An actual update

First of all, I miss blogland.

Secondly, it's been a little over a year since my last update. 2010 was a very hard year in terms of death and failure, but it also offered rebirth and redemption, so as things go, it was just another slightly dippier roller coaster than most years kind of year.

Lauren and Jeff are wonderful. They're as fun as ever. Jeff is still a grubby little boy (I swear, he manufactures dirt) who has really blossomed into quite a character. He's intentionally funny and loves to joke and be silly. He also loves football, which pleases his father to no end. Lauren is still smart and funny, and her most recent venture is that she's writing books. She has three volumes under her belt already ("Jeff Makes a Mess", "Why is all the Water Coming In to Everyone's Houses", and "Lauren didn't Listen.") She has plans for several more. She is in school four days a week now and loving every minute of it. Since she goes in the afternoon, as soon as we get home from dropping her off, Jeff goes down for a nap and I get about 2 hours ALL TO MYSELF. It's heavenly.

Work has been busy since about November of last year, which, of course, is a very good thing when it comes to owning a business and having it, you know, stay in business. Most people in my life forget that I work full-time. (In-laws, friends, miscellaneous people.) I work full-time AND I take care of my children full-time, and sometimes that balancing act is very hard to maintain. It requires being on-call at work all day during normal working hours to keep up with email and phone calls and fulfilling requests for information, and doing the bulk of the rest of the work at night after the kids go to bed. I've pulled a lot of all-nighters in the past year. It's made for some rough days and nights, and a lot of stress.

That said, I am glad to be able to continue to work AND take care of my children, and at times, the balancing act does tip in my favor, too. There was a week in July where I didn't have much work to do, so I didn't do anything. After running full-throttle since mid-July, this week has been a little quieter, too. The busy-busy will start again soon so I'm enjoying these quieter days now while I can. Every time I want to whine and complain about how busy/tired/stressed I am, I have to stop to remind myself that I have it pretty good and that I'm lucky to be in the situation I'm in, for better and for worse.

My one thing that I do for my own fun has been cooking. In a continuation of the CSA and farmer's market posts where I left off last year, I'm still CSA-ing it and have become a regular at the Farmer's Market. I signed back up with my CSA from last year, and added the egg share this time around. When the CSA ends next week *sob* I think I will miss the eggs, most of all. I bought a share in an apple CSA which is still going - 6 deliveries of 10 pounds of apples each, and then a 10# box of baking apples and 2 gallons of apple cider at Thanksgiving. Also, since May, when the Farmer's Market opened, I have bought 100% of my meat from a local farmer (his farm is about 40 minutes away.) I usually buy meat for the coming week and usually one or two extra things, and I've built quite a little stockpile in the freezer. It may last a month or so after the market closes (the last Saturday in October, *sob again!*) My farmer suggested that I consider buying a half of a hog in the spring, and I think I'm going to do it. I have also purchased a heritage, pastured turkey from him for Christmas, and I'm terrified that I'm going to ruin it since I've never cooked a whole turkey before.

I have to admit, I love being a regular at the market. I like being greeted by name and how buying food has become more than a faceless transaction. I'm really going to be sad when it ends in two weeks. Really.

I also started canning in earnest this summer, using the bounty of goodness from the market. I now have around 100 jars of stuff down in the basement; everything from fruit jams (strawberry, blueberry, peach, apricot, grape, raspberry, and many combinations of the above) to condiments (pickle relish, pickles, honey mustard, ketchup, peach hot sauce, tomato jam), to whole and sliced things (sliced peaches, whole tomatoes) to sauces (applesauce, apple butter, tomato salsa, spaghetti sauce, crushed tomatoes, tomato puree.) I froze a couple of quarts of blueberries to make Mr. Fro's birthday pie in December, and have also frozen peaches, raspberries, cranberries, peppers, zucchini, and a few other things. Several weeks at the farmer's market saw me hauling a wagon-load of produce away from my favorite produce farmers. I bought a bushel of tomatoes, and then two weeks later, bought another bushel. (A bushel of tomatoes is about 50 pounds of tomatoes.) The only produce that I've purchased at the grocery store since May has been bananas. Everything else has been from the market.

Now with fall upon us and winter looming I'm finding ways to use the things I've canned, sometimes trying to be creative. I made a quickbread and used a jar of cranberry-lemon preserves in the batter. (Blueberry would work, too!) For Lauren's preschool treat day, we made whole wheat muffins with applesauce and shredded apples in the batter (BIG HIT!) I slow-cooked a pork shoulder with a jar of the hot spicy peach sauce, and it was fantastic. This is fun!

MY last two weeks at the market will be focused on picking up items to store. Hard squashes, potatoes, onions, apples, carrots, hearty greens, etc. I'm thinking of turning my garage fridge into a root cellar, of sorts. Mr. Fro doesn't know this, yet. He's been surprisingly supportive of my market ventures, although he did laugh pretty hard when I told him that I'd brought home ANOTHER 50 pounds of tomatoes.

I grew a single tomato plant on my back patio and we got about 15 tomatoes from it. Success!

For the winter I want to try some things that are less fresh-produce dependent, like making wine jelly and more mustards, and flavored vinegars and extracts. I want to try making cheese, and making yogurt, too. More bread baking - especially practicing making rolls and buns because I really can't quite seem to get those right. I'm hoping that some cranberry-apple-cinnamon jam that I have planned will come out good enough to use for teacher gifts this Christmas.

So, yes, I've gone completely bonkers.

Sorry this is long and boring. Life has been boring, for the most part, lately, but it's the good kind of boring - the "no news is good news" kind of boring, so I'll take it.