Our lovely plum tree is in full production! This is the biggest bunch of plums we’ve picked from it so far; two five gallon buckets almost full. Everything lined up perfectly this year. One big problem we have in the pacific northwest with growing stone fruits is the bloom time. They bloom when it’s raining! And bees don’t like that, so things don’t get pollinated. I love to see the soft white blooms of this tree, and I knew when I saw them FOR WEEKS that we would have lots of plums. It was a weird streak of sunny in the spring. These are Bj’s favorite edible from our yard, for sure. He went so far as to rig up a “plum catcher 9000” before we had the shed, to catch our precious few. The shed helped us this year, as it gave us a place to stand and pick from. We took turns on it’s roof gathering from the lowest branches, a full 15 feet up. There are still LOTS for the birds.
This picture of our messy yard is from April 15. The tree has already bloomed out and is in full leaf, you can see the trunk coming up behind the shed and a little bit of the canopy. I don’t have many pictures of it because it’s so high up! When I first moved in the backyard was so overgrown towards the fence I didn’t even know I had a plum tree (until my creepy neighbor showed up IN MY DINING ROOM while I was working on the restorations saying, “Did you know you had a plum tree?” and handing me a plum. I called about a fence the next day!).
So yes, we had lots of plums. And I think the reason I never see these small plums in stores is because they go bad quickly. We picked them on Sunday night and when I got to the bottom of the buckets Tuesday already some were spoiled beyond using (it has been very warm, so I’m sure that didn’t help). The other reason may be that they are clingstone plums. Oh bother, a bit of a pain. For part of the recipes I squeezed out the pits before hand and for the other I got them out after (using a food mill like this – but mine is from an estate sale). I am super happy with all of these (from left):
1. Asian Plum Sauce. This recipe is from the Ball Complete Book of Canning (affiliate link). I’ve linked to the hardcover version of this book because I think it is an absolute essential. It has hundreds of recipes, great tips and general guidelines. I write in mine noting the years I’ve tried various recipes, how I tweaked them, and the results. I really chose this recipe because I was at a loss at what to make with all the plums! And I’m so pleased with it. Sweet, but not overly so, and so good on pork. I think this will make a great stir fry sauce as well.
2. Plum Lemonade Concentrate. OH MY GOODNESS! This one is a bit over the top! I needed an easy sanity saver plum recipe and this was one. Hardly hands on. Cook plums for a bit, then hang in cheesecloth overnight to extract the juice, combine with other ingredients in the morning and bring to 190 degrees then can. Done! I use this amazing stockpot from All Clad (wedding present!). I love the steaming baskets. I just line the small one with cheese cloth and put in the fruit; making juice is so simple this way (works for any fruit), and completely covered, so no bugs get in there. The recipe notes to make this 1:1 with water. It is still so intensely sweet. I mixed a pint with a full 2 liter of non flavored seltzer water plus a bunch of ice and it made a very refreshing punch type drink. At home I just make up fizzy water in the soda stream I got Bj a few years ago and then add a dash of this to a glass (plus ice), instead of their syrups. I love it. In fact I think I’m going to make more concentrates in little bottles. I need to do some research on canning in bottles to see if that is possible because I think these would make fun gifts.
3. Plum BBQ sauce. The recipe calls for peaches, but I think plums and peaches can be pretty well interchanged. This is also in the Ball book, but they have some of the recipes on their site as well. Also good. A tangy not spicy sauce that would make a good marinade. I had some pork loin dipped in here and it was great.
4. Plum butter. Oh baby is this stuff rich. I think some of this is going to be presents for holiday time. Mmmm in the winter on warm toast? Yes! And I am sold on this style of cooking preserves! Another time saver. You mix up with fruit, spices, and sugar. Mash it together and let it sit overnight. Then you pop it in the oven and cook it way, way down. Mine never boiled, nor scorched in any way, so it was a simple way to cook without having to be hands on (I was actually baby sitting a friend’s kids at the time so I was really hands off!). Now getting the pits out of this was a bit of a trick as I didn’t squeeze them out before hand. The foodmill helped, but I wanted all the yummy chunky bits of skin in there so I had to hand squeeze them out of the sticky buttery mess. If you click on the link you should know I used an asian plum (I’m not sure what variety I have) not a prune plum.
Here is Tuesday being a goofy model. I told her to have a sip of the drink and a bite of the muffin, but she wouldn’t do it! The drink yes, but the muffin for some reason she just didn’t want any so she did this nice pose 🙂
I wish I had a better picture, but this phone snap from last year is the best I could find (I guess we eat them pretty quick!). I wanted to show them so you could see what type I used.
I would love to know what you do with plums! There are still trees around loaded with fruit, and prune plums (the dark purple kind) are not quite ripe. With those I make a straight up plum jam. If you’d like a general post about canning from me I’d be happy to write one. I do have a few tips and tricks. Happy canning!
Backyard fun and fun with toys
I think the best thing about working like crazy out in the yard is when I get to enjoy it with friends! When I was in high school my best friend Carmen went to Japan for a year on an exchange, I was heartbroken! While she was gone a super sweet girl came to live with her parents. And this last week she came back to visit, so Carmen came to visit too – as her and Tomoko had never actually met!
Look at all our cute girls! The big girls are all with in six months of each other, and the little ones all within a year of each other. Such sweetness.
Last night I had an all girl party of a different sort. My friend Tracy is a Discovery Toys consultant and since I’ve wanted to have a Discovery Toys party since I was a kid (really!) I asked to host her first party!
It was awesome! I made my easy bean salad, cut up some veggies, got some fun vintage type sodas and we sat and ate and chit chatted and looked at toys for a few hours. With a few cute little babies.
Here is a link to my party in case you are interested in any toys. I love these things so much. When I was younger my mom had a Discovery Toys party and got a few things for us. She got us something they don’t sell any more, a Think it Through. Did any one else play with one of these? It’s a self correcting puzzle of sorts. There is something similar and I already have it for Tuesday, the It’s a Match. I picked up the level three set at my party. I love that she can play with this thing for hours by herself, and check herself to see if she is correct. It is fabulous for the car.
They have a bunch of other fun stuff, for older and younger kids, and family games, so fun! Tracy doesn’t know I’m doing this, but if you’re in my area and want to have a party she is really good and it was so fun. I’ve never done a “party” for anything else (candles, kitchen stuff, etc.), even though I worked for a (now defunct) consultant scrapbooking company out of college. I was the warehouse manager and purchaser so I didn’t actually do parties. This was super laid back, gabbing about kids and looking at toys. The only problem was that Tuesday was pretty jealous!
The garden – mid July 2014
Ah the garden, such goodness. BUT SO HOT! I’m having a trouble finding time to work out there. The girls are not able to spend long periods of time out in the heat and it makes it hard for me to weed and stuff, I don’t really want to go out in the heat of the day when they are resting. So a few things have gotten out of control, you’ve been warned.
I think I know what is going on with some of my plants, like my super small beets. Turns out you have to fertilize stuff. I’ve never really done that before, just bits of organic stuff when I put in transplants. I went to a Master Gardener’s Mini Collage this last weekend and learned so much! Also I read my seed packets while organizing (I need to get my stuff together to plant the winter garden – hence the empty bed) and I planted over wintering 220 day carrots, oops. Well you live and learn. We’ve harvested lots of raspberries and marionberries. We ate a lot of snap peas before I pulled them, and the celery was an interesting experiment, I chopped most and saved for winter soups. The herbs in the back I’m letting go to seed (some) to see if they’ll re-seed themselves next year.
The new bed to the left has five tomato plants, a butternut squash, four peppers and some basil crammed in it. So far it’s working. The cucumbers to the left are coming on, and very yummy.
To the left scarlet runner beans are blooming, and so pretty. The little potato bin maybe has potatoes in it, we’ll see in a few weeks. The other new box Bj built is growing melons and peppers. I put too many in, and we’ll see what happens. Once the fruit set is a little better I think I’ll start pinching off new blossoms. Speaking of thinning fruit… I swear I did thin my apples! But I guess not as much as I was supposed to. So propping up these honey crisps is a must!
Another view of the bed, so that you can see my pumpkin vines! I pulled out half my strawberry patch and I’m so glad I’m giving these things some room. My goal is three big Jarrandales pumpkins and some little pie pumpkins.
This back bed, still hoping some of those beans will come on and a few poppies, but we’ll see, all were planted late and in partial shade.
These little bush beans (planted only slight before and in full shade) are doing great. I’ll wait until I taste them but I love that I can stick these beans in anywhere. Cosmos are great, I love the pops of color, I’m going to try them from seed next year I think.
More tomatoes tucked in above the rock wall, and the little ground cover I planted blooming (wish I could figure out what it is!). Here you can see some of my clover problem. It. Is. EVERYWHERE. Not quite sure what to do about it.
The front yard is looking better. I’m still so sad we only got these piddly little sunflowers after about a hundred seeds!
Remember the trellis we had built a few years ago? Well the jasmine we planted (one of them a day after Bennie was born, thanks to my man), is loving it. Oh these smell so good.
So good!
And underfoot, besides these weeds, I have this sweet ground cover growing between the stepping stones.
And in the, we can do better area, is this section. I have to chop my clematis down to the ground because of a persistent fungus. The willow is CA-RAZY! It’s on the chopping block this fall. If I learned one thing at the mini-college it’s “right plant, right place” and this is the wrong place for this gigantic thing.
The big news is that our arbor is done! I LOVE it! I can’t wait until grapes are growing all over it!
The Asian pears are growing, though scabby, but I think they’ll still be edible. My bean tee pee is growing and I love it.
Yes the summer garden is a good place to be, especially with friends!
Moda Splash Quilt
I found a picture of this quilt through a quilting newsletter and shared it with my friend Carmen. When she exclaimed over how much she liked it I knew I had to make her one. She had the idea of changing out some of the solids for prints, which I liked. So I bought the pre-cut set and switched out a few of the triangles for prints.
The pictures are not the best, it was snowy as you can see! But I wanted to get it in the mail, so I just had Bj hold it up in the cloudy weather (obviously I finished this a while ago, but am just now getting around to blogging it).
My mother in law had the idea to use this sweet ombre fabric for the anchor.
It’s been a while since I did all over quilting on my home machine, so I was a little rusty. But I really like how it looks. I used a green binding, with this little bit of plaid thrown in.
The back is all this material (sorry I don’t remember what it is).
All in all a fun easy quilt, that I was happy to gift to my friend. I have a goal of finishing up more quilts and randomly gifting them. Maybe with this hot weather I should just hid out in my basement and sew!
To hot! To the beach!
My friend Tracy sent me a text yesterday that said, “call as soon as you get up.” so I did. A friend of hers reserved a yurt at the beach but wasn’t going to use it. Did we want to get away from 90 degree temps and join her? Oh yes we did!
Ah so chilly! So fun! The girls played in the world’s shortest river until they were chattering (our ocean is really too cold to go into much – 50s). It only got up to about 63 and got down to low 50s, so we had a fire, snuggled up in the yurt with our friends and set out to play today as well. We played slightly past rest time.
As you can see Bennet was about ready to sleep right in the sand! She did not want to leave!
I didn’t really either, I have been trying to shake a nasty summer cold and it was nice to be in cool air. Alas, my girls and I did still come home with runny noses and coughs. Hopefully they’ll be gone by next week… it’s set to hit 100! NOooooo!!!!! We might just have to head back to the beach again!
The Garden – end of June 2014
End of June! That’s when I always realize I’ve planted things too close together! Ha! I make it work though.
The biggest news this week is that our grape trellis is finally going in! I’ve been on our handy man’s list for a while, but he’s been really busy. And then he wimped out on supposedly “rainy” days this week (it barely sprinkled!). Still I’m hoping to have this finished soon. My grapes have been in pots since I bought them in early May. There will be a high trellis that should give us a little shade on the table during high points of the day, and a smaller one that the girls will have an easier time picking from (I chose table style seedless grapes).
Here you can see the base of the tree. I’m trying my best to attract lots of bees. Especially since ass hats in our state keep spraying blooming Linden trees and killing thousands at a time. Grr. Any way I’ve tucked in tons more flowers than I usually do in my veggie heavy garden. And I love it! Here you can see one of my olive trees (I think I need to un-stake it), some small cabbages, and one that got a few weeks start (what a difference, huh?).
More brassica (broccoli and brussel sprouts – my favorite!!!). Expect lots of pictures of these, since I have to hand pick bugs off them and am very proud that they are this big.
Further down this same side are some yummy fruits. Blueberries that we’ve been picking for a week, and Asian pear trees behind. The twine hanging off of them is from rocks I had dangling from the branches to train some of the branches. Now that I’ve done this and the fruit has grown a little more I’m unsure if this was the right thing to do. The books say yes, but the heavier fruit seems to do a good enough job anyway. We’ll see.
Speaking of fruit: On the other side of the garden I have an honeycrisp apple tree that looks like it’s going to be VERY productive. if only I can keep the bugs away! In that vein:
I’m taking my Home Orchard Society’s advice and covering the apples with little panty hose type Fruit Sox. I doubt I’ll get to every apple, but at least I know I’ll have a good amount to eat in the fall. The Asian pears will get the same treatment, but I do believe I was too late on those and a lot show signs of insect activity already (Sox are typically applied in early May here, just after thinning the fruit).
The bed behind this tree gets sun ALL DAY. That combined with careful cloching when the plants were little means I have peppers already! To be honest the melons in this bed could have used additional cover at night. But after nearly baking them one hot day I decided to air on the side of caution and remove it all together. It was a bit of a chore to sneak back there every morning and night and deal with a big piece of plastic. I’m happy to say it held up well and I think I’ll be able to use it for many years.
Next to this bed my beans have leapt up (along with many weeds!).
Some bush beans are coming in with the little poppies that I probably planted too late. sorry for the over exposure on this pic. It was about to rain and I was hustling!
Plants that got removed for the arbor project, along with other pots that are not on drip and keep my on my toes! Tons of raspberries, but we’ve hardly got any to the kitchen the girls eat them like crazy.
These are my original two beds. Check out those snap peas! They have gotten way over my head and I’ve had to add stakes to the top, as wind was toppling them over. I did it using this green velcro (Amazon links are affiliate links) that I am loving for tomatoes also. We harvested some celery for a salad to take to our Girl Scout potluck. It was tasty, but perfectly round, I’m not sure why. I saved all the leaves and little side stems for stock.
Now my real obsession the past few weeks has been compost. I’ve never made my own before. Our city gives out free bins to put by the curb and take to municipal composting. I felt good enough that most of our food and yard waste was staying out of the landfill, but recently had an ah ha moment when I bought my 1,000th bag of compost. Um, can I make that? Turns out yes! I bought a fancy tumbler, that is just not doing it for me. I do like that it’s closed to keep out pests, but it is S.L.O.W. And relatively small. Because of the size it can’t get hot enough to kill weed seeds so I have to be careful what I put in there. Then I found this geobin. I LOVE it. After 24 hours (with a little help from a friend’s rabbit poo) I got it up to 120 degrees!!! It comes apart easily for turning (note: haven’t tried this yet, and not sure if I’m going to. I might take the slow road to compost, we’ll see), is flexible in size, goes together in a minute max, and very well aerates the compost. The gray bin you see on top of the toy bin is my homemade worm bin. I think I’ll save my worm composting trials for another day. Let’s just say, man those things can eat!
Another thing I’m doing besides composting to keep the soil quality in my yard up is using free tree trimming wood chips (it’s a mix of wood chips, pine needles, leaves, and anything else that went into the chipper that day). I was warned that it wouldn’t be a “good look” but I quite like it. They should weather and grey, and depending on how they do in the garden I’ll reapply them year after year to build deep fertile soil. I did underestimate how much a “truckload” was and am glad I bought a second geobin, as I can put some extra in there.
The rain has been conspiring against me to get this all spread out. And I need to because I can’t plug in my car until it’s moved! Here you can see my (pitiful) sunflower area in our front yard. I hope you can notice how I don’t put the mulch right up to the plant stems, that would choke them. I semi weeded before I put the mulch down. Tiny weeds no, big giant weeds yes. In areas where there were no plants I am laying the mulch very thick, at least four inches. I’ll report back on this.
Here are some books I’m reading right now about gardening and composting:
Our Life in Gardens (you don’t have to be a gardener to appreciate this. A lovely couples 30 year relationship told through plants. The kind of book you pick up and read a chapter of – as it’s organized by plant type – here and there. I got this for my mom for her birthday)
Let it Rot (out of all the compost books I’ve checked out – and it was a lot – this is the one I ended up buying)
Worms Eat My Garbage (I remember reading this in the forth grade and wanting worms. Finally I have them… and they are eating my garbage!)
Quarter Acre Farm (love the writing. Reminds me of Farm City, but not so hard core, at least not yet, I’m only half way through)
Mini-Farming: Self Sufficiency on a 1/4 Acre (I seriously can not stand the thickness of the pages, but I think that’s a personal problem)
So how grows your garden?
(My garden in early May, mid May, late May, beginning of June)
Pax Forest School Fundraiser this weekend!
Local (Salem) peeps be there! Tuesday will have a lemonade stand on Sunday and she is so excited she almost can’t stand it.
Pax Forest School Rummage Sale!
Hey, have you ever wanted to buy my old crap? hehehe. Ok, not crap, but stuff we just don’t need any more. Because baby I’ve been purging! This message is mostly for local peeps. And I pretty much copied the rest of it word for word from the Pax Forest School blog, if you also read that. Basically my friends and I decided to start a non-profit child led learning school of sorts outside, in all weather, back in January. We’re still working towards our 501 (c) (3) status (oh the paperwork!) and a permanent location. If you live around here and want to support alternative learning please consider donating to our sale or coming to shop!
(and now, copied from Pax):
Hi all, we’re wrapped up for the year. Check out this picture of our last day of the season:
A big difference from the mud and cold of the first day back in January!
We had a great year this year and are so looking forward to the fall. The board will be busy finishing our 501 (c) (3) application and finalizing our private location for the fall. This means we need your support! We have loved being able to offer Pax as no cost child led play days, but we really want the room to grow. We’d love to have the children be able to build structures, and really get to know their land. In order to do all of this we need donations. Until we have our status finalized with the IRS donations are NOT tax deductible. So we are going to have a warehouse rummage sale to get donations rolling in.
You can help by donating used items in good condition to our rummage sale June 21-22. We have one more set drop off date (see below). If possible please have like items bagged or banded together (a bag of barbies for example, or all the pieces to a game in one box). You can not write off these donations. That is why it is so important for us to get our 501 (c) (3) status so we can encourage bigger donations (we are already registered with the state as a non-profit).
Drop off date:
Tuesday, June 17th from 10-noon
Rummage Sale:
Saturday and Sunday June 21-22
9-3 both days
Location:
2709 19th St. SE, Salem
Donations have started piling in! Please if you need assistant getting donations to the warehouse contact us and we may be able to help you! Parents of Pax we also need help making signs, ads (Craig’s list and other garage sale sites and apps), helping with the kid’s lemonade booth and of course day of sale help. And tell your friends and family about the sale as well! Please support your awesome kiddos by helping with our sale!
And please share this post with all your friends!
About Pax Forest School
Pax was started by three homeschooling moms as a way to facilitate child led learning out of doors, in any weather. Our hope is that children learn about themselves with and through nature; becoming confident, adventurous learners who work together to solve problems. Pax means peace.
Project 333 and a happiness update
Remember my happiness project? Well I’m happy to say I’ve been sticking with it! I decided to just lump all our happy moments together (vs. one special pic for each of us). Enjoying the moment and not having to worry about capturing every detail is a lot easier. It’s been about 75 days, here are some highlights.
Happy moments: 1. Tuesday at Forest School 2. Special night at the symphony with Grandma and Grandpa 3. Apple blossoms 4. sensory play for Bennet 5. bike ride to our chicken friends (and their parents) 6. olive trees! I bought olive trees (yes I still live in Oregon, cross your fingers) 7. “Papa I need a fridge for my outdoor play kitchen” 8. When your aunt and uncle surprise you with “relaxers” you gotta relax! 9. Bennet very happy I finally cleared off the mess on this thing and brought back out the learning tower.
Um, going back through just that month made me realize just how little I’ve blogged about, slacker over here! Also how long it takes me to make collages like that. So sorry, you just get a taste. Anyone have a grid drop in PSD file like this with masks?
Now I was going to tell you about how I joined in on another online project, Project 333. The basic idea is to pick 33 items (clothes, shoes, accessories) to use for 3 months. Work out gear, Pjs, under things and socks don’t count. Can I just say if socks counted I would last maybe a few days? I don’t like dirty feet. I digress. Here is my closet (via a crappy phone pic) after some intense clothes trying on/debating/tossing/packing up.
That’s it. There is no tee shirt drawer, no mounds of sweaters, these are all the clothes I will be wearing. It’s not 30, it’s more like 35:
Shirts x 12
Skirts x 6
Dresses x 4
Bermuda shorts
Black pants
Jeans
Fleece
Sweater
Belt
Bangles
Necklace
Bag*
Roxy flip flops
Silver Birkenstocks
Brown teva flip flops
Sanuks
(I have no idea why there is a space between shirts and skirts, but when I try to make it go away it adds a space between skirts and dresses.) I let myself have the freebie of tank tops as undershirts since I’m still nursing. I wear them under most non nursing shirts to hide my belly while I lift my shirt to nurse. Instead of keeping two drawers full out (?!?!) I just tucked them under the shirts that need them on the hangers and put three in my underwear drawer for workout (let’s be honest – gardening) clothes. I have a totally empty dresser! Minus my one tiny drawer for under things! When I go to get dressed I will look right here and be done! I’m very excited about this. I’m also excited that I only have things I like, and that fit, hanging up. Also that I found this dress:
I mean this makes me look good! And look, never opened bangles on my wrist! I think I can put these two things together and go somewhere! Plus it’s a nursing dress, which is the only kind I can wear. (yes I basically let the kids run around in the background while this was happening. I’m not going to lie, we ate pretzels UPSTAIRS!!!!).
I put a few things that hopefully won’t be, “what was I thinking”. That long crazy print dress in an example. But I think if I don’t wear it this summer I might not have the nursing breasts to fill it out ever again! ha! I was annoyed at having to have long pants, closed toed shoes and a fleece, but we do live in Oregon, so leaving them out would probably be a terrible idea. As it is I have three sweaters and two t-shirts left out as possible back ups. I don’t know, can I get through the summer with out a white tee shirt?
*Oh ya, the asterisk. I would be perfectly happy with one bag. But it totally depends on the kids and what we are doing (tomorrow, the zoo), so narrowing down that was not happening. I am going to attempt to use the bag I got at the end of the summer… it still has the price tag on it. Oops.
Now, there are SIX giant totes in my storage area full of clothes because of this. Yes, I got rid of a few things, but a lot just went in there. Two of those bins are things I can’t fit in (like not even close, I wore this on my honeymoon type), that I can’t part with. They also have dresses and other things impossible to nurse in. Two are mostly winter things. And two are outcasts from this experiment (a whole lot of tee-shirts).
Anyone try simplifying like this? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Growing dinner; long term meal planning
I’m growing lots of yummy edibles in the yard, as you’ve seen. I’m starting to think about cooking and preserving with them. In fact the salads above were picked from out yard! I’ve also frozen quite a few gallon bags of strawberries (cored) for smoothies.
I pulled out an unused calendar tonight and started writing dinner ideas on it. I didn’t look anything up special, I just used recipes (or vague ideas of things to make) that we always come back to. Here is what I have so far:
BBQ (Bj) 20
Pasta salad 15
Slow cooker 18
Pizza (we make) 18
Chicken & polenta 4
Aaron & Erin 8
Potato chowder 7
Tacos 13
Curry 10
Chili 12
Pot sticker soup 8
Tomato soup and cheese sandwiches 10
Pot pie 1
Veggie mulligatawny 2
Salmon chowder 2
Other Soup 16
Spaghetti 13
Enchiladas 7
Stir fry 9
Hawaiian 5
Salad 12
Chipotle pork 4
Gnocchi 7
Stuffed pumpkin 5
Eat out 12
Party (&holidays) 8
Left overs 44
This leaves 74 nights unaccounted for, more if we want less leftover nights (but I do find we use those, and will as long as the girls are too young to eat full servings). Of course this is an ideal world, we always eat out (or get take out home) way, way more than this. Ugh.
I would love more ideas specifically on summer time foods or foods I can make (or ingredients I can prep) to put up for later. I will hopefully have lots of lettuce, kale, cucumbers, peas, beans, carrots, radishes, Swiss chard, and fruit (strawberries, blueberries, marionberries, raspberries, plums, apples, Asian pears, and figs) to work with. Plus a few cabbages, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, peppers, onions and melons. I’m also thinking about what to plant next month to harvest through the fall into winter (and maybe even very early spring). Garlic is on my list! I just saw my friend pull up beautiful garlic from a bed she planted last fall, so cool. I should have artichokes in the spring too, those are growing well.
For lunches we do leftovers, muffin tin lunches, sandwiches and salads. I could probably use a few ideas in that department too!
Breakfast is usually one of these:
Parfait (yogurt, fruit and homemade granola)
Cereal (Tuesday; when she won’t eat anything else)
Oatmeal (pretty much every day in winter with canned peaches or pears mixed in)
Smoothies and toast
Bagels and cream cheese
And sometimes:
Eggs/veggie/hash brown scramble
Breakfast pie
Pancakes (Bj)
Muffins. Yes! I finally tried muffins, twice. Both times they were not so good. We ate them, but couldn’t finish either batch. Must figure out muffins.
So that’s how we eat in a year. Have you ever done long range meal planning? How do you decide what to put up in the summer? I’ve always just winged it, but 17 jars of corn relish and no more Italian sauce tell me it’s better to have a plan.