Red, Yellow, White & Blue - Oh My Taters, I Love You!

This year is my first year REALLY doing a garden. I am getting some decent tomatoes, awesome cauliflower (fresher is WAY BETTER than the store stuff), one large zucchini, and I'm  going to have so many red Italian sweet peppers I'll probably hate them by next spring.

I so tried potatoes! My son hilled them (piling dirt around the stem to keep all those baby taters warm and happy and hidden) and I let them grow grow grow. 

Lately they haven't been looking all that great, so with a Google and a determined mind-set, I harvested most of the potatoes.  I was SHOCKED at how many I have. Easily 25 lbs. 

My purple ones are much smaller than the red, but that's ok. There were many more. Odd though, smaller potato, bigger plant. Hm.

I still have about 5 plants in the ground, they look hale and hearty (always wanted to use that phrase!) so I'm leaving them until they start to look brown.

Had one totally stinky rotten one. Smelled so foul I gagged. Bleh!

Tonight we are dining on the purple - or blue - ones and they're getting sautéed in olive oil, a touch of garlic and salt.  We are having a shepherds pie type of meal - no crust - over rice! Because Asian, duh.

Anyway, here are the photos from today and only one broken nail to show for it!

Also a couple potatoes were weird inside. I chucked them in the compost bin. 

One looked like a baby Pokemon: 

After cutting them, into my reclaimed antique but totally usable square cast iron pan where they turned a nice shade of blue!

I can't wait to eat these!!!!

Chef Boy!

I am one of those people who thoroughly enjoys cooking. If I could have learned to do it professionally I probably would have, but - as it stands, I just cook for friends and family.  That being said, I'm also one of those WOMEN who finds it incredibly impressive when a man who isn't a chef, makes me something to eat that doesn't involve boiling water and a jar of spaghetti sauce (not that there's anything wrong with your spaghetti J-Man...).

Because of this, and because my Little Man - the Boy - has shown some talent and enjoyment in the kitchen, I thought now would be a good time to teach him a basic recipe, quiche!

He put the pie crusts in, and was cutting off the excess!  He really enjoyed playing with the leftover dough....

After he did that, I gave him all the ingredients .In this case, it was spinach  ham, onions and garlic for one quiche, and spinach, ham, onions, mushrooms and garlic for the other quiche.

Then we poured in our egg (one has no cream - due to my inability to have dairy).

 After that we cooked and ate them! I do believe he was really impressed with himself and quite proud of himself too!!

Look out Gordon Ramsey, Chef Boy is beating down your door!!!

I'm a Crafty One...

These days, down to one income, I'm looking at any way I can to save moola and make things better on our growing little family.

Everything from contemplating sewing things for the kids, to making my own diapers, to making diapers to sell, to knitting gloves, hats, diaper covers, etc. to just watching another kid for awhile.

I've also had the treasured and rare time to spend with my kids.  Having been a career focused mom for so many years, just hanging out with my son and daughter has been really nice!  The daughter has one heck of a great sense of humor, and the boy is still as sweet as he ever was, but he's growing up. Both of them are.  I've had a wonderful time this month teaching my son to make quiche and making my daughter her requested birthday dinner (filipino style!).

Even so - as much as it pains me - I do have to find something else to do with my time while they're busy having social lives.

I've been learning to knit (mostly to keep myself from going insane in the last few weeks of pregnancy).  It doesn't require much in the way of physical exertion, but keeps my hands and brain busy.  I've managed to knit a pair of mismatched sized (and shaped) baby booties, a pair of fingerless gloves, and now I"m working on a baby cap. Today I may run to Michaels and get a new pair of knitting needles and some different yarn.  

Another thing I've been researching is wool diaper covers. I did go to Goodwill and buy two wool sweaters and successfully felted them down for use. I debated on deconstructing the one and knitting with the yarn, but I opted to felt it instead. For those of you who don't know what Felting wool is - I have only done it once so I'm no expert - but it's the process of shrinking the crap out of it, basically. To learn more about how to felt wool, click here.   The two sweaters I felted down will become diaper covers for the baby one she's here.   I'll be doing another blog/vlog on that once she's born and I get my new serger!!!

Couponing - Well, I'm not getting all my groceries for .37, but i am saving on average about $7 bucks a trip.  That's nearly $30 a month.  Maybe it doesn't qualify for "Extreme Couponing" but it's pretty exciting to me!

Other than that, just working on slowly adding to my CD stash, thinking about the baby, and waiting.