Mystery Dessert

Have I mentioned before that Tool Lady likes to cook?  OK - Have I mentioned she likes to throw things together, combine recipes and flies by the seat of her pants?  Right.  Have I mentioned that everything she makes is fabulous?  Yep, everything.  I'm not sure how she does it, but she always makes the yummiest things, with random recipes, with no recipe, with random ingredients, at the spur of the moment.  Me, I need a recipe, all the ingredients and a plan. 

So, the other night she asked if I would help her in the kitchen, but said I couldn't know what we were making, it was a secret.  What?!  Ummm...OK.  So, she put me in charge of stirring a pot on the stove full of random things as she threw more things into it while she was working on another pot of random things (I tried to keep track of what she was doing, but that didn't happen).

Once one pot was finished, it's contents were put in a bowl and put in the fridge.  The other pot was mixed with something else and then spooned onto cookie sheets and put in the oven.

Are you wondering what the heck she was up to?  Yeah...so was I!  It wasn't until the first batch of baking goodness started puffing up that she finally told me...we were making Lemon Custard Cream Puffs!  Oh. My. Goodness!!!

So, now you might be wondering what recipe she followed.  Well, she was actually following 2 separate recipes and then adapting them so Fish Girl could enjoy the yumminess as well (no dairy for Fish Girl)!

The Cream Puffs themselves came from Fuji Mama and her recipe is below with Tool Lady's changes in red.

INGREDIENTS
1 cup water
1/2 cup butter (4 ounces) sub 1/2 cup coconut oil
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour and salt.

3. Bring the water to a boil in a medium-size saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the butter coconut oil. When the butter coconut oil has melted, add the flour mixture all at once and stir vigorously. Cook and stir until the mixture forms a ball that doesn’t separate.

4. Remove from the heat and cool slightly (about 1 minute). Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each one until the dough is smooth.

5. Drop heaping tablespoons of dough about 2-inches apart onto a greased baking sheet. Or transfer the batter to a pastry bag with a round tip and pipe circles about 2-inches in diameter and about 1-inch apart onto greased baking sheets. Bake the puffs for about 30 minutes until they are golden brown and puffy. If the puffs are medium-size, bake for about 22 — 25 minutes, and if the puffs are mini-size, bake for about 17 — 20 minutes. Remove the cream puffs from the oven and cool on a cooling rack.

What was I feverishly stirring on the stove?  A variation of the custard she found at Casa Veneracion, which is below (again, with Tool Lady's changes in red).

INGREDIENTS
1/2 c. of sugar
2 tbsps. of corn starch arrow root starch plus enough all-purpose flour to make 1/3 c.
a generous pinch of salt
2 c. of milk almond milk
4 egg yolks, beaten
1/2 tsp. of vanilla lemon extract

In a pan, mix together the first four ingredients. Stir until smooth. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened.

Pour half of the flour mixture into the beaten egg yolks, beating to incorporate. Pour the egg yolk mixture into the pan, mix, and continue cooking for about 10 minutes, stirring and scraping the bottom constantly, until the mixture is thick and coats the back of a spoon.

You now have your custard filling. But you have to cool the filling completely before using it. Otherwise, it will create steam and make the pastry shells soggy. So, give the filling an hour or
so to cool.

Once the puffs were all baked and the cream was chilled, she cut a little hole in the side of each pastry and piped in the custard filling (we use sandwich bags with the corner snipped off as piping bags).  In total we got 28 pastries of a few different sizes (not intentionally, sometimes it just happens).  We ate a few and stuck the rest in the freezer for quick snacks/desserts although I don't think they'll last very long.  

Check out both  Fuji Mama and Casa Veneracion for each of their individual (and I'm sure very yummy) recipes.  

In the meantime, I (we) hope you enjoy these!

2011 into 2012

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about 2011 as it readied itself for it's transition into 2012 and it seems as though there has been a few themes...Community...Inspiration...Joy...Growth...

Sunset - December 31, 2011
Our quite often dramatic sunsets gave way to a gentle transition into 2012.

Community...People coming together to share ideas, inspiration, hope.  People sharing laughter, love, care, whispers, truth.  Whether standing with me in the moment in person or sitting with me in spirit, I know I am surrounded by a community whose strength I can see and feel, every minute of every day.

Inspiration...New and old, forgotten and remembered.  Every texture, color, thread and piece of glass holds a bit of inspiration.  Each smile, laugh, shake of the head or hand holds a bit of inspiration.  Open hearts, minds and spirits...inspiring one another...inspiring each moment.

Joy...in everything....even the tears, because they lead me to grow and change and continue to become who I am becoming.

Growth...yes...This year was full of growth in so many ways, stretching, trying new things, working out kinks, guessing, tripping, wondering, trusting and hoping.  It was full of lots of questions and a few answers, lots of validation and more than a few humbling moments.

I have learned a ton, made plenty of mistakes and have grown to appreciate all the bumps along the way while slowly learning how to produce more and consume less.

Sunrise - January 1, 2012
Gentle transition into a new day, a new year.
A quiet reminder of the endless possibilities, opportunities
for growth and moments of joy that lie ahead.

Thank you, my wonderful readers, for coming on this little journey with me, with us.  Happy 2012!  Here's to another year of community, inspiration, joy and growth!

Photo Project - December

To complete my participation in the 2011 Color Photography Challenge here are December's photos!  Can you believe 2011 is almost over?!  December's color was a wildcard!  Suggestion's included using the color wheel for inspiration or photographing metallics...after much debate, I chose metallics since our trip to STL offered lots of photo ops!

Even though I jumped on this project super late, I'm glad I did!  It's been fun to pull together each month and even more fun to see what everyone else has chosen to photograph!  I look forward to learning what 2012s challenge will be!

Linking up to anofferingoflove and Macro Monday

{this moment}

 

{this moment inspired by Soule Mama} 

If you feel inspired to share your moment, please leave a link to your moment in the comments below for all to see.

A First

Since I paint 3D trees, I've decided to try something a little different and try to sell Family Tree(s) paintings.  As part of my journey into making art to give and sell to other people (as opposed to simply hanging it all up in our home), a good friend of mine asked me to make her husband a painting of their Family Tree(s) for Christmas.   So, we went shopping for a canvas and some paint colors and then I came home and tackled my very first (and very large) "commissioned" piece (I gifted my time on the painting as my Christmas gift to her and she purchased all of the supplies).  Just the fact that she asked me to create this for her and her family was an amazing honor!  Honestly, it was also a bit stressful (I am absolutely a perfectionist).

This was quite an intense process and took way longer than I imagined it might (I'm guessing it took about 40 hours total).  It's 30 inches wide X 40 inches tall, and had to be laid flat on our dining room table for the majority of it's creation, which made for lots of hours of bending over which meant a sore back on many a night.  At one point (at the end of a very long day) I was ready to throw the towel in (it was probably about 75% done, but man, was I tired!), but after a good nights sleep, I pulled it together and carried on.

However, even with all of the stress of this creation, I wound up being very happy with the end result.  The pictures don't really do it justice, but the colors came out beautifully and behind the leaves are layers of gold which shine brilliantly when the light hits them (there is also gold on the ridges of the trunks...they just show up funny in these pics, too.  Stinkin' camera!).

The greatest moment, though, was my friends reaction when she saw it!  She was so happy!  And when she showed it to her husband, I dare say he almost cried.

Now, with all the creating of the holidays behind me, a new year full of promise ahead of me and lots of ideas swirling in my head, I'm very excited to begin creating more items for my little Etsy shop.

Chalk Art

A couple of days ago Fish Girl drew this on our chalkboard in the kitchen.  It's us humans and all of our crazy animals (7 chickens, 3 koi, 1 beta, 2 dogs, 2 cats, 3 mice, and a "million" bees represented by lots of dots and one actual bee).  

It makes me smile every time I see it.

The Pantry

When we first moved into our house 4 1/2 years ago, one of our favorite things about it was our pantry.  It was not original to the house...at some point over the past 30+ years, one of the previous owners decided to add in a pantry by breaking through the wall in the kitchen and taking a few feet from the garage.  This simple change was (and still is), in our minds, brilliant!  So we moved in, bought some wire shelves and loaded up our beautiful (and very empty) pantry.  I have to admit, I really, really like a full pantry.  It just makes me feel safe and happy.  I like to always feel prepared for the impending Zombie attack!

Now, while we try to keep it organized and clean, just like everything else, it has a way of getting quite dis-organized and cluttered.  We've also gotten very intentional about buying in bulk over the last year while making the shift from "regular" foods to more locally grown/organic/generally healthier foods and learning how to make as many foods from scratch as we can (it's a process we're still in the middle of).  While this is great and fun and healthy and all that good stuff, it also makes for a lot of extra items (flours, nuts, rice, etc) that need to be kept sealed after the original bag has been opened and proves difficult to store efficiently.

So, this is what our pantry looked like before Tool Lady decided it was time to make some changes.  I jumped in to help (I so wanted to just sit on the couch all day, but I'm so glad I didn't) and we knocked it out together.

Macro Monday (Christmas Style)

Happy Macro Monday everyone!

Linking up to Macro Monday on Lisa's Chaos

Harvest Monday

Happy Monday everyone!

I've been MIA in this space for a bit due to the fact that there have been no harvests to post about.  Trust me, I've been very sad about it!  However, this week I actually have a harvest to celebrate!

Yep, we've made it back into another green season!  These mixed greens have been growing happily under our grow lights in our laundry room and provided us with an entire salad for 7 adults for Christmas dinner yesterday (the salad went perfectly with lasagna and french bread)!  And there are still more to harvest!

Now, as you know, greens aren't very heavy, but they sure are yummy :-)

This weeks totals:

• Lettuce = 7 ounces

2011 total:

• 182 pounds

So, it looks like I won't make my goal of 200 pounds this year, but I'm OK with it.  It gives me room to grow next year ;-)

Linking up to Harvest Monday @ Daphne's Dandelions
Linking up to the Homestead Barn Hop #42

I'm Back!

As you might have noticed, I've been gone for a bit.  We took a little road trip to STL to visit Tool Lady's family and have a little early Christmas.  After a longer than expected trip back home (we got trapped in Amarillo when I-40 got closed after some crazy ice and snow here in NM) we came home to last minute prep madness for Christmas today with my family.

Well, I am happy to be home and very happy to report that after too many days (months?) of madness, I am now allowed a bit of space for calm.  What does this mean?  It means I still have 8 days of vacation!   I plan on filling those days with a little bit of blogroll catch up (you all have been busy with all of your postings!), some organizing (including, but not limited to: closets, drawers and my thoughts), some reading, painting, cooking, and breathing (among other things).

I'll also start posting again (I have to admit that it was very nice to unplug for all those days, but I did miss this whole writing and reading and sharing thing that happens in Blog Land) and have plans to change up my blog just a bit (nothing big, no worries) since the end of one year and the beginning of another lends itself nicely to updates and change!

I hope that wherever you are and whatever you're doing, you all are cozy, full of joy and enjoying your evening!  Cheers!

Hot Chocolate & a Mason Jar Cozy

Alright, I know I said I'd be MIA for a bit while we take our little trip, but I couldn't resist scheduling this post to go out today while I continue to remain unplugged.  Why today?  Well, I couldn't post this before now because we gave these away as gifts and I didn't want to spoil the surprise!  But since they've all (but one) been officially given out (Brother, if you're reading this, STOP.  Thanks.), I figured I'd share this super yummy, super easy and super fun last minute gift idea...

Now really...can you think of anyone you know who doesn't like hot chocolate?  Right!

Unplugging

After too many days (weeks? months?) of burning the candle at both ends, I'm more than ready for a little vacation!  Tool Lady, Fish Girl and I are going on a road trip to visit family and I will be officially unplugging for a full week!

I'm sure I'll have lots to share when we get back, but for now I will simply say that I hope you have a magical week full of love, joy, peace and bounty!

{this moment}

A Friday ritual.  

A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.

A simple, special, extraordinary moment.

A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

{this moment inspired by Soule Mama} 

If you feel inspired to share your moment, please leave a link to your moment in the comments below for all to see.

Sometimes...

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile,

but sometimes your smile can be 

the source of your joy.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

"We can pay the farmer, or we can pay the hospital."

Our children truly are our future, and they know what they're talking about!  Pint sized hope, that's what this is!

A Splash of Chaos

This year I have found myself squeaking out every minute possible to work on gifts (you know, when I'm not finishing up my first semester back at school or working my "real" job).  I am exhausted and over stretched and will definitely plan better next year, but I am also so incredibly excited about the creative elf work going on!  I can't show specifics, just in case any of you readers will be recipients of any of these gifts, but I can show you a glimpse of the chaos that has taken over our tables these days...

Pendants and paintings and pouches...and don't forget the tea!

Cards and wrapping and remotes for movie viewing (a Tool Lady necessity)

My biggest painting yet (at least to be given as a gift), in process.
This guy is 30 by 40 inches !

Creativity is not always pretty, but it is always an adventure :-)  

I hope that whatever you're days are full of this week, 

you're having fun!

Harvest & Macro Monday

Happy Monday everyone!

The past two weeks have been full of a whole lot of nothing much...in the garden, at least...there is busy-ness happening everywhere but there!  There's lots trying to grow, but not much ready for harvesting.  The lettuce in the ground froze completely over the past week with our below zero temperatures at night and the veggies in the Wagons are still struggling with the cold and that stinkin' pest!  Thank goodness for grow lights!  It may not be much, but it's something!

I should mention that our sprouts, wheat grass and greens under our grow lights are doing great!  We are keeping our fingers crossed that the greens will be big enough to complete our salad on Christmas!  For now though, the sprouts make a nice (and extremely tasty) addition to a salad.

Also, I'm making an attempt at growing some basil inside and these little babies just poked up their little heads!  Yay for germination!  ;-)

This weeks totals:

• Sprouts - 2 ounces

TOTAL OF...yep...2 ounces this week.

Linking up to Harvest Monday @ Daphne's Dandelions
& Macro Monday on Lisa's Chaos

Do Our Chickens Pay for Themselves?

Back in August I asked this question, so we've been tracking it on my sidebar ever since.  This is what's happened in a nut (egg?) shell...

For a while (read: when we first started this challenge), we were getting 6-7 eggs a day and I was feeling extremely optimistic about our little experiment.

Then, the ladies started molting, their eating habits changed, their laying sharply decreased and we were quickly down to no more than a few eggs a week.  Add to this the weird (super cold at night) weather we've been having and I started wondering why the heck I started this whole experiment in the first place!!!

I kept tracking it all, though, keeping my fingers tightly crossed that it would all work out!  Well, guess what?  It did!  Our chickens officially pay for themselves!

Now, of course, as I mentioned before, we will probably never re-coup our coop and fencing costs and we're OK with that!  Especially since the weekly costs of the Ladies are being covered by their yummy eggs!

Here's how it breaks down:

Feed & Scratch Purchased:

8/13/11 - 180# = $125.92

Factoring:

$4.50/dozen organic eggs

Right now:

+$1.58

340 - eggs collected

I've also been challenged by a comment Greenpa left a couple of months ago asking me to think about a few of the extra benefits our Ladies offer us...
"A word on your chicken economics- it's going to be hard to get into the black if you only count the eggs on the plus side; at this scale. Do they eat any pesty bugs for you? Put that down as an economic plus - it IS; just hard to quantify. Likewise- there are human mood benefits; do they make you happy? That counts.  Hard to quantify, but very real; there ARE people working on doing this kind of accounting, so we can talk to the plain money people out there."


I love this way of thinking!!!  So, do they eat gross bugs for us?  Yes!

Do they make us happy?  Absolutely!

Sounds like we're winning all around!  Hooray for backyard chickens!

The Tree is UP!

Man, how is it possible that Christmas is only 15 days away?!  This month...this year has gone by so incredibly fast!

It's crunch time now!  Final papers to write, potlucks to prepare for, gifts to make, cards to create...Whoa!  I'm sure everyone's feeling it...I'm not the only one, right?!

Well, regardless of the number of things that have to be done, the tradition of putting up the tree brings it all back home!  This simple act, with it's ornamental memories and dancing lights, makes everything feel just a little bit more joyful!

Wishing you a joy-filled week!

Linking up to The Great Holiday Barnhop 2011

{this moment}

A Friday ritual.  

A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.

A simple, special, extraordinary moment.

A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

{this moment inspired by Soule Mama} 

If you feel inspired to share your moment, please leave a link to your moment in the comments below for all to see.

The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

- The Invitation, Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Freeze Yer Buns Challenge Update

Well, we have been officially freezing' our buns for the last month, but the real challenge has popped up over the last several days!  With temps falling below zero a few nights in a row (which seems to be turning into a new norm, here...at least after last February's record breaking lows and this months lows reaching well below zero) we'll see what the next few month bring.

For the most part, we've done pretty well with maintaining our temps at their pre-set levels (52 through the night and while we're gone during the day, 65 while we're home and moving around).  We're wearing more layers, adding blankets onto the beds and drinking lots of hot beverages.  Even so, 52 degrees feels pretty damn cold when I roll out of my super cozy, ultra warm bed each morning to work on homework!!!

In the interest of full honesty, there have been a few evenings that the thermostat has been tampered with temporarily, usually by Tool Lady, who tells me continually that she's freezing.  I guess that's why it's called a challenge, right? (As I type these words, though, I must confess, my hands ARE a bit cold!)

I keep trying to remind myself how lucky we are to actually have heat!  No matter how low it is, it's still there and it's still working!  YAY!!!  This is just a challenge, no one's getting hurt, and maybe, just maybe, we'll save a bit of money and learn a few things through this process.  Hey, at least we don't wake up each morning with frost on the blankets like they did in the old days, right?

What temperature is your thermostat set at?  

How do you stay warm during the cold days (and nights) of winter? 

Seed Gifts

Anyone who knows me, even just a little, probably knows that I absolutely love seeds!  Well, I've now received 3 separate envelopes of seeds in the mail and I'm just beside myself with excitement!  I know, I know, it's going to be MONTHS before I can plant any of them, but that's beside the point!  The point is, they exist :-)

So, what seeds did I get and where'd they come from?

• Dave at Our Happy Acres, as part of his Happy Yummy Pepper Seed Giveaway and experiment, sent me two packets of seeds.  I love experiments, so this should be fun!
• Hot Happy Yummy Pepper Seeds
• Sweet Happy Yummy Pepper Seeds
• Daphne at Daphne's Dandelions sent me three packets of seeds just because :-)  How kind is that?!  Amazing!
• Cherokee Purple Tomatoes
• Little Gem Lettuce
• Trail of Tears Pole Beans
• Mary at The Edible Garden sent me some of her seeds as part of her Seedy Saturdays giveaway.
• Yellow Beets

How cool, and organized, are these bloggers?!?  I, on the other hand, don't feel as though I've gotten my seeds together enough to try to offer any of them in a giveaway.  Yet, that is.  I might still try, because if any of you out there love seeds as much as I do, I would love to share some seed love!

Greens Under the Grow Lights

Shortly after the grow lights went up, the seeds went in!  We're growing wheat grass, a variety of greens and sprouts for now and will experiment with different varieties throughout the winter to see what grows the best and the fastest inside in the dead of winter.

They all might be quite small, but there are lots of true leaves, which is a very exciting start!

Linking up to Macro Monday on Lisa's Chaos

New Juicer

So, while I do homework, read blogs and play on Etsy, Tool Lady likes to check out Craigslist.  She looks at properties (and tortures us both with the beautiful photos of acreage that we can't afford just yet) and looks at all the random miscellaneous that is Craigslist.  Usually, it all amounts to a whole lot of nothing.  However, a couple of night ago, she found a listing for a juicer.  Well, we've been looking for a juicer, a good juicer, a masticating juicer for a while now.  So, she called, and a nice old lady told her she could come pick it up.  She said it was brand new, but we didn't really believe her.  Brand new?  Really?

Yes, really!  She was telling the truth!  This thing had never even been out of the plastic bubble wrap it came from the factory in!

What did we pay?  A measely $100!  Alright, $100 is nothing to sneeze at, but we paid cash for it and have declared it our Christmas gift to each other :-)  Also, since this baby is literally brand new, it's worth at least $250!  Another score!!!  Not only does it juice, but it will also grind wheat and coffee and make pasta!!!

So, we immediately unpacked it all, rinsed it off and started juicing some of the random produce we had in the fridge...carrots, kale, a beet, a banana (not in the fridge) and a lemon...and some of the wheat grass we've started growing under our grow lights!

With some of the carrot leftovers, we decided to make some carrot cake muffins :-)

Fish Girl, after mixing the batter with her hands, tried to start a war with Tool Lady.  She was unsuccessful, but I'm thinking Tool Lady is just waiting for the perfect time for payback ;-)

The remaining pulp went out to the chickens...

And the juice, once we got past the crazy colors of it all, was happily consumed!

Yay for Craigslist scores!!!