Summer Yum OLS Dinner

Farm pick up was today. The fruit share starts next week and we can't wait! For dinner, we had our head of lettuce with Ani Phyo's Kreamy Curry Dressing (yum!), a raw carrot and raisin salad (double yum!) and sliced cucumbers. So simple, no cooking, and delicious. The carrots this week were both purple and orange. Ted ate most of the purple ones, but I managed to snag a few for the salad. Kale, chard, more green onions, turnips, green beans and zucchini rounded out the share.

Yummy Local Salad

Tonight's dinner was a CSA salad. CSA lettuce & beets, special Dream Share CSA fava beans, local Boulder tofu and pomegranate dressing. Mmmm. It was so hot today plus we walked/biked to get some local Boulder beer so we were extra hot when we returned.

Ted's been really enjoying RMDC. He got the Spirit Award last Monday and this Monday, which means he was very into all the sports and was a good listener, etc. I'm so glad he's liking it so much.

Mae and Sam (aka Mr. Biker) are getting very sandy and dirty at JCC Camp and having lots of fun. They've been biking alot too. Mae is really something on that trike.

Today we spent the morning at the pool with Randi, my 'mother's helper' on Tuesdays this summer. LOVE her! She entertained Mae so I could play with Sam or chat with Lisa, her mom. Good times. This should be a good week. I've been running about 3 miles on MWF and it feels good and relaxing. Very therapeutic. I've been contemplating doing a raw food diet for a month or so. It's supposed to be very cancer-fighting, not to mention invigorating. We'll see. I like the idea of it as a short term "boost the body's immune system" thing, but I know I couldn't do it full time. I'll let you know!

off to Taiwan!

Angelina is getting a brother! Like Amber, Angelina is the 2nd of our group of 11 girls to have a little brother from Taiwan. So cool. I can't wait to meet him in person.

We had a lovely local meal tonight of CSA kale & garlic, local tofu (that I had marinated and baked earlier in the week) and rice (oops, guess that's not local but we're using up all the stores before buying more.) Actually, I have a mellow "live simply so that others may simply live" plan for the next week. We'll see how it goes. I'm going to make a big pot of CSA beans and rice that will be the main meal and we'll just have whatever greens/salad etc that is already in the fridge from today's pickup. We received a lovely share today! Purple baby carrots (the kids love these), fava beans, kale, new garlic, green onions, zucchini, beets and turnips. I don't think I'll put up any of these this week. The turnips will turn into that delicious salad I learned about back in January and turnip fries. The zucchini will be made into more bread and the rest shredded and frozen. The beets, with their greens, will make an excellent side to go with the beans and rice, as will the fava beans. Mmm.

busy busy

Ted loved RMDC. Archery was his favorite. How cool is that?! Sam and Mae were happy to be back at the JCC. Heather brought them home for me and I got TONS done!

• baked Raisin Bran muffins (these are sooo good)
• blanched & froze last week's CSA greens (7 servings worth)
• pressed, marinated & baked the tofu for tonight's Tofu Lettuce Wraps and Thursday's meal
• did the grocery shopping
• washed, line dried and folded 3 loads of laundry
• took a 3 mile run with Ole and showered (!!!)
• unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher
  
• prepped Ted's bag for tomorrow and made his lunch
• made little snack bentos for the kids to eat in the car on the way to TKD
• planned meals for the week

I just had to put it all down because it was a good day to have after quite a few weeks of what felt like NO alone time, translating into no time to get things done. When I have the time to keep the house running smoothly, I magically have the energy/patience/time to spend more time with the kids. We talked, we read books, we snuggled. I love the structure these 3 weeks will have.

And for the record, the Tofu Lettuce Wraps were our local meal of the week thus far. CSA lettuce, CSA zucchini, CSA onion & garlic, backyard garden mint and local tofu.

Quick Challenge Update

I love challenges and there are a lot of them going on. I think I'm supposed to be updating so the organizers can put up recaps. Since I'll be MIA for 2 weeks, I thought I'd update here and label them, in case someone comes checking up on me.

One Local Summer: lots of local meals this week and I blanched and froze the excess for winter. Meals include:

• steamed greens (CSA) with tofu (local Boulder company),
  
• homemade (local flour) flour tortillas with eggs (Jay Hill Farms), greens (CSA), beans (CSA) and salsa (Rocky Mountain Farms),
  
• radish (Jay Hill) and marinated artichokes (Rocky Mountain Farms) salad (CSA spinach) and of course,
  
• the requisite almond butter (Justin's, local Boulder company) and jam (Rocky Mountain Farms) on homemade bread (local flour).
  
• We've been enjoying Jay Hill eggs and (local flour) pancakes with (Rocky Mountain Farm) strawberry syrup for breakfast all week too.
  
• And loads of strawberries and sugar snap peas from Jay Hill! A delicious week.

Keep Yer Cool
This one is easy so far. It is pleasant in the morning and evening. Mid-afternoon is pretty hot, in the low 90s all week. I've brought back the nap (I read this on a blog yesterday and thought it was ingenious!) Napping from 1-3 helps get through that time of day and lets me stay up later at night enjoying the cool night air. We have the AC set to go on when temps hit 86, although with Paul working at home we'll have to see if that's too hot for him. So far, he chose the hottest week to go to Iowa. I'm doing just fine being hot. It's tough in the car but luckily 2 out of 3 kids enjoy the wind in their face (can you guess who hates it?) so we are doing OK there. So far, so good.

5 Minute Shower Challenge
No problem! Having short hair and shaving infrequently make this easy for me. I think my showers average about 2-3 minutes, a bit less than 5 when I'm counting my warm up water time (caught in a bucket to water the garden, of course!) This one is a no-brainer and I'm mad at myself for not doing this earlier.

The One Can a Month and I'm a Bookworm are starting up on July 1, so I'll jump on those when I get back! Going from half a 32 gallon trash bin to essentially a quarter is the challenge. Try and put the trash out just once a month. I'm eager to learn even more tips on reducing our garbage output. It seems like it should be easier but we are still at 2 full kitchen sizes bags per week. Reading one eco book a month will be the push I need to plow through the Michael Pollan books, so looking forward to getting back into The Omnivore's Dilemma when I finish up Ahab's Wife for bookclub.

The Addiction challenge comes to an end in June. Mine was not eating out unless it was planned and I did great until the boys left. We ate out for girls night on Monday (planned, AOK and was my first time in a month and it was delicious!!) but then Wendy and I took the kids to Noodles after swimming on Thursday, and then I brought home some sushi (from a local restaurant in Superior) for lunch today. And now we're off for 2 weeks of probably eating out a lot. Still, it showed me the value of planning my special occasions and I do plan to pick it back up when we return in July.

The Don't Buy It - Put Your Rebate to Work rebate check is slotted to be deposited into our "Boulder House Down Payment" account. We think it will be mailed sometime after July 4, according to the site. We'll see!

I think that's it for challenges! As a general note, previous challenge buttons are moved to the bottom of the list but are on-going. So many of these are great enough (and easy enough!) to do full time.

Breakfast Granola, finally!

Paul is a big breakfast cereal person. The kids prefer waffles, eggy bread, muffins, etc. But Paul is a cereal boy. So, I experimented a few times with granola and this one got a thumbs up! (Search on granola if you're hitting the link.) This took 9 minutes to prepare and was excellent. I added a half cup each of whole almonds and raisins. Hooray!

The kids helped me cook up a batch of (16) waffles this morning. Only 4 remain. They love those waffles. Usually I use spelt flour but only had 1/2 cup so I used barley flour for the rest. They were still excellent and also were thicker. Yum.

Tonight's local dinner (sans tuna) was soo yummy. Over a bed of CSA frisee & spinach, unlocal tuna, Rocky Mountain Farm's marinated artichokes and CSA radishes, topped with Amber's dressing and some local dill. Served with a side of not local but a local shop Indian paratha. Excellent.

One Local Summer Update - Week 3

Yummy week. Here are the meals that were local:

• CSA radish (and non-local tuna) salad with CSA lettuce
• homemade corn tortillas with local eggs, salsa and CSA lettuce
• Sauteed bok choi & honey baked beans (CSA bok choi, onion, garlic & beans, local honey)
• Asian Tofu & Greens Stir-Fry (CSA mizuna, Yukina, onion & garlic, local tofu)

Here is a great recipe site for Asian greens. I plan to blanch and freeze the remaining greens in this share. I hope to freeze 2-3 "bunches" of greens per week/share to ensure greens in the winter. Oh, how we missed our greens!

I am really loving the lettuce and we haven't even had our standard tofu lettuce wraps or Puree of Spring Greens Soup yet! I pick up our next share on Thursday, the day the boys leave for Iowa. Mae and I leave on Saturday, so I plan to blanch and freeze all greens possible, keeping just some spinach and/or lettuce for me for the 2 remaining days. It's funny: I have one more ziplock of soup in the freezer. Will it be gone before the first of the greens go in?

One Local Summer Week 2

This has been a hard week, obviously. I didn't manage much this week. But by Friday I felt better. For Paul's bday dinner I fixed homemade corn tortillas with his favorite filling, black beans and corn. The black beans and corn were CSA, frozen from last year and the onion and garlic from Jay Hill Farms. But I "cheated" in that I bought a can of Kuner's Black Beans with Cumin and Spices and drained the "juices" to use. When I add my own cumin it's just not as flavorful. We would have had local Jay Hill Farm steamed greens, but I got lazy. It's about the best I could do this week. We're out of homemade almond butter and homemade bread/waffles. I hope to get on that tomorrow.
On Thursday night, I pulled out a ziplock of Pumpkin Black Bean Soup (100% local) frozen in January). That was delicious!

One Local Summer-Week 1 Recap

One delicious week of June has come and gone. The traditional way to do this challenge is to plan one meal for the week made from exclusively local ingredients. Well, this is easy for me for lunches but since we're going through the stores in the freezer and pantry, not as easy for the main meals. Here are some meals we've enjoyed.

• a lunch staple for me: quesadillas with local tortillas, local MouCou cheese, Jay Hill greens & eggs.

• a lunch staple for the kids: sandwiches on homemade bread with local flour/honey, homemade almond butter and Rocky Mountain farm cherry jam.

• a breakfast staple: homemade waffles with local flour/honey and local Rocky Mountain Farm strawberry syrup.

• One of our favorite meals this week was homemade french fries with local potatoes, Jay Hill rainbow chard and veggie brats grilled on the grill. Such the quintessential summer meal.

• Another was baked (local) potatoes with Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy (made with CSA Indian Woman Beans, Farmer's Market onion & garlic), and a side of Jay Hill beet greens. YUM!!!

• Lastly, from the freezer, black bean loaf (CSA black beans, onion & garlic) with a side of Jay Hill spinach. The loaf was a bit chewy after being frozen but still good.
  

Our plum tree is producing! Last year, we had a crazy windstorm that blew all the baby plums down before they had a chance to plump up. I hope these make it. We have a TON on the big tree. Our other plum tree is 2 this year, so next year we can expect some fruit from it as well. Mmm...

new pool

Judy has a new pool! This one is in a hotel and has a cool waterslide and a little kid slide, although they (hotel management) didn't let us use them today. Hopefully next week. The kids loved the new place and they have two teachers now instead of one, so they get even more attention than usual! Sam is in a class of 4 with 2 instructors. Back when Ted was in this class, it was 6-8 kids with 2 instructors. This rocks.

We had a 100% local dinner tonight. Tortillas from Tortilleria La Esmeralda, eggs & spinach from Jay Hill Farm, mushrooms from Hazel Dell Mushrooms, and MouCo ColoRouge cheese. Excellent! My mojito wasn't local, but the mint was from my garden. I admit, my garden, put into the ground Saturday afternoon, doesn't look so hot. It looks ... wilty. We'll see. I hope it survives. We've had 2 strawberries so far. I'm encouraged so I think I'll get 2 or 3 more plants this Saturday at the market and we'll put the whole lot of them into one of our two large container planters. Maybe put the mint in the other.

I am beat. I washed all the winter coats, snowpants, mittens and hats today. Luckily the threatening rain didn't come and they all got dry on the line. Now they are put away, so I'm sure it'll snow tomorrow. Argh.

sunday

"The dugout in the weeds or leaves beneath a backyard willow, the rivulet of a seasonal creek, even the ditch between a front yard and the road - all of these places are entire universes to a young child." - Last Child in the Woods

We wrapped up this lovely weekend with a birthday party at The Children's Peace Garden (next to, and a part of, the Community Garden in Boulder.) The kids donned bee suits and went to the hives to gather honey, planted seeds and tasted lots of different herbs and vegetables, and dug around in the dirt in search of worms. It was a fitting end to a weekend filled with fresh air and sunshine. Paul and I noted that the kids had not had a single fight all weekend.

While on my run this morning, I noticed a falling apart shack on the trail. I think we'll head over there some time this week, just to poke around and explore.

Last year I enjoyed the Eat Local Challenge and this year's is coming up on June 1. The Eat Local Summer Challenge asks that you prepare one meal a week from entirely local foods (spices and oils are exceptions.) I joined this group back in September and have been striving to eat local as much as possible. Summer is so easy with the bountiful Farmer's Markets here in Boulder. We are so lucky to live in such a rich, thriving locavore community. The challenge doesn't officially start til June 1, but our dinner tonight was 100% local (spices and oils excepted.) Sauteed mushrooms on toast (Colorado flour!) and baby beets with greens, fresh from yesterday's market. Mmm!