A Little Bit Of Everything

1. Our Daily Tomato Harvest.

Yes,  in January! That is unusual even for Phoenix! Several of our tomato plants survived the frosts (partly thanks to some frost cloth action on my part) and have been producing tomatoes all through winter for us. Slower and smaller than the ones we would get when the nights aren’t quite so cold, but nevertheless an abundance of tomatoes!

 

 

2. New Items In The Store

I have two new items in my Etsy Store.

First of all, canvas #3 in the “Follow The Whispers” series:

 

{Mixed Media Canvas - 8" x 8", stretched canvas.}

The words on the canvas read: Remember who you wanted to be.

 

And here are the little ladies together!

 

 

I also put the “Hello Moment” canvas in the store.

 

{Mixed Media Canvas - 8" x 8", stretched canvas.}

The words on the canvas read: Breathe in. Hello Moment. Breathe out. I am here.

 

3. Craft related money saving tip.

Do you know those awesome Ranger crafting mats that nothing sticks to?

 

 

Yes,  I love to work on those! They just wipe clean, whatever you throw at them.

However, they are usually anywhere around $9- $20 a pop and I use more than one in my office/arts/crafts room, and on more than one table/location. My kids use them, I even use them in the kitchen!

 

Turns out, that these Non-Stick Dehydrator Sheets are EXACTLY the same thing, only you get 5 of them for $10! 

They are square instead of the Ranger rectangular shape, but honestly, I don’t really care! By the way, they stick together really well with some clear packing tape!

 

 

Oh, and Blitsy has everything Martha Stewart for enamel and glass crafts on sale today, if you are stocking up on any of those!

 

 

4. Some in-progress yummy-ness from my studio.

 

 

Have a wonderful day, everyone!

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Inexpensive Solutions To Home Fermentation

We love Kefir at our house! My kids have grown up with milk kefir and they would have it morning, noon and night if it was up to them!

But because I have been off Dairy since earlier this year, I branched out into Water Kefir a while back, as I still wanted to get all those good probiotics! And we have totally fallen in love with Water Kefir!

We all love it and we love experimenting with different flavors, different stages of fizziness, etc.

We generally have our Water Kefir in the evenings with dinner and the kids have become quite the connoisseurs, judging every new flavor as to it’s fizziness, ripeness, overall flavor profile and if we should have it again!

So, after a while of doing water kefir, I started looking into other home fermenting, especially with all the fruit and vegetable abundance summer brings with it!

{From left to right: Water Kefir Lemonade, Grape Water Kefir and in the back in the large bottle is some Blueberry Water Kefir. Then a half gallon jar of Water Kefir in the process of fermenting, two jars of fermenting peppers and other vegetables and a jar of lacto-fermented sauerkraut!}

The internet is full of fermenting recipes, ideas, descriptions of the benefits and last but by no means least, gadgets and contraptions that aid you in proper fermenting. All 0f it of course costs quite a bit of money, which I was not prepared to spend.

When you first start playing with it, you can do it with just regular mason jars, but once you do it on a regular basis, it really helps to have the proper equipment!

So, I went about rigging up my own!

It’s not all that hard. Since I use Mason Jars for just about anything anyway, I am of course using them for fermenting too.

The caps I am about to show you how to make rather quickly and inexpensively, run from $10 to almost double that on the internet and are basically exactly the same.

For my initial set-up I used what I already had on hand. Note that there should be no metal touching fermented food or drinks, so please always choose glass or BPA free plastic lids!

You will need Plastic Lids for Mason Jars or Tattler Lids (make sure they fit your jars - wide mouth or regular,) a 3-piece Airlock, 1/2 inch rubber grommet and a rubber gasket. Unless you’re using the Tattler lids, then you don’t need a gasket as that is already provided. You do however need one of the metal rings that come with a mason jar to tighten the finished lid down.

Since the  plastic lids for the mason jars are rather leaky and not air tight at all, we need to trim the rubber gasket so it fits inside the lid and seals it.

You only need to cut a few millimeters off around the outside, which is easily done with a pair of scissors.

Next you need to use a 1/2 inch spade bit and drill a hole in the middle of your lid.

Once you drilled your hole, place the rubber grommet in the hole and adjust so it sits properly. Next insert the airlock and fit the trimmed rubber gasket - and you’re done!

To use your airlock lid, pull off the little lid off the 3-piece airlock and fill it about 1/3 full of water. Place the lid back on and screw the entire lid on your fermenting jar.

For the Tattler Lids, you do the same thing as above and then tighten down the lid insert with the metal ring provided with your mason jar!

I usually use this lid for my first ferment with the water kefir grains.

Then I remove the floating raisins* (I keep them in a little container in the freezer and use them as probiotic, pre-soaked raisins in baking and smoothies,) strain out the kefir grains and the lemon (I squeeze the juice into the finished water kefir and use the rind like I would any other organic lemon rind.) 

*The raisins are there to feed the kefir grains as well as a good indicator as to when the kefir is done with the first ferment, as they all float to the top (and stay on top) when it’s ready! During fermenting time you often see some being pushed up to the top by the bubbles, but they sink back down to the bottom. Until it’s ready, then they stay on top!

I then bottle our water kefir with a little fruit juice (our favorites so far have been organic grape juice, blackberry, raspberry, pineapple and cranberry) in flip top bottles (check your local wine and beer brewing store for those, they tend to be less expensive locally,) leaving them out on the counter for another day, burping them once.

Then I place the in the refrigerator. We usually drink the water kefir within a day after it has been placed in the refrigerator, even though we have found that some flavors develop better if they are given an additional day in the refrigerator, like the water kefir lemonade and ginger ale!

If you want to be really adventurous, you can also make your own Pickl-It jars. You would be drilling the hole into the glass lid however, which can be a little bit more involved than a simple drilling into a plastic lid. But it’s doable. There are plenty of tutorials about drilling into glass on the internet and once you have done that, you just add the grommet and the 3-piece airlock as above!
I am getting ready to try this soon, as I just stocked up on some of those jars at IKEA! They currently have quite the variety of flip-top bottles and jars!

I will keep you updated on my progress!

Now let’s move on to fermenting vegetables.

In fermenting it is pretty much the most important thing to keep any fruit and vegetables submerged and well below the brine. The vegetables float to the top and anything that peeks out over the brine can grow moldy and spoil your entire jar.

So fermenters usually use weights that keep the food below the brine. For large crocks you can buy ceramic weights, but for the individual jars, you can purchase glass disks that keep your food submerged.

They are however quite expensive and it occurred to me that there must be something less expensive out there that would do the same job and that would be commonly available!

I did find it eventually, in the form of  the dollar store glass candle holders!

Yep, you’ve probably seen them before and they fit into most mason jar openings just right.

The best part? They are $1 for two. So yes, that’s 50 cents instead of $9 + per glass disk!

First, I thought the indentation in the middle might present a problem, but as it turns out, it’s actually a good thing as it makes getting the glass disk out of the jar much easier. You can just grip it from the middle and lift it out!

Just make sure you place the glass candleholder with the hole facing up in your jar and that you don’t have any food in the middle indentation, as that would invite spoilage! Having the brine in there is fine though!

And yes, it has occurred to me too that that cheap dollar store glass is probably made in China and that it may contain lead. So, I consulted my trusty Lead Check before I started using them and I can report that they do NOT contain lead! Yay!

I’ve been collecting a variety of fermenting recipes, which I will be trying. I have collected them here, if you want to follow along and try some of your own!

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Lately ...

Lately, I have been so busy, with so many things. Things I want to share with you. Things that all require at least one post by themselves, yet I never quite get past the beginning, as the next thing demands my attention.

So, as a result I have a flurry of unfinished blog posts, that never quite made it onto my blog.

What kind of things, you ask?

Well, there is

• Gardening in general, gardening in the dessert specifically, my experiences with Square Foot Gardening in the desert summer heat and gardening with children. Permaculture, what and why I am turning our backyard into a veggie garden and all that! Oh, and organic pest control. And building your own raised beds and other structures the cheap and easy way! And what about grow bags and root pouches! Yes,  gardening has taken up a lot of my time of late!
• Then there are the mason jar meals. Tips, tricks, experiences, recipes and other useful things.
• Tying in with both of the above, doing real food, good food, organic food on a budget. And I mean a fairly tight budget.
• I have also dabbled in sausage making of late and have some German/Bavarian recipes to share!
• And since it’s the season of abundance everywhere it isn’t as blisteringly hot as in Phoenix, there is also a lot of processing and canning and preserving going on. Which ties into the gardening and the budget and the organic and real food topics!
• And there’s the bread baking! So many recipes to share, so little time!
• Oh and some more tips and tricks, from money saving recycling ideas, to time saving practices around the house, to some crafty (ad)ventures around the garden and with the kids!
• I have also dabbled a little more in the homemade shampoo and other cosmetics area with great results and I have recipes to share!
• And then there are of course the kiddos. They are on break. And home. And in need of entertainment, learning and activities. Since it’s really hot here, we are mostly confined to the indoors, which always makes for a bit of a challenge!
• Then my husband had a somewhat unexpected health challenge, which involved surgery, hospital, recovery at home and all that good stuff!
• I have also always wanted to share with you some blog posts about mental, emotional and spiritual well-being practices. EFT, Access Bars, Body processes, meditation and so many other things that I practice regularly and like to involve my children in too. Ah, yes, one of these days I will get around to all of that!

So yes, it has been an eventful summer! And for the moment, at least until the kiddos are back in school and we resume some kind of normalcy, the unfinished blog posts probably stay that way!

 

However, I will leave you with a few photos!

 

Some of my pots. They are starting to go somewhat scarce and dormant for the summer. With those it’s not so much a matter of production but sheer survival. However,  if they survive the summer heat, they usually go into a second production cycle after the heat lets up a bit!

 

 

Growing potatoes in grow/root  bags and coffee sacks, filled with mulch! The potatoes you see here were planted at 4 different stages, so the harvest should keep us in potatoes for a few months, without having to store them much (no cellars/basements in Phoenix!)

 

 

Bavarian Leberkaese, which literally translated means Liver Cheese. The funny thing is, it neither has liver nor cheese in it. But it is a very delicious Bavarian sausage!

 

 

I have found some more things that you can grow/re-grow from grocery store produce!

 

 

Mason Jar meals galore!

 

 

 

We scored more inexpensive organic peaches, nectarines and figs and I’m canning and freezing like a champ!

 

 

My kids have been involved in quite a bit of gardening and fruit picking this year! They are really getting into the whole growing stuff! Good thing that I am too!

 

 

Yummy breads coming out of the oven every week!

 

 

 

At a 120 F you have to get a little creative with the shade cloth in order to give your plants at least half a fighting chance! What’s climbing up on the side are sweet potato vines! They LOVE the heat! Did you know that you can eat the leaves of the potato vines? You just sauté  them like spinach leaves.  Oh, and the sweet potatoes are another thing you can grow from store produce! This particular one I grow mainly for slips and the leaves, but I have a couple of other containers that I am growing for the sweet potatoes!

 

 

Field trips and new adventures are a necessity during the long summer break! And so much fun!

 

 

How is your summer going? Are you looking forward to the start of school or are you going to miss the little people being home all the time?

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4 Things Happening Right Now

1. Fresh out of the oven right now! Sicilian No-Knead Sesame Bread, made with whole durum flour! So easy and definitely a family favorite!

 

 

2. Mason Jar lunches are being prepared for next week!

 

 

3. Things are growing in the garden, despite the adverse conditions inherent to the blisteringly hot Phoenix summers, followed by the somewhat more destructive Monsoon storms! The new transplants and seeds for the fall planting season are going in too, but that’s a whole post all by itself!

 

 

4. Figs Galore! Fresh fig abundance has come to our house, thanks to a friend with a very prolific fig tree! Now we are reveling in fresh figs, fig jam, bacon-caramelized onion-fig chutney and homemade fig and coconut ice cream!

 

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Beautifying The Garden - Compost Bin

So, as I’ve been amping up the gardening activities around here in my tiny backyard, the question of a compost heap of course came up. It makes sense to make our own compost, keep the fruit and veggie scraps out of the landfill and generally give the kids a chance to observe the cycle of nature.

However, we are in the middle of a big city, we have a tiny backyard and we don’t really want a stinking heap of all sorts and attract every undesirable critter in the neighborhood!

So, after some extensive research on the art of composting, I felt moderately comfortable  in tackling this task, without the undesirable side-effects.

When I checked out what the city ordinances might be in regards to composting, I found, much to my surprise, that the city actually encourages composting! Not only that, for $5 they offer compost bins, which are essentially cut up trash cans. Since other options for a compost container have been considerably more expensive, I thought using one of those would be a good way to start and take it from there.

 

 

My husband went to the place to pick one up, but as it turns out, the only one that could possibly fit into the trunk of our car, even with a lot of bungee cords, was the most beat up one around. It didn’t even have the lid properly attached - they improvised with a chewed up bit of pvc pipe!

I forgot to take a picture of our bin. In fact I didn’t take any pictures of the entire process, so keen was I to cover the mess up!

It was also very blue, since it had been a recycle bin in it’s former life. Even though the main décor color in my garden is actually blue, I really didn’t want a great blue bin attracting all the focus. Especially as it’s just not great to look at.

It was beat up (literally, like somebody had actually beaten it with chains or something) and even though it was blue, it seemed to have various shades of blue and not in a good way. Some faded, some not, some black stains, some faded white logo printing on it. Just not pretty at all. Not that compost bins have to be pretty, but if you put it in a very small garden, it’s going to be a focal point, even in the very back corner of the garden, behind the raised bed!

So, I had a look around my extensive craft stash and found that I had two cans of brown spray paint for plastics with inbuilt primer (score!) sitting in my cupboard.

And since I didn’t just want to spray the whole thing brown, I also got out some scrap vinyl and cut out a variety of shapes on my silhouette.

That was actually the most time consuming part of the project. Once I had those cut and applied to the trash can, cleaned up the messily drilled holes a little,  it was really fast. Remember, it’s a dry heat around here and at 7 PM we still sport 110 F and up, so things dry really fast.

The trick was definitely light but sweeping spray action and going over everything several times that way. Voila, not a single drip in sight. It helps that the paint was dry practically the minute it hit the can!

I let it dry for another hour or so, just to be sure I hadn’t missed a spot, then I peeled the vinyl off and now we have a Compost Bin worth looking at! It’s not exactly a thing of beauty, it’s still a compost bin, but it has some interest now!  And now all the fading and beat marks add to the interest and texture of the whole thing!

 

 

And now we’re busy filling it all up!

 

 

This is the temporary setup for now, we’ll be swapping out the bottom once we’ve found a suitable piece of scrap wood and some bricks. But for now, we’re using what we had, which happened to be more bright blue. I sense a theme!

 

I got us a bucket with a gamma lid for the kitchen. It’s a generous size, so we don’t have to take it out after every meal preparation and the gamma seal lid prevents odors and fruit flies. So far it has worked out well!

I also stuck instructions as to what can and can’t go in the compost bin on the bucket, so the kids can be reminded (and their dad too!)

 

 

I have plans for a Vermi-Composter, but that has to wait until it is a little cooler, so we don’t fry our little worm friends!

More on that in another post however, since I also combined it with some major garden bling that I am in the last stages of finishing!

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Beautifying The Garden - Easy, Inexpensive Solar Lanterns

It’s summer time and everything moves outside - except for around here, where everything starts to move inside! We do, however, have the privilege to spend most of the rest of the year in lovely temperatures and outside, including the “Winter” when everyone else is holed up!

Just lately, I’ve been gardening a lot, turning much of our unused patio and portions of our yard into planting areas for fruits and vegetables! I have been growing things in the odd container here and there, the last 3 years or so, but I really want to kick this up a notch or three and grow a lot of our own stuff!

We do get a double growing season around here, which is great (Spring and Fall) but this year I am also trying to grow at least some things through the blistering heat. It requires a lot of babying of the plants, especially in the early stages and some creative use of shade clothes and watering techniques.

So far, so good, but with temperatures of 120 F in the forecast, things are getting pretty dicey out there!

Since we can’t be outside much and the kids are of course on summer break, we’ve been making things for the garden inside.

My kids totally delight in rock painting, which we have done several times now.

 

 

 

They love the walk around the neighborhood, hunting for the roundest, smoothest and biggest (or smallest) rocks.

And they love the actual painting - and then the playing with the finished product, as well as placing them all over our garden!

 

And I’ve been busy making other things for the yard, mostly inspired by a variety of pinterest pins I have collected over time,  which I will be sharing with you over the next little while.

The first little project I want to share with you, are quick and easy solar lanterns. Very little effort and a lot of savings by doing it yourself, even if you purchase all the components!

 

 

You will need:

These mini solar stake lights. I purchased 12 and with shipping and tax, they came to $1.80 each. If you can find them at your local Dollar Tree, they’ll be even cheaper!

Mason jars (1 pint, with lids and bands)

Wire

 

I got the  Heritage Collection Pint Jars at Target for $10.99. As  I wanted blue lamps, that worked out pretty well. If you can’t find them at Target anymore, they are also available here.

You can also do it with different lights of course, but these happen to be the exact size of the mason jar band, meaning you just need to wedge them in the band, with no glue or anything, screw them on tight and you are done!

If it seems a little loose, you can  put a ring of hot glue around the inside, where the band meets the solar light. If you get a lot of rain where you live, you may want to do that anyway, so the rain won’t fill up your jar over time.

Mine worked out just perfectly, so no glue was needed!

I put the band (minus the lid) on the jar and screwed it on loosely.

 

 

Then I took the stake off the solar light and dropped the top in through the band.

 

 

 

 

Then I tightened the band and that was it! The light settled into a nice and tight spot. But not so tight that I couldn’t get it out again!

 

 

Then I just made a little hanger with some wire by wrapping it around the lip of the jar a couple of times, wrapping it around the side and up to be joined into a hoop.

 

 

 

 

And that’s it!

 

 

Twelve solar lanterns for $3.70 each. Not bad, considering that the solar lids alone usually retail for $11 and up ... each! And then you still have to provide the jar, which would add another dollar or so to the final cost!

I put mine on Shepherd’s Hook Stakes all over the garden! Not only do they look lovely, they have functionality since we have a lot of raised beds and containers all over the garden now and it helps to know where the corners are, when it gets dark!

 

Other notes:

• Of course you can also use these without the hanger for table decoration or just by placing the jars all around your garden.

• Or you can use the  more inexpensive clear mason jars, which also make a beautiful light.

• Or you could color your own mason jars by thinning out glass paint with some nail polish remover!  Just pour it inside your mason jar (band and lid taken off!) and swirl it all around to cover the inside as evenly as possible. When you get to the top rim, don’t be afraid to help it along with your finger a little. It will even out once it dries. Once your have coverage, turn the jar upside down on a kitchen towel and let the rest of the pain drip out.  Once it stops dripping, remove the paper towel/scrap paper, give the jars a quick twist on a clean kitchen towel to remove any glue residue from the top rim and allow the jar to dry completely.          Don’t just leave it to drip and dry in the same spot though, as you may find yourself peeling and scraping stuck kitchen towel off!

• There are several tutorials all over the internet which use mod podge or Elmer’s glue and food color to tint glass. Those methods work great, however, if these solar lanterns are going outside, that method won’t work. It flakes in the sun and it washes off in the rain, even when applied to the inside of the jar!

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