18

Our oldest son turns 18 in just a few days. In fact yesterday, February 21, was his due date...just 18 short years ago.   Our celebration is much different than most.  Ours comes with a bit of trepidation.  You see, March 3, 2016 marks the day that his birth mom has the legal right to contact him.  For the past 18 years, I have actually looked forward to the day when I could give him his box.  The box that I have been filling up with letters, cards and gifts from his birth mom.  My desire was to give it to him on his birthday, but I've been feeling the urgency to give it to him now.  Nailing him down is a problem though.  He is so busy with Basketball and living life as a Senior in High School.  I am going through all the emotions of a mom who's firstborn is going through their senior year.  The last first day of school, Senior night for Basketball.  His last home game.  And coming up, Senior Banquet and dance, Senior Exams, Senior Trip...... and then Graduation.  Lord help me through the next few months.

When did this little baby, become this man??

Why didn't time stand still? There are times when I am reduced to a puddle of tears.  I am so grateful for the wonderful gift that was given to us.  That God allowed me to become a mom.  That I was deemed worthy to be mom to this boy, this man...  My heart is overwhelmed.  I hope, that if he does choose to meet his birth family, that they will see that we did a good job raising him and that they made the right choice.  Because, I know they did...  I can't imagine NOT being his mom.

My heart bore witness with Hanna when she wept bitter tears for a child and again when she presented her firstborn to God.  

1 Samuel 1:27–28
"I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the LORD. For his whole life he will be given over to the LORD."

Well, this made it better

I've been doing a lot of hand sewing lately.  I find it much more relaxing and fulfilling.  The Dr and I were going on a small road trip and I decided to bring some along with me.  Well, I was finding it hard to work on my sewing and keeping the thread, scissors, needles, and other parts together in the car where I could easily grab it.

I realized that I needed a tray, but it couldn't be any tray.  Then I remember a set of trays that I picked up at Goodwill. I got 2 of the smaller trays for $.99 each and the bigger one for $1.99.  I was already using the bigger one for office supplies so I grabbed one of the smaller ones, measure it and then grabbed the supplies that I needed...Yes, we had pizza for dinner.......

I decided to paint it a nice teal color and then I covered a piece of cardboard with pink flannel.   I was going to use felt, but then I found this piece in the remnant bin of W-mart and the two ladies near the fabric dept. didn't look like they wanted to cut fabric, so this had to do... 

I love how it turned out!!!  The pink is perfect.  Here it is in use on our way to visit our families.  It was prefect and just what I needed to keep everything organized and within reach. The only thing missing was a pin cushion.  That is next.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving with their families.  

R

The Life of Red, also known as Sir Loin

2 years ago The Dr asked me what I wanted for my birthday.  I said "A Steer!"  So, he went out and we got a bull and a pregnant cow with a steer calf.  We sold the other cattle this summer, but we kept Red.  Raising cow takes more than we were able to commit at this time in our lives.
The Dr still works all through the school year and we have 3 very active teenagers.  Plus we need the infrastructure. Plus it would be nice if we had hay equipment.  Maybe, in a few years we will do it again.  I do know that I would go with Dexters again.  They are a good size, mild mannered and don't eat a lot

So, 3 weeks ago, The Dr loaded Red up and we took him to a processor.  This week L and I picked him up and loaded him in the freezer.  It feels good to know that our beef was raised and processed humanely and was grass fed.  We don't spray our fields and didn't give him any growth hormones or antibiotics. I do miss seeing the cows on the hill and I hope we can get more soon.  But for now, we will enjoy the bounty that God has provided for us.

So much news!

So much has gone on since my last post.  The Dr has changed schools and so have the boys. This was not an easy decision but it was the best one for the family.  Things were changing and they didn't fit the mission that we had for our family.  God is good and provided a great school for the boys to attend and play sports and an awesome teaching opportunity for James. The girl is home and that has been the best thing for her.  Aaron is entering his Sr year and Zane is going into the 10th.  Last year when I started back homeschooling Lydia, I bumped her up a grade, so in essence, she skipped 7th grade. This year she is a freshman..

My canning kitchen is finished and I am about to test it's usefulness.  Lydia and I have about 100 lbs of tomatoes to get done.  After that we will work on beans.  I am hoping to turn the focus of this blog to more of the farm goings on, and less of my family.  My kids are growing, and I hope to respect their privacy and not post so much about them.

Hopefully over the next couple of posts/days I will be updating on all the things that have been happening on the farm. Today, Lydia and I are canning tomatoes.  She will be picking all of the tomatoes and peppers that are left in the garden and we will let the chicken loose and allow them to tear it apart.  Then we can head to the woods to gather leaves and lay it on top of the garden space and let it decompose until spring.

So, I leave you with my last post, that I made almost a year ago. This is what we will be doing today.


Have a wonderful day


R

Easy Tomato Sauce

I love to can.  I love putting away food for my family that, for the most part, is free.  Pretty much all we buy are the seeds for the plants.  There is the time factor but The Doctor loves outside work so, I let him have fun in the garden.

My family also uses a lot of tomato sauce.  From spaghetti, to pizza, to chili and soups, and, and and.... we go through A LOT!  The fist time I made sauce it was full of seeds and runny... I hated it.  So I went on a quest to find and easier way to make sauce.  After reading many blogs and searching Pinterest, I found 2 ways that looked perfect for me.

So, Monday I decided to do something about all the tomatoes that we picked over the past week.


First I put them in my steamer juicer.  I love this gadget.  It has made juicing grapes and all manner of fruit easy.  I filled it to the top and turned the stove on.  In the end I had 1 1/2 gallons of juice.  You can see the the juice had a bit more color to it toward the end.  This I will freeze to use in vegetable soup instead of water.

Before

After

Then I put the tomatoes from the steamer into a strainer and let them drain a little more.

The last thing I did that day, was to put them in my Kitchen Aid Vegetable Strainer.  I love this as much as I love my steamer juicer.  I just put the tomatoes in  and out comes tomato pulp on one side and seeds and skins on the other.  It is a tad messy, but most of my canning is.

Here you can see that I got 1/2 gallon of tomato meat.  I will cook this down a bit more and put it in jars.

I did mention that there were 2 methods that I wanted to try. The second was to puree your tomatoes first and then put it all in a clear container and set in your fridge overnight.  What you will have in the morning is all the tomato pulp floating on top and juice on the bottom.  You can then skim the pulp off the top and process as normal.  I did this with my jar and had a scant amount of juice on the bottom.  I then warmed up the sauce and canned it.

I want to add here that I love my 1/2 gallon jars.  They are perfect for storing all my dry goods in.

After I cleaned up my kitchen and started dinner, The Dr and I went out to the garden and brought this in.........  Good thing I didn't put everything away!!

Lydia inspecting the tomatoes

How I make Gumbo

It's been a tradition since The Dr started teaching that I make the first gumbo of "the season" on his birthday.  In LA, school starts later than here, often it started on his birthday.  So, how do I make a Cajun gumbo..well first a lesson in Cajun cooking.  Cajun gumbo is thick and brown and has any variety of meat in it.  It is served with rice with a side of potato salad.  If you are like my mom and I, we take a bit of potato salad and and a spoonful of gumbo all at once.  Cajun gumbo does not have tomatoes in it, that is Creole gumbo.  It may have okra, but I can't stand the stuff, so I leave it out.

So, how do you make Cajun gumbo... Well, first you start with a Roux.....  Well, ok, actually I don't.  First I put a whole chicken in a stock pot, cover it with water and simmer for  2 hours.  I'll spare you a picture of raw chicken in a pot of water.  I think you can visualize it for yourself.

When that is almost done, I make my roux.  Now... I don't really "make" my roux... I can.. I just don't.  Now, before you profess that I am not a real Cajun let me give you a short genealogy of my life.  My mom was a Thibodeaux, her mom a Picard.. we go way back.  In fact, my Thibodeaux ancestors were one of the families that Canada kicked out when they refused to bow to the king of England (yes, there is still a bit of bitterness..LOL). My dad is from Texas but has lived in LA for so long that he sounds Cajun, plus he learned to cook from Cajun men..so he knows what he is doing.

My Grandma Therese Picard Thibodeaux

Back to why I don't make my own roux.  Back in the day my mom made her own roux and after burning it (which is easy to do) she discovered that this nice man by the name of Savoie made roux and sold it in jars.  Voila' no more burned roux.  Well, fast forward to about 30 years and I had 3 kids 3 and under and decided that I wanted to be friends with Mr Savoie (shut up Gene)....so I bought my roux.

Ok, back to how to make gumbo....

So, once the chicken is cooked, I remove it from the pot.. skim out all the stuff and add the roux to the pot and cook it for an hour or so while the chicken cools enough that I can pick it apart.  This is also when I add onions and bell peppers to the water.  After an hour, I pick the chicken apart and add it to the stock pot.  (save the carcass to make stock later)  Then I let this whole pot cook.  How long?  Until dinner time.  A word of warning.. don't let the gumbo boil...whatever you do, don't let it boil.... trust me.  I let it come to a boil and then lower to a slow boil/fast simmer.  I rarely cover it but I keep checking it and adding water if I think it needs it.  I serve it over a scoop of rice and with a side of potato salad.... yum..

Happy Birthday to my favorite Dr.  I love you oh so very much!!

Back at it

When I finished up my 10th grade year in high school, my mom asked me if I wanted to be homeschooled for the remainder of my high school years. This was back in 1985 and there weren't many homeschooled kids.  We met with one family who homeschooled and I was hooked.  My mom later revealed to me that she had wanted to homeschool us when we were younger, but only hippies did that and she was a good Catholic girl who sent her kids to Catholic school.  Looking back, her desire to homeschool explains all the workbooks that she had us do in the summer...  Anyway, I loved being homeschooled.  I loved having the freedom during the day to do what subjects that I wanted to do when.  I loved that we took the whole day off and watched the news when the Challenger exploded right after it took off.  I loved that mom and I would watch The Price is Right every day!!!  I loved that she planned my work so that I could take Friday off and help with the hot dog sales that our youth group did to raise money for missions at the school I previously attended.  I loved everything about it.

I knew that when I had kids, that I would homeschool them.  When A was old enough, I purchased K4 materials and dove in head first.. and I loved it! I continued with Z and L.  They did attend a supplemental program for a few years and I missed having them with me, so we stopped.  Fast forward to his 7th grade year.  His dad started teaching at a new Christian school at our church.  The  kids all started going.  The kids enjoyed being with friends and playing sports.

At the end of Aaron's 9th grade year he asked if he could be homeschooled part time and still attend school for math and play basketball.  We talked to the Headmaster and he supported us.  So, for his 10th grade year he came home.  Halfway through, Zane asked the same question.  I then had both at home.  At the end of the last school year, Lydia needed to come home.  She is still struggling with discipline issues and it became to the school and us that she needed more one on one.

So, today I had all 3 home for the first time in 4 years.  This morning went smoothly. The boys will leave so that they can take 2 classes each and then head to football practice and workouts.  I know that this is the perfect combination for us.

I am glad that God has given me this opportunity once again.  I have missed my kids and I am happy to have them home with me.