I love Sundays. It's the day we clean the house, put clean sheets on the beds, and I have plenty of time to be leisurely in the kitchen.

After our breakfast of fresh-baked bread, sausage and eggs, I finished making up the homemade cereal, granola, and yogurt, and made hard-boiled eggs for our lunch.

John spent most of the day in the yard with the kids. He trimmed up all the bushes and sent the kids in with two huge bunches of hydrangeas that we put in the kitchen and dining room. He and Snacks took apart Snacks' fort (a.k.a. my shed) while Sissy napped in the afternoon.

For dinner we had brats from the Trad Foods warehouse, fresh broccoli from the CSA box, and brown rice cooked with fresh garlic scapes and green onions.

It was a good day.

I love being immersed in the world of growing and preparing food--it is becoming more and more a big focus of my life. One year ago I hardly knew how to cook; now I'm making three meals a day from scratch and enjoying (almost) every minute of it.

Wendi and I went to see Food, Inc. last night and John went to see it this afternoon. I haven't been able to talk John into reading any of my books, so I was thrilled to discover that the film rolled many of my very favorite books up into 90 minutes that would hold his attention. He came home ready to build a chicken coop in the back yard and even offered to help us fill the water barrels at Dowling this afternoon.

Earlier today Snacks helped me make bread. I measured and he dumped, and then we each kneaded a loaf while talking about why we don't buy our bread from Great H*rvest anymore (for example, they're not organic and they get their ingredients from C*rgill...) and what it means to genetically modify food.

I tried whole wheat bread flour instead of spelt flour in my rye sourdough loaves today. They felt a lot different while I was kneading them--less pliable, I think--and they didn't rise nearly as much as I expected them to. Also, they feel slightly heavier, if that's possible. I can't wait to slice one tomorrow morning to see how they handle and, of course, how they taste!

We had homemade pizza for dinner tonight for the first time in a long time. It was so much fun going out to my "kitchen garden" and cutting fresh basil and oregano for the sauce. I used green onions and garlic scapes from the CSA box. John grated the pizza cheese and made a spinach salad and the vinaigrette while I rolled out the pizza crust and made the sauce. It was nice working in the kitchen together, even if we do end up tripping over each other and arguing about who gets the only cutting board.

I've got yogurt warming overnight and granola and cereal soaking to bake tomorrow. Eggs from the farm with my fresh-baked bread and sausage from the Trad Foods warehouse for breakfast tomorrow. Can't wait.

We ate the last of the CSA veggies tonight (except for a few potatoes that will keep for awhile). Both kids ate kohlrabi raw with salt on it. And--in keeping with the recently discovered miracle of no snacking--both kids ate my spaghetti. With sauce on it. With meat in it. Every bite. (Sissy even had seconds.)

I'm not a big pasta person, but I was especially proud of my spaghetti tonight because I made the sauce from scratch with green garlic and green onions from the CSA box, and oregano and basil from the back yard. It felt so good chopping everything up and throwing it in the pot.

I weeded the strawberry patch out back after the kids went to bed. It was hot and humid, but it felt good to be outside. I love the serenity of summer evenings.

We went to Dowling around noon today and, for the first time, I realized that our garden plot is actually "part shade" instead of "full sun". Great for working in the garden; not so great for growing food. The raspberries, rhubarb, and lettuce from the previous tenant seem to be doing well...guess we'll see how my tomatoes and basil fare.

I finally stuck the little watermelon and cucumber plants in the ground in the yard today. It's so late in the season, I have no idea if they will even mature, but the kids picked them out and I figure it's all part of the experiment this year. I ate three ripe blueberries off my new bushes while I was watering my new plantings. Yum.

Finished up the last of the strawberry rhubarb crisp tonight along with the rest of the leftovers from this weekend. It occurred to me that we virtually have zero food waste these days. I have recently devised a system where I make a list on a sticky note of all of the leftovers so I can keep track of what needs to be eaten.

I bet we used to throw out 75% of our leftovers because they went bad. Now nothing gets thrown out and the tiny percentage of what doesn't get eaten is fed to the worms (along with all the egg shells, banana peels, etc.). I have just discovered that if I don't give the kids snacks, they eat ALL of their meals without complaining--vegetables included--and almost always ask for seconds. It's like a miracle. We used to have to take the trash out every single day because it was full. Now we're down to maybe once a week and that usually has to be taken out because it starts to smell bad before it gets full.

Snacks read the grace tonight at dinner for the very first time. He had to get a little help from his dad, but he did it mostly himself. We were so proud.

I feel like fresh produce is running my life. I'm remembering now why I've gone with frozen fruits, veggies, and meat for so long--you have to PLAN and stay on top of things when food is fresh. I think I'm much more up for the challenge now, but I definitely have already learned some things about the CSA veggies.

Next week I'll know to use the edible greens from the veggies like radishes and kohlrabi FIRST, and then start in on the salad greens. I'm bummed the veggie greens wilted before we could eat them. I could make chicken stock with them, but I decided with all the "pressure" of the strawberries and my first CSA box, I'll just feed them to my worms. Next week I'll know better!

I've been harvesting and freezing rhubarb today, both from my yard and Dad's. I have such big plans, we really need to get that second basement freezer soon--I'm running out of room and it's only mid-June!

We finished up the last of the fresh strawberries tonight--we got quite a bit of mileage out of our bounty! We had strawberries and cream the first night, baked two strawberry rhubarb crisps last night, and I whipped up some Strawberry Fool for dessert tonight.

Today the kids and drove out to pick strawberries. It was the first time the kids have picked them (they've done raspberries and apples...), and they had a great time. We didn't get as big of a "haul" as I had hoped for, but we managed over 4 p0unds in about an hour (plus what Sissy ate while she was picking--she ate everything she picked!) and we celebrated with strawberry sundaes afterward.

On the way home we stopped at Dowling since we hadn't been by the garden for almost two weeks while we were away. We couldn't believe how big our tomato plants have gotten! We harvested some basil, watered, and weeded.

Dinner tonight was inspired by the CSA veggie box and the leftover burgers from last night. I roasted some gorgeous deep purple potatoes and made a bechamel sauce from The Art of Simple Food to crumble the hamburger into--along with a handful of my very own homegrown parsley--which I ladled over the potatoes.

Tonight's huge salad included the rest of the butter head lettuce, spinach, arugula, parsley, green garlic, green onions, and radishes in white, red and purple, tossed with the same homemade vinaigrette as last night.

We ate in the back yard and finished off the meal with our freshly picked strawberries with pastured cream poured over the top.

Yum.

Tonight's dinner was local pastured burgers on the grill, fresh milk from the farm, and a huge salad from our very first CSA box--butterhead lettuce, spinach, and arugula. I made a simple vinaigrette from The Art of Simple Food with green garlic and green onions from the CSA.

Doesn't get any better than this...

We just returned from a week in Sandpoint, Idaho where the kids got to be with their cousins from sunrise to sunset every single day.

There were 33 of us staying in bungalows right on the water. When the kids got up and dressed, we could just let them out the door to run and play.

It was the ultimate freedom for all of us.

This afternoon, Snacks and I released his caterpillars back into the woods by the school where he and Brenna found them last week. He had me take a picture of each and every one of them just before he let it go. This is a picture of his very favorite one, "Snowy White".

While he cried a little about it last night as we talked about doing the "right thing" and letting the caterpillars go, he was in good spirits about it today. I was really proud of him and told him so.

On the way home, we stopped at the fish store to do some information gathering about getting him his very first pet (if you don't count the caterpillars, of course...or the dog that we've had since long before he was born...).

I thought I'd get him a couple of goldfish in a bowl (he planned to name one of them "Greg" and Sissy was going to get to name the other one--I'm sure it would have been something like, "Orange Fish" or just plain, "Fishy"), but it turns out that it's a myth that goldfish can live comfortably in a GOLDFISH BOWL--they actually need a larger tank, and an air filter, and some other things that total up to over $200 just to get you started.

After a call to Gramma Ruth to see if she'd take care of his new fish while we are out of town next week, we left with a gorgeous (and much, much cheaper) betta (Siamese fighting fish).

Released from the teeny tiny vase he has been living in for who-knows-how-long, he is now happily settled in his spacious new home (a.k.a. my old kombucha crock) and, I must say, he looks mah-velous as the new center piece on our dining room table.

Peonies are one of my very favorite flowers, along with lilacs and lily of the valley. We cut a few and took them to Snacks' teacher on his last day of kindergarten. Today I got around to cutting a bunch for our dining room table. You can't beat fresh cut flowers from your own yard.

I think I've finally talked Snacks into letting his caterpillars go. He reported that one didn't survive last night, and I'm guessing that we don't have the right leaves for them to eat. We've tried maple, birch, rhubarb, lilac, Virginia creeper, hosta... they don't seem to be eating any of them. He is sad about letting them go, especially the babies that hatched from the eggs he had, but I explained that they had a much better chance of surviving in the woods than they do in his little plastic box, and he seems to understand.

We think we'll drive them back to Dodge where we got them so they can find their old homes. I'm not sure about letting them go in the yard since I don't want to be introducing some caterpillar species that we don't already have in our neighborhood, just in case...

I told Snacks we could look into getting some fish when we get back from Idaho. He seems to be ready for pets of his own and I think I can handle a couple of goldfish.

I've been busy with my latest project of figuring out exactly how much everything we eat costs. I've gotten sort of fanatic about it--comparing prices between several different stores and figuring out how to get things at the best cost. I'm probably driving John crazy following him around telling him the cost of everything he is putting in his mouth, but it is truly fascinating to me!

For example, I can make a loaf of organic sourdough bread for $2.22, while I used to pay $5.75 for a genetically modified loaf from Great Harvest. And I can make a quart of organic yogurt with milk from cows on pasture for $1.88, when I used to pay almost $5 for a quart of organic yogurt from cows in a CAFO.

Most of our food is actually much more expensive than what we could otherwise buy, since we're buying eggs and fresh milk straight from a farm and I insist on buying pastured meat, so I've been having fun figuring out the cost of each serving--this should help me lose weight really fast. It's definitely cut down on the amount of food that the worms get--we salvage and reuse a LOT more than we used to.

I've recently discovered that I'm quite handy with a drill. Inspired by The Complete Tightwad Gazette, I've been "saving money" left and right by drilling holes in all kinds of things for Snacks to keep him occupied now that summer break has started.

Today he spent a couple of hours in the back yard with a plastic water bottle with a hole drilled in the cap that he could squirt water out of. I figure that's more hours than he's spent altogether on the hundreds of dollars worth of toys he got for Christmas...

Today was Snacks' last day of kindergarten. He got up at 5:00 a.m. and asked if he could go right out to the back yard to check on the caterpillar he'd brought home from the woods by the school yesterday.

The caterpillar apparently wasn't smart enough to climb out of the open Kleenex box overnight, so Snacks was happy to report that "he" was still there at the crack of dawn. He traveled back to school again this morning to be admired by all Snacks' classmates. Somehow he stayed in the Kleenex box all day, and even got to go to the end-of-school assembly.

After school Snacks' got to play with his three favorite school friends. They gathered about 30 more caterpillars from the school grounds and woods--luckily only about 10 of those made it into our Kleenex box.

We had to stop at home on the way to our celebratory lunch to drop the caterpillars off so they didn't roast in the car (or crawl out of the Kleenex box, for that matter...) We pulled together a quick homemade terrarium for them.

After lunch and ice cream--and a quick stop at Dowling to water--Snacks spent the rest of the afternoon naming and watching the caterpillars.

Before bed, Snacks and I sat on the couch and went through his "Summer Suitcase". It was so cool to look over all his school work and art work from the past year. I can't believe how much he's grown and changed since September.

School is out in 3 days. My plan for mornings this summer is to get up (the kids are up between 5:45 and 6:15), grab something portable for the kids to eat for breakfast, and walk the dog to Dowling to water and weed before it gets too hot.

Today was a little bit of a practice run when the kids and I stopped at Dowling on the way home from school to water the tomatoes and basil.

We each grabbed two watering cans from the shed, filled them at the water barrels, and the kids watered the marigolds while I watered the food plants. It worked even better than I had hoped!