produce guilt

You could either call it Produce Guilt or Garden Guilt, but since about the middle of July, I have been calling it produce guilt. It's the very real guilt of a head of broccoli going to waste, flowering in your garden because you were only able to eat three heads of broccoli that week, not five. It's the sincere guilt of watching your swiss chard grow rhubarb-size because you just don't know what to do with swiss chard. It's a guilt that lingers as every time you walk into your garden you are greeted by brown and dehydrated sweet peas that still dangle in the wind.

I have told my neighbors about my Produce Guilt. I have invited them to come by anytime and get anything they want out of the garden. And a few have stopped by a time or two. But it's not enough.

So when my eggplants became ready for harvest, I decided I would not let one egg plant go to waste. After eating eggplant Parmesan, the one and only eggplant recipe in my repertoire, I consulted Martha and her incredible list of recipe ideas. There I found the recipe for Roasted Eggplant Dip with Greek Yogurt.

Last night in the midst of bedtime with the kids, I made the stuff. I roasted four smallish eggplants under the broiler until all sides were black with char, removed the skin, gave it a rough chop and added a few more ingredients. And it turned out decent. I don't think anyone would ask for the recipe at a party, but for using up four eggplants, the dip went well with pretzel crisps and was good for watching Shark Tank.

But I should warn you, the smell left on the lower level of the house seems to linger. Like, when you walk down the stairs at 4 am to get your son a sippy cup of water, there is an aroma that you must walk through to get to the the water faucet. It will stop you, make you gag a bit, and force you to give your son his sippy cup and run back downstairs to blog about it. And to rid your house of every last trace of the stuff. Because it smells so, so stinky.

So what do you do? Do you eat sub-par dip because you feel guilty about how well eggplants seem to grow in Minnesota summers? Or do you turn a blind eye to all of those purple tear drops, begging to be made into something?

I guess what I'm trying to say is: Anybody want some eggplants?

great uncle carl

These two love each other so much! And they take the best pictures together. There is love all around and somehow the camera seems to catch it every time. You might remember the time Uncle Carl showed up and saved the day when Ivar was just a baby.

Or the awesome Rooster Scooter he made for Ivar.

Just look at this sweetness!

Well, this time when he came he fixed the back wheel on Ivar's trike. Which was no small job, as the wheel we ordered was too big so that he had to grind down the axle using a blade grinder. And that's Uncle Carl: he's always fixing things and giving our boy lots of love and attention. We love you Uncle Carl!

recipe links

I am reading Farmer Boy again. Farmer Boy is one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books and tells of her husband's childhood growing up on his family farm out east. It details his day to day, what work they did each month, and a lot of the book talks about the food the mom and sisters prepared.

I am reading this book at the same time our garden is bursting with produce and I got inspired. So I've been cooking and baking and trying new things in our kitchen. For my own sake, and for yours, if you are interested, I thought I'd catalog the recipes we have tried.

Hummus.  No chickpeas in our garden, but I've always wanted to make my own hummus. And since we go through the tubs from the store so fast, I thought I'd give it a whirl. This hummus was as good as the stuff I buy at the grocery store. I wanted to for sure keep track of this link because the order and process seems to make a huge difference in the world of Hummus.

Basil Maintenance. I was all excited to make a batch of pesto, and then realized I needed a whole lot more basil than I had thought. So I stumbled upon the link for basil maintenance that taught me how to grow a healthier, bushier plant. And how to propagate basil from this one plant. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll have six indoor basil plants!

Maple Lemonade. I wanted to figure out how to sweeten my lemonade without white sugar. You can definitely taste the maple, but it is unique and great on ice.

Martha Stewarts Seasonal Produce Guide. Have you seen this before? It's just fun to look around! I used it to try to find a blueberry cobbler recipe. I ended up making Pioneer Woman's Cobbler and it was awesome with our homemade ice cream melting on top.

Philadelphia Style Vanilla Ice Cream. I got out the ice cream maker this week. Man is homemade ice cream good. We now have a line up of future ice creams to try, including peanut butter ice cream and a blackberry sorbet.

Broccoli Salad: I cannot get enough of this stuff. But I'll be honest, I cannot make it as well as any deli counter can. I have tried, and my version just doesn't taste as good. I'm not sure what the secret is...but the grocery store kind is the best. So I'll just keep buying little, personal tubs for myself.

life in words

This is our truck bed, where we have a little unexpected garden growing in the compost we never scooped out. I saw this day after day, but it didn't register as hilarious until I drove a friend to the movies and as she got out of the truck at the theater, she whipped out her camera to document our mobile garden.

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So I have become a blogger who writes about the pictures she takes. It's fine, and serves as a great way to document our lives. But today, besides the picture of our mobile garden, I'm going to try to write out my thoughts here without pictures, as the thoughts pop into my head.

I'll begin with Elsie. Because the girl is out of control. I usually know where she is because I can hear the step stool scooting in front of her. She pushes it everywhere she needs to go. Yesterday, I was cleaning up the bathroom counter that was flooded after she had been sent to wash her hands. I came out to find that she had found the yogurt I had been dishing up before cleaning up the flood in the bathroom. She had utilized every spoon from the silverware drawer in an attempt to get that yogurt into the bowl.

It was everywhere but the bowl.

I sort of envision her as a little, white, female Steve Urkel. She doesn't try to be such a handful. She just is. And when I catch her mid-mess her eyes look so sweet as if to say, "did I do that?"

Today I was putting laundry away and discovered her standing on her step stool taking little bites out of all of the apples I just purchased yesterday. Every one of them, tiny bites on each side. As if a little rodent had found my fruit.

I can't tell our kittens a part. I never have been able to. I think if I tried I could probably figure out some marking, but there is little time to study cat hair patterns in my life. But I know which cat is which based on behavior. One is super wild and the other is super timid. I have decided Thomas is the more active of the two, the one who proudly brings frogs and bats and mice into the garage clamped in his jaw. Percy runs for his life when I get out the broom to sweep the garage.

Ivar is growing every single day and it amazes me. He looks so long and huge when I go in at night to check on him at night. Lately it has stopped me in my tracks and I just stand there and look at my little boy.

Yesterday I played with Ivar and Elsie really, really hard all afternoon. We were playing doctor, taking turns being the doctor and patient, and Elsie was always the nurse. We each wore a clean diaper on our heads and used more clean diapers to bandage wounds and to use as blankets and for ice packs. We laughed so hard together and it felt so awesome. To play without interruption. It reminded me of my babysitting days when I was a rockstar sitter. And now we have a whole package of diapers that have been spread out and are all ready to wear.

I have a lot of produce guilt this year. We have so much coming out of our garden that it is hard to keep up with meals to eat it up. And I know I should give it away, but even that takes some level of organization, and I'm just not there at the moment.

Tomorrow the woman who lived in this house for 40 years before us is going to come by for a visit with her daughter. This is the week her husband died, six years ago and she asked if they could just come and be at the farm. She has been here lots of times since we moved in, but not with her daughter. I am so pleased to have them coming and hope they can take a long walk and talk and remember.

The Stepping Stones Community Walk

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early and went to hang pennants for The Stepping Stones Community Walk. It had been rescheduled from earlier in the summer and I had no idea what sort of turn out to expect.

In the end, we had about 80 people come to walk and that number felt really good. A great start, and a really wonderful group of people. One of the employees from the Women's Center spoke before we walked and did an awesome job of communicating the heart this center has for helping these mom's get back on their feet. And then we walked a quick mile to the picnic pavilion that then led to Celebrate Dundas.

There is a funny vulnerability in helping lead an event like this. The day before I started to worry that it might have been a silly idea. You wonder if anyone will show up. But when everyone started pulling up in their cars to register I knew we were onto something good. People were there because they wanted to be and wanted to support The Women's Center. And there was a collective energy and camaraderie that made me so grateful to get to be a part of such a morning.

I was trying to explain this feeling of gratitude to my mom and my sister-in-law Sara after the walk as we wandered through a community garage sale and Sara mentioned a line Gary Haugen had once said, "If you do nothing, nothing will happen. If you do something, something might happen."

I love those words. They sum up the humble hopefulness you hold onto when you're doing anything that feels like you're throwing yourself out there. Like the young mom who walked through the Stepping Stones program this year who is now registered to take night classes at a community college. She's doing something, and it's going to change the course of her life and the life of her baby.