hairpin embellishments, tutus, aprons, and scarves, but hopefully one of these days I will work myself up to making bigger, more complicated items. And it’s even cheaper if you upcycple what you already have rather than buying new fabric (although that too is cheap and great fun).

We also use all-cloth napkins, and both that and hot pads can easily be made at home (people even knit and crochet their own dishcloths, although I haven’t yet).

Another thing I choose to do myself is cut my kids hair (and I am really not half-bad) while they are still little. Do you do that sometimes?

My big dream is to make a working dish soap as an alternative to Dawn since we don’t have a dishwasher and do all of ours by hand. If you have a recipe, don’t hold back (NO Fels-Naptha or Castile Soap-based recipes, please)!

For the complete list of our DIY food items, click here.

Now it’s your turn! What do you like to make? Please share, as I’m always looking for new DIY ideas!

1. We are about to embark on a huge-ginormous remodel of a lifetime! 

We’ll be adding an entry way, a mudroom, a laundry room, an office, a better downstairs bathroom (better than our existing porch bathroom – don’t ask), a (small) pantry in the kitchen, a larger-than-life American-dream island, and a bay dining area among other things.

And here’s what I’m especially looking forward to:

Mr. GORBACHEV, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!

The horrific obstruction between our kitchen and our future living area.

Ugh.

I plan to paint “Out, damn spot!” on the wall of my new laundry room. Removing stains from our good clothing is one of my more meaningful existential battles.

We’ll be moving into a house around the corner for the duration of this project, which is perfect because my girl can still ride the same school bus, among other things.

2. I am helping with the costumes for the first-grade play.

Mainly, it included going through the school’s stash and plucking out the pieces that would work for this particular storyline. I will only have to sew a couple of elementary pieces and crochet eight red balls to represent apples. I decided it’s easier than sewing them.

3. And speaking of crocheting:

Lookie what I made for my girl! I didn’t use a pattern – the whole thing is just a doily down below and a tube up above – just some basic stitches and the constant adding and decreasing after trying it repeatedly on my little model. I’ve learned basic crocheting at the age of 6 and continued doing it on and off for nearly three decades, so yes, it is the easiest (and the most enjoyable) form of handwork for me.

This skirt fits – and twirls – perfectly, if I do say so myself.

4. My husband says that crocheting an entire garment is not like the miracle of Hanukkah.

It is too!

5. Unlike crocheting, knitting is relatively new to me, and I would say it’s getting better. 

This scarf is for my little son – I lurve this tight little pattern – and it’s super easy for a beginner like myself.

I gotta keep churning these out because the kids fight over my hand-knits. Isn’t that sweet?

It’s like I always say – it ain’t done right if it’s not worth going to war for.

6. Quilting is addictive!

Meet my first quilt, made entirely out of “Gypsy Girl” charm squares by Moda (I used two packs). This tiny one is for my baby – it’s a little less than halfway done in this picture. Doesn’t it scream “East of the Balkans?” It most certainly does. I couldn’t imagine starting out with any other fabric. I plan to quilt it relatively intricately on my home machine using wavy lines. Delicious!

Although this quilt is not yet finished, I am already plotting my next one – a rainbow quilt!

This.

Send help now.

Also, Fancy Nancy has a fancy new shirt. With velcro closure in the back. Don’t you love velcro?

I can’t stop sewing, man.

7. Ya gotta be a particular kind of crazy to make a “practice” birthday  cake.

In general, I feel like homemade themed cakes are a little over the top, especially if they feature such anathema as fondant.

That said, this sailboat cake, although it misses a few elements and needs a different bottom frosting (lighter-colored and more spreadable), seemed simple enough to make for my boy’s upcoming fourth birthday.

Why hot-pink sails, you ask? Two reasons – my boy loves pink, and a scarlet-sailed ship represents a Russian literary reference. Am I not an English major?

Here he is. No gender stereotypes in this house!

Friends, I’ve got a confession to make – I am an addict! An addict to sewing, that is. Ever since my mother-in-law gave me my sewing machine as an early Christmas gift, I literally cannot stop attempting to create things with it (and, sometimes, without it). Luckily, with two daughters (and a son!) and two girl nieces there is no shortage of outlets for my output.

Also, I just made a life-changing discovery – HOT GLUE GUN! It’s easy to operate, it creates an instant, strong bond between various types of materials, and it involves pulling the trigger! Fun.

Here’s a glimpse into a small fraction of my recent/current projects:

The skirt I am crocheting for my little girl. If there’s anything crafty I actually feel confident doing, crocheting is it. I’ve done it off and on for 20 years! Word of advice though: don’t be like me – don’t crochet large garments with medium-weight yarn.

Here’s a doll skirt my girl and I made together, aka “how not to attach single-fold bias tape.” Great use for those scraps and stray fat quarters!

My oldest child began to do a little machine sewing as well (all under my watchful supervision).

Here’s a glimpse at my girl’s princess skirt that I have since completed. She absolutely loves it, but it’s no different than the dolly skirt – just a gathered skirt with an elastic threaded through the waistband.

The seventeen (!) felt crowns I made last Friday evening to give away as party favors at my girls’ seventh birthday party on Saturday. The kids really liked them! I must be a Waldorf mom or something.

These jingle bell necklaces were party favors as well. I got the idea here.

In order to keep track of all the crafting projects that I am potentially interested in, I finally joined Pinterest. If you enjoy Pinterest and I would like to follow me, you can find me here.

My husband recently pointed out that I have lots of inertia – which is another word for lots of potential energy. It’s true – most of the time it’s really hard for me to get going on anything from typing up the minutes from a committee meeting that took place three weeks ago to running a long-overdue load of laundry (or seven!). Once I get going however, it is pretty difficult for me to stop, and the sheer volume of the resulting output can be ridiculously large. Can you tell?

Merry Christmas, friends! I hope Santa’s been good to you this year.

Now where have I been? I’ve been bit by a fiber-crafting bug! Let me count the ways:

1. I have been totally and utterly absorbed in learning how to… sew with the sewing machine my wonderful mother-in-law gave as an early Christmas gift! This is just so, so exciting.

Sewing is totally architecture – in a way. So far I have replaced a zipper on my husband’s leather coat (no more zipper ladies with their fees and indeterminate project timelines!), as well as sewn ten cloth napkins, two tutu skirts (one of them blaze orange for reasons I can’t quite explain), a young child’s apron, and I’m now plotting my first (child-sized) quilt, inspired by a super-cute pattern in a quilting magazine Santa brought me.

I have really enjoyed each and every project!

Except, course, they all seem simple and quick and they all turn out to be anything but for this beginner seamstress.

Plus, I am way cool to actually use patterns, having made my own so far instead.

Using freezer paper! Best pattern-making material ever – and always on hand in this hunting family! This one is for a future circle skirt for my girl.

This one was going to be a “princess” skirt with three layers – starting with satin and culminating in some sparkly tulle. By now, the layers one and two have been completed.

Do you think I use enough pins?

2. I also have been teaching myself how to knit. Well, my mom has shown me the basic way to cast on and knit when I was little, but my best friend the You-tube and the rest of the internet showed me how to purl, bind off, and block. Granted, I haven’t gotten into intimidating things like cable-knit yet, but I have knitted a scarf for each of my older children. In fact, the scarf I made for my older girl turned out so well that she’s now wearing it to school every day and loving it. I think it makes her really happy that I made her something to wear, plus it’s super-soft and doesn’t look half-bad. Next, I’d like to crochet her a skirt to wear this winter (crocheting it in a circle like a doily will guarantee the beautiful twirly circle-skirt effect), and knit another “go-to-town” scarf for her with some cool multicolored yarn I got.

For the record, I have been somewhat of an expert crocheter since I was fairly little, but knitting is something that always seemed much harder, so I have not began to master it in earnest until the ripe age of 32.

3. Dress-up-hungry little kids are a great motivator, so I also hand-sewn each of my kids these felt crowns, having designed the pattern and the rest of it with my daugther and son. Would you be interested in a tutorial?

Here’s another look:

Every single bit is hand-sewn – no glue!

4. I’ve also taught myself how to needle felt and created a necklace for my oldest out of these felted balls (made through a combination of needle- and wet-felting techniques):

The picture above shows how I laid it out, but I have since completed it (the heart pendant has been needle-felted).

In other news:

5. I now make my own lip-balm! Only took me until now. It’s just a combination of 1 part beeswax, 2 parts cooking oil, melted in a microwave and then allowed to set into a solid again (a nice person since suggested to add a drop of honey to it). It’s really wonderful! I tried it with coconut oil too, but found that variation downright disgusting in both the consistency (oily! Ick!!!), color (looks like lard!), and smell. I could have added some essential oil to mine, but I love the pure, sweet, vanilla-y smell of the beeswax. Obviously you can use any number of high-brow, cosmetic-suited oils too, but I prefer to use what I can find in my cupboard.

6. Lastly, a friend recently lent me her beautiful, cast-aluminum clear toy (hard-candy) molds, and here’s what I’ve been making with them:

If you grew up in the Soviet Union, you are probably having an emotional reaction right now!

This one’s been made with maple syrup. The kids went bonkers for these! I love candy-making, man.

No time to blog, right?

We set up our Christmas tree today. We usually cut one down from my in-laws Christmas-tree patch, but this year we simply didn’t have the time, and instead got one from our friends closer to town. Unlike the huge, old, larger-than-life Hundt trees, this one was young, slender, and short (granted, it still reached the ceiling). After some perennial bickering surrounding the decoration, we had the tree fully decked in its tinsel glory, as well as put up our usual outside lights – twinkling icicles on the porch roof, multi-colored strand around the deck railing, a stag on the lawn, and another string around the cherry tree outside my kitchen window.

Unsurprisingly, I had little enthusiasm for the whole she-bang, still in shock from last Friday’s horrific, tragic abuse of our freedoms. Making merry in the light of this unfathomable monstrosity felt inappropriate, if not sacrilegious. But, for the sake of our kids, we went ahead and did it anyway. Isn’t that the reason for everything we do?

Every year, I decorate our tree with a motley assortment of ornaments that my mother-in-law and I have been gathering for years – the commemorations of times and places past, stores now closed, and different phases in our lives. In addition to its obvious aesthetic value, my ornament collection is a mind-map of sorts, reaching far into the past.

Unfailingly, we always place a five-point red star at the very top – a somewhat-poignant reminder of my having grown up in the Soviet Union. Back when I was a little girl, the “Kremlin” star just like this one was at the top of every tree we’ve ever had. And although, at an early age, I made a conscious decision to leave behind my tumulus homeland, I knew that no holiday tree in my life would ever be complete without this archetypal symbol of my country’s Communist past.

The year of my wedding, my mother-in-law sought out and purchased this tree-top star for me in a nearby city, so that, in the comfort of my American home – the kind of home I could have never had back in Azerbaijan – I could relive one of the few bright, color-filled highlights of my otherwise literally and figuratively gray and grim Soviet childhood.

Honestly? I am glad that we did all these things today – let the blackness of this darkest time of year – and of our hearts and minds today – be driven back by the lights of Christmas.

My husband is out of town for two weeks (which, for the record, is the shortest of his many longer trips so far), and I am for the moment being all things to all the people and barn animals around here. And while being alone is something I very much enjoy, filling my husband’s and my regular shoes makes me feel like this:

(I know Jacob is gonna love this one.)

Here are some of the highlights of this experience:

1.

My Red Room of Laundry. I am understaffed, man! It’s been washed and is waiting for Godot to be put away.

2. With Jake gone, I have to take my big girl to school in the mornings, with my two little ones in tow. It is never easy to rise from my bed, but the whole thing began to go a whole lot smoother after I accepted two simple truths:

a. Lay the no-cook breakfast materials out the night before so the kids can feed themselves.

b. Be just a tad late like everyone else. On-time is a lonely time in this town!

3. This is my husband’s first trip since I got a dog, and it is making all the difference – no more imaginary cougars hiding in my hay barn!

4.

My precious angel has been chatting up a storm, with a grand vocabulary of “mama, am/ami (eat),” “nurse (= drink from a variety of sources, human and otherwise),” “Olive” (the dog), and “hi”! This is the first of my children to say “mama” as her first word – both Josie’s and Cyrus’ first word was “cat.” You can tell there’s been a paradigm shift in the pet department!

5.

I’ve organized our sewing/crafting supplies! I am very pleased with this.

This is where I’m now going to sew – for a number of years, this table had served as our dinner table – a hand-me-down from my in-laws, which we recently replaced with another hand-me-down from the same source. My future as a Martha Stewart is just around the corner!

6. I made venison jerky this past week. Then I did done (mostly) ate it, having failed the moral test of saving most of it for my kids. Luckily, they don’t enjoy it quite as much as I do.

(Also, I am pretty sure that the good God made deer without marbling for my personal benefit!)

7. My friends were going to come over for breakfast tomorrow, and, due to my circumstances, I asked them not to expect any of the following:

(You see, my husband is the primary dish-washer at our dishwasher-less house!)

8. I own a pitchfork. I use it, too.

9. My glass is always half-full, man. I might be understaffed, but hey, there could be three feet of snow to shovel or cow escapes!

10. Our dog is new, and in the context of explaining to my son what foods we could or couldn’t feed her, I did an utterly un-Waldorfian thing and introduced him to the differences between carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores. “So which kind do you think we are?” I asked him. His reply: “Newervores!!!” The good Herr Doktor knew what he was talking about when he insisted on keeping scientific models out of little ones’ minds. It’s all fairy world out there!

Not sure how about you, but I’ve had a crazy couple of weeks. Not only was blogging not a priority, I feel like I have hardly had the chance to come up for air.

1. First, we had windows replaced in our house while we stayed with my in-laws. Very Old-Country experience, I might add! We had hired nice ladies to come and clean the house for us before we moved back in. Then it was glorious!

2. We have a new dog, who is absolutely amazing – a spayed, three-and-a-half-year-old female golden retriever and lab mix, Olive came from a friend who recently moved to town. She’s a wonderful farm companion to my kids and me, and I really think that our homestead was incomplete without her. Begone, thieving racoons! No more irrational fear of encountering a wild animal in the barn!

And she’s better behaved than my kids!

Hilariously, Olive-the-Other-Reindeer’s tags jingle like sleigh bells when she approaches.

3. Also, I’ve recently picked up black magic!

Just kidding. I’ve recently picked up hard-candy making and it’s the syrup bubbling away to the happy hard-crack stage. Looks like some witches’ elixir though, doesn’t it.

4. You know yer in Wisconsin when you call a business on Friday before the opening day and they tell you that they can’t do anything till Monday cause it’s, ya know, the dear season and all.

This is the drawing my three-year-old son made of his dad shooting a deer in the woods (notice the blaze orange clothing). He made it before the season, like them cave-carving hunter-gatherers. It came true, too.

5. Good-bye, Twilight. It’s been a good five years.

6. For over three decades my father-in-law has hosted a big deer-camp over at his farm, known as “Dawn’s Gone Hunting Club” because it begins with my mother-in-law, Dawn, leaving for the entire weekend.

Because my sister-in-law Julia is only a couple of weeks away from having her second baby, Dawn didn’t want to travel far, and invited Julia and I to stay at a hotel with her in the closest city of 50,000 for the duration of the camp. Among the good clean fun like splashing in the pool (no pun intended) and going to the children’s museum, the kids got to watch TV and eat multi-colored sugar cereal provided with the hotel breakfast.

7. Speaking of TV – while channel-surfing at the hotel, I stumbled upon a reality show about a Hutterite Colony in rural Montana (Hutterites are anabaptists like the Amish and the Menonites, differing from the latter two through their communal way of living). Like any rural folk, they do things like butcher deer, make jerky, kill and process chickens, fix machinery, and are not that much different from the well-familiar back-to-the-landers.

8. While in the city, Dawn took us and a few of her friends to the most amazing restaurant called Traditions. It is this small, cozy place with some fabulous food, complete with complicated reductions and incredibly-tasty desserts. It was there that I encountered chocolate terrine for the first time. Have you ever heard of it? It’s basically like a chilled flourless chocolate cake but without the whipped whites folded in. Have you ever tried it?

The past couple of weeks have been filled with all kinds of new developments, improvements, and additions! Here they are, in no particular order:

I now “make” dress-up! I made this tutu skirt for my girl. Tutorial coming soon!

I now make candy! Hard candy, specifically, which earned me cool mom points with my kids fer sure. Not that I’m after points or anything.

Meet my new silicon candy mold – the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

Snow! This is my in-laws’ farm.

I have new kitchen windows! Doing dishes is now officially my favorite activity!

And, if you know me at all, I bet you didn’t see this one coming:

I am now a DOG OWNER!

Meet Olive, the other reindeer, my new dog! This three-year-old spayed female belonged to dear friends until they moved to town and began to look for a new country home for their half-lab, half golden retriever companion. This is a bit of a plunge for me – I haven’t owned a dog since I was eight, when our sweet sixteen-year-old miniature pincher passed away. Back in the Old Country, we fed him on Soviet-factory hotdogs otherwise unsuitable for human consumption, but here in the capitalist paradise I’ve got plenty of cow bones and other good stuff.

Here’s to America, where everything is possible!

Because of the encroaching cold weather, paired with my older daughter’s clear need (and desire) for focused, quiet projects that are somewhat challenging (in a good way), I recently headed to my friendly small-town Walmart to stock-up on crafting supplies for the kids – embroidery, hand-sewing, and art supplies, along with… food dye for homemade candies and play dough. It’s gonna be a long winter! But looks like it’s going to be a fun one.

Here are some of the things we’ve made/been working on so far:

We made this homemade cooked play dough, using  this easy recipe from Clean. My girl and I made it this past weekend. My kids absolutely loved it.

I am especially pleased with this embroidery floss organizer, below, that now holds my daughter’s new embroidery floss and needles, her old jewelry supplies, and the expanded selection of hand-sewing thread.

It’s cute, right?

Here’s the first incarnation of her sewing kit:

As you can tell, it’s been expanded considerably since I first gave it to her a year ago – there’s also crochet yarn (something that didn’t catch yet  – although she’s been doing lots of finger crocheting as a part of first-grade handwork curriculum at her Waldorf school), and some cute quilting pieces for her to practice with (and buttons – not shown).

Embroidery, I must say, is something both of my kids got immediately hooked on – the three- and the six-year-old both. And while I myself had never embroidered before, very basic embroidery was real easy to figure out (thank you, You Tube), and I was able to show my kids how to do it without any trouble.

Here’s the list of the embroidery supplies I’ve gotten to get them started:

• thick embroidery needles – easy and safe for little fingers!
• cross-stitch fabric NUMBER 11 – the Walmart didn’t have a great selection, and available number 11 had the widest distance between the holes (I say, with little kids, the wider, the better). I didn’t necessarily mean for us to cross-stitch specifically, but the fabric, with its marked holes, is absolutely perfect for every kind of stitch for the little ones.
• embroidery rings for each child (I got two medium ones, one really small one, and one bigger one)
• a small selection of embroidery floss (about 15 different colors)
• embroidery floss organizer, which’d go insane without
• floss spools – I’ve gotten paper ones but I really should have gotten the plastic ones, which they also had, to keep our floss from tangling.

I didn’t feel like using any patterns at this point – I just drew whatever they asked to embroider – things like flowers, trees, and letters – directly on the cross-stitch fabric with a number two pencil. Like this:

Course, a little boy’s embroidery project must include machinery.

I found it to be a wonderful form of bonding, too – embroidering with my little guy as he sits on my lap while I help him with his stitches is one of the sweetest thing we’ve done together.

My daugther and I also recently made this felt monster out of an old sweater the day after Halloween, when I kept her home from school to rest and come down from the sugar high:

Although this is obviously not Etsy-level (the most complicated thing I sewed recently was this floral headband for my baby), I thought the project was absolutely terrific for a little girl because she got to participate in every step of the process.

It started with her conceptualizing her future monster by drawing a few prototypes. I then drew a “life-size” pattern based on her drawing on a separate piece of paper and cut it out. Next, we traced the pattern on the doubled fabric with a shard of soap (which is SO MUCH better than chalk), and cut along the line with my proper fabric shears. Finally, we pinned the two pieces together all the way around and my daugther hand-stitched everything along the edge, leaving a small section open so we could turn the monster inside-out and stuff it with cotton balls (I later sewed up this opening neatly from the outside).

Such a great project for a little girl!

Here it is in the making – the white thread was used to create a temporary straight stitch to hold the two sides together while she put the stronger permanent stitches all the way around.

And then there was this:

A really awesome no-sew tutu skirt – a little girl’s dream come true (I found the inspiration here). The tutorial of my own version coming up soon!

You know what else I really love about it all? I love how it shows my kids where toys and clothes come from, just like living on a farm and helping in the kitchen shows them what it takes to put food on the table.

All in all, it’s been real fun – my daughter even declared that I was really good at teaching crafts (which is hilarious, because I am not crafty at all). How often do I get to hear that?

I’ve also found this website which I can’t wait to explore for more ideas (especially this one). Gotta keep up with my cool-mom reputation!

Yesterday I:

1. Made my first batch of sweetened homemade yogurt – sweet vanilla and almond – and it was magnificent. Though I’ve made a massive amount of plain yogurt over the years, I’ve never actually made the sweetened variety before, and it worked like a charm. Everyone in my family loved it.

2. Made my first batch of hard candy (totally free-form because I don’t own a mold since the whole thing was spur-of-the-moment) – and it was glorious. Without a doubt, it scored me some cool-mom points, especially on the heels of the sweet vanilla yogurt success. This doesn’t happen every day.

3. Baked a loaf of bread.

4. Made a simple but nice dinner of Russian hamburgers and rice pilaff accompanied by the sauerkraut made with the cabbage my husband grew. And yes, it’s all as pastoral as it sounds.

5. Ran a load of laundry with my new homemade powdered laundry detergent, which works amazingly well, is a clinch to make (although I did need to use a face mask), and costs ridiculously little. This is no small money-saving step in my life, as I burn through laundry soap at great speed given our family’s size and lifestyle.

6. Made a second-ever flower headband for my baby girl – while I find them kinda ridiculous, these things make great photo props and are a lot of fun to make. Now, I am not crafty or anything (at least not anymore), so this is pretty unusual. I’m no Martha Stewart, but I think it turned out pretty nice for my level of “expertise.”

Meanwhile, my husband:

1. Took the big kids to the car mechanic and the library in another town, which meant that they were gone from early morning and into mid-afternoon, allowing me a much-needed, utterly glorious time alone, not counting the baby (who’s sweet and, by and large, great at playing by herself).

2. Put the kids to bed and cleaned the kitchen while I ran to my favorite store, our small-town Walmart, to get some drawing and construction paper for my kids, along with an embroidery floss organizer for my girl’s floss, needles, various beads, and spools of hand-sewing thread (a much-needed addition!).

Results not typical!!!

While this year’s weather was absolutely surreal, with record heat, unimaginable drought, and bizarre, unseasonable warm spells, it was also responsible for the most glorious fall display in my nearly ten years in Wisconsin.

The town, the woods, and our farm were aflame in the way I’d never seen before. Because of the drought, every tree turned colors more or less at the same time, instead of taking turns throughout the season. It was absolutely magical.

One of the greatest things about living in the county is having a built-in park right outside your door.

Isn’t the world full of wonders!

You know what I love about having three kids versus two? Instead of a pair, we now have a built-in community – just what we were hoping for.

Have kids.

Have a few.

But only if you want to.

Fall is so very much my favorite season.

(Name that tree.)

Something about this time of year makes you wanna take a photo of your boots in the fallen leaves. I love Mucks – I wear them around the farm, to town, to meetings, parties, and deer hunting. They project nicely who I am while delivering unparalleled comfort to my feet (as long as I don’t wear them in warm weather).

Love is all we need! Let Cyrus tell you about that.

The Giveaway winner is #10: Nettie Black!

Congratulations, Nettie! You will be getting an email from me so I can get your mailing address.

Thank you, everyone, for participating!

_____________

I am so excited to bring you this wonderful giveaway from Lusa Organics, a local Viroqua business specializing in organic body and baby care products that we love and adore in our home. Handcrafted by a family not much different from our own, Lusa’s products are safe, really effective, and have this luxurious feel that comes with using something utterly real. But don’t take my word for it – several of Lusa’s products have been declared the best by Mothering magazine, and deservedly so.

While Lusa offers an entire line of products, I especially love their intensely-fragrant soaps, deliciously-smelling lip balms, and their award-winning diaper ointment that I’ve been using on my various babies for years. If you wanna give these a try, they can be purchased directly from Lusa’s website, the Amazon, and various independent retailers.

And this is the family behind the company – Rachel, Pete, and their kids, Lupine and Sage (hence the name LuSa):

In addition to running her very successful business, Rachel homeschools her two children and authors a popular crafting and parenting blog, Clean, which deserves a few words of its own. While filled to the brim with fun and practical tutorials on things like homemade toothpaste and tonic water, Rachel’s blog especially stands out through her articles on raising capable, confident children in the atmosphere of peaceful communication, joy, and a whole lot of projects. I personally find it to be an immense source of inspiration, so please run, don’t walk to check it out.

Now for the fun part:

The Giveaway

The products that I am giving away today, courtesy of the soap queen herself, are my personal favorites:

A bar of handcrafted Lusa soap, above, which is just sublime…

And our favorite diaper ointment (my young son used to lovingly call it “the butt soap” and requested – no, demanded it at the slightest sign of discomfort). This wonderfully gentle, versatile product is pure magic in more than one application – in addition to soothing diaper rash like nobody’s business, it also works wonders on weather-chapped cheeks and chins – a common affliction this time of year.

To enter:

Just leave a comment telling me you are interested!

For a second chance to win:

Like Lusa Organics on Facebook and leave another comment here telling me you did.

The contest ends at midnight CST on Sunday, November 4, 2012. The winner will be announced here soon after.

Disclaimer: This giveaway is sponsored by Lusa Organics.  I have not received any compensation for hosting – I just love Rachel’s blog and her products. All opinions are my own.

Back when I was a little girl in the Soviet Union, consumer goods were scarce, resulting in crafting and DIY being as commonplace as outsourcing is in US today. Far from being a middle-class hobby, tackling small sewing projects was a matter of course, and I honestly don’t believe that there is a person of my exact background who doesn’t know how to replace an elastic in a pair of pants, hem a skirt, or fix small holes in socks, tights, and other clothing.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that whenever anyone wanted, say, a pretty rosette-shaped hair bow for a little girl, which spelled high-fashion at the time, it had to be made by hand, and I myself sewed more than a few starting with the age of eight.

Even though I now lead a considerably more prosperous life in US, I still fix holes in my kids’ clothes, socks, mittens, and tights religiously (note that the same cannot be said about my husband’s farm pants) and replace failed pant elastics. However, I had not crafted anything decorative in a very, very long time.

That is, until last night.

You see, a recent conversation with my Russian emigre cousin unexpectedly filled me with intense nostalgia for my crafting days, and not being able to contain it, I decided to make a thing or two for my girls.

An infant headband seemed like a good place to start, and after a (not-so) quick trip to the store, I sat down and made this yesterday, staying up rather late to complete it because I am out of practice by a couple of decades, and because my technique predates labor-saving tools like hot-glue guns.

And while I don’t have or want a future as an Etsy merchant, I feel like I didn’t do half-bad.

It sure made one heck of a photo prop, don’t you think?

Because of the very basic nature of this, I didn’t need any kind of tutorial, relying solely on the finished-product vision in my mind and the muscle memory acquired back in the elementary school.

And I guess that makes me more of a crafter than I let on.

My, have things ever been crazy of late – I believe the seasons turned since my last update! Here’s a list of all of the exciting obstacles projects I had to overcome attend to in the past two weeks:

1. My baby got baptized at the ripe age of 9 months, and we had a party. A party at our house means a pretty big effort because I am:

- Moderately antisocial

- No Martha Stewart

- Have very limited party space

- Have a big extended family, which means that inviting our immediate circle of locally-residing relatives translates into at least a dozen guests.

- Have control issues, which means that I prefer to prepare most of the feast myself, at a relatively advanced level, and entirely from scratch, aided by the fact that I have a food snob blogger reputation to uphold.

As a result, I ended up making the bread, three quiches, roasted delicata squash, a quart of vanilla ice-cream, and the salad dressing for the salad my mother-in-law brought, as well as baking a three-layer chocolate cake with the French buttercream frosting that involved freshly-brewed espresso, reducing a sugar syrup to the soft-ball stage, and the painstaking application with two different kinds of icing spatulas and lots of swearwords.

Nothing says “welcome to the community of saints” like butter.

Here’s what it ended up looking like:

Because of the combination of black cake and white frosting, my husband christened my creation “the whited sepulcher.” Pun intended.

Also, did you know? Bakeware makes the happiest babies.

2. Among other things, last week was marked by my cooking some 15 quarts of cream-of-potato soup and baking four big loaves of bread for an informational luncheon at my girl’s school. Luckily, all of the potatoes and onions that went in the soup were grown by my husband in our garden, which meant virtually no ingredient cost.

Nothing like investing in my children’s future on the cheap!

I also tried to serve as the event’s semi-official photographer. Granted, my enthusiasm surpasses my skill level, but that’s a separate question.

3. Within the aforementioned time period, I finally managed to catch up on 100 years of laundry, discovering in the process that:

- My husband owns many more intact T-shirts than previously thought.

- Some of the clothes were no longer seasonally-appropriate.

- Some of the clothes no longer fit my children.

Don’t be like me.

On a bright side, full laundry baskets make one heck of a foot stool.

4. To add (in a good way) to my busy social calendar, I recently attended a heart-warming and endlessly entertaining reading and book signing by a Wisconsin writer Michael Perry, whose New York Times bestseller Visiting Tom just hit store shelves. Hilarious, touching, and incredibly close-to-home all at once, his mix of personal anecdotes and passages from the newest book drew endless bursts of laughter from the crowd of fans who packed one of the venues in our town.

Because I couldn’t help myself, I brought Mr. Perry a small jar of chocolate chip cookies.

By the way, I’d never had a book inscribed by the author before, and thought this was really special. Mine reads: “Thanks for the cookies.”

5. No busy couple of weeks would be complete without kids getting sick, and mine was no exception after my daugther brought stomach flu from school and gave it to her little brother. My girl has since recovered, but my little guy currently needs some tender loving care. I plan to be back to my usual posting once that’s behind us.

Truth be told, blogging of any quality takes quite a bit of time. Which brings me to my final point:

This Russian-language meme has popped in my Facebook feed, and here’s what it says:

“People always ask me: ‘How do you find the time for everything? What’s your secret?’

My secret is simple – I don’t accomplish shit.”

Along with borscht and Olivier salad, few things can delight a nostalgic Russian émigré heart more than this delightful summer spread, forever associated with summers in the motherland. Thanks to our bumper crop of eggplants, I was able to make some entirely with our own garden produce. It can be served as an appetizer on crostini and makes a wonderful light lunch or snack when spread on freshly-baked, crusty bread – just like I remember. You can find my complete eggplant caviar recipe over at the Edible Madison website, and the full list of my Edible Madison contributions here. Russian sauerkraut is up next!

Enjoy!

Sweet Petunia has just turned 9 months.

She sits up, stands up, crawls everywhere, and says “mama” and “that.”

She has a lot to say to the world!

My, why do you have such big teeth?

I have a son. His name is Cyrus.

Cyrus is currently three and a half years old, and says the most hilarious things. Here are some of the things he said recently:

“Mommy, when your milk is all gone, will your *chest* get flat?”

“Mom is better than the store!”

Playing a 911 dispatcher with his sister: “I have an emergency at my house. Someone stole all my chocolate chips!”

Cyrus, upon having enjoyed a treat:

Me: “Cyrus, how is it going?”

Cyrus: “It’s going bad. I got full!”

Cyrus’ term for Curiosity Rover: “the space tractor.”

And speaking of little boys, space, and machinery:

How amazing is that?

1. Once upon a time, two days ago, I looked out of my front door and saw this:

What’s wrong with this picture? Or, right – location, location, location.

2. The other day, I told my husband that our brother-in-law and our good friend Luke headed up to Canada for an 8-day long fishing trip, leaving behind their rather pregnant wives with little kids. “Can you believe it,” I said?

His response: “Why don’t I ever get invited?”

3. Speaking of marriage, last night I was all ready to put together a nice burrito dinner when I noticed my husband going to retrieve his .22 rifle. “I’m going in the woods to shoot some squirrels,” he said!  That was an hour before dinner, you realize – the act I found both puzzling and disconcerting due to the unusual timing.

“Maybe he wants to get away from the mean mama and the loud kids and needs something to do?” said my six-year-old daugther cheerfully in a matter-of-fact manner.

It’s a good thing you understand men, my child. It’s a useful skill to have.

4. I made this delicious eggplant “caviar” spread – a Russian classic as popular as the all-American apple pie – for Edible Madison.com, a Wisconsin branch of Edible Publications, run by the fine people right here in Viroqua.

I am quite certain it’s the best batch I’ve ever prepared, made with 100% our own eggplants, tomatoes, and onions. Wow.

Also, this is the second batch I’ve made in 15+ years – but I haven’t lost the touch yet. Stay tuned for the recipe!

When I married my husband eight years ago, I married into a very large family, as my father-in-law is the seventh of eleven siblings, all of whom live in the area and maintain strong bonds. Which is why, when it comes to the traditional seasonal celebrations, a 30 to 50-person crowd is nothing out of the ordinary.

Below are a few snapshots from the recent Labor Day celebration over at the so-called Hundt Trust Farm (which my kids call “the Christmas farm”) – formerly the residence of my father’s-in-law late parents.

Singing for their supper is a big part of the tradition. This is only a small part of the crowd present.

My sister-in-law, Julia, with her doppelganger daugther Penny and my girls. The newest generation of Hundt women!

The other day Penny came over to play with Cyrus. At first, they competed for my attention, so instead of reading to them I took them with me into the garden to pick tomatoes, where they cooperated nicely. I then had the kids help me core them, and working together made them the best of friends. Really, they totally bonded over it. Jobs, however small, take kids out of their own selves and make them focus outwards on the task at hand rather than worrying about their place on the totem pole. I highly recommend this approach!

Julia is currently expecting her second child, and I think it’s a boy (although they haven’t found out). Baby envy on my end!!!!!!!

Boys in trees! This is James, the fourth child of Jacob’s first cousin Mike and my friend LaVonne. Mike and LaVonne have five kids all together, and have for years been a model family for us. Love them.

This is my father’s-in-law sister, Connie – the de facto matriarch of our branch of the Hundt clan, at least where the gatherings are concerned. She is the central planning force behind these awe-inspiring spectacles of extreme cooking and eating – and an extraordinary cook herself.

When my husband was born 32 years ago, Connie came over for a week to be with Jacob’s mom, Dawn, as he was Dawn’s first baby. Unsurprisingly, she became my husband’s godmother.

When I first came to America, Connie and her family welcomed me for dinner at their beautiful home in Madison, Wisconsin, and I will never forget the divine taste of the smothered chicken Connie served to me that day – possibly the most recognized of her mom’s recipes.

Evie – currently the youngest Hundt baby in our branch.

This striking young beauty is Mike and LaVonne’s second child, Sarah. Funny story – when I first came to America nearly a decade ago, Sarah was just four years old – two years younger than my oldest. Now that says  a lot about my age, doesn’t it?

Like no other season, early September in Wisconsin offers the ultimate cornucopia of garden produce, made all the more exciting by its fleeting nature. CSA boxes, farmer’s markets, and food co-ops are bursting with local produce at its ripest. Below is the list of my go-to recipes for this time of year:

Apple-Dipping Caramel (above). Amazing. Life-changing. Simple to make. From-scratch. Get behind me, individually-wrapped factory caramels!

I hate canning, so I don’t. Instead, I freeze my tomatoes in this easy way to make sauces in the winter and beyond.

Squash Blossom Fritters in Beer Batter – zucchini still running amok in your gaden? Nick them in the bud! Pun intended.

Russian Borscht, the right way – labor-intensive, to be sure, but if you like beets, this dish is not something you’ll soon forget. I made a giant pot of this for the Parents’ Day fundraiser at our school last year, and it was a hit. Have it with some good bread.

Still eggplants in your CSA box? This relish is yummy.

Did you know? Eggplant is my favorite vegetable. Here are a couple more:

Stuffed Eggplants
Easy Eggplant Moussaka
Eggplant Bruschetta – to die for.

I love this bruschetta – such a lovely appetizer, starter, or family-style meal accompaniment.

I love this late-summer stir-fry recipe from our cousin Lars, a cook extraordinaire.

Sweetcorn surplus? Freeze some.

Roast Chicken!!!!!!! Smothered, to be precise. Perfect for this cooler weather.

More roast chicken! This one is made with maple-balsamic glaze and caramelized onions.

Russian Cabbage Rolls! My cabbage is RIPE.

I love these spectacular (OK, not in the picture) pepper and onion steak fajitas.

Give ‘em a try!

Whether we choose to stay home or balance a family and a career, each mother is a mighty powerhouse, and don’t ever let anybody tell you otherwise. If you consider the planning, the dedication, and the sheer number of work hours involved, motherhood is at once comparable to building a house (a brick one, no less), planting a forest, and growing a garden. Visioning, tireless cultivation, and sowing the seeds of future generations – we do it all.

Like Tom Spaulding in Dandelion Wine, I often mentally count the number of “bricks” – big and small – that I have laid into the edifice of progeny in the past seven years.

Here are the results of my rough calculations:

• 672 loaves of bread
• 990 chocolate chip cookies
• 260 crayons purchased
• 22 batches of homemade ice-cream (I made my first batch about two months ago)
• 1,260 servings of homemade baby food (always as simple as mashed bananas, potatoes, avocados, roasted yams, apple sauce, plain yogurt, or some of what the rest of us were eating)
• 10, 950 diaper changes
• 9, 125 eggs collected
• 180 lunches packed
• 33 lego pieces purchased and lost (I swore off Legos since)
• 35 holes in clothing fixed
• 55 blowout stains removed
• 20 bottles of Febreze, extra strength
• 30 bottles of Oxy-Clean spray
• 2 birthday cakes baked and iced (I know)
• 1 US citizenship earned
• 1 rural lifestyle embraced
• one whitetail deer life taken (as lean venison makes wonderful kid treats, like this and this)
• 3 human lives given

My husband used to say that work is love made visible, and I have to agree.

1. This past week has marked a huge milestone for my firstborn – she started the first grade, and she loves it.

At the end of this rainbow (and I do mean geographically) is her little school.

2. She now rides the school bus home and likes it very much – the fact that raised the eyebrows of every fellow Waldorf mom I spoke to.

But here’s the deal:

Besides our resolution to not own a second car, and my firm belief in the fact that mom does not automatically equal chauffeur, I value the opportunity to allow my child this wee bit of independence and the resulting boost in self-confidence.

Besides, her particular ride is very, very short.

3. One of the most satisfying things in my life is to be able to provide my children with the childhood I never had. I know this sounds totally cliche, but please believe that when I say it, I fully mean it.

Here’s what this childhood includes:

• a country with a good government and a strong economy
• a reliable, responsible father
• decent things to wear
• plenty of good things to eat
• a few siblings
• mother at home
• mother who pays attention
• mother who can bake and can afford to bake
• mother and father who have the patience to teach them how to bake, cook, clean, and navigate the world around them

None of these are taken for granted by anyone involved.

And speaking of first-world amenities:

4. I’ve got a new washing machine.

Like most things, we purchased it used, but that’s how we choose to live our lives. Foregoing shiny new things means that we are both able to pursue our true callings while ensuring that our children have the life we want for them (see above).

Here’s my old washer’s historic last load, characterized by my having to drain the full machine of water and wring all of these sheets and towels by hand before hanging them on the line, all with my husband out of town and my beef steers at large.

On the bright side, it broke during the rinse cycle.

I even washed a few items by hand between this one breaking and the new one coming – something I’m still good at – and let my kids try their hand at it as well (they literally demanded that I let them, copy-cats that they are). An impromptu perspective-building exercise ftw.

5. After a very hot and muggy Wisconsin summer (drought or no drought), characterized by the dirty-white sky, the weather is finally getting cooler, which means blue skies and bright stars. I am excited for fall!

6. Speaking of the weather, I had to run both the air-conditioner and the wood stove at different points this past week.

Can you believe it?

It’s plainly obvious that being a mom is my primary vocation.

Here’s what I’m currently growing in my garden:

My oldest – smart, easygoing, and very responsible. Starting first grade in a few days. I don’t think I can cope.

Angel baby, she is as sweet and pleasant as she looks. Our easiest baby by far – assertive when she has to communicate some concrete need (like a diaper change, for instance), she is nevertheless completely chill the rest of the time.

Love and love.

Evie.

Eevee.

Evelyn.

Ev.

Her name is music.

Cyrus – what a delight. Very smart and has a way with language, rhymes things, and recites poetry to the extent that he can remember. Says things like “tow trucks tow trucks” and “Mom is better than the store!”

He takes great pride in my cooking, for some reason.

10 lb 4 oz at birth.

When Cyrus was Ev’s age, we had a small fire in the upstairs of our house. Luckily, Cyrus and I, the only ones in the house at the time, were downstairs. I smelled the smoke, called 911, threw on his Columbia snowsuit (as it was October), and out we went.

I took nothing else.

I cared about nothing else.

I already had the only thing that mattered with me.

Incidentally, I had just been reading this book, written by a Wisconsin writer and volunteer firefighter Michael Perry.

Small-town volunteer firefighters – and I’m speaking from a place of experience here – are as efficient as they are stereotypically hot (no pun intended). I haven’t come from a culture of volunteerism, so I think the very fact of their existence is a miracle. This I believe is what love thy neighbor looks like.

FYI, Mr. Perry has a new book out – a New York Times bestseller, no less. I want to read it.

Anyhow, this machinery-crazy child loves to wear pigtails.

I love these kids so much, my heart overflows. Being home with them is a luxury I treasure like nothing else.

There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

Two words for you today: delicious and ’tis the season. Click here for the recipe.

Remember yesterday’s gripping narrative of my flighty salad-bar beef and the ensuing chase? And how all was well in the end?

That’s what I thought until just around dinner time, when the supposedly fenced-in cows came to dinner as we were sitting down on our deck.

And I don’t mean on a plate.

Now remember, my husband’s out of town.

At first I couldn’t figure out how the heck they got out for the third time in one day.

Oh, and my three-year-old son began to cry hysterically when a cow stopped to taste the lawn decoration-type thing he made out of colored paper and tape.

“Take it away from the cow, mommy, take it away from the cow!” he kept screaming, trying to get me to save his precious artifact from the beast’s clenched jaws.

Now I love my son and all, but I had to explain to him that I wasn’t gonna do it. And so he wailed:

“MOMMY! I WANT TO EAT THOSE COWS! LET’S EAT THOSE COWS!”

Translation: “Let’s kill them and eat them so they don’t steal our stuff anymore!”

Don’t worry son, you’ll get your revenge. Don’t you know it’s the dish best served cold? Or, in this case, hot.

Anyhow, because it was right around my kids’ bedtime and about to get dark, I decided I would let the cows be for the night and deal with the problem in the morning – they couldn’t really leave the farm anyhow, which was fenced all the way around.

All evening I listened to the steers wandering in the yard like ghosts of people who left some business unfinished between my garden and deck. Eventually, though, I realized that I had forgotten to fence off a remote section of the pasture, thereby unwittingly allowing them to escape.

It wasn’t their fault, after all! They just wanted to go on a field trip and saw a way.

I am a fine example of a farmer’s wife, I know!

Don’t hire me.

I mean, don’t marry me if you’re a farmer.

Actually, that’s not really possible anyway, so nevermind.

On the upside, I had guard cows in my yard all night: big and scary!

Thankfully, once I figured out what the problem was, same friend agreed to come out and help me tackle the situation for good in the am, while my mother-in-law was here watching my three kids.

It’s so wonderful to have family and friends.

It’s what my husband calls “social capital.”

Oh, and you shouda seen me using the end of my bright-yellow broom for poking the cows to make them move into where I wanted them to go. I’ll give you a moment to imagine it.

Now, do I look like a cowgirl to you?

Nevermind, don’t answer that.

But what a relief to finally have them back in!

My yard no longer resembles a Marc Chagall painting, with cow faces in all the wrong places.

The cowpies can now return to the earth.

The children can roam freely.

Oh, and I highly recommend chasing livestock as a way of getting high legally!

Or not.

I wish I could have tackled the situation like a normal person from the beginning, but sometimes I can be really, really slow. Still, I am glad my kids could witness the whole debacle – it’s just as useful when they watch us struggle and succeed.

With my husband out of town, I had a fine week of (mis)adventures. Course, everything had to happen at the same time:

You say bucolic salad-bar beef, I say repeat offenders!

They weren’t happy with their old life.

The were looking for greener pastures! It’s like they say…

Specifically, they were lusting after this fine clover, so they helped themselves out of the fence. Which, we later found out, was not fully electrified – but we fixed it. By “we” I mean myself and Leo Cox, Jacob’s former student and a good friend, who happened to be in town and was kind enough to stop by to help me with my steer situation.

This is Leo on another occasion. A man of many talents! Leo’s mom works with my husband.

Also, many thanks to our friend Matt and his boy Truman, who also came out to help with a bunch of Truman’s fourth-grade friends.

I don’t know what I would do without you, guys, cause I am no match for the steers.

Gotta love this small-town life – you call up a neighbor, and they come right out and know just what to do, independently of whether they’ve done it before or not.

I also had to move the electric wire around to contain the cows in this clover-y area – my husband left them in a plot that I guess wasn’t quite as satisfying as they would have liked.

To do so, I had to run an additional piece of wire (and by wire I mean the electric fence) along the side of the barn to reach the electricity source.

Which is in this shed.

This kind of moving from plot-to-plot is what you call rotational grazing, and this is how we pasture our 100% grass-fed steers. If you are in or around Viroqua or La Crosse and are interested in buying some of this naughty but delicious beef in the fall, give a holler!

But it wasn’t my first challenge this week.

Bad news: my washer quit on me in the middle of a full load.

Good news: it was during the rinse cycle!

Course I grew up in USSR, where my dismally impoverished and largely dysfunctional family couldn’t afford any meat, sweets, or dairy, much less a washer, much less an automatic one, so wringing out the contents of the washer by hand and draining the water was a no-brainer with my acquired skill set.

By the way, I was really amused by the suggestion I got to wring the clothes out one by one in a salad spinner – I am still cracking up at that one. Back in the Old Country, we didn’t have salad spinners either. Instead, we had a terrific, versatile tool we successfully used for most things: our hands.

In fact, it constantly puzzles me that women no different from myself can be preoccupied to the point of neurosis with all the seemingly secondary body parts like their face and middle, while in fact it’s our hands with their accumulated skills (along with our minds and hearts) are what’s ultimately responsible for crafting a satisfying life.

Or at least that’s been the case with me.

TRAITOR!!!!!!!!

Actually, this washer and I had a good life together between the farm, three young kids, two home births, and a countless number of resulting unmentionable substances. And since we had bought it used for a song, which is the thing to do here in America with people constantly moving around and upgrading, I am at peace knowing that there are countless others waiting to take its place.

Plus, like my six-year-old daugther hilariously put it, it’s much better than “having a broken water pump!”

This is her:

She bakes cakes and cupcakes (with my help) and recently masterfully changed the baby’s poopy diaper without ever being asked to do such a thing. This, I believe, is called initiative.

(Here’s that baby.)

I think it’s a gift to be able to raise kids with a healthy sense of perspective, which is why I am not bitter about my District-12 non-childhood at all. For here’s what’s great about growing up in a collapsing/totalitarian country: it makes you tough, resourceful, formidably self-assured, and able to treasure the smallest amenities like the greatest of miracles – think Katniss-Everdeen-turned-mom.

And for that, my friends, I will always be grateful.

It’s no secret that I love eggplants. It’s also no secret that eggplant is not exactly a pretty vegetable once you cook it. Especially when I photograph it – so I’m gonna need you to trust me with this one.

Rooted in the ancient Azerbaijani tradition of cooking up summer vegetables (particularly eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, and onions) together into stews, relishes, and spreads, this one is wonderful atop toast and pasta.

Here’s the recipe:

Looking for more eggplant recipes? Check out these :

Azerbaijani Stuffed Eggplants

Easy Beef and Eggplant Moussaka

Eggplant Bruschetta

Sweet Evie turned eight months last week.

She’s sitting up.

She likes Johnny jumper.

She is starting to feed herself finger foods. Just.

She crawls everywhere.

She kneels up even.

She loves to be held and cuddled.

What a cute age.

(Pardon my drool.)

I think we need a family portrait before any of them get any older!!!!!

Around here, we’ve got this funny habit of putting everything we don’t want the kids to reach up high, and then later consolidating a pile of cabinet-top objects into a cardboard box or two at cleaning time.

Then we forget about them, sometimes for half a decade, at which point they become sort of time capsules, filled with outdated devices, random mementos, and a collection of assorted would-be-trash-turned-historical-artifacts. These are true treasure troves for our kids, with some items dating back to before they were born.

Here are the contents of one of such boxes, cracked open this past weekend:

Daddy’s old glasses – why are they still here?! Not the dorky glasses he had when we first met but the next generation.

My old bracelet! I am pretty sure my mother-in-law gave it to me the first or the second Christmas I was in America. Perfect for Josie!

My other old bracelet! I have no idea where that one came from.

A ring I bought for myself at one point, can’t remember where.

Mints! Eek.

A stationary collection from Jacob’s late grandmother Kate, including a letter she received from her grandson Lars when he was in England some unmentionable number years back. In his handwriting.

Did Josie ever love finding these!

An ancient hair piece of mine. Cyrus believes it’s a crane, though.

This is a curious one. This once belonged to my sister-in-law Julia when she was in her teens. When I first came to America years ago, I stayed in Julia’s childhood bedroom, and for some reason I took this from her old jewelry-making set. Not sure why I needed it, but it’s worth noting that when I was a little girl in the Soviet Union and made my own jewelry, we had no such supplies.

A laser point-pen! We took that one away for the fear they’d shine it into someone’s eye. This was a gift to my husband from his mom some Christmas many years ago.

Are your kids old enough to know what this is? Josie knew!

Curiously, this is not a music tape – this is a recording of the interview my husband did with our friend Philothea Bezin as he was writing his prize-winning master’s thesis on private schools and initiatives in our one-of-a-kind town, Viroqua, WI.

Philothea, you see, was the very first teacher at our town’s Waldorf school. Some thirty years ago, she started it with a class of three students, all of whom are older than I am.

My daugther is about to start the first grade here in a week.

If you are curious, Jacob’s entire thesis can be downloaded here.

I hear it’s excellent. I’ve never read it. Chukcha is a writer, not reader.

I can’t fathom why I still have these leads from an automatic pencil I used all throughout college in Bulgaria. I used it for tests, copious note-taking, and love notes (just kidding – I am not the love-note kind). How they crossed the ocean – and why – is beyond me.

Name this flag! Hint: It’s upside down. Jacob had sewn it onto his backpack while in college. The same college where I used said automatic pencils.

Daddy’s old lock thingie for his bike! It reminds me of the combination-lock briefcase my dad used to own in the Old Country. He took it everywhere, though it rarely contained anything other than fresh newspaper and a bottle of vodka he always kept there “in case of a party.”

Someone’s ready for first grade!

Twilight wasn’t always at the top of my book list.

A very curious artifact here! What you see here is a print of a sugaring-off event my husband and his dad helped put together. The sugar shack you see here was built in my father’s-in-law garage.

One generation’s trash is another generation’s treasure!

MY OLD BARRETTE! How could I have forgotten it there?

I bought it before Josie was born and placed it “up high” while she was still a toddler.

Doesn’t it look nice on her?

Which reminds me of my other time machine – my jewelery box!

Here’s one of my favorite tips for the parents of little kids:

Present a chore or a task at hand as a game, especially to the children between the ages of two and four.

You probably noticed that, at that age, kids process the world largely through their imagination, often without being able to fully differentiate between the real and the imaginary until they are six or seven. Observe a three-year-old at play sometime, notice how absolutely, utterly absorbed she is, and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

Because I know this, when it comes to getting my three-year-old to help with relatively boring household jobs, I often try to come up with a scenario he can hold in his mind as his hands do the actual physical task. Like the world of imagination itself, the picture you present them with doesn’t need to be perfectly realistic – it just needs to be vivid and easily understandable, preferably incorporating their current area(s) of interest. For my son, it pretty much means pretending to be either a machine operator or a hunter-gatherer.

With this in mind, here is what I told him when I was recently teaching him to button and unbutton his shirt on his own (a work in progress, I might add):

“Pretend that the hole is a lake and the button is a fish. The fish slipped away from the fisherman and wants to go back into the lake. Quick, quick, help the fish dive into the hole and get away!!”

Although simple, this “role-play” was highly effective in fixing his attention on this basic manual task because I choose an image from the natural world (its primal drama, as it were) that my son was closely familiar with.

Here’s another: when I wanted to involve him into folding the laundry, I sat him down on the couch next to me and dumped a pile of clean clothes we needed to fold by our feet. Then I said: “Pretend that we are two fishermen in a boat, fishing.”

I then reached into the pile and pulled out a pair of pants. I swung it wildly in the air, imitating a fish fighting the hook (boys love action!). I then slapped the pants onto my lap, exclaiming “We caught it! We need to butcher it quick so it doesn’t go bad!” We then proceeded to “butcher” the “fish” by folding the pants.

While my six-year-old daugther still enjoys the imaginary, she is also starting to awake to the material world as described by the laws of chemistry, biology, and physics, often looking for basic scientific explanations for things. With kids like this you gonna wanna appeal to their curiosity and wonder. Because she is currently into stars, planets, and all things having to do with space, I came up with the following game to accompany coring tomatoes:

(Which she did with this tool my mother-in-law gave me after reading this post).

“Look, look, it’s a meteorite flying through space!”

“Bang, it crashed into a planet and made a big crater!”

And I illustrate:

It’s nothing complicated, but it does make a difference in the tone and the atmosphere between you (the labor-commissioner parent) and your “work force.”

Especially because of the space theme, I knew I couldn’t finish today’s post without saying goodbye to Neil Armstrong. Incidentally, prompted by a particularly bright half-moon, my husband and I spent most of the Friday evening watching the videos and looking at the pictures of the original Moon landing, less than a day before the astronauts’ death made the headlines and permeated my friends’ status updates. I will never cease to marvel at the heroic nature of manned space missions – a triumph of human curiosity, courage, and will.

My apologies for the delay in announcing the winner here – my girl has started the first grade last week, and the school routine has been a killer.

And the winner is… #26 Brittany D. Steffey: “It’s a tie between Cheesemaking, Fruit Tree Grafting, and Beekeeping for me!”

Congratulations, Brittany! I’ll send you an email soon asking for your mailing address!

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If you live in or around Viroqua, WI, or in the neighboring cities such as Madison, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Milwaukee, or Chicago, this giveaway is for you!

The Driftless Folk School is a terrific local organization offering courses in sustainability-related subjects including gardening, blacksmithing, cheesemaking, woodworking, building, butchering, herbalism, wilderness skills, food preservation, sustainable living, and more.

The classes are normally either a day (9 am to 5 pm) or half a day (a morning or an afternoon) long, and take place in a variety of locations in and around Viroqua. Occasional classes are weekend-long. Whether you are a die-hard survivalist or a city dweller with an interest in DIY, there’s something there for you.

Just to give you a taste, these are some of the classes that have been offered recently or are currently being offered:

Building a Solar Cooker

The Zero-Energy House

DIY Photovoltaics (Solar Electrics)

Dry-Stack Stone Walls

Herbal Soup Making

Earth Oven Building

Food Drying with Attitude

Fermentation Basics

Deer Butchering - I’ll be there!

Bagels for Beginners

Beekeeping Basics

Fruit Tree Grafting

Lots of cool, no-nonsense, practical workshops – just what I like.

There are also a few music and dance classes, like Introduction to Fiddle and Shape-Note Singing. Ever heard of shape-note? It’s a really democratic choral singing tradition that you might remember from “The Cold Mountain” movie. I sang it and it’s a lot of fun.

There’s also a whole series of courses on foraging, hunting, and wildlife watching, as well as a wilderness skills immersion class and an expedited Wisconsin hunter’s safety class (required to buy a hunting license in Wisconsin for people born after 1973). I personally took the latter one.

I have also attended a number of other Folk School classes over the years and learned some incredibly useful things. I especially loved the cheesemaking classes I took a few years ago. Read what I wrote about them here:

The Driftless Folk School Cheesemaking Class

Advanced Cheesemaking

Alice in Dairyland

Alice in Dairyland II

By the way: if you are interested in dabbling in a rural lifestyle full of gardening and animal care before taking a plunge of your own, know that the Driftless Folk School has a popular work-study program. If accepted, you’d get to spend a couple of months living and working with one of the homesteading families in the area, including this one and this one.

Needless to say, I was thrilled when a representative of the Folk School (a.k.a. my husband) approached me (in my kitchen late one night as I was doing dishes) with the offer to sponsor this giveaway.

Here are the details:

The Giveaway

One random commenter will win a $75 gift certificate to the Driftless Folk School. Upon winning, you will receive your gift certificate and the current course catalog in the mail. Just mention your certificate when you call to register.

Your $75 is good towards classes and supply fees. Classes are usually priced at $45 – $75 including supplies, so your gift certificate will cover at least one class. If you have leftover balance, you can apply it to the cost of another class. The certificate has no expiry date.

Please do not enter/comment on this post unless you are sure you can travel here in case you win.

To enter:

Browse the current class listings and leave a comment here telling me what class you’d be interested in taking. It’s gonna be fun, I promise!

For a second chance to win:

Follow Driftless Folk School on Facebook AND leave a separate comment here telling me you did.

For a third chance to win:

Share the link to this giveaway on Facebook or Twitter AND leave another comment here so I know about it.

The contest ends at midnight CST on Sunday, September 9, 2012. The winner will be announced here the following day.

Disclaimer: This giveaway is sponsored by the Driftless Folk School.  I have not received any compensation whatsoever for hosting. Except maybe a kiss from my husband. But all opinions are still my own.

Every year, our town puts on the annual “Wild West Days” festival, which, among other activities, includes a parade and a rodeo. Organized by a group of private horse and period-costume enthusiasts, the event draws quite an audience. My horse-crazy daugther in particular looks forward to “the horsie parade” the entire year.

In addition to taking the kids to the parade as usual, this year Jacob also took them to the rodeo for the first time. It must have made quite an impression, because:

When I came outside the following day, I suddenly saw this!

Without my being aware of it, Josie dug out daddy’s old cowboy gear, and, well, a picture is worth a thousand words.

My soon-to-be first-grader (hold me!) is six-and-a-half, and is currently at the age of trying to find and assert areas of autonomy, often expressed by insisting on doing certain things “all by myself.” One of these areas happens to be cooking and baking.

Although she has made batches of bread dough, rolled out other doughs, such as this homemade puff-pastry, and stirred batters for a long time, it wasn’t until now that I decided that I would (mostly) get out of her hair and let her complete (most of) the process by herself.

In the past couple of weeks, she baked twice: a chocolate-zucchini sheet cake sometime last week, and a batch of chocolate funfetti cupcakes yesterday. Here is what they looked like:

She made the frosting, too.

Because I am a nervous Jewish mama, I didn’t let her do the whole thing by herself, even though she wanted to. While she did all of the measuring, mixing, and stove-top stirring, I didn’t let her do the “hot” parts like pouring hot liquids, putting things in and taking them out of the oven, and taking the cupcakes out of the tins. I also filled the muffin tins with the batter myself, mostly because I didn’t think I could handle the mess that would surely result (it wasn’t until later that I realized that I could have poured this rather liquid batter into a narrow pitcher and have her pour out of there to minimize the spills). I will start letting her do these things eventually, but I just didn’t feel comfortable quiet yet, given her size and all.

Because this batter called for buttermilk, we used the small amount that resulted from our making butter earlier this week, and it worked beautifully. We don’t normally make butter in this way, which is actually more expensive, but in this case I just wanted to show the kids how it’s done. Woe to me – they loved it so much, they now want it all the time. Either way, I really appreciated the opportunity to tie the two projects nicely together.

Funny story: because Josie made it, after eating the little bit of leftover batter and licking spatulas and mixing bowls, neither of my kids could manage more than a bite of the actual cupcakes. Here is looking at you, Michael Pollan.

As far as the actual recipe, we used Ree‘s trusted Best Ever Chocolate Sheet Cake batter and frosting (note that we used the full batter recipe, but cut the frosting recipe in half). We love her easy and absurdly delicious recipe so much, we use it as our go-to cake building block all the time. Here are my other variations:

Easy Chocolate Layer Cake with Chocolate Mousse Filling

Black Forest Sheet Cake with Chocolate Mocha Frosting

“Praga” Cupcakes with Condensed-Milk Buttercream – a true Soviet classic made even better with Ree’s amazing cake.

Josie then simply mixed a bunch of rainbow confetti sequins and rainbow non-pareil sprinkles directly into the batter and the frosting (she would have also used rainbow jimmies, but I think Cyrus stole and ate mine all gone), as well as added some on top for cuteness.

Her next “by myself” baking project: chocolate chip cookies!

Today this girl folded laundry, helped pluck and clean chickens, dressed up her sister, fought with her brother, drew with mommy’s iphone app, hung out with grandma, ate pizza, and went to watch a rodeo. Just an ordinary Friday!

Here’s the result of her handiwork:

What a great doll, right? I totally understand her.

Anyhow, my little big girl is about to cross a major milestone – she is entering the first grade at our local Waldorf school in a couple of weeks. Hold me!

How will she manage sitting at a little desk?

How will she manage the bus ride?

How will she do socially?

She is extremely excited about all of the above. This Yiddishe mama, on the other hand? I am excited and extremely nervous at once.

I gotta say, she loved kindergarten.

She was well liked by her teachers. Her end-of-year report said that Josie “likes to work and to play house, where she plays out preparing food and caring for children.”

She came home beaming every day. But Waldorf kindergarten is different – there are no lessons and no little desks. Instead, the day is divided between outside time, walks, free play, nap time, setting and clearing the table for lunch, helping clean up a little, doing artwork, and story time. Sometimes they baked bread. Sometimes they chopped vegetables for soup. One time they made applesauce, the other time they made sauerkraut.

The first grade will certainly be a big change from that.

I am really nervous!

Although I suspect that it’s in part because her crossing the rainbow bridge into the first grade foreshadows her crossing it back out of the eighth.

I can’t say that I’m ready.

I can’t even say that I’m ready for the first.

But such is the nature of motherhood – I’m never, ever gonna be.

Since we live on a (small, hobby) farm, we came to think of our kids as future work force. To that end, we try to include them into various farm work to the extent to which they are able to participate.

Today, for instance, was chicken butchering day – something they actually wanted to be involved in.

Due to our run-in with some predation problems this summer, we didn’t have very many left to butcher, so instead of borrowing a chicken plucker, like we usually do, we just up and plucked them by hand.

I don’t think my kids ever hand-plucked chickens before, but it is actually a nice job for them – easy and not bloody (all actual killing is currently done by daddy).

If you are curious about the breed, these are Freedom Rangers, so their feathers are nice and red.

You can tell Cyrus is very intent on learning.

An anatomy lesson from grandma – always a bonus!

(Many thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law for coming out to help butcher despite a sore foot – and for buying pizza for lunch!)

This is the part where they pull the innards out of a chicken – it can be kind of tricky, because you don’t want to pierce any intestines for obvious reasons. I think daddy took over at this point. But Josie still likes to try to do it. I think that’s great.

Gotta start them young!

P.S.: If you plan to involve your kids into butchering, be sure to warn them not to put their hands in their mouths while they are at it – like with any raw poultry, salmonella is always a risk. If you have little kids, watch them closely, since they are not so good at remembering this type of instructions. Be sure to wash their hands thoroughly afterwards and to change their clothes.

If you are interested in butchering your own chickens or waterfowl, below are the links to my detailed poultry plucking and butchering photo-tutorials:

Chicken Butchering 101

How to Pluck and Butcher a Duck

I kept making these pops for our family at the height of the raspberry season, which conveniently coincided with this summer’s record heat. If you have fall raspberry crop coming in and like frozen yogurt pops, these are really, really good.

Here’s the recipe:

My girl is really into building fairy houses these days.

But then there’s fairy tipis. It’s America, after all. Except there’s no animal skins.

Yet.

Creating with natural objects is really great for their imagination, and imagination is great for everything else. Once you start looking, you start to see that these organic in the truest sense of the word constructions materials – pieces of bark, rocks, and plants – are everywhere.

Isn’t this so clearly an expression of the inner creative spirit we are all born with? This, in my mind, is what “being made in God’s image” really means.

As parents, it is important that we allow our kids to nourish this drive rather than stifle it. Cutting down on ready-made toys and screen time and giving them the access to a natural environment should be one of our primary objectives. Much like feeding them real fruit instead of jelly beans helps build a healthy body, letting them create with Nature’s own supplies helps build a healthy mind – and soul.

Let us not make the mistake of thinking that being able to afford nice things for our children equals providing them with a happy environment in which to grow. Even in the Waldorf world, I see time and again people being caught up in the perceived need to purchase exclusively extraordinarily-expensive “natural,” handcrafted toys for their kids. This doesn’t surprise me, as we live in a consumer-centric society where there’s a buck to be made, and where people are conditioned to believe that their worth is directly tied to their purchasing capacity.

In reality, you don’t have to have hand-dyed silks and hand-felted dolls (unless you dye and felt them yourself).

You don’t need all-wooden toy dump trucks with natural finish.

You don’t need a ginormous, multi-hundred-dollar, wooden toy kitchen (or a plastic one, for that matter) to feel a great parent – because, guess what, you’ve got a real one.

What you do need, however, is a backyard or a park.

For my part, I feel like I constantly put a conscious effort in not creating the need-to-have, shopping-dependent aesthetic with my children, otherwise so deeply ingrained our culture.

Although, for what it’s worth, I believe that one or two affordable, durable plastic trucks from the local agri-center are perfectly a OK on a fairy-house construction site.

They just shouldn’t be the only thing they get to play with.

Plus, the exposure to benign soil-abiding bacteria helps keep you happy.

I put together this hand-sewing kit for my girl as a Christmas gift last year, when it became clear that she wanted to exercise this type of fine motor skills. I also figured it would fill the need for some quiet, focused time that would benefit us both.

Here’s what I decided to include in the set – a pin cushion, spools of colored thread, a couple of needles, a thimble, a handful of decorative buttons, and a package of small quilting squares for her to practice with. I also later got her this set of alphabet beads on the right along with some sparkly elastic cords, as I figured she’d enjoy the combination of spelling and threading. I also got her a crochet hook and some yarn, but she hasn’t gotten into that yet, although they did some finger crocheting in the Waldorf kindergarden and will be doing some knitting in first grade.

Here’s why we think handwork is important:

Besides their obvious practical use, manual skills benefit the brain, as well as foster the ability to transfer the objects and solutions imagined onto the physical plane. It is of utmost importance that our kids’ education is not limited to – and by – purely abstract learning.

Although I myself grew up in the Soviet Union and obviously had no access to any kind of alternative education, I was taught basic sewing and crocheting at Josie’s age, and, by grade three, made my own hair-pieces to wear to school. Later, when I hit my teens and became conscious of style, I fashioned my own funky jewelry out of beads, leather, and even twine utilizing some of these same crocheting and sewing skills.

While I no longer make cute things to wear, the DIY confidence I gained in the process ultimately led to the ease with which I later taught myself all the things I now share on this website, starting with the language in which it is written. If my kids someday walk through life with similar self-assurance, I will have done my job well.

Also, it’s important to know how to fix holes in your socks and clothing. I do all the time!

While Josie, who’s six, hasn’t spent much time with her sewing kit at first, she began to use it more and more as the year progressed. She has since learned a couple of kinds of basic stitches and how to sew buttons.

This is the baggie she made out of a quilting square.

Here she re-attached the pin-cushion decoration element that had come unglued by sewing it back on. OK, this is not really elegant work, but it’s a start.

These alphabet beads are a big hit with her, too.

Of course, there’s an obvious question of safety when using sharp needles at a young age. Like with knives, it is important to make sure that kids learn safety techniques and understand potential dangers – don’t let them lose those needles!

There’s also the question of readiness, as different kids will be ready at different times.

Still, I find it important that we let them do these things at some point or another – important for their self-confidence, important for their intellect, and, ultimately, for their lives as self-sufficient adults.

How about your kids? What are some of the handwork projects they enjoy?

My husband recently grilled these for dinner.

Fresh.

Homemade.

Warm.

Campfire-scented.

A perfect accompaniment to steaks and hobo packs.

Just like back in the Old Country!

Not really. Although my six-year-old did ask me if this was the case:

“Mommy, did you have stoves in the Old Country or did you cook everything over fire?”

It is amazing how little they actually know about my old life, which, to them, is purely anecdotal.

This recipe is adapted from Planet Barbecue!, a terrific book full of grilling ideas from around the world (including a section on my native Azerbaijan, a grilling paradize).

Ah, the sweet innocence and perfection of the age of seven months! She’s growing really fast, and I am anxious to record every stage.

She’s finally pushing herself up and starting to crawl like a big baby.

I am watching my baby do that for the third time, and it never gets old.

She laughs so joyfully.

Baby laughter is probably the sweetest thing there is.

Yesterday I took my girl back-to-school shopping in La Crosse on one of my bi-annual trips to this town of 50,000 an hour away from Viroqua.

I am not your normal thirty-something woman. I don’t feel the need to do my hair, wear make-up, stress over appearance, or go to town very much. I am deeply and utterly content with my natural looks and my own company at all times.

Very Thoreauvean that way.

Always been.

In addition to some new school clothes, we picked up two Halloween costumes for this fall and for our costume pile in general.

Guess what Cyrus is going to be:

I think this reflects perfectly the inner world of a three-year-old male. Don’t you think?

Gosh, what a fun poll this was. Thank you all so much for pitching in and sharing your favorite cookbooks! I am always curious to see what people use over and over.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that people mentioned the time-tested classics Better Homes and Gardens, Betty Crocker, and Mastering the Art of French Cooking the most, but it was especially interesting to hear about all the new, unfamiliar titles. Do take a moment to browse through the entries.

Now for the fun part. The random winners of Tom Hudgens’ The Commonsense Kitchen “Deep Springs” Cookbook are:

#5 Alyssa T “So tough to choose a favorite, but I really really have been enjoying a recent one:
An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler. More of a manifesto than a cookbook, really, and I just love people who can wax poetic on the simpler parts of food and cooking.”

#19 elizabeth jeanne “How to cook EVERYTHING by Mark Bittman, which we refer to as “the cookbook.”

Congratulations, winners! You will soon be receiving an email asking for your mailing address so I can ship your book to you.

Once again, many thanks to everyone who participated!

————————————————-

I am so excited about this giveaway, I don’t know where to begin.

This cookbook, written by our friend Tom Hudgens – a former Chez Panisse chef and Deep Springs College cook, is one of the very best in my (extensive) collection. Straightforward instructions, stellar recipes with a Southern touch, elegant prose, and comfortable layout quickly made it one of my favorites.

Not surprisingly, this book is dedicated to Tom’s time in DS – an academically elite, then-all-male college of only twenty-five students, situated on a working cattle ranch next to Death Valley. This unorthodox institution of higher learning is known for its rigorous schedule of classes and ranch work, as well student self-governance and free tuition (Tom himself once went there as a student).

A lot to take in? Let me break it down for you:

Boys read Aristotle.

Boys slaughter cows.

Boys milk cows too.

Boys cook.

Boys maintain the grounds.

Boys run faculty and admissions committees.

Boys can easily get into Ivy League after. Many do.

Boys don’t shower all too often.

There’s only twenty-five of them total.

After nearly one hundred years as an all-male college, DS will admit girls for the first time starting 2013.

Which begs the question, will it cause the boys to become clean or the girls to become dirty?

Jacob thinks the girls will become dirty.

He went there, you see, he and his brother both.

Let’s have a peek inside the book now, shall we?

The book is printed on this nice, thick paper, and I love the artwork.

Thematically, the book is divided into the following chapters:

Breakfast: Oats, Grits, Bacon, and Eggs
Pancakes, Biscuits, and Cornbread
Bread, Butter, Crackers and Cheese
Great Lunches
Beans
Hot Vegetables and Vegetable Soups
Salads and Dressings
Beef, Pork, and Lamb
Chicken and Turkey
Fish and Shellfish
Pasta, Dumplings, Rice, and Stuffing
Sauces and Relishes
Pies and Fruit Desserts
Cakes
Cookies and Candy

It is a thick, substantial volume, just what I like in a cookbook.

And then there’s this:

My personal favorite! This is the section I’ve used the most, with Tom’s baked custard, snow ice-cream (that’s right), and blackberry ice-cream recipes becoming my personal staples.

Because it’s August and wild blackberries are in season, I’d like to share the latter with you to give you a little taste of what Tom’s recipes are like:

I love the writing, by way, which reads almost like a love story, as Tom is clearly in love with cooking and food. The wild berries I used in this recipe came from just such a hillside.

Here is my version of Tom’s recipe:

Start by placing three cups of blackberries (or other soft, juicy berries) into the bowl of a food processor.

Puree the heck out of them until they are as liquid as they could possibly be.

Place a sieve over a bowl.

Pour in the berry puree and use a spatula to push the juice and the pulp through the holes. Discard the seeds.

You will end up with this nice, thick, seedless blackberry mass.

Add sugar and a tablespoon of lemon juice to the puree to keep the color and the flavor bright (Tom’s original recipe also calls for vanilla extract, but I opted to skip it to keep the blackberry flavor straight).

Pour in the heavy cream or the mixture of cream and half-n-half.

Mix everything together, and either chill in the fridge before churning, or, if you are impatient like me, go ahead and churn right away according to your ice-cream maker’s instructions.

I like to eat this and other non-custard ice-creams freshly-churned because I love the airy, soft-serve consistency, but you can also let it freeze hard first.

Here’s the short version:

Now for the fun part:

The Giveaway:

Two random winners will win a copy of The Commonsense Kitchen: 500 Recipes + Lessons for a Handcrafted Life.

To enter:

Just name your favorite cookbook and you are good to go!

For a second chance to win:

Share the link to this giveaway on Facebook or Twitter, then leave another comment here stating that you did.

The contest ends at midnight CST on Sunday, August 19, 2012. The winner will be announced here the following day.

Disclaimer: This giveaway is sponsored by Chronicle Books and The Girls’ Guide to Guns and Butter.  I have not received any compensation for hosting – I just love Tom and his book. All opinions are my own.

Because I am from the East, yogurt, which in my mind is mainly a savory ingredients, is used often and extensively around here. My seven-months-old baby loves it plain, my big kids like it slightly sweetened with homemade elderberry syrup, and I myself use it in a vast variety of ways. Sure I make smoothies and yogurt pops, but there is so much more.

As I come from a rich, centuries-old, traditional food culture where, at least in my day, nearly everything was made from scratch and nearly every ingredient came from one of the countless, colorful open markets, the only yogurt I had as a child was either made at home or purchased homemade from retiree babushkas, who sold 3/4-gallon jars of it at markets or traveled weekly on foot from one residential courtyard to the next in a hope of making a sale.

Here in America, I make all of my yogurt at home as well, in part because it’s half the cost, but also because homemade tastes like what I grew up, whereas store-bought doesn’t.

I make mine in one of the two ways:

How to make yogurt at home:

Foolproof Homemade Yogurt: Science, Techniques, and Troubleshooting
Foolproof Crock-Pot Yogurt in Step-by-Step Photos

Now, I don’t just make yogurt every week, I make between one and two gallons of it at a time. My American friends usually respond to this information with big round eyes, but we cansume it all. Below are some of the many, many uses I find for yogurt on a daily basis:

1. Use yogurt to moisten meatballs, meatloaves, and patties:

I frequently add yogurt to various ground-meat mixtures that are destined to become meatloaves, meatballs, burgers, and the like. It is always a good idea to add some form of dairy, such as cream, milk, or cheeses to increase the moistness and the flavor of these types of dishes, but I especially like to use yogurt in this capacity because it adds a slight savory tang.

Here are some examples:

Tasty Meatball Appetizers
Meatloaf with Chestnuts and Dried Fruit
Russian-Style Chicken Croquettes (Pozharskie Kotlety)
Marinara Meatball Sandwiches
My Mother’s Russian-Jewish Meatballs (Tefteli)

2. Yogurt in pancakes:

Yogurt and baking-soda pancakes are downright the best – light, fluffy, and delicate. I absolutely love them. Here is my go-to recipe:

Russian Yogurt Pancakes (Oladiyi)

3. Yogurt soups:

Cold yogurt soups, highly popular in both my native Azerbaijan and in Bulgaria, where I went to school, are perfect for summer weather, and the heartier Azerbaijani versions are also great in colder weather when served hot. Here are the three recipes I constantly use:

Bulgarian Cold Cucumber Soup (Tarator)
Azerbaijani Yogurt Cream Soup with Dried Mint (Kelekosh)
Azerbaijani Yogurt-Herb Soup (Dovga)

4. Yogurt as sauce:

Back in Azerbaijan, yogurt is often used as a cold sauce for warm meat dishes, especially stuffed vegetables and dumplings. When beat until smooth and spiked with a little crushed garlic, the naturally-creamy yogurt with its tiny bit of tang (remember that, unlike the sour store yogurt, homemade yogurt is sweet and mild) fits this role wonderfully, and the contrast of hot and cold is most titillating. Here are some of the Old-Country recipes that use yogurt in this capacity:

Azerbaijani Stuffed Eggplants (Badimcan Dolmasi)
Beef and Chicken Kebab Wraps
Eggplant Moussaka
Russian Cabbage Rolls
Azerbaijani Grilled Ground-Beef Kebabs (Lyulya-Kebab)
Russian Meat Dumplings (Pelmeni)
Azerbaijani Pasta with Ground Beef and Caramelized Onions

5. Use yogurt to make a refreshing summer drink:

Ayran, a simple drink of yogurt thinned out with water is greatly enjoyed in both Bulgaria and Azerbaijan, although in Bulgaria it is usually unsalted, while Azerbaijanis add salt to theirs. My entire family absolutely loves it.

6. Yogurt-based “Ranch” and blue-cheese dressings:

I much prefer these homemade versions to supermarket varieties. Use them on salads or for dipping homemade wings:

Yogurt-Based Ranch-Style Dressing
Homemade Blue-Cheese Dressing (and Buffalo Wing Recipe)

You can also use part-yogurt along with mayo in chicken salad.

7. Yogurt in frozen pops:

Yogurt is a wonderful addition to frozen fruit pops – my kids absolutely love them. Here’s our favorite recipe:

Raspberry-Yogurt Frozen Pops

What are your favorite uses for yogurt?

I’ve mentioned before that my kids are relatively unassuming – like mine and Jacob’s, their tastes tend to be simple, and their joy in small things is plainly evident. But don’t take my word for it:

Yesterday our wonderful, wonderful friend Tegan stopped by for a visit. She played with my kids, built a fairy house with them, and, just before leaving, gave them her old pair of sunglasses and the tape measure she happened to have in her car.

In part because our family includes a little boy, the tape measure proved to be a big hit, with my kids spending quite a while today fully absorbed in measuring objects around the house and learning about measurement units in the process.

I love our American system of measurements, by the way – they follow the size of natural objects and make a whole lot of sense. Metric measurements, on the other hand, are mechanical, Ahrimanic, and all around unpleasant to deal with – and this is coming from a European.

Anyway, they spent a long time today measuring the diameter of door knobs, the length of the sofa and the piano, doors, windows, and I don’t know what else. It’d been a long time before they actually moved on to something else.

Simple things are often the best.

Here’s what else I noticed:

Today we had to do a relatively large amount of housework together – tomato sauce, dishes (which my son washed and I rinsed – for a while), folding and putting away laundry, picking up, and sweeping.

Cyrus is resourceful, right?

Anyhow, I noticed today that playing is that much more enjoyable to them after a little work. Original, aren’t I? Kinda makes them appreciate the unstructured nature of playtime – no wonder Waldorf education strives to intersperse the so-called “breath-in” activities (focused, quiet things like chores and schoolwork) with “breath-out” activities (running, playing, or otherwise doing something unselfconsciously active) throughout the day.

I can attest to the fact that it’s a fine approach outside the classroom as well.

Evelyn is not a morning person. That’s good for me! Very, very good.

Do you think she is concerned with the state of the politics in this country?

But then again, she adjusts to the circumstances pretty good!

Just like her mommy, I might add.

Our tomatoes are just turning ripe, but yesterday my mother-in-law gave me a five-gallon-bucket worth of hers. Her mixture of traditional tomatoes and heirlooms was perfect for my quick freezing sauce.

Even before I became a mother, I was dreaming of the day when my kids would help me with cooking, cleaning, and food preservation. Although not every child I encountered displayed such functionality, I envisioned my own busily washing and trimming and slicing.

I wasn’t wrong. That giant mountain of tomatoes was washed, cored, and cut in no time with the three of us working.

If you are wondering how I got them to do it, I did it by starting them young. Original, right?

Because children’s first instinct is to imitate the adults around them, I began to include mine into my kitchen work between the ages of two and three – depending on when each respective child reached the “I wanna do it too!” stage. If you were ever around young children, you have no doubt encountered this phenomenon. Basic prep jobs, such as washing the produce, stirring, rolling out dough, and cutting certain soft fruits and veggies, are perfect for that age.

We didn’t start with real sharp knives, though. When my daugther, above, was maybe two-and-a-half, I began to let her cut things alongside me with a fairly safe little knife you can see in the photo above. Over the years, she graduated to using our regular paring knives, passing “Josie’s little red knife” to her little brother last year.

How focused he is!

Because I am a Jewish mother, I walked them both through safety techniques from the start, and can now trust them to be careful (although I am still constantly saying, “Be careful, watch out for your little fingers!”).

Because my daugther is older and has better manual dexterity and knife skills, she volunteered to core – the job she was not that comfortable with only a summer ago.

Which brings me to the following point:

If your particular child doesn’t feel comfortable cutting in general or cutting something in particular, don’t push it until he or she does.

It’s just one of those things. As I tell my children, “if you don’t feel safe doing something, don’t do it.”

Anyhow, my son then cut the cored tomatoes in half (I don’t peel or seed my tomatoes for sauce, blending everything with an immersion blender instead). See how conscious he is about keeping his fingers safely away from the blade? I credit my inner Jewish mother.

This, by the way, is the product I wanted – and they delivered.

My girl also did all the washing. She didn’t especially want to, but I reminded her that it was important for us to do it in order to continue having her favorite noodles and red sauce on Mondays. It is the truth.

Overall, I feel comfortable giving my children work. In addition to teaching them to stick to a task, these types of skills are also helpful in building the self-confidence they’ll need in their adult life. In a nutshell, here’s how I see it:

Today I trust them with a knife = tomorrow they will trust themselves to face a challenge and succeed.

At least that’s what I think.

Our good friend Tegan stopped for a visit yesterday. When I first met Tegan nine years ago, she was a high-school junior. She has since finished college and worked for the NPR down in Louisiana for a few years after. She has just returned back to her native Wisconsin to pursue a graduate degree in Enviromental Reporting (I think) at UW-Madison, and is currently back in Viroqua visiting.

Tegan is wonderful with kids, and my kids enjoy her very much.

She gave Josie her old pair of sunglasses, and Josie was thrilled beyond measure.

Fashion is important to this country girl.

Not really.

But she is a girl, and she loves to dress up.

Tegan and my kids built a fairy house together in a volunteer violet bed in our orchard. Josie had built a couple of fairy houses of her own before.

Here is what it ended up looking like – sticks, flowers, grass, and leaves. Do you remember the chapter “Where Violets Grow” from one of the Little House books, On the Shores of Silver Lake? In that story, Laura and her family are looking for their baby sister Grace, who had wondered off on her own into the prairie as the family was busy planting trees around their new homestead. Laura eventually found Grace playing in a large, round patch of blooming violets, and wondered if this was a fairy ring (her dad later explained to her that it was an old buffalo stumping ground).

It also reminds me of a bowerbird house. Ever heard of bowerbirds? They live in Australia and New Guinea, and build a small stick structure that they decorate elaborately with flowers and bright-colored objects as a form of mating display. A female then comes and examines the home, and if she likes what she sees, she mates with the builder. Here is a whole gallery of them from the National Geographic.

In Waldorf education we believe in “fairies” – or, to use a more grown-up term, elemental beings that animate the natural world, and this belief in the wondrous and the magical, already naturally present in children, is something we nurture and cultivate. Fairy-house constructions fits right in.

They also made a bed of flowers near the house to serve as a fairy dance floor.

The fairies also needed a bath, so Josie got a jar lid from the house, filled it with the water from a hose, and carried it carefully to the orchard.

Carrying liquids in shallow vessels is not an easy job, so Tegan eventually helped her.

Before leaving, Tegan gave my kids presents – Cyrus got the tape measure she had in her car, and Josie got her older pair of sunglasses.

I don’t think my kids have ever been to Toys”R”US, so these were pretty much heaven.

Thank you, Tegan, for being so good to my kids! We love you! Good luck with your graduate school adventures!

I love my little farmgirl so much.

She’s starting to get interested in space, planets, the mechanics of how things works, and so on.

She helps out a lot around here. She doesn’t always want to, but she always does a great job.

She just got done washing a box of tomatoes I am going to cut up for sauce.

Her usual disposition is cheerful and content.

She has her moments (she’s seven, after all – and anyhow, don’t we all?), but she bounces back to her usual self pretty quickly.

She is easily pleased by simple things.

As a country girl, she doesn’t encounter a whole lot of glamor, but she loves to dress up and wear pretty things. It’s as innate as my son loving everything with an engine, real or pretend. It’s Darwinian!

From that standpoint, a pair of sunglasses is pretty much as glamorous an accessory for her as it gets. My friend Tegan stopped by today (more about it in a later post), and gave Josie her older pair.

Thank you, Tegan! Love you!

Because we lead a relatively simple life and try to show our children that much joy is to be found in small things and modest pleasures, Josie was utterly thrilled with Tegan’s gift.

I think she really rocks the style, don’t you?

My baby is now seven months old, and has just crossed several important milestones specific to that age:

1) She began to crawl.

2) She is starting to sit up.

3) Her first tooth is finally cutting through.

Don’t crawl away from me, child!

She’s putting everything she can find into her mouth (read, baby-proofing is back on),

She loves objects that can be used to make noise,

She rolls everywhere,

And chews on everything.

Evelyn is baby number three, so between her easygoing nature and my general level of experience, this transition into crawling doesn’t faze me anymore, logistically-speaking, but it’s still a little bittersweet. This is why:

Hey son, what’s with the fratboy look? It’s not beer, it’s an eggplant! Or “egg-or-plant,” as he calls it.

“Mommy, is this my egg-or-plant?” Hilarious.

It wasn’t that long ago that he was Evelyn’s age. But it’s been a while.

Same with Josephine:

Is this the little girl I carried?

I sure am taking the time to savor this stage – I know from experience that it’s as fleeting as the strawberry season or the first green. Literally!

I won’t be winning mother-of-the-year award anytime soon.

And I am far from having a beautiful, always-clean home.

And I don’t want one.

And I could never achieve that standard even if I did.

And I am not the infamous Tiger-mother kind, who wants her kids to perform at Carnegie Hall or collect sports trophies or go to Ivy League.

However – I do believe that one of my most important tasks as a mother is to teach my kids to complete their assigned tasks (usually practical, physical ones), complete them reasonably well, and in a relatively timely fashion.

It is not an easy fight, but an important one, and this is why:

If children learn how to work, they will be able to do anything they want.

Obviously, my kids are young, and their list of age-appropriate chores is relatively short, especially in the household that also places high value on free, imaginative play. But it doesn’t mean that they don’t have any.

This is something they do with the greatest regularity:

Unsurprisingly, this is also something they do best – pick up the two rooms that comprise their play space at the end of each day (they vacuum, too).

I don’t feel like it’s a lot to ask, given that they spend all day playing and approximately half-an-hour to forty-five minutes picking up. I think it’s just right.

In addition, I often ask them to help out with food-processing, baby, and laundry-related tasks, although less regularly. Here is what else my daugther can do (note that everything involving the baby, the stove, or sharp objects is done exclusively under my close supervision):

- change a wet diaper on a baby (though not a poopy one)

- dress her 3-year-old brother (if he’s not running away)

- do dishes (although I don’t ask her to do that often)

- wash produce

- cut vegetables

- turn on the stove and soft-boil an egg

- fold, sort, and put away her own laundry (though I usually just fold it all myself and have her do the latter two tasks)

- fold, sort, and put away kitchen towels, washcloths, and cloth napkins

- make her own sandwiches for lunch

- feed the baby

- dress the baby

- sweep the floor (this one is on the harder side)

I’ve got proof:

Here is what my three-year-old son can do:

- spread his own bread with butter

- feed the baby

- cut produce

This isn’t easy, and it often requires more effort than simply doing the tasks myself (which is why I don’t try to have them help me with everything), but it is what you’d call “fighting the good fight.” Not because of what it can do for me (well, a little), but because of what it can do for them. I figured, if they can stick with picking up the living room, it gets them that much closer to being able to stick with school homework, college prep, higher-education- and workplace demands, and so on.

But make no mistake – this is not some sort of Cinderella model. Most of the day they do things like this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And watch Mighty Machines and Thomas the Tank Engine.

Not all at the same time.

In the end of the day, it’s all about striking the right balance.

I love to cook and eat, but I don’t like anything too involved, multi-step, or complicated. How about you?

Here are my reasons:

- life’s too short

- there are too many good TV shows to watch

- nobody likes to wait, especially not kids

- steps are bourgeois

- great results with minimal effort are the highest good

Protestant Work Ethic doesn’t live here.  Blame it on growing up in the Soviet Union. How did that old Soviet joke go? “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.” Anyhow, you get the idea.

For this reason, I make it my life’s unsung work to tweak and twist recipes that come my way until they are completely, ridiculously easy.

Instant gratification is where it’s at.

Below is the list of my go-to recipes for quick treats, the kind I occasionally indulge in once the kids are asleep and thus prevented from mind-altering sugar overdose.

1. Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies – packed to the max with semi-sweet chips, they offer a decadent molten-chocolate experience when eaten warm, and are still soft and pliable the following day.

2. 5-Minute Food-Processor Ice-Cream – something I make whenever the mercury shoots up. No ice-cream maker needed!

3. “Heart-of-Darkness” Molten Lava Cakes

4. No-Cook Vanilla Ice-Cream – No custard? No problem! Mix heavy cream with some sugar and vanilla (you can even do a mix of heavy cream and half-n-half) and freeze. Serve right away.

5. 5-Minute Chocolate Mousse with Two Ingredients. I know, right?

Cyrus says “cheese”!

Evie’s eyes are impossibly blue.

Cyrus hugs sister. Sister thinks he’s something to chew on.

Evie is so cute.

Evie really likes to pose.

Shhh, bunny is sleeping!

We had another wonderful party today. Our friends Kate and Casey came up to visit their family in Wisconsin, and made some time for us as well.

Kate and Casey have a beautiful two-year-old girl, Olympia, and Kate is currently eight months pregnant with their second child, a boy. My sister-in-law Julia and her husband Adrian, who also came here today, are expecting their second child as well, although they haven’t found out the sex. Are you the find-out kind?

Now, because Jacob and I were hosting and cooking the bulk of tonight’s meal, I literally haven’t had the chance to grab my camera. Thankfully, Kate brought hers and snapped these:

My sister-in-law, Julia, with her outrageously awesome tomato-and-cheese platter. The tomatoes are from her garden, mainly heirlooms.

Julia, among her other gifts, has a wonderful eye for presentation.

Pretty maids all in a row: Penny (Julia’s daugther), Olympia, and Josie. They are eating and clearly liking these cookies.

The kids’ table! My kids are the ones facing away. Note how Cyrus is wearing cut-off long johns as shorts. Now that’s Viroqua.

Also, an important PSA: Kate is a wonderful writer and has a blog that she shares with her sisters and sisters-in-law. The girls write beautifully and entertainingly about growing up in our neck of the woods and about their lives in Wisconsin, Pittsburgh, and Texas. By all means pay them a visit!

On a different note, I am thrilled to no end that nobody ran screaming from the eggplants.

I also served some freshly-churned blackberry ice-cream made with the berries my husband and kids picked across the road at our neighbors’ this morning. I used the recipe from The Commonsense Kitchen by Tom Hudgens, a former Chez Panisse chef.

Tom’s cookbook is fabulous, by the way, and because Tom is my internet friend, he got his publisher to send me two copies to give away on this blog. Stay tuned!

This is Evelyn in the morning today. Today is pleasant.

Yesterday was not pleasant. Yesterday was 100 degrees.

Fortunately, I went over to my in-laws’ air-conditioned house for a family party with my mother’s-in-law side of the family, the Smiths. The Smiths are known, among other things, for their love of mixed drinks (which have no seeming effect on them), and more importantly for me, their love of chocolate.

Unfortunately for you, I haven’t taken any photos yesterday – in part because I don’t like to shoot indoors, but mostly because I was trying to help my mother-in-law in the kitchen, so you will have to take my word for it.

The Smith family composition on that particular day included both of Dawn’s brothers – Mike, who is retired and lives in a condo on the beach in Florida, and Jim, still very much employed as a successful business owner. Mike’s wife, Sharon, is one of the sweetest, warmest people I’ve ever met. Mike and Sharon are Yoopers who speak with a Southern accent after living down in Mississippi most of their lives. Every summer, they come up to spend a month or so at their family cabin up in Michigan, and that is where we usually see them.

And here’s what happened on the food end:

My mother-in-law grilled a few of her farm-grown chickens on a beer can – a rather pornographic-looking operation, if you ask me. Because she would rather not use beer cans in the long run, she tried cooking one of them over a pint-sized regular-mouth mason jar filled halfway with beer, which worked great. Just be advised that, rather than putting cold jars with beer and the chicken onto a hot grill, she preheated the beer-filled jars first while preheating the grill, and then placed the chickens on when everything was hot to avoid the glass shattering from the rapid change in temperature.

For dessert, Dawn asked me to make some of my lava cakes, and I ended up overbaking some of them a little – because we crammed 16 of them in the oven at once, rather than the usual four, it seemed to be taking forever and I kept setting the timer again and again.

Note: if you wish to give these lava cakes a try, be advised that I now also stir 1/3 C of semi-sweet chocolate chips into the batter (you can also use bittersweet) to increase the chocolate factor.

My mother-in-law also made custard vanilla ice-cream with the recipe I developed. Here is how I “develop” recipes:

1. I try an existing recipe.

2. I do not like the existing recipe.

3. I do not like the existing recipe at all.

4. I make several batches of said recipe with serious modifications and substitutions.

5. I have no fear in the process.

6. I have no fear at all. I also have no boundaries.

8. Especially when it comes to chocolate.

9. Finally, I settle on what in my mind is a winning combination.

By the way, my mother-in-law is particularly known for her amazing cakes (and pies and other baked goods), including wedding cakes, so it makes me feel special when she asks me to bring dessert.

I am not known for my cakes.

I am not known for my pies.

But I guess I am moderately successful with gooey sweets.

Now for today. Today I am having people over. My husband is here and is helping immensely – my husband has this Martha Stewart side to him and is particularly good at creating party ambiance. I credit his mom and the Waldorf education, which emphasizes beauty.

I am not a Waldorf student. I grew up going to a Soviet school, which I quit after grade 9.

I never went to high-school.

But then I won a full scholarship to college.

I am full of paradox.

Anyhow, I am not big on creating party ambiance, that is what I’m saying.

For the main course, Jacob suggested that I use our bountiful eggplants to prepare stuffed eggplants from the Old Country, which he very much enjoyed. This dish is very ethnic.

I am slightly worried about my guests, but I think I will do it anyway. Also, some blackberry ice-cream and another eggplant appetizer.

I hope they come back!

Although I didn’t take any photos yesterday, here is a sample of what my in-laws’ parties are like.

We had a small/big party here on our farm this past Friday – an ice-cream social, as it were – to bid farewell to my husband’s coworker Shawn, who is going back to his native Boston to pursue Master’s in Education (I think) at Harvard.

I first met Shawn the day after my wedding eight years ago – a friend of Jacob’s University-of-Chicago roommate and a fellow U of C student, Shawn was seriously into circus at the time and kindly agreed to perform at our wedding along with a few friends. While all of the other circus people made it, Shawn and his brother got lost in our winding Driftless roads. I don’t blame them – when I first arrived here, every country road looked exactly the same to me.

Later that year, Shawn and said friends came to teach a circus class at Jacob’s high school, thus forever instilling the love of stilt-walking, unicycling, and joggling in the Youth-Initiative students for generations to come.

Somewhere along the line, Shawn fell in love with a local girl and got hired by the high-school as a development professional, teacher, and camping trip organizer, thus settling permanently in the area. Shawn’s graduate program is only a year long, and he and his wife Anna Jo are fully planing to return back here once he’s done, meanwhile allowing their baby boy to spend some time with Shawn’s family out East.

These are Shawn on the right and the guy replacing him at the Youth Initiative on the left.

I haven’t taken a whole lot of photos that day, but here are a few highlights:

Much bratwurst was cooked and consumed that day. This is Wisconsin, man.

Little kids enjoyed tractor rides. I especially love looks of skepticism on the parents’ faces.

My son was really into Thomas the Tank Engine for a while, so he calls this little tractor trailer “the coal cart.” We now call it “the coal cart” too.

This is the older boy of my husband’s other colleague from school.

This is the boy’s little sister, Millicent. I love, love, love that name.

This is Leo, the son Jacob’s other co-worker and a good friend of Jacob’s younger brother Henry. When I first came to America, this handsome man was a really nice little boy, believe it or not.

I can’t believe it, anyway.

Leo is another Youth-Initiative graduate, hence the joggling.

The next generation? What do you think?

Assorted kids had much fun in our hay barn – it is such a good place to play, especially in the dead of winter when the ground is covered with deep snow. Used to be covered, anyway.

Here is what else my camera saw that day:

Meat chickens!

The garden!

Niece Penny!

And sunflowers. The camera must have been high at the time!

My husband managed to grow the most beautiful eggplants this summer – long, slender, and deep-purple Japanese – and plenty of them. Immediately, I knew what to do with the first crop: my native Azerbaijan’s stuffed eggplants!

While American cookery is not big on eggplants, they are a major staple back home, and most people really enjoy them in one form or another – especially this one here.

I so do love this dish – flavorful, meaty, and ultimately “summer.” Serve it with some good bread and a simple salad (I favor sliced tomatoes and cucumbers).

I recently learned how to make ice-cream.

It’s really good – so much better than bougten, in my opinion.

And making my own helps my kids learn patience – none of this buy-it-on-a-whim-from-a-grocery-store nonsense. No, sir! If you want ice-cream, you have to wait until it’s made.

This is what I love the most about all-from-scratch foods – they teach the sense of appreciation stemming from the knowledge of what it takes to put them on the table.

Starting with raising the veggies and the cattle.

That is, starting with my husband raising the veggies and the cattle.

Things like this.

And this.

Anyhow, with the incredible recent heat wave, I jumped into the making of various ice-creams and never looked back.

This here is the raspberry ice-cream I made when the raspberries were peaking at our farm. We liked it very much. You can find the recipe here:

Raspberry Ice-Cream on Edible Madison

Try it with blackberries, too!

Here is more of my ice-cream experiments:

5-Minute Food-Processor Ice-Cream

No-Cook Vanilla Ice-Cream

It’s been incredibly hot out there, which meant two things:

1) Working in the kitchen has been challenging.

2) There was a great need for cooling treats and beverages.

With that in mind, I decided to re-post this Russian concoction from my archives – it is perfect for this weather.

Despite its French name, this is technically a Russian treat, although I never actually had it during my old life.

This here is effectively a coffee float, and it’s delicious beyond words.

Here’s how to make it:

Here we’ve got ourselves ice-cream, heavy cream (half-n-half is for sissies), coffee, sugar, and salt.

Note: these days I use sweetened condensed milk in my coffee, which is a whole lot more delicious than any dairy product to have ever emerged directly from a cow, and this is what I would use now instead of the cream+sugar combo above.

Add 3 t of sugar to 1 C of coffee – increase or degrease the amount of sugar to taste.

A few grains of salt… NOT THIS MUCH. This is for demonstration only.

A serious dash of heavy cream…

Now whisk it all together.

At this point, Cyrus wakes up from a nap and toddles into the kitchen.

Note: This is Cyrus today (dressed by his sister):

Isn’t it amazing how much my boy changed in a little over a year?

Also, he no longer naps.

Also, I since learned how set the white balance on my camera manually, improving my weird cast situation dramatically.

Also, I since learned how to shoot in full manual.

Next, add a scoop or two of slightly softened vanilla ice-cream to the vessel from which you intend to drink this divine, caffeine-loaded concoction.

Note: I used to love Alden’s, but last week I up and bought an ice-cream maker and never looked back. These days I would use homemade vanilla ice-cream.

You can tell I have some decision-making issues in the vessel-choice department. That’s how I generate so many dirty dishes.

Next, and I bet you didn’t see this one coming, pour the coffee mixture right on top.

At this point, Cyrus hears the sound of a truck going down the road. It’s all over his face.

“A twuck! A twuck!”

Note: Cyrus no longer mangles words and instead recites clearly and profusely from Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein, as well as makes up his own rhymes.

But he’s still obsessed with trucks.

Done! And while some of you may be mentally counting the calories, remember – animal fat is your friend!

Animal fat means prosperity, happiness, and a productive life.

And plenty of breast milk – Cyrus will be the first one to tell you that.

Note: Cyrus, who at the ripe age of two-and-a-half still helped himself to the lacto-producing machine I will not mention directly, no longer partakes of said fine beverage. But the machine itself is far from being out of commission. This is why:

Keep that dairy coming!!!

I can’t quite explain why, but I find it most amusing when Jacob and I talk to each other in broken English. We actually talk like that a lot.

We actually talk like that all the time.

It goes like this:

“You buy milk?”

“Da be!” (Bulgarian for “Yes, and I am annoyed that you had to ask.” Roughly speaking.)

“Is good.”

A part of this Jacob-and-Sophia idiolect includes me using Russian sayings, translated literally into English. Sometimes they make sense, but often their meaning is completely lost in translation, which makes them all the more funny.

Here are some examples:

As we say in my country, “Work is no wolf, won’t run off into the woods.”

Translation: “You can always do it tomorrow. Now let’s go and have fun!”

That nails the Russian folk-soul right there.

Kick a woman off a cart, and the mare will have a lighter load!

Translation: “Good riddance!”

Isn’t it fun to learn things about another culture through its language?

And here is Jacob’s favorite:

Hunger is not your auntie, won’t serve you pies. Usually, only the “hunger is not your auntie” part is used, which sounds completely nonsensical to a non-Russian.

Can you guess what it could possibly mean?

It means, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

There is no truth in feet. = “Take a seat!”

Elderberry grows in the garden, a dude lives in Kiev.  = “Non sequitur” or “red herring.”

And here is my favorite one: 

You can’t ruin porridge with extra butter.

I’d say so.

The beauty of a house is measured by its pies rather than its corners (= decor, stuff).

With that, my friends, I wholeheartedly agree.

To a master hunter, game comes of its own free will. - Or, in the words of Escanaba in da Moonlight, “Everything comes to those who shoot straight.” Very much my life principle.

Follow the cabbage soup. = Follow the money.

I especially love this one:

A quarrel between lovers is a form of entertainment.

My secret to a happy marriage!

I also love the wonderfully concise yet extremely descriptive Azerbaijani expressions, like this one:

butter for my heart =  “that makes me very flattered/pleased”

Gotta love the ways of the East.

How about you? Can you think of foreign expressions that make you laugh?

1. I spent most of the last week gloriously alone – my big kids went away on vacation up north to the Upper Peninsula (my son recently said, “Do you pee in UP?”) with Jacob and his family, while the baby and I stayed behind.

Now, I am a strong believer in the stay-at-home parent carving out a healthy hunk of personal space in the course of daily life, and in taking every opportunity to send the kids to grandma’s and playdates to this end, but a long stretch like this was absolutely unprecedented, and a very special treat indeed.

Does this ever happen to you?

I also discovered a curious phenomenon – when you don’t have little kids in the house, things stay picked up after you’ve picked them up. Why didn’t I experience this before becoming a mom?

2. This is my son after he came back from vacation:

What my big sister thinks I am (a girl)…

What I think I am (a kitty)…

What my mom thinks I am (a cutie!)!

3. I am not entirely positive the baby noticed that her big siblings were gone. She didn’t appear to miss them.

While they were gone, I took this batch of photos of her. The most uninterrupted photoshoot ever!

4. I bought an ice-cream maker while they were away. Turns out, making ice-cream is simple, and because I am highly attuned to freshness, I found it tasting 100% better than boughten. In the week that I’ve owned it, I fully cracked the code behind both custard and non-custard varieties and made numerous batches. So easy.

This was the raspberry ice-cream.

This was the non-custard vanilla ice-cream.

The world of ice-cream is rife with possibilities.

5. The eggs in the bluebird house on my porch (sic!!) have hatched, and the bluebird parents have been tirelessly bringing the babies fat grasshoppers and moths and grubs.

I love having birds around.

6. It rained!

The incredible Midwestern drought we’ve been having was briefly broken by a really good, heavy rain, which I think may have turned the corn around, at least for a bit, at least where we are. I sure hope we get more rain, because things are positively starting to look scary. Our lawn is yellow, and we are likely to start feeding hay to our cows in August instead of November. Good thing we made plenty extra.

7. My three-year-old son loves to vacuum – this is because he loves machines, and vacuuming is as close as he gets to operating one:

8. My husband made campfire flatbreads yesterday:

Along with:

Campfire-grilled steaks from our cows and hobo packs with the nice veggies from the local farmer’s market.

He marinated the steaks in butter and garlic. Not a whole lot of butter, but butter still. It’s the cowboy thing.

How was your week?

My town, Viroqua, boasts this lovely, vibrant farmer’s market. Not too bad for a town of 4,000, eh?

I don’t go there very often, but really, I should! Just look at what they’ve got to offer:

I was beyond thrilled to have stumbled upon these pie cherries – they are hard to grow and even harder to find in our parts – and they just happen to be my #1 favorite fruit for cooking. I purchased two quarts of them and that same afternoon my kids and I pitted them with safety pins and paper clips, stuck them in the freezer, and later turned them into this wonderful food-processor ice-cream (I used more sugar than the original recipe indicates because pie cherries are very tart).

My husband especially loved it.

Next, what do you know, we ran into my niece Penny and her mom Julia. Penny loves her big cousins.

The feeling is mutual.

There were folks selling these beautiful handmade tarts. Can you imagine how much work that is?

And they also make buckwheat crepes right there.

And not only buckwheat ones. Check out their menu!

There was homemade lemonade…

And a gentleman with all these cool birdhouses.

Creative!

There were the folks with these beautiful handmade aprons for only fifteen bucks each. I really, really wanted one! Or two. Or five. I don’t have any.

And a quilter lady. Gotta love Thomas-the-Tank-Engine bibs!

Then there were quilt pieces…

There were Mennonite mom and daugther selling all these baked goods…

And handmade candles in mason jars…

And, of course, Amish baskets…

Amish quilts… I really, really want a quilt – I don’t have any big quilts.

Fresh veggies and meat… I know these vendors personally.

Colorful yarns, probably home-spun.

The good folks at the Driftless Folk School table, no pun intended… These are Annie, Jamie, and Rice.

This is Bonnie – remember little Penny, above? Bonnie was her mom’s grade teacher for eight years at the local Waldorf school.

Bonnie is also a close friend of Julia’s mom, and a sheep and beef farmer, as well as an organic certificator – the career from which she is retiring this year.

Just before Evie was born, Bonnie had gifted us a beautiful sheep skin for the baby to lounge around on.

Handmade bath products…

Jewelry…

Pretty cards printed off original drawings…

And then there was the Veggie Mobile:

Some very expensive local blueberries (which are not easy to grow around here) – they were a little tart, but my kids loved them.

More handmade soaps…

Quilted Amish aprons – I love them!

And live music!

We brought one of these buckets home as my girl had been asking me to make pickles for weeks.

Josie loves pickles.

Cyrus doesn’t like pickles.

But Cyrus loves to cut, trim, and otherwise participate in cooking.

And that is exactly what they did! Josie washed all the cukes and then they both trimmed them and packed them into the crock. How did things suddenly get to be so easy?

Do you have a farmer’s market where you live?

This delicious homemade ice-cream couldn’t be simpler as it involves no eggs custard, cooking, or chilling – perfect for a mom of three and spur-of-the-moment cook like myself. Made with nothing more than heavy cream, sugar, and a generous amount of vanilla, it is still rich, creamy, and delicious.

Give it a try and watch yourself become everyone’s favorite person.

Give it a try today.

5-Minute Blender/Food-Processor Berry Ice-Cream

5-Minute, No-Egg Chocolate Mousse (Cream & Chocolate)

5-Minute Heston Blumenthal’s Chocolate Mousse (Water & Chocolate)

Here is the last batch of photos from our trip out West this summer – and it is by far the most successful. Most of these pictures were taken while crossing from Colorado into Kansas.

Just for kicks, I added texture to some of these shots:

Doesn’t the texture make it look like a painting? Especially given the subject matter.

Lots of yuccas out there – this is decidedly desert-y. Soon this will be my backyard! What’s with the drought in the Midwest, I mean.

Already is, actually.

If you look closely, you will see a very faint outline of the Pike’s Peak on the horizon.

Now, this is very interesting – this, I believe, is a horned lark – the only true North-American lark, as meadowlarks are not true larks but, rather, close relatives of starlings. Listen to a starling sometime, and you will hear meadowlark notes; or look at a meadowlark and tell me if it doesn’t look like a fat, striped starling.

This here is one of my favorite shots. This was so beautiful.

The color scheme was just amazing.

There are few things more beautiful in the world than ripe, golden wheat waving in the prairie wind, whose sublime beauty matches its high purpose – to bring bread, the very stuff of life, to our tables.

Here is what it looked like without the texture. Breathtaking!

O Beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain… Did you know that this song was inspired by this exact area?

The transcendent beautify of this landscape brings tears to my eyes.

These wide, high Western skies are like nothing else. The sky around here is not even blue – the near-100% humidity of Wisconsin summers renders of it dirty-white.

Look at this sky – so high, so open.

Yuccas everywhere! So, so dry. This is how you get that blue sky.

It was also very, very hot.

But you know what’s really disconcerting about this landscape? The distance you have to drive to get from one town to the next, let alone one with groceries.

By the time we reached this, we were desperate to find a grocery store.

The shining beacon of hope!

Cause otherwise it’s all like this for miles and miles around.

You know you are in the beef country when you come by a town named “Bovina.”

I loved the emptiness of this but… I wanted to go back to Wisconsin, the Viroqua Food Cooperative, and my own gourmet cooking! My family is used to the food of such great quality that leaving is always a huge, monumental shock.

I WANNA GO HOME!!!!!!

Here are the rest of the posts from our trip:

Back from out West

Viroqua and the Driftless Area of Wisconsin

Camping in Iowa, Family-Style

The Plains

The Rockies

Rocky Mountain National Park

Colorado’s Manitou Springs

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs

Garden of the Gods is this cool park of red-rock formations between Manitou Springs, the home of the Pike’s Peak cog railroad, and Colorado Springs. Amazing what erosion can do, no?

This is the park entrance.

Don’t ask me what’s with the special effects. I don’t owe you an explanation!

Wow, I thought this was so cool.

A naaaarrow “gate”!

Look at the gravel road, it’s red! You don’t see that around here.

And that, in the distance, is the Pike’s Peak itself – the naked mountaintop, that is.

There it is again – 14,000 feet! My family took the cog train up to the top, but some people hike up… on foot!

Next up: the beautiful wheat fields of Colorado and Kansas. Stay tuned!

We now have a a fire ring!

Jacob built it for me after our recent camping trip, where I found myself rather enamored with campfire cuisine. The best part of camping, if you ask me!

Besides being able to build fire rings, he is also extremely, unbelievably good at cooking things in and over fire.

I love my husband.

One of the first things he prepared in there were these wonderful hobo packs, which are nothing more than cubed vegetables wrapped in tin foil, topped with butter, and buried in the coals to bake. Here they are below:

This is what they looked like when they were done. He made these with potatoes, beets, onions, and garlic scapes, sprinkled with salt and topped with two tablespoons of butter per a 2-cup package.

Isn’t it a beautiful sight? We served them with campfire-grilled rib-eye steaks, which we had cut up into bite-sized pieces so we could eat everything without a knife around the fire outside.

The kids really liked them, too.

The beauty of this is of course in the fact that you can put a mixture of any number of things in there – mushrooms, carrots, rutabagas, garlic, even ground beef – the world is your oyster!

Just be sure to use a double layer of tin foil to prevent your hobo packs from cooking too fast and burning too much by providing an extra barrier between the food and the fire. Note also that it is better to overcook rather than undercook them – while slightly-burned vegetables are soft and nicely caramelized, undercooked vegetables will be crunchy and bland.

Campfire food is something I am just learning about. If you have campire favorites you wish to share, go ahead and shoot! I am always looking for new ideas, especially in the dessert department!

Here’s how the Whos Hundts celebrate:

First of all, there’s lots of them, and they are all related. Or soon will be, anyway.

They like to sing. They are the ultimate real-life Whos.

They usually sing for their supper.

Above are my husband’s uncle Monsignor Hundt, a life-long Catholic priest, and aunt Connie. They are Jacob’s dad’s brother and sister, respectively. You see, his dad is the ninth of thirteen siblings. Where would I be if his mom stopped at five? That is the possibility I do not wish to ponder.

This is at my in-laws’ farm, by the way.

You know what else the Whos do realy well? Feast, of course.

They feast, and they feast, and they feast, feast, feast, feast!

My tall, dark, and handsome brother-in-law, Adrian, was in charge of the Who-roast-beast. Adrian is a carpenter and a sartorialist. Check out his sunglasses. Also, check out his rum punch.

It was also a beach party, nevermind it’s the ridgetop.

My mother-in-law grew up on a lake up in the UP (my son asked yesterday, “Do you pee in UP?”), and wouldn’t take no for an answer from the local topography. See? A beach!

They’ve had this pond for years and used to use it as a hockey rink in the winter, but this year they’ve “remodeled” it in a major way, turning it into a beach. My both kids are currently learning how to swim, so this is pretty much heaven.

That’s the kind of people my in-laws are – if they want themselves a ridge-top beach party, beach party they shall have.

It’s an incredible pond, really.

It has this bog feature (water purification?)…

And the waterfall feature… Doesn’t this look just like the photographs they have hanging on the walls in Asian restaurants?

And check out the water lilies!

Cyrus was a really good boy when I came to pry him out: “Mommy, I’ll bring all my stuff!”

Grandma also set up this cute little half-sandbox. The number of her grand kids is climbing steadily.

There was a game of softball… Gosh, just look at that yellow grass – it’s like Nebraska or something. We are in the midst of a most horrific drought.

My father’s-in-law other sister, Sue, kindly pushed Cyrus around in a go-cart. The dude can’t pedal. Yet.

This is my niece Penny – age-wise, she is between my son Cyrus, who is three-and-a-half, and my daugther Evelyn, who is six months. Penny is such a beautiful girl. Love her hippie ambertini, or what’s that thing called.

My oldest child, Josephine. She is moving out of the little-girl phase and into the pre-adolescent girl stage. All of a sudden she is taller, leaner, and stronger (I think). Six is such an interesting age – she oscillates between a surprising degree of maturity and little-girl behavior at the same time. I now have her make her own lunch. I did!

It was the hottest day of the year, too. By the end, everyone looked positively “boiled,” as we’d put it in Russian.

Poor baby. We took her inside at this point (we actually kept her inside most of the day).

That night, we left the big kids at the in-laws’ (thanks, Grandma and Grandpa!) and had a date watching our town’s sweet little firework show. The heat had lifted somewhat by dusk, and the evening air was surprisingly pleasant over at the fairgrounds, where the show takes place.

This was my first time shooting fireworks, by the way – as in “photographing.” Like what you see? Check out the rest of the photos and the technical explanation of how it was done here:

How I Photographed Fireworks

Happy Forth of July!

Our town, Viroqua, puts on a lovely little firework show every year. Yesterday, for the first time, I decided to take photos of it.

I’d never photographed fireworks before. What’d ya think?

Not too bad for the first try, eh?

I was not using a tripod or any other kind of support – this was entirely hand-held. I am that kind of woman.

I did this by putting my camera into “Shutter Priority” mode, allowing the camera to automatically match the aperture to the shutter speed of my choosing. To capture fireworks in this way, I used the shutter speeds between 50 and 80, and the ISO of 1000 on my Nikon D90 with the 18-105 lens.

I found that the best way to photograph them was to have the camera focus automatically by pressing the shutter release button halfway as the rocket went up, and then release the shutter (i.e, hit the button all the way) at the exact moment each rocket blew up.

I then worked all the photos over in Photoshop Elements, sharpening and increasing the brightness and the contrast of each photo.

And this is what I got as a result.

I absolutely love it.

The rest of the photos are below. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday, America!

You made all my dreams come true.

Here is what we did after we left the above high-elevation campground in the Rockies:

We saw these moose grazing on the bank of what is the beginning of the Colorado River, believe it or not. There is no moose in our part of Wisconsin, so this was pretty special – I’ve never seen one before. I am told they don’t make good eatin’, though.

We passed by this reservoir. Wow, that water is low!

More sagebrush! Nice and dry here.

I am always thrilled to see a birdbox on a post. It must be for the mountain bluebird? Do they have them in that area?

We had to cross the Rockies again, so we climbed up the last wretched mountain pass – the last time I climb a mountain of any kind.

See the bowl shape in the mountain side? This is where a glacier sat at one point during the Ice Age.

Next we drove into a tourist town of Manitou Springs – a suburb of Colorado Springs, which, unfortunately, has been the site of some of the terrible recent wildfires. It missed us by only a week. We came here to ride the Pike’s Peak cog railroad (my husband and kids, that is), which goes up to the top of Pike’s Peak – the inspiration for “America the Beautiful.” The author rode the railroad, and that’s how the immortal line “purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain” was born.

You don’t see a lot of towns with this kind of mountain topography here in the Driftless – but I am very familiar with it from both the mountainous Bulgaria, where I went to college, and from my native Azerbaijan.

Look at that red rock!

Lots of adobe buildings – we are definitely in the Southwest now.

More adobe houses…

You know a hippie town when you see one. In this way it is a lot like Viroqua or Madison. Notice the store sign above – we must be in Colorado!

The Garden of the Gods – an area of red-rock formations, reminiscent of Utah.

I took numerous photos of the park – that’s up next!

It hasn’t rained here for a while, and everything is starting to look positively yellow. This factor, in combination with some extremely hot weather, suddenly made my Wisconsin farm look like some place in Western Nebraska.

On the other hand, hot weather seems to make everything grow faster – the plants must be thinking, “if I’m gonna do it, I gotta do it now.” Same as with human reproduction, don’t you think? Trust me to look at a garden and think of babies rather than food.

Here is what everything looks like:

Like our homemade tomato cages?

The tomatoes actually don’t look bad (Jacob has been watering a little, too).

Eggplants on the background, peppers on the foreground.

I love eggplants. Got extra? Make some moussaka or this delicious Transcaucasian eggplant bruschetta.

Cukes!

Taters!

Have you ever seen anything like this? This is the so-called “walking onion” – it’s in its second year and is supposed to self-propagate (hence the tiny onion sets forming on top). Jacob claims that the regular onions don’t do that, or, at least, have this capacity bred out of them. Not that we are experts.

See the miniature onions on top? Neat, no?

This is actually a weed by the name of “lamb’s quarters.” Isn’t it a funny name? You can pick it and use it as spinach, but it tends to be tougher. It doesn’t taste like much, but some foragers swear by it.

Sunflowers! To us, these guys are decorative (plus, wild birds like them, and we like wild birds) – they plant themselves each year and Jacob weeds them back to the perimeter.

I love sunflowers, don’t you? In my mind, they are the ultimate symbol of country life.

And… raspberries! They are in. This year I am especially excited because I’ve been using them for this 5-minute food processor ice-cream, which requires no ice-cream maker (which I don’t have).

Click here to find out how this compares to the garden photos taken a couple of weeks ago.

And how is your garden?

The Cook’s Country Giveaway winner is:

#9 rebekah: Use baking soda mixed with coconut oil as a substitute for goo-gone. Slather it on the sticky residue, let it sit a few hours, and it all comes right off!

Congratulations, Rebekah! You will soon be getting an email asking for your mailing address to start your subscription.

Here are the rest of your tips – I loved them all:

Reader Household Tips

1. When putting things like honey or peanut butter in a measuring cup, spray it with cooking spray first. The ingredient slides right out and it’s much easier to clean!

2. If your honey turns to sugar and is in a glass jar, set the jar in boiling water for a while until the honey returns to normal.

3. Use baking soda to clean your crock pot. Just pour some in the crock pot and scrub with a damp rag, cleans it every time without scratches!

4. Make overnight oats right in the mostly-empty peanut butter jar!

5. Use baking soda to scrub the tub/shower, sinks, stovetop, pretty much anything where a light abrasion is helpful. It doesn’t scratch but gets all the grime.

6. Make your own dishwasher detergent with equal parts borax and washing soda. Keeps everything sparkly, even with hard water.

7. Keep a soda cracker or 2 in your sugar shaker to keep it from clumping. Putting a little rice in your salt shaker does the same thing.

8. I recently saw a strawberry huller that I thought I had to have, but then forgot to find one on my trip to town. I can’t remember where I saw it but was suggested I try a large drinking straw. Sounds silly, but had one in the drawer and it worked amazingly well. Started at small end and shoved it through to the top, couldn’t believe it. I found a large straw from last Bubble Tea, cut it in half and my case of strawberries became jelly in no time flat!!!

9. I can’t say enough about borax for dishes. It works like magic with stuck-on food. If soaking and regular washing don’t take the bits off, just sprinkle on the borax and start scrubbing. Sometimes I use a dishrag but usually I use my fingers. I like to *feel* that it’s clean! You won’t believe how shiny your glass baking dishes or bowls will be. I’ve also had good results doing the same with baking soda and salt. All are good, non-scratchy scrubbers!

10. One of my favorite hacks is for cleaning up an oily mess. Throw down some salt first, then sweep the salt up. Most of the grease will get absorbed into the salt, making it way easier to clean up.

11. Use a solution 1 part vinegar and 1 part water to clean stainless steel (the fridge, stove, microwave, pots and pans). It takes off the grease on the outside other cleaners leave, and they look so pretty after!

12. When strawberries are in season (like right now), I dehydrate them by the bucketful. I slice them evenly and uniformly by using an egg slicer. Perfect slices, every time.

13. Homemade fruit fly trap! Cut the top off of a soda pop container and put a banana peel or some overripe fruit or vinegar in it. Cover with saran wrap and rubber band it on. Poke a couple small holes in the saran wrap with a fork and watch it fill up with flies.

14. Brushing your toes in the bath with an old toothbrush and toothpaste helps summertime garden feet become more presentable for going to town… almost, ALMOST, as good as a pedicure…

15. A dab of toothpaste on a damp cloth is good to scrub black scuff marks off dress shoes.

16. Remove skin of ginger with a spoon instead of a paring knife; easy and no waste. Sofya: I use my vegetable peeler for this job.

17. Use a little vodka in a spray bottle to freshen linens.

18. You can shave with butter/peanut butter!

And here is a new one from me – I figured it out over the weekend:

Use a safety pin to pit cherries. Hold the pin by the head and push the rounded bottom part into the cherry until you feel the pit. Hook the bottom of the pit onto the bottom of the pin and pull it out – no pitter needed! I used this trick to pit 2 quarts of cherries this past weekend, and it worked beautifully.

Thank you, everyone! I learned a lot today.

Ever wonder what to do with garlic scapes?

Roast or grill them! Like with garlic itself, roasting the scapes brings out their sweetness and rids them of the sharp, pungent garlicky taste, making for a lovely side dish. Here is how I do it:

After camping near Denver, we crossed the mountains from East to West through the Rocky Mountain National Park. I am absolutely positive that I have not gone up to such high elevation before.

Such lovely valleys.

A black-billed magpie! We don’t have them out East.

Steller’s jay! I was especially thrilled to see one – I love blue plumage. Did you know, by the way, that blue color in birds is not a pigment but the way their feather structure reflects light? Note next time how every blue-colored bird you see is actually iridescent in the sun.

Steller’s jay above, as well as its Eastern cousin, the blue jay, are actually in the same family as magpies and crows. You know how they have these raspy cries? Very much the crow-family sound.

Gosh, I loved the coolness.

I just didn’t like the lack of air.

Boo-hoo, as my daugther likes to say.

Gray jay, I believe! I loved seeing the Western bird species.

Chipmunk! The world is filled with small wonders everywhere. Here’s how this blogger travels: I don’t go to cities or resorts and take pictures of glorious cupcake stores or city views. I much prefer back country and wildlife.

Something about the contrast of scale here… macrocosm and microcosm.

This is getting reaaaaly high now.

Oh, they’ve never seen the spring hit the Great Divide…

Eso es. The spring on the Great Divide.

Where did the mountains go? Looks like we are on the flatland again, doesn’t it? Wrong! We are at the very top of the mountain, way above the tree line.

Trees again – we are coming down now. TWILIGHT!!!!!!!!!!

The wildlife in those parks and campgrounds is entirely unphased by humans. A whitetail in our parts would never stand grazing in front of you like that. You can tell this dude evolved without guns.

This is a bull elk in velvet.

And there it is! The Divide.

And here is the campground where we stayed that night – incredibly beautiful, but I hated how there wasn’t enough air and how cold it got there at night.

Up next: Colorado Springs!

The next part of our big trip included driving into the Rocky mountains from the plans and, ultimately, crossing them by way of some high, high passes. Here are a few photos from the first part of that drive:

There is no way to ease into the Rockies from the Plains – there you are, driving along, used to the landscape being nice and flat for hundreds of miles ahead, and, all of a sudden, BAM! There they are. Purple Mountain Majesties. They really are purple, too – made especially so by the haze from the wildfires in the area.

Having spent the previous night at a motel in Nebraska, we camped that evening at a very nice campground at the foot of the mountains in one of the suburbs of Denver. My daughter is a real water-bug, so we wanted to find a place with a (man-made) lake and a beach.

We headed into the actual mountains the following day, avoiding the wildfires, of course.

They are beautiful, they really are.

We passed by this cute rock formation.

We saw some mule deer (I think).

We passed through this narrow, rocky gorge on our way up.

Don’t these rocks look like trolls?

Ain’t no Driftless Region for ya.

Twilight! Not really – far dryer here.

A nice mountain stream.

These folks don’t look like fly-fishermen to me, but there were a few of those there as well.

At a higher elevation now, the air felt clearer and cooler. We were getting into some real mountains now.

Then, what do you know, we passed by Noah’s Ark.

Finally, real snow-capped peaks! We would cross them that day. Stay tuned for the next installment!

More about our trip:

The Overview – a collection of the best pictures from the entire trip!

The Driftless Wisconsin

Camping in Iowa

The Plains – they are flat!

This is one of the two wren houses hanging on my porch. Ordinarily, wren houses are considerably smaller than bluebird boxes due to the obvious difference in the species size, and come with a much smaller hole.

For some unknown reason, this wren house, bought at a local agri-center, came with a bigger hole than usual. I’ve had it up for many years now, and every spring a pair of wrens would make a nest (I happened to really, really love wrens with their beautiful song and their sassy attitude).

But something unusual happened this summer – a pair of bluebirds, which normally tend to nest much farther from our house in the outlying vineyard and pastures, up and claimed this wren house here, literally within feet from my door. They made a nest, they laid eggs, they hatched the chicks, and are now bringing them fat worms right over our heads.

This one here is the mom:

A female eastern bluebird, that is.

Its resemblance to its larger cousin, the American robin, is obvious (both species belong to the thrush family).

Have you ever been this close to a bluebird?

Up until this summer, I certainly haven’t.

I can’t believe how lucky we are.

It is a beautiful thing.

Back in my native Azerbaijan, stuffed grape leaves are everyone’s favorite food, making them possibly as common as burgers and fries are in America – a staple at every local eatery and in every home.

Unlike in America, back in Azerbaijan dolmas are a main course rather than an appetizer, served piping hot with cold yogurt-garlic sauce (gotta love the contrast), and needing no other sides than plenty of good bread to soak up the cooking liquid. A complete meal in and of themselves, they are filled with a mixture of rice and meat rather than rice alone, and are flavored delicately with onions and cilantro. And unlike the long American ones, these are shaped into small, round bite-size packages that require no biting or otherwise dividing in half, which is a definite plus.

Click here for the complete recipe.

This incredibly-delicious berry ice-cream can be made without an ice-cream maker in a food processor or blender in five minites flat.

There are many good reasons to add this ridiculously quick and simple recipe to your collection.

Maybe you think that making ice-cream at home is more trouble than buying it.

Maybe you hate unitaskers.

Or think that ice-cream makers are bourgeois.

Or are impatient.

Me, I’m all of the above. Still, when it’s 90 degrees and my kitchen is overflowing with fresh berries, I begin to wonder what life would have been like if I could churn all that summery goodness into a dairy-rich, cold treat.

Enter this recipe.

Everything about this recipe is right:

It requires no ice-cream maker.

It relies heavily on frozen fruit.

It only takes five minutes to prepare.

It is extremely, excruciatingly delicious.

It leaves people endlessly impressed.

But don’t take my word for it. Find out today.

Here is how:

Start with some frozen berries. You can use a 10-oz package of boughten berries, or freeze your own on a cookie sheet. I liked the strawberry version best, but raspberries, which are currently ripe in the garden, are equally amazing, and I can’t wait to try it with blackberries!

Aren’t they pretty?

Throw the berries into a food processor…

Add granulated sugar, and process until the fruit is finely chopped.

With the blade running, pour heavy cream into the opening in the lid and process just until the mixture resembles ice-cream.

If you have processed the mixture too long and ended up with a rather soupy-looking product, don’t fret! Pour everything into a container and stick it the freezer, where it will reach the right consistency by the next day.

Ask me how I know.

Whichever the case, it will be perfect after it firms up. Like this:

And you can freeze and refreeze it without compromising the texture.

Here is the recipe:

Looking for more quick, easy, and cooling summertime desserts? Try these:

2-Ingreident Chocolate Mousse (used here as a filling for a cake but also spectacular on its own)

5-Minute Chocolate Mousse

Quick Raspberry Mousse/Fool

Café Glacé (Russian Coffee with Ice-Cream)

Heck, why don’t you browse the entire dessert section while you’re at it.

My friend Ann and I met seven years ago at a pickling class I was teaching for the Driftless Folk School. At the time, Ann and her husband Chris had just moved to our area of Wisconsin from Arizona, looking for a quieter country home and slower-paced careers. Upon moving here, they purchased a beautiful valley property with a winding stream teeming with trout.

Over the years, they have transformed both their land and their house in amazing ways – it is always fun to see how people who have lived on the land for any significant amount of time do that.

It also makes me feel old to have been around long enough to register these changes, both on my own farm and elsewhere. And you think kids grow fast.

This past weekend, Ann has invited us to a dinner party to celebrate her graduating from an intensive wine-making course and to welcome the new Driftless Folk School work-studies, who are being hosted at Ann’s this year. Naturally, I couldn’t pass an opportunity to snap a few photos of the place I’d been admiring for years and to share them with you. I thought you might enjoy touring it with me.

I am a big fan of dining a-fresco, especially when there are tablecloths involved. I think there is something really romantic about a tablecloth waving in the breeze.

You can see hints of the Southwest in Ann’s decor.

There are solar panels on the house, and while the house is not off-the-grid, the panels generate some electricity and I think also some heat in the winter.

Then there is this neat stony path with a nicely maintained terrace garden.

I absolutely love lavender – Jacob said he’d plant some for me, but, meanwhile, I got to bring a bunch home to dry. I love cooking with it!

Ann actually has an indoor swing at her house. I can’t believe it! I’ve never seen anything like that. How fun for the visiting kids!

This is Ann’s newly-remodeled upstairs. It used to be a loft space but they have converted it into a complete floor with three very small bedrooms that all share one bathroom in the hallway. This is a really great way to fit a lot of people, and it is perfect for hosting the work-studies. If you have a large family but not a whole lot of space, I think this is a great solution. The upstairs currently sleeps five, plus..

This! This is on a balcony directly off the second-floor that I have just showed you. I love this cute option for sleeping outside.

Below is Ann’s kitchen, which has seen a number of transformations over the years:

This cool (no pun intended) built-in cooler is the newest addition. It is insulated, and works really well for certain things.

Also note Ann’s wood-fired cook-stove and oven unit. This is where Ann cooks and bakes in the winter, which also helps keep her large downstairs warm.

Ann also has two small, stand-alone induction burners – the kind you put on your countertop if you are a food blogger and need to be able to cook by your only good window so you can snap photos in good light.

They also have a small, real fridge.

And get this – the compost pail is in a drawer immediately next to the sink. You open a drawer, and there’s the compost pail!

When it comes to summertime baking, Ann uses this antique oven here. She is cool that way.

As if that wasn’t enough, here is a handmade wood-fired mud oven, which apparently makes the best pizza. The oven was built in another one of the folk-school classes. If you are in the area, YOU can learn how to build one too (although the ones they teach in this class might be slightly different).

He is what else they got going:

Meat chickens! Isn’t it a nifty summer house?

Bee hives!

Here is the stream, by the way.

Draft horses!

Remember how I showed you the local ridge-top landscape before? Here is what the valley landscape looks like.

Horses and a little steer.

Sauna! But Cyrus thinks it’s a playhouse.

I may or may not have helped butcher this deer here.

All the nice wood for the sauna.

A cool trellis!

And another cool trellis.

And Chris’ tractor!

A large proportion of the people I know here live on homesteads just like this one in our beautiful Driftless countryside, including ourselves.

Many thanks to Ann and Chris for letting me take photos of their home!

Homemade rose syrup, how about that?

Rose, or “golden flower” in Azerbaijani, is traditionally used as flavoring and jam material in both my native Azerbaijan and the surrounding countries, and both rose water and rose syrup can be purchased from Middle-Eastern ethnic grocers. Being the kind of snob person that I am, I made a batch of homemade earlier this summer with the petals of the incredibly-fragrant roses from my prolific climbing bush, thereby bypassing the shipping charges and the potential preservatives. The results were simply spectacular, if I do say so myself.

How is one to use rose syrup, you might wonder? In a variety of ways! You can pour it over your pancakes, use it as a mild sweetener, drizzle it over ice-cream, or reduce it to the soft-ball stage for some rose-flavored French buttercream.

Myself, I envisioned it as a kind of a drink concentrate that could be added in small quantities to a pitcher of water I put on the table at suppertime, much like throwing in cucumber slices or lime wedges or a bunch of mint. My kids absolutely love this “roseberry juice.”

As far as preparation, the process couldn’t be more straightforward – just pick a few handfuls of unsprayed rose petals, throw them in a pot with sugar and water, bring everything to a simmer and cook for about five minutes before adding lemon juice (important for both the color and the flavor!), removing from heat, and allowing everything to infuse overnight. All you have to do the next day is strain it.

Alternatively, you could leave the petals in and reduce the syrup-petal mixture to a spreadable consistency, giving you rose jam. Although I haven’t done it this time, the taste of rose jam is still one of my most persistent childhood food memories.

If, after straining your syrup, you decide that you would like it a little more viscous, simply put it back in the pan and reduce it to your desired consistency (just remember that hot syrups and jams are much thinner than they would be after cooling – run a freezer test by drizzling a small amount onto a plate and sticking the plate in the freezer for a few minutes to cool it quickly and give you an idea of the final result).

While the absolute exact proportions are less important than the method itself, here is what I used:

• approximately 3 cups loose, unsprayed rose petals
• 5 cups cold water
• 3 cups granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Just follow the above directions and enjoy!

I love, love, love useful household tips. If there is a tip section in a magazine I’m reading, I read them all. Raise your hand if you do too!

Just the other day in fact I received the following amazing tip: to prep cabbage leaves for cabbage rolls, stick a head of cabbage in the freezer overnight. Take it out the next day and allow it to thaw. Once the cabbage thaws, the leaves will be limp and ready to be separated and used for wrapping. I thought this was most amazing, since my original recipe calls for a lengthy and painstaking process of boiling the head first. I still can’t get over the brilliance of this.

Here is a couple of my other favorite tips:

Use long kitchen tongs to reach for objects on high shelves – I can’t tell you how much I use this one.

Use hand sanitizer to remove pine sap stains from clothing before running an item through a wash – perfect for moms with little kids that spend a ton of time outside.

Use soap and water for mild stinging-nettle burns – a pertinent subject here on the farm!

Do you have favorite tips too? Share your tips in the comments and be automatically entered to win a one-year subscription to Cook’s Country Magazine, a terrific magazine that features, among other things, a meaty tip section, along with step-by-step recipes that really work and beautifully-written, inspired editorials by Christopher Kimball. All tips submitted will be featured in a separate “Readers’ Tips” post on this blog.

I can’t wait to hear them! I am so excited.

Giveaway Rules:

One random commenter will win a one-year subscription to Cook’s Country Magazine. Only comments with tips are eligible to enter.

To Enter:

Leave your favorite tip or tips in a comment. Feel free to leave as many tips as you want, but only use one comment to do so.

Second Entry:

Like The Girl’s Guide to Guns and Butter on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, and leave an additional comment here stating that you did.

If you are already a fan, share the link to this giveaway on either Facebook or Twitter and leave a second comment here.

No entries after midnight CST on Sunday, 7/1. The winner will be announced here on Monday.

This Giveaway is sponsored by The Girls’ Guide to Guns and Butter. I have no affiliation with said fine magazine whatsoever other than being a devoted fan. Amen.

This is my friend Keiko. Keiko is Japanese and is married to one of Jacob’s good friends, Clovis. Clovis is the son of George Siemon, the C-I-E-I-O (CEO, for you) of Organic Valley, the maker of fine dairy products and a sponsor of this blog; and Jane Siemon, the author of The Whole Plate food curriculum. This is a small town, and everyone’s connected, which makes me endlessly happy.

I love name-dropping – it makes me feel more special by association.

But back t0 Keiko – aside from being a beautiful and gracious lady that she is, she is one of the most wonderful home cooks I’ve ever met. Her food is not simply good, it is sublime. Man. I want to be Keiko when I grow up.

Clovis and Keiko recently had a baby, a little boy. He is a little younger than Evelyn.

My, what a beautiful boy.

And here’s their older son, another beautiful boy. Give him a year, and he and Cyrus can be good buddies.

Oh my gosh, a sleeping baby! I can’t resist a sleeping baby!

Goodness, he’s smiling in his sleep! This makes me melt and want another baby.

Wait, I have another baby!

Kii, the baby, and Evelyn could be in the same class.

That’s the beautiful thing about a small community – everyone’s a neighbor, everyone’s known each other for a long, long time. It makes me very happy to live here, and to have friends like Keiko.

It’s summer, and I would like to highlight a few useful posts about food preservation that I have published over the years. I hope you find something new to try or a new approach to an old technique! Here they are, in no particular order:

Food Preservation

Lacto-Fermented Dill Pickles – give this one a try!

Classic Dill Pickles: Refrigerator and Canned Versions

Homemade Raspberry Preserves

Easy Unsweetened Homemade Applesauce

Quick Tomato Sauce for Freezing

How to Prepare Sweetcorn for Freezing

Summer Grilling

The Incredible Blue Cheeseburger

Beef and Chicken Kebab Wraps – my guests never fail to be impressed when I serve this, especially with home-baked pita bread.

Bruschetta Burgers

Grilled Trout

Grilled Trout on a Bed of Creamed Morels

Blue-Cheese, Garlic, and Parsley Compound Butter for Steaks

Unexpected Steak Marinade: Sparkling Water

Grilled Naan

Refreshing Summer Drinks

How to Make Kombucha – a wonderful summer drink! Sweet and delicious, too!

Tasty Home-Brewed Iced Tea (no bags, for Christ’s sake)

Homemade Blackberry and Raspberry Juice Concentrate

Ayran – a salty yogurt drink – an Old-Country classic and perfect for summer! Also, here is how to make yogurt.

Other Summer Foods

5-Minute Food-Processor Ice-Cream

Creamy N0-Cook Vanilla Ice-Cream

Blackberry Ice-Cream

Homemade Raspberry-Yogurt Frozen Pops

Basil, Tomato, and Olive Bruschetta (this is perfection)

Eggplant, Garlic, and Mayo Bruschetta (this too is perfection)

Fruit Milk Shake

Green Salad with Blue Cheese and Easy Summer Dressing

Tarator: Bulgarian Cold Yogurt and Cucumber Soup – a summer staple at our house! We serve it as a side dish to meaty dishes at supper, and my kids also really love it for both breakfast and lunch.

Dovga: Azerbaijani Yogurt and Herb Soup – perfect as a refreshing drink, too. That’s how we do it in the Old Country. No pop.

Easy Summer Moussaka

Late-Summer Beef or Venison Stir-Fry with Ginger-Lime Marinade

Gardening

Homemade Tomato Cages and the Benefits of Deep Mulch

Uses for Overgrown Zuccini

Butchering

Chicken Butchering 101

Duck Butchering 101

Hand-Plucking Waterfowl

Enjoy!

When it comes to travel, I positively prefer to go back-country and to avoid cities, which, with their concentration of people and cars, leave me feeling downright claustrophobic. The great thing about the Plains is that you definitely don’t feel claustrophobic there.

Another delicious thing about traveling West is the increasing dryness you encounter as you approach the middle of the continent, and the number one reason why we chose West as both our honeymoon destination eight years ago and for our big trip this summer. A child of the desert, every few years I begin to ache for a yellow landscape and the hot, dry air, what’s with living in Wisconsin and all.

I think these photos show this deeply-satisfying progression from green to yellow quite nicely:

Iowa – they actually call this part “Little Switzerland.”

Still Iowa, with its lush-green unirrigated cornfields.

Farther West yet – see how things are starting to look dryer?

Middle of Nebraska!! So… much… more… yellow! Ahh….

Mmm…

Still the lawns are green and soft. This is America, man.

We are not in Kansas anymore… Talk about the yellow brick road.

Incidentally, I found a free copy of Wicked at a “take a book, leave a book” shelf of a Colorado campground. It’s not bad.

The first irrigation line!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Note the brown hills on the background – they look just like my native Absheron peninsula.

In Colorado now – brown!!! This is just like home.

America’s breadbasket.

Yellow pastures! I always love seeing some cattle in the landscape.

Mmm, very much like my native part of Azerbaijan. Ever watched The World is Not Enough?

SAGEBRUSH!!!!!!!!!!!! I can’t believe we didn’t bring any home. I am so bummed out by that. I absolutely love sagebrush.

Oh, the blessed dryness that makes sagebrush grow. This hot, dry air is to die for.

Prickly pear!!! About as approachable as me. I am a desert fruit, everybody.

Wow, I’ve never seen a powerline this big – like a mechanical giant, marching across the plains to bring us the good “computer juice,” as my kids call it. In the words of Anthroposophy, very Ahrimanic.

Up next – the mountains!

More about our trip here, here, here, and here.

Here is the next installment about our pilgrimage out West:

It includes the fair state of Iowa – the first state we crossed on our way to the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado.

You can tell you are out on the plains.

The first day of our trip was pretty easy – we drove for a couple of hours before stopping for lunch at a nice little park in a small Iowa town whose name escapes me. It was perfect, really – the kids got to run and play on the playground, we got to stretch, and the first of the many picnics we would have this week was absolutely delightful. We had just left home, after all.

In a couple more hours, we found the charming Ledges State Park, surprisingly situated amidst the seemingly endless cornfields. It included a natural bit of wilderness around a deep natural canyon (believe it or not), as well as a wonderful, modern campground. Here is what it looked like:

This tent was a wedding gift to us from Jacob’s college friend Whet and his wife Liz. It is a wonderful, spacious tent that we immediately took with us on our honeymoon (also out West), and Jacob has been using it ever since for a yearly camping trip or two he takes with his students. Thank you, Whet and Liz!!

Jacob started the fire…

Evelyn lounged…

The kids drew…

There is no TV in our car, and neither is there one at our house (although they watch a few shows online via Netflix now and then), so our kids are used to making up their own games and keeping themselves entertained without the need for electronics or much adult participation – one of the major things that make my experience of motherhood so smooth.

Jacob inflated the ground pads and Josie made “beds” in the tent where four of us were to sleep (Jacob opted to sleep on a ground pad outside). We left the rain-fly off that night and went to sleep under the stars (although the campfire smoke kept being blown towards us, which drove me bonkers).

My mother-in-law lent us her car-top carrier for this trip, as well as several ground pads, the cooler, and her camp kitchen set.

And, finally, Jacob made a campfire supper and coffee, at which he is unparalleled. He made the next morning’s breakfast, too, and also did all the dishes and the packing. I am pretty sure I did nothing at all!

You can read the first couple installment here, here and here. Do it, too – some of the beauty we’ve encountered on the way will blow you away!

It’s June! How does your garden grow?

Here is (some of) ours (my husband’s, that is):

It is covered with deep mulch all over, which cuts down on weeding significantly and helps retain the moisture. We just use our last-year’s hay for this.

Cabbage, just planted.

Cukes, just planted.

Potatoes.

Eggplants. I love eggplants.

Chives.

Tomatoes. Tomatoes are a vine, and will climb and cling to the cages you put up for them. These homemade cages, while not the easiest way to go, are nevertheless sturdier and much taller than what our local stores carry. They are made of the metal mesh used to reinforce concrete before pouring (I believe), and are held up by fence posts.

We learned about them from Jacob’s sister, and they really do work great.

When it comes to planning and preparing family dinner, there are two fundamental truths we have to face:

Cooking dinner for a family is hard.

Having a plan takes you most of the way there.

I used to drown in anxiety with regard to what’s for dinner tonight, and originally overcame this condition by starting to plan meals a week at a time and buying groceries with those in mind.

Recently, we’ve taken this model even farther by establishing a permanent weekly dinner rotation, primarily to help with the pickiness of my six-year-old, who is at a delicate age and is seeking both structure and a greater degree of independence all at once. We deemed that clear expectations that come with a rhythm and the resulting repeated exposure to certain types of foods will both provide the comfort of predictability and help her expand her tastes, while simultaneously minimizing the anxiety of everyone involved.

Because I am, after all, a food blogger, I wanted some sort of a balance between structure and flexibility, so instead choosing specific dishes, we made our rotation out of types of dishes. And since this change was primarily for and about my daugther, I included her into designing it. The whole thing took about five minutes, and we never looked back.

Here is our particular example, reflecting our preferences and resources:

Monday: Pasta (usually noodles and red sauce)

Tuesday: Meat and Fries

Wednesday: Meat with Mashed Potatoes and Gravy

Thursday: Soup or Stew Day

Friday: Meat and Rice (stir-fry or pilaff)

Saturday: Tortilla Day (burritos, fajitas, tacos, etc)

Sunday: Forage-for-yourself Day, although this summer we plan to turn Sunday evenings into backyard-campfire cookouts with my husband in charge – a start of family tradition, I hope!

And here is the repertoire of dishes I draw upon for the above rotation:

Monday Pastas:

Spaghetti Bolognese (almost always)

Russian Meatball Pasta (also known as bitki)

Beef or Venison Stroganoff with Blue Cheese (or without)

Tuesday Meat & Fries:

Paprika Potato Wedges

Best Oven Wedge Fries

Russian Skillet-Fried Potatoes

Easy Oven French Fries

Russian Meatballs (also known as tefteli)

Pozharskie Kotlety (Russian chicken patties – they are ah-may-zing, try them today!)

Blue Cheeseburgers

On occasion, I might deep-fry some fish, in which case I deep-fry the potatoes as well (I do all of my deep-frying in my enameled dutch oven) – just be sure you do the fries first, fish second.

Wednesday Mashed Potatoes & Gravy Dishes:

Smothered Chicken

Beef Shanks

Pot Roast

Murphy’s Hot Hamburger (only I serve it with mashed potatoes rather than fries, although it is also good with fries)

Chicken-Fried Steak (only instead of buying cube steak I use beef sirloin steak or venison round steak, which I cut in half horizontally to make it half as thick and then into 3-inch by 3-inch-long sections, which I pound to 1/8-inch thickness with a kitchen mallet between two pieces of wax paper)

Thursday Soup or Stew:

My soup and stew repertoire can be found here.

Friday Meat and Rice:

Azerbaijani Pilaf, with variations

Beef or Venison Stir-Fry with Ginger-and-Lime Marinade

Saturday Tortilla Dishes:

Azerbaijani-Style Kebab Wraps

Azerbaijani Lyulya-Kebab Wraps

Pepper-and-Onion Beef or Venison Fajitas

And, like everybody else, I also like ground-beef burritos, where I brown my ground beef with onions and spike everything up with a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste and ground cumin.

The only thing not mentioned is the side of green and/or fresh vegetable, which varies with seasons and is therefore left open.

While regularity is not something that I naturally gravitate towards, I can attest to the fact that structuring our family dinners in a this way made an enormous difference in the levels of acceptance and peace during supper, not to mention facilitating planning and preparation.

Do you have a weekly dinner routine? I’d love to hear about it!

My tiny Petunia is now six months old. Born on a winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, she is celebrating her half-birthday on the longest. Here’s her six-months transformation:

You think she’ll look like Josie in six years?

The first few photos I took on our big trip were of our immediate area, the Driftless (or Coulee Region, as it is also known), which is this amazing unglaciated (hence, “drift-less”) region that includes Western Wisconsin and small sections of the surrounding Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota. Rather than gliding over this part of the state and rendering it flat like the rest of the Midwest, the glaciers instead split somewhere up north and by-passed its rolling hills and deep valleys, preserving its undulating beauty and making it off-limits to the kind of large-scale agriculture and suburban sprawl we’ve encountered out on the Great Plains. Instead, it is a home to small dairy farms, numerous Amish, back-to-the-landers, and a few amazing humanly-scaled organizations in and around Viroqua, its unofficial capital.

Because this blog is a potential promotional space, I feel compelled to highlight some of these extraordinary institutions:

• Pleasant Ridge Waldorf School, which my husband and his three siblings attended, is a no-nonsense, uncharacteristically-affordable Waldorf school which is now I believe 30 years old. My daughter has just completed kindergarten here and will be starting first grade in the fall, rainbow bridge and all.
• Organic Valley, which brings countless real foods to our table and sponsors this blog, among other things.
• Driftless Folk School, which offers classes in sustainable skills.
• Youth Intiaitive High School, a small Waldorf high-school whose mission is to involve the students and the parents into the governance of the school and fundraising in a major way.
• Viroqua Food Cooperative, where the majority of my food comes from. Seriously, I don’t know what we’d eat otherwise, besides the meat and the veggies that we raise. Most of the food here is organic or otherwise ethically-sourced, and everything I bring home from here is good, pure, and true.

Thank you for your attention. Now back to the local landscape.

Apart from riverbanks, which have their own topography, the two major features of the Driftless are its ridgetops and valleys. When you are up on the ridge, the landscape is similar to that of the plains – relatively flat land is plowed-up for cultivation, only here the farmers arrange their fields in narrow strips that follow the contours of the hills to minimize  erosion.

The hillsides, on the other hand, are too steep to farm and are covered with woods – a home to the area’s wildlife, including some plentiful and delicious whitetails.

The widest of the picturesque valleys below can be cultivated and the soil is rich, but they can also be colder than the ridge-tops (the difference that can be crucial during the delicate times on both ends of the growing season), and it gets dark sooner. The valleys here are often criscrossed by clear, cold streams favored by trout and fly-fishers, some of whom drive up here from the nearby urban centers like Minneapolis, Chicago, and Madison.

To get to Iowa, the first state we crossed, you have to drive down to the Mississippi River at the town of Prairie du Chien – one of the oldest in the state. Here are the photos from that scenic drive:

Being stuck behind a big hayload that is stuck behind an Amish buggy on a highway is a common situation.

Pretty farmland.

Alternating corn and beans, but not as much of them as in flatter areas of the country.

Lots and lots of dairy farms. It’s the Dairyland after all. I am pretty sure God led me here for a reason.

See how the fields are actually on hilltops?

This rolling topography has a distinct effect on the identity and the mentality of the people who grow up around here, I think.

And this, finally, is the Mississippi river.

A few more photos of the area can be found in this post:

Driftless Spring

The next post will cover our tour through the thrilling Iowa and Nebraska. Stay tuned!

We are safely back from our trip out West.

For the past seven days, we alternated between camping, driving ridiculous distances, and staying in motels, as well as eating a mixture of healthy foods we brought  from home in our cooler (cheese! jerky! hummus! home-baked bread!) and convenience-store snacks.

This jerky ain’t the same.

It was also on this trip that I realized that granola isn’t found everywhere. It is no secret that I live in a bubble.

Speaking of which, I bought my first jar of Nutella at a Walmart in the middle of Kansas. I am not against Walmart. I like our local Walmart just fine, and it was most welcome out on the Plains.

Nutella, on the other hand, I did not like at all. I like ganache sandwiches a whole lot better.

Also, a random fact: my daugther won’t eat marshmallows.

If you’ve never gone on a cross-country road trip with three young children, including an infant, it is probably better that you don’t. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

When it comes to road trips, sticker books are magic. I don’t care where they put them.

For the record, the infant and my girl were the most patient of all.

I was the least patient of all, which was hardly a surprise.

My husband, on the other hand, was a saint. This is what makes our marriage work.

My camping beauties. Josie is really dutiful when it comes to smiling for pictures. It just doesn’t always look believable.

By contrast, coming home was amazing – suddenly, we weren’t homeless! We aren’t living out of our car! We can spread out over the expanses of our house and the farm. A little (a lot of) personal space makes a whole world of a difference.

I have no doubt that the same is true for chickens and livestock.

My car has not yet been unpacked.

My house is a mess.

As you can tell, I am doing nothing about it for now.

I have a duck thawing in my sink to make smoked duck breast for supper in some context or another. In the past, I’ve smoked the entire bird, but smoking the breast I think is better.

It’s hot and muggy back home and we even pulled out our window air-conditioner.

We haven’t turned it on yet. It feels a little bourgeois. We are sensitive that way.

On a different note, this wheat field on the border of Colorado and Kansas on our way back was simply breathtaking.

Stay tuned for more!

We are back from out West! Iowa-Nebraska-Colorado-Kansas-Iowa in seven days with three kids, including a six-months-old baby!

My, what a trip!

We camped.

We also stayed at a hotel. I like hotels – they are way cleaner than my house.

I like camping too – it is dirtier than my house and makes me feel good.

I learned something new about the world.

I learned something new about myself.

The trip once again made it plainly clear that we live in one of the best (and also most-affordable) rural areas anywhere, especially on the food end. This is a huge deal when you realize that a Walmart is a shining beacon of hope out on the Plains, and that you have to drive for hours to find one so that you can buy actual ingredients to cook with amidst convenience stores and empty towns with nothing but a grain elevator.

But what a beautiful country this is. See for yourselves:

The prairie.

The desert. Sage brush! Yuccas! This reminded me so much of home.

High up in the Rockies, above the tree line!

Breathtaking in more than one way. Not… enough… air!

Come to think of it, I’ve never climbed a mountain (in a car, that is) with such drastic changes in elevation over such short distances.

The “Garden of the Gods” park near Colorado Springs. Definitely the beginning of the South-West, adobe buildings and all.

And this is me doing my camping laundry for five at a hotel.

Here are a few other highlights:

I saw a wolf.

I woke up next to a herd of elk.

I realized that homemade jerky is incomparably superior to store-bought, especially when made with fine Wisconsin whitetail deer rather than industrial beef.

I brought four quart-sized ziploc bags of it with me on this trip after running my dehydrator day and night and using up the rest of our venison supply.

It lasted to about Nebraska, and that’s with rationing.

Speaking of which, it was on this trip that I actually encountered industrial agriculture for the first time.

I have seen my first feedlot. And second. And third. And tenth. And smelled them, most importantly.

Chicken and pig CAFOs too.

On a different note, I saw birds I haven’t seen before – steller’s jays, gray jays, black-billed magpies, ravens, violet-green swallows, great-tailed grackles, and a Western meadowlark. Being in a place with a different, unfamiliar set of bird songs is unusual and fascinating.

I also crossed the Great Divide twice.

In the end, I found the rugged, severe beauty and vastness of the West both sublime and dwarfing, but it most-certainly isn’t what my husband would describe as “humanly scaled.” Alternating endless prairie and fields all the way to the horizon are a far cry from the Driftless network of rolling hills, coulees, countless small Amish farms, and charming hippie CSAs.

To say this country is enormous would be an understatement. Back in Europe, 2000 miles that we’ve covered on this trip would have taken you through several countries five times over.

Except the borders could be hard to cross.

For the record, this is half the mileage our family drives in an entire year.

But this… this is humanly scaled. And this is why we call it home.

Note: I took 1000+ photos on this trip and will be covering each section of our journey in separate posts in the course of this week.

Inspired by summer street food—they’re a bit of a cross between Greek gyros, Mexican tacos, and the traditional barbecue of my native Azerbaijan—these beef and chicken kebab wraps are light and satisfying. With plenty of color and flavor, they’re my go-to staple when company is coming.

Each wrap holds chicken and beef, oven fries, an onion-cilantro mixture, and sliced tomatoes, with yogurt-garlic sauce drizzled over all. The potatoes deliver French fry-style enjoyment with less fat—and the best meat choices are skinless, boneless chicken breasts and rib-eye steak trimmed of all marbling.

Traditionally, Azerbaijani kebabs are prepared on a grateless grill named “mangal,” and are suspended over the coals on hefty metal skewers, but the American bamboo skewers laid over a standard metal grate work just fine (just remember to soak the skewers for thirty minutes or so prior to using so they don’t catch on fire).

My choice of fuel is charcoal, for which I favor hardwood “chunks” over briquettes because they are ready faster, but this works equally well on a gas grill.

Beef and Chicken Kebab Wraps

Serves 4

For the kebabs:

• 2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into 1 x 2-inch strips
• 2 rib-eye steaks, trimmed completely of fat and the connective tissue, and cut into 1 x 2-inch strips
• salt and pepper, to taste
• optional marinade: 1 sliced medium onion, salt, and a generous squirt of lemon juice

For the oven fries:

• 3 large Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed and cut into french fries
• 2 T vegetable oil
• salt and pepper, or seasoned salt to taste

To serve:

• 4-5 flour tortillas or pitas
• 1 C plain yogurt, mixed with 1 crushed garlic clove
• 1/2 large or 1 medium onion, sliced and mixed with 1/2 C chopped cilantro and a sprinkling of salt
• 1 large ripe tomato, cut into strips
• several small pickles, cut into strips (optional)
• wing-style hot pepper sauce if you like extra spice (optional)

You will also need six bamboo skewers, soaked in cold water for at least 30 minutes prior to using.

Bake the fries:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Farenheit.

Coat a half-sheet/jelly roll baking pan with non-stick spray.

Place the potatoes into a bowl of hot tap water and allow to soak for 10 minutes. Drain and dry with paper towels.

Place the potatoes onto the baking pan and drizzle with the oil. Toss to coat.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until the potatoes are fork-tender and are beginning to turn crispy golden-brown on the outside.

Remove from pan onto a plate lined with paper towels and sprinkle with salt and pepper or seasoned salt. Cover with foil to keep warm.

Grill the meat:

If you wish to marinate the meat, toss it in a bowl with all of the marinade ingredients and refrigerate for several hours. Note: I marinate the beef and the chicken separately to avoid cross-contamination.

Roll the meat strips into tight rolls and place the rolls onto the skewers, 4 to 5 per skewer. Season generously with salt and pepper.

If using a charcoal grill, heat the coals until they are covered with a layer of gray ash. If using a gas grill, preheat it to medium. Be sure that your grill grate is hot and scrubbed clean with a wire brush before you place the food on it.

Place the skewers onto the grill (the rack does not need to be oiled), and allow to cook on one side, without turning, until a light-brown crust is formed. Turn skewers with tongs and repeat with other three sides, or until the chicken juices run clear and the beef has reached your desired degree of doneness (I like mine medium-well—mostly cooked through but with a hint of pink—and I test it by sticking a fork and a knife right in and taking a peek inside). Be careful to not overcook the meat to avoid it drying out.

To assemble:

Layer the meat, fries, pickles (if using), onions, and tomatoes onto the warmed flatbread of your choice. Drizzle with the yogurt-garlic sauce and serve immediately.

This post is part of the BlogHer Light & Fresh Summer Grilling series, which includes 100 percent editorial content presented by a participating sponsor. Our advertisers do not produce editorial content. This post is made possible by Michelob ULTRA Light Cider and BlogHer.

Here is a little something I made the other day:

It included:

• Strawberries from our farm
• Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie dough baked into bars, with fresh strawberries folded into the batter
• Alden’s Organic vanilla ice-cream (because I am that kind of woman)
• Homemade hard chocolate glaze (the kind you encounter on a chocolate-coated ice-cream cone)

Here is a look inside:

This already spectacular dough is made even more delicious with the addition of strawberries (hint: eat some of it raw), and bakes up into a molten, gooey single cookie – the kind you wanna eat with a fork. Make it today, while the berries are still in season.

Here it is:

The past week has gone by in a blur. Here are some of the things that happened:

1. This is one of my next recipes to be posted here:

These are oven fries.

This was my birthday cake – I am officially 32! I used this recipe, plus berries.

Another recipe on the way. The hard glaze on top is homemade.

And speaking of sweet, homemade, red things:

I now add a little bit of red dye to my hummingbird food. It’s pretty this way.

2. Wildflowers: my girl picked these for me in one of our empty pastures:

 Aren’t they sweet?

3. We have pulled out our old chicken tractor to serve as a summer chicken coup for our meat chickens. They are babies right now. We don’t plan to keep them confined in there, and don’t plan to move it all that much – as soon as they are a certain size, we’ll let them out to roam freely wherever. I love chickens wandering around.

4. We had our hay made. Here is how it was cut:

Our neighbors did it for us. Half of our neighbors are Amish – some of the most conservative in the country, I am told.

This Russian-speaking Jewish-Azerbaijani American is finally English.

5. Summer is the season for swinging:

6. Cyrus has a new haircut:

He can’t twist his pigtails in the same way right now, but at least he’s nice and cool!

Remember the tobacco-barn art project? The one my husband’s students did here on our farm? Here is the time-lapse the students and their art teacher, a local graphic artist Pete Hodapp, made of the process:

(The rest is between me and my stain-removal arsenal. But we don’t talk about things like that on the internets.)

Come and check out my new recipe over at the Edible Madison website! My husband and I love this easy blender hollandaise – perfect for a family with 300 asparagus plants!

My older kids have been having these for a special, strawberry-season-only snack. I think Evelyn might be feeling left out!

Wisconsin is a northern state, and it is highly unusual for us to have strawberries until June. Last year’s strawberries, for instance, didn’t ripen until the end of the month.

But this is year is different – this year our berries are coming in strong right now, and it’s not even the end of May. Like everything else about this unnatural spring, this feels really weird.

Strawberries are one of the few fruits that I insist on consuming only when gathered locally and in season, and the season is now.

I plan on sharing new strawberry recipes within the next couple of week, but, meanwhile, here are some from the archives:

Chocolate Dipping Sauce for Strawberries

Strawberry Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Best Strawberry Shortcake

“Paradise Found” Strawberry Shake

“Heart of Darkness” Lava Cakes with Strawberry-Sour-Cream Topping

Enjoy!

Look what I’ve got in the garden:

My kids found and picked these.

Then they brought them to me.

Then they asked me to make them some chocolate dipping sauce – the kind of question I don’t need to be asked twice.

Most days.

Here’s what to do:

How is your garden doing? Our lettuce is up!

It is actually growing in one of these ultra-easy and super-cheap makeshift cold frames made of hay bales and old windows. Baby greens are my favorite!

And here is some head lettuce.

Here are my two favorite ways to dress and eat lettuce:

Garlicky Homemade Vinaigrette

Green Salad with Blue Cheese and Easy Dressing

There is garlic involved.

The grapes are putting out their leaves as well – I will be writing a recipe for stuffed grape leaves for Edible Madison a month from now (meanwhile, my other recipe contributions to their website can be found here).

One of the things I really love about baby grape leaves is that delicate pink hue. Can you see it in the picture?

For better or for worse, I always imagined owning a vineyard, romantic comedies be damned.

Well, we’ve got one now!

***This giveaway is now closed***

The winner of the giveaway is #9: Colleen Gilgenbach: “Steve Madden Gamma …. love it!”

Congratulation, winner! You will be receiving an email with your gift code shortly.

The thing about a growing family is that you one day find yourself needing more of everything: more food at meal times, more closet space, additional beds and dressers, and so on. It goes without saying that new bedding is among those basic needs.

Because it can get quite cold here in Wisconsin, and because my firewood-heated home tends to cool down towards morning, quality comforters – and plenty of them – are at the top of my bedding needs, what’s with three kid and counting. With them in mind, warmth and durability are the two characteristics I look for the most. Of course, it doesn’t hurt if the bedding is also pretty, especially where my older girl and her suddenly-emerging aesthetic sensibilities are concerned.

Needless to say, I was beyond thrilled when Bedding Style contacted me about hosting this giveaway, for who couldn’t use some extra bedding? I certainly could, so I jumped at the opportunity to select something for my family and to offer my readers a chance to do the same. Here is how:

Bedding Style is celebrating 7 years in business and wants to spread the love by giving one lucky blog reader a $250 gift certificate to the site. If you haven’t heard of Bedding Style, be sure to check it out, as they carry a large variety of brand name bedding at great prices online, as well as bathroom accessories. Their customer service is great, and the bedding they sent us was beautiful and decidedly high-quality.

Here’s what my daugther and I chose:

This striking Unikko Red comforter by Marimekko for her bed, which turned out to be wonderfully soft at 300 thread, as well as surprisingly light-weight for the warmth it provided – perfect for little ones!

This is what it looks like in real life. Fluffy. Cozy. Fun!