My little man!

Nicholas was quite excited that Grandpa showed him this big, dead tree that needed chopped down.  Of course Grandpa could have grabbed the chainsaw and had it down in no time flat, but how proud Nicholas was to be able to use an ax and do it all by himself!  I think Grandpa thought it was going to take a little longer to get as far as he did!

Later that day, Nicholas also got to try driving the Ranger for the first time!  He was quite the little man!  Not sure who was prouder - him or me!  :)

It's crazy to have such mixed feelings about loving to see them grow up and prove themselves but wanting them to stay little!  :(

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Groundbreaking!

Driving up the driveway to Grandpa's house today we saw that they had finally broken ground for his new house!  We are all pretty excited to see things progress, although Nicholas is a bit sad to see some of our trees go...  My little conservationist.  :)

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Vegan Block Cheese Success!

We've been making a vegan cheese sauce for quite a long time now that we really like, but we have never tried our hand at making something more solid.  So when my SIL pinned this recipe on Pinterest, it looked easy enough to try - so we did!  And it was a success!  Here it is!

Vegan Block Cheese

• 1 Tbsp agar powder (I use Frontier brand)
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 cup raw cashews
• 1 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp sesame oil
• 2 Tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• anything you'd like to add to flavor the cheese - spices, chopped jalapeños, etc.

Lightly grease a small bowl or whatever container you'd like to shape your cheese in.

Grind cashews to a fine powder using food processor. Add all but the first two ingredients and process until smooth.

Bring agar and water to a boil in saucepan. Continue to boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and add mixture from food processor. Mix until smooth and creamy. Pour mixture into greased bowl and allow to cool. Move to fridge and allow to chill.

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The first time I made this, I followed these directions exactly, but used my Vitamix instead of a food processor.  The Vitamix was rather hard to get clean - the cashew mix was very sticky.  So, the next time I made it, instead of adding the cashew mix to the pot, I added the water/agar mix to the vitamin and whizzed it up in there and poured it out into the container.  Both worked fine.  Next time I might try the food processor and see how that goes.  I'm not sure it would get the cashews as fine as the Vitamix, though.





And LOOK!!  It slices AND shreds!!!

We've had this cheese with pizza, quesadillas and grilled cheese - all with great success!  I don't think it melts quite as nicely as Daiya, but the family has all called this the best vegan cheese they've ever had, so I'm happy with that!  I know exactly what goes in it - and it's all good!





More cheese?  Sure, why not!?  It's good for you!!  :)

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Planting garlic!

We had so much garlic leftover from our CSA this year that I decided we should try to stick it in the ground and see if we could grow more!   The kids helped me pull apart the heads of garlic into cloves, being careful not to peel them.  Then we stuck them in a little trench in the garden pointy side up and covered them up and added compost.

Grandpa helped us with this project - he dug the trenches for us and then went to fetch some straw for us to put on top to protect it this winter.

Come spring, we sure hope to see some little garlic scapes poking up!  Grow garlic, grow!

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Not a simple spider!

Now I really am all about living in the country, don't get me wrong.  I don't, however, enjoy certain aspects of it - like snakes and bugs and spiders!  But I get along.  Until this day...

We have this really cool tool that we all love.  I love it because it keeps my distance from any bug or spider that I need to dispose of.  The boys love it because they feel like hunters with a big gun!   It's called a BugZooka.




So, when Michael was cleaning out our coat closet and said he found a spider, I simply told him to grab the BugZooka and get it - which he did.

Two days later, Nicholas picked up the BugZooka and was looking in the capture tube because, well, he just likes bugs and likes to see what was caught.  And when he said, "Mommy, did you know there's a black widow in here?!," I was dearly hoping he was wrong!  But looking through the tube, this is what I saw!

I found some old bug spray in the garage and sprayed it into the tube.  When we were very sure that it was dead, we finally took it out to get a little better look at it.  ICK.  

Now I'm just pretending that there are no others like it anywhere in our vicinity - much less our house!  We will all be pretty careful to shake out our coats and shoes when we get them out of that closet!!

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Garden prepping

We are so excited to start thinking about our garden for next year!  There's much work to be done as we have broken ground for a brand new garden space in a field.  Long ago (way before hubby's grandfather bought the property initially) this area used to be used for tomato farming.  Currently, it looks like a rock farm!  Grandpa (Eric's father) rototilled about a 100 x 100 foot space a few months ago, so the rocks were "ripe" and ready for picking!  We all got out there and picked up load after load and threw them in the little dump trailer.  Even Emma really enjoyed tossing rocks!

The best part, of course, was getting to ride in the Ranger to go dump each load!  Sometimes the big boys rode along, and other times they rode their dirt bikes along side.  

After we had picked up the majority of rocks, hubby rototilled again.

And then we ran around and picked up even more rocks!  Even Grandpa was out helping.  :)

When all was said and done, we stood back and enjoyed the view of our new garden space.  Dreams of row after row of scrumptious veggies danced in my head!  There's a lot of work to be done in the months ahead, but the reward will be worth it! 

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Serious Applesauce making!

After my first little dabble in applesauce making, I could barely wait to dive in deeper!   So off we went to a local farm.  While I would much prefer to buy totally organic, I settled this time for a farm that practices Integrated Pest Management.  They were referred to us by a local organic restaurant that trusts their practices.  Not my ideal, but I absolutely couldn't wait to try this!   While they didn't have the orchard open that day for picking from the trees, the kids still enjoyed picking out of the bins and filling up our boxes via their bags.  We ended up with four bushels of apples - three for us and one for my friend who was going to share in this experience.  :)

My father-in-law was kind enough to dig out the old galvanized tin buckets on stands from the barn for me.  I gave them a good washing and then filled them up with water and lots of apple cider vinegar for a nice bath for the apples.  The boys enjoyed agitating them.  They are good at agitating.  Lots of practice.  ;)

Next, we cut up the apples into about eighths and threw them into big pots.  The big boys helped with this step, too.

There's my bestie stirring up her brew.  :)

And then we ladled the soft apples into the mill to turn it into applesauce!  We tried two methods - the first was using an old food mill that my FIL got out for us.  It worked quite nicely - especially since one of the boys was the one cranking the handle!   The other option we used was an attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer - that certainly made things go quickly and I'm not sure I'd like to be without it for doing these large batches!

Here are the attachments I used:

   

We only made it through two bushels of apples.  I'm sure we'll get much better the more we do it!  :)

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Spur-of-the-moment Applesauce!

While looking through my fridge this morning I found a bag of pears that we had forgotten about.  They weren't bad, but they weren't pretty anymore - you know the type.  Basically, my kids were going to look at them and refuse to eat them as they were.  So, I thought I'd just cut them up and make a sauce of some sort out of them.  Well, my mother-in-law happened to be at our house that day and she offered to cut them up for me.  As she was cutting them up, I thought about the apples that were in the fridge and asked if she would mind doing some of those as well.  I got more and more excited about this, knowing that she had made applesauce before, and I decided to get a whole bag of apples out.  I used my apple peeler/corer/slicer and we ended up with a pot full of cut apples and pears.  :)

We added just about an inch of water to the pot and cooked them down for about 30 minutes.  When it was done, I put the apples into the VitaMix and blended them up.

Voila!  Easy peasy applesauce!  I am totally inspired to dive into this a little further!  I can't wait to go get some apples (in quantity!)!  What's funny is that I don't even like applesauce.  But my kids do, and I love knowing exactly what's going into it (as well as what's not!).  They loved it with some cinnamon sprinkled on top.   We use the Vietnamese Cinnamon from Frontier and love it - it's a great quality cinnamon!

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Homeschool at the beach!

I would be hard-pressed to declare my number one favorite reason to homeschool, but I can guarantee that right up at the top would have to be the ability to take our homeschooling anywhere!  How awesome is it to be able to hit the beach when the weather is still lovely, yet pay low-season rates because everyone else is back in school?!

That's what we did for a couple weeks in September this year (again).  And to make it even sweeter, we joined in with another homeschooling family (who we adore!) and had a grand old time!  It was so neat to see the kids jump right into their school work each morning to get it done so that they could have the day to themselves.  Sometimes they even got up before the grownups!

Beyond the normal curriculum, another thing that I love about homeschooling is the opportunities to learn things beyond textbooks.  Real life learning has proven to be so valuable for our children!  I am always amazed at the things that they retain and tell me about far beyond when we actually learned it.   Who knew that fishing could provide such a vast learning experience?

We had such a lot of fun on the fishing pier in Sandbridge.  The kids were so eager to learn so much, they were very good about talking to the "real" fishermen on the pier.  They asked them so many questions and learned so much about feeding habits, weather patterns, effects of hurricanes on the beach, fishing tips and techniques, fish species - the list goes on.  They even got to pet a shark that another fisherman had caught!  I had so many nice comments and compliments from tough looking fishermen!  ;)

Of course the kids got to enjoy all sorts of other beach/vacation fun, too.  Digging in the sand was a daily event - I've never seen such big holes in the beach!  Boogie boarding was another favorite.  But most of all, we all really enjoyed spending time with our friends.  Never mind that we had plenty of bedrooms to spread out a little, the kids loved piling in one room!  

Proudest mommy moment at the beach?  At family worship one night, the kids told us how they stayed up really late the night before (as if that were news to us! ha!) - it's what they were talking about all night that brought a tear to our eyes.  They were discussing heaven with each other - what it was going to be like and what their favorite things were going to be.  Those are the moments when you feel like maybe, just maybe, you're doing something right.  <3

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Green Eggs!

It seems I'm constantly looking for new ways to get veggies into our kids.  Don't get me wrong, they are really good eaters.  But we still get stuck in ruts and it feels like we eat the same things over and over again.  Trying new things is always a challenge - with four kids, it's hard to please everyone!

Getting greens into my daughter especially has always been a challenge - you could hide a teeny tiny piece of something green in a bite and she would find it in her mouth!  It's like a little green filter hides in there.  There are a couple of exceptions to that, namely broccoli and spinach, and so I try to find ways to exploit them.   *giggle*

I don't remember where the initial idea came from, but I decided one day to try to use the novelty of old Dr. Seuss and see if I could sneak some greens in.  Of course, we don't eat ham, so we just had them with ketchup!  ;)

It really couldn't be easier to make green eggs!  I cracked a dozen organic eggs and put them in my Vitamix.  Then I dumped a bunch of spinach on top!  I didn't really measure it - I just pretty much filled the container to the top - but I didn't push it down and pack it in, just threw it in.  Then, starting on low and working up to full speed, I blended it for about a minute.  

After they were blended, I just scrambled them like normal - in some coconut oil.  The mixture was a little frothy, but it cooked up just fine!  And once again, this creation was Kid Approved!!  Surprisingly, I didn't feel like you got much taste of spinach!  Even the kids said so.  

If you happen to be thinking, "Hmmm, sounds like garlic would be a nice addition to those eggs," let me just tell you that I had those same thoughts - and, errr, it wasn't such a good idea.  At least not the way I did it!  I threw a (way too large) handful of raw garlic cloves on top of the spinach.  Yeah, probably not the brightest thing to do, but anyway, it sounded good!  haha.  It was horribly overpowering and no one liked them!  Not even me!  LOL  Trust me on this.  Maybe roasting it first would be good, and not adding so much of it.  But for now, we'll stick to just the spinach.  :)

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Homemade Flax Milk

I first discovered the simplicity and cost effectiveness of making our own flax milk about six months ago.  I'm not sure why we haven't made it since, other than the extreme convenience of buying cases of rice milk at Costco!  For around $14 we would get 12 quarts of organic rice milk.  That's a pretty good deal in my opinion.  Well, it was anyway...

Fast forward to today when *gasp* we opened our last carton of rice milk.  Oh, the tragedy!  Now that we are in the country, it takes a little more doing to get to Costco.  Hubby could have stopped on the way home, but he was already running late and I opted to have us be able to see him a little longer before the kids went to bed.  So, I decided to pull the old flax milk trick out of my hat and try it again.  

All that you need is a high-powered blender (VitaMix is our blender of choice), flax seeds (I have used both dark and light flax seeds) and your sweetener of choice.  We chose vanilla flavored stevia drops from SweetLeaf.  Additionally, you'll need something to strain your milk after it's blended.  We use something we brought back from Thailand - a Thai tea strainer.  You could use any muslin strainer or even a stocking - you just want it to be a fine way of filtering as the particles will be very small that you want to take out of your liquid.  

Homemade Flax Milk

Ingredients:

6 cups water

1/4 cup organic flax seeds

15 drops stevia

Directions:

Put all ingredients into your blender.  Blend at high speed for about 2 minutes.  Strain into a container.  Store in the refrigerator.  Enjoy the savings!!

  

Before we even strained it, N wanted to taste it!  I got a quick approval and was begged to allow them to have cereal for dinner!  How could I say no?  ;)   

Look how nice that milk looks pouring out of that pitcher.  And just look at that face of approval!

And I approve of the savings!!  I paid just over $2.50 for a pound of organic flax seeds.  There are approximately 3.5 cups of flax seeds in a pound.  That's 14 batches of milk for just -  let's call it $3.00 to include the stevia drops!  Yes, $3.00 for about 21 quarts of milk!  Costco can't touch that!  :)

I also love that drinking flax milk helps up our intake of Omega-3 essential fatty acids!  As {trying-real-hard-to-be}vegans, that's important to us!  :)

Let me know if you try making your own!

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