Soups: Chicken Noodle

So, every year, one Halloween hits everything between there and the end of the year seems like this crazy blur, things pick up at work for me, we get caught up in Holiday shopping, and to top it all of this year I got sick. Not just normal sick, sick like laying in bed and sleeping nearly 20 hours a day for almost a week sick. So needless to say, I feel a little blindsided by everything going on, but I am feeling better and have realized that I am SEVERELY neglecting this blog! So, since it's winter, what do I do? I am not going to be able to go out and plant anything, and there isn't a lot of things to do around here at the moment outside of the house, so I am going to start sharing things inside the house!

Unfortunately, my "recipes" are more like lists, I don't do exact quantities, especially with soups, I have a list of ingredients, and I kind of just throw in a handful of this, a handful of that until I have made soup. Soups are my favorite thing to cook in the winter, and I have enough soup recipes to open a restaurant!

So here is my "recipe" for chicken noodle soup.

Chicken thighs (boiled and peeled into strips of chicken)
Can of diced tomatoes
Diced onions, celery, garlic, red peppers, jalapenos, carrots
Cooked egg noodles

First, brown the chicken thighs in the pan with a little olive oil. Then discard the skin and the large globs of fat, and return to pan, cover with water bring to a boil then cover and simmer for a few hours to make broth. Or, if you have some chicken broth just simmer until cooked through and peel the chicken off of the bone. I always quickly sautee the diced vegetables, then everything just gets thrown in the pot and simmered until the vegetables are tender.

I promise my next recipe will have measured ingredients!

(What kind of recipes would you like to see?)

Pancakes!

We love pancakes around here, and whenever we make them we try and make a new variety. I try and tell myself they are healthy because I add flax seed meal and make them from scratch, but really, some of the varieties are not really healthy at all! But, sometimes you just have to indulge the sweet tooth and partake in something less than wholesome.

Pancakes:
1 C. flour (I use whole wheat)
2 TBSP. Sugar
1 TBSP. Baking Powder
2 TBSP. Flax Seed Meal
3/4 C. Milk
2 TBSP. vegetable oil
1 egg

Mix the dry ingredients together and then add in the wet ones. I drop the batter onto a hot skillet by the 1/4 C. full. I find this makes about 10 pancakes. Which is more than enough when we eat two a piece.

Honestly, I have no idea what the nutrition information is for these, so sorry that I can't fill that in.

Variations:
(most of these ingredients get folded in last. The spices get added in with the dry ingredients)

*chocolate chip: 1/4 C. chocolate chips
*apple cinnamon: 2 TSP. cinnamon, 1/4 C. shredded apple
*s'mores: 2 TBSP crushed graham cracker, 1 TBSP cocoa powder, 1/4 mini marshmallows, chopped
*Blueberry: 1/4 C. blueberries (really any berry works!)
*rainbow sprinkle: 1/4 C. applesauce, 2 TBSP rainbow sprinkles
*Sweet Potato/Pumpkin: 1/4 C. mashed sweet potato/pumpkin puree, 1 TSP. cinnamon
*Banana Nut: 1/4 C. mashed banana, 2 TBSP. finely chopped walnuts (or pecans, or whatver nut you want to use)
*Honey Nut: (substitute 2 TBSP honey for the sugar) 1/4 C. finely chopped nuts
*Oatmeal Raisin: 2 TBSP. oatmeal, 1/4 C. raisins

This is the list for now and it keeps growing everytime we make pancakes and I look in the cupboard for more ingredients. Let me know what varieties you would like to see, and I will try them out for you! Or share what varieties you come up with!

Links, links, links, links, links... Oh, and some more links.

I horde links like you would not believe.... So I figured I would share some of my favorites (I will group them for easy browsing!). This is going to be a work in progress for a bit, so feel free to check this post out every couple of weeks to see if I have added anything, for now though, this is a good start!

Tutorial's, How-To's, and Instructions:

For Around the Homestead:
*Project List from the Creative Homeowner
*NDSU Building Plans This site has plans for EVERYTHING! From cattle feeders to root cellars, you can find just about anything you may want to try your hand at.
*Building and using a midwest solar food dryer
*Build a Simple Outdoor Bench Because everyone needs a place to sit after a long day of gardening

For Around the House:
*Making Homemade Laundry Soap
*Power Your House with a Bloom Box
*Recycle your old jeans into a rug
*Chalkboard Paint
*The Container Store I found this site very helpful when I was looking for spice jars, and am going to be ordering some vials with droppers when I start making tinctures.

For Yourself and Your Family:
*How To Refashion a Men's Shirt to Fit a Woman
*Make T-Shirt Yarn
*Hot and Cold Comfort Bags



Helpful Online Resources
*Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association Biodynamic farming is one of my main interests!
*Countryside MagazineHas a ton of useful and interesting articles, sometimes I just like to browse the online library.
*The Backwoods Home: Articles
*Mother Earth NewsSomehow in the off chance that I am introducing someone to this wonderful magazine. I have been reading this since I was a little girl, and I can credit that with planting the seed for wanting to live simply.


Blogs/ Misc:
*No Impact Man
*Garden Girl TV
*Forager's Harvest
*The Wife Life This blog has crafts, natural beauty recipes, recipes for yummy things to eat, and all sorts of fun things. I love just browsing through her archives.
Make It Do A plethora of posts, organized by awesome little tabs.

Shooting for the Moon

Our moon is a familiar sight to us all, but do you really know how important this celestial body is to our environment, and even our bodies? I have decided that starting with the next full moon (October 29th), I am going to strive to be more aware of how the moon effects myself and my surroundings.

First off, let's talk about how the moon effects the earth. The moon controls our tides, and we have especially high tides during the new and full moons. This of course also has some impact on the earth's water tables. Now, you may be wondering why I am bothering to blog about this, since I don't have a blog about boating or fishing. In permaculture and biodiverse/biodynamic farming the earth's cycles become very important, and being aware of the phases of the moon are incredibly important. The different phases of the moon have an impact on how the plant's grow and there are optimal times to plant each type of plant. It's all very fascinating and I am going to direct you to another site, because really there is so much information to be related, and they do a very good job of it already over at Gardening by the Moon.

The Phases of the Moon Explained

By tracking the phases of the moon and planting at optimal times, you can really improve the output of a plant. It's an old concept and people used to plant according to moon cycles, and in fact that's part of what the farmer's almanac is based on! I have always loved the farmer's almanac. So, why not take the time to consider the moon phase, and astrological sign of the moon before planting? If it's more in tune with nature, then it's all good in my opinion.

How does the moon effect us? Well, that may not be as obvious. The moon follows a nearly 28 day cycle, which is also the same as a woman's cycle, so if you're female, try tracking your menstrual cycle by the phase of the moon instead of days of the month, it will probably be WAY more accurate. But even if you're not female knowing the phase of the moon can be incredibly important for you as well. Did you know that the phase of the moon can have an effect on the success of your diet? In fact it's always best to start a diet on the day of a full moon, and have the period of the waning moon helping you out as you begin. It's all very neatly summarized at the Moon Connection, and I think I am going to use that as a guideline for how I plan on eating from now on. If I am going to start gardening according to the phase of the moon then this seems like a natural next step.

Moon Diet Plan

In fact the Moon Connection website has great information on hunting and fishing by the moon as well.

So my goal is to start living more by the moon. For anyone else that's interested in any of this, a helpful resource would be a lunar calendar. I use this one for free: 2012 Lunar Calendar

One Last Taste of Summer

I love coffee cake, and I love blueberries. I have had this recipe hidden away in my recipe box for years now. It was stolen from the bowels of the internet somewhere, and I am sorry if I don't give proper credit, because I can't remember where it came from. It's not my recipe, and if you know where it came from let me know so I can give proper credit.

Blueberry Buckle

3/4c. sugar
1/4c. shortening (I used lard)
1 egg
1/2c. milk
2tsp. baking powder
2c. flour
2c. blueberries

topping:
1/2c. sugar
1/3c. flour
1/2tsp. cinnamon
1/4c. butter, softened

Preheat oven to 350

1. Grease and flour a 9" square pan.
2. cream together sugar and shortening, add egg and milk, mix well. Add baking powder and flour mix well then carefully fold in blueberries. Spread into the 9" pan.
3. Mix together dry ingredients for topping then add butter. Using a fork mix/mash the butter into the dry topping ingredients to form a crumbly mixture. Sprinkle on the top of the blueberry batter.
4. Bake for 45-50 minutes, make sure to test it by sticking a toothpick in it, since cooking times vary depending on your oven. Mine's older so it took almost an hour for it to cook properly.

Cell Phone Free

So, a little over a month ago, I let my phone expire, and I didn't bother to do anything about it. Partially motivated by the fact that I moved to a dead zone for the particular cell phone company I was using (though they tried to convince me that I had service), and partially motivated by the desire to eliminate a hefty monthly bill. At first, I admit I was a little nervous. After all my smart phone did everything, calendar, contacts, it even connected me to my email, facebook and the various blogs I follow.

A lot of you are probably wondering where the silver lining is. Well, I feel a lot more free, and I have been able to focus better. I get sucked into constant updates at my fingertips as easily as the next person, but overall, I had to be honest with myself and admit that responding to a friend's status could wait until the next time I was at the computer. So I took the plunge, I got rid of the cell phone and you know, within a week I rediscovered quiet. It's amazing how much easier it is to focus on a project when you don't have alerts and updates interrupting your train of thought every few minutes. I know, some of you are saying "why not just turn your phone off?" Well, it's not that simple when you have a 5 year old, a few times when my phone was off people needed to reach me and couldn't and that experience has made me terrified to repeat that. Luckily it was nothing major, but just the thought of "what if it was an emergency" haunts me.

So aside from missing my alarm function, and my calendar tracking my daily life for me, syncing up my google calendar to my phone, I am enjoying this newfound freedom. The other day I talked to a friend on the phone for 2 hours, not once did I think to myself "I wonder how many minutes I've used for this month." So while, it is taking some getting used to, I realized that I let something that started out as a luxury masquerade in my life as a neccessity. Now I am beginning to wonder what other things have hidden themselves in my day-to-day life pretending they need to be there.

Pallets!

I really love this video, it gives you so many great ideas for re-purposing old wood pallets. I love reusing things, and finding new innovative ways to keep things from going into the trash. Did this video make you want to go out and snag as many wooden pallets as you could? Cause that's how I feel right now... I need to start saving up to buy myself a drill!

What items have you found new uses for? I love learning new ways to re-use!