daze

that panicky...i've got too much to do and not enough time to do it all feeling is here...it must be spring!

i even forgot to mention i am posting over at not dabbling today about mullein.

last night, i cooked a meal from our backyard...asparagus and morels, weedy salad (cilantro, chickweed, baby radishes, baby lettuce, lamb's quarters sprouts, dandelion leaves, violet leaves and flowers, dandelion blossoms, baby carrots, mint), barbequed chicken and breaded okra (frozen from last summer). yum!!

planting, weeding, sowing, etc.

busy!

sundays are supposed to be for relaxing, aren't they?!

i made a double batch of noodles and froze 2/3 of them for friday's dinner...spaghetti w/meaballs. yum! i love my pasta maker. jaden loves to help with it. we ate 1/3 of them in some turkey noodle soup...i simmered down the turkey carcass leftover from hanksgiving finally. it was delicious. everyone begged for seconds.

then, greg butchered 6 of our remaining 12 broilers (yay) and i gutted and bagged them. that was a long time coming!

i've planned the week's meals, updated the homeschool schedule and finished up the next month's posts for herbal roots. now, it's time to get dinner going. never time for relaxation around here!

i have decided to try prepping the week's meals on sundays...so, if i want noodles made, i'll do them. this week i hope to can my remaining amount of pintos so i won't need to worry about beans, although i could have put them on the woodstove to simmer all day. however, we had pots of water on there all day boiling while the butchering was going on so i wouldn't have been able to do that. i love cooking on the woodstove! i'm finally learning the burning personalities of different kinds of wood...i hope next year we have enough stored ahead of time that i can pick and choose as i need them.

i am behind on tapping the maples. must do that tomorrow. can't afford syrup prices any longer!

local eating

i don't actively participate in the local eating but thought i'd share a picture of a make-shift salad we had last night.i scraped together tyfon, lamb's quarters and radish leaves, peppermint, lemon balm, borage and nasturtium flowers, radishes and parmesan cheese. all but the cheese came from our yard. i served it with goat steaks that had been marinated/tenderized overnight, boiled tyfon sprinkled with salt, thyme and olive oil, leftover rice, fresh radishes and green beans. a mostly local dinner.

this jelly is divine! it smells like roses and the taste is subtle and wonderful. it turned the lovely pink color when i added the lemon juice to the infusion. for the record, i used the roses shown, plus a lighter pink variety and some white and yellow. fragrance is the key. if you're interested in making it, follow the violet jelly recipe.