Market day!

We went to the market today after a bit of a hiatus. I still need to process all of our cherries (we picked 6.5 lbs last week), I still need to do something with the basil in the yard, and the lettuce is out of control. We are behind on EVERYTHING lately- we were away, I have been soo tired and lazy summer days are getting the best of us.

Today we went to market with $80. We came home with $12. Here's what we bought and what we will do with it.

Two loaves of bread (one from Bread Alone, one from All you Knead)

1 croissant (All you Knead)

1 pretzel (All you Knead)

6 pints of blueberries (Madura Farms jam and vodka and cordial)

1 quart sugar snap peas (I don't remember what farm, but we are going to freeze these)

1 quart peas (same farm and going to freeze these as well)

1/2 pint raspberries (from Evelyn's farm- we are going to eat these outright)

1 pint Black currants (unknown farm- going to make cordial and vodka)

4 apples (Breezy Hill Orchards)

1 pint of apple juice

I have to get on top of the jamming, our freezer is running of space!

Market Day!

This weekend the Coldspring Market was outdoors. So many more vendors! There was wine, an herbalist who had tinctures and honey and maple syrup,and there were a few plant people.

I had $100 dollars to spend, and I spent $160... I must remember that if it is a meat week I have to have more than usual. At least until we can go berry picking for canning. The majority of our money went to strawberries this week, and I literally bought ALL the strawberries that the seller had, so I don't mind paying full price for the flat.

$75 to Madura Farms

1 flat of strawberries- 8 quarts

1 lb mushrooms

1/2 lb of spinach

4 tomatoes

$5.50 to All You Knead

oat loaf

$20 to Full Moon Farms

2 lbs chop meat

1 lb stew meat

$60 to the winery (on debit card)

4 bottles of wine

we will eat: flat iron steak (from last meat day) with rice and asparagus (from last week)

scallops over spinach salad

chili and french fries

tortellini and salad

Friday we leave on a camping trip so we'll not get to the market this week.

It was a canning weekend- how could it not be with 8 quarts of strawberries sitting on the table? Stay tuned to see what we did with those!

rhuboozey and a dandyfail

Yay! First canning weekend of the Spring.

When we were at farm school last week we ate some dandelion jello. The instructor could not find any powdered pectin so just mixed in some gelatin to make a lovely yellow snack for the kids. We tried to make the dandelion jelly at home, but it did not set up right.

But how lovely does this giant cup of dandelion heads look?

The recipe is this: 4 cups flowers (just the yellow bits)

3 cups of water

4 cups sugar

juice of one lemon *

1 box powdered pectin

Put the dandelion blossoms (seriously it took all of 5 minutes to collect enough from our unsprayed yard, it took another 15 to make sure I got all the green off them) and water into pan on high. Bring to boil then simmer for 10 minutes. Pour through strainer with cheesecloth (or a jelly bag) pressing to get as much liquid as you can out. Strain again and discard blossoms. Add lemon juice, pectin and sugar to dandy water in pan. Bring to rolling boil and stir until sugar is dissolved, boil hard for 2 minutes. Pour hot jelly into hot jars and process for 10 minutes.

*there is lots of talk around about bottle vs fresh lemon in canning. I err on the side of caution being a new canner and use bottled because of the assured acidity. so bottled is about 2tbls. per this recipe

As I said we had some set issues. I have yet to make a great jelly. But we ate this over vanilla ice cream and it was delish. It is very honey like and I bet if eatedn regularly would have the same medicinal properties of honey in terms of warding off seasonal, localized allergies...

The rhubarb jam of last year (really was it april that I canned it?!) never really set right so I scraped it in the canning plans this year. Last year I ended up boozing up every thing boozeable. The basic recipe for that was "pour some everclear (you know that ultra overproofed lighterfluid like vodka) over berries. add some sugar. let sit." This year I decided to get classy and used this recipe for a nice cordial/simple syrup beverage that can be added to anything.

Rhubarb Cordial

13 good sized stalks of rhubarb

2 ish cups of sugar

1/2 pint water

strainer and cheesecloth

Chop up your rhubarb and add it to a non-reactive pot with the water.

Simmer until the rhubarb if soft and mushy whilst sterilizing your cheesecloth/jellybag in another pot of water. Put the cheesecloth in strainer over bowl. Pour rhubarb mush water into and let sit over night.

I strained again the next day to ensure a nice clear product.

Once strained add rhubarb liquid and sugar to taste (i used about 2 cups) and bring to boil. Boil one minute. Pour hot liquid into hot, sterile jars (leaving 1/2 inch headspace) and process for 10 minutes.

I got 5 and 1/2 jelly jars out of this recipe and have been enjoying it poured into icey cold water. Can't wait to use it as a drink mix!

Market Day

I took my poison ivied self to the Cold Spring Market this morning armed with $140. Man oh man was it packed. Where were these people during the winter? Especially the annoying ones who were pushy as they picked over the asparagus lamenting over how they "can't even stand to buy from california anymore". Really? These are the people who give the local foods folk a bad rap. It is all fine and good to support your farmers in the spring time bounty, but where were you in the winter when the SAME farmers were coming to market each week? Mental note, get to the market earlier next week....

Anyway this week I bought $126 worth of food (give or take some change):

$50 for Madura Farms (though it should have been slightly more than 50)

1 early spring garlic

3 cukes

1 pint tomatoes

4 beautiful purpley tomatoes

2 lbs greens

1ish lbs portobello mushrooms

1 lb asparagus

2 or so lbs rhubarb

$25 to Block Factory Tamales

3 black bean tamales

3 pulled pork tamales

$12 to the flower guys

1 pot basil

1 pot rosemary

1 pot some edible flower whose name I can't remember

$5.50 to All you Knead bakery

1 oat loaf

$33 ish to Pura Vida Fisheries

2 lbs scallops

This week we will can up those rhubarb into pie filling or booze and can the asparagus into dillygus pickles

We will eat: pasta with spring garlic, scallops and mushrooms

beef ribs with asparagus and rice

asparagus, garlic, mushroom risotto and salad

tamales over rice

burgers and fries and salad

Market Day

Cold Spring Market is getting bigger as the weeks go by, the weather getting warmer brings out more shoppers and more vendors...Today the 3 Chicks Sugar Shack were there. I should have bought a maple cupcake, but instead I bought a quart of syrup and a bourbon barrel matured syrup to send to my army brother. I just think a pig roast in the desert needs bourbon maple syrup...I have a feeling I will be purchasing some more for myself..My goodness I like living in Maple country....

Anyway an even 100 dollars will buy:

1.5 lbs of scallops

1 oat loaf

4 rolls

2 lamb spring rolls

2 black bean chili tamales from Block Factory Tamales

1 lb or so of mushrooms

1 lb or so of spinach

7 brussel sprouts- i dont know if we like brussels so i am going to try them out

4 onions

1 spring garlic

1 qt Maple Syrup

8 oz Bourbon Syrup

The big ticket items were the syrups and the scallops. I think though that we can stretch the syrup to last quite some time and the scallops get stretched over two meals..

The menu this week:

Saturday: Burgers (bought beef last week in beacon) spinach sweet potato fries

Sunday: I am going to the Bay Ridge St. Paddy's Day parade

Monday: Roast chicken with brussel sprouts and rice

Tuesday: chicken potpie

Wednesday: mushroom risotto with scallops and spinach

Thursday: Winter carrot and ginger ravioli (Bongo and Capacci Pasta from Beacon Market) with vegetable fried rice

Friday: black bean vegetarian chili tamales and assorted leftovers

This week's Homestead Revival post got me thinking we are doing ok preparedness wise. We are already thinking about ways to stock up on food without hoarding it, we already buy our staples in bulk (well as bulk as we can get without real storage) and we constantly replenish our food items. The next paycheck I think I am going to invest in some sprouting kits, because I find we are spending lots of money on greens in the wintertime. I could just as easily grow the microgreens myself. I really count our local eating as part of our preparedness. I think that by knowing who the local farmers are we are one step ahead. Our bread people grind their own flour, something that to me is useful to know in case I ever make that leap into locally sourcing our grains. We are starting small. This is our first year in the house, first year of the garden so there is a lot of trial and error that is going into preparedness. We also don't have much money to spare for things, so I am going to be looking into how to become prepared for anything on very little money. It's a whole switch of lifestyle to become self sufficient and we are taking baby steps.

"This week, for the Preparedness Challenge, I planned the garden more. I really looked at what we spend money on, what we eat and what we can store. I started putting away money for a pressure canner (the plan is use the change jar for preparedness savings) and I placed an order for 2 rain barrels through the County Extension office (the Cornell cooperative extension). I also noticed that the local outdoor store is having a sale, so I will go over there today to see what we can afford right now."

Hope for the best Prepare for the worst

Some of you might know I married a crazy person. Well crazy in the sense that he really does believe that 2012 is the end. I believe some history channel Nostradamus who-ha on repeat while he was out of work is to blame; or maybe I just never knew about his particular brand of crazy until 6 years into our relationship...Anyway part of his rationale for moving up to Beacon was that it would be easier to be prepared for the worst here. And now I am calling him on the crazy. I am taking him seriously and forcing us all to be prepared. There is a sustainable edge to this preparedness too- it sits right in line with my own feelings about being able to support ourselves.

So when a blogger I follow posted this it seemed like just the kick in the pants we needed. And it was something that the hubby could get behind as well. All that is going on in the world today makes me feel like I want to have enough in my home to help others, not be a hindrance if anything catastrophic were to happen here in the US. I am not a religious person in many ways but this post hit me in a weird way. It really did make me stop and think.

And so we prepare. We have much to do to even become slightly prepared- I don't even know that we have a full first aid kit anywhere in the house (we have bits and pieces of a few what can I say toddler boys go through lots of band aids) and I while I have no plans for building a full on panic room complete with a year's supply of grain, I do plan on creating a pantry that we can live out of in a worst case scenario. For us this means having actual storage for our bulk flour, sugar, rice (staples already being bought in bulk), canning and drying more staples (maybe less spicy tomato jelly and more dried apples) and saving up for an extra freezer (something that was a thought anyway). In addition getting the basics in survival together- batteries, flashlights, sleeping bags for everyone, a camp stove, a winter tent, matches and flint, water or some sort of filter bottles.

So "This week, for the Preparedness Challenge, I dug out a nice patch of grass in order to plant veggies."

Works in Progress

Today I have no photos because I have been lazy...I had a few starts and stops on some knitting projects this week that caused me to rip out A LOT of progress...But I did finish another blanket bunny and a little diaper bag pouch for a friend who just had a baby, and I picked out a pattern for another friend who is picking up her adopted son next week. So I count myself semi-productive.

Oh and I ordered yarn for a few upcoming projects, and I started to dig out the garden.

Something that I've been thinking about lately is where do I want to go with my crafting. Do I want it to remain a hobby? Do I want to invest more time and money into it to build a business? Do I want to use it as a further measure of our sustainability? Do I want to use it to help others in need? And on and on the questions swirl in my head. I am using Lent to fuel a habit of knitting for charity. I am making 40 of the blanket bunnies for an as yet unnamed charity (any suggestions are welcome).

I'd also like to use my momentum to start knitting a wardrobe. For MYSELF. Sure the kids are little and it would be quick to make them things (and I will make them stuff along the way) but they grow so fast that by the time I finish a sweater for them it does not fit. Plus how long will it be considered cool for them to wear handknits? How long will they want "mommy mittens" etc? So I am going to knit for myself. I am a weird shape and clothes shopping gives me hives. I keep seeing knits in stores and I find myself mumbling "they want that much? I could knit it for less" and so I am going to. I have a few sweaters in mind and a very ambitious dress so far in my head as starting points.

The garden planning is in the works still. It is really hard since I have never seen our backyard in the spring or summer. I don't really know where the sun is, or how the trees from the church will affect us. Our neighbor tells me that berries are a good idea as they grow wild in these parts, and that a little apple tree will work as well. So that's good since I bought berry bushes and an apple tree... Right now I am more concerned with how much space we have. It seems like a lot because both me and the hubby are used to postage stamp sized yards, but the reality is there is not a whole lot of space for a garden, for a sitting area, for the kids to run around. I really need to rethink trellising and what veg crops we have space for.

Going to the Market

Ahhh St. Patrick's Day (week)- an annual rite of spring that brings a flurry of parade going, bar hopping, cleaning and tons of eating. I am sad to say we have not been to any parades in our new home yet; even with Joe dancing we didn't now schedules before making other plans. Next year we will be more prepared. Both boys are at grandma's this weekend so the hubby and I can go on the Pub Crawl around town...But first the market!

$75 at Coldspring Market:

2lbs scallops

1 challah

1 oat loaf

1.5 lbs portobello mushrooms

1 lb mixed greens

8 potatoes

4 carrots

2 parsnips

2 onions

10 apples

3 lamb rolls

My GOD I am sooo tired of carrots and potatoes. I am dreaming of asparagus and ramps and sweet spring carrots and fennel. Where are the spring time veggies. Seriously the days are supposed to be getting brighter not bleaker in the food dept....

this week we are eating:

Sunday: Flank Steak and mushroom risotto

Monday: leftovers and salads and some sort of bean soup- maybe lentil?

Tuesday: Not Tabbouleh- basically tabbouleh without parsley and mint but with whatever veg are laying around. And whatever soup is leftover

Wednesday: Corned beef and potatoes (the corned beef is not local as the meat guys were not at market when I thought they would be in order for me to corn it myself)

Thursday: Annual Connolly's Lunch and NYC Parade- so more corned beef and street pretzels and more corned beef and beer

Friday: Spinach Pasta with scallops and mushrooms

Saturday: leftovers

Going to the Market

This weekend Joe got to go to Grandma's...We had two success poops without prompting...sure we had a few accidents but I am taking what I an get. We also were doing our taxes so we all went...Anyway, the master gardeners from Cornell were at the farmers market this weekend, they were doing seed starting in paper pots, soil testing and just giving out general advice. These ladies were WONDERFUL. They had so much knowledge in their heads that it was astounding, and they were genuinely interested to hear about what we were planning. They tested soil from two of our potential growing spots. Guess what? We have clay in the backyard..not so surprising since our end of Beacon was where bricks came from (huge brick manufacturer right down the road once upon a time) but the pH is great for veg, and the side of the house has not as much clay and will be perfect for our blueberries! The ladies were also able to tell me how to play with the pH to make it ideal and when to start putting things in up here. So word of advice? If you need help with a garden contact your local County Extension office (and be aware it may not be in your county)

So armed with 100 bucks this week I bought:

10 apples

1lb tricolor pasta

1lb spinach pasta

10 oz Japanese style ginger dressing

1.5 lbs portobello mushrooms

1 lb kale

4 sweet potatoes

2 heads garlic

3 onions

3 cukes

1 pint tomatoes

2 loaves oat bread

1 loaf ciabatta (for a potluck)

.25 lbs Toussaint cheese (also for potluck)

4 lamb spring rolls

1 jar of hand cream (for a gift for friend)

1 crochet market bag (because my bag got too small for everything- total impulse)

Lent starts this week!

sunday: baked ziti (made with last week's leftover sauce and in our freezer already)

monday: porkchops and applesauce and greenbeans

tuesday: pancakes and cake (it is Shrove Tuesday after all)

wed: winter veg chili

thursday: leftover chili with meat added in

friday: pizza

Going to the Market

Everyone is home this weekend. It is hard to have the two kids and the husband home on the weekends. That sounds awful, I know. BUT it is hard, the husband wakes up at 3 am everyday to go to work, he gets home in time for dinner (by 4:30 he is in the house) and quiet time and then bed. He is asleep on the couch by about 8pm; usually just after Joe stops fussing in bed and I return to the land of adults. So yeah we don't spend all that much time together lately. I look forward to the weekends, thinking I can have some time by myself, some time with everyone as a family but the husband looks forward to the weekend because he thinks it means he can work on various things at the house. It causes us all to be snippy. I don't like it.

But anyway Joe and I went to the coldspring market this week armed with $50. We bought:

2 loaves of bread

4 lamb spring rolls

5 sweet potatoes

2 cucumbers

just about 2 lbs of greens

a little more than a pound of mushrooms

1 lb of spinach pasta

4 apples

1 giant cookie

This week's menu (we never had the stuffed flank steak last week)

Saturday: meatloaf with mashed sweet potatoes and salad

Sunday: leftovers or cottage pie

Monday: pasta with salad

Tuesday: crockpot chili with rice

Wednesday: leftover chili (I will be out with friends so the boys are on their own)

Thursday: roast chicken

Friday: chicken pot pie

Saturday: we are going to grandma's to do our taxes so dinner for me and the hubby will probably be movie theater popcorn

Going to the Market

This week Jude once again went to Grandma's. I got to go to the Coldspring Market by myself on saturday. I had big plans. Honey, and Soap, and Bread and Cheese...You see we paid all the bills on time this month (!) and there was actually some money left over to buy things! Things like a nice dinner out (ok we went to the local Mexican place YUM!) and a new knitting pattern and MEAT!

So armed with 95 bucks I hit the market, intent on buying soap and honey in addition to food. But the Meat folks (Full Moon Farm ) were there and I never got past their table...

So what will 92 dollars get you at the Cold Spring Market?

1 chicken

1 flank steak

1 package of 5 pork chops

2 lbs of carrots

1 lb of baby portabello mushrooms

5 sweet potatoes

1 pint cherry tomatoes

4 onions

a good bit of mixed greens

It is nice to have the freezer stocked again. But it means I have to bake bread this week

The menu this week is:

Monday: Spinach lasagna

Tuesday: leftover lasagna with salad and garlic bread

Wednesday: Crockpot ham with applesauce glaze and mashed maple sweet potatoes

Thursday: leftover ham?

Friday: pizza or calzones- depends on how much of the sauce is left from monday...

Saturday: stuffed flank steak

Market Sunday

Jude was at grandma's without us this weekend. We are trying something a little torturous with Joe in terms of potty training. He has it pretty much down for peeing; he FINALLY will just go on his own (though he still needs the reminder if he is playing) but the poop has been a fight from the beginning. He just refuses to go on the toilet. He would rather go into a corner somewhere. And I don't mean that he just stands in the corner and goes in his underwear, though he does do this about 70% of the time, I mean he uses various corners of our home as poop receptacles.....

Anyway Grandma decided that she could not handle both boys so she requested only one be send for Grandma weekends. Don't even get me started on how I feel about this new arrangement. So to make the toilet pooping more attractive it was suggested that Joe not be able to go to Grandma's until he goes on the toilet. I am not sure how I feel about this new route we are taking. It feel like punishment rather then reward because Jude got to go. It feels like using his love of Grandma weekends against him. But I will say that 5 minutes after Jude left, Joe was happily sitting on the couch eating pizza; remarking "We cant do this if the BABY is here..."

It was really nice to only have the one kid the whole weekend. So nice that we felt guilty about it. We were able to just enjoy the moments, instead of making sure the boys were not killing each other, or making a mess of the house we just cleaned etc. The Hubby worked on Saturday so Joe and I made valentines, we went to the movies, we built a train at Lowes. All things that are pretty near impossible with an 18 month old in tow...We went to the Beacon Farmer's Market and bought the following :

a 5 lb chicken

Apples

Pears

Green Beans

Bread

Marshmallows

Donuts

Coconut Macaroons

Hazelnut Hearts

The chicken was 27 bucks. I don't know if we can sustain farmer's market meat eating for the long haul, particularly over the winter months when vegetables are in short supply. It's hard to eat vegetarian when the only veg that are available are carrots and potatoes. And although I would like to lose some weight I dont think starvation is the way to do it...

The Dinner Menu this week:

Monday: Valentine's day feast! Heart shaped pizza and chocolate cake

Tuesday: crockpot pot roast with carrots, onions and potatoes (the last of our little harvest)

Wednesday: lamb shanks with spinach and rice

Thursday: eggy pie (quiche without the creme)

Friday: leftovers

Saturday: baked ziti

short and sweet

40 bucks this week bought:

8 apples

8 carrots

1 lb green beans

3 cider donuts

3 croissants

1 sausage pepper cheese pocket

2 lamb spring rolls

1 lb of coffee

6 orange madeleines

I dont know what we are eating this week. We will be spending a portion of it in Queens attending a funeral.

Saturday Market

After spending a good portion of saturday hanging on various railings around the house, knocking icicles off the gutters with hockey sticks, Joe and I headed to the market.

We spent $40 this week on

3/4 of a lb baby spinach

1 lb of carrots

2 loaves of bread

4 lamb spring rolls

2 lbs of clams

2 lbs of mussels

6 sweet potatoes

1 ice pop

Then we went to the regular grocery store (Price Chopper) where we spent $90 on:

gallon of milk

18 eggs

4lbs kidney beans

4 lbs brown rice

4 boxes of pasta

8 tortillas

1 lb mozzarella cheese

1 package of shredded jack cheese

2 avocados

1 bunch basil

1 box of Kix

2 lbs of stew meat

6 oranges

1 bunch bananas

2 lbs of bacon

mayo

peanut butter

We will eat:

saturday: we had spring rolls for lunch

dinner: rice and beans beef burritos with avocado and cheese

sunday: lunch leftover rice and beans

dinner: flank steak with seafood stuffing and spinach

monday: lunch: pb&j

dinner: leftover steak

tuesday: lunch: black bean soup

dinner: black bean burgers with sweet potato fries

wednesday lunch: leftovers

dinner: goulash over rice

thursday lunch: pb&j

dinner: leftovers or pasta with bacon and beans

friday: lunch: leftovers

dinner: pizza

Farmer's Market Saturday

We went to the Cold Spring Farmer's Market today. I think this is going to be our regular saturday market as it has my favorites from the Beacon Market as well as a rotating schedule of meats. I knew that we had to buy meat this week so I went to the market anticipating spending a small fortune, and having to be creative about our menu this week. I took $50 bucks with me and whatever singles were in my wallet. We spend $55.50.

We bought:

1 chicken

1 lb ground beef

1.5 lbs of flank steak

1.5 lbs potatoes

1 loaf of bread

1 giant cookie (Joe was with me so this was his treat)

(we still have a few carrots and a rutabaga in the pantry from last week)

The meat ate over 40 bucks which is insane. I don't know how people afford organic, grassfed, free range meat every week from their grocery store. We did not buy all that much and it used up 90% of our budget. The bread used up most of the rest. There are two bread options at this market; Bread Alone and All you Knead. Bread Alone is slightly cheaper but is a larger operation (though still uses lots of local stuff), while All You Knead is based out of Beacon, and uses mostly local ingredients- including NYS grains; I feel good about supporting both but the fact that All You Knead is based in my community they win. Plus the bread is awesome....

but anyway what will we eat this week? here's an idea, I am going to leave off lunch because 99% of the time it is pb&j or leftovers. Breakfast is usually hardboiled eggs, oatmeal, cereal or toast with jam

saturday: shepherd's pie using the lamb stew meat from last week

sunday: the kids will be at grandma's and I will be in the city so who knows

Monday: flank steak stuffed with basic bread stuffing (though if my brother wants to share the rice/bacon stuffing from oh so long ago thanksgiving at Liz's house that is what i will use)

Tuesday: leftovers

Wednesday: roast chicken with roasted carrots and potatoes (i will make stock/soup on thursday)

Thursday: butternut/black bean soup with biscuits

Friday: leftovers

Saturday: most likely lamb spring rolls from the market and salad.

So that's what's been eating the tomatoes

So technically I like nature. However I do not like it when it rears its ugly green head and looks at me menacingly. Like this evening when I went out to gather the tomatoes, I ran into a very hungry caterpillar; and by run into I mean my arm brushed up against it, yelped like a little girl and threw the offending branch that it was sitting on into the BBQ. That's right I threw it into the BBQ, which was still burning from our dinner. Go ahead call me a murderer.

I then checked on the carrots and saw another caterpillar hanging out on the greens, this one I recognized and left alone. That's right I murdered the one that was unfamiliar to me, and left the one I knew alone. Is there a word for gardening xenophobia? my googling does not lead me to an answer..

Once back inside with my bowl full of tomatoes (they will become pickles soon enough) I looked for images of the deceased. I found this

I did find out is that this caterpillar (who was bigger and had more white things on it) is really a tomato hornworm. The white things (which I thought may have been maggots or something equally gross) are actually the cocoons of some kind of wasp- which apparently eats its way through the hornworm to form the cocoon on the outside. So by throwing the whole things into the BBQ I really performed a mercy killing. The poor thing was being eaten from the inside! The wasps would have hatched and sought out other hornworms to feast on! (which would have been good for garden, except for the fact that there would be wasps in it)

The caterpillar that I did recognize was this one

which will turn into

20 dollars and a dream

I have been dreaming of tomatoes lately. In my dreams I wake up to a garden full of giant, beautifully ripe red and orange and pink tomatoes. These tomatoes hang on vines that are perfectly groomed, with little drops of dew clinging to the leaves and nary a blotch to ruin this perfection. But then I wake up and am greeted by the overgrown, not so groomed green tomato wasteland that is our garden. The orange globes have cross pollinated in an odd way with the cherry tomatoes; leaving these long vines of small red orange useless except for salads bastard children. The plum tomatoes, which I have been anxiously waiting on are all still green and hard.

And the squash has wrapped itself around the pink heirloom tomatoes leaving it starved for sunlight and producing little. And at the rate the squash is producing I am going to have to commute to harvest.

So I ventured to the Farmer's Market where for $20 I obtained 20 lbs of plum tomatoes. And for $2.43 I obtained roughly a bazillion hot peppers and one lb of green beans...The tomatoes are going to be skinned and chopped and canned whole because its too gosh darned hot to slave over sauce (and also because I am running low on pint jars which is what the recipe books call for, but I ask you who only uses a pint of sauce when making pasta et al?) The beans are going to be dilly'ed and the peppers are going to be dried for use later, or maybe I'll pickle them too.

We had our first pickles the other day. I had made a bunch of bread and butter slices, and one batch wasn't big enough to can up, so into the fridge they went. We served them at Jude's birthday bbq; prompting the neighbor kids to say "what do you mean you made pickles? you can't make pickles, they come from the store...."

Its a Jungle out there

Its all tomatoes, except where it is squash...I probably should have pruned back the tomatoes or at least staked them better, but they are growing well and wild. There are tons of little flower shoots and a bunch of little green tomato starts on all the plants, and the squash has a few blossoms already. I resist the urge to pick the squash blossoms since I'm not sure if you harvest them you will get actual squash.

But I feel like the garden is on a timeline that does not match my own. According to our signed sealed and delivered home buying contracts our closing is around the second week of september. Which means that this garden has at least until october 1 to produce a harvest I can use.

Strawberries, Cherries, and Radishes OH MY!

Over the weekend I took Joe to the market with me. It is really hard to take him to the market, what with his fruit stealing habit and his fly like attention span... I don't know what I was thinking when I woke up at 6:30am and said "Joe do you want to visit the farmers with me?"

Anyway there were strawberries abound at the market. The cheapest were 4 bucks or so for a quart.But the strawberries were all over the place. You could say the market was lousy with them! The hardest part of having Joe with me was that I couldn't price compare very well, so I just picked what looked like it was a good price and moved on quickly.

Joe charmed Farmer John's wife for some extra rhubarb in our bundle, and had a crazy conversation about cherries with another farmer. "I don't eat the pits Mr. Farmerman!"

"And why not Joe? (because as soon as you talk to Joe he tells you that he is Joe and I am mommy and Jude and daddy are wherever they are)"

"Silly the tree grows in my belly and my button would break open and branches come out, the birdies make the nest in the branches and poop on my shoes!"

"Ahhh I see, that is a good reason not to eat the pits, I wouldn't want bird poop on my shoes"

We bought radishes and peas from Tim Stark's daughters. Joe got shy and wouldn't speak. Can I say something about radishes? They are freaking good. Chop some up into your potatoes some time. I dare you.

We played in the playground for 20 minutes then we took the train home, where Joe ate a quart of strawberries and fell asleep on my lap.

Total: 50 bucks spent for not much product in my opinion.

I bought 5 quarts of strawberries (two different sellers)

1 pint of cherries (or maybe it was a quart I don't remember we just dumped them into a bag)

1 bunch rainbow radishes

1/2 lb peas

12 stalks of rhubarb

2 lbs of compost

monday Blah

I am a bad 100 miler. Life is getting in the way. Saturday dawned with the hubby having to work, and Joe at grandma's. Jude and I slept in until 7 am (my god when did 7 am become sleeping in?) and never went to the market. Firstly we still have stuff from last week's green grocer (some asparagus, carrots, potatoes and spinach) so we really didn't need anything and secondly Jude is heavy. He is 23 pounds of baby and the subway is 12 blocks away. You do the math. Our subway station is not accessible (a problem in many NYC stations which is bizarre to me) so bringing the stroller is pretty hard once I am also carrying produce. I know cry me a river....In two weeks the farmer's market opens kind of in our neighborhood, by then my snazzy new bike will be put together and I can bike to the market.

So I didn't go to the market. Despite that fact that I am going to try to get some friends together for a 100 mile picnic next weekend. We have plenty of meat from May's meat box in the freezer, rhubarb booze getting all boozy in the closet, and nice weather as a reason to celebrate. It's time to start making some community memories with this food.

The house hunt continues. We are still narrowing down where we would like to live. Food and entertaining are one of the things we are taking into account when looking at houses. I want a kitchen with counter space and room to have more than 3 people eat at one time. I want a backyard where the hubby can rule over the grill, where I can grow hundreds of tomatoes and raise some chickens. I have visions of small town living complete with a roadside summer business selling eggs and tomato sauce (and maybe some jams if I can perfect those) but I want all of this with accessibility to NYC because the hubby needs to work, and I eventually need to go back to work. My sister gave me a lead on a little town in the Hudson Valley that seems to fit all of our criteria. Now we have to motivate to look in earnest.