Dandelion Jelly

So I have some A.MAZING friends that do some A.MAZING things that I sit & dream about!  One of those A.MAZING friends started out as a childcare mom & has turned into someone I know I can trust for/with anything.  Sporatically, I get to care for her children.  The older of the 2 is homeschooling so usually its like having a helper on days she's here.  AWESOME.  This week when she came she had 70some dandelions picked already & added 20 some more from my yard & we started discussing making jelly w/them.  Determined not to let her down I searched on swagbucks.com for 'homemade dandelion jelly', low & behold whose site pops up? one of the above mentioned A.MAZING friends!  SAWEEET, a recipe I can rely on!

so she set to work after all the others were settled for quiet time, snipping & snipping the flower petals off all of the dandelions, making 2 cups worth.  I then poured boiling water over the top & let that steep for 2 hours (which was KILLING HER to watch it sit there doing 'nothing'.  :)  then I realized I didn't have the liquid pectin it called for, so said A.MAZING friend linked me to a page that subbed the powder for the liquid & told me the measurements.  We proceeded in stirring, boiling, heating jars, pouring into jars & letting set to pop.  Here she is the next day w/one of our little jars.

& here she is showing that it didn't gel.  yup, that's right, instead of Jelly, we have dandelion SYRUP.  ice cream topping, toast & oatmeal topping, sun tea flavoring.  it tastes remarkably like honey so I think I will also try it in some recipes as the sweetener!

Lesson learned, should have used the whole packet of pectin insteadof 3/4.  Live & learn! it was a fun project & I loved that we took a WEED & made it into something useful!!

Frugal Tuesday

I have a few little things I do be more frugal or environmentally friendly, none of which deserves its own post as most I have gotten from other bloggers (Stacey, Shanen, Abby, & Sara --hehe almost all S's) so I will list them here:

• I compost: fruit & veggie 'junk', paper towels used to just dry wet children's hands (also working to do away w/them), newspaper, junk mail all goes into a bucket
• I provide cloth napkins for our home meals (not childcare quite yet)
• I provide cloth diapers for my childcare kids
• I recycle: plastic jugs, tin cans & cardboard
• I reuse: all glass jars & lids for freezing leftovers, produce (bananas, pumpkin & squash), freezer cooking (mac n cheese, taco meat, chicken or beef broth, etc.)
• I make my own laundry & dishwasher soap now-Thanks Stacey!
• I cook a whole chicken once a month instead of boneless skinless chicken breasts every week-Thanks Shanen & Abby!
• I carry around this aluminum water bottle
• I am learning to make my own mixes: taco seasoning, ranch mix, cream soup mix, onion soup mix, mocha mix, & pancake mix.
• I shop the farmer's market & Iowa food Co-op whenever possible. Shop Fresh Shop Local. From the farmer's market I am loving the hand crocheted washclothes!
• I haven't bought harsh cleaning products in 3 years, vinegar, baking soda & dawn dish soap clean about everything.
• I haven't bought store bread for childcare in a year. I either serve homemade bread or muffins, pita pockets, tortillas or pasta as our grain group @ meals. (tortillas are inching their way to the top of my 'to-learn' list)
• have almost done away w/baggies -minus Tim's lunch sandwiches, which are fewer than they were & the occassional 'prize' found & taken home from childcare (feathers, rocks, flowers for mom) & want to invest in some reusable sandwich bags for camping, childcare & home as well.--thanks for the heads up Sara!
• I have a small (HA) reusable shopping bag addiction  collection.

Things we hope to increase or improve in the next year:

• use the clothes line (just installed last night)
• find a fabric softener for winter months that kills the static cling & do away w/the dryer bar
• get a rain barrel
• build a bigger compost bin
• grow more garden
• preserve/can/freeze more produce this fall than last
• add to my list of homemade mixes, soaps & foods (tortillas, bagels, etc)
• get all childcare children into cloth-will reduce our trash can to the SMALL one! imagine that!! a childcare home w/a small can!
• finish & hang 'towel rack' I am in the process of repurposing for the kids to have their own towels & do away w/paper towels
• install filter in the childcare so I can cancel the water delivery we rely on for our drinking water

No pictures but lots of links to follow! Thanks for visiting & have fun!

Linking up to Frugal Tuesdays go check out the others!!

Food.

What does the word "food" mean to you?
Does it mean simply what you eat?
Or does it mean what you fuel your body with?

 

Food is an important subject to me. I love to eat. I love to eat good food. I love to eat good food that is both good tasting and good for me.  I also strive to feed this doubly good food to my childcare children. With some encouragement I have spent most of 2010 thinking a lot about the food we eat around here. 

 

In the past few years, I have chosen to avoid aspertame, high fructose corn syrup, most soy & bpa from an abundance of canned products for my childcare children.  This has been an educational experience for all of us. Here is what I do & why I think its 'so great' :) wow was that hard to type w/a straight face LOL 
I:

1.  Shop local when at all possible. Even if it *is* a bit pricier initially.  Why? Because its local, it was picked when it was meant to be picked not 2 weeks ahead to ripen on the way to the store, I know who grew it & they will honestly tell me what they used on the dirt & plant to get it to grow, they grew it for me with love & concern with their own two hands, not just because they were paid to plant, transplant, pick, & load it, never caring where it ended up or what condition it was in when purchased. Fresh has such a better flavor! I get to help support a local producer.
1. Shop the farmer's markets. What a fun experience! To get to talk to the 'farmers' & ask questions.  They are all more than willing to tell you how to clean, prep & cook their produce. They are often times, untapped resources. I shop the local Clarke County Farmer's Market June-October, Saturday mornings & Tuesday afternoons, I also visit the Downtown Farmer's Market a couple of Saturday mornings thru the summer months & finally, I have gotten to visit the Winter Market both November & December weekends it was open.  This year I hope to get to explore nearby markets too. 
2. In peak season, get bulk purchases of tomatoes that I used for canning sauces last year (a first for me). I also bought a bulk amount of peaches & habaneros that combined, make a yummy jam/meat topping.
3. After the squash & pumpkins have out-lived their season of decoration on the front step, they came in one by one to be split & baked for pureeing & freezing in portions for baking with in the winter.
1. Join the Iowa Food Coop.  This is new for me and I am loving it! Shortly after the first of the month the online cart opens as the producers have entered what they will have available for the pick up day on the third Thursday. Everything is labeled on the site; free range, grass fed, corn fed, hormone-free, Iowa grown, etc. Very straight forward. Some even have links to their websites with easy access to email the producer directly with any questions or concerns.
1. Today for example, our lunch was: scrambled eggs w/bits of chicken, fried potatoes, apple wedges, homemade onion bread topped w/pumpkin butter & milk.  Eggs, potatoes & pumpkin butter-Coop, chicken - private purchase from a free range farmer, apple wedges & milk were the only store bought items. :)
2. 2 mornings this week we have had oatmeal (steel cut from an Iowa farm) & the other 2 mornings we had homemade wheat pancakes. I feel great knowing I am serving them a grain item that will stick with them & isn't loaded with junk.
2. I order my grains (breakfast granola, steel cut oatmeal, wheat & white flour & assorted beans) from an Iowa organic farm.  It is like Christmas morning for me when it arrives although I do pity my mail carrier that day.
2. I make all the bread I serve in my childcare from scratch.  I might cheat a little by using the bread machine to mix it but then I raise it on & bake it in the oven but its still from scratch. I purposefully put each ingredient into that mixing pan. I plan to add tortillas, bagels & english muffins to my baking list this year.
3. Barter. I have found a couple of people willing to make noodles in exchange for a loaf or 2 of homemade pumpkin bread. (remember that pumpkin I talked about above-24cups of it in the freezer) Great trade to me!  I have also bartered childcare services for beef products we didn't have in the freezer as well as jam for jam. Everybody wins.
4. Grow our own.  We have a very small organic garden producing green beans, cucumbers, lettuce, green onions, assorted peppers & tomatoes.  We hope to use the 3 sisters method in our new area this year as we are moving into the play yard & will be a little tight on space until we figure it all out.
5. Know our farmer.  We get a full beef(460ish pounds) from my grandpa every fall. We are comforted in knowing where it's coming from, what it has eaten, how it was treated & THAT it is coming.
6. Be alert.  I found a raspberry vine on our old property last summer that I never knew was there.  I spent a couple of hours on a couple of evenings picking but then chickened out & let them dry up in the fridge instead of using them. I will change that this year.
7. Keep my ears open, chat it up & don't be afraid to ask.  This past summer we were able to collect apples & pears from a couple's tree for free. I am ashamed to admit I didn't do anything with the pears but the apples, I cooked down, made into applesauce & froze for the childcare this winter. Later in the year, I found some mulberry trees to pick in the spring/summer for free and am hoping to find some wild plum to make jams.

 Not to say I don't shop at the grocery store because I do. I do a lot. I just very much prefer to shop small, local and fresh.

going green?

so its now cool to say you are going green.. but to walk the walk is so much tougher (as usual) than just talking the talk. So far I have not convinced Tim that any of it is worth it. He's so about the here & now & ME thought process so I just do it on my own....

so far I have:

• developed (& kept well fed) a bag addiction-- any bag that looks like it would hold more than I can carry, is pink or raises money for someone/thing I am all for it. they are scattered about my world; in the child care, in the van, on the stair rail, in the scrap room, in the upstairs kitchen, you get the picture :)
• tried homemade dishwasher soap. not sure if it was the dishwasher, the water or just me. but it left everything gritty & I couldn't stand it. so after 2 weeks of altering amounts of soap, running half full loads, full loads, changing dishwasher settings, I gave up & went back to store bought soap :(
• managed to convince Tim that we need a compost bin :) his only stipulation is that it be @ the other property. no problem!! I walked over ice cream buckets of compostables last year all summer long.
• greatly cut out the papertowel use in the upstairs kitchen-Tim is the only one that uses them there now.
• switched to cloth napkins for our suppers. Love them!! (thinking they'll be my first sewing project!!)
• recycle all cardboard boxes that come thru the house. along w/the plastic, glass & tin that I've been doing for years.
• washable feminine products. nuff said publicly.
• bought organic (ish) toothpaste & avoided all problems I had w/the regular stuff :)
• buy local (@ minimum USA) products no matter the cost. (this drives Tim crazy in the stores LOL)
• am minimizing the microwave use
• haven't bought store bought bread in a month
• am back to using real butter
• am collecting glass jars to freeze in
• am thinning my plastic container 'collection'
• bought a SIGG water bottle & love it
• using /reusing what I have in the area of craft supplies & home decorations
• bought organic local grown grains (Thanks Shanen!!!!)
• bought organic local soaps (thanks again Shanen!!)

ok so this turned from going to green to more of a changing to a healthier lifestyle post. sorry! :)

What have you changed in the going green, going organic, getting healthier areas? please share!!