Last Warm Days

Enjoying the 65* day!

Local Walking Trails and Wetlands

I don't have anything to post regarding gardening or growing my own food. The only thing being produced on this city lot these days are a few daily chickens eggs- and I certainly can't take credit for that.

The maple trees have finally dropped most of their leaves (allowing tons of sunlight to flood the house- I forgot what a perk this is!). Now is the time to rake all the leaves onto the gardens like a big fluffy comforter. Time to sleep, my beloved dirt. See you in the spring.

Life has been keeping me super busy these days and that's all right. I've come to realize though that we really need to start some serious menu planning (as much as I love last-minute pizzas from Whole Foods!). It feels like I either put a lot of energy into our meals or none at all. Depends on the day, I suppose. I've had some days lately where I drop kids at school, come back to pick up the baby (who stays home with my mom while I cart big kids) and then go to work. By the time I finish up and get kids from school, it's 4pm and there's nothing ready to eat at home. And because I'm breastfeeding, I'm ravenously hungry oh, every 45 minutes or so. This leads us to occasional pizza nights. Again, not opposed, but I can't live on pizza. ;)

I have made some nice things lately though. Tonight we had awesome French onion soup with mushrooms. Had delicious pulled pork and homemade coleslaw the other night. Made an interesting red lentil/chickpea/saffronny stew. Also a nice cassoulet another night. And of course, when all else fails and we need something quick, we scramble up a ton of eggs, make a bunch of toast and roast some of our beloved fingerlings and have breakfast for dinner.
One of the things on our family agenda tomorrow is to make some serious meal planning lists. There's 4 eaters/1 nurser in this family who fly in all different directions and meet back again for dinner. We need to make breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner a bit more cohesive and easier to deal with.

In other news, I've not succumbed to my personal guilt of not canning a crap load of applesauce, apple butter and dried apple rings this year. Despite being the owner of small children, my kids just don't dig applesauce. Nor does my husband. I'm the only one who eats it. And I certainly do not need to consume 24 quart jars of applesauce over the winter months. In fact, I just finished off the last jar from last year's batch. Apples are lovely. We'll just have to enjoy them as they are, when they're in season.