Happy Halloween

After two days of secretive planning and preparations it was time for our annual Halloween party tonight and when it comes to gross foods I aim to please *grin*. 

I've been trolling the internet looking for new creepy foods to make and this year's menu consisted of brains, cockroaches, turds, a rotten cheese log (blue cheese & cream cheese with a touch of green food coloring)....

 

monster mouths which are just chocolate chip cookies cut in half with a little bit of red icing, marshmallows and almond slivers for fangs....

and swamp water which is a favorite of ours and is an orange juice spritzer with a touch of grenadine to darken up the color with black sanding sugar and twizzlers as garnish :)

 I found this pumpkin dip on pinterest and it is to die for!! Oh my goodness is this good :)

 

Of course every Halloween party has to have at least one food item that is totally over the top disgusting and this year my pièce de résistance was a worm dessert that I named the 'Nightcrawler Parfait' *grin*.

 You wouldn't believe how life like these things were! You make them in straws with the accordion necks so they get that ribbed center just like a real worm and they were cold and rubbery like they were actually alive. If you looped them around in the dish they actually moved and untwisted. Eek.

I made all of the children close their eyes when I brought the dishes of them to the table and then when they opened their eyes you should have seen the look they each had as I proceeded to tell them that they were fresh from the compost bin LOL.

 Not one of them would eat them!!

It was absolutely hilarious to see them turn a little green as they poked around at them in their bowls. My dad who loves a good joke grabbed a handful of the worms and stuffed them in his mouth so they were hanging out with some of the cookie crumble dirt hanging from them while the children looked at him in disbelief  :) In the end they all picked them off of the pudding beneath except for my oldest son who managed to eat some of his but it wasn't an easy task *grin*.

You know it was a great Halloween party when you make something that no one wants to eat!

Hope you all had a wonderful Halloween :)

Hugs,

Rosina

Fall Comfort Food ~ Sweet Potato Gnocchi

 October 1st was the first time I had to light the woodstoves to take the chill off of the air in our home and we awoke to our first hard frost of the season yesterday! The lawn was crispy and white and all of the water buckets for the cows and chickens had a layer of ice locking in the fresh water below. All of this cold weather has definitely left me yearning for warm comfort foods :)

I've been building up a little recipe cache on Pinterest which is where I found a yummy recipe for sweet potato gnocchi but I didn't have all of the ingredients on hand so I took a chance and remixed the recipe a bit and it turned out delicious!

 In place of the ricotta cheese I used one egg, subbed in 1/2 a cup of asiago cheese instead of the parmesan, reduced the salt to 1 tsp. of sea salt in the dough instead of the two she called for and I baked my sweet potatoes in the oven for about 45 minutes at 400 degrees fahrenheit instead of microwaving them.

Now this was my very first time making gnocchi so I had no idea how sticky the dough would be but I found that I needed to use at least 4 cups of flour to get my dough to be workable and not crazy sticky but the original recipe only called for 2 3/4 cups. So I'm thinking my sweet potatoes were much larger than hers but you'll definitely know if you need to add more flour *grin*. 

 With my dough all ready to go I got busy rolling out dough snakes, chopping them into little bite sized pieces with my pastry cutter and then rolling them around with the tines of a fork to give them the little indentations in the photo. Nobody told me how many little gnocchi this recipe made though!!

I kept cutting and rolling and cutting and rolling...

until I had two giant cookie sheets full of them plus more all over the counter. On my final count I had over 200 of them so they all went into the freezer except for the ones I kept out for dinner and we're all stocked up for a good while now I think :)

The kids aren't real big on the taste of sage so I omitted the sage butter that went along with the recipe as well and instead made an easy sauce with basil and homemade chicken stock. 

I used:

1 cup homemade chicken stock

1 tbsp dried basil

1 tbsp arrowroot powder

1 tbsp onion powder

salt & pepper to taste

Mix all of the above together in the cold chicken stock and pour over two carrots cut into matchsticks, two cups of broccoli florets and 3 cloves of pressed garlic that have been sauteed until just tender. The arrowroot created a nice thick sauce just perfect for our fresh gnocchi to be coated in. Mmm, mmm good. Now if only there were leftovers *grin*.

Hugs,

Rosina

Celebrating Michaelmas

 So many wonderful things have been happening this month!

Yesterday was the celebration of Michaelmas and we have all been looking forward to it for weeks. We've been reading all sorts of dragon stories, our favorite being The Knight and The Dragon by Tomie dePaola, and the children have been re-enacting the stories with the felt dragon and knight that make up part of our nature table this month :)

 I found this cute dragon craft on pinterest that we just had to make to *grin*. When you blow through the paper tube the streamers blow up like the dragon is breathing fire. It was a hit with my 6 year old and the added touch of googly eyes made it even more fun for him as he attempted to make the dragon make silly faces as he blew fire :)

 With all of the apples we had we saved a special basket of them for making a pie to go along with dinner and the kids made light work of all the peeling for me with this great little peeling gadget that peels, cores...

  and slices all of the apples into uniform pieces.

 

Not one part of the apples from our trees went to waste except for maybe the core but even then the chickens got those. L has a serious addiction to peelings LOL. 

 With the apples peeled and sliced it was time to make pie and legend has it that after Michaelmas you shouldn't eat fresh blackberries so of course we had to add blackberries to our apple pie which made it all the sweeter :)

 I had to time it right to get all of our baking done before the roast chicken had to go into the oven for dinner but we managed to bake the pie, sculpt and bake a ferocious looking dragon and even make a set of bread shaped swords to go along with dinner.

 This year I wanted to make our dinner extra special so we had my parents over and just before we ate I had everyone raise their bread swords and we recited the following poem.

 "Brave and true will I be,

Each good deed sets me free,

Each kind word makes me strong,

I will fight for the right,

I will conquer the wrong."

Since St. Michael is the saint of courage I thought this was perfect. I found it on one of the waldorf yahoo groups I'm on and don't know who to credit the poem to so if you happen to know where this is originally from I would love to know.

So after a little mock sword fighting with our bread swords we ate heartily and enjoyed the company of family :) 

Did you celebrate Michaelmas? I would love to know what you and your family did :)

Hugs,

Rosina

Happy Valentine's Day

Oh did we have fun today!
We munched on our special candy apples...

stuffed ourselves silly with fruit and chocolate fondue...

enjoyed mini whole wheat pizzas...

and got really, really, really sticky *grin*.

Hope you all had a great Valentine's day to!

Hugs,
Rosina

Nibble Nibble Little Mouse....

Who is nibbling at my house?
The kids found the hole in the photo below chewed through part of the wall in our chicken house and it was nearly as big as a tennis ball. Something was trying awful hard to get in to either eat our chickens or steal eggs :( Either way not good but we found it in time to board it back over again to thwart any further attempts to break in. I definitely don't want anything to happen to our girls!

I have to say I have thoroughly been enjoying the egg laying winter lull that the chickens have been in though. In the warmer months when we are getting 12 eggs each and every day it can be tough to be come up with creative new way to use them up! I do sell some to my mom and sister when they need them but quite often we have more than we possibly eat and getting 5 or 6 each day is such a nice treat *grin*.

But even with the drop in egg production I ended up with an extra 3 dozen in the fridge the other day right after we did our big two week grocery shop and space was pretty tight so those eggs had to go. Not to worry though they weren't headed for the trash but a recycling of sorts *grin*.

I put all of them into the largest soup pot I had in the cupboard and hard boiled them. Next I popped them into my food processor, shell and all, by the the half dozen and pulsed them into a lovely egg salad buffet loaded with calcium rich chunks of egg shells that would make a delicious and nutritious treat for the chickens :)

Extra eggs?? No problem! LOL. And I know the shells on their upcoming eggs are going to be tougher and healthier for it :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Our Fall Garden...

is growing strong :)

It is such a treat to pull open my creaking and quite visibly crooked garden gate with my kitchen bowl in one hand and a the warm fingers of my little one in the other as we tromp together through the weeds and grass that have now taken over the paths between the rows and search for the delicious treats that are waiting beneath their coverings.

We have been enjoying the extra beets I planted this summer immensely! Oh my goodness are they yummy. All of the children love them so I've been boiling them up by the pot full for our dinners and eating the leftovers cold in salads and the turnips are a special treat for me :)

The cold weather has begun here and the temperatures have been dropping to just above freezing or slightly below at night. The perfect temperatures to sweeten them up just right. Who new one could get so giddy over vegetables *grin*.

Along with the vegetables there are a few flowers and herbs still thriving. One of my favorite herbs is my Mullein (verbasacum) with it's giant fuzzy leaves and towering spears of little yellow flowers reaching for the sky. The kids love to pick the leaves and rub them on their cheeks as they are just as soft as a bunnies ear :)

They are a wonderful herb for coughs and asthma to. The leaves and flowers contain mucilage which can be very helpful in soothing coughs and acting as an anti-inflammatory for the lungs. I myself make a tea from the dried leaves and flowers and drink it to help with my own asthma :) Another wonderful thing to make with it is to make an oil with the flowers to treat earaches. So many wonderful uses and it self sews rapidly providing fuzzy leaves the first year and flower spears the second year :)

Do you have a fall garden planted? What sort of vegetables are you growing?

Hugs,
Rosina

Fall Leaf Sugar Cookies

We are spending a lot of our days embracing the beauty of fall around here lately as we watch the leaves on the trees transition to their vibrant autumn colors and we happily jump on their crunchy counterparts that litter the lanes :) The children keep bringing in handfuls of stray leaves to that they just couldn't resist because they were 'to pretty' and I keep picking up crumbled bits off of the tile floor beneath our nature table as they fall apart from all of the handling *grin*.

So when I saw a photo of some great fall leaf cookies on the Country Living website I just had to bake some with the kids. The only problem was there was no recipe so I made a batch of my favorite sugar cookie dough that I use all the time and thought I'd share it with you to. It makes a nice sized batch of dough for tons of fun :)

4 eggs
2 cup sugar
2 cup unsalted butter

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add one egg at a time and beat really well until the butter mixture is super light and fluffy.

1 tsp. baking powder
5 cups all purpose flour

Add the flour and baking powder to the butter mixture and mix just until combined. Once you've got it all combined divide your dough into four chunks. Don't worry about being completely accurate, just eyeball it up.

Now color each of your dough balls a different fall color :) I really like to use Wilton Gel colors. They create gorgeous vibrant colors and they are cleaner to work with than the old drip style liquid food coloring. You can find them at most grocery stores and walmart.

After you have finished adding your food coloring, wrap each piece in a bit of saran wrap and place in the fridge for about 20 minutes so that dough firms up and makes it easy for rolling later :) Roll out your dough on a floured counter top and bake in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 - 12 minutes or until just starting to brown and firm up around the edges and the centers are slightly puffed up.

I set the kitchen up with three work stations so that each of the children had their own rolling pin, cookie cutters and assortment of colors and they had fun ripping off chunks of color and creating their own fall color palette :)

It actually turned into a color blending lesson on top of the baking fun as we watched the colors meld together creating new tones of oranges and greens and the surprise arrival of brown each time we balled up our dough scraps and rolled them out again. Things got quite psychedelic LOL.

So much yummy fall fun. I can see we're going to have a lot of tea parties in the coming days *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Rhubarb

Rhubarb season is finally here and those bright red and juicy stalks are beckoning me *grin*.

The extended cool and wet weather we have had this spring has really allowed them to burst from the ground with gusto and I found a giant bloom on one of my plants!

Rhubarb blooms are really pretty when they open but I want my plants to continue to produce for a little while longer so I broke it off. The kids brought it into the house and we'll see if we can force it to open in a jar of water :)

The leaves of the plants are poisonous so you can't eat them but they make a wonderful natural insect repellent for deterring cabbage worms, aphids and other things. Just throw a bunch of leaves into a pot, cover with water and bring to a boil. Pour the strained liquid into a spray bottle and treat any plants that have buggy problems!

I think for now we'll just enjoy some of the raw stalks dipped in a little bit of sugar. A yummy way to enjoy this tart treat :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Deliciously Green

I generally try not to make new year's resolutions as I have a terrible time keeping them but this time I made a promise to myself to live this year intentionally. I want to grab the year by its horns and live it to the fullest, taking control of my days and getting the most out of them for both myself and my family :)

There are so many facets of our life that that encompasses. Such as my desire to slow down the rhythm of our days in order to make even more time to cherish my family, enjoy the simple things life brings no matter how small, increasing our self sufficiency by growing more vegetables and raising more livestock, and fine tuning our diet to try and make sure the foods I prepare for my family are as wholesome as possible to name just a few.

That last one is a tough one though but I'm working on it :) Which is actually where I'm heading with this little ramble that I've taken you on *grin*.

For the last couple of months I have made it a morning habit to blend up a surprisingly yummy spinach smoothie for myself and the children :) When I first thought about making a green smoothie I was a little worried that I was going to hate it despite my want to love it but I think the whole scary thing was in my head because I do really like it *grin*.

I pack my blender right to the top with fresh spinach leaves along with a little bit of fruit, a splash of maple syrup and ice cold herbal tea. Usually I put in an apple or a pear but blueberries are delicious and soon there will be fresh strawberries from the garden to add :)

When I first started making it I was using plain water as my liquid to help puree everything in the blender but I love the extra flavor that herbal tea provides. Our latest favorite is raspberry and each morning after I've used up what was in the fridge I replenish my mason jar with hot tea and pop it into the fridge for the following morning :)

I think I'm going to have to start making two blenders full though as it seems the kids want to drink more and more of it every morning *grin*. I'm not complaining though but tomorrow I'm heading out to weed out a patch in the garden so that I can plant a whole lot of spinach :)

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more yummy recipes?? Check out this week's Hearth and Soul blog hop :)

Making Sushi ~ So Fun!!

Our study on Japan for K's research paper is finally finished and the culmination of the entire project was to meet up with the three other families from our homeschool book club and to not only share our reports but to also bring along a special dish from the country we studied.

So sushi it was for us :) I made a special trip into the city to find Nori which is the seaweed wrapper, sticky rice and some different vegetables and fish for the filling.

We both took turns rolling the nori with sticky rice and a mixture of smoked fish or crab and avocado and cucumber. It took a little bit to get the hang of rolling them in the mat and less is definitely more when it comes to the filling part *grin*.

We made some similar to the California rolls with the crab, cucumber and avocado and then sprinkled black sesame seeds on the outside...

a smoked salmon, cream cheese and cucumber roll with thin slices of avacado on the outside called caterpillar rolls...

and then we thought we'd get really fancy or at least try to look like we really knew what we were doing *grin* and made Shikai-maki which are a decorative four sided version of regular sushi rolls. You can see they are the square shaped ones below and we filled them with kiwi and pineapple and had a special fruit and honey dipping sauce I made for them :)

They turned out great and were a huge hit! I never imagined that everyone would love sushi that much. There wasn't one left when we were finished *grin*. Personally I don't really care for the taste of the seaweed but the kids liked them so I will probably make them again :)

They had so much fun trying to eat them with the chopsticks I brought to :) It was a great potluck! There were samosas with chutney, special fried rice, a fluffy fava bean dip with naan bread and a ravioli pasta for everyone to try.

The whole thing really got K excited about studying other countries and it was his first big report he has actually had to write so it was great intro into thesis statements, APA style format for laying it out, bibliographies and more. All of the artsy fartsy stuff like making his kimono and geta, the salt dough map he made and the sushi making broke it up into nice little chunks of hard work with the writing and and then nice easy breaks of creativity which really kept him wanting to keep at it :)

Hugs, Rosina