Wild rose petal cake

Apparently my posts haven't been posting? I'm sorry! I am just about out of patience with Blogger, with all of the trouble it's been giving me these last few months; it may be time to start looking into a different platform. 


Our first foraged food of the season! (We've been doing alliteration lately, can you tell?) The wild roses are finally in bloom here, and I am so happy to see them.

Summer is sure taking its sweet time getting here: this time of year we're supposed to have temperatures in the 80s, and instead we've been lucky to get into the mid-60s pretty much all month. Our gardens are not happy... With the exception of the mint, which was still happy and green after several frosts last fall so it really doesn't count as a normal garden plant, none of my plants have grown since I planted them 3+ weeks ago. They haven't died yet, but they haven't grown either.

So I'm so happy to see the wild plants finally growing well: there's something to harvest! Matt is allergic to dandelions so I don't use those — a pity since we have such a robust crop of them in our yard! — but the wild roses and chiming bells just opening now are making a welcome and colorful contribution to our table.

The kids were so excited to be sent out with a bowl and a measuring cup, and brought me back a heaping cup of wild rose petals along with a couple of chiming bells just because. I made a double batch of my rose petal cupcake batter and baked a two-layer cake to celebrate both Father's Day and our newly-minted 3 year old:

As far as I know, rose petals don't have a ton of nutritional value; they mainly add color, scent, some flavor, and a little bit of vitamin C. And happiness! A cake decorated with bright pretty rose petals just looks happy, doesn't it?

Anyone else enjoying harvesting wild foods? What is in season where you live?


(This probably goes without saying, but always make sure you've positively identified a plant before eating it. And if there's any question whether it has been treated with chemicals, either at the roots or sprayed, don't eat it!)

Seven Gardenly Takes

I
The snowshoe hares can't wait until we put in a garden...


My parents have never had to worry about rabbits in their garden—their fence, 6 feet of chicken wire, starts more than a foot off the ground in order to be tall enough to discourage moose from jumping it! We've had snowshoes all over the place, though, so our garden plans are going to have to take them into account.
II The kids and I did some "planting" the other day, if you can call it that; we took 5lbs of too-old-to-eat barley and scattered it liberally over a cut bank that did a lot of collapsing during the spring melt this year. I'm hoping that enough of it germinates to get some degree of root structure there to help hold the hill together next spring. If it doesn't take we'll go buy grass seed or another kind of ground cover, but I wanted to try what we had first. 
III
No 70-degree days this week, but we've had some very respectable upper 50s and low 60s with frequent rain showers. There are still a handful of small patches of snow and ice in shaded spots, but the ground is certainly clear enough (and the trees green enough) that we can all agree that it is spring. All of the perennials in my east-facing flower bed were pulled out last weekend, which was kind of sad: they were pretty! But they really did need to go, because their bulbs were attracting too much attention from the local vole population, and I do not want them to have incentive to be tunneling around right up next to the house. Plus, we need the space for edibles.

IV
The other day Little Bear learned why I've been so insistent that they stay out of the clay mud: he went down to play in the softest, stickiest corner of the yard, and wound up having to have me "rescue" him because he sank in well past his ankles. His boots stayed there half-buried until Matt came home and the mud had hardened a little, because I was not about to risk the mud myself with Otter in the front pack! Now I'm keeping half an eye on that corner of the yard every time the kids are out playing, because I remember the lure of sticky mud... We had the same boot-stealing mud at the house I grew up in, and when I was about LB's age, I remember trying to see how stuck I could get my boots but still be able to get out without help. Is unreasonable to hope that the same "game" doesn't occur to LB?

V
I need your thoughts on weeds, specifically on getting rid of a large number of them spread over an area large enough that pulling them by hand isn't a practical solution. I've always been opposed to using chemical weed-killer because it's not great for people or the environment, and especially since our water comes from a well and we're putting in a garden—I don't want those chemicals getting into our food and water supply! Matt's allergic to the dandelions all over our yard, though, and the flower bed we're preparing to fill with herbs and vegetables is edged with several layers of stacked paving stones, with "volunteer" columbine and irises growing out of all their cracks and crevices. Any ideas for me?

I did suggest getting a goat, only half in jest, but that suggestion was definitely turned down :-) The snowshoe hares have seemed interested in our bumper crop of dandelions, though.

VI

We have two small, round garden beds that were set aside for the kids this year. LB was initially planning to have one bed split between radishes and beans and the other all carrots, but then he realized how much work it was to plant teeny carrot seeds, and the second bed wound up being half beans as well. Kit decided the radish and carrot seeds were too small for her, but she loved helping to plant the beans! She and LB have been running out every morning to see whether their baby plants have come up yet. I'm so glad that they are excited about gardening!

VII
Because I am overambitious, I'm working on a map for planting our big bed up against the house before we have a bunch of people over on Monday. Perhaps I'll talk myself out of trying, because I already have objectively too much to do between now and then, but I would really like to have it looking nice—and to have the plants started, since our growing season is so short! Intense, thanks to the 24-hour sun, but short. So far, my plans for the bed include napa cabbage, basil, cilantro, garlic chives, calendula, and marigolds. We'll see what else winds up in there!

Are you gardening this year? What do you grow?

Strawberries & Cream Baked Oatmeal

This recipe is dedicated to those of you who, like me, always seem to pick out strawberries that only last a day or two before they start turning squishy.

Over the weekend I picked up several pounds of strawberries with the intention of making jam... Only to get home and realize that I already helped my mom make jam this season, when Otter was very new and I was very tired, and so I already had eight pints of jam in the cupboard. Oops. So the kids and I made strawberry bars, and strawberry popsicles, and after making popsicles we still had a bunch of puree left over. Working off the idea that strawberry puree is basically the same as applesauce, I cooked it down a little and wound up making it into a pan of delicious, moist, hearty baked oatmeal. To be honest, I'm considering sending Matt back to the store this evening before the sale ends to pick up more strawberries for me to puree and freeze—it's that good!

Strawberries & Cream Baked Oatmeal

3 cups rolled oats
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
About 1 3/4 cups strawberry puree, cooked down to 1 1/2 cups
1 1/2 cups milk of choice (I used coconutmilk)
3/8 teaspoon salt
1/3 to 1/2 cup honey
2 to 4 Tablespoons nut butter (I used cashew butter)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and pour into an 8x8 or 7x11 (2.2 qt) baking dish. Bake for 25 minutes or until firm. Delicious warm or cold!

Quick catch-up

There are two draft posts sitting here, completely finished except for photos, but both kind of need the photos and Blogger has decided it doesn't want to let me upload photos and I'm tired of fighting with it so... I'm just going to write a photo-free post instead. Sorry!

This afternoon Matt made one of his fancy grilled pork roulades, this time stuffed with onions, red bell pepper, and fresh pineapple. It looked and smelled amazing! And then we cut into it, and learned that pineapple contains this enzyme that breaks down proteins... The meat had a weird, almost chalky, consistency all the way through. It was very disappointing. Funny/frustrating thing is, if we had used canned pineapple it would have turned out perfectly because the super high heat of the canning process kills the enzyme!

Well, now we know. No more fresh pineapple + meat dishes.

We have successfully reintroduced eggs with no one reacting to them, which is hugely helpful when I remember about it. (i.e. only once last week) Two more weeks until we can start reintroducing everything else. I'm getting so tired of this diet... It's not terrible, when I plan well, but it seems like last week things just kept coming up that made it more difficult to make the planned meals... I'm hoping to do better this coming week.

The kids are looking forward to their second week of summer break, now that the yard is approaching 3/4 free of snow. It is so weird having temperatures into the 70s and half the yard still covered with snow, but we had so much out there that it's taking a long time to melt! Regardless of the snow, LB and Kit have both been happy to get outside multiple times every day.

Occasionally I lose track of how young Otter still is, because he is so big: at 8 weeks, he has nearly doubled his birth weight already! He's fitting well in 6 month clothes. I don't recall LB or Kit growing quite this quickly...

LB and Kit love talking to Otter, making faces at him, helping with him... LB especially is doing a good job of helping with both of the younger kids: while I was busy in the kitchen today, LB brought Kit and a pile of books over next to Otter, and read aloud until both of his siblings had fallen asleep!

We had been talking about going out of town for a hike or picnic for Mother's Day, but it turns out that greenup is happening this weekend—pretty much every deciduous tree in the area leafing out at the same time and sending pollen everywhere—and  between the pollen and the fact that the sudden rapid snowmelt is causing rivers to rise quickly (and all the places we wanted to go are near rivers), staying home is sounding like the best choice. Matt offered to grill for me, so that will be nice.

What are you doing for Mother's Day?

May Day

Not sure whether we should be punctuating that as one word or two this year... It sure doesn't look or feel like May outside!

There were ice pellets bouncing off the deck railing when I finished putting the kids to bed this evening... It feels like this winter will never end!

I've always loved the idea of "going Maying," looking for wildflowers on May 1st, but it's never been warm enough long enough before that for flowers to be blooming. This year takes the cake, though; I have never seen this much snow still on the ground in May. 

A couple of weeks ago, the craft in LB's Waldorf curriculum was fingerknitting flowers. I had grand plans of making a whole bouquet in time for May Day, but... as grand plans plus kids tend to go, I finally finished the first flower during Otter's nap this morning. The instructions called for finishing the flowers with a yarn needle, but after two weeks of "maybe I'll make it to the craft store next time," I just used a crochet hook and it worked fine.

I cannot find the program we used for our May Crowning last year—how I can have a whole stack of liturgical year-related books and none of them mention May Crowning is beyond me!—but there's definitely way too much snow in the yard for a procession around the house like we did last time anyway. The kids and I pulled some ideas from Catholic Icing, though, and had fun crowning our big statue of Mary and arranging little paper flowers that LB made next to the little statue in the kids' room. We switched from Easter hymns to Marian hymns for bedtime, too; not sure yet whether I'll stick with Marian ones through the whole month of May, or go back to Easter ones until Pentecost. 

How did (or are) you celebrating Mary in May?

Simple Truth from Fred Meyer

We've talked about the Kroger company's "sharing network" program before, yes? They send people who sign up free stuff, in exchange for those people telling others about the products. I haven't taken one of their "missions" in many months, but when they emailed this month inviting me to receive and review items from their Simple Truth and Simple Truth Organic lines, my eye caught on the free cloth grocery bag they were offering to send... I confess, I have a weakness for cloth bags. It is a ridiculous thing to have a weakness for, I know! But I agreed to review the other items in the box in order to get the bag. They said they would send a couple of snack foods, which I figured the kids would have fun with.

And then we started the elimination diet before the box arrived, and we couldn't try either of the foods they included, a package of salted almonds and a box of fruit & grain bars. There was also an organic strawberry-lavender lip balm, which Kit immediately claimed and has been having great fun with. The other day she told me, "Mama, I put on so much lip balm I can't even imagine!" :-) As liberally as she's applying it, I'm glad that it's made of safe ingredients like beeswax and coconut oil instead of petroleum byproducts!

The kids did enjoy being able to give the snacks to their friends, though, and they've both been excited about using the cloth bag with the Simple Truth logo on it. As a marketing scheme to get people to buy more Simple Truth-branded products, the campaign sure worked on LB: now every time we go to the store, he notices things with the Simple Truth logo and asks if we can get them. And thanks to his current obsession with it, I've noticed how many Simple Truth items I do buy.

Kit and LB went on a scavenger hunt through the kitchen for Simple Truth items, and came up with quite a few! Off the top of my head I can remember canned beans and tomatoes (they use BPA-free cans!), the quinoa, and bagged apples. LB wanted us the get the Simple Truth coconutmilk last time we were at the store, but it has carrageenan in it, so we stuck with the name brand.

It's been a good source of "teachable moments" on marketing and brands, how seeing a logo we recognize can be a good starting point but it's still important to read the full ingredient list, compare the price, etc.

And the most important item in the box, the cloth bag?

It's okay. Wanting to use the Simple Truth bag has helped the kids remember to bring the cloth bags in when we go to the store, so that's a plus; it is definitely not the sturdiest bag in my collection, but it's fine for produce. I'm a little surprised that they chose to put their logo that's supposed to carry the connotation of "high quality" onto a bag that isn't, but it was free.

Seven Quick Takes

I
Time for spring colds! It's been a never-ending challenge this past week, catching kids as they run out to play and hustling them back into the house to get jackets on, get them zipped, where did you put your boots?!? etc. And so now we have the inevitable consequences of outside time without the proper gear, and LB and Kit are bewailing their fate of being stuck indoors until their colds get better even though it's beautiful and sunny outside. And it is beautiful! Temperatures are in the upper 40s with clear blue skies, and under the blazing sun our snow is melting quickly. The flat top part of the driveway is pretty much all dry at this point, so the bikes/trikes have been getting a good workout. There is still a lot of snow to melt—Little Bear managed to get himself good and stuck in the back yard yesterday, in snow up to his waist, and his feet were not touching the ground—but a lot has melted this week, and if these temperatures hold it won't be too much longer.

II
Otter picked up his siblings' cold, so he and I have had a couple of kind of difficult nights. I'm still so spoiled from Kit, though! She slept straight through the night every night when she was tiny, so it's really only in comparison with her that Otter is giving me trouble: when he wakes me up four or five times over the course of the night just to eat and goes right back to sleep, it's really not that bad.

III
What kind of "marketing language" would you use to help win someone over to the idea of sweet potatoes for breakfast? I made this sweet potato breakfast bake from Kitchen Stewardship, and I'm really excited about it! Kit and I think it tastes amazing, and I love that it's naturally sweet: the only added sweetener is two tablespoons of maple syrup in the entire 13x9 pan, so its real function in the dish is providing a subtle flavor, not sweetness. But I'm getting a few... raised eyebrows, let us say, over serving vegetables for breakfast: a practical "it's a great start on the recommend 5 servings of veggies a day!" was not all that helpful. :-) LB did eventually concede that it didn't taste bad, but I was hoping for a little more positive response.

IV
The kids' current favorite "everything-free" snack is halved bananas spread with cashew butter—I think several of you suggested that, so thank you! They've been topping them with sliced strawberries and calling them banana boats "because they're quarters of bananas that look the bottom of a boat, and the strawberries could be stood up like sails but I like to lay them down on their sides." - LB

V
I am buying so. ridiculously. many. bananas these days. Between kid snacks, using them in recipes the way I would normally, and substituting them for eggs, we are going through them quickly. I'm grateful that they're the least expensive fruit in the store! Sticking to the grocery budget on this diet has been pretty difficult.

VI
Okay, what are your projects for the weekend? I'm thinking that maybe if I write mine down, on the internet where anyone can see them, they'll be more likely to get done... Sound reasonable? There are always too many things needing my attention, but even if nothing else happens, at the very least I need to plan next week's menu, go over lesson plans for Sunday School and for LB's last week (!!!) of the school year, scribble out an initial ILP for next year so that I'm not walking into Monday's curriculum fair blind, do laundry, and bake some special treat for Sunday. Before I touch any of that, though, we're moving and reorganizing all of the too big/too small kids' clothes; hopefully that takes less time than I'm expecting it to!

Have a good weekend! For more quick takes, check out This Ain't The Lyceum.

Lessons from the first week

We made it a whole week on the "everything-free" diet! (Not literally everything; in case you missed it earlier, our whole family is off egg for three weeks and gluten, dairy, soy, citrus, almonds, peanuts, and a couple of other legumes for six weeks.)

And we ate well. Well as in "food that tasted good," but also as in "food that was good for us." When you have to cut all of those things out, it's pretty hard to find junk food, or really much pre-made food at all. I definitely spent a lot more time in the kitchen this past week because I had to make almost everything from scratch. Soy, gluten, and whey and other milk derivatives like to hide in many, many things. I did find, on Friday, a company that makes bread free from everything we can't have (Little Northern Bakehouse, I think it was called?) It was weird to buy sliced bread for the first time in years, but very nice to have bread with our burgers Saturday evening.

A few takeaways from the first week:

Sticking to a menu plan really is possible. When I suddenly could not use pasta, sandwiches, etc as fallbacks, supper actually happened as written on the menu plan every day. There were a couple of minor deviations (lamburgers instead of moose burgers, taco salads when I forgot to buy corn flour for making tortillas), but we pretty much stuck to the plan and there were no last-minute "oops, I wonder what I'm doing about supper" evenings.

Prepping breakfast the night before makes a big difference. Blueberry baked oatmeal, chia pudding, oatmeal apple breakfast bars (which turned out to require forks, but were still a big hit), cinnamon roll baked oatmeal... If I made something good and filling the night before, it helped everyone get off to a good start. Also, apparently we ate a lot of oatmeal last week, but having special baked oatmeal variations was much more popular than multiple days of "look, a bowl of oatmeal" would have been. There's a cranberry vanilla rice pudding in the fridge for tomorrow, but I think we'll be back to oats the next morning.

Note: unless I did something wrong, which is certainly possible, chia pudding does not set up in coconut milk the way it does in almond milk or cow milk.

It's easier to give things up entirely than to find substitutes that make you very aware of what you are missing. That bread was pretty good, but since bringing it home on Friday, suddenly people are talking sadly about other wheat products like cereal and pasta.

Lunches were the hardest meals for me, and I don't entirely have a solution yet. It was okay as long as I made enough supper for there to be plenty of leftovers, though there were a couple of days when the kids weren't interested in having the same thing again. Sandwiches are out, and our normal non-bread quick lunch, hummus, kind of needs the lemon juice so I can't just make a batch without it. Ideas?

Using fruits and vegetables as the main snacks worked pretty well, but at the rate we're going through them they are expensive! I need to find more ways to stretch them. There is something very gratifying, though, about telling the kids that they can have more broccoli for dessert and getting an enthusiastic "okay!" in response.

What we ate this past week (suppers):

Sunday - grilled chicken, green salad, white rice
Monday - pork chops with spiced nectarines, roasted cauliflower, green salad
Tuesday - garlic chicken, brown rice
Wednesday - chicken taco salads
Thursday - grilled rosemary-dijon moose steak, garlic masked potatoes, grilled zucchini
Friday - honey-balsamic salmon, leftover mashed potatoes & zucchini
Saturday - BLT lamburgers on "everything-free" bread, grilled sweet onions, sweet potato fries

Week two, here we come! I know that the next two days' suppers will be a chicken-rice casserole and something made from ground moose, but that's as far as I've gotten on the new menu. Time for me to get to work!

Sleep Cycle

Lately it's seemed like Otter has fallen into a pattern: good night, rough night, good night, rough night, repeat. On Sunday, he and I spent midnight—7am on the couch so he wouldn't wake everyone up; I did get several hours of watching the northern lights out of it, but was very grateful for a good night's sleep on Monday night. Last night wasn't nearly as rough as Sunday, but Otter and I were still upstairs hours before anyone else. Now he's peacefully snoring on my lap as I sit here figuring out breakfast for the rest of the family.

I've come to the conclusion that sensible people do not voluntarily take on elimination diets with a newborn in the house: being so tired has made it difficult for me to make the transition to the new diet easy for the rest of the family. Lunch and snacks are definitely the hardest—supper is easy, breakfast is manageable especially with gluten-free oats, but the kids are not thrilled about eating leftovers every day for lunch and being told "fruit or vegetables" for snacks.

Now, fruit and vegetables are reasonable snacks—it's hard to get five servings a day!—but I want to be able to give them a good variety of types of foods so everyone isn't completely sick of this diet by the end of the first week. My Sunday attempt at baking biscuits with gluten-free flour was a total failure, and Monday I tried a batch of cookies that... Well, they weren't awful. They just weren't much of anything. My banana bread, though, seems to be working well! Maybe we'll just eat a lot of banana bread for the next two months.

I have high hopes for this morning's breakfast: I made Oatmeal Apple Breakfast Bars from Don't Waste the Crumbs (substituting coconut oil and gluten-free oats/flour), but filled it with close to four cups of apples, sliced thinly and tossed with cinnamon, because I already had them prepped in the freezer. It sure smells good! And what's not to like about having basically a healthy apple pie for breakfast? Hopefully the kids agree and it helps get us off to a good start this morning.

Plan-laying

Best-laid plans, and all that... 

Here's what my ridiculous-elimination-diet-menu-planning process is looking like so far this evening:

Lots of crossing things out and moving stuff around! We're feeling pretty confident about suppers; as you can see, I filled in the easy part first and am now going back to figure out breakfasts and lunches. We're so used to just jotting down "leftovers" in the lunch column for most days and having it not really matter if there are actually leftovers because we can always have sandwiches, egg salad, cheese and crackers... With none of my typical backups as options now, I'm kind of feeling like I ought to have more things actually planned for lunches.

The "shopping list" column got divided to create a spot for "prep work," the idea being that when I look at the plan for Friday's supper, I'll also see that I need to find a recipe for gluten-free hamburger buns and thaw ground moose in order to be prepared for making burgers on Saturday. The biggest problem I run into with meal planning is frequent forgetting to pull meat out of the freezer early enough. It will be a lot more difficult to throw a meal together at the last minute without dairy, gluten or eggs, so hopefully having that extra column of reminders winds up being helpful.

Seven Quick Takes

I

"Not quite there yet," "in a few more weeks," "when we get to that point"... all of my caveats and sidestepping are out the window because all of a sudden, our whole crazy gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, soy-free, etc, diet starts now. No more waiting until I feel ready. I went off dairy and soy for Otter's sake starting yesterday, and ohmygoodness last night was so much better than the past week or two. Kind of a hooray!/aw... feeling; it's what he needs, so I'm glad to know and be able to do it, but now I'm off dairy and soy for a long time again. Matt and LB will formally begin the full elimination diet Sunday morning, but we're tumbling rapidly into it because that is close enough that I can't make anything noncompliant which is likely to leave leftovers.

II

And just to make it more exciting, I get to go back to the grocery store and return the almond flour and almond butter that I brought home yesterday, because surprise, I missed the line at the top of the page last time I read their results and Matt and LB are both forbidden almonds as well! Do you know how many gluten-free recipes call for almond flour? So many. And I made a double batch of banana bread yesterday, to start us off: no eggs, gluten-free flour, and... almond milk. Oops. At least Kit and I can eat it.

III

There's a kitchen hack that I tend to think of as common knowledge, but I'm often surprised by people not knowing about it so maybe it isn't actually that common? So in case this is helpful to anyone: in many types of baking, you can substitute bananas for eggs 1:1. I've done it with great success in brownies, cookies, muffins, and quickbreads—I never put any eggs in my banana bread, because it's so much better with the extra bananas. (Granted, this will add banana flavor to whatever you're making, but we like banana so that's not usually an issue in our house.)

IV

Food aside, it's been a lovely week. Today we were enjoying balmy 40-degree weather, and the kids have been spending hours out in the slush and mud. I've kind of reached the point of pretending not to hear when they talk about playing in "the mud waterfall," aka the side of the driveway where all the melting snow is running down... After the long Alaskan winter, they need sunshine more than I need small laundry loads, and as long as the muddy outerwear stays out in the garage, they can get as dirty as they want. LB pulled out his bike the other day, and Kit has been begging for rides in the wagon, but the driveway is still a little too soft... A neighbor just offered us a nice pink trike that her daughter has outgrown, and Kit will be so excited to see it! 

V

Otter is growing so fast. Did I say that last week? It's definitely still true; he is really filling out, and doesn't have that "newborn look" anymore. I can't believe that he will be four weeks old in a couple of days! My phone refuses to talk to Blogger or my computer at all right now, though, so I can't use any photos this week.

VI

The pussy willows are out in full force, and while there's still a lot of snow in the yard, I know that Matt is starting to check the birch trees for signs of green. One good thing about the elimination diet: there's a chance that sticking to it will lessen the severity of his birch allergies this year. We were also encouraged to tap some birch trees and collect the first run of sap for him to drink, which would help, but then I had a baby... No sap-collecting occurred this year. Maybe in the future--it would be fun to make birch syrup someday.

VII
I have strong feelings about peanut butter; it may well be my most-often-consumed protein source, at least for breakfasts and lunches. Typically I'm adamant about it not containing anything other than peanuts and salt, but someone recently introduced me to Dark Chocolate Dreams from Peanut Butter & Co... it is incredible! Also dairy-free and soy-free, which other chocolate-nut butters I've seen have not been. A very fun treat.

LB has to give up peanut butter for the elimination diet, but since it's such an inexpensive protein source, Kit and I will keep eating it and I'm hoping to find a not-ridiculously-expensive alternative for LB. Almond butter isn't allowed either, and that's the only other "-butter" that I've had before... what else is out there that a five year old would find appealing?


Have a great weekend, and don't forget to check out This Ain't The Lyceum for more 7QT.

Drawing up a new food pyramid

We've been working for a while now on sorting out some seemingly diet-related health issues for a couple of members of the family, and a month or so ago we got results back from food sensitivity testing. Going over the results with me, the doctor emphasized that none of this was life-threatening and since I was about to have a baby, it would definitely be fine to wait to address the potential food issues until after I settled into a good routine with the baby. I'm not ready to claim that I'm there quite yet: "Guess what, kids; the Internet says that today is National Sandwich Day. How does that sound for supper?" – me this evening. There were also carrots, so at least everyone ate something healthy? (And it turns out that the Internet was wrong, anyway; Sandwich Day is Nov 3, in honor of the fourth Earl of Sandwich.)

So we aren't attempting a full elimination diet at this point, but we're at least generally trying to keep an eye on what we eat and noticing whether anyone seems to react, and trying to reduce our reliance on the foods that may possibly be causing the issues: gluten, dairy, legumes, eggs and citrus (different things for different people). Hopefully that'll make it a little easier to shift into the elimination diet once we reach that point.

It's unfortunate that wheat and legumes are both staples of a tight grocery budget! It will be a challenge to use less of them (and eventually cut them out completely) while still keeping our grocery bill as low as possible.

We order dry goods in bulk twice a year through a local co-op, so I'm getting some almond flour through them to try my hand at gluten-free baking. And I already know how to go dairy-free, thanks to Kit's year+ of being allergic to it; Otter is showing more and more possible signs of the allergy too, so it's just as well that we won't be eating it. Eggs, though; what do you feed people for breakfast when they can't have gluten, dairy, or eggs? Lots of oatmeal, I guess?

Actually, it just occurred to me that I have a bunch of books with answers to that question... I picked up the Ultimate Meal Planning Bundle back around New Years', and stuck all of the gluten-free and allergy-friendly books in a folder on my computer along with the many other GF/allergy/vegan/other-specific-diet cookbooks that I've picked up in other ultimate bundles over the years but were never applicable to us. Until now, when I am super thankful to have this trove of treasures to begin digging into. I just found a 200-page book in here on gluten-free sourdough baking!

Coincidentally (I promise it's a coincidence! I totally did not begin this post thinking about anything other than figuring out our family's food issues), the 2018 Ultimate Homemaking Bundle goes on sale tomorrow morning. I'm actually not planning to pick it up this year, now that I have a bazillion suddenly-applicable-to-us books that I should be reading through. It feels weird to not order it—I think this is the first ultimate homemaking or healthy living bundle I've skipped since 2015! I always encourage people to take a look through what they're offering, though; every year's bundle is full of valuable resources, and this is certainly not the first time that I've gone back to a whole category of books that had been gathering virtual dust for a year or two because they suddenly became pertinent to us. As long as there are at least a few resources that will fill a need for you, the bundles are generally a great deal!

I always love finding new books, resources, food bloggers to follow, etc, so if you have any good sources for recipes that'll fit into our new diet, I would sure appreciate links! It's a little overwhelming to think about how many things we'll be at least temporarily cutting out, but at the same time, I'm excited to take on the challenge.

Back to school

Happy (shifted) Annunciation! We already celebrated it on March 25, but talked about it a little again this morning. Being able to point to, "it's the Annunciation because in exactly nine months it'll be Christmas!" is just easier for our little kids to connect with than, "they moved the Annunciation this year so that it didn't have to be smushed in with Palm Sunday."

Today was our first school day on my own with three kids, and it went better than I expected. Granted, we only have six school subjects these days and one of them is art, but we were finished with everything except painting before 10:30 am. Plus, in that same time span, I baked a loaf of sourdough bread and made a batch of protein balls (bars sounded like too much work... yes, now that I'm more awake I'm aware that it would have been less work to spread the stuff in a pan than to roll individual balls...) And Otter slept and ate and got changed throughout it all, happy to lay in a sunbeam whenever I needed two hands for something. He did sleep better last night, thankfully! He's been very sleepy this evening, though, so I may be up a lot tonight.

We made a library run this past Saturday, which has helped keep the house peaceful: LB spent a couple of hours happily curled up in a couch corner with a pile of books, and he read to his sister for a while this afternoon so that I could kind of pretend to "sleep while the baby sleeps" with Otter.

Oh, the library reminds me; does anyone happen to have experience with the reading lists from The Good and The Beautiful? I already have two language arts curricula picked out for next year, so I'm not letting myself even look at their whole program, but we've had such a time trying to find books that are appropriate for LB both in terms of reading level and content/emotional maturity level. I liked how, in the sample she offered from the reading list, she gives a quick overview of content as well as educational value and literary value. But I'd love to hear from someone who's actually used it before deciding whether to buy it... Or if anyone has another suggestion for a good reading list, that would be helpful too!

I had been feeling like I ought to make myself wait until we finished this school year before making plans for next year, but I gave up because looking at curriculum is just so much fun. I wouldn't say that we have our curricula set in stone yet, but at this point I think I have a pretty good idea of what I'll be using in the fall. I know that there are a lot of good things about getting a comprehensive curriculum all from one source—that's what my mom has always done—and maybe in the future that'll be the right choice for us, but at this point I'm so grateful to be able to pick and choose from many different vendors to find what works best for LB. It's wonderful that there are so many options! Once I have things set for sure, I'll have to write out our list for next year.

A beautiful "breakup"

breakup, n. The period of early spring in which snow and ice are breaking apart and melting (Alaskan use)

It's so warm outside! Our highs for the foreseeable future are all in the 40s, the sky is clear and blue with blazing sun, and a curtain of waterdrops is falling steadily from the eaves. There are bare patches on the driveway where gravel is showing through the snow, and the stretches of road that get the most sun are a patchwork of dirt and slush. Spring is coming!

How I wish I was a little farther along in recovery and up for a walk in this beautiful weather, but I'm not quite there yet. Otter and I will have to get outside tomorrow for a little bit, at least, to watch the other kids as they run around. They had a blast on the deck this afternoon! We're at a funny point in breakup, since there's still snow piled higher than LB's head (and it's getting soft and punchy now with all the sun, so the kids sink in instead of running on top), but it's warm enough that they want to spend hours out playing in it. It's messy-boot-area season, or messier-than-usual, because the kids need breakup boots for town but snowboots for home and I can't quite reach the floor with Otter in my arms, so I have to keep reminding them to keep all their gear neatly organized themselves and somehow it all just spreads everywhere...

Matt is taking advantage of this warm weather to thoroughly break in his new grill; so far he's made bourbon chicken, moose burgers, grilled chicken to add to a Mediterranean pasta salad, and this evening he made a pork loin stuffed with apples and onions. And tomorrow there's lemon-basil chicken planned; hopefully I'll have it ready in the fridge marinating by midafternoon, so he can throw it on the grill when he gets home from work.

And we know it's sure not winter anymore when it's still broad daylight at 8:30 pm! I'm not sure exactly when the sun rose this morning, but it was some time between 4 and 6 am. We've already had the annual conversations about how "the sun has nothing to do with what time it is" (i.e. whether or not it's bedtime) enough times than Kit and LB believe us. Otter doesn't have any reason to associate light with waking/dark with sleeping, so I can't blame the sun for his keeping me up half the night either. :-) He's been awake for a couple of hours consecutively this evening, though, so maybe there's hope that he'll be tired and sleep most of the night tonight!

Has spring arrived where you live yet? It sure seems like most people are ready to be done with winter!

Seven Baby Takes

I

Otter is so cute, it totally makes up for his lack of interest in sleeping at nighttime. Well, maybe not totally. But he is very cute.

II

So far he's gaining weight at a rate of a pound a week, which is a little bit ridiculous. I'm grateful that he is getting enough milk and isn't having any trouble gaining weight, it's just been funny realizing that outfits that were too big when he was born are already getting too small. 

III

Also, he is my only baby so far that hasn't hated wearing hats... 

IV

The night before Easter, we were reminded again to be thankful that we live in such a great neighborhood: a neighbor whom we'd met a grand total of once, at a party back in September or October, stopped by with two meals of moose stew and two loaves of bread because she thought she remembered that the baby was due at the end of March. So incredibly kind of her! We live near some wonderful people; we need to do a better job of getting to know our neighbors.

V

LB and Kit are both so eager to help with Otter! LB especially has impressed me: the other day in the car Otter was crying, the loud, unending angry cry of a baby who must. eat. now., and instead of getting upset LB talked quietly to him and rubbed his tummy until he fell asleep. Kit has (usually) been quick to run and get things for me when I'm stuck on the couch feeding Otter, and she and LB both want to hold their little brother all the time. Otter slept on LB's lap all through bedtime stories this evening!

VI

Since we never did get around to taking a spring break when everyone else in town did, LB and I decided that the octave of Easter was a good time for a break. It's been nice to have my mornings theoretically clear for non-school activities, though in practice I'm spending most of that time sitting on the couch feeding the baby anyway. We did school the first two weeks after Otter was born, but Matt was home to help; the coming week will be my first school week with Otter without Matt... We'll see how it goes! I'm glad we're getting close to the end of the school year—there isn't as much going on as there was earlier in the year, we've already begun wrapping up several subjects, and honestly I don't particularly care if we move through the remaining subjects at a slightly slower pace and wind up having a week or two of math lessons to do in May. Most people do school well into May anyway, don't they? I've always been in favor of not taking any days off and getting done as early as we can, but I really won't mind this year if we wind up on a more relaxed schedule due to Otter and wrap up a little later.

VII

One more baby photo:

Different baby :-) We had a cow (mom) and calf (baby) moose hanging around our yard Wednesday and Thursday this week! They were right up close to the house, and the kids had so much fun watching them. LB and Kit know better than to ever get close to one outside, but having them close enough to see so clearly through the windows was a treat.

Don't forget to check out more quick takes at This Ain't The Lyceum!

It's springtime somewhere

Okay, so in my opinion, it's springtime here. Matt feels strongly that it can't be "spring" until all the snow has melted, though, so... basically it won't be spring until some time in May? So we're compromising by using the Alaskan term—breakup—for the snow-is-melting messy season, and once most of the snow is gone and things are starting to green up we'll call it spring. Which is okay; before we married he was accustomed to determining when the seasons changed based on the calendar date, so living in a place where we calculate seasons purely based on climate has been enough of an adjustment... I can accept his definition of spring as being snowless. :-)

If you look at the weekly ads for the big chain stores, though, it's already grilling season... Clearly, they don't make separate ads for Alaska with our remaining 2.5+ feet of snow! (And as my father recently reminded us, it's not at all unheard of for us to get 15+ inches of snow in April. Though hopefully that doesn't happen this year!)

Matt's been looking at those ads and talking about a gas grill for a while now; we've had a charcoal grill for five or six years, and while we really like it, the time and effort involved in lighting charcoal and getting a good bed of coals has meant that we really only grill on summer weekends, and only those weekends that it's not raining or windy and we're able to dedicate a good block of time to pre-supper prep. And every fall, we wish that we had done a lot more grilling. It was time to find someone else who wanted a charcoal grill, and pick up a gas grill instead. 

When would you expect grills to go on sale? I said Memorial Day or Father's Day. Matt figured there would be some beginning-of-the-season sales, to which I said "yes, like Memorial Day..." Apparently he was right, though, because he just found the exact model he's been looking at for a deep discount. Thanks to the sale—and a new-baby gift that his coworkers would definitely approve of him using for a grill—Matt brought home a very early Fathers Day present this afternoon, and spent the next hour or so assembling it with LB and Kit.

And it wound up being the perfect day to try out a new grill, since our power was off and on for most of the afternoon and evening, so I wasn't able to cook supper as planned! It was a windy 39 degrees outside, definitely not the best charcoal weather, but the gas grill did just fine. And having a hot supper as opposed to whatever bits and bobs I could pull together without electricity? Delicious.

It felt pretty strange to be grilling with this much snow still on the ground! I'm hoping that we'll get a lot more use out of it, though, now that it's so much quicker to heat up the grill. Anyone have some favorite grilling recipes to share? I've gotten away with only having a couple of good ones up until this point, but I know that the family would appreciate some new ones to try!

Baby

I'd like to introduce our newest addition, "Otter"! 

Our largest baby yet at seven and a half pounds, Otter was unexpectedly born at home Sunday morning: thankfully two of the midwives with our birth center live nearby, because I woke up at 2am, they got here at 2:15, and Otter was born about ten minutes later! It was certainly not the birth we'd been expecting, but it worked out perfectly. He and I are both doing fine, and we are all so happy to have him here!  

Matt is able to stay home with us for a couple of weeks, for which I am very grateful! LB and Kit have been excited about Otter, but realistically they're probably more excited right now about having their dad home to play with them and do things with them while I'm busy with the baby. LB is still doing school this week, and has been so happy to have his dad here to do science projects with him! And I have not yet had to re-master doing everything one-handed, since Matt has taken on most of the meal-prep, and I've been able to hand Otter to Matt when I do need both hands for something. Maybe we'll work on that next week... Right now, I'm just enjoying sitting and holding this new tiny baby as much as possible!

Patience and a Lent list

About two weeks left of Lent! And of this pregnancy, theoretically. It is making me crazy that I can't really make plans for the rest of this liturgical season, because we've reached the point where baby could come any time now or not for a couple of weeks yet. My chiropractor commented yesterday morning on how much lower baby had dropped since she last saw me, so maybe it'll be sooner rather than later? We shall see. I actually spent about 7 hours at the birth center last night/this morning with very convincing labor that just... stopped. So now we're back home, and maybe we'll have to head back tonight and maybe not until Holy Week! Getting some practice being patient here.

Last night I sat down with three weeks' worth of menu-planning sheets and started trying to map things out for just in case I'm actually able to make everything I want to between now and Easter, and as I looked back through past years' plans for Lent and Holy Week, I realized how disappointing it was that I have a bunch of Lenten posts from 2013-2016, but my search terms brought up nothing from last year. Yes, I'm busy, and always tired, and it's hard to find time to write... But it's so good to have this record, too! And I know that I'll feel badly about it later if I continue to do such a poor job of posting. So, here is my "probably more wishful thinking than realistic plan" for this home stretch of Lenten observance (with feast days thrown in):

Saturday, 17 Mar: St Patrick

We are talking about St Patrick and Ireland in social studies this week; for supper, I'm planning Guinness moose stew with Irish cheddar biscuits, and my friend's mom's recipe for Guinness chocolate cake!

Sunday, 18 Mar: Passion Sunday

It's the annual "why do I suddenly have no purple fabric??" day! Time to cover all of the statues, icons, and religious art in the house. Unless I am actively in labor and thus am not home, this will definitely happen, because Little Bear has been excited about it for weeks and will happily help Matt take care of it.

Monday, 19 Mar: St Joseph

Instead of an Italian meal for the Solemnity of St Joseph, as we've done in the past, I'm planning a supper that Matt particularly likes (since we treat the day as a patronal feast day for him as a husband and father): chicken salad on homemade pretzel buns. Possibly a dessert; I haven't thought that far yet. No one would complain if I said they could have ice cream, though I'd like to do something more creative/intentional.

Sunday, 25 Mar: Palm Sunday (and Annunciation)

I know, I know; the Annunciation gets moved to after Easter so that it can be celebrated on its own instead of being overshadowed by the celebration of Palm Sunday, but we will definitely still be talking about how March 25 is exactly 9 months before Dec 25. I figure it won't hurt to use foods for both celebrations that day, either; chocolate waffles for breakfast, and psari plaki (Greek baked fish) for supper.

(Tuesday, 27 Mar is my due date... I've never yet had a baby wait until their due date, so the rest of this is fairly unlikely to actually happen...)

Wednesday, 28 Mar: Holy Wednesday

The day Judas betrayed Christ for 30 pieces of silver. Hopefully, we'll have Jidase buns with supper.

Thursday, 29 Mar: Holy Thursday

Persian lamb with almonds for supper. Holy Thursday is also the day we make Hot Cross Buns. If I'm on top of things, we will hopefully hard-boil and dye eggs as well. Probably not making the traditional red dye out of onion skins this year, though!

Friday, 30 Mar: Good Friday

Hot Cross Buns for breakfast. I grew up with potato soup for supper every Good Friday, but I love potato soup so it's not at all a penitential meal for me, and Matt particularly dislikes it... anyway, we don't have a traditional Good Friday supper yet. I tried for a couple of years to make lentil soup our traditional supper, and it did not work out. Maybe tuna salad or egg salad this year?

Saturday, 31 Mar: Holy Saturday

No promises, but the Italian Easter Bread that I always bake on Holy Saturday may be possible this year; it's always been a knead-by-hand-forever recipe, but the new stand mixer will definitely be able to handle the dough on its own, so there's hope! 

What are your plans for observing the upcoming feast days and holy days?

Easter baskets

I am so thankful today for a post from Katie Kimball of Kitchen Stewardship on non-candy/non-junk Easter basket items! Both because she has a lot of great ideas, and because reading her post reminded me that my usual waiting-until-the-last-minute approach to finding things for Easter baskets would not be a good idea, considering that the baby is due during Holy Week... So this morning I left Little Bear and Kit home with Matt, and went to town all by myself to pick up Easter items along with my regular errands.

(I am also thankful to Matt for being awake enough this morning to point out that, while in many places sidewalk chalk and bubbles would be very reasonable things to give kids in early April, that is not the case here!)

This year, the kids' baskets will each have:

- one small toy (Lego for LB, doll for Kit)

- one accessory to match their clothes for Mass (tie for LB, headband for Kit)

- a pack of Easter-y stickers

- freeze-dried fruit

- and a few chocolate eggs

There is supposed to be a sacrifice jar on the table, slowly getting filled with black beans throughout Lent so that I can replace it with a jar of jelly beans for Easter, but... I am very tired and forgetful. And the kids keep forgetting about it, too. I bought jelly beans before Lent even started, though, so I suppose we'd better get the jar going. Better late than never?

What are your thoughts on Easter baskets for adults? My parents shared one, which looking back was probably just the most convenient dumping-place for the leftover pieces from each bag of candy—there certainly wasn't anything but candy inside. Matt can't remember what his parents did. I do remember as a kid feeling strongly about the importance of my dad having his own basket, so that he wasn't "taxing" our candy intake. :-) In past years we have done adult baskets as well as kids, but this year I think we'll do one shared parental basket and I don't even know what to put in it... It's not like either of us needs candy. Possibly jerky or coffee for Matt; the only thing I'm likely to want at that point is sleep, and you can't put that in a basket!

(I do not know whether this is relevant to a discussion of Easter baskets for adults, but it just occurred to me to note that we don't "do" the Easter Bunny; the kids know that the baskets are filled by Mom and Dad, and are a fun thing to find on Easter morning, but that they aren't really what Easter is about. Not that we necessarily have any particular problem with the Easter Bunny... it honestly has never been important enough to Matt or me to bother putting thought into whether there was a reason to do/not do it. There are so many other things we are actively doing/making/talking about during Holy Week and Easter! Maybe it would be a thing we'd have to address if our kids were in a traditional school? At this point, I don't think LB or Kit have ever even heard of the Easter Bunny, except possibly in the context of my younger siblings joking about the Easter Bunny wearing bunny boots...)

Assorted things (7QT)

I

Baby has not made an appearance yet; figured I'd better get that one out there first! :-) It's a good thing, because we don't necessarily have a name nailed down yet... or the newborn clothes or other baby things ready. I'm 37.5 weeks now, so that should probably go on the *really does need to be done* list for this weekend.

II

I started seeing a new chiropractor last week, and she's been so helpful: I can actually walk again! I'm definitely still having a hard time, but being physically capable of walking and getting some things done has been good. The kids have also been getting lots of practice helping; with me literally unable to pick things up off the floor, they've learned that they actually can clean up quickly without me doing it with/for them. Two of my sisters have been coming over regularly as well, and their help has been invaluable. I'm so thankful for all of the ways they've helped and let me sit/lay down!

III

School is going really well. We just finished our 27th week today, which doesn't actually mean much since we aren't required to do school for a specific number of days/weeks each year per Alaska homeschooling regulations, but it's nice to have a measure of how long we've been working. We are starting to see the end coming: there are only a few pages left in the handwriting book, three or so chapters in religion, I think five weeks of math... Our grammar/language arts program I expect to carry through the summer, since we started it in January and he's enjoying it so much.

IV

We spent this week in science learning about cheese, and yesterday we made cream cheese out of whole milk and vinegar! It's really closer to ricotta, I think, but it tastes good. And as initially horrifying as it was to see four cups of milk shrink down to just one cup of cheese, when I did the math, making homemade ricotta is still less than half the price of buying ricotta or cream cheese at the store!

And to go with our cheese, my sister and I made our first-ever batch of homemade bagels! We used the recipe from King Arthur Flour, making some plain and some cinnamon raisin, and they came out so well. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but they are exactly the texture and flavor I want from a bagel! And they really weren't that much work; we will definitely be making them again.

V

It's beginning to look and feel a little more spring-like outside, despite the slightly ridiculous amount of snow on the ground right now: 

That would be our deck. The snow is almost up to the top of Kit's head! But it really is feeling springish anyway, because we have so much sunlight—more than 11 hours today! 

VI

Of course they're taking away our lovely morning sunlight this weekend... I'm always so disappointed when we have to change the clocks and suddenly it's dark in the mornings again. I know it won't take long before the sun is up before we are again, but it has been so nice to open the shades in the morning and not have to use the lights! At least our parish doesn't have religious ed this week (the public schools have spring break), so we don't have to get up at feels-like-5:15 for the early Mass on Sunday!

VII

Kit, wearing Matt's ear protection: "You don't hear me, Mama, 'cause I have hearing protections on!"

She is so funny, chattering all the time and telling us stories about what she is doing. Lately she's been pretending that Matt's office area is Nome, because we've been talking about the Iditarod a lot with the kids; she keeps telling me about what she's going to go do in Nome today, or how her baby dolls are waiting in Nome to watch for the sled dogs.

Little Bear signed up for the IditaREAD this year: he picked a musher to race, and then tried to read 998 pages before his musher's team completed the 998-mile race. The race started on Saturday, and he had already passed 1,000 pages by yesterday afternoon... I now understand why my mom never bothered having us sign up for the program! :-) I love that he loves reading so much, but he definitely didn't get as much out of the program as he would have if it had actually been a challenge. He had a lot of fun, though, and we got to practice mental addition of two- and three-digit numbers keeping track of how many pages he had read!

That's seven! And hopefully a somewhat adequate catch-up on what we are up to. For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain't The Lyceum!

Freezer Cooking

I have been intimidated by the idea of "freezer cooking," "batch cooking," whatever you want to call it, for years. It wasn't until I participated in an online roundtable on meal planning last month that I realized something super important: there are different ways of freezer cooking. Maybe this is ridiculously self-evident to most people, but my mental picture of freezer cooking was that you had to dedicate a full weekend (or similar block of time) to cooking all the food in the world, and fill up your freezer with it, and then... I was a little bit foggy on how it was actually helpful, because I think I was picturing freezer meals as being a way to save dinnertime if you weren't able to make whatever you had already planned.

Last assumption first, while there are certainly some things that you can pull out of the freezer and use immediately, that's probably not going to be the main way that freezer cooking is helpful: quickbreads, breakfast cookies, chocolate banana oatmeal fudge bars, yes, but main dishes not so much... For full meals, it's more about having the prep work done ahead of time than about having healthy versions of instant pizzas in the freezer. Having a menu plan is still important—ideally, the freezer meals get built into the menu plan, so that they're written down and I can see on my planner a day ahead that I need to pull whatever it is out of the freezer and let it thaw in the fridge overnight.

Matt and I were talking about this a couple of weeks back, about slow cooker freezer meals specifically; he was confused about how it could possibly be all that helpful to have, say, a pork shoulder frozen with a marinade. "But you still have to cook it all day!" I certainly saw his point, but (as we were actually discussing an upcoming cookbook that I'm excited about on slow cooker/pressure cooker freezer meals) it got me to think through exactly how it would be helpful. Yes, in that case you still have the cooking time of a regular meal, but all of the prep work is done and if you're planning your cooking ahead, there's no last-minute "oh no, the orange juice has been sitting in the fridge too long and has a funny smell so I guess we're making carnitas with grapefruit juice today!" (It's not awful, for the record, but orange is definitely better.) And as we're getting ready to have a newborn in the house, even the 20-minute prep work of making a spice rub, coating the pork, dicing the onion, and making the marinade sounds a whole lot more challenging when I picture trying to do with with a tiny person who wants me to sit on the couch and feed him constantly. So in that case, yes, being able to dump the thawed bag into the slow cooker and turn it on instead of doing that small amount of prep work would be legitimately helpful.

Okay, now back to my first assumption. There certainly are people who do huge batch-cooking marathons and get an entire month's meals into the freezer in one go, and that works for them, and that's great! But there are other people who just make double batches of suppers when they know something freezes well, and stick one batch into the oven/slow cooker and the other into the freezer. Some people mainly freeze breads/sides/snacks, things they can easily use from frozen (or after a quick thaw). And some people just make staples ahead of time, things that can easily be transformed into a variety of meals, like beans, rice, tomato sauce, pesto, cooked meat... 

And any of those methods, or any combination of them, helps to save time and get dinner on the table more smoothly. I've actually been doing a little bit of several of those methods for years without realizing that I was "freezer cooking": sticking leftovers in the freezer when there's enough to serve as another full meal, keeping things like pesto and pureed beets portioned out in the freezer, storing batches of muffins or individually wrapped bars in there to be easily grabbed for quick breakfasts or snacks.

I've been trying to be a little more intentional about it as we prepare for a new baby, though. I don't even remember how I started reading the Thriving Home blog, but our family has enjoyed their recipes (and their "real food meets reality" philosophy) for a while now, and when Polly and Rachel released a cookbook full of freezer meals last fall, I was so excited to pick up a copy. Many recipes from From Freezer to Table have since become favorites in our house—their Killer Carnitas, Peach Baked Oatmeal, and Pesto Feta Tuna Melts all made it onto this week's menu plan! 

And in this last however-many-weeks pre-baby, I cannot tell you how helpful it is to have meal components already in the freezer and easy to assemble! I'm exhausted today, and had been dreading the end-of-the-day "they want to eat again?" time... until I realized that all I have to do is slice bread, pull pesto out of the freezer, and combine tuna with a couple of items from the fridge. I can practically make supper sitting down! Little Bear can peel some carrots for me, and if I have enough energy we can make ranch dip, but if not there's some hummus in the fridge. Easily-assembled suppers are very, very valuable!

Do you use any (or all!) of these methods of freezer cooking, or are there other ways of doing it that I missed here? How do you incorporate cooking ahead into your meal planning?

Instant Pot convert

Confession: for the past several years, I've been ever-so-slightly scornful of the Instant Pot as a, perhaps not silly, but unnecessary extra appliance, a fad that would burn itself out quickly enough.

I was wrong.

This pregnancy has been... not easy. There's nothing seriously wrong with me or the baby; I have chronic loose joints, which during pregnancy makes standing/walking/bending down much harder and more painful than it otherwise would be, and means I tire more easily. I had to stop sitting on the floor months ago, for example, because it was too difficult to stand up and walk again. And now that I'm mid-third-trimester, I am so tired all the time, but that's kind of to be expected.

All that to say, my meal-planning abilities have been lackluster lately. By the time the kids are in bed and the kitchen is clean, and maybe I've even picked up after the two-year-old tornado, I am firmly stuck on the couch until bedtime. Getting chia pudding started in the fridge last night (3 minutes of work max) was an embarrassingly rare feat of breakfast-prep. Pulling meat out of the freezer so it can thaw in the fridge overnight just hasn't been happening. (Though to be honest, I couldn't tell you how much of that is due to being pregnant-hurting-tired and how much is attributable to the meat being in the chest freezer out on the sub-zero deck...) 

And so the Instant Pot has been saving me, over and over again. Oh, the chicken breasts are frozen and it's mid-afternoon? Not a problem. Ground beef is frozen and supper needs to be in the slow cooker in an hour? That's fine. I told Matt we were having moose stroganoff, and accidentally pulled out stew meat instead of steaks? Pressure cooker to the rescue. And the reason I first decided to give it a try: dry, unsoaked beans to cooked in less than an hour! I haven't even found a permanent home for it off the counter yet, because I've been using it almost every day. (And we got an 8 quart, so while it's not too heavy for me to lift, it's certainly heavy enough that I don't want to be hauling it up and down twice each day.)

Even with all of those applications, I would still have said that it was nice to have but not necessary... And then we got home tonight after a long afternoon of appointments and discovered that the pork shoulder I'd had in the slow cooker all afternoon was not done, not even a little bit. It wasn't the first time in the last month that a recipe hasn't gotten done in the called-for length of time in the slow cooker, but the other times were new-to-us recipes, so I figured they just hadn't been written well or I'd made too many "tiny adjustments" to the recipe. Tonight's planned supper was a recipe that I made successfully in the same slow cooker two weeks ago—the only difference was that las time I use high heat instead of low, because I got it started (quite) late. And looking back, all of the failed recipes were supposed to cook on low. So it seems that the low heat function of our slow cooker—which is certainly at least as old as I am—is no longer working properly. I guess it's time to actually read the four or so articles I have bookmarked on how to convert slow cooker recipes for the Instant Pot!

We've loved our ancient slow cooker particularly because it has a dial instead of buttons: with the frequency of power outages this winter, it has been helpful to have one that doesn't reset when it thinks it's been turned off and on again! But I'm also grateful, now that I can't rely on it anymore, that we have a machine that can take its place; it's rare enough for the kids and I to be out of the house for a long span while the slow cooker is on that, at least for now, it shouldn't be a huge deal to go reset the Instant Pot if we lose power while it is running. And we probably have less than three months left of winter, so power outages shouldn't be a regular thing for too much longer.

Do you have an Instant Pot (or other kind of electric pressure cooker)? What's your favorite way to use it? I would love more ideas—I know there are so many more things to do with it than the ones I've tried!