Amber Dusick

hey it is summer, that is my excuse

I blame summer but I don't have much to report!  

(giant slices of pizza from Newport Beach, yum)

We're busy going to the beach, making and eating ice cream, spraying each other with water in the backyard, spending time with friends and eating outside.  And well, that about sums it up.

Looking forward to our 4th of July plans, which involve two men and a grill, two women and a bottle of wine, two golden retrievers, two cats and five kids. And fireworks over the Pacific.  

So I'll probably be silent in these parts (I'm noticing this on a lot of blogs I follow actually) until after the holiday weekend.  Summer won't wait and the beach is calling!

What is calling you?  

 

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And because there are still links floating around leading people here, Parenting. Illustrated with Crappy Pictures has moved to its own cozy home.

 

 

On Being Wasteful

Did somebody say zero waste about wrapping gifts for the holidays?  

This was this year.

Gulp.  It made me a little nauseated honestly.  Yes, much of it was reused already, nearly all could be recycled and this trash involved gifts to and from our extended family, for a total of 11 people but still.  Some people go a whole year without accumulating this much waste and we knocked it out in a matter of hours.  Seeing it in my pantry made me feel ashamed, like a stereotypical wasteful American...

And then!  In a quiet moment after the holiday whirlwind I sat down and flipped through the most recent issue of Sunset Magazine that our realtor sends us.  And turned to this article on the zero waste home family.  While my pantry looked still like this.  Isn't that hilarious?  Oy.  A clear message to say the least

Truth is, the rest of the year we do pretty well.  Really well actually.  With one exception.  Food.  Gosh, we waste so much food.  Yes we compost our veggie scraps and all that good stuff, I'm talking about the mystery leftovers that rot in the back of the fridge only to be pulled out and greeted with a confused, "What IS this?"  Followed by "Oh yeah, that was really good...I meant to eat that" as I toss it in the trash. 

When we were at our worst, someone spray painted the word "FOOD" on our trash bin that gets picked up by the city.  I'm pretty sure it was a less artful and less romantic modern hobo code that homeless people were using to mark our bins so that they remembered that ours were often full of food.  I won't go into the homeless topic too much more other than to remind you that I live in Los Angeles and it is a sadness we live with like in any large city.  While I haven't seen people go through our bins since we moved to our new house up here in the hills we "knew" some of the ones when we lived in the city...my husband gave the homeless guys all of our Thanksgiving leftovers one year.  As in, before they went bad in our fridge.  Sigh.

Anyway, I've been doing a weekly menu plan for over a year now and it has helped a lot but I still think we could do better.  I just threw out some moldy homemade mac & cheese this morning.  And it was good!  I meant to eat that!  Yeah, we're working on it.  

What do you waste the most of?

 

Christmas Tree Upcycling into Jewelry & Gift Tags

Thank you all for your sweet comments on my last post about losing and finding my ring. 

This was the first year we had a tree for the holidays.  All years past we had a wee rosemary bush that we planted in the yard after the holidays but this year my son really wanted a proper cut tree.  I agreed to a cut tree if we found something to do with it afterwards because I always loved the planting of our Solstice tree and knew I'd miss that part of the tradition.  

My husband sliced the tiny trunk, drilled holes, sanded, stained and sealed and made me a pendant. 

It is amazing how beautiful it is, how "me" it is.  

I'm amazed by the beauty hiding inside.  Look at the tree rings!

Our humble holiday tree transformed into a special preserved slice of wood.  Isn't he great?  I love it when he makes me things.  It doesn't happen too often (hint) but I love it. 

I woodburned our names in the rest of the slices to be used (and reused) for holiday tags in years to come.  Paired with cloth bags and a bit of string and our wrapping is completely taken care of for next year with zero waste.

 
         

Compost Post Hijacked by Spiders

I had the very best intentions for a post on composting.  We were cleaning up the yard and we had this old metal tub to collect stuff.  It looked rustic.  The leaves were falling, I had my camera and everything was falling into place.

We compost and I was going to go blah, blah, blah about it and how my son has learned so much from it.  About things returning to the earth and that some things can easily while others can't.

And then.  And THEN!  We ran out of room in our compost bin.  Happens every fall.  So I had to sheepishly go drag over the "green waste" trash bin collected by the city.  We never use it.  Well, rarely.  So I dragged it over while holding the baby on my hip because everything I ever do in life is with a baby on my hip.  And I flipped open the lid and...

There she was.  A black widow.  Another one.  Shudder.

Just casually hanging out just inches from where my hand gripped the handle.  From where my baby's foot dangled from my hip. 

And now I can't possibly wax poetic about composting.  Composting sucks.  Composting sucks because it means we never use our green bin and then the spiders hijack it. 

And as it turns out, they have also hijacked the compost bin itself.  Oodles of them live in it.  It is like a black widow condo.  The other night our kitchen scrap pail was getting stinky so I grabbed it to take it outside to the bin. I started to walk towards the bin.  In the dark.  What was I thinking?  I came to my senses and stopped right there in the yard, dropped the kitchen pail and ran back into the house, admitting to my husband that I was too scared.  He took it out.  Because he is awesome.  He is a black widow killing ninja.   

So yeah.  Compost schmompost.  It now falls entirely in my husband's domain along with most of the cooking, anything that involves math and changing lightbulbs.  So I'm not even going to post about it. 

PS - Spiders are assholes. 

 

 

Homemade Pickles from Moms Country Orchard

Apparently I'm all about food these days.  Fall does that to me.

When we went on our annual pumpkin/apple/raspberry day trip a few weeks back we stopped in at Moms Country Orchard shop like we always do as our last stop.  We got some fruit and honey (local & pesticide free) and a caramel apple too.  And a pickle.  The pickle.  The best pickle we have ever had.  So we bought the rest in the jar and ate them on the drive home.  Fought over them.   

We talked to the son ("Mom" was also there, it is a true family run operation) and told him his pickles were the best ever.  He makes them using cucumbers and herbs that he grows.  We asked him if he ever thought about turning his pickles into a larger business, bottling them and distributing them.  He simply replied, "No, because then the quality would go down."   It was then that I decided I must find a way to be adopted into that family.  

I talked about it the whole way home in fact.  About how I want to leave the city and run an apple orchard and make pickles.  I asked my husband, "Do you think if I just showed up at their door they'd let me hang out with them?"  And even, "Do you think I could marry into that family somehow?  You could come with."  He just laughed at me and told me he could see I was having one of my "rustic lifestyle crushes" again.

But back to the pickles.  The best pickles in the whole world.  He gave us the recipe.  Just gave it to us.  How cool is that?  

Here they are in their vinegar, salt, herb mix.

And here they are eight days later and ready to eat.  Oh my god they are good.

So I may not run an apple orchard, but I make pickles!  Okay, that is totally a lie.  My husband made these pickles, I merely watched with a baby on my hip.  Damn they are good.  The best ever.  

 

PS - you'll have to visit Moms yourself to get the recipe.  I don't feel comfortable haring something this precious without their permision.  I don't think when he gave it to us he meant for it to be broadcasted on the internet, but you could always ask them.     

Acorn Bread Recipe & Acorn Processing

 

So with one successful bread loaf under my belt I decided to make up my own acorn bread recipe since we were playing around with acorn processing.  Acorns are ready here a bit early this year, just like the apples were.

  Did you know you can eat acorns?  Not many people know that anymore.  It was the main plant food of the Chumash Indians that lived here in my backyard way back when.  They processed them and used them for mush, for soup or for bread daily.  They may have harvested from the same trees we did, which is entirely possilble since some of the oaks are over 500 years old.  Gives me goosebumps.  I could go on and on about how fascinating the Chumash tribes were (matriarchal, female cheifs, etc) but I'll try to focus just on acorns. 

So you smash the acorn to crack the shell.  This was the perfect job for our four year old.

Then you remove the shell and pick out the acorn meat.  Taste it.  It tastes terrible!  Spit it out.  Acorns have a lot of tannic acid in them that must be leached out before they are edible.  

We blended them in our blender and then added boiling water.  After a few hours the acorn sludge sunk, leaving the icky brown tannic water on top that I sucked off with a turkey baster.  And then we did it again.  And again.  And again.  It took us two days to fully leach these.  How do you know they are fuly leached?  Taste the mush.  It was finally mildly sweet and nutty tasting.  

So we finally strained our acorn meal in our chinois.  We didn't have any cheesecloth but that would work too.  

We fully intended to dry ours in the California hot sun just like the Chumash did...but it was raining.  So out came the food dehydrator.  In an oven on low would work too but I just know I'd forget and burn it.  After days of acorn processing I was not going to risk that.  

So once dry (took 3 hours) I ground it to a flour!  Acorn flour!  You can use this to bread fish or sprinkle it on top of roasted squash or you can bake bread with it.

Here is my acorn bread recipe.  It was based on a bunch of other bread recipes and I tweaked it to include the acorn flour.  It made a nice crusty bread that is slightly sweet.  Perfect for topping with honey butter. 

• 1.25 cups water
• 1 packet of yeast
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 2 tablespoons sugar (we used brown)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups flour
• .5 cup acorn flour
• 2 tablespoons butter

Mix the yeast with the lukewarm water, honey and sugar and set aside.  Mix all the rest of the ingredients.  Combine your wet with your dry and mix and knead.  Place dough into an oiled pan (we oil with coconut oil) and cover with a wet towel to rise for 45 minutes.  Punch it down and let rise covered with wet towel for another 45 minutes.  Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes.  

By the way, yes indeed, the Chumash had to process and leach their acorns this same way.  Although without the blender, dehydrator and oven!  Good grief it was a lot of work even with my modern appliances.  I imagine dealing with the acorn processing was a fulltime task for them.  Talk about slow food.  I'm so glad we tried this!

And, as evidenced by how much is left over the next morning...it was delicious too!  We served it with chicken noodle soup but ideally I think a squash puree would have been divine.

 

PS - Different acorns taste very different.  Some are actually very sweet after processing, but all of them need to be leached to remove the tannins.  Once you learn what kind are in your area you can find out how best to process and eat them.  More acorn processing and eating info here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did it! I baked bread!

I can now stop feeling like a poser in this whole homemaking thing.  I finally make bread from scratch in the oven.  Like with yeast and kneading and rising and all that.

I now understand the whole "getting strong from making bread" thing as ten minutes is really a long time to knead dough.  The little guy helped too.

This was after is rose for the third time.  I will have to check out the "5 minutes a day" version many of you mentioned in the comments (thank you!) because this was more of a "5 hours a day" bread where it rises for an hour then you punch it down and it rises again, etc.  Not a big deal since we were at home anyway but I can see how this way would be hard for people who are out and about most days.

Broccoli, potato, leek soup in the background to eat for dinner with the fresh bread just out of the oven.  I could absolutely do fresh bread and soup at least once a week, maybe more.  Especially as the weather cools.

My son has been addicted to eating this bread, especially as a treat with a little honey.  I can't believe it took me this long to do this.  Seriously. 

PS - Notice my white stoneware bread pan?  I didn't own a bread pan (no foolin') and I spotted it on sale the other day at the market.  It called to me from the shelf and said, "Buy me!  If you do we can make fresh bread together and it will be wonderful and will change your life!  You will become an amazing homemaker if you buy me!" and I totally fell for it.  Ever buy stuff like that?  Thinking it will change your life?  People buy exercise machines like this.  It usually doesn't work.  I'm hoping this time it does.    

 

bread & butter

Zucchini bread & real butter.  I'm not the biggest fan of zucchini except in bread form (oh & also fried but that is cheating) so we didn't plant any.  This bread was from my inlaws who do plant zucchini.

 

When bread is around I'm trying to keep our butter in our butter bell so it stays fresh at the perfect spreadable temperature.  We've had one of these for a few years now and honestly I forget to use it.  I don't bake bread often enough to need spreadable butter so we just keep the butter in the fridge and use it for cooking.  But it really is oh so perfect when we have bread worthy of using it.  Which makes me want to bake bread more.  Like daily. 

I have a confession to make:  I've never baked plain, normal oven bread.  (banana, pumpkin all those yes, but not ever plain dinner table bread) 

Do any of you bake bread daily or almost daily in the oven?  No breadmaker here so it has to be the old fashioned way.  Have a fail proof recipe?   

 

raspberry pickin' and apple pickin' and pumpkin patchin' tradition

Our weekend included our autumn tradition that I look forward to all year.  Check out last year's raspberry picking photo next to this year:

My what a difference a year makes.  Can you believe that one year old in a carrier is the same little baby inside my belly just a year prior?  Amazing.  I'm pretty sure my oldest is wearing the same green shirt  and I can see how quickly he switched from toddler to boy.  I look forward to marking the season with this tradition though the years.  We've been doing this before we had kids.  

My my the raspberries were abundant this year.  I think we polished off half of those before we even started on the road home.  Tradition!

So fun to try to find the most perfect pumpkin.  Tradition! 

Mini-donuts fried in apple cider from the little shop at the orchard?  Another tradition!

Each person picking out a special pumpkin to represent ourselves on our porch with a family of pumpkins?  Tradition!

Eating homemade donuts with fresh cider and local honey for breakfast the following day?  A new tradition!

Added any new autumn traditions lately?

 

 

 

 

 

Eco-Friendly Piñata & Birthday Festivities

Our birthday festivities are over (still clean up to do out back though) and I'll share what we did for our homemade eco-friendly pinata other than the felted wool balls that I already mentioned. 

Other than these organic lollipops, we did a mostly toy piñata.  The NaturalCandyStore.com is a great source for organic & natural candy. 

Colored twig pencil bundles were a huge hit.  I got these in bulk from an eBay seller a few years back for Halloween and still had these left over. 

These mini play clay samples from Mama K were also well received.  They are scented in unusual scents like lemongrass, cardamom and lavender with real essential oils.  We love them!  You could of course get some tiny containers and make your own play dough if you are so inclined.  I'm so in love with the texture and scent of these I'm taking a break from making my own.  

Little handmade wee wooden vehicles.  I only had a handful of these.

Other things we included that I don't have photos of that I found in local craft stores:  bouncy balls, mini-watercolor pan sets, erasers, crayons and tiny bubble jars.

The finished handmade pumpkin piñata!  My son helped me paint it.  I'll post a tutorial soon.

We glued some leaf cut outs to small kraft gift bags for the the kids to collect their loot in. 

Party decorations!  Most everything we used was handmade or from our yard.  He wanted an "autumn theme" this year so it was lovely.  Except the part that it was 108 degrees on party day.  Didn't feel like autumn, that is for sure.  

Did I mention the boy asked for pumpkin pie in lieu of cake this year?  It was my tradition when I was a child, I never had cake - always pumpkin pie for my October birthday.  Remember the cake fiasco last year?  I was relieved when he suggested pie this year, and pumpkin at that.  No suggestion from me even.  Not that it didn't come with its own problems.  We accidentally made a double batch.  So instead of three pies we wound up with SIX.  Oops!  Pie anyone?

This is the kids table.  Sadly, I don't have any photos of the finished space with the chairs and the rest of the decorations.  Such is the case when you are in a whirlwind of birthday partying. 

It was the perfect way to celebrate my eldest autumn boy.  Pumpkins, acorns, friends, family and food outdoors. 

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PS - Welcome to all the new folks that headed over from SouleMama!  I'm so happy you are popping over to check out my corner of the web and hope you stick around.