New year, new title, new look!

Welcome to the newly renamed blog: Adventures in Urban Homesteading. (Sadly, Little Homestead in the City was taken!) I’ve been meaning to re-title this blog for some time now. I had the perfect idea for the new blog photo and making the change depended on getting that photo taken. But… 6 or 8 months later, I just don’t think I’ll ever get that photo taken!

So I dug through the photo archives and came up with this collection of photos instead.

Why the change, you ask? Well, it just makes more sense. This blog hasn’t been about culture shock for a long time. There isn’t much more to say about how different it is here in the Midwest, compared to the Northwest. Even if there was, I’d rather not dwell on it.

This blog has been more about cooking, preserving, sewing, keeping chickens, building root cellars, and of course building our own little homestead.

We really are just getting started, just exploring the tip of the iceberg of urban homesteading and urban farming.

In the future (this year, next year, 10 years from now, who knows) we have lots of ideas and plans:

• Jeremy wants to get goats – but first we have to convince the city to allow hoofed animals. Then we can make goat butter and goat cheese and have goat milk (for Jeremy to drink and me to use in recipes).
• Jeremy wants to get bees and make honey and beeswax candles.
• We are thinking about raising rabbits.
• Jeremy thinks a pig would be cool too, but I’m not so sure about that!

Other things we want to experiment with making:

• Chapstick
• Laundry soap
• Bar soap
• Hard apple cider
• Wooden toys
• Crates from the lathe we pulled out of the upstairs
• and more!
  

I have plans for more quilts and more sewing projects (but Jeremy says I have to get our quilt done first!). We hope to finish the upstairs rooms and build a root cellar. Jeremy has started planning the garden for this year. We are making plans for fruit tree additions to the yard, more flowers, and converting the garage to a year-round mushroom growing building. And hopefully somewhere in there one of us will get a job!

Thank you to all my loyal readers – lurkers and commenters alike. May this be an exciting and fulfilling New Year for you, as I hope it will be for us. Happy New Year!

(And no, I'm not going to change the url - sorry for the confusion, but I really don't want to start a whole different blog!)

The other good beet recipe

Way back in October I posted one of my favorite beet recipes. This is my other favorite beet recipe. And that's all the beet recipes you'll get out of me!

Secret Chocolate Cake (from the Simply in Season cookbook)

Cook a bunch of beets first. They'll be peeled and chopped up to make 2 cups, so how many you cook depends on how big they are.



Throw the peeled/chopped beets and 1/2 cup of applesauce (we used our homemade applesauce) in a blender or food processor and puree until smooth.



In a large bowl combine sugar (I used 3/4 cup honey), 1/2 cup oil, 1/2 cup yogurt (alas, we didn't have any homemade left!), and 3 eggs (from our chickens of course!). Beat with an electric mixer for 2 minutes.



To that mix, add the pureed beets, 1/2 cup of sifted baking cocoa, and 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla. Beet for 90 seconds - here is where it can get really messy!



Mix up 2 1/2 cups of flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour), 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon (I tried out my new Extra Fancy Vietnamese Cinnamon).



Sift the flour mix into the batter and mix with a wooden spoon; don't overmix.



Mix in about 1/2 cup of chocolate chips (or more, oops. =)



Pour into a greased bundt pan (or other baking pan) and bake at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes.



Fresh out of the oven:



And - hey, someone got a slice out before I could take a picture! =)



Supposedly no one will know the secret ingredient (beets) if you don't tell. Perhaps because I don't add as much sugar as they call for, I can sort of taste it sometimes. Solution: must be eaten with ice cream or fresh whipped cream. Yummm!!

Christmas, part I

Jeremy and I just returned from 8 days in Kansas City, visiting with relatives of Jeremy's. We went down a day earlier then planned to avoid all the awful weather that was brewing. Sure enough, it snowed in Minneapolis quite a bit on Wednesday. I was bummed that we had missed out on the snow - it was completely dry in Kansas City. I think it was even 50 degrees on Wednesday. But then on Thursday it started snowing and it didn't stop! Then I was much happier to be in KC because it stayed cold and kept snowing, while in Minneapolis it warmed up a bit and they got freezing rain and all sorts of ugliness.





Its tradition in Jeremy's family to go out for Japanese food on Christmas eve (this started many years ago when they were feeling sick and looking for some place that sold chicken soup...) We braved the icy, snowy roads and had a great dinner at Jun's Authentic Japanese.

The next tradition is to get up at 5 in the morning on Christmas morning and go to the Swedish service at a Baptist church in town. Apparently the Swedes celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, partying all day, opening gifts, and staying up all night. They end the celebration by going to the church service at 6 in the morning. Then they nap on Christmas day!
5:30 am Christmas morning: the snow had really come down and nothing had been plowed. The snow was still coming down and the windshield wipers were frozen to the windshield. We squashed into the car and drove carefully through the white, abandoned streets. Karin, Jeremy's mom, was tempted to stop many times as we approached hills, valleys, ruts, and piles of snow. We all yelled encouragements: "Keep going, keep going! Just drive through it!" And then whoops and hollers as we plowed through another pile of snow. We finally got to the church and discovered a van stuck trying to enter the parking lot.
Jeremy and his brother leaped out of the car to render assistance. After about 30 minutes of shoveling, scooping, pushing, and conferring, the van was finally able to back out of the parking lot. In the mean time we found out the church service was canceled! Another would-be church attender showed up in the midst of this and she had brought a car full of the Swedish tea cake rings that would have been served after the service. She handed us a whole ring, still warm, and we all drove back through the snowy streets to our warm homes.

We opened gifts later that morning. I'll post some pictures of gifts later. We still have some gifts to hand out! But, here are the awesome new boots I got!



And here I am testing them out (tags still on!) and trying to eat some falling snow.




An unfortunate addition to the holiday spirit, we saw this sign on a walk through the neighborhood. Tucked in with santas, polar bears & penguins, and a giant Noel: "No Trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again." That's the spirit...



We had a great, long, relaxing time down in Kansas City. I received a box of t-shirts to be made into a quilt for next Christmas. Oh boy do I have a lot of sewing projects ahead of me!

I'll post some photos of gifts we made next week after we have our second gift exchange with the sisters-in-law (and then there will be more photos after Christmas with my family in late January!).

The much-overlooked rowan berry

We have a mountain ash tree in our yard. I never paid much attention to these trees till we had our own and they are really quite beautiful. They bloom with white flowers in the spring then they get berries that seem to change colors from orange to red. The leaves turn orangey-red in the fall, but when they're gone the bright red berries are still there.



Over the summer a friend was visiting and she mentioned that jelly could be made from these berries. We were amazed. It just goes to show we're losing track of all the edible things out there. We set to work researching this a bit.

For one thing, it turns out mountain ash trees are not ash trees but members of the rose family. They are also known as Rowan trees, thus, rowan berries. Some people have thought the berries were poisonous, but they're not. Just very, very , very tart! Jeremy was brave and tried one this summer. Yech! But, the flavor improves (somewhat) after freezing. The berries also have a lot of vitamin C - more than lemons.

We were going to pick our berries and make jelly this year but then decided we didn't have the time. But then a friend found out about rowan berries and picked a ton of them. He borrowed our juicer and made gallons of rowan berry juice, then gave us some. So we decided to make some jelly.

We saw a lot of recipes and we'll have to keep tweaking ours. We used a 1 to 1 ratio of rowan berry juice and apple juice and we put in a lot more honey than we normally do (3/4 cup instead of 4-8 teaspoons!)







Aren't they beautiful? In the second batch we also added some cloves. I'm afraid the jelly turned out quite tart, almost bitter. We still have a lot of rowan juice so we'll keep experimenting (a higher amount of apple juice and more sugar!) In any case, the jelly is better as an accompaniment to meat dishes - not something you slather on hot biscuits. We'll let you know if we come up with a recipe that's not so lip-puckering tart!

Cookies!

I'm not sure how long it has been a tradition in my family to make Christmas cookies. My grandma made an assortment each year and I'll never forget her Anise cookies and Marzipan. Two of my favorites.

As a family we had a tradition of making boxes of cookies for our teachers at school. Usually there was just one or two teachers in grade school. Then in Jr High and High School we picked all the teachers we liked best, and we did the same in college, and I gave cookies in my workplace too! This is why my mom has had to make more and more cookies every year.

I'll try to remember everything she makes: sugar cookies (with fantastic, elaborate decorations!), peanut butter blossoms, snowballs, wreaths, spritz, hermits, baklava, and fudge. I'm sure if I'm forgetting something my mom will comment to remind me!

Each of us kids has our favorites and this year I made the three I like the best. (No boxes of cookies in the mail from my mom. We tried that last year and they arrived in many small pieces!)

First and foremost: peanut butter blossoms. You start out rolling them into little balls:



After they've cooked for a few minutes they start collapsing down and getting cracks.



Then you push in a chocolate star (NOT a Hershey's kiss! Ack!) and they are the tastiest best cookies ever!



Next are Spritz. They are flavored with almond extract which is probably why I like them so much.



And lastly, wreaths. These have cream cheese in them and the little red hots. I can't quite describe what it is I like about these. They are just tasty. These and the Spritz are both made with a cookie press.



Why are you so tasty little wreath!?


It turns out a neighbor of ours grew up with the tradition of giving out cookies too. She and I met a couple days ago and made some of these cookies and some of her recipes. In another day or so we'll put together plates of cookies and deliver them to neighbors on this block. Yay for new traditions!

Freezer challenge

I was reading a fellow blogger's post and was inspired that we should have a freezer challenge. My fellow blogger is having (and had last year) a pantry challenge. As she explains it, this is the, "thing where you don't buy any groceries and only eat what's in your kitchen as of...right now." She does it for a week or two to get things back on track.

I ran this idea by Jeremy.

"We should have a freezer challenge! We could make meals for the next month that use ingredients from the freezer!" (Note: that would be the royal we, as in Jeremy will be doing all the cooking)

"Hmmmm," was his reply.

Of course we realized pretty quickly it wasn't that practical. For one thing, we couldn't make a meal from the freezer every day because we don't eat that much. And we can't (or at least I won't) just eat a bowl of thawed corn or thawed strawberries. Most things in the freezer are ingredients to go in bigger dishes.

So perhaps we're not talking about a challenge, but about being more intentional. We've got plenty of food in the freezer (as well as canned) so we shouldn't have to buy as much food. Of course, there is the problem that there is so much in the freezer and it's so disorganized that we don't even know what's in there anymore!

In any case, we've had several intentional meals this last week using freezer and canned foods.

Jeremy dug out a lovely venison steak which he put under the broiler. He made this incredible marinade for it with fish sauce, whiskey, tamari, sesame seed oil, and pepper. We only ate a couple pieces of that, so for the next meal Jeremy cut up some pieces to put into a fabulous stroganoff (including our own shiitake mushrooms, onions, fish sauce, roasted red peppers from the freezer, and fusili pasta).
There was still more, so the venison next showed up in a quiche, as well as roasted red peppers from the freezer, tomatoes from our CSA, salsa, cheddar & Gruyere, and the other usual quiche ingredients.

Here's the quiche:


(accompanied by blue chips found in the pantry and some sprouts.)

After this Jeremy whipped up a pizza. This had roasted kale (from the freezer), mozzarella, Italian sausage, and roasted garlic.



Then he was really inspired! He browned some mutton he had picked up at the farmer's market a few months back. He popped that in the slow cooker with chicken broth from the freezer and hominy from Native Harvest(which we've had lying around forever) Then he added some sauteed onions and garlic, celery, fish sauce, red wine, and miso and let that cook overnight. It smelled really good. It really cooked down and thickened so we served it over rice. It was incredibly tasty.




Jeremy is hoping to use up some corn and fruit next. Corn pudding? Smoothies? Cobbler? We will let you know what springs up next as we dive further into the freezer.

Yellow & Blue = Green (Or, Where Aimee & Jeremy Finally Get to Insulate!)

A snowstorm moved through Tuesday and Wednesday bringing a ton of snow and much colder temperatures - hovering in the single digits for highs, and lows (plus windchill) in the negative double digits! When it's this cold outside...





...no one wants an un-insulated house!


But, we finally passed our electrical and framing inspection this week so we got to insulate. The ceiling of course was foamed over the summer. We're using recycled denim for the wall. Jeremy has made one trip per day for the last several days and picked up one giant bag of insulation per trip. Each bag fills up the whole back seat!

I guess I get pretty excited about insulation (or maybe just about getting this project moving) because it's done! I got started after 8pm last night and got a bit more than 1/3 of the way through. Then I finished this afternoon. I love looking at the bedroom side with the yellow ceiling, blue walls, and green floor!


I love the idea of house blessings so I took the opportunity to write some things in the walls before the last of the insulation went up. This is one of my favorites:


The text says:

May these walls be filled with laughter,
May it reach from floor to rafter.
May the roof keep out the rain,
May sunshine warm each windowpane.
And may the door be open wide
to let the Good Lord's love inside.

Things have been moving along this week. Jeremy also got up the sheer walls in the closet and the rest of that part (and you can see the railing we picked up this morning.)





While I was putting in insulation Jeremy went around attaching light switches and outlets. He just got the power hooked up and it's not quite working yet. Power is getting up there, but it's not getting out of the main box. So he's running around trying to solve that.

I'm just sitting around admiring the insulation. It feels warmer in here already.