I was supposed to be implementing my goals?

 We've been sick. Really sick. And so, I've done almost nothing related to anything. Since we got sick two weeks ago we've gone out to eat twice and other than making some crackers and a couple of very simple dinners I've done almost no cooking at all. J has picked up the slack admirably and made dinner a number of times and spent quite a bit of time with the kids. On top of the plague that won't go away, our basement flooded following a weekend of modest snowfall followed by a few days of extreme rainfall. We live on a hill and not surprisingly, water tends to travel downhill. We had hoped to wait until summer to install a permanent sump pump and and all the attendant plumbing that is going to go with that but realistically we need to get moving on it now. I'm hoping to do our taxes this next week which will likely give us the means to pay for that as well as a wood stove. Our current primary heat is a wood furnace in the basement. It works well but consumes wood at an alarming rate and doesn't burn very cleanly. Also, the chimney is unlined, needs a fair amount of work, and runs right up through a corner of the kitchen. The wood stove will go in the living room. I'm looking forward to not having to go down to the basement to feed the fire all the time (although it is good exercise) and to being able to cook on it. I envision a pot of soup or stew happily simmering away on it a couple of times a week. When it comes time to remodel the kitchen we'll take out the chimney which will open up the kitchen nicely.

On a completely unrelated subject, J and I started putting dreadlocks in my hair right after thanksgiving. Most people would probably think this was an odd choice as I'm generally known for having a chin length bob that then exists for a year or two in various stages of being grown out before I get around to getting it cut again. I had considered dreads right after my first husband and I split but I was worried that it was simply a reaction to major changes in my life and opted not to do something quite so long term. The desire for them never fully went away though and I figured that 10yrs of longing was probably a fairly good indication that it wasn't a passing fancy. Unfortunately, the first time J and I did them, we did them too big and I had to take them out and start all over again. Once we started again it was very, very slow going. We destroyed a number of combs in the process and only got through about 1/3 of my hair. And there it has stayed in all its underdone glory. I'm sick of it. The roots haven't tightened up the way I wanted and it just keeps looking frizzier and frizzier. So today, I'm combing them out as best I can. I haven't given up on having them but I think that for a number of reasons we need to start from the beginning. I suspect that it may take us a couple of months to start them again but hopefully we can get my whole head done in a matter of days instead of months.

I'm headed up to Seattle tomorrow evening to share a weekend with two of my best friends and the girlfriend of one of them. It will be the first time since my kids were born that I've gotten to get together with both of them at the same time without any children along for the visit. I'm very much looking forward to it.Hopefully once I get back I'll be ready to get back into the swing of things and I'll have some progress to report.

2012 Goals- Food

Reading back through last week’s post I realized that I might want to unpick some of my reasons for choosing the goals I did. This week I’ll look at my food related goals.

Food Goals

1. Limiting eating out to once a month.

I have three main reasons for wanting to do this- Financial, health, and environmental. 

We cannot afford to go out more often than this. Even though we really shouldn’t we have been going out at least once and sometimes 3-4 times each pay period. Astonishingly enough, when you overspend in one area of your life, you’re effectively taking money away from other areas of your life. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to be taking money away from things like our fuel and grocery budgets to fund going out, especially when where we’re going out is often not really good enough to merit having spent the money.

Our bodies really can’t afford to have us go out either. We don’t go out for fast food but some of our choices probably aren’t much better. We’re so careful about what we put into our bodies at home, choosing to eat a largely plant based diet with as much organic as possible and almost nothing processed, that it really doesn’t make any sense that we would put so much crap into our system when we go out. It makes so much more sense to mindfully choose one place to go out each month that will be both tasty and meet the expectations that we set for ourselves when we cook at home.  

We've made a commitment to eating foods that are, as much as we can manage, responsibly grown or raised so as to minimize the negative impacts on the environment. We also feel it is important to eat animals that are raised not only in an environmentally ethical way but also in a way that is as humane and healthy as possible for them. Eating crap food from restaurants that source everything through national food suppliers doesn't even remotely meet those standards. There are some very good local restaurants around here that source their produce and meats from local farms that responsibly grow and raise their produce and animals. They are however a bit more expensive and so take a bit more planning to be able to afford, especially if we plan on taking the kids.

2. Because we'll be limiting our going out, make sure I've made snacks and easy to travel food so we don't end up going out simply because we're starving and not at home. 

This seems fairly self explanatory. It is going to require a fair amount of consistent production of easy to travel with foods though. It is not uncommon for us to have to leave the house on short notice or to end up having to be gone longer than we initially planned. These are the situations where we have been most likely to end up going out.

3. Get back to making bread, crackers, and granola bars on a weekly basis.

Some of this goal stems from the last- bread, crackers, and granola bars are all great foods to have on hand when you’re out of the house. These are also ways for me to be able to eat certain types of foods. I can’t eat conventionally made breads because of the yeast and often they contain corn also. I can however eat many types of quick breads as well as my own home-started sourdough. Commercially made crackers are often made with yeast and corn as well and are not usually be all that good for you. I’ve found that homemade crackers are both really tasty and quite easy to make but have gotten out of the habit of making them consistently. I love granola bars and the kids do too but any way you look at them even the organic ones are not good for you and very expensive. I can make them infinitely healthier and more cheaply than anything I could ever buy.

4. Track where we're spending our food money. Continue to move as much as possible to local food sources including fruits and veggies, dairy, and grains. Limit those things that cannot be provided by local sources. Exceptions to include olive oil, Asian food ingredients that cannot be sourced locally, and nuts. 

I’ve never really tracked where we’re spending our food money. I do know that compared to 3 yrs ago far, far more of our food is local and/or organic. As of right now we get 80% of our vegetables from a local organic CSA. Another 5% is grown by us, which I hope dramatically increases over the next years as the kids get older and the garden becomes more developed. The last 15% is grocery store bought, pretty much never organic, and probably unnecessary. This year we will be getting a larger share from the CSA which we hope translates into not spending anything on store bought vegetables. Fruit is much more difficult. There are some things that we easily have access to through friends and family but much more that we have to spend more time sourcing. It’s almost impossible to find good sources for organically grown local fruit around here and it is for us, prohibitively expensive. This year I hope to find better sources for local organic berries and apples but I have resigned myself to conventionally grown local peaches and that I will probably have to supplement my homegrown tomatoes with conventionally grown ones from a local farm. We have our own pear tree and my parents have some apples and Italian prunes and none of those are ever sprayed. 

We’re joining a dairy CSA in March. It will give us a gallon of organic raw milk each week for the same price that we’ve been paying for a gallon of Organic Valley milk. We won’t be able to afford cheeses that are organic and local but we do buy most of our cheese and our butter from local producers. Our eggs have long been from a local farm and will remain so until we either have our own chickens or the CSA provides them.

We buy our grains and flours as much as possible from Azure Standard which is a natural and organic foods bulk ordering company. They are based in Oregon have their own organic farms for wheat and oats and a few other grains. I can easily afford to provide our family with quality grains and flours through them which makes it much easier for me to meet my goals of making my own breads and crackers.

5. Continue to put up as much food as possible. U-picks, trades, and canning/prep parties are good things. 

I managed to can jam, some tomato puree, pickled peppers, plums, and apple and pear sauces this last year. I would like to far more canning this year especially as I now have a pressure canner. I froze broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and berries. I need probably 4x as many berries and tomatoes as I got last year . I would like to can peaches this year also. We need to get a dehydrator which would give us another option for food preserving.

6. Renew my love for reasonable portion sizes.

I’m pretty sure this is self explanatory. I can go months where I really only eat what my body needs and then suddenly will start to creep back to the habit of snacking the entire time I’m cooking, eating seconds I’m not actually hungry for, and simply eating because something tastes really good even if I’m not actually hungry. I’m not an advocate of dieting but there is something to be said for eating foods that are nutrient dense, of very good quality, and in portions that are actually reasonable.

The New Year

Nothing too glamorous in this post. A little, okay maybe long, itemizing of my goals for this year and because I'm totally obsessive this way, organized by category.

Food

1. Limiting eating out to once a month.
2. Because we'll be limiting our going out, make sure I've made snacks and easy to travel food so we don't end up going out simply because we're starving and not at home. 
3. Get back to making bread, crackers, and granola bars on a weekly basis.
4. Track where we're spending our food money. Continue to move as much as possible to local food sources including fruits and veggies, dairy, and grains. Limit those things that cannot be provided by local sources. Exceptions to include olive oil, Asian food ingredients that cannot be sourced locally, and nuts. 
5. Continue to put up as much food as possible. U-picks, trades, and canning/prep parties are good things. 
6. Renew my love for reasonable portion sizes.

Household

1. Maintain and track budget
2. Get back on a regular cleaning schedule
3. Follow the 5-5-5 for reducing, reusing, and recycling from each room. Do again quarterly
4. Tackle mundane house projects that will vastly improve quality of life i.e. cleaning and organizing the basement, painting, and ultimately remodeling the kitchen. 

Consumption of non-food items

1. Buy nothing new that can be thrifted, traded for, or made ourselves. Exceptions are socks and underwear and Justin's work jeans. 
2. Prioritize making/building projects and do the most important rather than the most interesting (assuming they're not one and the same) first.This will help ensure that we don't end up buying something we need because we haven't gotten around to making it.
3. Set aside specific time each month for making small household necessities such as cloth napkins and mama and family cloths.

Garden

1. Deal with the front yard. Get it cover cropped so that it's usable next year. 
2. Get back yard weeded and try to keep in some reasonable order. 
3. Plan and plant a small but functional garden focusing on those things that we like to put up for the winter and don't get in large enough quantities or appropriate varieties from the CSA. Onions, tomatoes, peppers, pickling cukes, etc.

Homeschool Goals 

1. Be more mindful of the educational opportunities inherent in everyday activities. 
2. Involve Rosy Girl more in defining and planning her learning goals. 
3. Find creative ways to teach math that don't put me right over the edge.

Parenting

1. Continue to practice positive parenting and try to add more tools to my parenting toolbox
2. Find a way to work more effectively with The Master of All Things Wood rather than constantly working against each other when it comes to parenting.
3. Make a point of having consistent distraction free time with each kid.

Personal Goals

1. Independently study math towards the goal of being able to take MTH111 in the next 2ys and then Stats so that I can finally finish my degree. 
2. Finish acquiring my essential midwifery texts and study.
3. Practice piano on a regular basis again.
4. Finish at least one garment a month for myself including participating in the Colette Handbook Sew-along.
5. More consistent aerobic exercise as well as yoga and meditation. Find ways to involve the kids in them so that I'm not constantly having to put off doing them because I can't get time away from the kids.
6. Unplug from the computer more. This is a consistent problem for me. Limit of 1hr per day unless working on "school" or waiting on something truly important. 
7. Write at least one letter a month. This doesn't include thank you notes or other more obligatory forms of written communication.
8. Find a spiritual community.

I realize that to people who don't know me well, these seem like far too many and far too specific goals to actually be achievable but as most of them are things that I already do to some degree or have done, even all at once, it's not actually that unachievable. Mostly what I need is to make them habits again. Of course a key part of this is unplugging from the computer more. While I'm not just sitting in front of it all day, I do spend a fair amount of time back and forth on it all day long and I would imagine that if you added up all that time, it would probably amount to 4-6hrs a day. Just think of all the things I could do if I spent that time in other ways. This is also probably the most difficult goal for me as the computer is the only way I have of maintaining regular contact with some of the people I love best. I don't plan to drop the blog (although clearly it hasn't been a priority) but I probably won't post more than once or twice a week. I would like to use it to track some of my progress on these goals. And on that note, I should go do something that doesn't involve the computer, namely getting ready for a much anticipated few hours with friends we haven't seen recently.

The roots of a simpler life

8yrs ago when my husband and I met I was focused on going to grad school and creating a career for myself in anthropology. As my studies progressed I began encountering so many signs that to me, meant that simplifying our lives was the only way to live a satisfying and responsible life. We started a vegetable garden at the community garden at the University and started on our slow journey towards a simpler life. Honestly it has taken us this long to really realize how much there is that we could still do but we've done what we can step by step. And while some of the obvious passion has abated from those early days, our actual dedication is far, far stronger.

We bought a house in a small town because we could afford the house (which is only 1,000sqft for our family of four) and it came on a larger lot which would enable us to grow some of our own food. We live on my husband's income and while there are times when things are far, far tighter than we would like, our priority is our family and the lifestyle we've chosen and neither of those would benefit from my going back to work. I work long hours some days but I love what I do most of the time. I can't wait for the weather to dry out enough to work the soil, hang out the laundry, and barbecue more nights than not. I like finding new (to us) ways to move ourselves further from the culture of consumerism. I love trading time and labor/skills with others rather than my husband working more so that we can find a way to pay for things we need/need done.

We do sometimes feel exhausted by how tight things can be. We don't have a dog, which we would love, because we know we couldn't afford the vet bills if something happened to it and we don't have a vet locally who would be willing to take payments or trade/barter. While our meat is responsibly produced by family and costs us no money, and we buy nothing edible that we could make ourselves which eliminates prepackaged food from our life (other than the occasional carton of ice cream), there are some months where even buying flour and beans, which we buy in bulk and store, can require some budget creativity.

And then we eat a meal with chicken raised by a friend, potatoes from the CSA we've managed to be members of for the past few years, and salad from our own garden. And we remember how good and important those things are. And we see something we want in a store, but can't afford it, and it is somehow freeing not to have to weigh the choice between buying it or not. And we each make something lovely for the kids and each other for birthdays and Christmas and all that love and care that goes into it makes it better than anything that could be bought.

We are lucky to have friends who are also traveling along this same path. Some are further along than others but we all agree that as long as we keep inching forward, we're getting there. Not everyone understands what we're trying to do; there are plenty of people who wonder why we would want to work this hard for what they see as so little. We're grateful though, to know that this is an option, to know that we don't need all that stuff and money, to know that our children can learn how to live a life that takes work and dedication but that also connects them with the world around them in a way that no money or things could ever do.

Wherin I change my mind after a very short time

I thought that I wanted to write a blog about our journey towards leaving consumerism and the components of our life that go into that. And I do. But I think I want this blog to be more personal to me than just that. When I think about posting, along with those posts that obviously fit into that focus, I think about posting about food, the book I just read, and how some days I'm just exhausted. I could just turn this into a private blog, somewhere to keep a journal, or even simply keep a paper journal. But one of the things that I love about the blog concept, is the idea that you can write both for yourself and for others. Other than papers for school and letters, nobody ever sees what I write. It keeps me from having to risk failure in other people's eyes. I'm realizing though, that not taking the risk is in itself a form of failure. So, you will see posts about canning, bartering, sewing, homeschooling, and gardening. You will also see posts about internal struggles, gratuitous food posts, and musings on why a book has touched me a certain way (or conversely, why I hate it). A blog without a clear focus does not generally garner a large following, and it's good that I have no ambitions to make money from it because that won't work either. But perhaps a few people, probably my nearest and dearest, will come a read and comment and occasionally enjoy the fact that I don't just say that I write things, I actually do write things.

Recipe Thursday- Spring and Summer Lentil Salad

This morning we were scheduled to go to my midwifery study group but Tractor Boy woke up with a low grade fever, a cough, and lots of congestion. Acting on the assumption that no one really wants us to give this version of the plague to them and their children, we're staying home this morning. The study group consists of five students and the midwife heading up the group. Three of us also bring our children for a total of 5 (soon to be 6) kids. We meet in the morning, spend a couple of hours going over the study subject for that week, and then share a potluck lunch. In this particular group we have a corn allergy, a yeast allergy (to brewers and bakers yeast), a severe dairy allergy, and three people with gluten intolerance. I have the corn and yeast allergies  so I'm well accustomed to leaving those out, but dairy and gluten are well represented in our daily diet. It can sometimes be a challenge to meet all those requirements, especially as two of the members, while not strictly vegetarian, prefer not to eat meat most of the time. This lentil salad was to be our offering for today.

I give amounts in this but realistically I don't actually measure most things unless I'm baking. These are meant to be a middle ground and it is fully expected that you will want to adjust according to your taste preferences. This probably serves 6-8 as a side dish. Could be bulked up to be a main dish by adding a grain of your choice. This is a recipe that is far better prepared at least a couple of hours in advance to the let the flavors marry.




Spring and Summer Lentil Salad

2 C French green lentils, picked over and rinsed.

Cover with water to 3-4" above the level of the lentils. Simmer for 20-25 min or until just tender.

While the lentils are cooking prepare:

1 small onion or 1/2-3/4 large onion, diced (as these aren't cooked, mild spring or sweet onions are
best)

2 carrots, diced or coarsely shredded

2 ribs celery, diced (optional)

2-3 cups of assorted in-season veggies, chopped or diced to bite size. For spring, I've found that peas
(snap or shelled), radishes, salad turnips, beets (steamed or roasted), and greens (cooked or uncooked,
but especially spinach and arugula) work well. In the summer, fresh tomatoes, sweet peppers, green
beans, zucchini, and cucumbers are all good.

Drain lentils when cooked, pour into a large serving bowl, and set aside to let cool a bit

While the lentils sit, prepare the dressing:

I use what is a fairly standard vinaigrette for this, so I make a big batch (about double what I have written here), dress this salad to taste and save the rest for green salads.

¼ C lemon juice
½ C vinegar- red wine or a mix of red wine and balsamic work very well
1-2 Tbs course grain mustard
2-3 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
Pinch of sugar or honey
½ - 1 C olive oil- we prefer our dressings on the tart side but others may not
Salt and ground pepper to taste

Pour the dressing over the lentils. Add veggies.

Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for a couple of hours.

Check to see if it needs additional dressing.

At this time add in:

Fresh herbs to taste- In the spring I usually use oregano or thyme and in moderate quantities. In the
Summer I use basil, Italian parsley, and mint and in much larger quantities. Dill would also be good.

Best served at room temperature.

Optional serving suggestion - feta or goat cheese for crumbling over the top

Enjoy!

Edited to clarify some points in the recipe.

Not so wordless Wednesday

My plan is to do wordless Wednesday's once my camera has batteries and I remember to take pictures. As it is though, I thought it might be fun to revisit where we were three years ago.

One of the views from the drive

Three years ago I was the mother of a 2yr old and a 3mo old. J was struggling to find work and my parents asked him to build a shed to house the equipment and panels for their solar power system at the cabin they have in Eastern Oregon. As it was expected to take at least 10-12 days, we all went. The trip took 16 days and it rained almost the entire time. It was also wonderful though. Rosie Girl was just starting to be truly curious about everything and we spent hours with Tractor Boy in the Ergo while we traipsed around the fields looking at wild flowers and taking long walks. We had never had a vacation together before and even though J had to work most of the time, the fact that we were all together each day and could steal some moments here and there was a glorious change.

 

 

The solar shed being roofed

Our Explorer

Three years later, J is still working as a timber framer at the job he got just weeks after finishing the solar shed. The kids are 3 and 5 and  that was still the closest thing we've ever had to a family vacation.

A rare picture of the three of us

 

Completed

Can you spot J's mark?