Busy Hands Homestead

The rain is pattering on the windows. It is dark outside. I set the alarm early and reluctantly crawled out of bed. If I want a few moments to myself I need to take them before the kids wake up and we embark on our get ready for school routine. Routine. My life suddenly has routine: a set bed time, a set up time, a set dinner time, a set we have to be somewhere time. There are weekdays and weekends and Thursdays are early out days. Ivory walks out of the big red brick building at two instead of three. There is an extra hour of sunlight. A precious extra hour of warmth and light in our day, and our days have already been getting so much shorter.  The sun late to rise and early to set and it is only September.  It will get so much darker yet. Last Thursday we walked among tall grasses, spied the bright red berries of wild asparagus, and admired the yellow of the first fallen leaves. It was warm, and sunny, and almost summer. The river was cold and lazy....

I recently posted the last few weeks of our family meals...  I thought I would offer a glimpse into the future of our family table.  Tonight Adam cooked dinner while I cleaned and rearranged the children's toy area. We had rice, steamed vegetables (cauliflower, mushrooms, peas and carrots) all smothered in peanut sauce. So, I am just going to list the dishes I have planned starting with tomorrow's dinner (Firday, Febuary 18th): Beans and Greens Tacos with Goat Cheese (vegetarian) Spring Rolls with Shrimp and Peanut Sauce (sea food) Pumpkin Soup (vegetarian) Egg Rolls with Sweet and Sour Sauce (pork) Spaghetti (vegetarian) Quiche with Zucchini and Caramelized Onions (vegetarian) Beet, Arugula and Feta Pizza (vegetarian) Sloppy Joe's with baked Potato Wedges (beef) Fish Cakes (sea food) Gorgonzola Linguine with Toasted Walnuts (vegetarian) Roasted Chicken with Winter Vegetables Spinach Stuffed Manicotti (vegetarian) Chi...

Every few weeks I sit down with cooking books spread across the table and leaf through the pages.  I have been planning our dinners approximately three weeks into the future.  I starting this project in November.  "Why?", you might ask.  Well to be completely honest it is because we have food stamps.  In spite of careful shopping I still managed to run low on food stamps by end of the month and it was an unnecessary worry in my life.  We manage to eat varied  mostly organic, fresh, made from scratch meals every single day sitting around the same dinner table (unless Adam is working out of town) sharing our day with family and sometimes friends as well. There are a few patterns that  have developed over the course of this experiment that I try to utilize to make the process simpler: soup and fresh baked bread once a week 2 or 3 vegetarian meals per week seafood once a week a salad centered meal once a week  pizza night ...

Our world is winter white and cold. The high today is 13 degrees Fahrenheit. I am somewhere between washing the dishes, folding 4 loads of clean laundry, sorting all the things that have collected on the bathroom shelves back into their spots and sledding. Sylvan is napping.  Ivory has, not one or two, but four puzzles spread out on the dining room floor.  Two and a half puzzles are completed.  Adam is trouble shooting the waste oil furnace in the shop.  It shut down yesterday for no apparent reason. I spent Saturday and Sunday cleaning.  Moving furniture and mopping everything from wall to wall. (When I say mopping picture this: crawling on hands and knees scrubbing the floor with a rag.  I don't actually own a mop.) Adam sealed up house envelope gaps here and there that were pointed out to us during our Energy Audit last week. We winterized a few windows (in our unheated back room - our washer froze.  That was a first.) In the past few wee...