Not-So-Temporary Insanity--January 26, 2011

If math gets more than a little boring,

or building your own robot loses a little of its charm,

and you find yourself going out of your mind with boredom...

...you have a few options for your entertainment.

You can build a strange contraption out of an office chair, half a ski,
a mower seat, duct-tape, and lumber, to pull behind the old yard tractor.

Or you can draw on your brother's dry-erase board when he's not looking.

Or you can mess around with your sister's bathrobe.
You'd be surprised what you can do with one simple article of clothing.

You can figure out what it's like to be bound and gagged.

Or you can be a handsome and sophisticated young gentleman.

Or a sweet, innocent maiden.

Or, when you finally wear yourself out with all your other shenanigans,
you can relax in it on your sister's bed with your little brother.

Yeah...the options are virtually limitless. Frightening, isn't it?

Sandwiches, Anyone?--January 24, 2011

Matthew, being a college student, has the same problem a lot of college students do: money. Or, more specifically, lack of it. And the other night, as he bemoaned the high cost of living, Tim and I were helping him come up with some creative ideas on how to cut his costs in the area of food.

“I wonder how much per pound I could get a chicken for,” Matthew mused .
“Well, a whole chicken might not be the best idea,” I suggested. “That’s a lot of meat for one person to use up quickly.”
“The idea would be you cook a chicken, eat some of it for one meal, and then eat chicken sandwiches for the rest of the week,” he clarified.
“Well in that case,” Tim broke in, “why not just buy a whole goat and cook it and eat it for one meal and then have goat sandwiches for the rest of the year?”

Indeed, why not?

Revenge--July 1, 2010

That picture up there is Timothy mowing off the first of the strawberry rows that we tilled under this year. Whoever it was that said revenge is sweet--they were right. After picking those rows over and over and over and over again for a whole month, my joy was indescribable when Timothy took the mower to the first of them.

Of course, my joy was dampened just a little by the fact that I ended up, with Caleb's help, mowing off most of the nine rows that we retired this year myself. It was a lot of work on a hot, incredibly humid afternoon....I guess they couldn't go down without a fight. I still won though--all that remains of those strawberry plants now is a green heap on top of our compost pile. So, I think, my revenge is complete. I got them.

Happy Birthday, Beka--June 29, 2010

Happy eighteenth birthday, my sweet big sister! I love you!

Yes, I'm Still Alive...But Just Barely--June 18, 2010

If you are one of the few people in the world that makes it a regular habit to check out this website for changes, you've probably wondered what has caused the totally dead silence here for the last month. I promise you there is a good explanation. I can say it all in one word too. You ready? STRAWBERRIES.

That's right, for three weeks tomorrow, I have done nothing (literally) but pick, sort, package, sell, clean, bake with, eat, throw out, and walk in strawberries. It's really sad. I can't even remember what my life was like before strawberry season hit. What did I do with myself all day? What was it like to sleep in all the way until seven each morning? What did I do for those hours and hours of free time? What was it like to not be exhausted and sore? I wonder...

I might have a chance to find out, too. As unlikely as it seems at this point in my life, strawberry season will come to an end. Right?? It will come to an end, right everyone?? I mean, strawberries are a seasonal fruit. One month, tops!! I just need to survive longer then it does.

Pictures and more to come after this madness is all over...providing I'm still alive, of course. So I guess if a few more months go by and I still haven't posted anything further here, you can come to one of two conclusions. Number one: we have discovered how to grow strawberries that produce for several months out of the year (in which case, I'm leaving home), or, number two: they got me......

Seriously though, we are having a good summer, and are really thankful for the amazing customers we have! I don't mind the extra cash that comes in this time of year either. :o) We earn it, is all I'm saying, though!!

Hope you all are having a good summer, and if you live anywhere around here, try to keep your head above water with these crazy thunderstorms that keep rolling through regularly and drenching us all. The rain sure makes for nice berries though; even if it does make for a muddy garden too!!

Tomorrow should be, hopefully, our last day of any real picking, so I'm going to go to bed now and rest up for that I think. I mean, I can be stronger than a strawberry plant, right???

Glad To Know I'm Loved--May 17, 2010

Yesterday night most of us were gathered in Matthew's room, looking over his shoulder while he perused a website that displayed a few necklaces on one of the pages. Somebody said that one of the necklaces was the same as the one Timmy got Beka for her birthday a few years ago. On closer inspection, however, it was decided that, no, it actually wasn't the same necklace. Tim agreed, and then added in a stage whisper, pointing to the $300 price tag:

"Besides, it couldn't have been the same one, because I would NEVER spend that much money on a sister!!"

Pie Factory--May 14, 2010

(Disclaimer: If by the time you've read this post you are very hungry for rhubarb pie, that may well be my fault but I refuse to take responsibility for it and give you a slice of mine. Take this post as inspiration, and go make your own!)

This afternoon I spent two hours making eight rhubarb pies. Sound like a lot of work? Well, it was! Admittedly, they were mini pies, not full-size ones. But still, you have to do all the same things for making a mini pie that you have to do for making a big pie, just in smaller portions. So it was a lot of work! My feet hurt from standing at the kitchen counter for two hours!! But it was fun too; I enjoy baking quite a bit. And pies are always fun to make--providing, of course, that everything goes resonably well and the pie crust cooperates as well as pie crust ever can.

Throughout the process I took pictures with this post in mind, and here are a few for you.

I never can estimate how many stalks of rhubarb I'll need to pick to get the number of cups I'm aiming for. In this case, it was eight cups that I needed. Last time I made a batch of pies I literally went back out to the rhubarb patch four times!! This time I did better and only went back for more three times. Oh well, I'm improving, right?? Eventually, I had my eight cups.

Until quite recently I had quite a bit of trouble with pie crust....if you've ever done battle with that particularly fussy culinary delight, you probably know what I mean. A few batches of pies ago, though, my sister Beka showed me a few tricks that has made my crust-making much more successful since then. (Yes, I too am wondering why she didn't show me these few tricks back when I first started making pies, or the three years that have since gone by!!! Think of the frustration she could have saved me!!)

Anyway, for my purposes today I made two batches of crust and split that into sixteen little chunks of dough--eight for bottom crusts, eight for tops.

Rolling out the dough is the part I always love about making pies. I especially like it when I'm making mini pies because a four-inch round of dough is much more forgiving then a twelve-inch one!! And if you're like me and, by about pie number five, tend to seriously speed up your originally careful and correct pie-crust-rolling-out procedure, that's a good thing.

Time to fill the little pans with rhubarb...which is fun step for me because by this time I've been at this for about an hour and every step so far has taken at least fifteen minutes, so I'm very happy just to scoop up the chopped rhubarb and dump it into the pans and be ready to move on to the next step!

The pies begin to come together once I add the sugar and flour and then put the tops on. It's always fun to play around with the edges, making them as fancy or as simple as I feel like. Today I was a little pressed for time so I just did a classic crimp and then brushed the pies with milk and sprinkled liberally with sugar. This is my own finishing touch to any pie I make, I like the way it adds a nice brown finish and crunchy sweetness to the final product. Plus, it's fun to do! :o)

My least-favorite part of the whole process is protecting the edges with tin foil so that they don't burn in the cooking process. I hate this part, it is tedious work and the little pieces of tinfoil necessary for such small pies are hard to work with. Not to mention they like to all fall off at the last minute!! I am always happy to have this part over with, which goes faster now that I save all the little pieces of foil from one batch to the next.

Then into the oven they go! After fifteen minutes at 450 degrees, I take the foil off and put it in a bag for next time, and then turn the temperature down by a hundred degrees and leave them to cook.

The next time I open the oven door, all eight of the pies are bubbling away, brown and delicious! I take them all out and leave them to cool on the counters, but they haven't even stopped steaming yet before Tim and Caleb discover they are cooked and eagerly split one. They get to eat one since, as these pies are for selling at our stand, I need to taste one to be sure they are cooked all the way through, taste right, etc.. (In other words, I can't wait to eat one either. :o)) And you have to admit, they do look pretty tasty, don't they?

I hope you enjoyed this quick visit to our kitchen! Even though it's quite a bit of work, I'm enjoying the rhubarb pie days of spring. All too soon it'll be summer and we won't be harvesting the rhubarb anymore, and I'll have to wait all the way until next spring to bake and eat another one!