Quote of the Week

Raizel, really wanting to be allowed to do something:

"I promise. I'll be really quiet and I won't make a beep."

The Menu

Hooray, shabbos!

For dinner:

challah
caesar salad
roast
yorkshire pudding
steamed collards
mashed potatoes
roasted carrots
cookies and pareve ice cream

For lunch:

challah
caesar salad
fish cakes
beef and cabbage with fried rice sticks
Asian coleslaw
edamame
eggplant w/miso dressing
cucumber salad
Romanian apple cake

And good company. :)

Chickens and Garden

The chickens have been doing great, and are getting so big! Taking care of them has been far easier than I had even imagined. I fill up their feeder and waterer every three days or so. Once a week I scoot the pine shavings in their condo down onto the floor of the run and replace it with new shavings. The 10' x 10' run has a deep layer of wood chips and pine shavings (8–12"). From time to time I sprinkle some of their food on the ground and they peck and scratch at it, stirring up the ground and helping to compost their own droppings. The run smells sweet (6 weeks into it) and, if all goes as it is supposed to, should remain sweet-smelling until its annual rakeout. I try to let them out once a day to run around the yard. They are always supervised, however, since there are birds of prey here that reportedly love chickens. That's pretty much it! Having the chickens is what really makes it feel farm-like here. They are so much fun to watch as they peck around the yard. They're just so... HAPPY!

The garden is getting there, slowly but surely. DH made a 5' x 32' bed with a protective hoop cover on it. Inside we now have 480 pots of seeds (and a few seedlings!) and 22 fruit trees waiting to be planted when the danger of frost has passed in another month or so. We've also arranged for a dump truck to bring us eight cubic yards of the county's free compost on Thursday. DH planted our peas on Sunday too; it's nearly too late to plant the peas! (I still am not anywhere near getting used to Savannah gardening rhythms.) All the boards that we originally got for fencing are now stacked up and cut to the right lengths to make the rest of the beds, so bit by bit we'll get those built and fill them with the wood chips, nitrogen, and the giant pile of compost coming soon. With only eight 8–10 person-hours on Sundays, and little bits of time here and there it's slowly coming together. So fun to see things growing.

Quote of the Week

Eli: Mama, I think you're really good at cooking, even if I don't like much.

Duck for President

That is all.

The Menu

Shabbos, again. B"H!

For dinner:

challah
caesar salad
chicken w/bbq sauce
baked potatoes
tofu sour cream
roasted asparagus
sweet and sour cabbage
roasted cauliflower
ossi dei morti (bones of the dead) cookies

And for lunch:

challah
surimi salad
beef vegetable soup
chicken salad
cucumber salad
spinach kugel
arugula salad
chocolate chip cookies

Good shabbos, all!

Pesach?!???!!

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I just spent a couple of hours on pesach menus! We're spending pesach on Tybee Island (thanks to the generosity of Doda S.!), and while I won't have to clean my house for pesach I think the logistics are no less staggering. Kashering a strange kitchen for pesach (at least we'll get there three days before pesach). Fitting everything in one (!) refrigerator (maybe we can bring the chest freezer with us? Would that be nuts?). Imagining feeding 14 people, 3 meals per day, plus a few more for the seders. On the other hand, I can delegate! Several good cooks will be there so we can take turns with cooking and cleanup. Maybe it won't be so crazy. We have our own pool and a beach. I'm voting for late-night women's swims. :)

So... I've organized my thoughts a little, looked at last year's menus, plugged in some of my old standby dishes and if I plug away at it a bit each week and start stocking up groceries now, we should be in good shape... please, Hashem!!!!

Mozzarella Recipe

Here's the "easy" recipe! :)

2 gallons milk (2% is best)
2-1/2 tsp. citric acid powder
1/4 cup cool water
1/2 teaspoon liquid rennet (or check the strength; mine only requires 1/4 tsp)
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup kosher salt
1 gallon water

Dissolve the citric acid in water, then add to milk in stainless steel or enamel pot. Mix for 2 minutes, until dissolved.

Heat the milk to 88 degrees, then turn off the heat. Dilute the rennet in the water, then mix into the milk. Stir for a few seconds, then let it sit for 15 minutes while the curds develop.

Cut the curd into 1/2-inch cubes. Cut straight down in 1/2-inch rows, then make cuts perpendicular. Last, make cuts at a deep angle to (sort of) cube the curds. Let them rest for 5 minutes. Put heat on low (2?) and slowly heat to 108 over a period of 15 minutes or so while gently stirring the curds. Turn off the heat and gently stir for another 20 minutes.

Remove the curds from the whey (using slotted spoon or colander). Lay curds in a bowl. Mix up kosher salt and water and heat to 170. Cover the curds with the water (you'll have more salt water than you need). Gently stretch the curds up the side of the bowl, using the back of a spoon. They'll start to get more stringy then shiny. Turn the curds out onto a board and gently knead it. You can then put the cheese into a mold, or braid it. It will harden as it cools. It should yield 1-1/2 to 2 pounds of cheese. YUM!

Cheese Math

I made mozzarella cheese a couple of years ago, but for some reason just hadn't made it since. Now that I have new rennet and culture, yesterday I decided to finally make another batch. But it didn't work. It started out as expected. Add the citric acid to the milk, heat it up, add the rennet. Let it sit while the curds develop. Cut the curds. Heat up the curds. Oops? Where are the curds? They're gone! Frizzled. Nothing but little tiny pieces instead of nice lumpy, squeaky curds. Where are my curds?????????

Fortunately, DH had just been reading the cheesemaking book while resting and recovering from his stomach bug. "The book says when you use too much rennet it won't work," he kindly informed me.

But impossible. I had measured everything exactly. No room for... oops. I had used two gallons of milk. The recipe was for two gallons. I thought I was supposed to be doubling the recipe for two gallons. Nope. Okay. No harm done. A little grumbling about time lost. But the cheese frizzles turned into a nice batch of ricotta cheese. Perfect for lasagna later in the week. Yum.

So, not to be deterred, I set out again this morning. The intrepid cheesemaker. Same thing happened. Frizzles. All frizzles. Granted, I only had 1-3/4 gallons of milk at this point, but I had very carefully calculated everything for a 1-3/4 recipe making sure I didn't use too much rennet. But obviously I had! Hmmmm... I then double-checked the website and discovered that the rennet I purchased is double-strength! OH! I only need 1/4 teaspoon for two gallons!! So I had used too much rennet... AGAIN! Oh, well. This ricotta was great on tonight's pizza along with some cheddar and feta to kick it up a notch. And we sure are looking forward to lasagna later this week.

As soon as I get new milk I'm going to give it another shot and hopefully it will be as smooth and easy as the first time I tried it, IY"H! (Do you know they do look at you rather oddly when you go through with 7 gallons of milk... 4 for cheese, 2 for drinking, and 1 for yogurt?) Here's to perseverance!

The Menu

Ooftie, pooftie. We got papa and Eli through a (thankfully short) stomach bug this week. Now on to better things, like shabbos!

For dinner:

challah
stuffed eggplant (eggplant, onion, anchovy, tomato paste, herbs, garlic)
caesar salad
coq au vin blanc (chicken stewed in white wine)
linguini with garlic sauce
roasted curried cauliflower
roasted asparagus
mashed potatoes (for the girl who just can't have a shabbos w/o potatoes)
apricot squares

And for lunch:

OUT!

Bringing challah and salad...

Good shabbos, all!

Now I'd better actually finish up! The clock is ticking...

And a P.S. to the Fun Week

I can't believe I forgot. Yesterday we went to Animal Control and picked out two cats to adopt! Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time to fill out the paperwork before they closed, so Dean returned on his lunch hour today to hand in the paperwork and bring them home (while I dashed from dentist to home to have lunch and see kitties and then to doctor). One is between 1 and 2 years old and the other is 2 to 3 years old. A dainty little brown tabby and a medium-sized tortoiseshell. Both free, since there are so many cats there. And their names (we think): Lucy and Florence. (But Amirah insists their names are Betty and Florence.) Both are very unassuming and sweet and happily moved in. Not sure when they'll meet the chickens. :)

And can I just say... the roasted berbere (Moroccan spicy herbs!) chick peas I'm munching are one of my favorite snacks. WOW. Made them myself. We like roasted chick peas (just roast cooked chick peas at 450 until crunchy), but I'd never put this wonderful cayenne-y berbere mix I made on it. Oh, YUM.

What a Fun Week!

And it's only Monday (??!?!!).

For several days now I've just been feeling particularly... hummy! I love having different projects happening. :)

Here's what's been going on:

•We're all finally up to date with doctor and dentist visits. Hooray! It feels like we've had an appointment or two for months for one reason or another.

•Two thirds of our fruit trees arrived today. We need to find out if we can plant them now, with preparations for keeping them warm if it freezes (one suggestion I found was to string them with holiday lights - FUN!). Or we'll just keep them potted until after danger of freezing has passed (mid-February).

•I (finally) got around to ordering yogurt culture and was THRILLED to learn that now my usual suppliers are kosher-certified for repackaging. Hooray! That means I can order just the amount I need. So while I was at it, I got yogurt culture, rennet and citric acid for mozzarella-making (thereby gleefully lopping $100 off my co-op order), and a small "try-it" kit for making two small bries and two small bleu cheeses for $7. I'm so excited! Mozzarella cheese is the highest-yielding cheese and you can get between 3/4 and 1 pound of cheese from a gallon of milk. So cheese will cost $3–4/lb instead of $5.19/lb. And basic mozzarella is pretty easy to make (though you can make fancier, more involved mozzarella too!). I'll b'n post the easy recipe I've used before... Now I have visions of a cheese-curing fridge (just alter a regular, probably small, fridge and keep the humidity high. Eventually I want to try hard cheeses too...

•I am realizing that paint stripping is much more difficult than I had imagined! The paint on our kitchen cupboards has many layers, the oldest probably being 50+ years old. In other words, stubborn. Aargh. Oh, well. I'm in no rush. The plan is to strip the cupboards, paper bag decoupage the insides, paint the outsides, paint the counters with Rustoleum counter paint, and do the floor in paper bags. I only have about 5 hours per week to devote to it. It will take a while (60–80 hours?), but eventually it will be done! It really is fun. Especially the part about it costing less than $300 to redo the whole kitchen... Please, hashem!

AND OUR LEARNING...

•Amirah has, at last, finished 2nd grade math and we are going to be zooming into 3rd grade. If we keep to the same pace we have been we *should* be caught up by July-ish. The important thing is that she understand the concepts before moving on, and I'm so glad we finally found Math Mammoth for her. It has worked SO much better than any other math curriculum. It's worked well for all the other kids too.

•Amirah has finished Lech Lecha!!!! We spent a lot of time there, having not skipped any of it. Her reading has gotten much faster, and her ability to translate is pretty good. There have been generally only one or two words in a pasuk (verse) that totally stumps her. Vayera, here we come! Avraham and Yishmael just got circumcised, and Sarah is about to find out she'll give birth to Yitzchak when she is 90 years old. I love our chumash time. I think it's the highlight of my day. The other highlight is on those days here and there when ALL FOUR children are davening together, out loud. And we love, love, love L'shon Hatorah. What a great grammar book, and not overwhelming in the least. I did decide to really plow through L'shon Hatorah to help our chumash studies. My original plan was to do 3 days of LHT/2 days of Rashi. But I've decided to do 5 days of LHT so we can finish by pesach, then we'll do Rashi after that. Learning the script won't take too long, and I've been reading many Rashis out loud to her as we go through the text. I think that will put us in pretty good shape by summer.

•Raizel has finished another level of Hebrew in Aleph Champ. She's starting Level 5 (of 8), and Eli is almost done with Level 5. Raizel should finish it in about two months. After Level 5, they're ready to start chumash (the first seven days of creation!). For efficiency's sake I'll probably have Eli wait about six weeks so they can start chumash together. Exciting!

•Eli is happily zooming through 2nd grade math. Concepts that Amirah really struggles/struggled with are second nature to him. He often pipes up with the answers to her math problems without skipping a beat! :) She takes it in good stride. He's in the second grade Handwriting Without Tears and very happy with that. Explode the Code 4 has him very fired up reading and writing lots of compound words right now. He also started spontaneously reading whole books. So Raizel did too! They both like to sit in the kitchen and read various Dick and Jane stories to me. Eli is very happy with his Hebrew too. He's overall just very enthusiastic about all of his learning.

•Raizel's most striking skill right now is her beautiful printing. She's using a 2nd grade book now too (Zaner-Bloser). Her fine-motor skills have always been excellent. She makes the daintiest, most intricate little drawings. Her writing really is better than both Eli's and Amirah's. Everything else is great - Hebrew, Writing With Ease (w/Eli), Explode the Code 2, grammar (1st grade), English reading, everything... She's a smart little cookie.

That's just a rough, hitting-the-highlights summary. Lots of blanks, but it's good for me to write it all down for my own memory.

Vine Borers... Grrrrr...

Vine borers were our biggest nemesis in the garden in 2011. They completely destroyed all of our summer squash and a few of our cucumbers. The mother of the squash vine borer is the hawk moth. She lays her eggs near the base of a stem of a cucurbit (melon, squash, pumpkin, cucumber). When flying around, she flies and behaves a bit bee-like so no one realizes they are actually a moth. In retrospect I did see several of these flying around but didn't think much about them!


When the egg hatches, the caterpillar burrows into the stem and eats it from the inside.

The first evidence of vine borers is matter called frass that looks like sawdust protruding from along the stem. There are a few ways to do them in. You can poke needles through the stem until you find the offender and kill it (bleah). You can re-bury the stem at various points along the vine and it will grow roots. So even if the vine borer is digesting part of it, it can still get nutrients from the soil. Or you can use this nifty trick I learned—when the plant is young (6+ inches long) you can take toilet paper or paper towel roll and cover the base of the stem. It's apparently pretty effective at discouraging the vine borers from digging in. You can bet these will be all over our garden this year! I read elsewhere that nylons can work too. I'll be saving these as they expire both for this use and for holding heavy fruits on trellises as needed. I'm hoping (please, Hashem!) to get to complain about how I have zucchini coming out my ears. :)

Really enjoying this southern gardening thing, but I feel like I continually have whiplash.

Spring/Summer Planting Dates

This matters only to fellow Savannahians, but I calculated all the spring planting dates and thought it would be useful to store it here. It doesn't include any vegetables we don't eat. :)

1/1
asparagus
cabbage
carrot
lettuce
onion
peas

1/8
asparagus
cabbage
carrot
lettuce
onion
peas
potatoes
spinach

1/15
asparagus
cabbage
carrot
collards
kale
lettuce
onions
peas
potatoes
spinach

1/22
asparagus
cabbage
carrot
collards
kale
lettuce
onions
peas
potatoes
spinach

1/29
asparagus
beets
cabbage
carrot
collards
kale
lettuce
onion
peas
potatoes
spinach

2/5
asparagus
beets
broccoli
cabbage
carrot
collards
kale
lettuce
onion
potatoes
spinach

2/12
asparagus
beets
broccoli
cabbage
carrots
cauliflower
collards
kale
lettuce
onions
potatoes
spinach

2/19
asparagus
beets
broccoli
cabbage
carrots
cauliflower
collards
kale
lettuce
onions
potatoes
spinach

2/26
asparagus
beets
broccoli
cabbage
carrots
cauliflower
collards
kale
lettuce
onions
potatoes
spinach

3/4
bush beans
pole beans
beets
canteloupe
cauliflower
corn
watermelon

3/11
bush beans
pole beans
beets
canteloupe
cauliflower
corn
tomatoes
watermelon

3/18
bush beans
pole beans
beets
canteloupe
corn
cucumbers
eggplant
okra
peppers
zucchini
tomatoes
watermelon

3/25
bush beans
pole beans
beets
canteloupe
corn
cucumbers
eggplant
okra
peppers
zucchini
tomatoes
watermelon

4/1
bush beans
pole beans
beets
canteloupe
corn
cucumbers
eggplant
okra
peppers
sweet potatoes
zucchini
tomatoes
watermelon

4/8
bush beans
pole beans
canteloupe
corn
cucumbers
eggplant
okra
peppers
sweet potatoes
zucchini
tomatoes
watermelon

4/15
bush beans
pole beans
canteloupe
corn
cucumbers
eggplant
okra
peppers
sweet potatoes
zucchini
watermelon

4/22
pole beans
canteloupe
corn
cucumbers
eggplant
peppers
sweet potatoes
zucchini

4/29
pole beans
canteloupe
corn
cucumbers
eggplant
peppers
sweet potatoes
pumpkins
zucchini

5/6
canteloupe
corn
peppers
sweet potatoes
pumpkins

5/13
canteloupe
corn
peppers
sweet potatoes
pumpkins

5/20
canteloupe
sweet potatoes
pumpkins

5/27
canteloupe
sweet potatoes
pumpkins

6/3
pumpkins

6/10
pumpkins

That's for all the spring/summer crops. I'll work on the fall planting dates later, b'n. The original dates came from the University of Georgia in Athens, but since Savannah's last frost is two weeks earlier than in Athens I moved all the dates up by two weeks.

We've got work to do!!!!!

The Menu

Again, shabbos. B"H! I'm just not sure where the rest of the week went. Here's the plan!

For dinner:

challah
teriyaki salmon
whipped butternut squash
mashed potatoes
roasted sweet and sour mushrooms
roasted zucchini and carrots
homemade butter
pumpkin cheesecake
sugar cookies (by Amirah)

(Haven't had a shabbos dairy meal in AGES!)

And for lunch:

challah
sushi (surimi/avocado/cucumber and sweet potato/omelet/spinach)
baba ghanouj
bbq sauced chicken wings
cabbage apple slaw
rice sausage salad
cucumber tomato onion salad
pumpkin kugel
barley mushroom tomato stew
carrot salad
roasted pears
cake (from guest)
pareve ice cream (from a different guest)
and lots of wines (from two other guests)

We're having a lot of guests. :)

Gardening!

We've been working hard on the garden in the small cracks of time available. We've nearly got a plastic-covered hoop up over our 32' x 5' bed to grow our seedlings. The wood chips from the former trees are starting to smell like sweet growing dirt. We found someone with a dump truck who might be able to get a (HUGE!) load of compost for us. The compost is free from the city, so we'll just pay the cost of transport. The fence panels that we bought many months ago have turned out be so very useful for everything but a fence. We're so glad to have them! They made a first-rate roof for the coop, and now they're making fantastic raised beds all around the garden.

Last night I wrote out our whole planting schedule, which took some doing since Savannah's weather is quite different from the rest of Georgia for which readily-available planting schedules are made. We have to start spring/summer veggies about three weeks sooner and fall/winter veggies about two weeks later. My oh my, was I surprised to discover that our busiest planting weekend will be the last weekend in January! And the bulk of this is direct-seeding the vegetables, not starting them indoors or under cover. So, we've got to hurry up and get those beds done! No rest for the weary in Savannah's 11-1/2 month growing season!

Seed & Tree Order

Here's what's in the mail for us!

TREES
2 mandarins
1 Meyer lemon
2 pineapple guavas
2 paw paws
6 kiwis
1 fig
1 pomegranate
1 hazelnut
1 almond
1 quince
1 Methley plum
2 persimmons
1 mulberry tree
1 kumquat

SEEDS (some here; some in the mail)
winter squashes (Banana Pink Jumbo, Red Kuri, Tromboncino, Hunter Butternut)
beans (Negreta, Pinto, Scarlet Runner, Disoy Soybeans)
eggplant (Nubia, Long Purple)
greens (Mesclun, Bibb, Parris Island Romaine, Arugula, Malabar Spinach, Basil)
peppers (Jalapeño, Rainbow Mix Bell Peppers)
tomatoes (Better Boy, Big Boy, Brandywine, Supersweet 100)
peas (Melting Sugar Snow Peas, Super Sugar Snap)
beets (Cylindra, Early Tall Top)
cucumber (Boston Pickling, Lemon)
tomatillo (Purple)
watermelon (Georgia Rattlesnake)
bok choy
broccoli
cabbage (Chinese; everything else is really cheap at the store)
carrots (A#1, Danvers, Nantes Half Long, Short 'n' Sweet)
cauliflower
sugar pumpkins

ALREADY IN THE GARDEN:
onions
shallots
garlic
collards
cabbage
broccoli
mustard
lots of herbs

IN THE WORKS:
asparagus crowns
ginger
horseradish
lemongrass
mint
and enough strawberries for 100+ square feet!

We'll have our work cut out for us! Got great prices on seeds, and it should be enough for two years.