SouleMama

making butter

Our produce share for the week. Such bounty and color at this point in the season - it's beautiful. And so bittersweet, too, as I know it's a sign of the end. Among our greens and oranges and reds - in the center - is some raw milk. Ezra, in particular, is a fan of the idea of raw milk, as much as I'm in love with the idea of knowing the name of the cow from which our milk comes. This milk comes from Dulsie, the Mama cow we see each week. We talk a lot on the ride to and fro the farm about Dulsie and the milk she gives. And all the many things that her milk becomes.

After we made cheese at the farm earlier in the summer, Ezra was most interested in making some butter. From Dulsie's milk. And finally - finally, today we did.

We got some instructions from the farm, but checked here online too. Really, though, it was pretty simple - skim the cream off the top, shake (a lot), drain, shake (a lot more), rinse, form into a shape. So simple that I've been wondering all day how it is that I've made it 30 years in this life without making my own butter. I'm so glad we did so today.

Once we started and I knew how much Ezra was loving the whole thing, I realized we needed something really special to put this butter upon. So out to our blueberry bushes we went, and returned in to the kitchen for some blueberry muffin making.

So good. So very, very good. So good that it prompted one of my near-daily visits to the real estate websites to search for Maine farms for sale (I can't help myself). Nothing quite right for us, though - not yet, anyway. And so, for the time being, I'll gladly take our local milk when we can get it, make it into whatever my little ones prefer (yogurt next?), and treasure the whole thing. And of course, give our thanks to Dulsie, the cow.

at the farm

Much of the way we measure and talk about the passage of time with our little ones is by seasons - it seems so much more tangible to them than calendar months and years. They're fully aware of how humid it feels, or how blue the blueberries are now, or how the evenings might feel cooler. The fact that it's just turned 'August'? That doesn't mean anything. The fact that the mosquitoes are gone? That does. A different measure of time.

And so it was that on the drive to the farm this week, Ezra slowly put it together that the season is changing a tiny bit - that the harvest is fully in swing; that most of the things planted in the spring are coming to fruition; and that yes - this means that vegetable gardening will soon pause for the winter and eventually even, we will stop going to the farm to pick up our weekly CSA share.

He was crushed. It hadn't occurred to me that he thought we would be going there once a week forever. He was eventually comforted by the repeated counting out of how many more weeks we likely have before the season is over. And since it's more than 'five' - his standard for a lot - we're okay for now. And then, there's next season to look forward to, when he'll be old enough to attend farm camp here with his brother - just one fall and winter between that exciting time for him.

In past years, we've always been part of a CSA where we share pick up responsibilities with neighboring families - easing the driving burden on us all. But this year - with the decision to let our own vegetable garden go for the year - we joined a CSA just a bit closer that we could pick up at and visit each week. While considering the driving impact that decision entails, it feels more than balanced out by what we've gained. Each and every week - in a comfortable rhythm - we make our small trek for food. The kids gather the canvas bags, we walk the path to the farm - stopping along the way to say hello to the cow, the pigs, the ducks, the chicks, the bunnies, and whatever butterflies may be in the flower garden, and we journey in to get our vegetables. There's much routine we have in the measuring (which miss Adelaide loves), the counting (Calvin's expertise), and the selection of *just* the right eggs (always Ezra's job) - all very important details.

There are very few outings (for me, anyway) that are easy with three young children and just one adult. The beach, the woods, and the farm - those are easy, and fun, and wonderful. The hardest part is always the leaving. No one ever wants to leave.

Thankfully, the leaving is always softened by the anticipation of getting our food home...and on the table.

Dinner from the farm? One of those measures of the season we're so very grateful for.

what I love :: rhubarb + strawberries

Yummy rhubarb from our local CSA.

+ Strawberries from yesterday's pick-your-own adventure.

= the perfect 6am pre-breakfast muffin snack (vintage strawberry tablecloth makes them taste even better).

Strawberry - Rhubarb Muffins

1.5 cups unbleached flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp salt
1.5 tsp baking soda

1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 stick melted butter
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp grated orange rind (optional, but oh-so-good)

1 cup chopped rhubarb
1 cup sliced strawberries

Mix dry in a large bowl. Mix wet separately. Add wet to dry. Stir in berries and rhubarb. Spoon into greased muffin pan. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Devour.

what I love :: summer food

It can't be found locally yet, and not even organically...but I couldn't resist a little dive into the season with corn on the cob, cooked on the grill. With pasta salad, and grilled burgers (for the meat eaters among us). Eaten outside, naturally. Where else can you eat your dinner in between swings on the swingset and cartwheels on the grass? It's one of the only times that our busy little babes partake in the kind of leisurely hour-long meal celebration I always dreamed about having with my own family. I love it.

And in just a couple of weeks, our first CSA share of the season will be ready, and then come the berries, and the rhubarb, and the watermelon and.....Oh my....

Quiet Cooking

I don't think I need to tell you how much I love the busy, bustle, energy of family life, and particuarly around family mealtime. I really do. I feel blessed to have it, and I truly enjoy it - the mess, the baking, the craziness, the creativity, the laughter. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

But you know what else I enjoy? QUIET.

Yesterday, Steve arrived home from work to find us at the end of the driveway, at the ready for a hand off - the kids ready and buckled into their car seats, the car full of pajamas, a picnic dinner, and all that they would need for a playground/picnic/bedtime driving adventure with Papa. Goodbye! Goodbye! Be on your merry way, my loves {right now, please!}!

And back I went into the house to revel in it's silence. And to clean it without someone behind me 'helping'. And to cook without the flour ending up on the floor (okay, only a little). Quiet cooking? Oh, I really, really like that. Instead of madly scrambling to just 'get things made' before they end up on the floor, or interrupted to help settle a disagreement in another room...I can leisurely take my time baking and cooking, and actually thinking about what I'm doing. It even allows for a bit of creativity, and like sewing I do think, the results of that are always unique, and a little bit of a surprise.

Blueberry-Banana Cake

wet:
3 egg whites
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup sour cream
1 ripe banana, mashed

dry:
1 cup unbleached white flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1 cup blueberries
1 tbsp lemon zest

Combine all wet ingredients in a large bowl. In a seperate bowl, sift dry ingredients. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix until combined. Fold in the blueberries and lemon zest, being careful not to overmix. Bake in a greased 8" pan, at 350 for 30 minutes (or until a toothpick or knife inserted in center come out clean). Let cool in pan, and remove. Extra yummy with cream cheese frosting (I like to add a little blueberry juice to this).

It was yummy last night at 11pm with three dear friends gathered here for dinner, craft, laughter, and wine.  And I must say that it tasted just as yummy at 7am this morning as a breakfast surprise with my three loves, while we compared stories of last night's adventures. Ah, the Quiet and the Noise.

a report from the mountains

With just a few days to go until Solstice (when we exchange our gifts) and then Christmas right behind (when there will be lots of gathering and hosting with family), I'm well past the point of having enough time to clean up between projects. I just keep on rolling right into the next, adding the fabric to the pile, and the pattern pieces to the growing fire hazard (folding that paper is 90% of the reason I usually don't use patterns. So lazy am I.). And the floor? Oh gosh. The floor is so bad that I have to wear shoes to prevent any workplace injury. Please tell me I'm not the only one whose been hit by the messy wrath of the holiday beast?

The mountains of mess aren't limited to my studio. The kitchen? It's an ice skating rink with the now-permanent layer of flour from our daily cookie baking. Sometimes, the sifting around here gets a little out of control. Ahem.

While I may be walking around with my clipboard (with my excel spreadsheet of lists. I'm not kidding, and stop laughing!) and weaving my way through the chaos, there's mountains of joy in this kind of busyness,too. Out of these piles, and stacks and messes are the handmade gifts that we're so excited to give (and receive). And yummy treats that we're devouring and ready to share with friends. And a home that feels cozy, and ready for hosting and nestling for that long winter's nap (c'mon, snow!). It certainly is a fun kind of mess. But man, as soon as the peace of January comes, I'm just itching to fold that fabric. Well, you know what I mean.

warm coffee is very very very important...

...which is why this french press coffee cozy made it's way to the top of my crafting list this weekend (in spite of all the other projects with deadlines). This has been on my mind to make one since I saw mav's in action last month, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it really does work to keep the coffee warm. That's a very very good thing. SO...here's what I did: I pieced a few of my favorite blue vintage kitchen-ey fabrics into two squares big enough to cover the press, quilted each of those to two layers of cotton batting, sewed those two pieces together, turned it right side out and then used a wide bias tape to 'finish' the bottom.

And of course, it needed a matching oven mitt (based on the Denyse Schmidt Quilts Too Hot To Handle Oven Mitt).

care for some tea?

My grandmother, Meme, was a dreamer, and a master of pretend play. The reality of her life was that she grew up very poor during the depression, in a large family, and saw much more than her fair share of tragedy. It's precisely that, I'm sure, that made her the dreamer she was. I adored being with her and all the dreaming we would do together-- we had secret names for each other (what? you think I'm telling? never!); had grand adventures to many places (including the 'seaside cruise' we went on in her backyard in the summer--which amounted to laying in lawn chairs, running a looooong extension cord from the house to prop a fan in front of us, closing our eyes and 'listening' to the boats in the harbor... All of this in the rural mountains of Maine, of course.); we had a tea party every day I was there; and of course, went on many a 'treasure hunt' at yard sales and junk shops.  On the summer of my 10th birthday, she decided our mission would be to find a real (as in, not a child's) tea set. Because every 10 year old girl needs her own tea set, right? Naturally. After a few days of hunting around, I came upon the tea set above at a shop, and I was sure that this was THE ONE. I think it surprised her--certainly it wasn't the 'fine china' that she had in mind, or that I was usually drawn to (we're talking about a child who already had a bavarian china collection at this point!), but - never one to get in the way of a child's dream - she bought this one for me anyway.

Mostly, it's sat in a box in some basement or another for the past 20 years. I've never been so sure that I love it, and haven't really had a place to keep it out anyway. I dug it up yesterday, as we're getting ready for Ezra's third birthday in two weeks and he wants a 'tea party'. I hadn't really looked at it in about 5 years and was surprised when I opened the box. Surprised that I think I kind of like it again. Or at the least, am very interested in figuring out what my 10 year old self loved about it. Today's goal is to find a spot for it so I can ponder just that. And so I can have a tea party with my little ones, perhaps on a breezy seaside cruise.

Turkey Help

I've got a riddle that needs solving! Here goes:

We ended up with two turkeys on Thanksgiving (long story.), and popped one into our standup freezer while it was still semi-frozen (this part I'm pretty sure is "safe"). Now....to defrost the thing, Martha says to put it in the refrigerator until defrosted--approximately 5 hours per pound. I've got a 30 pound turkey (yeah, I know), which would be 150 hours...or 6 days! But then, that doesn't seem safe, now does it? That some parts of it will be defrosted for 6 whole days before cooking? This site I found says that an uncooked turkey should not be kept in the refrigerator for more than 4 days.

So, what to do? Does this even make sense to anyone? Welcoming all varieties of advice--I'll go with the consensus. ;)

Banana Blueberry Bread - Yum!

It's full-on blueberry season here in Maine, or atleast at the bushes in our backyard. We're thankfully having a wonderful crop of blueberries this year--I can't believe how much we've frozen already, plus all the pies and other treats we're eating each day. YUM!!!

Banana Blueberry Bread

1 c. all purpose flour
1/2 c. whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 c. cornmeal
1/3 c. sugar
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder

3 tbsp canola oil
2 large eggs, beaten
1 c. blueberries
3 mashed, very ripe bananas

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. Mix second list of ingredients in a seperate bowl. Add wet to dry, stirring just until moist. Using a 8x4in loaf pan (coated with cooking spray), cook for one hour at 350 degrees, or until pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool bread in pan for 10 minutes, then remove and cool completely on wire rack. Eat up.