I dub thee, Brasperries

Since Big Bro was a toddler we have loved picking wild black raspberries every summer from bushes found in our yard. Typically we didn't find that many berries so we would just eat them as we found them. 

Lil Sis also loves the taste of wild black raspberries so the tradition has continued. This year, we discovered two large black raspberry bushes that had gone unnoticed. Or maybe they just were never there before this year.

We went out one cool and rainy July night and started picking berries and putting them into our jar. The kids likened the sound of dropping their berries into the empty jar to Little Sal in Blueberries for Sal "kerplink, kerplank, kerplunk."

We picked and picked to get 4 cups worth thinking that would be enough for jam.

After looking at the actual recipe turns out 10 cups were required. We picked another 3 cups a couple days later. My good friend contributed a few more cups gathered from her own yard and we were able to make a delicious batch of blackberry, I mean black raspberry jam. After all of us making that linguistic mistake countless times I dubbed them officially "Brasperries."

The jam was amazing. A welcomed change from our usual strawberry jam.

Slippery Slope

I loved a few Nintendo Game Boy games when I was a little girl, namely Duck Tales, Tetris, Dr. Mario, and Tom and Jerry. I played them nonstop from the ages of 10 to 12, then I was done and had my cousin sell my 1991 Game Boy in France where she lived and could get a good price.

When my husband and I were first dating he was really into video games. After a childhood where his father refused him any gaming systems, my husband went game-crazy in college buying every possible system from Atari to XBox. I accepted video games as a fact of modern life when dating a young adult male. My husband and his friends loved "shoot 'em up games," but the only one I would play was a music and rythme game called Space Channel 5. I was really great at it though.

As we grew up more and more, video games were less and less a part of our lives.  I didn't miss it. I enjoyed having evenings going out to restaurants, taking walks, and playing the board games that replaced the video ones. Occasionally we would play video games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero which were fun since they were rythme and music, plus they were group oriented. After Big Bro was born the video games really faded away. Six months later we moved to a new house and the game systems were never even unpacked.

It was a 6 year era free from the clutter of game consoles, cartridges and tangled wires. Ahhhh.

Now Big Bro is 6 and discovered Pokémon. It started slowly with a couple cards given to him by a friend on the bus. Then it was a small pack of Pokémon cards and a card holder for his birthday. Then my husband came home with packages of cards and the boards so they could play for real. Then Big Bro was rummaging in a closet and found the Pokémon Puzzle League game cartridge for Nintendo 64. Next thing we know, the Nintendo 64 is set up and both my kids are battling with Pokémon and Nintendo franchise characters.

"Can we play a video game?" Lil Sis (now 4) asks. "I love video games!"

"Can we play Pokémon?" Big Bro asks. "Dr. Mario?"

Usually my husband is in charge when they play for 10 or 15 minutes. When I'm in charge it devolves into fights over who is Pikachu and "stop attacking me!!" Even though that's the whole point of the freaking game. 

Grrr. I hate video games.

"They will only be allowed to play Pokémon, right?" I ask my husband. "It's a slippery slope."

A slippery slope indeed.

Make peace with your past. History has a tendency to repeat itself. Those darn video games are circling back around again.

Works of Art -Lil Sis Edition

Lil Sis is now a preschooler. She absolutely loves school and is sad when it's not a school day. Like her brother, she is becoming an artist. Here are some of her drawings so far.

Early October 2015: Lil Sis and mommy. 

I'm the blue upside-down person and you can very clearly see Lil Sis with her pixie cut on the left. She's very proud of her pixie cut.

October 2015: Daddy Giant, herself, a tracing of Baby Cheetah

I helped a bit...drawing legs on the two people and coloring baby cheetah yellow at her request, but the rest is her.

October 31, 2015: a portrait of her aunt who is pregnant and her son. They are swinging.

November 14, 2015: Lil Sis' "P-ata because it's made of Ps.

February 29, 2016: illustration for a story she wrote "A Silly-badilly Story"

February 29, 2016: Trash Man and Recycling man from her original "A Silly-badilly Story"

Watercolor painted deer

March 2, 2016

I remember struggling to teach Big Bro how to use water colors. Lil Sis picked it up well and fast!

March 18, 2016: Daddy at work in his office

First cucumbers ever

Turns out that some of the plants that I thought were zucchini are actually cucumbers! This is big because I have NEVER grown a successful cucumber plant. I guess the mounding that the guy at (the now defunct) Grand Isle Nursery suggested worked!

I prefer European cucumbers for eating, so the kids and I turned these beauties into quick and easy refrigerator pickles. 

Boil vinegar, sugar, salt, pickle spices (a mix from Healthy Living Market), cool, pour over cucumber slices, and leave in the fridge undisturbed for 3 days. They are delicious (but strong). Big Bro still likes them, he loves pickles. Another fun first for our garden. 

The Baby Bird Rescue

It was a little past 6:00 when the kids and I went out after dinner to play until their dad got home. Within minutes he arrived, grabbed a plate of food and hung out with us on the front lawn near the big blue spruce. When he went to return his plate to the kitchen he suddenly noticed a little bird on the ground. It had arrived out of nowhere.

Thankfully he found it before our dog Pepper did. We located the nest up in the blue spruce. It was perhaps 15 feet up and sheltered by many branches on the way up making it impossible for us to get the chick back into the nest. The mother, a mourning dove, didn't show any outward signs of distress that her baby went missing.

A quick look online told us to build a nest and affix it to the tree so, just maybe, the mother bird would still take care of it.

I picked it up in a towel and my husband placed it in a yogurt container he had stapled to the tree and filled with soft wood chips.

But it was cold and we had nothing to feed it. The chick still seemed doomed. So I kept looking online hoping for a better solution.

Then I came across a page on wildlife rehabilitation published by the Mount Mansfield Veterinary Hospital (http://www.underhillvet.net/wildlife-rehabilitation/). Incredibly, it shared contact information for a number of wildlife rehabilitators and even said what types of animals they cared for from songbirds to foxes and raccoons. There was even one who specializes in doves: jackpot.

The first rescuer I called just went to voicemail. The rescuer #2 picked up but was out to dinner in New Hampshire on her vacation. She gave me the number of rescuer #3 which also led to a voicemail dead end. I called rescuer #2 back and she told me to put the chick in a box and bring it in the house to keep it warm until rescuer #3 called back.

In the meantime, during our bedtime routine with the kids, Rescuer #1 called. I sent her photos of the chick and she confirmed that it was a very young chick who would have to be fed with a tube down its throat. She figured the chick would be ok until morning as its mother likely fed it all day long until about 6:00 PM when it must have tumbled out of the nest. I arranged to meet her that night to hand off the chick.

I drove with the radio off and the car warmed for the sake of the chick, which was now snuggled warmly in its makeshift nest with it's tiny back moving up and down with its breath.

Then under the light of a street lamp near the dumpsters at the highway exit gas station the chick drop was made. 

The rescuer will do her best to keep the little chick warm and fed until it can return back to the blue spruce pine tree in front of our house. Keep your fingers crossed. 

Adult mourning dove

Image source: Wikipedia 

The summer of zucchini

This year's garden was wholly my effort, with some planting help from the kids. It was a quick effort because doing things with two kids running around and making demands isn't easy.

In some ways it's one of our best gardens. I used Green Mountain Coffee burlap coffee bean bags as mulch (you can get them for free at their factories). Therefore, for once, the weeds are actually under control.

Then again, not all of the space we typically use was planted. Also many of our seeds were old eg. the sweet peas didn't do much of anything. We picked maybe two dozen of them to eat as impromptu snacks.

This year I planted cilantro which grew quickly from seed and tastes delicious. It's a nice addition. There's basil too, also from seed, but it's getting shaded out by the tomatoes, whoops.

We've had a decent crop of tomatoes so far. Here is the latest collection sitting on my window to fully ripen.

I have shied away from planting zucchini in the past because I know what a monster it is. Zucchinis typically take over gardens and your neighbor then tries to pawn two foot-long giant vegetables off on you.

From FB:

This year I went for it anyway. I planted a few seeds and I think I have three plants now. It's hard to tell because they are so sprawling and prickly! I don't like touching them.

The zucchinis themselves are sneaky little buggers, hiding among the prickly stalks disguising their full-size.

Do you see the two zucchinis in this picture?

So when you have prolific zucchini plants what do you do? Zucchini bread of course!

I have documented all my garden firsts on this blog so here is the latest. This morning I made zucchini muffins. The kids were playing happily and independently for most of the time while I grated the zucchini and mixed the dry and wet ingredients separately...

...then mixed it all together.

The kids joined me to butter the muffin tins…

...and of course for the eating part. They are delicious!

Have you made fresh zucchini muffins or bread? Here is the recipe we used: 

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/zucchini_muffins/

A few days later we tried Zuccini brownies too: http://www.texanerin.com/2013/08/chocolate-zucchini-brownies.html#_a5y_p=3859621

Those Dreaded School Lunches

I signed Big Bro up for a four-day camp that met from 8:30am through 2:30pm. I got three of his buddies to sign up with him so he would feel more comfortable with me dropping him off for such a long day. I figured it would be good practice in advance of Kindergarten. Going from three mornings of preschool a week to five full days of school is a huge change.

While I thought what good practice it would be for Big Bro to try a new routine, I didn't realize it was going to be good practice for me as well: getting up and out the door early, and packing those dreaded school lunches.

I have read blogs about packing school lunches and they all like to describe what a pain it is. The endless containers, the wasted food, the preparation time, planning and shopping, limited menus due to kid's picky palates, and of course, food restrictions due to the nut-allergy epidemic. Just like Big Bro's new elementary school is nut-free, his camp is also nut-free. So much for endless peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches.

I bought a YumBox last Christmas (an impulse, sale purchase). It offers compartments that seal shut with just one lid. Each compartment is labeled with a food group to help you plan a balanced meal: protein, grain, vegetable, fruit, dairy, and even a tiny one for dip. In addition to filling his YumBox, I also sent him with a breakfast bar and granola bar for snacks.

Here's how the week went:

Day 1: ham slices, Parmesan goldfish crackers, cucumbers and ranch, 2 cherries and a strawberry, slices of cheddar cheese.

Result: He ate everything but the ranch. He was hungry when he came home but that's not surprising, after school snacks are typical. He informed me he was so hungry before dinner and he "never had real lunch today."   Uh oh.

Day 2: buttered bread (I ran out of ham, shoot), hard boiled egg, cucumbers and craisins, slices of cheddar cheese, chocolate caramel kiss as a bonus.

I sent him with two breakfast bars and 2 granola bars and told him to save at least one for the ride home with his friend and his mom. 

Result: He had a good ride home and ate 2 bars when he got back here. He ate everything in his YumBox minus the bread crust, a small cucumber and a few craisins. He even ate the egg (yay!) and said he wasn't hungry during the day, nor did he say he had no real lunch.

Day 3: buttered bread (crusts removed this time), goldfish, an egg (why mess with success?), ham, carrots (a change from the cucumber) and cherries, plus another chocolate caramel kiss (his favorite part, surprise, surprise).

Result: he didn't touch his buttered bread or ham (it wasn't the usual brand so he didn't like it). He left behind goldfish and even cherries. He said he wasn't hungry. He didn't eat any of his granola/breakfast bars either until he got home. Weird.

Day 4: final day! I had a late night meeting so he ended up with cheese, strawberries, crackers, egg, carrots, and a slice of ham even though it's not his preferred brand (it's all "Black Forest" ham!?), and the beloved chocolate kiss.

Result: the ham came back half-eaten so that's some progress. The carrots came back because "he only likes carrots with ranch."

After only 4 days of lunches I already felt the monotony of this packed lunch thing. There were two nights in the week when I felt like I should have gone shopping, but only made a store-run on one of those nights. I'm glad Kindergarten will have hot lunch options for purchase to break it up a bit. The YumBox compartments really did help with packing a varied lunch. 

What grains, proteins, dairy, fruit and veggies are packed lunch favorites in your house?

Surviving the 1st Family Campout

I love camping. There were a few years (between the ages of 16 and 19) when I did quite a lot of it. Much of it was intensive including some true backcountry trips. Even though I'm not a frequent camper anymore, I still love it, so was excited thinking this was the summer my little family would try it out.

We bought a 5 person tent at Costco for $80. I set it up in the living room to start so the kids could play in it and get used to it. Lil Sis was excited to sleep in it. For three nights in a row as I tucked her into bed she protested, "I thought we were sleeping in the tent!"

I told her we would do it on the weekend when Daddy was home too (he's been super busy with work and school board/supervisory union meetings). That wasn't my only reason though. Big Bro only wanted to camp outside, not in the living room, which was another hurdle. Sibling conflict, sigh. 

But the even bigger reason was that camping out (or in) is a commitment. It's not a time when you tuck your kids in and then have a couple hours of adult time before nodding off to sleep. I had to count on the kids being up late (for them) and going to bed early myself (husband and I are night owls).

Friday night arrived. Lil Sis still wanted to camp in the living room and Big Bro still only wanted to sleep outside. We had just had a string of gorgeous weather days. The lawn was dry, the forecast was clear. However, beginning Saturday night, it would be another stretch of rainy days, who knew how soon the next dry spell would come? Maybe we should sleep outside without the indoor practice since we had been building up the anticipation and the weather wasn't going to accommodate the original 2 part plan this weekend.

So, I made a quick decision, after dinner I dragged the tent outside. We gathered up sleeping bags, pillows, stuffed animals. We brushed teeth outside in order to be more authentic. Then we started a campfire. I didn't have any marshmallows due to the spontaneous nature of it, but it was still nice. The kids enjoyed being outside in their pjs, watching the fire, playing on their play structure, finding firewood. 

Nini and Grandpa joined us for our campfire. When the flames started to die down we put it out, then headed into the tent to sleep. It was around 8:15 maybe?

Snuggled in our sleeping bags, we took turns telling stories, then watched for the stars to come out. We only saw two before I told them to close eyes and sleep because it was 9:00. They were both asleep in minutes.

Amazingly we all fell asleep and spent the whole night in the tent. Sure, we all took turns waking up. Lil Sis slid off the air mattress and spent part of the night by our feet, Big Bro's pillow slipped off the mattress and got all "dewy" so I gave him mine. Dada of Ma'at's hair and feet were getting wet from touching the tent walls (they're not super waterproof. You get what you pay for...). We slept (amazingly) until 6:45 despite the sunrise and chirping birds. We were all still sleepy, and a bit stiff, but I was happy and proud that we had made it!

We went inside and the kids watched cartoons from their sleeping bags on the living room floor while I made breakfast. 

Looking over at my husband I said, "I'm so glad we did it, but we don't have to do it again for 5 years." ⛺️ 
Although, in all seriousness, we will do it again. It will only get easier the more we do it!

Maple Love

This was the first year that our maple operation was 100% my own. After a bit of trouble to get a working drill, the kids and I tapped three trees on March 10th, which is about one month later than what  was typical for us due to freezing temperatures (ie: the coldest February in 80 years).

For some reason two of the three trees were having yellow sap from the get-go. In years past these particular trees were usually our super-producers. This made no sense to me, since it was no where near warm enough for them to start blooming (the usual reason for yellow sap) but after a few days of the same – just some small yellow drips – I pulled the taps out. Now I just had one tree left.

On March 17th I boiled my first batch of sap on the kitchen stove.

In total I had 5 small batches of sap to boil during my short five-week sugaring season. The batches are shown (from left to right) first to last.

Batch 1 was beautifully clear sap but I made a rookie mistake and boiled it for too long making it more like candy. It's already starting to crystallize.

Batch 2 was yellow sap. I'm not sure why it happened maybe because it froze and then thawed while in the bucket thanks to temperature swings. I was almost going to throw it out but my husband suggested I try it. He even tasted it and said he liked it so here it is, super dark. At least I didn't over boil it so it's more like syrup instead of honey.

Batch 3 was a mix of some slightly yellow sap with a second run of clearer sap. It turned into a medium syrup but it was a very small amount.

Batch 4 was crystal-clear sap and boiled to a good consistency, however there is a ton of sandy sediment at the bottom that I should strain out.

Batch 5, the last one, was also beautifully clear sap but the smallest amount yet. I boiled it to a good consistency and the color is amazingly light, just like Batch 4, but batch five has less sediment at the bottom. Perhaps that is only because it hasn't been sitting in the fridge as long.

I pulled the tree tap yesterday because even the nighttime temperatures were supposed to be above freezing. That is not sugaring weather. 

 Yet the next morning I, along with the rest of Northwestern VT, woke up to this:

Maybe sugaring season is not quite over, but I am over sugaring season.