The Devil You Say

The devil is alive and well...right inside these little boxes.

Growing a Garden part 1

As I have mentioned a time or two before, I have gotten hooked on gardening. My first semi-successful attempt was last year, and it was a little bitty baby garden. It was a bit of therapy for me during a really dark time in my life. My garden brought me out into the sunlight every day. I would soak up the warmth of the sun as I worked in the dirt and gave new life to tiny seeds and seedlings. It helped me. a. lot.

Gardening was so good for my spirit, that we decided to grow it a little bigger for this year. Our kids enjoy working it with us, especially Boo and The Boy. They all love it when we prepare meals from food that we have grown ourselves. It is funny to see how much they like to monitor the growth and production from our little plot. It must be good for them too. The initial plan was to double it in size. I think the footprint that was made today ended up being about triple what it was last spring.

The plan that we had was to build up the area where the garden will sit, and to enclose it, as we have wild animals that enjoy our produce as much as we do. Since I have a weak back, we knew I would not be able to help build the structure that our plot would require. It is times like these that I am glad my teenage daughter has amazing guy friends! We recruited two of them (my favorite teenage boys in the entire world, I might add) to help Chris today. Neither one of them asked what we needed when asked to come help...they just said sure thing, and were here ALL DAY today. On a Saturday. And they worked their butts off. And asked if we need them to come back to help again. That's good kids. We did pay them. Oh, and I did cook lunch for them too.

Asian honey glazed baked chicken...yum!

Chris and the boys made a lot of headway today on the garden space. It looks awesome!

One load of dirt is not gonna cut it.

Getting started...

Unloading rail ties from the trailer.
I told those kids to bring their muscles!
They called to tell me that they are sore tonight :-)

Dixie loves the new place to explore!

 Hungry guys coming in for food...and a heater!

After lunch, the enclosure goes up!

Oh my stars! I am drooling over this already!

No thumbs were injured in the building of this structure

 How much help are these little girls?

My honey! I love this pic :-)

Checking where the ground is level with the base of the enclosure

 Cat roping was the half-time entertainment for the day.

(Aren't my red rubber boots just presh?)

A long day's work 

These girls were no help at all.

SAHM (only for the summer :-( )

When the girls were little, I was a stay-at-home-mom. I loved it. EVERY MINUTE. They were my life, and that is how I wanted it! I would give anything to be able to stay home again. To have dinner prepared more often than not; to have after school snacks ready; to be able to pick them up in the car rider line; to take them lunch on occasion; to not worry about who would get them where they need to go after school or to appointments; to be able to take care of wifely things that get neglected now; to be involved in community things and school groups; get my drift???

As it is now, we eat out during the school year more than we are at home for meals; the girls ride the bus or stay after school (with hopes that someone is able to bring them a snack); they eat sack lunches every day; doctor and dental appointments send me in a tizzy because I have a hard time finding someone to get them there for me when I can't get away from work (it doesn't help that I work 30 minutes out of town); the house stays a wreck except for the day after the cleaning lady comes (so one or two days every other week); I never get to stop by to visit Hubby at work or have lunch with him; PTO? What's that? I have hinted and asked, but no luck. Anywho...

So summertime is a tease for this SAHM wanna-be. I stay busy doing things with the kids and trying to get as many appointments in as possible so that I don't have to worry about them during the school year. For the month of July, we have Loo and The Boy, so that makes it extra fun. We have been trying to cook new foods, so each kiddo gets to choose a meal a week. Some of the things we have tried are...

French dip roll ups and poutine (steak fries drenched in gravy and topped with cheese)

Sweet and spicy bacon wrapped chicken with twice baked potatoes

Loaded baked potato pancakes

Bacon Ranch Pasta Salad (served with burgers)

3 Cheese Chicken Penne, Green Bean Casserole, and Baked Zucchini Chips

Summertime pretend SAHM time also lets me get a lot of this done...

And it's never far from my thoughts that my time as a SAHM is just a dream and I have to get back to this...

Today I Made...

SALSA!!! From my garden veggies. Oh my. We all love salsa, and homemade is the absolute best! This is what I did:

• Bought some supplies. If you haven't seen the new Ball Freezer Jars, you better run right to Wal-Mart (or just click here) and grab some. They are the bomb-diggity! So is the canning kit that I snagged for a mere $6.97! It had that awesome jar grabber thingy, a plastic funnel, a magnetic wand for grabbing those pesky jar flats and lids, and another little gizmo that checks for headspace and releases bubbles in the jar. Steal of a deal, I'd say!

• Laid out said supplies. They took up three counter tops, so this is just a peek at the organized mess!

• Prepared the jars and lids in boiling water. 

• Blanched 22 small to medium sized tomatoes so that they would be easy to peel. The skins pop in the boiling water, then they peel right away...no knife necessary! I love the bright color that they turn after blanching too... 

• While the tomatoes were blanching, Boo was chopping up the other goodies...2 small onions, 4 jalepeno peppers (also from my garden), and a lime. Well, the lime wasn't chopped, but it was hand-juiced. 

• After peeling and coring the blanched tomatoes, I added them to the onion, pepper, and lime juice in the blender. I spiced it up with half a package of salsa mix, 2 tsp cilantro, 4 Tbsp chopped garlic, and a quarter cup of sugar. It was too much for one blender, so we did it in two batches. 

• The salsa could be considered finished at this point, if you just wanted to put it in a container in the fridge or freezer...but I wanted to can it, so it needed to be boiled together for a minute or so. It looked nasty like tomato soup after boiling! 

• Finally, the fun part...ladling into jars and processing in a boiling water bath. I had no idea how much salsa I would have, so I prepared all of my jars. Only half were needed, but hey, that's 5 pints of homemade, homegrown salsa!!! Can't beat it and it is beautiful in the jars!!! 

• Last step...MAKE LABELS! I adore my label maker. It is very handy in the kitchen, and I am thinking I could use one at school.