Showing posts with label Budgeting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Budgeting. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

I Pea'd Myself!

Oh, garden humor. I am a laugh riot.

For real, I have finally managed to plant sweet peas in such a way that I get, you know, actual peas on the vine! Woohoo!!!! The trick wound up being: plant early, plant in the shadiest spot in the garden, and sing to the vines encouragingly every day. They prefer Bob Marley. I'm sure that this won't necessarily work for everybody, depending on your region. If you live in the Northwest, for example, you might do better with full sun and, say, Lyle Lovett. The point is: I HAVE SWEET PEAS!! To be sure, there aren't a lot of vines, probably because the seeds I planted were old. Next year, I'll put trellises on the back of every bed in the shade and try to get a bigger harvest.


In other garden news, the potatoes got a second layer of hilling, this time with mucked out straw from the school farm. Forking it into barrels made me so happy that I'm pretty sure the Ag teacher thought I was insane. I doubt any farm I have will have cows, but the smell of straw + cow + manure is lovely to me. The taties already need another hilling. I'm considering going to the Ag Center, which is a huge complex where the state fair and various animal contests and RV gatherings are held. They have a pile of shavings and manure that anybody can go and get for free. I don't know about hilling potatoes with it, though. Maybe I should just try to find some more grass clippings? I remain skeptical about the potatoes, although they look beautiful and healthy in their golden bed (I'd take a picture, but we've been under a weird little streak of thunderstorms since around five, so I think I'll stay in here so as not to get zapped...maybe later after the weather clears.) I wonder what type of music they'd like? Garth Brooks springs weirdly to mind.

The first batch of compost is officially ready. There are still some bigger strands of grass left over from last year before I realized you really need to shred your stuff before chunking it into the bin, but I'm not too worried about them. I'll use the compost on my seedlings, which will go in this weekend. Poor babies. Winter sowing, it turns out, is a science for at least one person living in the South. Again, it might be easier somewhere else with more predictable seasons. This spring has been fairly consistently coolish, but our winter was a wee schizophrenic, especially at the end. The plants sprang up fast and then have been hunched down in their pots for at least a month. Transplanting them seemed to have little to no effect on their growth, although most of them really seem puny now, like they want to stretch their legs. I'll be trying to find fish emulsion this weekend to perk up the squash. I've read that too much nitrogen makes for not a lot of fruit. And I want a LOT of fruit!! (Oooooh, the thought of fried squash is ALMOST enough to make me long for the heavy heat of summer.) The others will get some compost--and maybe some Andrew Lloyd Webber show tunes.

On the homefront, we've been doing good on the eating-in department. We took Jeffrey out to eat yesterday after a doctor's visit, but otherwise, we've eaten at home for the entire week. The rest of the month hasn't gone as well--we've done a terrible job of eating-in AND of keeping our budget. Sometimes I feel a bit like, "Dang, I'm growing a garden. How much do I have to pare down?" but this mainly comes on days when the kids are fractious or we have a packed schedule or when (to be honest) I'm just being lazy. Budgeting simply must be part of the homesteading effort, as well as doing a better job of using what we have here instead of buying something new. Baby steps.

I've settled officially on a biscuit recipe for the family. It yields yummy, tender, buttery, soft, crunchy on the bottom bread that everybody loves. It's a variation of Mama's recipe, one I read in "Better Homes and Gardens" by Scott Peacock, and one from Alton Brown, my culinary boyfriend (and fellow UGA grad.)

Not Hannah's Biscuits O' Joy
  1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
  2. Combine 2 cups all-purpose flour, three teaspoons baking powder, and one teaspoon salt. I use a whisk, other folks use a food processor. Eh.
  3. Pour one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar into a measuring cup. Add milk to make one cup. I use 1 percent milk, for what it's worth. This is a replacement for buttermilk. I don't know that I make biscuits enough to buy buttermilk since I don't know how long it lasts in the fridge, nor how much it costs. I'm perfectly happy with this substitution.
  4. Cut a half stick of cold, unsalted butter longways and then shortways. You're aiming for little butter cubes. Plop those into the flour mixture.
  5. Squoosh the butter cubes around in the flour mixture to break them up. "The experts" say aim for pea-sized pieces combined with smaller bits, which always makes me go, "Ack! Are we talking sweet peas? English peas? Crowder? PURPLE-HULLED PINKEYES????" Dude, you just want some bigger bits (field peas) and some smaller bits (graham cracker crumbs) and some flour. Don't have big hunks of butter in there.
  6. Stir up the milk and cider mixture. The acid in the vinegar will combine with the baking powder and make a nice fizzy dough that rises in the oven.
  7. Pour about 3/4 of the milk mixture into the flour and butter mixture. Some folks say make a well in the middle. Eh. I just pour slowly and hope for the best.
  8. Stir gently with a fork. This is the "Do this part carefully or you'll wind up with tough, dry, disks o'sadness" part. I mix until it's all just combined. Depending on weather, I sometimes have a bit of milky stuff in the bottom of the bowl. This is okay--I can always add a bit of flour during the kneading part.
  9. Plonk the dough out onto a floured surface. I use a wooden cutting board and I sprinkle maybe an eighth of a cup of flour onto the board. I have no idea if this is the "lightly floured" surface the experts go on about. This is what works for me.
  10. Now the kneading part. I flatten the dough out to about an inch and a half, fold it in half, flatten it to an inch and a half, fold it in half, repeat and repeat and repeat maybe six or seven times. I've heard you should knead eleven times, that you shouldn't knead, that you knead only enough to coat the back and front of your dough with flour. Whatever works, y'all. This works for me.
  11. Roll the dough out to about half an inch. I use a fairly large biscuit cutter and with a bit of smooshing the cut out parts together, I can get eight big biscuits and a little wonky one that I call the "sample." Don't spin the cutter; just push it down (I love the poofy little sound it makes) and lift it up. Put the biscuits on a parchment sheet lined pan so that they're almost touching, like maybe a centimeter between them. Poke holes in the biscuits all the way down to the pan with a fork, twice. Top each biscuit with a tiny piece of butter.
  12. Bake for, oh, eleven or so minutes. I never time it...I always go by sight.
  13. Eat and experience bliss.
Still working on the Cracker O' Joy. Will report when I've figured it out.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Springing (and Cleaning) Out All Over!

The sweet peas and bunching onions are up! Yay!


Tiny lil sweet pea


Baby onions in a row


(Is it wrong that I kinda want to smooch on them?)

Clearly, the rain from the storms last night (which I apparently and uncharacteristically slept through, which is scary because Will never checks the Weather Channel and we'd be halfway to Oz before he realized we were having a tornado) helped them out. I really need to get my garden planned out so I can get my watering system set up. Last year I tailored it to each bed, which meant a lot of sweating in the pathways after everything came up. I'll still use the soaker method this year, but I'm going to try to configure it in such a way that I can set the lines up without having to plant around them OR move them around the plants. Hopefully I'll be able to salvage the lines and all of the drippers as I start dismantling the system in the next few days. Having them will keep me ahead of the game.

The winter sown seedlings all got a good soaking last night and are looking good--even the blown-over Swiss chard. Another Lemon Cucumber is coming up. I'm actually worried about all of the seedlings, winter sown and otherwise, since we're expecting a hard freeze (or several of them) over the next few days. I can always rake some leaves over the peas and onions and maybe "bank" some around the containers. The theory is that nothing will come up that isn't ready to, but our weather is so temperamental in the late winter/early spring that it makes me wonder.

In other (and far more boring and unpleasant, in my opinion) news, I'm still working on my Imbolc-inspired inside overhaul. The office is awash in discarded CDs and papers. I feel guilty throwing so much JUNK out, but at the same time, paring this down will help me be more efficient in running the house and garden. I'm planning on making binders for home projects and our schedule and budget, much like the one I've already made for my recipes. (One project will be using bills and envelopes and other junk mail to make paper, as I recently came across my old paper-making frames. Viva la organization!)

Another thing we're working on as a family right now is an itemized budget. We've always had a budget--but I use that term loosely, as we never followed or tracked it at all. I suggested we itemize our budget for February so we could see where the money's going. No big shocks so far--we're already over our monthly grocery limit AND we've eaten out A LOT. This is my fault. I need to do better on planning and cooking our meals. We over-budgeted for gas, though, and had a big "miscellaneous" chunk, so we can adjust as needed. Still, I'd like to do better on groceries next month. Cleaning out the pantry today will help me plan better for next month--I won't buy extra of those things we don't use.

Fascinating stuff, no? Sigh. I'm going to have to roll up my sleeves and take to the office again before I put myself to sleep.