Victoria's Lemon Zest French toast

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
about 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1 1/2 tablespoons of butter
a lemon
either French bread or day old sandwich bread, either one works.

Instructions:
beat the eggs together in a large bowl
add the milk to the eggs and mix them together untill its blended evenly
add the sugar and the vanilla

heat up a nonstick pan or skillet on the stove and add the butter or a nonstick spray to keep the toast from sticking to the pan. when the butter has melted, lower the heat to medium.

once the pan is nice and hot, put a slice of the bread into the egg mixture. flip it over so that the bread soaks it up. place the bread on the skillet and cook for two minutes on both sides,or untill the toast is nicely browned, flipping with a large spatula. repeat this step with as many slices as you'd like.

once you have cooked a slice, place it on a large plate. sprinkle confectioners sugar over the top. take the zest from a lemon and zest it over the toast, this adds a really bright flavor to the toast so it doesnt taste so heavy.
enjoy! :)

Garlic 2.0

A lot of what happened in our garden last year started with the idea of growing our own garlic. At that time, we didn't know anybody who did, but it seemed like an interesting idea. We use garlic in the kitchen, but not huge quantities of it, so it seemed very possible to grow enough garlic for our household.

In the fall of 2007 I started to poke around the Internet looking for information, and ended up buying a starter package of garlic bulbs for planting from The Garlic Store. The sampler had 8 garlic varieties, and came all bundled together with a little leaflet explaining how to plant it and care for it.

Including in the sampler were (according to their website):

Elephant Garlic Clove - The giant clove will grow out to massive bulb, the best for roasting garlic
Polish White - The large, round bulbs have a cream colored wrapper with a real punchy taste.
Brown Tempest- If eaten raw, the cloves have a fiery flavor, but that mellows to a pleasing aftertaste
Susanville- a beautiful artichoke variety, with large cream/pink bulbs, similar to Inchelium; has a compelling raw flavor, one of the most popular, and a long storage life
Red Janice - very hard to find; from Nmarazeni, Republic of Georgia; a turban with puplish stripes and a taste that is almost sweet and spicy
Inchelium Red - our biggest selling softneck; a Rodale kitchen taste test winner; gorgeous cream/pink wrappers
Applegate - a softneck artichoke-type from the Pacific Northwest
Bronock Red - a small-ish red garlic that they have since stopped selling.

Most of these grew beautifully in our garden. Every single clove of garlic that we planted sprouted and produced a head of garlic. Some were much better than others. Without a question, our favorite was Polish White, which has a lovely flavor when roasted, very easy to recognize.

We started harvesting garlic in July (Inchellium was our first garlic to be ready) and we didn't buy any garlic until December, even though we cooked almost every day this year. We also harvested garlic scapes (edible garlic flowers, delicious in stews). Our garlic harvest was a big success.

In the Fall of 2008 we planted the remainder of our garlic crop. 90 cloves of smaller garlics were planted in square foot beds, along with 4 large Elephant garlic cloves. Within 10 days all had sprouted and were growing beautifully. Even after a long, cold winter all the garlic is looking verdant and green.

I can't wait for this year's crop. Garlic independence might seem like a trivial thing, but it makes us really happy to know that we're growing our very own garlic and we don't have to purchase any of it!

I'll post this year (or else)

As far as journals go, mine sucks. I had such great dreams for this blog, such illusions of grandeur, that I became paralyzed with fear. If I didn't have the greatest stories, and the greatest pictures to go with it, I might as well not post. If I couldn't reach far and wide with my witty prose, then I might as well never come back to post a thing to this blog. If I couldn't be happy and upbeat and chipper, then I might as well shut up.

And so, I did shut up.

My mother passed away, after a long and sad battle with bladder cancer, on September 15, 2008. Any happiness that she may have experienced in her last year came from going outside to our garden to pick up fresh veggies, or to watch the grandchildren do it. I now realize that I had planted that big garden for her, and I am so glad that I did. As far as children go, I don't think I was the best one that my mother could have, but at least I can grow things in the garden...and she liked that about me.

I haven't been too happy or too chipper this past year, but things are getting better. I don't think that my writing has improved, or that I have gotten any better at posting pictures, but I feel that I need to write things down as imperfect as they might be, so here I am. I am posting, even if it's only a short post to write about something I saw or something I cooked.

Which brings me to my first post of the year: Making marmalade.

We went to visit Craig's family in Florida and brought home a couple big bags of citrus. Oranges, Meyer lemons, and Ponderosa lemons (the biggest lemons I have ever seen) as fresh and fragrant as only fresh fruit could be. I made marmalade with some of the oranges and the Meyer lemons, and then made even more marmalade using a very large Ponderosa lemon. I have never seen lemon marmalade before, but I figured that I would give it a try. It is very tart, and different from orange marmalade, but so good on crackers with Brie cheese! I am so glad that I made it. I used the recipe that comes with the Sure-Jell powdered pectin, but since that recipe is for oranges, I changed it up a bit.

Here is my recipe:

1 large Ponderosa lemon (I used a ripe one, most of the peel had turned yellow)
3 cups of sugar
1/2 envelope of powdered Sure-Jell pectin
1/16 tsp of baking soda
1/2 cup of water
1/4 tbsp butter

Using a vegetable peeler, peel just the zest off the lemon (without any of the white part) and them cut the peels into small strips. Put the peel in a sauce pan with the water and the baking soda and simmer for 20 minutes.
In the meantime, peel the lemon and remove all the white parts and seeds. With a large lemon, you will get about 2 cups of lemon pieces.
When the peels are cooked, add the lemon and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring once or twice so it doesn't scorch.
After the 10 minutes are over, add the pectin, mix well and bring the mixture to a rolling boil. Boil for exactly one minute.
Add the butter (to reduce foaming) and the sugar, mix very well and boil for another minute.

Pour the finished marmalade into small canning jars and process in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes.

This makes a marmalade that has a wonderful yellow color, lovely consistency, and spreads very well.

- About a horse

If there is one thing that kept nagging me in the back of my mind and telling me that getting land was the way to go, that one thing was this horse. His name is Keystone, and I love him a bit too much.

We bought Keystone in October of 2006. He is big and bold and wonderful. He is a great grandson of Native Dancer, the greatest gray Thoroughbred that ever lived. Nothing would make me happier than getting up in the morning and walking out to see Keystone in his pasture, right by our house. I know, don't we all wish to see big beautiful animals first thing in the morning :) Well, I know tons of people who don't, but it is a dream of mine.

Buying land and actually having some farmland would mean that we could bring Keystone to live with us. It would also mean full responsibility for his care, including his breakfast, which he likes to take before 8 am.

Have I mentioned before that I am not a morning person? Good, glad we understand each other. I still wish that I could get up and visit with Keystone. Apparently not bad enough that I am actually willing to risk the comfort of my bed in the early morning.

- Names are important

The quest for the nameless hobby continued for a while. I tried to define it because I wanted to tell people about it. When I got into scrapbooking, it was great to have a name for what I did. It felt good to be a part of something, a movement with a name and a face and lots of online support. Maybe if I found a name for what I wanted to do, I could find me some friends that were in the same boat.

I tried some things on for size. Part-time domestic goddess. Nah. Domestic renaissance. Ummm…no. Back to basics just in the afternoons. Sure, whatever. Finally I settled on being the person with the no name hobby that was mostly a hodgepodge of old domestic arts mixed in with some good environmental responsibility.

Maybe the reason why I couldn’t come up with a name is because what I was trying to get into was not a hobby but more of a lifestyle change. All I wanted to do was come home to a place that was filled with meaning as opposed to knickknacks and expensive furniture. I wanted to live a full and rewarding family life without all the trappings of modern technology. I wanted us to raise food with our hands, cook it in our home, and eat it together. I just wanted all of us to come home.

Now, I do believe in free choice. I didn’t think that it was fair for me to drag my husband and kids into this adventure kicking and screaming if it was not something that they wanted to do. I decided that I would change the way I did things, and let them join in if they felt like it. No pressure (what a concept, after being raised by the mother of all pressuring mothers). Show them a good thing and let them come and get it if they are interested. There had to be something in this life change of mine that interested them. And, even if there wasn’t, they would eat better and I didn’t think I would get complaints about that.

I first envisioned this new life as a sort of social experiment. You can’t blame me, I have been doing experiments for a living most of my life. I would chronicle the whole thing in a blog. People would be able to follow it. It would be a grand adventure on a large scale. It would…wait a minute…it would be just like those books I had been into lately. Barbara Kingsolver’s year of eating locally. A.J. Jacobs year of living biblically. Was I nothing more than a copycat? Was I waiting for a date to start this new life so I could do it for a whole exact year? Was I going to create that kind of pressure for myself? I was so disappointed in my own competitive nature. That was so NOT what this whole thing was about. It was about being happy and fulfilled and relaxed. I had never written anything before, save for research papers. Was I asking for rejection letters and re-writes? Was I crazy?

Back to the drawing board I went.

It finally hit me that I had to write about it because I was afraid that I would forget the things I did and what worked or didn’t work. This indicated to me that there was a specific need for a journal. I also had to write about it to make it real. It felt a little more real just now as I finished typing that sentence. A private journal would not create any pressure. I would just write when I felt like it. I could also organize it (or not organize it) any way I wanted, which was a big plus.

As far as making it a year, or putting any other time constraints on it, I scrapped that idea. As a very loose starting date, I chose my birthday, on September 25, 2007. Some things were already started around that date, some were just in the form of an idea or a stack of library books. The wheels were in motion, and I had secured some participation from family members. My husband was on board with the plan to plant a medium size organic garden in the backyard in the spring. We signed up together for a rainwater collection workshop in October. The kids were warned that we may be going to the Farmer’s Market more often. Lots of fruits and vegetables started to pepper the table.

Even my mother was alerted of the change. She was in her own private hell at the time, coping with the effects of chemotherapy, but she got on board. She liked the fresh veggies and all the cooking I was doing. She even started knitting a scarf with some natural sheep yarn that we got from a local fiber farm. Our time to come home, to come to our home-turned-farm had started. No ending date had been set, and maybe one would never become necessary.

- I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career

I just love that line from the movie Say Anything. That’s me. I don’t like the pressure of selling. I am not much of a buyer. And I don’t think that I would ever be happy if I was forced to process stuff for a living. How do I make a living, you ask? I teach chemistry. It’s a great job, and it makes me happy. Not everyday, but on average it does make me happy. I wasn’t looking for a new career (it took a while to figure this out). I was looking for a part-time happiness source. Which had to loosely resemble being trapped at home after an ice storm, minus the cold. Still with me?

Knowing that I wasn’t looking for a new career took the best part of the summer, and took a huge weight off my shoulders. Or it could have been the anti-depressants kicking in, we’ll never know. Around that time, my mom’s health took a turn for the better. She was able to eat, and her mood improved. Or mine did. Again, no way to know. Searching for a hobby was a much easier thing. It didn’t involve quitting, moving, or buying land. I am pretty sure that my husband was quite relieved. If he only knew. So, what would the perfect hobby be?

I searched the Internet again. You would be surprised to see how many craft sites and message boards there are out there. I was familiar with my little scrapbooking corner of the net, but there is just so many other crafts. And there is cooking. And gardening. Organic gardening sounded good. There just wasn’t a hobby that jived with being trapped at home plus gardening plus going light on the environment (I am not sure when I decided to add that to the happiness equation, but you might as well dream big). So, like any other confused individual out there would do, I made a couple of lists.

Here is the gist of what my lists (which evolved slowly and painfully over time) had to offer.

The things I thought I wanted:

Spending time with husband and kids

Being home

Cooking

Organizing

Making cheese and butter

Baking

Knitting

Quilting

Organic gardening

Keeping chickens (just for the eggs)

Taking pictures

Scrapbooking

Sewing

Horsemanship

Decorating/remodeling

Canning and freezing

Making compost

Collecting rainwater

Living frugally, but meaningfully

Relaxing

Writing

The things I knew I didn’t want:

Waking up early

Quitting my job

Moving

Cleaning

Anything involving heavy machinery

Having more responsibility

Spending more

Stressing out

Traveling

Something was starting to take shape here. It was hard to tell what exactly that shape was.

- Finding stuff

When other people talk about their quests for happiness, it always sounds so easy. Search and you shall find. The skies parted and God talked to me. There was a fork on the road, and I took it. Sure. Well, it’s not always that way. In some ways, last year I was at a place where I had found happiness. I had to do some digging to find the source of my unhappiness. What was it? Suburban life? Would I be happier on 40 acres and having some mules? I hear you have to wake up early to feed the mules, so scrap that. I am also not that big on manual labor. Oh, and I am allergic to mosquitoes. And I freckle. Easily. So there, as good as the farm sounds (and I do love the farming idea), I shall remain a visitor. Albeit, a daily visitor, because our horse is boarded at a farm nearby. A farm where somebody else wakes up early to feed him. Bless her heart.

It was hard to give up the farm idea, but it was just so unpractical. Then I started to think about crafting. I had some success designing scrapbook pages. Some had been picked up for magazines, I had done some freelance work. Maybe I could be a full time scrapbook designer. Yikes, that sounds like a lot of work for little money. Maybe I could quilt. I spent hours on the Internet looking for quilting information. Did I mention I don’t sew? Maybe I could cook. Cakes, perhaps? Oh, no, I have no experience making cakes, but I am a decent baker. How hard could it be?

One day I was driving home and started to think (I always do my best thinking while driving) about what being happy really meant to me. If I wanted to describe a perfectly happy moment, what would that be? The happiest time that came to mind was the aftermath of an ice storm that we had 4 years ago. I know. Crazy. Power was knocked out. We had no heat, no phone, nothing. And a big branch crashed on our roof and almost landed on top of our bed. Yet, I was so blissfully happy. We cooked (we do have a gas stove and gas water heater). We ate. We played games, we sat around. I took lots of pictures. We all slept on the floor in the living room with the dogs and the cat, trying to stay warm. It was fun. It was fun to be home and do domestic things. It was fun to be together without anyone running away to check their e-mail. Hmmm. Maybe that was just a fluke. Certainly there must have had a happier moment. When the kids were born? Nope, too stressful. Our honeymoon? It was great, but I missed Victoria so much. Christmas? When we spent them at home. Vacations? No, not really. Well, I did enjoy that one time when we rented a cabin in Bryson City and just kind of spent some time hanging out, drinking hot chocolate, and watching the little creek that ran behind it.

Could this really mean that I was happiest when trapped at home? And, if so, what was next? What did this finding mean? I had no earthly idea.