Strawberries for Now

It's strawberry season. That time when the aromatic, sweet, and juicy strawberries are ripe. We were very fortunate, this year, because Aunt Martha had a lush strawberry patch that she shared with us. We quickly consumed the first batch of berries she gave us, but luckily, we were invited to pick more.

Strawberries from Aunt Martha

Wally was excited with this prospect and started discussing everything we could do with them—make strawberry short cake, make smoothies, make jam and the list went on. So we set off one afternoon to go picking. As we were picking, Wally asked me if I remembered one of his favorite books from when he was a child called Blueberries for Sal. In this book, a little girl named Sal goes blueberry picking with her mother but finds herself eating the berries faster than they can fill the bucket. He said that he was reminded of the book because he was doing somewhat of the same thing. However, we did end up with some to take home.

When we poured our berries into a container, there weren't as many as we had hoped for, but we still planned to make strawberry jam. However, when I returned to the kitchen a couple of hours later, all of the berries were gone. I guess the fresh berries were just too tempting.

Now you see them.       Now you don't.

I started to be annoyed, but changed my mind. We could enjoy the strawberries now or we could enjoy them later, and I guess now was okay. I reminded myself about the practice that is hard for me—being in the moment. That helped. Then I didn't feel so guilty about my part in the disappearing berries.

Food Waste Friday, 6-10-11

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money. 


Here it goes for this week.

Five half filled cans of soda and the mysterious hommus container.

It was an interesting week. Wally finally cleaned out a month's worth of soda cans from his room and out of the 28 he put in the recycling bin, 5 of them were half full. That resulted in soda down the drain. Next, when I was searching the refrigerator, I found an old container of hommus. This surprised me because I thought we had totally cleaned out the fridge a couple of weeks ago. However, when I pulled it out, I found it was essentially empty. The question then became, who put the empty hommus container back in the refrigerator. I suspect it was the same person who puts the ice cream box back in the freezer with only one spoonful of ice cream in it. Oh well, kids will be kids. And very big kids, will still be kids sometimes. We are going to have to reiterate some house rules.

Brown celery

Also, one of the victories that I thought I had last week of salvaging celery and putting it in a soup and a salad was only half realized. The celery got too old to eat before the salad was finished so it had to be picked out and thrown away.

Now, it's off to another week of looking in the back of the fridge and eating leftovers when we are hungry. And that's a good thing.

A Second Look around the Yard, 6-8-11

A Second Look around the yard this week was scary as I found several invasive vines ready to take over the world or at least the trees and plants they were near. I found poison ivy, Virginia creeper, Japanese honeysuckle, wild grape, trumpetcreeper, mile-a-minute, and bindweed vines.  All I can say is, "Danger, Danger Will Robinson."* If you see any of these in your yard, pull them immediately.

Poison ivy with its typical three leaves.

Japanese honeysuckle. Did you know that the flowers start out white and fade to yellow?

Bindweed (wild morning glory) Its roots can be as far as 30' underground.

Trumpetcreeper. This was originally planted by a previous owner who liked its orange flowers. However, it has since become out of control.

Virginia creeper. This is often mistaken for poison ivy. However, there are two important differences: it has five leaves instead of three and handling it does not make you itch.

Wild grape vine

Mile-a-minute. This vine with the interesting triangular leaves also has thorns.

This picture has at least three of the vines mentioned above. Can you name them?

If you want more information on invasive vines, go to the USDA site on invasive plants or check out the Ortho book, Controlling Weeds. Of the many books I have read on weeds, I found this one the most useful.

*Does anyone remember Lost in Space and what the Robot always said to Will when there was trouble?

Food Waste Friday

I was recently introduced to Food Waste Friday which encourages you to post pictures of the food that has gone to waste during the week. I thought that I would give it a try to see if it made us more careful with how we use our food. The plan was to start posting last week, but the refrigerator clean up we did yielded too many things for me to show without being embarrassed.  So, I decided that I would start this week with a relatively clean slate.

Knowing that I was going to post pictures on Friday, definitely motivated me. The soon to be rubbery celery was put into salad and soup just in the nick of time. The family got tired of the soup before it was gone, so I traded it with my sister for some fresh strawberries. When all was said and done, here's what is going to be thrown away this week.

Corn chips that we overcooked and a peanut butter sandwich that got lost in my desk at work.

Birthday Turkey

I live with a family of wannabe carnivores. According to Ward and the boys, meat would be the sum total of every meal if we didn't need those pesky vegetables to stay healthy. Therefore, I was not surprised when Theodore said he wanted a “Meat Event” for his recent birthday. After some discussion, it was decided that the event would be a fried turkey.

Our turkey fryer setup

Everyone I know swears that a fried turkey is the best turkey they've ever had. Also, they claim that since the oil doesn't penetrate the skin, it's still healthy. Well, that's not entirely true, a little of the oil does go into the meat--why else would it taste so good? But overall, it's not a bad choice, nutritionwise, in the meat world.

350 degrees is optimum frying temp.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with frying a turkey, but the concept is simple. Basically, you take a full size turkey, submerse it in hot oil, and fry it until it is done.* The first time we fried a turkey, I was very excited because a large size bird was only going to take about an hour to cook--what a time saver. However, we failed to realize that the setup and the heating of the oil to cooking temperature took a couple of hours. Lunch was a little late that day.

Ward getting ready to carve the turkey.

Ward was the mastermind behind frying the turkey for Theodore's meat event. He beautifully fried a 10 pound turkey most of which was eaten during the birthday meal. Did I mention that the males of the family like meat? We topped the evening off with a birthday cheesecake—but didn't fry it. Maybe next time.

*A word of caution if you are going to try this at home. A frozen turkey can explode in the hot oil.