Urban Green Farm

in sync, they would have been better then bieber

Hi! This place went all out of sync, sorry about that. Friday's post didn't post till really late and yesterday, well, yesterday was against me, but lets start at the beginning! 

Friday morning I decided to brave Black Friday (Canadian Style) Walmart to get my new camera. It wasn't bad, there was more then normal levels of people, but it wasn't the push and shove, scary story I prepared the kids for! We ran in, right to electronics, right to the camera, right to the till and out. Easy. 

As soon as I got home I read the whole manual and then tried to learn the features of the camera. I right away fell in love with the CA feature, it is automatic in the way it decides your ISO, F # and shutter speed, but it still lets you choose flash or no flash, blur behind your object, brightness level and setting like standard, portrait, landscape and black and white. It is the perfect blend of manual and automatic.

Example,

This was taken full auto. The flash turned on and just washed the doll out. 

This was taken full auto without flash. The lightning is better, but she seems to orange. 

This is using CA mode, with no flash, blurred background and brighter on portrait setting. It has made her skin smoother and peachier. 

 This is CA, no flash, blurred background, a little brighter, black and white setting. 

Such a fun camera. Can't wait to learn more. 

Sometime during Friday it happened. I for REAL felt Glimmer move! 

It was the very clear feather tickle with a pop at the end. She/he has been moving up a storm since. It is amazing to feel. 

Hannah took me to a really neat modern Mexican restaurant that night for my birthday. They had a whole tequila menu and tequila master who would help you decide, of course I didn't drink, but one day I will here! 

Saturday we Christmasfied! 

This is our fourth year with this tree. Never had a problem. But this year it decides that 3 of it's segments will not light up. Keith and spent hours taking out each bulb. We only fixed one segment and have thousands of cuts on our arms! I gave up one section, you can clearly see it and just strung an extra set of lights around the other broken section. SOOOO annoying. But the house is all jolly and nice now. 

I also put up our crib on Kijijii. 

Yes I know we are having another baby. But do you see that thing! It's huge. We have to fit a crib in our master bedroom, with a king size bed. That sucker was not going to fit. I need the thinnest, smallest, basically crib mattress size crib,which Ikea sells for $130. So I sold this bad boy for $160. It went last night. Kinda sad to see it go, it held my babies. 

Sunday was Grey Cup, the 100th Grey Cup! And the Calgary Stampeders were playing in it! SOO excited. 

My parents were out at a different party, so my family and all our friends crashed their house to have our own party! They have cable, crucial part to having a Grey Cup Party. 

Good thing we had such great company and such great food, because the game was just disgusting. Toronto had obviously paid off the refs, the Stamps forgot this was a GREY CUP game and showed up like it was a pre season one, Justin Bieber was the half time show??? WHAT! Who do the CFL think watch football, teenage girls? So weird. It was just awful. We lost, by a lot, it was a boring game to watch and just upsetting. 

I kinda let my kids just go crazy, it was a party, their friends were there, so were bowls full of candy. I paid the price for their freedom that night. Ayla woke up like every hour, she diarrhea'd all over the bed, she was a monster babe. But we had a really fun night, so kinda balanced? 

Anyway Monday morning I was cleaning my parents house on no sleep, trying to deal with 2 over grumpy kids. I ended up hanging out with my parents for a bit and just kinda tossed this here blog aside. Sorry. 

We got a little better sleep last night, but I am still popped. 

TODAY: Might hit Ikea, might not. I am giving the girls rooms makeovers for Christmas and I have a huge list of stuff to get at Ikea, but I want to time this room reveal right, so I don't know when to start this project. 

_my here . my now_

My favorite Vegas souvenir. My CSI heat sensitive mug that turns white when hot and a secret finger print is revealed! I love watching the Tassimo fill it with coffee and it evenly turns white, just a little magic for my morning. 

I finshed ALL the photo stuff yesterday. 4 new albums printed, filled and written on...my hand is sore. I also filled frames with the blown up pics and our holiday pics. 

Before,

After,

TODAY: A quick trip to the grocery store to get Ayla's milk but we won't be out long, Ayla was up at 5! AHHH so she will want a nap at 10 and I am not going to let that happen, being in the car would make that happen so we will stick close to home. Tonight birthday dinner at my parentals. 

This weekend dinner with Keith's fam and church. 

Happy Weekend All! 

modern jellies

Lots to say, but nothing to say. So today here are some pictures of us enjoying Jelly Modern Donuts. 

(fighting over donuts)

What a great place and great treats. 

 

full of food, laughs and fun

NED was awesome. 

Taping down the light switches proved to be wise as I tried to flip them on countless times. We lite a few candles when we woke up, it was pretty dark. But soon the sun was up, we were peculating coffee on the indoor fireplace. Our first pot ended up all over the floor when the log supporting it broke. 25 mins later we were sipping a new pot of coffee. Keith made some toast over the fire and breakfast was ate fireside. 

The morning was the hardest for one of the family memebers....Ayla. She seriously went through TV withdrawl! It was embarassing. Crafts, books, singing nothing distracted the kid from wanting her shows. Finally when we cooked pita pizzas over the fire for lunch she calmed down. We played outside for a bit and got ready for our Vegan Thanksgiving. 

Friends arrived around 4. Keith got a fire going outside and cooked all the food that needed heating. We had a HUGE feast of vegan goodness, all by candle light. Soon the sun went down and more and more candles lite. It was beautiful in here. 

I took pics with a colour disposable camera and my manual Minolta I loaded with black and white film. As soon as those develop I will share them with you. 

The evening was filled with Keith on the guitar and singing. It was incredible. We all had a great time. Looking forward to next months NED, Nov 3rd, hope you'll join us! 

 

We had lots of Thanksgiving on Sunday. We started at Keith's families. The kids spent the whole time running up and down the stair case! With Ayla having no nap. We hung out there for a while then headed over to my families thanksgiving dinner. My dad smoked a turkey, it was awesome. My mom made all the sides, potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, peas and then 2 types of dessert. We feasted. 

The only pics I managed to get of the day were these of my grandpa. 

My grandpa used to give his grand kids these horsey rides, so why not his great grand kids! 

Ayla ended up falling asleep early at my parents, so Ivy and I stayed the night too. The next day we hung out with my family eating, talking, napping! The boys watched football and played crib. It was a great day, a super great weekend. 

TODAY: Exciting morning ahead! The chiclettes and I and some friends are going to a special donut store!! Fancy pants donuts, even gluten free ones, YAY. Having a small breakfast to save room :)

felt like cake

We have been watching Little Bear. One of my favorite kid shows. It is quiet, with nice classical music, calm colours and cute messages. It is also set in a different time, where Mother Bear always seems to have time to bake, garden, knit and sew. And she is ALWAYS baking chocolate cake for Little Bear and his friends. 

After episode and episode of chocolate cakes I couldn't take it anymore. So yesterday morning we got to work. 

While the cakes were baking the girls had a bath in the kitchen sink to wash off all that chocolate! 

My never fail ice pack on the cake pan to get the cake to fall out method, failed. I could not get those cakes out!! Resulting in a dryer cake then I like :( It cooked a little too long, then stayed in those pans way too long. I also like icing the cake while it is warm, the icing spreads around easier that way, but it was cold by the time I got it out and the icing did not spread and the cake crumbled. Oh well. It still tasted pretty darn good. 

Hit that craving right on the spot. 

Cake for lunch is always a good way to go. 

TODAY: Some playing inside while we watch the snow fall. I am in love with today's snow, as light and non sticky as it is, it is filling me with peace. I am beyond excited to spend this winter growing a little babe inside and watching my tummy expand. When the snow leaves, usually in May, this little one will be born. So to me the quicker that snow comes the quicker this babe arrives. Also some much needed girl friend time tonight, so wish there could be wine, but hot apple cider will have to do.

in review

It has been almost 2 weeks of eating Once a Month Mom's August Traditional menu. 

Its funny how a site like this has been around for 3 years and the month I find it and send all my readers to check it out they go to a paid membership. Nice.  

I don't think we need to debate this here, I honestly get why they have gone to memberships, I can't believe the amount of work the authors of the site do every month, they deserve to get paid I think. Just bad timing! But they have left all their old menus before 2012 available for free. So I plan on using those. 

I plan on using them, because I am hooked. 

I can't believe the quality of this food. I have been so impressed. 

The burritos we had with homemade garden salsa. Awesome. The orange pork was the most wicked sauce I have ever tasted. The yogurt greek chicken was mouth watering. The tomato soup tantalizing with a whiff of spice. The taco bites go down quick and happily. The lemon yogurt muffins I have devoured, I am making more of them today or tomorrow, they freeze so well. Just awesome. 

We have ate 2 flops too. The Bubble Up Pizza, was plain old NASTY! The rattlesnack rolls, ground beef and cream cheese rolled up in crescent rolls didn't bake right, so they were raw in the middle, but they would have been tasty if cooked right before frozen! I will try baking them longer next time we eat them to see if that works. 

But 2 flops out of more then 30 recipes, pretty good I think! I still have some to taste obviously, but I am sold on this cooking method. I will be having another cooking day sometime near the end of Sept. I think I am going to do half veggie half trad menu. 

Did any of you try it out? What do you think? 

The neighbour play date was awesome yesterday. We are doing it again and soon! YAY! 

I am absolutely exhausted today. I can't believe how this pregnancy is kicking my butt!? With both girls I got sick and tired, but not until 6 weeks or so. This is crazy, but I am SOO glad to be feeling it, the more I feel sick, the more that baby is sticking! BRING IT ON GLIMMER BABE, bring it on. Also Ayla decided to have a spice attack at 3am. Who does that?!

Spicy Ayla. 

She wanted a bottle, she is teething and a bottle always calms her down. But she just had a second one at 11,  I wasn't giving her a third. And she lost her mind. Cried and cried until 4. I tried walking her around, rocking her, signing to her, rubbing her gums....nothing worked. Finally at 4 I got her to calm down, I walked around with her until she was almost sleeping, then she came to bed with me. She woke up at 6....and then started crying again. Until 8am!! No jostling, carrying, loving worked. She just lost it. 

AGRH. She is finally calm now. She ate, and is watching cartoons. Going to be a long day. 

TODAY: Groceries this am. Just some basics. Bread, almond milk, eggs. Early naps for ALL. Then playdate this aft and holding itsy bitsy Caitlin, I think holding all these newborns are keeping Glimmer firm in place :) 

How it worked

We survived! 

If you remember on Friday I was tackling a WHOLE day of cooking. Today I am going to explain how it worked out, and answer all the questions I got about it!

So after reading the amazing, Once a Month Mom website I knew I had to try this out. I picked the August Traditional Menu. I inputted 4 people into the grocery lists and recipe cards and printed out all the material for this process. I read all the instructions and recipes and then hit the grocery store with the huge grocery list. 

I spent $300 on groceries for this menu. Not bad, considering the AMOUNT of meat I had to buy. Which was disturbing for this girl who has been trying to not eat as much meat. I couldn't afford to buy it all free from, so I compromised and bought one of each meats free from (there was 4 packs of 5 chicken breasts, 3 packs of ground beef, 4 packs of 2 pork chops and a huge pack of 5 steaks and bacon and pepperoni!!!) 

I also needed 3 dozen eggs and sucked it up and bought them free range. I learnt a lot at the Stampede about the differences in egg types and I can ONLY buy free range, not even free run anymore. And I pay $6-8 a dozen for them! ICK. 

So if you do this, you can save money buying on sale meats and cheaper eggs, so it could be a lot less then $300. 

The night before the big cooking day I prepped all the veggies, like the instructions tell you too. I cut sooo  many veggies, browned a lot of ground beef and sauteed mushrooms. 

The day of I started cooking at 7:30am. I finished at 5:30pm. No breaks, other then to deal with the kids. 

2 kinds of muffins, one to eat while cooking, one to cook and then freeze. I followed the instructions exactly, because I like instructions and they were written so well. But you can do this type of cooking how ever you want. But the instructions use your oven the most efficient way by cooking the lower temp things first and higher temp things later. 

So while something was cooking, I was preparing the next recipe. Then one would come out of the oven and cool, while the next one went in and then a new recipe was prepared. I also had to flash freeze things, lay them on cookie trays in a single layer and freeze them before packing, and package things!

It didn't take long till I was behind a whole recipe in the instructions. 

I also would fill the kitchen sink with water at the beginning of each recipe, use the water throughout cooking, then wash all the dishes from that recipe and counters at the end of cooking it. I like a clean work space. This amount of cleaning also helped in putting me a recipe behind. 

What ended up happening was the oven was on for a while cooking nothing, because I hadn't prepared the next recipe by the time the cooking one had to come out!

I have big counters and I soon found that they were all full, the table was being used to cool food and I had no space left! AND a big glob of dough to roll out, so in came the floor. 

I made this all work by having the instructions taped to the bottom of my kitchen cupboards. Then I taped up each recipe and left it taped up until the recipe was packaged and frozen. I had 10 recipes on the cupboards at one point! 

The kitchen table was my packaging centre. I had the labels ONce a Month Mom provides and taped them to the gallon or quart freezer bags. The labels tell you what is in the bag and how to prepare it when your ready to cook it. 

As the recipes went on there was less oven cooking, more stove top, then it was no cooking at all, just putting the meat in bags and adding marinades or sauces or both to the bags. 

I would say half the recipes have some cooked meat and the other half has raw, now frozen, meat. Which cut down a lot on the cooking time that day. 

I was worried the recipes would be basic and simple to make the cooking day faster, but they were full of amazing ingredients and every sauce tasted awesome! I was really pleased with the whole set up. 

There was only 2 recipes I ended up not making, the pepperoni grilled cheese sandwiches sounded great, but grilled cheese is an easy go to lunch for us, so them taking up precious freezer space didn't seem wise. I also tried to make the raspberry roll ups, they are pancakes spread with cream cheese and raspberry sauce, but the pancake batter they had me make was way to thick for this! It should have been a crepe batter instead. So I just froze the pancake batter for later and put some into the fridge to use that weekend. The sauce I froze into ice cub trays to pop out as a single portion sauce for pancakes. 

What I ended up with, 

2 Bubble Up Pizzas

15 egg burritos 

12 taco bits (wonton wrappers filled with beef and yummness)

16 lemon raspberry muffins

1 huge container of tomato bisque

1 gallon bag of tomato bisque

8 large rattle snack rolls (croissants filled with beef, veggies and sauce) 

12 raspberry cubes

1 gallon bag of pancake batter

1 gallon bag of meatballs and homemade bar b q sauce 

2 gallon bags of crockpot mongolian beef

2 gallon bags of chicken cacciatore 

2 gallon bags orange teriyaki pork

2 gallon bags Dijon baked chicken 

2 gallon bags yogurt marinade chicken 

6 spinach and goat cheese stuffed chicken breasts, wrapped in bacon 

AWESOME! 

And it all fit in my fridges freezer!

It all needs to thaw before cooking. I learnt that the best way to thaw something is in your fridge, then you can put it in the oven, bar b q or grill once thawed. And if you decide not to use it you can put it back in your freezer! Most of these things will take 2 days to thaw, so weeks still have to be planned. 

 

So I made up this board. It says what we plan on eating that week and what day each things needs to come out of the freezer to thaw in the fridge. 

It is also important to keep track of what is in your freezer, because it is sooo full digging through it to find out what I have in there would be crazy. 

Freezer inventory sheet, right on the fridge for easy access. 

Now the real test begins. Cooking all this food was, hard, but really rewarding actually. I am soo happy with the quality of food in the freezer. But if it doesn't taste good, then there is no point in all of this. 

I have had 2 items now, some taco bits (AWESOME, the kids devoured them) and last night we had one of the crock pot Mongolian beefs, ummm wow. Keith could not stop saying, this is so good, this is so good! It was really amazing. 

I am impressed so far. I have a feeling this will become a monthly thing for us. Next time I might try the vegetarian menu, as this was A LOT of meat! 

Ohh how did the kids do? They were unsupervised basically all day. The TV never turned off. But they were fantastic. Moving the table down there and setting up those simple craft trays were such a great ideas, because they played on them all day long. 

That's one played in room! Worth it though. 

Things for next time, wearing shoes! AHH my feet were sore, standing for 10 hours takes its toll. 

Happy :)

TODAY: I don't have to go grocery shopping! CRAZY, I grocery shop every Monday....this is weird. I might just go to get yogurt and a few baking items I ran out of, just because it's Monday, it's what I do. A friend is hopefully visiting today too. We are eating burritos tonight! 

_my here . my now_

_my here. my now_   my exact current moment. Capturing the beauty of the simple, silly, normal things of my Fridays. If you want to play along leave a link to your post in the comments.

On your cutting boards

Get knifes 

GO!!! 

My now is facing, the 20 containers of prepped food, the counter full of ingredients, the 15 recipes going to be tackled. All while warm muffins cook in the oven to serve as fuel for this CRAZY day. 

By the end of today, I will have 16 indv breakfasts, 16 indv lunches, and some 50 indv dinners. Epic. 

From whole, fresh, veggies. 

To chopped and sliced prepped veggies. I chopped 10 cups of onions....my eyes just about burned themselves in their sockets. 

Ingredients standing ready. 

To keep the kids happy,

I have moved there eating table to the playroom, with a table cloth underneath of course! And set up their trays (Micheals, $9 each, amazing) with new toys, candies, crafts and books. It was a hit. 

I also have gobs of movies from my friend Lil to also help :) 

HERE I GO!

 

PS Fertility clinic, FINALLY called yesterday. I had to get another referral from my Dr, since it has been a year since they last saw me. I almost screamed at her, I AM NOT WAITING FOR 6 MONTHS ON THAT WAIT LIST! And she so softly replied, oh we would never do that to you. After you get your referral in, we will call you within 2 weeks, and book you for the next available appointment. I saw my Dr pronto yesterday and got her to send in the referral that same day. So to me that means END of Oct, beginning of Nov. BLAH, but at least the ball is rolling somewhere. 

Have a great weekend all. 

the passion of it

This is our third year gardening. Every year I say to myself I will do more, help more, weed more, use more, but never seem to get there. There have been pregnancies, newborns and mom-ness that has often kept me from the garden, but I don't have those this season and I am still not out there as much as I want to be. 

The garden is Keith's baby. He is the one who puts soo much work into it all. I imagine I will help out more when the kids are older, I hope so. But I decided this year not to let so much go to waste. There is just so much to learn with gardening, when to plant, whens the earliest to harvest, whens the latest. Lots of our crops last year and the year before went to waste because we didn't know how to preserve it. Not this year. 

Yesterday Ivy and I tackled that garden, while Ayla napped. 

First off we tackled the apples. 100's of rotten ones lay on the ground, we had a hail storm that knocked off so many apples and the bugs got to them before we did. Those all got composted. Then we gathered about another 100 from the tree and ones that were fresh on the ground. They all got thrown in the sink in a water bath to be washed. 

Then I (lost Ivy by this point) harvested almost all the spinach and kale. It was losing its freshness out there and if left much longer the moths and bugs would have eaten all the leaves. 

I also got a bowl of onions, some of their exposed parts were rotting and I didn't want to see them wasted. 

Next was time to preserve! The best way to keep leafy garden plants is by freezing them. But first they had to be sorted, all the bad, yellow parts composted, then the stems cut, then washed, then steamed for 2 mins and then iced for 2 mins, then dried and then sealed tight into freezer bags. A PROCESS! 

I did this whole ordeal with both the spinach and kale. It took me over 2 hours from harvesting to bagging. Crazy. 

Then the apples needed looking after. After getting them really washed, I began the grueling process of quartering and coring these tiny apples. I filled 3 huge pots with them, added a cup and a bit of water and cooked them for 20mins. Then blender full by blender full I blended them up with some brown sugar and cinnamon. 

I made 2 big fridge containers, 2 huge freezer bags and 6 jars for gifts of applesauce. We already ate a whole fridge container! I think more applesauce will be made in the future. 

So what lead me to this crazy amount of work? Partly the vow I made to not see so much garden growth wasted, but also a friend commented on here yesterday about a web-site and it blew my mind. 

Once a Month Mom

How oh how have I not heard of these ladies before? Their idea is to cook only once a month. Yes once. Cook for 12 hours make 30 meals and freeze it all. Not only do they suggest this, but give you new menus every month (traditional, vegetarian, gluten free, dairy free!!), then give you a grocery list, instructions on how to cook it all, recipes, labels for your freezer then have article after article how to do this successfully! I spend a good hour and bit reading all their information on the getting started page and my world was change. 

All this, all for free. WHAT!!!! 

So I got to work, scraped the new menu planning idea I talked about yesterday and printed off all the materials for Once a Month Mom. 

I put the vegetable freezing chart and the thawing chart on my bulletin board, I put a freezer inventory sheet on the fridge and all the menus, instructions, recipes and grocery list in my clip board. 

All the recipes use seasonal ingredients so that you are cooking with what is fresh. The idea is you cook all this, eat it the next month and then do it again every month. That way we will always be eating healthy, good food, but with NO time to make. Just pop them in the oven and enjoy. AHHH!

So I am grocery shopping today, prepping tonight and cooking all day tomorrow. I will let you know how this goes! 

It also teaches you how to organize your freezer better and how to make just a small freezer work with this type of cooking, because we don't have a deep freeze, but I am wanting one! 

You might be wondering, Alicia, whats with the obsession with food? You are always talking about it, changing your plans, your diet, everything! What are you doing? 

I think a problem we have as North Americans is that we have lost our relationship and our connection with food. We see meat in the grocery store but don't see the cow or chicken. We see every kind of produce we could want all year round, but we don't see the stickers from how far away it is, what was put in it to make it last that long, and what chemicals are on all the produce we eat. We see the convenience of packaged things and not what they are made of, or the foot print all that packaging leaves. 

We have lost something. 

I want my family to eat healthy, to appreciate the lives that were lost for our meat, to realize the crazy amount of work to bring produce to the table, to learn the joy of cooking with good ingredients. Because it tastes better, is better for the earth, better for local farmers, better for our bodies and now with this once a month cooking, better for our wallets! It's win, win, win. 

I want a relationship with my food and that is why I talk about it so much. Because we ALL eat everyday, we ALL need food, it is something we all have in common, it is so important to our survival but so many of us have no idea what is going on with our food. 

I am not trying to preach here, this is what I believe and why I am so passionate about food and finding a way to cook easier and better and take the frustration out of eating healthy and well. That is why I change it up so often, because I still end up at the McDonalds too often, buying heaping amounts of snack foods, giving in to the cheap meat sales and these are habits I want to change, or lessen if I can. 

Does that make sense? 

(our sunflower!) 

I am proud of what our family is doing and I am ok with not being perfect, I think the things we are trying to do is better for everyone and I am super excited about my cooking day tomorrow! 

TODAY: Grocery store, for one massive load of groceries (they say that this once a month cooking only costs $150 - 300 a month....amazing). Then a look at the game plan for tomorrow and creating some tempting things to keep the children entertained for the day! WISH ME LUCK. 

 

back to food

Thank you all. Your thoughts, prayers, love, offers to babysit, all mean so much. And I will take you up on watching my kids, we will need it! 

If you have read my blog for any length of time you see our eating habits change a lot around here! Summer always messes up the best well intentioned plans, even more destruction occurs when your youngest daughter deletes your meal planning app and upon reinstalling it ALL my meal plans, recipes and HOURS and HOURS of entering GONE. So I gave up on it, I am not doing that work again. 

So we had no meal plans all summer, which meant a lot of eating out, a lot of meat, and not a lot of health. 

September is nearly here though, and with it some routine. With the help of this blog, I am meal planning in a new way. I like her idea of themes, then when searching for a recipe you don't have the millions on the internet to surf through. 

I printed out these sheets, and am writing a theme on each day. Then I can search for a recipe using the theme, and I have been looking through Simple Bites recipes, so that makes it easier right now too. I also plan on using Fridays to make batches of dinner to freeze, so that we get a nice stocked up freezer of good, healthy foods. Excited! 

The themes I am using are comfort, kids, fast, garden, Daddy cooks, special, freeze (which means making a meal that can be frozen and then I make lots), freezer (which is using one of the frozen meals) and eggs. Searching recipes with these themes makes deciding on one a lot easier. I will let you know how some turn out.

So our food priorities right now are use garden, meat once or twice a week, local local local and seasonal as often as we can. And following this new meal plan, it just saves so much money and takes so much stress out of cooking. 

Right now I am working on muffins. I just LOVE muffins in the mornings, good ones, moist, fluffy, perfect muffins. Store bought ones can't compare, not even cafes or bakeries! Homemade, fresh muffins are just to die for. So I am working on a triple batch, so I can freeze two without the add-ins and just pop the bag in the fridge over night so I can wake up to freshly baked muffins more often!

And because this post was not very picture kind, here's a really funny photo shot of our family!

TODAY: Muffins, maybe some coffee, and not much else! A day of no plans.