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Our third was due two days after Halloween 2008. It was customary to drive out to my sister’s place so the boys could shell-out with their cousins, but we were nervous about being more than an hour from home. So we made a plan: Grandma would pick up the kids and take …
When Windy was about 18 months old, we decided we wanted another just like him. So, one dreary December day, I borrowed Daddy’s toothbrush and we started re-arranging furniture. In the new year, when all was confirmed and the grandparents were informed (I love breaking the “rules”), I started hunting for a new midwife. I [...]
It was Friday, April 25th, 2003: DaddyH and I had rented a couple of movies for the weekend, from the local Vietnamese video store. We were watching Session 9, not the best movie for a new mom to see (check it out, if you must know why). I remember sitting on the edge of my [...]
My daughter is two today! And she is officially a girl. She has spent the last year and a half playing with her older brothers’ toys – Transformers, trains, cars, light sabers, swords, guns and, most recently, Lego. She’s always had fun with them. She’s never known anything else. She has also always worn her [...]
I did my first fast when I decided to have my first baby. DaddyH and I had been slowly making the shift to healthier, holistic (do people still use that word?) living. We stopped eating sugar and wheat, started filtering all of our water – not just drinking – and tossed every chemical we had [...]
When we decided to cut out meat, I knew that the old family goulash recipe would need a minor facelift. (Blasphemy!) I decided to substitute chick peas for the stewing beef, which, incidentally, shortened the prep and cooking time by half an hour, saved me from dirtying a skillet, and turned the dish into an [...]
Frost Warning tonight. Busy day after a busy Thanksgiving weekend. Wanted to can some apple butter and apple sauce, but instead I spent naptime madly harvesting all remaining veggies from the garden: 3 green cabbages 1/2 dozen japanese eggplants of varying sizes 2-3 dozen peppers, green and purple, of varying sizes 3 over-sized zucchini 1 [...]
Home-canned food has saved us from starvation on more than one occasion. On a snowy winter’s day, when the fridge was looking bare and I couldn’t go get groceries ’cause the driveway needed plowing, but the tractor was out of diesel, and the only local pizza delivery place decided they “wouldn’t risk it”, I’ve bounced [...]
Pure unsweetened apple butter was my kids’ first condiment. When they had their first rice cakes, and it was too soon to try peanut butter, I gave them apple butter. When I made Apple Barley Pancakes, they were never served with maple syrup; they were served with apple butter. Their first “cookies” were sweetened [...]
We’re eating enormous amounts of fresh raw food from the garden. Every day we take a bushel basket and head down to collect the daily harvest; we come back with our bellies full and our basket wanting. No dishes! And the kids love it because they think there’s something naughty about ‘stealing’ food right off [...]
It’s been a busy summer of gardening, harvesting, cooking and preserving. This year is, for me, the most productive season I’ve ever had. The early spring gave us an early summer which, in turn, gave us an early harvest. The dry start was scary, but eventually gave way to an almost perfect schedule of rain [...]
So our old raccoon is back and, clearly, is no longer deterred by my little green box. He knocked down half my corn stalks last night. There were little nibbles where the ear would have developed. I decided to pull all remaining plants, leaving nothing for the little b—–d to get his fingers on. I’ve [...]
June was a blur. But the garden grows without me, now, so there’s little to do there except wait for the harvest. The peas are just finishing, the beans are just starting, the greens are continuing, and the tomatoes are full size and ready to change colour. I have never had such a lush vegetable [...]
Miscellaneous updates for the past week: Fertilized the tomatoes. Replanted (third time) yellow beans; eleven of the original twelve plants had been chewed off by a furry foe. Lost one pepper plant to some critter that left the plant mostly intact, but nibbled on the stem just enough to make it flop over in despair. Planted [...]
It took all winter to come up with a decent garden plan, but at this point, it’s mostly gone to hell. It happens every year, though this year it’s comical. The tomatoes are in the general vicinity of where they were planned to be, as are the peppers and summer squash; there are fewer of them, though. [...]
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