Recipe Round-up: Week of 9/29/14- 10/05/14

When we were housing hunting just a few months ago, just for fun, we went to an open house for a house that is lifetimes outside of our price range.  Pretending to be serious shoppers, when the realtor asked us what we thought of the house, we told her that it wasn't to our liking because we are searching for house that better fit a multi-generational house (not because it was many times over and above our price range).  To which, we quipped, "Oh that is the wave of the future in housing".

But it's true.  We are a multi-generational household, on purpose, and we did actually find a great house in our budget that allows my husband and I along with my parents to live together and enjoy our own space when we need it all under the same roof.

We also share many meals, and with busy lives, it can sometimes be difficult to determine who is going to be around for dinner and what we are going to serve.  This post is one way we are splitting up meal duties.  I plan meals seeking to maximize our budget and bring home the healthiest foods possible; and my mom preps those meals so that it takes less time to get dinner on the table when we get home from work in the evening.  To make it easy for my mom to find the recipes we are working from each week, I decided to make her a blog post where she can easily find all the links.  Together we will keep you updated on how these recipes go, which meals we recommend, and which to avoid.

Monday: Turkey and Quinoa Stuffed Bell Peppers
This is a pretty nutritional recipe to begin with, but we could increase by substituting 1/4 of the meat with finely chopped mushrooms and carrots. Also, use whatever cheese we have.  Go ahead and keep the serving size at 8, and we can use these for lunches this week.
Dinner time plan:  If mom can get the filling completed beforehand, we can pop these in the oven as soon as I get home from work.

Tuesday:Spaghetti Squash with Marinara
How to Cook Spaghetti Squash- this looks like a great tutorial on how to properly cook spaghetti squash so that you get long "noodles".
Sauce: This is less of a recipe and more of a doctored up sauce from a jar. We'll use ground turkey, onions, garlic, bell pepper, marinara, basil.
Dinner time plan: Mom roasts squash beforehand, and I'll make the family marinara sauce.

Wednesday: Grilled chicken with zucchini and a spinach salad
Chicken: Honey Lemon Garlic Chicken
Zucchini: slice length wise, marinade in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil, oregano, pepper, salt, fresh garlic
Salad: Keep it simple with spinach, radish, tomato, carrot, and chopped pecans
Dinner time plan: Marinade the chicken and zucchini for at least an hour prior.  When we get home, then we'll grill the meat and veggies and assemble the salad.

Thursday: Korean Stir fry
Meat: We'll use a mix of half ground turkey and half finely chopped mushrooms, carrots, and celery
Dinner time plan: Make the rice and chop veggies for meat ahead of time.  When we get home from work, we'll cook up the meat and make stir fry vegetables that are in the freezer.

Friday: pizza with friends

Saturday: Date Night.

Sunday: Roasted Butternut Squash Soup
Dinner Time Plan: This recipes is wonderful as it is, and a great leisurely Sunday afternoon project that we can make together.

Resolve

Today marked the first official day of implementation of Our Family Strategic Three Year Plan.  Yes. 

Last year at work we went through a process of creating an agency wide Three Year Strategic Plan, and I kinda nerded out so much that I wanted to create one for me and The Cowboy as we started our new life together. I know that strange halfway glance you are giving me right now, very well; I have seen it on everyone’s face that I have told this to over the last few months.  Except for The Cowboy.  He doesn’t really get giddy about “strategic plans” the way I do, but he gets giddy about me, so he overlooks my tendency to make everything a spreadsheet or a S.M.A.R.T goal.

The Cowboy on a Christmas light with me last December.  

Actually it sounds way more impressive than it turned out to be. But I do think that it will help us be intentional about how we spend our time over the next several years.  When it comes down to it, it’s kind of less than a plan, and more of a collection of happy thoughts concerning what we want to prioritize, explore, and where we want to be at the end of the strategic period.  So, in lieu of resolutions, here are several of our goals for January 2013 based off of the Strategic Three Year Plan.

·         Complete a detox focused on consuming more fruits and vegetables and decreasing the amount of sugar in our diet. (guess I need to put down the NYE champagne, huh?)

·         Grow a sourdough starter for bread baking

·         Walk the pups together everyday

·         Continue reading a verse together at breakfast before we go to work

·         To go to bed with a clean and empty sink

I actually set up the sourdough starter a few days ago, so we sorta have a jump on that goal, but it will still be about a week and a half before I will be able to test it out.  Any volunteer taste testers out there?

And then because  I am being extra ambitious I would like to try to transfer it over from white flour to whole wheat, in the hopes that just about the time that I finish my little detox, I will have some healthful whole wheat homemade sourdough bread to hopefully not eat all in one sitting. No one does that!

Anyway. I have couple of reasons for wanting to bake sourdough bread:

1.       Homemade bread kicks the pants off of all the other breads in the store. (not news)

2.       I have this fantasy of spending hours cooking for my family, in which I am lovingly kneading bread and pulling out delicious artisan breads from my oven.  But in reality, I feel really proud when the bread machine does all of the work, and I laboriously spread butter over hot baked goodness.   I am totally a wish-I-was bread baker, and in 2013 I would like to become a bonefide bread baker as just one of many steps towards a lifestyle that is blesses me and blesses those around me.

3.       Probiotics.  The same good bacteria that make sourdough taste so good, are the ones that I am looking for more ways of incorporating into my diet as a way to support my sometimes weak immune system.   I haven’t totally researched all of the scientific goodness surrounding sourdough bread, but it’s on my list. But if you are interested in reading more about the health benefits of sourdough bread, I found THIS and several other articles like it very intriguing. Besides, this chica's blog has "cheese" in the name.  I'm in.

So, as I sip on my lemon detox tea, and smell the waft of lentils simmering on the stove, I gotta say that I am pretty excited about January.  Three Year Strategic Plans aside, if I had to make one resolution for 2013, it would be this: I resolve to be my best, to love abundantly, to grow in knowledge, and to cultivate joy. 

I would love your thoughts today and throughout the year on the ways that you have resolved to be your best, wherever your little homestead lies.

Happy New Year from our Homestead to your!

Hopes for a Happy New Year

The first snow flurries of the New Year are falling across the winter brown that is all of Oklahoma this time of year. Half packed up boxes of Christmas decorations and gifts lay strewn about our living room and while I am ready for a fresh clean in the house, I am left feeling a little like, “what? Christmas is over?  How can it be January already?”

Sitting here with a bubbling glass of left over champagne from last night’s festivities and I am marinating on all of my hopes and desires for the upcoming year; I am also filled with anticipation and determination for making my hopes reality.

The Cowboy and I have been married not quite 3 pretty much awesome months, most of which was spent building a Fort Knox style fence intended to keep our pups contained in our new family’s yard, and from which they promptly escaped not more than two hours the day after they moved in.  I am totally behind in wedding thank you note writing, the garage is still full of unpacked treasures that I have no idea where to stow in our new home, and the financial realities of newlywed life are constantly trying to put a damper on my newlywed bliss.  Like the disapointment over how at our new house it is going to be all but impossible for me to grow anything but sandburs in our sandbox of a yard. But sometimes, like right now, while my husband sings worship songs in the living room as he is folding laundry in the last few minutes before he has to head out the door to work, I can’t help but be overwhelmed with how blessed my life is. 

Sandburs and all.

In this moment, I am not worried about fiscal cliffs, or what craziness awaits me at the office tomorrow, or even how the champagne I am sipping right now is sooo not allowed on the New Year detox I was going to start today. 

Right now I am filled with hope.

It is the New Year. And it is happy.

And I have champagne.

Dog Vs Garden: Meet the Fence

Never underestimate someone just because they have cute ears or flatter you with kisses

The biggest threats to our gardening efforts do not come from pests, but from those that snuggle up against my legs and keep me warm all winter long.  Yes, my pups may be my best friends, but they are not my garden’s best friends.

Over the last two years I have tried a variety of things to ward them off, with mediocre but up-till-now acceptable success.  I have mostly tried strategies that were low cost and low effort.  Someone suggested I try cayenne pepper sprinkled over the garden as a deterrent.  This might have worked out well, except that some accidentally got into my pup’s eye and it swelled shut for a day or so and I felt like the worst parent ever in the world. It was particularly depressing because it still didn’t keep him out of the garden.

When this failed, I finally decided to lay out a bit of cash and bought what we affectionately refer to as “the rock monster”, which is basically a battery operated invisible fence that keeps dogs away from its ten foot radius.  This worked well until the batteries died, but trained the dog to stay out of the garden until summer drought killed most things and a mini tall grass prairie sprung up and I didn’t care anymore if the dog ruined things or not.

Another idea I tried was my own special version “companion planting”.  I planted all my hot chili de aqua peppers around the outer edge of my garden in hopes that if my dog ventured in for a snack that he would have an unpleasant experience and never do it again.  This didn’t really have an effect.  My best plan was to plant multiples of everything as an insurance against canine catastrophe and hoped for the best. Yea, it wasn’t a great plan, but it was also pre-Cowboy involvement, and he has a way of improving my plans in ways I couldn’t previously imagine.

But this year there are now two dogs, which means like three times the destruction.  After all the effort to build trellises and defeat the weeds and our desire grow so many more items, we needed a better plan.  At first, I tried a liberal layer of cayenne pepper (with no puppy eyes harmed) but it didn’t stop either of them.  And we tried the rock monster, but only one could wear it at a time and it didn’t cover the whole garden.  So, after we lost a pepper and an eggplant to veggie loving pups within a few hours of planting, we decided we needed to break down and build a fence.  Not a pretty one, just an effective one, and as soon as possible.

Harley sits safely on the other side of the new garden fence from this beautiful marguerite daisy plant The Cowboy picked out that will hopefully attract more butterflies and fewer puppy dogs.

The Cowboy came by on his day off and built it with his bare hands with the help of his roommate. I think a t-post driver was also involved, but I am still pretty sure his hands were bare. He said that the project went much faster than anticipated and texted pictures that looked great. And it was only a one band aid necessary project (trellis building was a two band aid day).  I came home from work that night eager to see his handiwork, but was greeted by only one puppy face at the gate!! Someone was missing.  That someone was behind the garden fence sitting with the marigolds he had ripped off their stems.  Scandalous!

The Marigold Murderer investigating checking out his handiwork

So, the next day was fence building day part two, which has so far proved quite effective.  The Cowboy re-enforced the breached defenses, constructed a gate, and I happily planted some additional plant selections. 

So far we have had no more blue heeler break-ins, so we hope our harvest losses have been minimized. Hopefully we have outsmarted them.  Although, you never want to underestimate a blue heeler, not even the tiny adorable cuddly ones. 


What strategies have you used to keeping your homestead harmoniously co-existing?  Do you have any hilarious failures or wild success tips for keeping canines out of the compost?  I am all ears.

Puppy Mug Shot

Whole Wheat Pasta with Goat Cheese and Grilled chicken and veggies

This dish is summer food.  It serves well hot or cold and can be made with for one or for a crowd, making it a great potluck or picnic dish.  It is also perfect for sitting on the patio kicking back with a beverage of your choice. This one is going to become a staple at our house this summer.  I am not including an ingredients list because I think that the exact selection of ingredients and amounts can vary to your choice, access, and based on what purpose this dish will serve. I have made a version of this for just me and The Cowboy and I made the dish described here now for a house church gathering with 15 to 20 lovely people.  It is really versatile and easy and full of delicious things.  Be free to enjoy it whichever way fits your life best.

First marinate your chicken in dry spice rub and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Once you get them nice and rubbed up, set them in the fridge while you prep everything else. This step can be done at least 20 minutes ahead, but could be done several hours ahead for maximum marinating goodness.

Use vegetables of your choice. We used asparagus, red pepper, mushrooms and onion. Wash and cut veggies, keeping as whole as possible for grilling.  Example, I cut the peppers in half and left the mushrooms and asparagus whole.  I used the last third of an onion I had in the fridge and just grilled the whole thing intact. Keeping them whole makes it easier to grill.  Marinate in spices, a touch of olive oil, a generous splash of balsamic vinegar, and a tiny splash of Worcestershire sauce.  I don’t think it matters as much what kind of spice you use, so much as that you use something you like and let the veggies marinate in them a bit.  Additionally, customize your veggies to your own taste and what is available and affordable.  The grocery store had really cheap red pepper, so I included them when originally I hadn’t planned them in this dish.  They were such a good addition, but next time, if they weren’t available, I’d use something different, squash or eggplant or maybe even okra. This summer as I start gathering a harvest from my garden we will use whatever we picked that day. I am pretty pumped about that.

The next step is to peel a whole head of garlic. Yes. Trust me on this.  Make a little aluminum foil boat and put your garlic in there with olive oil, salt, and pepper, a touch of truffle oil and rosemary leaves.  You are going to roast this garlic on the grill while the chicken and veggies cook. With the other mushrooms in this dish, the truffle oil makes a nice accent, but is very optional.  If you have some available, I suggest trying it, if not, I would omit.

Heat up grill to medium high.

Boil salted water for pasta.

Put garlic boat on second shelf and grill chicken on medium-high until fully cooked. That means an internal temperature of 165 degrees food safety lovers.  You are going to leave the garlic on the cooler shelf of the grill during the duration of cooking the chicken and veggies.

Set your garlic boat on the ledge of your grill, or in a cooler spot so that it can slowly roast and not burn.

Grilled marinated mushrooms, I am salivating right now.

Your vegetables really do not require cooking, so what you are looking for is just a little charing while still being quite firm.  I found in this recipe that my asparagus was finished first, then the mushrooms, and finally the red pepper (for which I prefer a little more charring).  I like my veggies to still be pretty crisp but enjoy the smokey grilled flavor.

When you water is boiling add your whole wheat pasta and cook to al dente.  Drain out the cooking water, saving one cup to make sauce. Put the pasta into a large bowl.   Incorporate the soft goat cheese and the pasta water back into the pasta.  It will melt into a creamy light sauce.  Add the zest of a lemon and about half of the juice from that lemon. Add fresh tarragon and bit of ground pepper.

Chop your chicken, veggies, and garlic and add them to the pasta, as well as several generous handfuls of baby arugula.

Serve immediately, or take with you to house church to share with your family on a Friday night :) Whatever you do, enjoy a lovely meal.

Garden Spotlight: Icelandic Poppy

You know that feeling you get when you see someone and you are simultaneously aware of how ridiculously attracted you are to them and how much trouble they will bring into your life.

I recently had an encounter like this last week at the garden store.  Not with a person, but with a plant. I fell in love at first sight with a poppy.  An Icelandic Poppy. I saw it and the way the six o'clock light filtered through it's almost glowing pink papery petals took my breath away. At first standing there in the store googling it from my phone, I decided it was a bad idea since experts advised that it did not do well in extreme heat *ahem* Oklahoma summer *ahem*. But when I saw it again later I decided that my attraction to this plant was too great, and that I was going to take it home anyway.  I planned to put it in a pot so that during these cooler sunny spring days it can sun itself on the patio, and in the hot-as-hell late July days I can move it to a cooler spot in the garden, or even into the house if it needs a reprieve from the heat.

Several days later it looked like this.

The multiple buds give me hope. But I have a funny feeling that it was a good thing that I took so many pictures of the darned ethereal thing, because they will probably last longer.

So, I guess this is just another lesson in the perils of impulsive passion based decision making.  But I enjoyed the journey and am slightly wiser today than I was a week ago, so I am still counting this as a garden success.

Spray Painting the Town: Upcycled Patio Planters

Spray paint might be one of my favorite tools for affordably breathing new life into old furniture and household items.  I have used it to restyle many a basket, wreath, vase, and dresser or end table into something new and fabulous.  It's easy to use and cheap, it looks great on so many surfaces, and you can do so much with it.  Infact, just this week, I watched my neighbor spray painting the white metal awnings of his all-white house to a deep green.  It instantly added so much charm.  I probably won't be painting my awnings any time soon, but I do appreciate his creativity.

These two plastic planters that held large store bought mums last fall recently received a makeover to turn them into cheerful spring planters for my patio.  With some left over paint from a previous project and a few minutes I took these pots from trash pile to re-styled.

These plastic pots have been washed and are drying in the afternoon sun awaiting their makeover

First wash out your pot, making sure to get any dirt or stickers may have been attached. Some people suggest washing pots that previously held plants with bleach so that you start with a sterile surface when planting new needs or plants.  I washed these pots and placed them on the patio in the afternoon sun to dry.

When your clean pots are dry set them on a level surface away from anything that could be damaged by paint.  I always try to do my spray painting projects outside.  There is the spot where they dogs have flattened the grass, so I don’t might if it gets a little paint on it.  You can also lay out a tarp or newspaper to protect the ground before you start painting. The best time to spray paint is when there is just a slight breeze.  If it is too windy, dust or leaves may blow on your wet paint, and you may lose a lot of your paint coming out of the can.  But a slight breeze can help ventilate the area.

I set my pots upside down and spray the outside first. Don’t spray the bottom, unless you are willing to wait a while to ensure it is dry before flipping the pot over.  Spray your pots with small even circular motions so being careful to not get to much paint on any one spot, or it will drip, and to ensure an even coat.  You may need to do two coats depending on your paint.  Once it looks even, let it dry.

Turn the pot over, and apply a coat of paint to the inside, focusing mostly on the top half of the pot. Remember, you are going to fill this with dirt, so you really don’t need to paint it all the way to the bottom, but you can if you want to.  I usually focus my paint on the areas that will be visible.

While one pot dries you and paint the other, and about the time you finish the second the first will be dry

Again, let the planters dry.  One of the nice things about spray paint is that it dries really fast, so this whole project including waiting for the pots to dry three times takes me less than an hour.

I usually let them fully air out for a few days before I plant anything in my pots. 

Can't wait to plant! These pots already brighten up my patio.

For this project I used Rust-Oleum Painter's Touch Ultra Cover spray paint in Brilliant Blue (Gloss finish) and Eden (Satin finish) I like it because it covers evenly in about one coat and with one can of paint I have been able to cover about three pots and one large wicker basket.  Because it sprays two coats at once, it works great for projects where you want solid color blocks.  For projects where you want to blend colors, I have had a lot of success with Krylon Indoor/Outdoor.

Are you excited and about to take a boring pot and make it awesome?!  I want to hear about it.

What items do you have in your house or garage that could be given a new life through a simple coat of paint?