Waste Not Fruit Leather

 Are you guys getting this crazy heat!?  88 degrees in April just seems surreal!  I used to LOVE the sun, and it couldn't get too hot for me, but now I'm afraid Alaska has ruined me.  I feel like I'm melting as soon as the mercury hits 80 and I'm more than a little concerned about this upcoming summer!  But, oh!  The blooms!  The variety of plants that are thriving in this climate never ceases to astound me.  My neighbor threw some lilac boughs on the burn pile yesterday because she had to thin her tree out a little, but I couldn't bear it!  I had to rescue them and brought them all in the house! =)

We've had a lovely week of exploring gardens, wading in creeks, and shooting with friends.  Not to mention catching tad poles and filling up the kiddie pool!  Our little lady has decided that while we're out and about, her snack of choice is an apple.  Not slices, no, the whole thing.  And that's all well and good except, she gets it to where it is just beginning to look polka-dotted with her tiny little bite marks and then she decides she's done.  Even on her best day, she'll eat off all the skin but doesn't want to eat the flesh.  But I'm pretty okay with it because of my latest technique for using what we have. 

Last summer we made a lot of smoothies with unfinished bits of fruit, but this spring I've been taking it a different direction.  Like I've said before, good fresh fruit was difficult to come by in Fairbanks, so it pains me to see it go to waste!  So lately, I've taken the leftover bits and pieces and throwing them into the blender, then in my dehydrator to make fruit leather.  This is so easy!  I only have one tray right now, so my blender half filled with puree will then fill my dehydrator tray just about perfectly.  As. Kadee mentions in her post Oh So Delicioso, the right consistency comes from patience and spreading it so it's just thicker than transparent.  In the dehydrator set to 135, this will take about 6 hours to fully dry. But keep checking on it as you get close because different combinations are going to take different lengths.  It should feel fairly dry to the touch. 

And flavor combinations are endless!   Right now, mine usually involve some apple and banana, but I've been adding in melon, orange, and blackberries.  I did a couple adding a spoonful of honey or sweetened jam, but it certainly wasn't necessary.  I even did one that was about half Greek yogurt!  It was really tasty!  This is another place to sneak in some well paired vegetables as well, like cucumber, spinach and carrots.  I've snuck them all in! =) 

So far this spring, I haven't had a batch last more than a day.  The young 'uns eat it like candy, it's easy to make and easy to grab on the go!  My next batch is going to be blackberry watermelon.  What other concoctions could we come up with?

Note: our family shares our own germs, but if you're making this to share outside of immediate family, I recommend using non-nibbled fruit! =)

Expecting Joy (and Nausea): Morning Sickeness Gift Basket

Havin’ a Baby!  (Morning Sickness Basket)

 

 

Worth the Morning Sickness!

 

No not me! =)  My dear friend just, JUST found out they were expecting baby #6!  Wow!  So excited for them! With so much joy, she’s also experiencing the common morning sickness (though you wouldn’t know it by looking at her!  That woman has endless energy!)  Those of you who’ve had to deal with that know it’s miserable, especially when you want to be soaking up life and cherishing every moment!

 

Eagerly Expecting

I’m going to insert a little excerpt of my first pregnancy here so you know where I’m coming from.  I should clarify.  My first successful pregnancy.  My very first pregnancy was a couple months prior and (this never stops hurting!) our first baby went to heaven in the second month.  But, to encourage you who are having morning sickness, it usually means that your baby and your body are progressing healthily!  So when I started feeling “off” a couple months later, I took a negative home pregnancy test.  A little discouraging, but I understood these things take time.   But a couple weeks later, I started crying profusely at a TV episode about the Iditarod (I’d almost NEVER cried at any movie!) and Josh said I should retest.  Sure enough!  Our little guy already had a beating heart by the time we were even sure he existed! 

What joy and excitement!  And then came the morning sickness, gradually progressing through the first couple months, then intense until the last couple.  I ended up feeling sick nearly the entire pregnancy and actually had hyperemesis gravidum (extreme morning sickness) with my first.  I lost more weight (25 lbs) though the second trimester than I gained in the whole pregnancy.   Even sounds could set it off!  It was so weird!  I couldn’t even listen to some of my favorite music because it made me so nauseous!  Anyway, raw ginger was the only thing that would touch it.  I would seriously chew on it raw.  Now the idea of that nearly makes me sick! =)  When it reached the clinical level, I did accept a prescription medication for a couple months so that I could continue working and maintain a healthy pregnancy.

He arrived!

There are a lot of suggestions out there about how to ease the symptoms of nausea, but they can have different effects on different individuals, even different pregnancies!  I was only minimally nauseous with our daughter and I only threw up once (and that was on a very turbulent, windy jet landing in Seattle!) 

So in putting together a little basket for my friend, I definitely wanted to include ginger, and I found a recipe for homemade ginger ale sweetened with honey to include.  You know, to whip up in all her spare time.  Yeah, I’ll throw in some pre-made, too.  =)  Just want to make sure it has real ginger in it.  Many brands now don’t.   I got ginger capsules that some pregnant friends swore by, but they didn’t touch my nausea either pregnancy.

Peppermint, my other lifesaver, is also a must.  Peppermints are good, but sometimes just the sweetness is counteractive in this case.  Peppermint oil is very helpful.

Have you ever tried acupressure?  I feel like it made a dent in the nausea sometimes.  Was it just a mental change?  Possibly, but whatever works, right?  Pressing two fingers against the indent of the inner side of your wrist (just before your thumb) can be helpful.

Fresh or frozen lemon can alleviate the symptoms of morning sickness, also.  To use the whole thing, cut a small slice from an end to suck on, then place what you don’t use in a day in the freezer and keep slicing off pieces as you need them.

Cold: while it was winter in Fairbanks, it was so nice just to be able to step out on the porch for a breath of fresh air.  When that’s not available, a cold pack around the back of your neck can really help!  These can later be used as heat packs for any painful cramping! I found this easy, inexpensive pattern for one from Satsuma using dollar store socks!

Breathe and try to relax: anxiety can increase nausea

Finally, hydration.  This can be super hard when anything at all in your stomach makes you want to hurl, but as much as you can, keep yourself hydrated.  Sucking on ice chips or taking tiny sips seems to help.

What have you found to be most helpful in alleviating morning sickness?  Any other ideas for the next basket?

Note: this was written some time back, but I am revising it for another friend currently expecting!

Rendered Useful: Adventures in Making Lard

As promised!  LARD!  Ugh, that isn’t even a fun word to say.  Not unlike BLOG, actually.  I really don’t like that word and my kids and I laugh every time we say it.  In fact, we’ve been trying to think of another name for it.  Blog is a mix of, what, basic log?  Back log?  So if I were Jean Luc I would call it a clog (captain’s log)?  I think I’d replace log with journal or even record.  Maybe combine with web?  Wernal?  Wecord? Hm…I’ll have to work on that a bit.

When Josh came out of our neighbor’s cooler with a packet of pig fat, my first thought was, “Gross, why?”  But he was all excited, “Look!  You can make lard!”  Okay, I was sure there were instructions out there in the interwebs somewhere, but I had never used lard before.  Even if I did figure out how to make it, I had no idea what to use it in!

So there it sat in our freezer for about a month and I didn’t want to see it go to waste, so I rummaged up some instructions from Faulk Farmstead to render lard in my crock pot.  Pretty simple, really.  You just cut the fat into smallish cubes (mine were a little bigger than dice size), discarding the large portions of muscle, ligaments, and blood vessels.  But don’t get too particular, the remnants just get used  for cracklins.  In the pot add a cup of water so it doesn’t burn before it melts, set it to medium and let it melt!

I feel like now would be a much better time to try this, at least if you are rendering indoors, because it was pushing 100 degrees the day I did this and the added heat (though not a lot) was noticeable unpleasant.  And though I didn’t notice a strong smell, it was detectable at close proximity.  I wish I would have done it outside!  It took the better part of a day, maybe 6 hours?  But I had my pot packed full, too!  As the lard melted set a strainer atop a mason jar and poured out the liquid until all the fat had liquefied. 

I saved the remnants for cracklins, later frying them up until they “crackle”.  This was the first time I had ever had cracklins, but they reminded me of bacon bits.  We had them with our scrambled eggs in the morning, but the Food and Wine page cooks it into a tasty-sounding pasta, though I have yet to try it, and I’ve seen many recipes out there for crackling chicken.  I’m really curious what else you have used them for? 

Anyway, after the mason jar was full, I just sealed, labeled and allowed it to cool.  I try not to do a ton of baking, so I kept it in the fridge, though I know many will just keep it in the cupboard.  The very next day, the little ones wanted us to make cookies together, quite specifically, snickerdoodles!  I realized the recipe I had called for shortening and that this would be a perfect time to substitute the lard.  They turned out amazing!  Slightly crisp on the very outside, but soft and almost chewy. 

The more I read about lard the more I find it’s ideal for baking, especially pie crusts.  I can’t wait to try my own!  And someone mentioned making soap with it, also.  So many possibilities!

I don’t know about you, but for so long we were told that lard is so unhealthy, but now we’re learning that isn’t so true.  Happy meets Healthy has a great article about the benefits of eating lard.  The most notable in my mind was that it has super high vitamin D content (which doesn’t occur naturally in a lot of foods).  This is great news for my Alaskan friends!  Our pediatrician in Fairbanks told us that even in the summer we didn’t get vitamin D because of the extreme angle of the sunbeams.  So all year we had to supplement to avoid the deficiency we all had. 

Well, I’ll sign off with that little tid bit and hope you have some new ideas that you’ll experiment with as well! 

Laughter

It's the best medicine...

Scottish Shortbread

Fynn's had a bit of a bug for a couple of weeks and it's really settled in his lungs.  It had been sounding better, but then the wheezing and junky coughs came back, so I decided to call the advice nurse at his pediatrics.  She told me to bring him in immediately, and I got kinda nervous.  Turns out it's bronchiolitis, a viral infection, but not terribly serious.  The NP told me that I'm already doing everything I should be and  to just wait it out a couple more weeks.  My poor baby's going to have one amazing immune system at this rate!  I really am so grateful for his overall health, though!

Then I had an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon yesterday regarding my wrist.  It has been painful to me for months, but has been getting worse lately to the point where it always hurts to pick up Fynn.  Sometimes its so shocking it makes me lose all strength, and I'm so afraid I'm going to drop him.  The PA discovered I had what they call "Mommy's Thumb."  I guess it's pretty common for new moms, especially with big babies.  It's just an inflamed tendon, irritated by all the picking up motions that happen.  And Fynn likes to be held.  A lot!  So I'm trying a brace and an anti-inflammatory for a bit, but if that isn't working, then they'll give me a steroid injection. Fun times!  But it really is just so good to know what is happening so we can move ahead with making it better.

The rest of this week involved a little grocery shopping and packing up and shipping a couple items I sold on Etsy (yay!)  Other than that it was mostly just trying to keep the house clean.  For those of you that know me, that is a constant challenge.  My artist's heart is more concerned with so many other things than house work, and thankfully, it doesn't bother Josh to much that our home isn't immaculate (I saw his bachelor apartment before we were married.  He has no room to talk! =) But now that we're having Bible Study here every Wednesday, I try to have it semi-presentable.  We had a small but good group this week.  Josh has been working 12 hour shifts and was just wiped, so I played piano and led a couple songs instead of him.  One verse that stood out to me this week was First Timothy 6:6 "But godliness with contentment is great gain."  What a perfect combination, and I am trying to attain both.

Okay, so on a lighter note, I pulled out the short bread recipe for small group this week.   It's always been a favorite and went really good with our chai tea (see previous entry).  I was thinking after I had them in the oven that these might be fun to cut out with cookie cutters into Christmas-y shapes.  Hm, maybe next time.  Well, I decided I could at least make a Jenga stack with mine, this time. =)

Scottish Shortbread

Ingredients

• 2 cups butter
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).

Cream butter and brown sugar. Add 3 to 3 3/4 cups flour. Mix well.

Sprinkle board with the remaining flour. Knead for 5 minutes, adding enough flour to make a soft dough. Roll to 1/2 inch thickness. Cut into 3x1 inch strips. Prick with fork and place on ungreased baking sheets.

Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for 20 to 25 minutes.