Gina Capri

Naomi Anaïs Estelle

My biggest roadblocks are time (I work full time and have four, soon to be five, kids, and am notoriously distractible when cooking), and also that I always seem to have difficulty finding a warm enough place in the kitchen for the dough to rise properly. I have tried in the oven so at least there are no drafts, and I preheat it for a minute or two at a low temperature then turn it off so it’s warm enough. That works okay but not reliably. So I get discouraged because then I have to let it rise even longer, and end up still sometimes getting a flatter loaf than I want.
Also, we don’t like the taste of sourdough, so that isn’t going to happen. And sometimes my kids aren’t interested in eating a whole loaf of bread, so then part of it goes bad. That discourages me.
But if anyone has tips about making a warm enough place to raise the dough, I’d maybe try at least baking cinnamon rolls- my daughter loves them. Or French bread/baguettes- we do eat those about weekly.

This is timely! I just saw a really nicely manicured hedge/shrub up by the Oregon City Municipal Elevator last week. Upon closer inspection, it was rosemary! I’m inspired to try to manicure my rosemary bush now. I feel like everyone in the PNW has a perennial rosemary bush, but a hedge is possible if you wanted! I just don’t know what you would would do with more than one bush’s worth of rosemary.

Wow Kate, I loved your post! I guess I will leave some of my quinces outside for a few days until I can deal with all the ones already inside.

I made the “Quince and Butternut Squash Soup with Curry” recipe from “Simply Quince” and it was really good! The baby loved eating some today! I also made the “Quintessential Quince Paste” and hoping to give some of it out as Christmas/Thanksgiving gifts.

I am getting around to cooking quince this year (3rd year of the tree -Aromatnaya variety- producing). The last two years I didn’t manage anything past a quince sauce and a lot of my fruit went bad because I waited too long to deal with it. This year I have time and am motivated! I just ordered Barbara Ghazarian’s book “Simply Quince” a few weeks ago. I love how many recipes there are, and every single one uses quince. I have already made the “Quince-infused vinegar” recipe and am hopefully going to make some savory recipes this weekend if the baby allows. I’ll try to remember to report back on how they turn out. But, if you need a compilation of quince recipes, it looks like a good book for that!

Oh no! We can’t get credit unless there’s a before picture, huh? Because I didn’t realize this was a task for “credit”! The  “before” was so awful that I didn’t want to remember it... and now I am halfway through... ah well, there are other dysfunctional closets that need sorting! Just nothing as big as this one!

So, also not at all Ball Blue Book approved, but I reuse the metal lids as is, without anything extra. You just have to roll them on your countertop to make sure there aren’t any divots around the edges, and they work more than 95% of the time on the reuse. Of course you check all your jars for seals after canning, and if one comes off, store it in the fridge and use first. But it does work - my mom even does this now. Obviously don’t do it if you’re gifting the canning or entering it in the fair, but if you have a teenage boy who consumes obscene amounts of strawberry jam annually, it’s a good way to cut down on costs, and one less thing you have to regularly replace.

I haven’t ever cooked with honey beans, but if you type in “honey beans recipe” in Google, you get some delicious looking beans and fried plantains as the first suggestion, and there are others too! Also they look like black eyed peas, so I am guessing you could cook them and eat with rice and a nice West African sauce (tomato based with or without beef/lamb/goat). You also cook beans with potassium, per my sister-in-law’s advice, so they give you less gas.

For a nice West African sauce you would start with chopped onions which you would sauté in canola or olive oil (or whatever oil.. peanut or palm oil could be fine too). Then add minced garlic, curry powder, paprika and once that’s cooked (~1min), add chopped fresh tomatoes and your meat. Usually for black eyed peas and rice (benga) we use beef, but goat might be fine, or maybe lamb. Then you would add water (not a ton, it’s going to be a sauce, not a soup) and tomato paste. Flavor with bouillon or salt and your other favorite seasonings. Cook until the meat is tender, adding water as needed if it evaporates. It’s soooo good with the rice and beans that I tend to overeat when we make it.

I have used for all three kids so far. I don’t know what they are called but they are these big cotton rectangles that are thicker in the middle, and definitely a few layers. Then you fold them in thirds or so and put them in the diaper cover and you’re all set!  I was able to use my 20 or so (maybe 30 or 40? My mom was generous.) diapers for both older kids before they got a little ratty. Got a new set with #3 and they’ve are definitely still good enough to use with #4. I can’t remember the name of the diaper covers right now either.. I had Sunbaby ones at one point and they were really cute. I always just lay the diaper inside the cover. I never stuff it in if there’s is a pocket. If you stuff it in, you have to change the cover too every time. But if they just pee and the cover is still dry, you just take the diaper out from the inside, throw it in your diaper bucket, and put a new one in the same cover.  Oh yeah, there is a separate bucket for the covers too, because they will break down if they sit in bleach. Poopy diapers get a rinse in the toilet before going in the bleach bucket.

I always bleached my diapers. I would make bleach solution (pretty diluted) and soak the diapers in that in a 5 gallon bucket next to the toilet in the bathroom closest to the washing machine. Usually it would take about 3 days to get a load. Then it is important to do an extra rinse after the cycle to get that bleach off. But, it helped a ton with the smell and they of course were disinfected thoroughly each time.

Cloth diapers are so easy that I don’t know why so many people don’t do them, unless you have to get quarters to do laundry. That’s a pain. But I still did it with my first. I mean you have to go grocery shopping to eat (unless you are a hardcore permie who has really got things going) so you just figure out your quarters routine within that. So much better than throwing away diapers that will sit hundreds of years in the landfill. Sure, I have used a few disposables, especially in the first days and weeks, but I do feel better knowing that even having 4 kids, I have not made much trash in this respect!

Travis Johnson wrote:

Jasmine Dale wrote:Antonio has flagged up a very important point there about the power of 'mocking' up a design using any object around. We usually (for gardens or buildings) stick poles in the ground etc and spend considerabletime  pondering on layout, feel, access and so on before committing.

Another one that's really useful is making models, especially to scale. With a piece of land / garden make a sand tray or similar and as you learn the contours etc you can keep tweaking the model. Using a table lamp at the right angle for your latitude is also very accurate for testing out where and when it will be shady and sunny on a site.

Here's a model for a big house using clay and sticks, that we then combined with photoshop to play around with layout and gleaning exact calculations for timbers, windows etc

The clay model, table and chairs etc is just about visible.

I am pretty dumb so I do this a lot with what I call CAD Modeling...or Cardboard aided design!

I have my farm mapped out by LIDAR so I can get maps of it in 2 foot increments instead of 20 foot, which really shows me where the water is moving. Here is a CAD Model of two fields I have that I want to put some access roads into, some swales to install, and even a small pond. The first picture shows an satellite view of the fields with the black lines showing what the model represents. The second is of the model, made to scale including elevations.

Wow, I really like both models. Is that really made with cardboard, Travis? I am enjoying all the discussion here. Makes me want to rewatch my PDC lectures if I can still access them.