Three Plus Two

A Winter Visit to the Farmer's Market

Subtitled: Yes, Virginia, it is possible to eat local in upstate New York in January.  It just takes a little extra legwork.

The small town farmer's markets are all closed up until May.  But there are two indoor markets open year round within an hour and a half drive of us.  Today we chose to make a field trip to one of them, located in the Salvation Army building in Saratoga Springs.  It was one of those cold pewter gray days, when the snow showers fall like white brushstrokes and you would probably rather stay inside and admire them as if the day really were a painting.  But walking into the market was like stepping into the warm hug of your grandmother.

The Salvation Army building was full of people and music -- live Irish music, played by a trio in the back of the large meeting room.  There was a woman spinning wool on an old-fashioned spinning wheel and offering her hand-dyed, hand-spun, homegrown yarn for sale; a woman selling handmade soap, a beekeeper in a white plastic hat selling honey and candles, a molded beeswax St. Ambrose keeping him company, a baker selling bread and pies, a woman selling a dozen different kinds of jam she'd put up herself.  And then there were the farm stands. 

In upstate New York in January, this is what we bought:

• leeks
• golden beets (very sweet)
• cabbage
• carrots -- orange, rainbow, and purple
• onions
• garlic
• apples (Gala and Empire -- but there were many varieties to choose from)
• apple cider
• spaghetti squash
• radishes
• arugala
• celeriac
• kohlrabi
• daikon radish
• pink turnips
• rutabaga
• hard raw milk cheese
• creme fraiche (for a treat)
• blueberry honey syrup
• a molded beeswax candle
• pear jelly
• nectarine jelly (I couldn't resist)

A few pictures of the produce:

Cabbage, kohlrabi, rutabaga, daikon radish, carrots in view

Rainbow carrots...

Leeks, radishes, and golden beets

Products also available that I did not buy:

• potatoes in various rainbow shades (we still have our own)
• pork and beef cuts (again, have those in the freezer)
• cow's milk feta, other cheeses
• other greens, including spinach
• hydroponic tomatoes
• greenhouse grown herbs, such as basil
• various kinds of beets
• shallots
• various winter squashes
• white turnips
• red onions
• honey
• eggs

Most of the other shoppers were not, of course, buying for large families.  So the vendors were not used to anyone walking in and buying bags of their stuff.  LOL Everyone was very friendly, though, and the kids managed quite a few free samples.  The apple man gave Farmerboy his own Gala apple to eat while I picked out a bagful of apples and munched my own samples.  After we finished shopping, we walked over to a nearby restaurant for lunch, then walked from there to Borders to pick out some books.  We got home about dinnertime, so a complicated dinner was out; we ate leftovers (homemade pizza, meatloaf, sandwiches) and put together a quick salad with the arugula and radishes:

Dressed simply with olive oil, cider vinegar, salt, and pepper, it was delicious.

It's a New Year!: Week in Review

This is what we woke up to on New Year's Eve...

And this is what we had on New Year's Day.

A little different than New Year's last year!

The amaryllis bloomed...

... and continuing with our winter botany theme, one of the choices of the week was to observe and draw any (or all) of our forced bulbs.  Gareth drew the amaryllis as it was just pushing its way out of the bud and turning red (the petals are pink at first):

The kids have been using the oil pastels a lot lately.  Their vibrant colors make them attractive, but they have a tendency to smudge.  On the other hand, this tendency to smudge makes them good to blend.  Farmerboy and Katydid have been experimenting with mixing colors.  ("Hey, Mommy!  Blue and red make purple!")

On the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, I set out some coloring pages for the kids to make booklets.  I took the pages from the Eucharistic Adoration Coloring Book, which I am 99.9% positive I discovered on Dawn's blog... I'm just not exactly sure when or where! (ETA: I did make copies of the "IHS" monogram, but I also had pages with other names for Jesus.  Which is what you see here.  We talked about all of them, but the kids chose which pages they wanted to color and to put in their booklet.  Actually, the booklet was a choice on the whiteboard in the first place.)

Fairies have recently become popular around here, at least with Katydid and Farmerboy.  Katydid has been reading from The Complete Book of Flower Fairies and with some of our Christmas money, we added Fairy Houses Everywhere, and checked Fairy Houses (the picture book) out of the library.  She has been making her own book of flower fairies:

Farmerboy has been drawing fairies, too... although his are considerably more, um, male:

Around the beginning of December, we finally got all our puzzle maps from Alison's.  Because December is its own little world, I put off presenting them to the kids (read: Katydid and Farmerboy) until after Christmas.  Katydid really has a hard time with geography, so my goal for the next two months is to focus heavily on geography.  (Around the end of February/beginning of March, we are planning on making a long trip to Tennessee, so at that point the big Montessori activities will have to give way to more mobile homeschooling.)  Happily, Katydid has also been requesting the mapwork, so my goals and her goals synch together nicely.  On Wednesday, she spent a long time working on the US map with a placemat map for reference.  Today I am finally labeling the control maps and realizing that our big atlas is somewhat out of date.

We've also begun to pick up history where we left off before we ventured down the Native American/explorer paths that took up our summer and much of the fall.  When I gave Gareth the book World War I to read on Veteran's Day, I didn't realize that his desire to read it meant that he was ready to move back to the trajectory we'd started last year, delving into the settling of the American West and the Civil War.  The Native American and Explorers trails we explored after we'd worked through the Civil War were just more exploration of the issues which made that particular era in time.  Once we'd gotten through some of the early explorers and uncovered the beginnings of the slave trade, the kids seemed satisifed and a little restless to move on.  I, of course, was a little behind but finally did manage to catch up.  We read The Silver Donkey as a sort of connector during December (and this book is really, really good, too), and now we've started fresh with the world as it leads up to World War I.  We started The Wizard of Menlo Park and Cheaper by the Dozen, and hopefully this coming week I'll actually have some experiments with electricity set up.  I'm also planning on reading (and strewing) books about the Wright Brothers.

Now, if you think this sounds a lot like Sonlight Core 4, you would be correct.  But this is Sonlight Core 4 done our way, which means that we've been reading these books for the past year and a half, supplementing like crazy whenever we find a subject we're interested in.  I do own the Instructor's Guide, but I rarely ever look at it.  The books are great, though, and with the state of our library, it is really, really nice to have the box of Sonlight books to plunder.  I do think we will go on to Core 5... I'm just not sure when.

And finally, wrapping up the week although I have no pictures because I forgot the camera... we met another homeschooling family on Friday afternoon for some welcome socializing, and on Saturday afternoon we drove up to the La Sallette Shrine (dedicated to Our Lady of La Sallette, like the National Shrine in Massachusetts) for our Little Flowers/Blue Knights Meeting.  We went sledding... had a very cozy Epiphany Mass... and talked about chickens with Father.  Because Father has turned his garage into a chicken coop.  It's a fun place to spend a Saturday.  The only mar on the day was Pip slicing open his ear on the corner of the Brother's table.  It did not, thankfully, require stitches.

And what about the twins, you ask? They have been amusing themselves by sneaking out in the mornings to play with Farmerboy's Playmobil guys:

But, shhh, don't tell anyone.

Christmas, the (almost) wordless version

Christmas at our house:

It started with this on Christmas Eve...

Christmas Eve afternoon...

The kids traded their presents to each other...

Christmas morning...

   

   

And ended with this on Christmas night...

Eggnog Custard Pie  (minus the brandy) with homemade maple-syrup whipped cream.

Christmas Tour of Homes

Today is the Christmas Tour of Homes over at BooMama's.  I'm not sure if I really want to look at everyone else's beautiful houses or not.  If you could see my house right now, you would understand.  I'm thinking of ditching the house and moving us all into an RV.  One change of clothes and one toy and that's it!  But I suppose we'd have to live in the parking lot of a really good library then, and we'd probably be arrested for loitering.

But, since I like to play too sometimes, here are a few Christmassy pictures for your Monday.  Courtesy of our nor'easter, it's looking a little more Christmassy outside today than inside...

(The pictures are a little dark because it was early.  You can't make out the blowing snow here, but we've still got winds gusting up to 40 mph today.)

I've been noticing this year how little Christmas stuff we actually have.  Our tree looks a little bare.  I'd love the kids to make more ornaments, but they haven't seemed too interested.  We still have a week, though!  Right now our tree is sometimes visited by woodland creatures, who enjoy having great big spaces of no ornaments in which to rest:

What?  You didn't know that lemurs live in Christmas trees?

Outside, the woodland creatures are going to be having a few problems:

This feeder is not in a good winter place, but we have two other feeders that are more sheltered.  This week we'll be focusing on the change of seasons and making our own feeders, though -- cranberry strings, orange feeders, peanut butter pine cones (maybe), and making up our own suet using shortening.  (That's the plan anyway.) 

Inside, our poinsettias are blooming nicely:

Outside, we have this:

and this:

(Christmas lights do not melt snow, in case you're wondering.)

Inside it's a bit cheerier, with this:

And, of course, we are waiting for this:

... in spite of missing several key characters... (Where's Mary, you ask?  I'd like to know, too.)... and a manger... (Wasn't Baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a basket?  And I think the donkey is attempting to kiss Him, not eat Him...)

ETA: Due to circumstances beyond my control when I first posted (they involved boys, of course), I neglected to provide refreshments!   In the hopes of correcting my mistake, here are some links to two of my favorite Christmas cookies:

• Strawberry Marzipan Bars (These are really, really yummy.)
• Buttery Jam Tarts

Merry Christmas, everybody! 

Snowy Morning

Every morning when I succumb to the desire for more sleep, I end up wishing I had just gotten up at 5 or 6 or whenever it was that Chipmunk ate last.  (On weekdays, I do generally get up around 6:30, so I can have a shower before Andy leaves for work.)  I went to sleep last night around 11 PM after Chipmunk finally went to sleep; he was up every two hours all night; at 6:40 this morning, I thought, "I could get up, but I am really tired.  I could get up, but everyone in the house will be up within fifteen minutes if I get up, no matter how quiet I am.  It is a snowy morning, and I am going back to sleep."

Chipmunk never sleeps past 7:30 anyway, even when he's just eaten at 6:30. 

This morning he slept until 8:30, and so did everyone else in the house.  We went to Mass last night ahead of the storm, so there's nowhere to go this morning.  But still, what am I thinking?

"I should just have gotten up at 6:40, because then I could have sat down and eaten my breakfast and spent a little time on the computer."

The upshot of being awake every two hours last night was that I could keep tabs on the snow.  It never snowed heavily, but this morning there are about four or five inches of new snow on the ground.  (We already had about five from the other day.)  The winds haven't kicked up yet, but Andy's flight to Cleveland has (thankfully) already been canceled.  So he won't even have to start packing.

The batteries in my camera are dead.  After I get going, I'll replace them (provided we have batteries) and take some pictures.  Which I could have done this morning, had I gotten up at 6:40.

Sleep is just so darned inconvenient.

A New Tradition?

Yesterday we celebrated St. Lucia's Day in somewhat backwards fashion by having Katydid serve us St. Lucia buns for dessert after we finished decorating the Christmas tree.  We didn't plan to bring the tree in yesterday -- we had actually hoped to get it up Sunday morning or Tuesday night (around Andy's trip) -- but I think it worked out really well to get the tree up on St. Lucia's Day.  In fact, I think it worked so well that we are planning on doing it next year, too.

I had some vague notions of having Gareth and Katydid call up their Grandma C., whose family is Swedish, and interview her about how her family and friends celebrated St. Lucia Day when she was young, but there wasn't enough time.  Last year we made star hats (sort of) for the boys, but this year nobody seemed interested and I am too craft-challenged to figure out how to make a cone hat when a two year old is crying and grabbing all the paper because he wants to do something no one can figure out.

Gareth and Katydid did most of the baking this year.  The dough didn't rise very much, though, which was a little perplexing.  Did we get hold of some bad yeast?  Or was the kitchen just too drafty?  In any case, the buns tasted good, but we couldn't make them look the way they were supposed to.  While we were baking, we had impromptu science lessons on yeast.  And Gareth is enjoying learning how to use the stand mixer.  (That's like power tools in the kitchen, I think.)

After dinner, we trimmed the tree.  Gareth has taken over my job of helping Andy string the lights.  Pip and Pop sat on the table taking ornaments out of the boxes. 

We let the kids trim the tree.  We think it looks better that way.

 

   

This and That

Thank you to everyone who sent well-wishes to Pip.  He's his normal, rowdy self again, which means another bump on the head is probably imminent.  Funny thing about toddlers; there seems to be absolutely no correlation in the toddler mind between cracking one's head open the day before and standing on the couch back (and jumping off) today.  But for now, he's fine.  (He's also asleep, which helps.)

I have a backlog of things I want to write about and will hopefully get to, once the Christmas letter is written, the Christmas cards are sent, the house is uncluttered, and the baking is done.

I take that back.  If I wait to write until the house is uncluttered, I'll never write anything.  So maybe scratch that one.

The house is coming into line a little bit, though.  I started out trying to follow the Make Your Home a Haven challenges, but Andy's trip out of town and Pip's scare set me back a bit.  Plus, we have this little thing called entropy at work around here, which means that as soon as I put something in order, the order starts to immediately break down.  Our house could be somebody's physics experiment.  (We might have a couple of black holes lurking around here, too.)

Anyway, I've been unable to keep up with the challenges because I know they're only supposed to take fifteen minutes, but I think that's if you start out with a relatively clean, uncluttered house without two year old twins at work.  It's going to take me somewhat longer to make my house havenish.

Here's a sample of my progress so far:

From this:

To this:

You'll notice a block made its way back onto the floor before I took the picture.  This is our entryway.  Usually it's not terribly messy, but it does seem to attract blocks and sometimes boots.  I reorganized the books, but I think by the time I was able to take a picture, somebody had been at them again.  I moved the pile of books from the top of the book case to another bookcase, which is probably cheating, as now I have to reorganize that bookcase, too, but at least the entryway looks a little better.  And -- wonder of wonders -- Pip and Pop have left this poinsettia alone!  They must be growing up.

(The poinsettias come from a local farm shop with a greenhouse.  We picked them up after Mass and a First Communion reception for a few of our friends on Saturday.  I meant to take pictures since we picked up our tree then, too, but alas, I was too busy enjoying the shop, where I also picked up locally grown Romanesque broccoli and golden and white beets, and some really nice locally made soap.  The store is a beautiful place, with soft honey wood floors, subdued lighting, and a play corner for the kids.  They sell some vegetables in bulk and have local milk, cheese, and beef as well.  You could almost do your grocery shopping there.  If it wasn't forty minutes away, I would try.  Because enjoying your grocery shopping is a novel idea that I could get used to.  Which reminds me... a reader recently asked me if I knew anything about online grocery shopping.  I don't, but I'm going to find out soon!  I'll report my findings here when I do.)

But back to this haven thing.  One of the challenges was to work on your living room.  Our living room hasn't really worked since we moved in.  Originally the living room was going to be the learning room because we have some nice built-ins by the entryway.  The twins nixed that idea last year, though, so we moved to the dining room.  When we did that, this table immediately became a clutter table instead of a learning table.

The table was in front of the window so I could put baskets on it without them falling off, but that idea didn't pan out.  Instead it was just a lot of junk visible to everyone who drove by, because this is our front window.  I had also put the big couch kind of in the middle of the room because I thought it would be nice to be able to look out the window.  Unfortunately, sitting in the couch felt a little like being in a ship adrift on the open sea.  (I am big on feeling sheltered in a home, which is why I can't stand cathedral ceilings.) 

We were also having problems figuring out when to have read-aloud time, because the little boys were disruptive, and the big kids find it hard to concentrate when they don't have something to occupy their hands -- usually drawing.  Sooo...

With Andy's okay (and help), we moved the big couch around to back the window and put the table in front of it. (I should have a better picture than this.  Hopefully when I get the whole area done.)  This has formed what I have named in my mind our "Read Aloud Corner".  It has a bookcase where I can put baskets of current books, enough seating for everybody, and the table where children can eat snacks (or breakfast), draw, build blocks, or play.  It worked pretty well this morning, so I'm hopeful.

I also cleaned all my junk off "the round table" in the family room, and everyone was pleased with the results.  After the poinsettia stops blooming, maybe I'll even be able to put fern here or something!  I am positively giddy with this idea of being able to put plants out again.

Now I think the St. Lucia bread has FINALLY risen, so it's time to make some buns and clean up the day's destruction so we can bring in the tree tonight.  The ice finally melted and we managed to get it in the garage before the snow.  (About 4-6 inches today.)  Pictures of St. Lucia Day tomorrow!

Remind Me...

Next time my husband goes out of town, remind me:

• To take him up on his offer to haul the 2 week backed up trash down to the curb before he leaves, especially if there is an ice storm in the forecast.  Who cares about the crows.
• That it's not a good idea to leave a Christmas tree outside in an ice storm.
• That a toilet will probably clog and overflow within two hours of his departure...
• The normally easygoing four year old will suddenly turn into Mr. Hyde...
• The baby will start eating every 2 hours around the clock again...
• At least one of the two year olds will refuse to nap...
• When trying to fix dinner in a hurry before the baby wakes up, at least one child will start screaming right outside the door...
• And that these are all mysteries of the universe without any apparent explanation.

And while you're at it, bookmark this page for next week, too, will you?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Fortified with hot chocolate, Gareth contemplates the Christmas lights after an afternoon of sledding.

Our first inch of snow came last Friday night, courtesy of a howling wind off the Lakes.  Since then, we've had snow Saturday night, Sunday, Monday, and today, too.  Since we had some ice and rain on Sunday and Monday, our snow totals are only about 4 inches -- although with the wind, it's hard to say.  Whatever the official count is, it's enough snow to play in!

Farmerboy got cold and came in early, so we spent a nice half hour or forty five minutes on the couch reading Curious George and Jan Brett Christmas books.  He drank hot chocolate, and we ate the snowball cookies he helped make on Sunday.

Yes, he helped me roll them in the powdered sugar, why do you ask?

Andy decided to try his hand at making Christmas cookies, too.  To this point, his cooking repertoire has mostly included frozen pizza and macaroni and cheese from a box.  So I was impressed.  He chose a recipe for Cardamom Cookies from a Swedish cookbook his uncle gave to me. 

The recipe called for "8 powdered cardamom berries", so we had to guess about that.  The cookies -- which are cut-outs -- turned out pretty well.  Farmerboy really enjoys cooking and baking.  I don't know if this holds true in other people's houses, but at our house four seems to be one of the best ages for Christmas baking.  When Gareth was four, he had just given up naps and I could get him to stay in his room for about fifteen minutes while I put his 18 month old sister to sleep.  Then he would join me downstairs and inevitably want to bake something.  Really, I think he wanted to use the hand vac to clean up the flour on the floor, but it was a good experience, whatever the attraction.  Likewise, Farmerboy has a hard time staying in his appointed quiet time place, and is pretty good at talking Mom and Dad into letting him help.

Katydid, of course, is focusing on the birds... although she has managed to do a fair amount of sledding, too.  I downloaded my copy of Seasonal Delights winter issue last night and was pleased to find a recipe for a suet-substitute and an idea for oranges as bird feeders.  We just got our Project Feederwatch information a couple of days ago, and we're eager to get started counting birds.  Katydid was filling the suet feeders when she noticed I had a camera.

The little ones stayed inside to take a nap instead of heading outside.  (It's hovering around 20 degrees right now, so I was kind of relieved to be staying inside myself!)  Chipmunk's a little over 3 months old now.  He doesn't even look like a newborn anymore.  Where did the time go?

And so end our first few snow days.  Looks like my fifteen minutes is over, too.  I'm off to ask Andy to bring diapers, nurse Chipmunk, and get a starving two year old some Cheddar Bunnies...

Hey! Unto You a Child Is Born!

The Nativity, Three Plus Two style...

Mary had charge of the camera...

...and took pictures of the little shepherd boys...

... who were so excited, they were running around in circles...

...with St. Joseph coming along behind, wearing a helmet so "Herod wouldn't get him."

And where was the baby Jesus in all this?  He was being walked around and around in circles, too, so he would stop fussing and go to sleep.

***Of course, you noticed the twins' shirts, right?  And I have no idea why there is a dustpan on my counter.