Running out the clock on 2008

Here's the last CSA farm box of 2008!

It contained broccoli, carrots, celery, squash, red onion, fingerling potatoes,

tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, pears, apples, tangerines, and oranges. Hmmm!

Last night, we loaded up Blue-Birdie (the Prius)

and headed for the Garden D'lights in Bellevue.

The botanical garden is transformed into a sensory Eden of colored lights.

This year there was a even veggie garden, complete with grape vines.
Here are the future farmers taking a break.
(Note, the Starbucks in Ari's hand!)

Anni cooking up a storm on her little stove.

The snow has finally given way to our usual rain,

and we are out and about once again.

We are busy tonight trying to figure out our resolutions for the new year.

We hope you and all your loved ones have a wonderful new year!

May the sun always shine

On your 2009!

2008 Garden Harvest

• Arugala (rocket): 10 harvests/done/2 plants.
• Bell peppers: 5/done/1 plant.
• Broccoli: 16 small harvests/done/3 plants.
• Bush beans: 4 harvests/done/3 plants.
• Carrots: 5 bunches of babies/done/1 row
• Chinese mustard greens: 12 harvests/done/2 rows
• Chives: continual harvest/1 plant.
• Cilantro: continual harvest for 3 months/done/2 plants.
• Cucumbers: 2/done/3 plants.
• Dandelions: 12 bins worth
• Garden Peas: 1 puny harvest/done/3 plants
• Giant Sunflowers: 1/2 plants.
• Jars of jam: 6 blueberry, 6 mixed berry, 6 raspberry-red current, 4 gooseberry, 2 peach-apricot, 3 black current-apple, 3 ginger pear, 1.5 ginger raspberry,11 jars of apple butter, 11 jars of apple sauce, 10 jars of apple chutney
• Mint: multiple small harvests/done/multiple upstarts
• Pickles: 3 jars of spicy dills, 4 jars of bread and butter
• Pumpkins: 21/9 plants
• Romaine Lettuce: 4 harvests/done/2 plants.
• Rosemary: continual harvest/2 plants
• Salad onions: 2
• Slugs terminated: 333
• Strawberry: 1 puny harvest/done/six plants.
• Sugar pea pods: over 925/finally done/8 plants
• Sweet Basil: continual harvest/ 4 plants.
• Tomatoes:249 big and 1096 cherries/8 plants
• Yellow zucchini: 45/done/1 plant
This year we did lots of preserving. Next year, we're adding chickens and a berry vine patch to the mix. We're also going to try fall crops.

The Rainman Arrives!

Goodbye snowflakes! Hello raindrops!

The rain started falling, the temperature finally warmed up,

and the snow is beginning to melt. Hurrah!

The main roads are passable now,but our neighborhood is still socked in with snow and ice.

We're parking at the bottom of our neighborhood hill

and slipping and sledding up and down.

Ari and I finally made it to the gym today!

Thank goodness after nearly two weeks of snow

and being stuck at home with lots of holiday goodies,

I needed that treadmill!

We've hit a few of the after Christmas sales over the past day or two for family essentials; socks, jeans, and sweaters.

It was great to get out and about again.

Ari was in a state of bliss as she used her Starbucks card and bookstore card.

Time for another of my recipes, this one in honor of Kwanzaa which started yesterday. This stew is super fragrant. Your home will smell divine!

Julie Ann's African Lentil Sweet Potato Stew

1/4 cup butter (or spiced butter if you have it)

1 large red onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tsp powdered ginger

4 cups of peeled sweet potatoes or yams (or combo), cut up (1" pieces)

1 can diced tomatoes, with liquid

1/2 cup brown lentils

1 cup water

6 Tbsp of Berbere seasoning

Optional: 2 cups diced chicken or firm tofu

1) Melt butter in large pan, Add onion and garlic and cook over med-low for about 10 minutes. Add ginger and chicken or tofu, if using. Cook an additional 5 minutes. Add tomatoes, water, and Berebere seasoning.

2) Here are the cooking choices:

A) The way I did it - Place sweet potatoes/yams and lentils in crockpot and pour contents of pan over. Give a good stir. Cook on higher setting until the tubers and pulses are fork tender. (about 4 hrs)

B) Another way - Add sweet potatoes/yams and lentils to pan. Stir and cook over medium heat until tubers and pulses are fork tender. Stir to prevent sticking. (about 40 minutes)

3) This stew has a spicy kick. Serve with a salad and something bready. Injera bread is the traditional choice (and very easy to make), but any flat bread would be good. (This is so good, I've had it for dinner 2 days in a row!) Enjoy!

White Christmas!

Merry White Christmas to all!

Here we are heading out of our cul-de-sac.

We got another 4" overnight.

We now have 16" in our garden!

Here's Ari looking like she's ready for an Artic expedition,

but she's only two houses away from ours. Here we are at a field nearby, playing in the snow this afternoon.

Anni and Barkley love the sled!
There they go!
Alex built a snow-bunny.

We had a very lovely Christmas Day.

We made a big breakfast, played in the snow, opened gifts, and cooked up our Christmas dinner.

We had to be creative as our oven is still kaput.

We made a roast beef with root veggies in the crockpot,

roasted potatoes in the toaster oven,

sauteed kale on the stovetop,

made Yorkshire pudding in the toaster oven,

added mushroom gravy from the stovetop,

and finished up with a delicious blueberry trifle.

Creatively done, but very tasty indeed!

(I'm hoping Santa will drop by with that oven repair piece soon)

We hope you all have a very lovely holiday,

full of fun and joy!

Silent Night, Snowy Night!

Holiday Greetings!

Merry Christmas!

Happy Chanukah!

Soltice Greetings!

Ah, another 5" of snow today!

It's beautiful, but enough already!

We spent 2 hrs digging out of our driveway,

but we still can't get out as the roadway has at least 9" on it.

My garden has 12" of snow!

Ari showing her holiday spirit,

with her reindeer antlers and her Christmas mocha,

many thanks to her dad.

We had great fun playing in the snow today. We went for a neighborhood walk that was a real workout in the deep snow. We ate many, many cookies. We opened gfts from our families.

Many, many thanks for all the lovely presents.

And we made a Christmas Eve dinner of 2 types of a latkes (parsnip with leeks & thyme and classic potato-veggie), a winter citrus salad with watercress, feta, walnuts, oranges, & red onions, yogurt cream with caramelized shallots, and mulled cider-cranberry-orange applesauce.

They were absolutely scrumptious!

(Recipes can be found in The Healthy Hedonist Holidays cookbook by Myra Kornfeld,

a year of multicultural veggie-friendly feasts.)

A Snowy Nana's Tea

Our fun in the snow continues....

Here's Alex having another run down the incline on his sled.

Here's our snowman.

Barkley stole and ate the carrot about one second after this photo.

Barkley loves carrots!

Here's a shot showing our street.Yes, that is my car buried in the driveway!
Here's Alex with one of the icicles from the eaves.
And this grainy photo is of our annual Nana's Tea. This year we made a roasted vegetable soup,tea sandwiches with shrimp salad, curried carrot, and watercress/cucumber/tomato,sausage rolls, a ham and cheese plate, homemade parmesean crackers, gingered-marmelade bread, jam tarts, current buns, and a selection of holiday biscuits. We also had tea. It was delicious.

Snowflakes and holiday baking

It snowed another 5.5 inches last night.

David was called in to work at 6am for all the folks who didn't make it in.

He had a very interesting commute.

Here's Alex on one of the inclines in our back yard.
And here he is at the bottom of the incline.
Anyone want to sit on our deck chairand have a BBQ.
(That white cushion is pure snow!!)
My garden bench is covered.

Barkley had a tough time even finding his tennis ball today.

And we are supposed to get even more snow overnight and into tomorrow!

So, we stayed inside and baked.

It took awhile using the toaster oven.

We made Swedish buns and crispy gingerbread cookies

for our Scandinavian holiday celebration today.

We had a smorgasbord with smoked salmon, crispbread crackers, and cucumbers for lunch, and for dinner, we had Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes (CSA), peas (CSA), berry jam (our homemade), with our baked cookies for dessert.

Yesterday, we ventured out into the elements and finished up our holiday shopping. We hit the calm between the weather storms, but hit a full force hurricane of shoppers at the mall. Everyone had the same idea after being couped up for a few days. The lines were incredible!!! Just as we left the mall, it began to snow again and hasn't stopped much since.

It takes a village

It takes a village to raise a family of readers... In our case a Santa's village and a footstool puppy. Alex was enjoying his history book in the net swing with Barkley. Anni was enjoying an Arthur story with her favorite blanket to stay warm on this very chilly day.

Here's the Santa's village we made today

And here are our deck plants enjoying a prime spot on top of Barkley's kennel to stay warm during our very cold cold snap.

We braved the elements and mostly the very icy roads to make a grocery run and do a bit of holiday shopping. We avoided all big hills after Seattle made the national news for two buses sliding down Capitol hill (very near where Chissy used to live), crashing through a barrier, and ended up dangling over the I-5 freeway. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt.

The Snow Arrives...

Here's our front garden at 9 am this morning.
Here's our big tree at 10 am this morning.
Here are the future farmers at 11 am.

We went for a short and chilly walk around our neighborhood,
followed by hot chocolate with cinnamon

and a big batch of homemade pumpkin-chocolate chip cookies.

We got about 5" of snow today. Tomorrow, it's supposed to be a big freeze!

Here's our cozy afternoon craft making session, turning old Christmas cards into laminated placemats.

Something's in the air

Something's in the air,
I can smell it,

The stockings were hung by the fireplace.

The nutcrackers were lined up on the shelf.

And the CSA farm box arrived!

This weeks had garnet yams, green onions, Italian kale, spinach, avocados, red peppers, sugar snap peas, grapefruit, pears, kiwi, mandarins, apples, and raspberry honey.

And it's almost Christmas too!!!! Yahoo!

Our whole local area shut down today, no school or appointments in anticipation of the big snowstorm headed our way. It never arrived in our little corner of the world. The Olympic mountains sent the white fluffy stuff north and south of us. We picked up only a light dusting this evening. The record cold temps remain with us, however, and have claimed their first victim, my big, beautiful artichoke plant.

To answer a reader's question, "How do you menu plan for your family?"

We roughy plan a monthly menu and then we ad lib based on what's in the fridge and our mood.

For example, Thursdays are usually pasta dinners. Today, we had wholewheat biscuits and gravy for breakfast, veggie soft tacos for lunch, and a Chinese dinner of potstickers, brown rice, and a shrimp and veggie stir-fry with a mandarin-ginger sauce. We used up some milk, leftover corn, spinach, green onions, garlic, ginger root, and bok choy. Yum!

Grr Brrrrrr

What is this frozen object?

Why Barkley's favorite tennis ball!

The high temp today was 32 degrees

and the low last night? a balmy 15.

Here's Alex and Barkley having a game of snowball.

Alex, where's your hat?

Well, another snow blitz is supposed to be heading our way tomorrow. And then another one for the weekend, and another for next week. The temps aren't supposed to reach above 35 for the next couple of weeks.

Today, we did our annual holiday track to IKEA for festive candles and holiday goodies. We ate Swedish meatballs for lunch, and we found plenty of crunchy cookies to keep us going through our oven breakdown.

Snowy Days! (and freezing nights)

The snow finally arrived on Saturday evening, just as I was leaving for a show at our local theatre. The big fluffy flakes made driving interesting, but I made it to Sister's Christmas Catechism anyway. The show was a very funny, irrelevant look at a Christmas Pageant, through the eyes of a Catholic school with lots a audience participation. Here is the garden, bright and early on Sunday morning. The poor plants are well covered. We got about 4" of snow overnight.

Here's Anni at the part, enjoying the snow. In addition to the snow, we had a day where it grew colder as the day went by. Our high temperatures for the next 5 days are predicted to be below freezing, with night temps dipping into the low 20's. Can you say brrrrrr?

In other news, we finished getting our Christmas cards ready for mailing out this evening.

We also cooked up a storm, making David's favorite; an old fashioned potroast in the crockpot with homemade wholewheat-oatmeal bread. I also did a loaf of banana-oatmeal bread for breakfast tomorrow. The kitchen smelled soooooo gooooood!

Green gift giving

A chilly morning view of the park

Ho! Ho! Ho! We're really getting into our holiday celebrations now. This evening we wrapped gifts with ribbons and bows, recycled bags, and saved papers. It was lots of fun, with holiday music playing in the background.

And now to a reader question: Do you have any suggestions for eco-bargains for green gift giving?

Here's a few:

1) Consider making a donation to a charity in the name of the person or a special gift to your family. We love Heifer International which targets hunger worldwide by purchasing livestock for families. The future farmers have decided on a sheep this year.

2) Consider a gift card to a green supermarket or a CSA subscription so the recipient can have healthy food on hand.

3) Consider making a gift from your kitchen, garden, or crafty hands, using materials you already have at home. One of our favorites is flavored hot chocolate mix: cocoa powder, powdered milk, (sugar,) and a featured flavor. Some we like are nutmeg, cinnamon, and chili powder.

4) Consider finding a gift at a garage sale, swap meet, or thrift store. These can be great places to purchase vintage chic and to save useful items from ending up in the land fills. I recently visited our local St. Vincent de Paul's and found a brand new set of holiday stoneware for four for $10. A coordinating cookie jar was $6. A cute reindeer plate, perfect for Santa's cookies was $3. (Our family constantly needs dish updates, we seem to have a high breakage rate.)

5) Finally, consider giving a gift of an experience. Tickets to movies, plays, symphonies, operas, ballets, comedy nights, etc make fun gifts to share with friends and family.

Tonight was soup night on the family menu. We made a delicious butternut squash (CSA)-potato (CSA) veggie soup topped with chives (garden) and served it up with fresh pumpkin (garden)-spice-wholewheat bread. Many, many thanks to our friend Lisa for roasting the butternut squash for us. Our oven is STILL out of whack.

The storm blew in as predicted yesterday with lots of wind and rain. So far our power is still on. The kids are eagerly anticipating snow tomorrow. David and I are less eagerly anticipating driving in the snow.

Weather wildness

Our beautiful skyline!
We were enjoying this skyline.
Tomorrow a big storm is expected to blow in,
complete with snow over the weekend,
and record low temperature over the next week.
Send us your warm thoughts.
We'll need them!

Lights, flowers, and Christmas Greetings

Sunday evening was the Redmond Christmas Lights Celebration

along the Sammamish River trail. It was cool, beautiful, and full of goodies.
The weather has been so mild lately. Our floweres are still blooming!

Tonight, we had a Christmas card making gathering with our friend Lisa.

It was lots of fun.

We had a great Italian dinner first with fried zucchini, pesto pasta,

mushroom mini pizzas, crostini, a green salad, and pannatoni.

Then the crafts proceeded.

Can you guess which one is yours?