What's left in the pantry?

I quickly took stock of the jars on the basement shelves today because it's become evident that there are beginning to be more empty jars than full jars.
It appears we have a LOT of fruit:
strawberry jam/sauce, blueberry jam, canned peaches in honey, pears, pear butter, applesauce, frozen and dried blueberries, frozen strawberries

I only have ONE jar of canned tomatoes left. *sob!* Actually, I knew I didn't have enough. However, I dried a lot of tomatoes and they reconstitute really nicely and sweetly.

I was talking to another friend who cans a lot and bemoaned the fact that we didn't know more folks who canned. February would be the perfect month to have a mid-winter preserved food swap!
I do NOT need 8 half-pints of piccalilly type relish. Nor do I need 10 jars of unsweetened applesauce. I would gladly swap some for canned tomatoes.

We do have a lot of soup jars left. My favorite being a vegetable quinoa soup (no, I didn't grow the quinoa, it was left over from the grocery store days). Also have minestrone and chicken noodle. I don't care for the chicken noodle. I can't figure out why it tastes a little weird. It's not bad, something is just incredibly strong in it and I feel like it's the collards. It's edible tho for sure, and goes well with grilled cheese.

I still have frozen green beans, a little frozen corn, only a couple bags of collards (my absolute fave for throw-it-in-every-dish). I have some sugar snap peas too.
Also have some salsa verde and this strange summer salsa that is a general salsa made with onions, garlic, tomatoes and cilantro, but also has peaches, pears and mint thrown it. I did not make the recipe up, it came out of the Ball cookbook. The mint kind of over-powers it, making it not bad, just a bit unexpected and strange.

Have two beef roasts left, lots of various pork, at least 5-7 whole chickens, and many bags of chicken legs, thighs and breasts. We also have two whole turkeys gifted from G's work. I should try to thaw them out and grind them. I miss turkey burgers.
Anyone ever grind turkey meat? Do you use only the breast? How does it come out?

Our potatoes are sprouting in the basement. This being our first year, I was relieved to find that El, at Fast Grow the Weeds says this is fairly normal this time of year if your root cellar space is no colder than 50*. That's as cold as I can make it. So, we just break off the sprouts and cook up the potatoes. Some of the small ones need to be tossed out, but we still have many, many potatoes and at least 20 or so huge yellow storage onions. Only have 7 or so heads of garlic, which I'm using a far more sparingly than usual, but will be plenty until I can get them again at the farmer's market.

I'm feeling good about our inventory, even if it's a bit weird. I need to seriously start making some baked goods with all the fruity things downstairs.

This afternoon my daughter and I took my mother to the grocery store (she lost her car in an accident 2 months ago and has yet to replace it). It was weird to walk through the aisles, noting what I used to throw in my cart weekly. My daughter begged me to buy a mix of Jiffy blueberry muffins. I said, "Are you crazy?! Do you know how many blueberries we have at home? I'll make some!"
"Will they taste the same as Jiffy?"
"No, they won't, but that's because they'll be made with blueberries and not dried apples dyed blue and artificially flavored."
"Jiffy mix is good though", she said.
"Yeah, it is", I agreed.

And then we walked to the magazines and she checked out the Jonas Brothers while I looked at a hairstyles mag. I treated my daughter to "fresh-made" sushi ("Mom! Can't I get ONE THING at the grocery store?!"--her first choice was Capt'n Crunch, something I wouldn't have bought even when I did buy groceries regularly) and then we helped my mother carry her groceries.

Life will not slow down!!

And that's a good thing, I suppose. I've had so many things to do lately. Life is incredibly full. Yesterday, I had 2 hours of down time out of the entire day and was able to go to the library with my husband and sweet boy.
We stocked up on a week's worth of bedtime stories (2 books a night, and nothing too babyish) and I also brought home 4 gardening books. I was so excited to get home at the end of the day and just veg with some tea and my books.
Twas not to be though. With the freezing temps and snow, my 20 minute drive to office last night ended up taking 1 hour 30 minutes. I was so enraged. Really, it's not like me to get so pissy about traffic unless I'm truly rushing to a birth...but anything else, I really try to be zen about it.
I just couldn't shake it though. I could hear my library gardening books calling my name through miles and miles of gridlocked traffic. "Come home, sweetheart. We've got your slippers and a mug of Earl Gray. Come home."

I ended up not getting home until 8:30pm. That meant put the kids to bed and get my pajamas on. I paced back and forth between my bed and the dining room, wondering if I should make myself stay and read or if I should just go to bed with my husband. I chose the latter.

Currently I have this small window of time before my daughter gets home and Little E is actually napping! So I've decided to moan on my blog. :) How exciting.

All bitching complete, now about the garden...

I've learned that I need 3600sqft of soil to plant enough wheat for a family of four. I think I can make it work, but it might mean creating a couple of raised beds for the front yard to accommodate all the vegetables we need to grow. My husband is skeptical about neighborhood thugs messing with front yard produce, but if they need it to eat, I say let them take it.
If we can make the wheat thing work, I will definitely be converting more grass to garden. We've not got much left that isn't in complete shade. I will be tearing out 3 huge and unruly forsythia bushes so that I can plant clusters of blueberries and raspberries.
Our shadiest part of the yard contains trees I'm unwilling to cut down, as much as I'd love more growing space. The trees create shade and shelter on the south side of our house. They're lovely in the summer and really help cool the house, especially upstairs.
And we will be bringing chickens home in the spring! I'm tired of having to drive to the farm to get eggs, especially in winter. I wish we could have gotten around to building the inside of the coop before it got cold, it just didn't happen in time.

So those are my wee plans for now. Am accumulating my seed order and will post soon.
I really, really want to grow currants too. I seems to be all about fruit now that I've conquered my fears about doing more than casual vegetable growing.

So yeah for berries, down with the forsythias, ponder front yard vegetables and bring home the chickens! That's what's in my mind for the garden this week.

Tomorrow I have completely and totally O.F.F.

I'm going to sit on the couch in my pajamas and bed head for as long as I please, armed with Earl Grey, my garden notebook, a very sharp pencil and a stack of seed catalogs and library books.

Bliss.

Quickest of Updates

Whew! Made it through the holidays!
Since my last post, we've had loads of snow, insanely cold temps followed by a freakish 55 degree day or two and then more snow.
For Christmas Eve dinner, I made a very local ham, with scalloped potatoes (Michigan cheese, butter, onions and milk). We bought rolls from a local bakery and bought two amazing cheesecakes from The Old World Bakery. Asked my sister to bring a salad. I was soooo looking forward to fresh greens! I was quietly disappointed when she and her husband showed up with 6 Greek salads of iceburg lettuce from Benito's pizza along with 2 liters of Coke and Canada Dry. Apparently they were too busy to make a salad. I understand.
Heavy sigh.
My mother brought two shrimp platters with cocktail sauce... from Vietnam. How the hell many miles is it from Vietnam to good old Ypsilanti?
At any rate, it was all good and fun. The kids received a lot of really nice stuff, both from family and Santa, ahem.

Today we had Hoppin' John for our New Year's dinner (made with left over ham from Boxing Day), and stuffed chicken breasts wrapped in bacon. The stuffing was loads of garlic and collards mixed with cream cheese. Very decadent. The green apples were from a gifted box of produce. My brother owns a restaurant and the guy he gets produce from gave him a box of fruit as an extra gift. My brother then gave it to my family. The kids were ecstatic to have PINEAPPLE! and MANGO! and APPLES! and KIWI!
Holy cow! It's so nice to see the kids grateful and thrilled to eat fruit from afar.

Now I'm off to continue making my lists from assorted seed catalogs. It is that time of year! Aren't you excited?!