Homemade

Before I make it a whole year without writing, let's jump in at random and I'll tell you what we're up to.

Making things, that's what we're doing. We made our own corn tacos this week. Our family has gone through a big dietary change, as the girls and I have had to stop eating gluten and dairy. Thankfully we all LOVE mexican food Hernande'z style (a great local eatery) and they sell masa corn flour for us to try our hand at homemade tortillas. The results?

Yummy!


This summer I have had a lot of yearnings for rural farm property, for growing some of our food and keeping some animals. Don't worry, we still live in the city, and are constantly debating the pros and cons of both locations and lifestyles. In the meantime Kit started a bunch of roma tomato seeds in June, and I planted them all in July, too close together, without much knowledge of what they needed. This fall I ended up with this:

I actually harvested twice as much, those pics are of the green ones that have yet to ripen. I had to pick all of them green, then lay them out in the windows to ripen in the sun. I didn't think they would,  was googling green ketchup recipes, not sure how I'd use 50 pounds of green romas. But half of them ripened, and the other half are well on their way. So I checked my fave food blogs and found a simple ketchup recipe. I don't feel ready to make pasta sauce or salsa, because we all like different flavours for each, and I don't need jars of food I have to force on my family. Ketchup felt easy, we can always eat more oven fries right? I have zero canning experience, but I have experienced friends, so I jumped in.

Trying to fit the canning process around my busy schedule was a challenge, and I ended up starting the final stage last night after 9pm, and stayed up into the wee hours. But oh was it worth it!

I can't wait for lunchtime today when we WILL be having oven fries with this tasty ketchup. I feel so amazed and proud, having succeeded at canning anything, and also having canned something I grew on our tiny city property. Woohoo!

This week we met with our weekly group and learned to light fires. We went to a beach in the rural part of town (there's that longing again) and we talked about the various ways you can build a fire, what fires need and fire safety in the outdoors. Then we let them loose with all the supplies they'd need, to see if they could get a fire going.

They built a bunch of different fires, trying their own ideas or trying some of the standard styles we had talked about. There was a lot to learn, and the day couldn't have been better, dry after a rainy night, windy and overcast, but not dark or dreary. Fires blew out, matches broke, paper burned up and blew away, the wood left untouched. After some time, success! And then more and more, their fires lit and burned away the cold air. Then they ran off to dam up a nearby creek that ran across the beach. A great fall day on the coast.

Hope you're enjoying the chill of fall.

kisses
C