December!

Our frosted Chinese lanterns on the back deck.

Thanksgiving dinner on the funny farm.

The younger farmers can't wait to dig in!

In other news, farmer Alex had a birthday. We went to the zoo. He really liked the bats. Anni's is coming up this week. I'll be living with three teenagers! Say a blessing and eat a vitamin or two for me!

We've been busy doing lots of holiday events. We went to the Pike Place Market the day after Thanksgiving for holiday favorites, pomegranates! yum. Yesterday, we did some holiday shopping and then the river lights walk in Redmond in the evening.

Our weather has turned for the cold, with a few places getting light snow last night. Today, I took the older farmers to see New Moon. Ari liked it, Alex did not. Then I went running. I can do a 10k now, yipee!

Nano, the national novel writing contest has ended. The Seattle area won again for most words and donations! I wrote almost 186,000 words on my story, and have added another 120, 000 since. So, a very productive November! I'm still working on the novel and having so much fun. I love the story!

And a project update to close with:
1) We are still eating seasonally and as locally as possible by continuing our CSA farm box with a local organic farms and trips to the Pike Place market.

2) We are still attempting to grow more of our own food. The chickens are producing eggs, and we still have some greens and herbs growing in the garden. Our attempt at winter garden was not sucessful. The heavy rains caused a huge influx of slugs! They ate most of the small plants.

3) This is a tough time of year to decrease consumerism, but we're trying. We've limited everyone to just a couple of gifts. We're not wrapping gifts within our family, instead placing them in large decorated bags - reusable. We've also asked the future farmers to chose an experience over a thing as part of their holidays, more fun for everyone.

4) We're spending lots of time doing holiday events in our area, winter hiking, and staying snuggly at home.

Slugfest

Barkley in desparate need of a sun break!

Today was another really wet one! Did I mention my poor tomatoes yesterday? We harvested lots of orangish ones to ripen in the window. The broccoli seems to love this weather! We also gathered more peapods, squash, and beans.

Tonight for dinner I made a stew with lots of veggies and dumplings in the crockpot. Alex made wholewheat French bread in the bread machine, and Ari made oatmeal walnut cookies in the oven. It was a good day for comfy food.

The wet weather has really brought out our least favorite beasties -slugs. We had a slug stomping contest. I won!

During the brief early afternoon glimpse of sun, we visited Kelsy Creek Farm to look at the bigger critters. We saw horses, pigs, cow, goats, sheep, chickens, geese, rabbits, and bees. We especially like the Polish chickens with their crazy feather head-dos. We kept our distance from the bees (they were busy).

(A special message to the Hearns: Send sun, we see by the international weather report that you guys have some! Even mum had thundershowers today.)

Late night preservation

Here's a pic of Anni making an icecream cone. Hmm!

Today was another breezy, rainy, cool day. Eek! the slugs are advancing!

There was no post yesterday as we were elbow deep in produce preservation last night. We blanched and froze peas, sugar peapods, beans, squash, and 4 kinds of peppers. Phew! was the kitchen ever steamy! Now we'll have some summer veggies to add to the fall/winter root veggies. Then at 10:30 pm, I decided to start a pot of black current-apple jam. Four hours later, I dropped into bed!

This evening, I went to the Veg of WA vegetarian dinner with my friend Lisa. The food was from an excellent carribean restaurant (Kallaloo).

Here's a recipe special request for the Skillet Chile Rellenos we mentioned the other night.
(makes 5 servings)
5 poblano chili peppers
5 eggs
1/2 cup milk (or soy or rice milk)
1/3 cup flour
1/2-1 cup cheese, finely shredded (we like organic sharp white cheddar)
Cilantro
1) Put peppers in enough boiling water to cover peppers. Cover with lid and blanche for 2 minutes. Drain peppers and rinse with cold water. Cool. Cut stems off each pepper, remove seeds, and cut each pepper into 4 vertical strips.
2) In a medium bowl, measure flour. Whisk in milk. Add eggs, one at a time. Beat until smooth.
3) Brush large skillet with olive oil. Heat pan on medium low. Pour in a thin layer of egg mixture. Lay peppers on top in a pinwheel pattern. Cover with remaining egg mix. Cover pan. Let cook over medium low until egg begins to set. (If you like, you can flip the reyenos at this point)
4) Sprinkle cheese over top. As soon as cheese melts, sprinkle with cilantro and serve with favorite sauces, such as salsa, gaucamole, or sour cream.

Rain, cool rain!

For those who don't believe that temp yesterday!

Today, it was rainy and was in the low 70's, quite a difference from the last few days. The slugs used the weather to their advantage and advanced on the pumpkin blossoms. We had to hand collect 6 of the little beasties this morning. We harvested broccoli, peapods, and tomatoes today in the raindrops. We hope it's not quite as stormy tomorrow as all those sproutlings need to be planted.

After our in-state traveling yesterday, we had mostly a home day today. Athough, we did venture forth to the library. We had a huge pile due.

Tonight for dinner, we made an Indian meal of cumin potatoes and cauliflower, a tomato-prawn curry, naan bread, and tomatoes from the garden. Yummy! If it's cool tomorrow, I'm jammin' again.

The Farmers Strike Back

Pumpkins gone wild!

Score a round for the farmers! We removed 12 more slugs from the garden this morning! They went to their maker in a gloriously intoxicated haze of Rainier beer.

It was another scorcher here, 90 degrees. We gave the garden a good watering early this morning and harvested lots of peapods. The pumpkins vines are threatening to take over the rest of the garden. The pumpkins are already forming. Hmm, I can already smell the pies.

Today was Saturday market day. Alex and I foraged for fresh goodies along with our friends Lisa and Karen and her 3 sisters. We found onions, eggplant, heirloom tomatoes, cauliflower, Thai basil, golden ginger apples, black currents, hazelnuts, hazelnut oil, and blackberry honey.

We put our veggies to work for dinner tonight. We made chili reyenos with fresh salsa, avocado, and chilied mango slices. All the ingredients came from the farmers' markets or our CSA box. The CSA box contains mostly veggies from the farm, along with some veggies from other WA organic farms, and a few organic fruits from CA/Central Am. All of the items are fair trade and sustainably farmed; so we don't feel too guilty about enjoying avocado and mango occassionally.

We had an e-mail question from a reader wondering about our eating preferences. I'd say we are health-oriented flexitarians. We eat lots of organic/sustainable vegetables, fruit, and whole grains. We enjoy many meals with no meat, but we do incorporate meat on some days. It's hardly ever the centerpoint of our meal, rather a side or an ingredient part of a veggie filled whole, as in stews and curries. Our meat, poultry, fish, and eggs come from local sources and is raised as cruelty free as possible (free range, wild caught, no hormones, etc). We love ethnic foods and trying out new recipes from all over. So if you have a favorite veggie filled yummie, zap us the recipe!

Revenge of the Gastropods

Eek! The slugs have launched a counter-attack. Farmer David forgot to put the beer out last night, and the slugs advanced. We had to eject 12 of the voracious little buggers this morning! Farmer Julie Ann set out the beer tonight.

We're having a heat wave, a tropical heat wave! It was 92 degrees here! We're melting! Send rain to reconstitute us as soon as possible!

We thought we'd give a project update with regard to how we are doing with the 4 different goals.

1) Eat seasonally, locally, sustainably, and organically. This goal is going quite well. Most of our food now comes from local sources, the farmers market or directly from the farm or from our own garden patch. We do seem to have a couple of problem areas to continue to work on, specifically our coffee habit and our love of grabbing bite while out and about, but we have noticed that both of these are decreasing. We're trying to purchase organic, fair-trade coffee as our personal exceptions and to choose locally owned restaurants. We've also joined a great local CSA and gotten to know many of our local farmers. What's next? Decreasing our exceptions and checking out more local sources especially for fall and winter, when many of the farmers' markets are gone for the season.

2) Grow more of our own food. We are doing pretty well with this goal. The summer garden is in full swing, and we are in the process of planting our winter garden. All the seedlings are beginning to sprout. We've build one raised bed and extended the garden fence to accommodate the new planting areas. We've also built a 3 section composting system. What's next? A more permanent worm bin system and 2 more raised beds for the winter crops. Then, it's chicken time.

3) Increase community, decrease our consumerism. This goal has been going very well. Our purchasing has mostly revolved around garden supplies! Friends have been great about saving and digging up jars for our jam endeavors. We've been able to borrow, rent, or purchase used several large tools, technical books, and music to cook by. What's next? We plan to continue our participation in the farm work days on Full Circle Farm as it helps put fresh produce into our community's foodbank. (It's also a heck of alot of fun!)

4. Live and play simply and locally. This summer we didn't take a family vacation to some exotic location. We have had several day-cations to local beaches, parks, and hiking areas to enjoy our beautiful surroundings. We've also had a few get-to-know the local neighborhoods of towns around us. Some of our favorites include Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle, the Ballard Locks, and the Blueberry Farm in Bellevue. We're finding that our quest for local, healthy food is a family adventure in and of itself. What's next? This weekend we're going to seach for multitudes of peppers to dry for winter.

Our technical guru let us know that we had the comments button turned off. It's back on now. So please feel free to comment on the blog! (Family friendly only, please! and NO SPAM!)

War of the Gastropods

Today, we waged war on an enemy invader to the garden patch, the common garden slug! Copper pennies did not deter the beasties as they notched up noturnal raids on the squash and pumpkin blossoms. But now we know their weakness, Rainier Beer. Victory! A dish of Rainier resulted in the demise of heaping helping of the slimy intuders. Yahoo!

The sun has finally found its way to the Pacific Northwest! Today was in the mid 80's and it's warming up over the next few days. The tomatoes are finally starting to get a rosy hue. Can you say tomato sandwiches? Hmm! The beans and peapods are still going nuts. And the pumpkins are threatening to take over the patch!

Does anyone know of a source of regional honey? We'd like to try buying in bulk from a local beekeeper for all our baking and preserving.

A note about garbage: We're noticing a significant reduction in the amount of stuff going in the trash can since the project began. Most of the waste connected to our food choices now goes directly into the compost bin. Our trash can used to be overflowing and now is now less than 3/4 full when it goes to the curb.