Category Archives: Cooking/Food

Totally Awesome Oatmeal

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So, a couple days ago a friend of mine on facebook posted the article 15 Things White Girls Love to do on Facebook.

#7. Take picture of undeserving food with a picture. (featuring a relatively gruesome bowl of oatmeal). Well, not to be outdone I had to take a picture of a bowl of oatmeal BUT this oatmeal is TOTALLY deserving of a picture. It’s so much more than just oatmeal!

TADA!

Mum’s Totally Awesome Amazing Oatmeal (Morgaine named it….I take no credit)

The trick to this oatmeal is to use old fashioned large flaked organic oats (you don’t want any of that icky quick oat mush). Instead of cooking the oats in water we use a 50/50 mix of almond milk and water (if I happen to have carnation evaporated milk I add a little, too). Almond flakes and raisins give it texture. Just a tad of brown sugar is added for sweetness and, of course, lots and lots of cinnamon. This is so yummy and nutritionally complete that even my husband says that after a long day of work he’d be happy to eat it as a meal.

Sooooooooo yummy! Who says oatmeal has to be boring?

Mama’s Organization Bonanza – The Spice Shelf

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I was speaking to my Mike last week about Goal Planning Monday (my weekly meme) and telling him what my goals for the week were. He told me what I really should to is organize one area/part of my life each week so that it better than the week before. That seemed like a swell idea to me and I’ve decided to blog about the experience. If you are in an organizing kind of mood, I invite you to join me and leave a comment in this thread (or any other Mama’s Organizing Bonanza thread) so that we can see your good work!

So last week my goal was my spice shelf. With two young budding chefs, one with a lot of potential and another one who tries hard, helping in the kitchen things tend to get thrown back into the cupboards hilter skilter. Everyone likes to book and no one likes to pick up so my cupboard usually ends up looking something like this….

You cannot read any labels and things have the look of being thrown in without much care. I pride myself on my cooking/baking and it is time that my working area reflects that so given 20 minutes or so I was about to transform my shelves into something MUCH nicer.

By layering peices of wood I was able to create a tiered “shelf” so that all my spice labels can be seen. I can see everything that is in the cupboard and nothing is pushed in behind anything else. It is functional and I hope that it stays that way.

If you feel inspired to do some cleaning and organizing, too, I’d love for you to add a link in the comment section of  this post so that we can all see what you are doing, too!

Blueberries Memories

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I’ve been moaning and groaning about not having any inspiration to write. Nothing worth mentioning happens. Everything has been written before. You know? What’s the point? Well, way back eons ago I starting this blog so I could write so taking the bull by the horns again, I’m just jumping in. Looking for inspiration I found Creative Writing Prompts for Writers (a little bit of a redundant title, no?) and have decided to give it a go as the questions on Plinky are not terribly inspiring in my honest opinion.

Do an acrostic poem with the word BLUEBERRIES written down the side of your paper. Make a reference to something that is shade of blue in four of the lines.

Now, I let it be known that I DO NOT write poetry but thought that today’s blueberry poetry prompt would be more challenging than just writing a memory of blueberries. When I think of blueberry picking with my Mum who passed away when I was 12 years old and how we’d sit at the table in comfortable silence cleaning the berries after we’d get home……


Blueberry picking. Memories found.
Light from the clear sky above,
Undoing the package held tight in my mind.
Every moment is precious indeed,
Because this won’t always be.
Everything changes.
Roads diverge, people pass on.
Rivers of memories of days long ago.
Instances of joy, the wind in the trees,
Ever remind me of you.
Stains of blue on my hands as they were at the table with you.

One of my first times blueberry picking, of many, I’m sure.

Hydroponics – The Set Up

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I know that I’ve promised you this post on our hydroponic set up for a while but I logged in yesterday to see that the draft I thought I had written up had somehow disappeared so I’m beginning again! Please know that we don’t really have a clue what we are doing so follow out methods at your own risk, you have been warned!

What you need (for deep water culture method):

  • 20 liter rubbermaid tub (ideally with an opaque lid)
  • Spray paint (black works best)
  • spring water (municipal tap water has chemicals added that plants just don’t like)
  • aquarium air pump and opaque tubing (to prevent the growth of algae)
  • oxygen rock
  • seedlings (we started in paper towels)
  • yogurt containers
  • perlite/vermeculite
  • drill and bits

The basic requirements for hydroponic growing

First thing you are going to need to do if your container is not opaque is paint it with black paint. You are also going to want to let this air for a few days if you plan on putting your hydroponic system in a closed in area, such a a small green house. We nearly killed out tomato seedlings with the fumes.

You’ll want to very carefully plant your seedling into a perlite mixture contained in your yogurt cartons (the leaves will be too small at this point to be able to suspend the roots directly into the water so we stabilized our plants in a perlite mixture (you can use sand or gravel but perlite is very light and the roots are easily able to grow in this medium)). You’ll then want to drill holes into the cover of your container that are just the right size to fit your yogurt containers. The nice thing about these is that the ledge will keep them from falling into the system so you don’t have to worry about creating any kind of system for the containers to hang on. They’ll fit just perfectly.

Ruadhan demonstrating how nicely the yogurt container fit in our system.

You’ll also drill a hole just the right size to fit your tubing into. You want to keep all your holes are small as possible and you to not want light getting into the water of your system as that we cause algae to grow. Thread the tubing through the hole and attach it to the oxygen rock at one end and the aquarium pump at the other.

Now all that is left to do is add water and your nutrient solution. We are currently using an all purpose mixture as we are in Cape Breton and no one has heard off the ideal concentration for hydroponics. We are also adding Epsom salts to the water and are on a hunt for calcium nitrate (which we also cannot find in Cape Breton). Our plants seem to mostly be growing though not near as quickly as we were promised in all the hydroponic websites we were visiting. We are a ways away from eating a salad (though we could manage a sandwich or two right now!) If you can get to a hydroponics supply shop I highly recommend that you do so. Add the water, turn on your pump and put your seedlings into their new home and you are all set.

Nice and bubbly…you want this so that your roots are oxygenated and do not rot.

We grew our seedlings for about a month is this system and over the past weekend we’ve transplanted them into their final growing spots (I’ll blog about that soon…I’m just waiting for my plants to come back to life before I lead you astray).

Lettuce just before final transplanting.

Despite the slowness of the process (not the right nutrients and lack of sun to blame), this has been an interesting experience for us and we hope to continue to grow our food like this for years to come! I hope you’ll continue to check back to see how it’s going for us (and maybe give it a try for yourselves….it isn’t hard and great science experienment for you homeschoolers out there!)

Hydroponic Gardening – Germination

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We don’t really have a clue what we are doing, but we’ve decided to give hydroponic gardening a go. The thought of fresh from the garden lettuce and spinach, year round, was just too tempting. I plan on documenting our journey so that firstly, we can learn from the experience and second, hopefully you can learn something, too.

This week’s topic is seed germination. We decided to go the paper towel route. Basically we sprayed down some non-bleached paper towels with water and laid down our seeds (spinach and lettuce) and folder the paper towel back over the seeds. We wrapped the towels in paper to keep the humidity inside and three days later we took a peak to find this….

Spinach (Day 3)

As the the plants sprouted and their heads came out of the seeds we folded our paper towel into quarters lengthwise and lined up our little plant with the roots in the paper towel and the little head out. We then rolled the towel up jelly roll style and placed it in a little container of nutrient rich solution (we are currently going the commercial plant food root…next year, if we get good, maybe we’ll figure out the organic method).

Day 3 (lettuce from seed)

1 week (lettuce)

10 days (lettuce)

Our largest plants are about to find their way into the hydroponic system that we are setting up using yogurt containers, a rubbermaid storage box, an air pump and an oxygen stone. I will post more about our set up in the next week or so. Our little seedlings have already started a good root system so now it is time to move on and see if we can get our wee ones to grow.

Make us proud, little ones…..make us proud!

Friday Fave Five – March 25th, 2011

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It’s time for Friday Fave Five again. Please be sure to hop over to Living to Tell the Story to share your blessings and joys from the week.

1. Reading aloud to the kids in the in middle of the day. We used to read aloud a lot when we were using Sonlight (before wee baby) but we’d kind of given up on it and instead read mostly at night. Unfortunately, wee boy us usually exhausted at the children’s bedtime so reading had become more of a shout over the whining baby experience than something enjoyable. Early this week, I decided that we need to start reading in the day and it has been a lot of fun. We are currently reading Ida Early Comes Over the Mountain. What a character she is!

2. Being the type of Mum who serves her kids homemade cookies and milk on a blustery spring (?) morning. It makes me feel like a decent housewife and the kid’s (and Daddy) love it. Recipe will follow soon for my very own spicy ginger cookies. I’ve been working on it all week (so, yes, we’ve had LOTS of cookies).


3. Sewing. It’s not my forté but there’s something quite soothing about it.

4. The fact that my hubby is in the kitchen whipping up bread pudding right this minute. He’s been craving it and I have to say that the particular recipe that he chose sounds yummy. Yes, as always, I am blessed to have a hubby that likes to cook from time to time. You have to love Daderday!

5. Seeds, dirt and a wee mini greenhouse. I hope to get my garden started. I love making things grow so I hope to have lots of success this year. I haven’t done so well with starting from seeds in the past but there’s always hope and I’m looking forward to trying again. My goal is to be able to eventually grow everything from seeds I’ve saved from previous years. We’re also looking at hydroponics and aeroponics so that will be a learning experience for us as well and maybe we’ll be able to grow some things year round.

Revisting my Gardens

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Well, spring is in the air (or well, kind of in the air) and while it will be nearly another three months before we’ll safely be able to plant seedlings in our gardens I’m already beginning the thing about what we’ll be growing this year. Last year was the first time that we did raised bed square foot gardening and it was a learning experience for us.

Our humble little garden, mid growing season, last year.

This season after two years of growing vegetables at home, we need to make some changes. We haven’t saved a penny, yet, from our own gardening adventures and unfortunately we had a fair amount of waste as well. Here are some things I plan to be mindful of this year.

1. Grow things that grow well in the area. Well, according to everyone we spoke to, the things to stick to are root vegetables but we did not find this to be the case. We had more success with tomatoes, green peppers, and our greens. Beets did not grow at all and we only have very mediocre success with onions and carrots. Our first year with potatoes was very sad indeed. We will not try these vegetables again this year. We can easily get them locally at a fair price without using the space in our gardens on things that would grow better for us.Check your local farmers market and if you have limited space in your garden grow the things that grow best in your area and buy the the more finicky things from a local farmer.

2. Plant things early in the season that have a short growing season. We will grow bush beans again this year and will plant them in early June so that when they are done producing we can take out the plants and start another set. Last year we did this but we started the second set a little later in the year so they didn’t produce as much at they would have just a couple weeks earlier. We’ll also grow radishes. You can’t beat a 30 day growing period.  If you have a long growing season take advantage of it by growing quick growing vegetables two or three times!

3. Grow things that you’ll eat. I had visions of the kids eating Tiny Tim tomatoes by the handful but that didn’t really happen. Tiny Tims aren’t as cute at little grape tomatoes and somewhat feel like eating a big tomato and the kids just weren’t into them. If we can get little cherry tomatoes I might give them a go but for the most part I thing we’ll stick with Scotia and Roma tomatoes. They were good in sandwiches and we’re easy to can for the winter. We also tried red cabbage but I couldn’t get over the cabbage worms sharing with us and found they had way too much of an earthy taste for my liking. We ate two and despite how long they can be stored, I recently tossed the others that were on their last legs. Cucumbers, zucchini, and peppers are all also favorites in the house and can all be canned for the winter so we’ll stick to these plants. I vow to actually use the green tomatoes that didn’t get a chance to ripen this year as well!

4. Don’t over estimate your needs. We did this we spinach and chard and I swear we had greens coming out of our ears all summer (and fall, we picked the last chard out of the snow in November). The spinach unfortunately went to seed because we just couldn’t keep up with it. We’ll plant about half as much as we did last year and still have more than plenty, I think. I also planted 16 squares of different herbs and only use about half on  them on a regular basis. A lot will grow back this year but some will not. I’m think it may have been a good idea to have the herbs in an inside kitchen garden and this is something we may attempt this year.

5. Start plants with a long growing season inside (especially if you live in an area with a short growing season). You’ll maximize your yield this way. It’s a whole other learning process but it is really worth it when you eat the produce that you started right from seed. It’s even better once you start keeping you seeds from the previous year. A full cycle. Beautiful.

6. Try something new. You never know what might grow if you give it a chance. Last year we tried corn that we were given. It didn’t grow, but you never know. We were pleasantly surprised but how much our tomatoes ripened last year when we were told not to even attempt them in Cape Breton. This year we’ll be putting up some chicken wire for plants to grow on and we’ll try peas and other varieties of beans.

7. Have fun. It’s a learning experience. Don’t stress over your garden. Get the kids involved. Get messy. ENJOY!

This post was written for The Christian Home blog carnival. Be sure to visit to read this week’s edition and get inspiration from other Christian homemakers.

A-Z of Gratefulness: Day 6

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~Fresh Food~

We love to eat in this house and we try to prepare almost everything from scratch so I am very thankful for fresh food. I’m shocked at the cost of our food here in Nova Scotia but the alternative of feeding the kids junk food isn’t at all appealing. For a couple of weeks we’ve been eating less on the healthful side. Not garbage, but lots of bread and pasta and finally yesterday we made it to the store for fruits and meats So yummy and good, I have to say. I cannot wait until I can get into the garden to start growing my own veggies again soon. You cannot beat fresh and local!

I am grateful that my children always have enough to eat and that we can provide nourishing meals for them on a daily basis. I hope that when they grow up they will remember the care and love that went into the meals that were prepared for them. It is one of my gifts to my sweet children and I’m happy to have quality ingredients to use when so much of the world (and even local families) go without….

Liam’s Pizza Pictures

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Well, is it cheating to say that I am not going to blog every day of the week and then direct you to my son’s blog where he posted about a pizza we made a few days ago? He took all the pictures himself and I think he did a mighty fine job and I know he’d love to get a comment or two if someone wanted to stop by. He has lots of things to blog about but, you know, at seven, he’s not as “famous” of a blogger as his Mama (his words, NOT mine *lol*) so he sometimes wonders if he should write or not.

It would be a seven year old’s dream to wake up to a comment or two so be sure to check out Liam’s Pizza Pictures!

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On another note….over the course of the next couple of weeks my blog will be undergoing some cosmetic work to make it more my own so please bare with me! It might end up looking kind of weird some of the time but I hope to come up with something that is really all my own as oppose to someone else’s theme.