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You are here: Home / Archives for Homemaking

Homemaking

The Way Boys Like to Cook….

June 21, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Over the past year, I’ve gradually turned more and more of breakfast duty over to the children. A year ago I was still cooking something for breakfast every day of the week. Now, on weekdays, I make sure there is something ready for Gayle to heat up before he leaves for work at 5:10 (no, I don’t get up to fix it for him or even to see him off), and fix my own breakfast and make sure Mr. Imagination gets fed. Otherwise, the children are pretty much on their own. Some of them have gotten pretty creative! Mr. Intellectual has become an expert at pancakes. He mixes them up without following a recipe. I’ve given him tips here and there at making better ones. He usually makes enough for himself and one or two of the other boys, which makes him popular! Mr. Inventor and Mr. Handyman usually fry a couple of eggs. When eggs are plentiful, I let them have as many as they want, and Mr. Handyman will eat five at a meal. Right now, I have to restrict them all to two eggs each, and even at that we have to buy some to supplement what our hens produce. Mr. Diligence can’t handle the thought of spending more than a minute making his breakfast, and he hates all the casseroles I make for his daddy, so he lives on leftover toast in the morning. He will make a lot of toast one afternoon, to tide himself over for the next few days! He eats it with peanut butter and sugar-free jam. Esther often makes herself a pudding with 2 eggs, 1/4 cup milk and some vanilla stevia. Just whisk it together and keep whisking until it just starts to thicken, then take off the heat and whisk another half minute or so till it’s just right.

On Saturdays and Sundays I make breakfast for everyone. I often make a fried oatmeal with apples in it on Saturday, or pancakes. I get the pancakes mixed before I head out to milk, and assign some boys to fry pancakes and make waffles (with the same batter) while I’m out. The morning these pictures were taken, a few weeks ago, the coal range was going hot enough to cook the pancakes. Wood heat makes the best pancakes! It is a very even heat, and usually not as intense as electric. We don’t scorch things when cooking with wood like we do with electric. That’s Mr. Intellectual frying pancakes; Mr. Diligence was operating the waffle iron. It looks like Mr. Inventor, in the background, was making tea.IMG_0797IMG_0800

The boys have also been baking potatoes lately, for snacks. We were given a bagful of washed potatoes, so I told the boys they can have them. They wrap them it tinfoil, and stick them in the stove in the living room. It’s fun to see the boys having fun cooking!IMG_1098

Mr. Imagination is playing with Legos while I write. He came over a few minutes ago and very seriously told me that his plane crashed and people were hurt. He showed me the “crashed plane”. A minute later he brought it back over and asked if I wanted some juice. I asked, “I thought that was a plane that crashed?” “It turned into juice,” was his reply. And now, it’s a cup of water!

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: boys working, Homemaking, Recipes

Apple Cider

June 17, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One of Gayle’s dreams for the past five years, ever since the first year we were here, when he saw how many apples go to waste along the roadsides, has been to make apple cider. This year, his dream was finally realized. We bought an insinkerator (garbage disposal) unit on Trade Me and cleaned it thoroughly, and then he ground apples through it into a pillow case. Then, he put that between boards, and pressed it with a car jack. Yum! Baby thoroughly approved, too—but cider stains clothes very badly, for your information.SANY3038

SANY3037

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: cider press, Homemaking

Quinces

May 6, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Sometime around the end of March, Gayle and the boys went to pick plums from a tree at an old house on the property a friend lives on. There was a quince tree nearby, and they picked a few quinces. Those quinces sat in our windowsill for a week or two before I got around to cooking them. I just put them in a pot with some water and brought them to a boil, and over the next two or three days brought them to a boil again so they wouldn’t spoil. Finally I had time to peel them and take out the cores, and then they sat in the fridge for another week till finally one day I put them on the table at lunch because I knew they wouldn’t keep much longer! To my surprise, the children loved them. I had not cooked them with any sugar or even stevia, but they were sweet enough to be good, and with cream on top they were absolutely delicious! We decided we wanted to can some quinces this year, so went back to pick a banana boxful off the tree. By this time, a month had passed since the first ones were picked, and they were now quite ripe. I washed and trimmed a dishpanful and cooked them the same way as the half dozen a month before, but they went to mush! So, I took the cores out by hand and froze the mush to make into jam when we have jars to put it in. The next batch, I peeled, trimmed, and chunked before cooking them, and canned them with stevia (I use NOW brand Better Stevia, 1 teaspoon to two quarts of water). We decided to make sauce from the rest, so I cooked them to mush and then picked out the cores and canned it as I do applesauce, with a bit of stevia because it was rather tart. Quinces are a distinctive flavor; I think they taste like flowers smell. With cream, they are quite a treat, and nowhere near as sour as I used to think they were. If you have access to this old-fashioned fruit, give them a try!IMG_0664

Above-the boxful of quinces I worked up. Below-some finished jars of quince chunks and one of sauce to enjoy this winter.IMG_0705

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Homemaking, quinces, Recipes

Finishing the Harvest

April 27, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We are getting close to the end of harvesting food for the year. Gayle and the boys are digging potatoes today. That is quite different from last year! It was so wet last year that there was water in every hole made by the fork when they dug up a potato plant. About half the crop rotted in the ground, and I had to deal with rotten potatoes in the bin all winter. Yuck! This year, the soil is bone-dry! We’re hoping for heavy rains soon, though, so Gayle decided it was time to get them dug.

The shelves in the jar room are very nearly full. The freezers are mostly full—even the “new” one we bought to put a steer in in another two weeks is a third full! Onions are braided and hanging beside the jars of food, and the pumpkins are piled in there and on a porch. We won’t go hungry this year!IMG_0602IMG_0603IMG_0615IMG_0616IMG_0617

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Gardening, Homemaking

2014-15 Garden

March 9, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Our garden this year has produced spectacularly! As usual, I took pictures early on, with full intentions of taking more when it was at its peak, and as usual, I never got follow-up pictures taken. We, specifically the boys, have put up bushels of produce—we will have all the pickles, of three varieties, that we want, plus 95 pounds of sourkraut and about that much plain cabbage in the freezer; lots of zucchini; all the lettuce we can eat, and so far what looks like a great crop of tomatoes coming on. The onions are nearly ready to harvest, and we’ve canned a great many green beans and carrots. The potatoes have a blight, but we’re eating a lot now. Corn was too dry, and crowded out by too many pumpkins in the patch.

The early garden, in mid-December:

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Corn and pumpkins, with tomatoes to the left and potatoes beyond them.

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Cabbage, cukes, beans.

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Carrots, radishes, beets, peas, lettuce

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The entire garden, in the process of being weeded for the first time.  Below is a mound across the creek, on which we planted zucchini and pumpkins. Failure! Too dry.

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Tomatoes fill up this small garden.

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Peppers are up against the house, by the lemon tree.

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We filled in this space around the rhubarb plants with tomatoes, tomatillos, Cape Gooseberries (like ground cherries), and zucchini.

I did get two pictures recently! This was the day we pulled up all the rest of the cabbage. This one head of Savoy Cabbage was so pretty I got a picture of it.

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I’ve learned that one way to save space in the garden is to plant the cabbages very close. They can be 1 foot from each other, in every direction, and thrive. No weed problems there!

We had several wheelbarrow loads of cabbage that day, and ended up with three bushels when it was all trimmed. I read aloud a very exciting story while the boys trimmed it, and the cow loved eating all the “waste”.

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When we thinned the carrots, the boys were happy to find some funny ones:

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All in all, we’re feeling quite blessed with this year’s garden.

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Gardening, Homemaking

New Year’s Day Harvest

January 1, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

First, I want to wish all of you a wonderful 2015! We’ve had a lovely New Year’s Day today. It’s a lot cooler than yesterday, which I appreciate, but sunny and beautiful. I went out to the garden this morning and found a lot of things ready to pick. We are eating well these days!IMG_0076

This afternoon, I went to the garage to get something, and made a side trip to check on the barrel of apple cider vinegar I’ve been brewing since last March. One of the boys had gotten a small cup of it this morning, and it tasted just slightly weaker than the double-strength vinegar we usually buy from a stockfeeds store. He thought there was a scoby in it (like kombucha). I looked, and sure enough there was a huge “mother” floating  on top!

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That was exciting. There were also a lot of fruit flies in it, so I decided it was time to strain and bottle all of it. We ended up with 21 liters, just over 5 gallons, for the price of a rubbish bin (maybe $15). The apples were free from the roadside, and the only other ingredient was water. To buy that much vinegar at the stockfeeds shop costs about $80. I’m pleased with this experiment!

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I put the “mother” in a jar to save till I start the next batch, so hopefully it will work even faster than this batch. Sure looks ugly! It’s kind of rubbery, a lot like a kombucha scoby.IMG_0083

Esther wanted to see what the cows would do with the vinegary apples, so she dumped them out in the paddock. They wanted to eat them, but the acid was apparently kind of hard for them to handle. They keep coming back for more, though!

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Gardening, Homemaking, vinegar

Nelson Trip, Part Two–Kaiteriteri

May 31, 2014 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The friends we visited in Nelson took us to Kaiteriteri, about a half-hour drive from their house, for the day. What a beautiful place! The sand was even more golden than Lake Michigan, but very coarse. The sky was so blue! It was a perfect morning. The children climbed the rocks, dug in the sand, and played fox and geese. DSCF2600DSCF2602DSCF2603DSCF2608DSCF2610DSCF2611DSCF2616DSCF2618DSCF2622DSCF2626DSCF2629DSCF2632DSCF2633DSCF2636DSCF2644DSCF2651DSCF2656DSCF2664DSCF2667DSCF2669DSCF2672DSCF2674

Filed Under: Away From Home Tagged With: Homemaking, Kaiteriteri, Ocean

Today’s Activities

March 15, 2014 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

This has been another busy day. We started out butchering roosters and making tomato juice, and while I cut up the roosters the boys worked on their projects. We also picked apples and made applesauce, and the boys helped their daddy cut off the rest of the cornstalks from the garden and bring them home; we’ll husk the corn tomorrow.

Now it is tomorrow; I didn’t get this finished last night. So, I’ll add the pictures and try to get it posted today!

Boy # 2 is working on building a workshop to store his tools in, in this picture.
Boy # 2 is working on building a workshop to store his tools in, in this picture.
The base for boy #2's sleepout.
The base for boy #2’s sleepout.
Boy #4 working on his sleepout--a defunct freezer that served as a swimming pool for a couple of years.
Boy #4 working on his sleepout–a defunct freezer that served as a swimming pool for a couple of years.
And this is what the kitchen looked like!
And this is what the kitchen looked like!
Applesauce,
Applesauce,
dehydrated onions,
dehydrated onions,
tomato juice, applesauce and a jar of lentils to fill the canner,
tomato juice, applesauce and a jar of lentils to fill the canner,
vinegar, I hope,
vinegar, I hope,
and corn being cooked!
and corn being cooked!
Gayle and the boys brought home all the corn, then picked it off the stalks and husked it.
Gayle and the boys brought home all the corn, then picked it off the stalks and husked it.
The cows enjoyed the stalks, husks, and cobs. They would have enjoyed the corn, too, but we didn't share.
The cows enjoyed the stalks, husks, and cobs. They would have enjoyed the corn, too, but we didn’t share.

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Fosters Road house, Homemaking, random pictures

Drying Laundry

March 5, 2014 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

My solar-powered dryer isn’t working today…DSCF2069

…but the wood-fired one is!DSCF2068

I will be back soon with more posts! We finally moved two and a half weeks ago, and I’m almost done unpacking. We started school last week; today is our sixth day. I’m finally feeling like we’re getting into a routine again. We’re on our third day of rain and cold, so very thankful for that good woodstove in the living room. We also love this coal range (wood cook stove) in the kitchen. We run it for a couple of hours in the morning and have all the hot water we want for the day, plus can cook breakfast on it. This picture shows the boys cleaning out a shelf of honeycomb that the professional chimney sweep missed. They checked into it when the stove smoked badly the first couple of times we used it. It works great now!DSCF2052

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Fosters Road house, Homemaking, laundry

Caraway Red Cabbage

January 31, 2014 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

I had a large head of red cabbage in the garden, so I cooked it up this evening. We have a favorite way to make it–a recipe handed down from my Dad’s Belgian family.

Ingredients:
2 Tb butter
1 c chopped onion
1/4 c sugar
2 1/2 t salt
1 1/2 t caraway seeds
1 c vinegar
3/4 c water
1 large (about 3 pound) red cabbage, shredded

Saute onions until golden in hot butter in large saucepan; stir in sugar. Add remaining ingredients. Simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, about 35 minutes or until cabbage is tender.

I don’t exactly follow the recipe; I used stevia instead of sugar, and I don’t bother sauteing the onions. I just omit the butter and throw the onions in raw and let them cook with the cabbage. This is delicious! We enjoy it for a meal, and then I freeze the rest in meal-size bags for winter. If any of my uncles read this, maybe they will remember who hand-wrote the recipe on a page for my mom’s cookbook? Thank you, which ever one did that, for passing on this recipe! Another generation is now enjoying it–my daughter loves it!

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I got some other food put up for winter today, also–28 pounds of sourkraut, 16 quarts of green beans, and also made about 4 pounds of butter. Since there was extra space in the canner, I put in four jars of chick peas. I hadn’t soaked them, but they cooked up nice and soft in the 25 minutes I processed the green beans at 10 pounds pressure. We’ll just use them soon, since they didn’t get the 90 minutes processing they need to be shelf-stable. It was a way to take full advantage of the fuel to heat the canner.DSCF1784

Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Homemaking, Recipes

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The Family:


Dad and Mom (Gayle and Emma)

Girl #1, Esther, my right hand

Boy #1, Seth (Mr. Handyman)

Boy #2, Simon (Mr. Inventor)

Boy #3, Mr. Intellectual

Boy #4, Mr. Diligence

Boy #5, Mr. Sweetie

Boy #6, Mr. Imagination

Girl #2, Little Miss

Girl #3, Miss Joy

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