Plantain

THIS is Plantain! I have blogged about it in other posts. This grows EVERYWHERE! Look in your lawn, I bet you have some. This is what I use when a kid gets a bee sting. I just pop it in my mouth, chew it up and spit it onto the sting. I have also used this on a weird ingrown nail thing on Michaels finger... it was HUGE and nasty and after putting some of this on it for about 10 minutes, it went WAY down and after a couple days was gone... he had had the bump for over a week before that. If I ever got a snake bite (no posinous ones here) this is what I would put on it... spider bite, etc... it is an astringent- so it pulls the poison out.

See how the leaves have the defined vains... 

Hope this helps you to identify! Great herb to teach your children about. Elle now points it out to me now, it is EVERYWHERE. You can also make a tincture with it using glycerin.

Recipe for Happy Children

WATER AND DIRT!!! Mix together until you have mud, and WOO-LA- Happy kids! =)

Gotta love the band-aid!

Elle said she was making
"raw jersey milk" and "teacher" ( I think she was trying to say tincture...) =)

This seriously entertained both of them for 20 minutes. (which if you know my kids... that is FOREVER!) Then Christian lost interest, but Elle "worked" on this for hours throughout the day!

May you all be blessed by this top secret family recipe! ;)

apple crumble heaven

So while the apples were cooking for the applesauce, I still had more apples and the pot was full so I thought about making a pie, and then thought I'd try some sort of crumble thing that would be faster than making dough... now, any of you who have made a graham cracker crust before... I never have, and didn't take the time to get a recipe for it, and still haven't, so who know's if I did it "right"- but it tastes INCREDIBLE!

First I had the kids mash up a bunch of graham crackers in a ziplock bag. Which Elle particularly enjoyed doing...

I poured about 2/3 into a pie plate and set the other 1/3 aside. I took a cube (1/2 Cup) of butter and melted it and poured it into the crumbs mixing it in and pressing it to form a crust.

I sliced apples- a little thick because I like a little crunch even when they're cooked- and then put in cinnamin, nutmeg, brown sugar and cane sugar...I couldn't tell you exact measurements because Elle put the stuff in and she used no measuring devise (just like her mama)... I'd guess about 2 Tablespoons of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon Nutmeg, 1/2 Cup cane sugar and 1/2 Cup brown sugar... basically enough just to coat the apples when stirred together.

I dumped the apple mix into the pie plate and Elle added the remaining 1/3 of grahm cracker crumble on top.  I put foil over the top and put it in the oven at 350degrees... for about 30-40 minutes... sorry didn't see the time exactly-(just judge by when the apples are soft and the crust is browned-can't really go wrong)... I was too busy finishing making the apple sauce, chasing the naked child who escaped from his diaper and was thoroughly enjoying his "freedom time" and cleaning up all the mess such things cause... ;0)

And then I put about 2/3 of the crunched crackers in a pie plate and melted a stick of butter and poured it in and mixed it up and pressed it to the pie plate.

It was SO EASY, really fun for Elle to help do (especially getting to stomp on the grahm crackers), and seriously SO GOOD.  I am sure it would be great with berries too...maybe not use the brown sugar? Anyway, successful experiment for sure! =)

Making Applesauce

We made applesauce this morning. Got the last apples from one of the trees and a few from another and quartered them and threw them in the pot. I recently learned about apple seeds... they have a lot of anti-oxidant, but too many can be toxic to the body... so some apples I didn't core and some I did. I leave the skins on mainly because I am too lazy to peel each one, but also they have a lot of nutritional value as well. For this large pot I put water in to about 2-3 inches, put a lid on and let it steal to a boil and the apples were soft and the peels falling off.

Like this.

 and then with

that I borrowed from my mom... I did this:

EEK!

A small interuption... my little man got his diaper off of course while I am pouring steaming hot apple chunks into the grinder! =) Kids just love the dishwasher... funny isn't it?

Anyway..Look at all that warm-insert DELICIOUS smell- yummy applesauce! I put some in containers to freeze, we all had a bowl with some cinnamon on it and the rest I will just keep in the fridge as I plan to use most of it this week. It is a great sugar subsitute in baking breads or cookies, I also use it making pancakes. The smell alone is worth the effort (which really isn't much).

Money really DOES grow on trees!

And here in Washington- that means APPLES! We picked this basket full this morning...Elle got stung by a bee when she was up on the ladder picking them- I chewed up some Plantain and spit it on the sting- the stinger was still in and we couldn't get it out with our fingers, but the Plantain took care of it... Elle can now identify Plantain- she knows it is worth knowing because this is her second bee sting and she has experianced how quickly it takes away the pain, keeps the swelling down and pulls out the poison....anyway...just a little "for your information"! =) Learn about Plantain! Maybe I'll post some photo's of it on here...

Anyway, we washed the apples, set aside the PERFECT ones to just eat whole and quartered the ones we were going to make juice out of.

Put them in the juicer and Elle turned it on and pressed them down.

Wala! About 10 minutes of work for about 3/4 gallon juice...the res is froth that we'll scrape off and add to a beef stew or crockpot meal. SO GOOD! We plan to make applesauce tomorrow. The chickens went crazy over the disgard apple mush...It feels good not to waste anything... We didn't get many apples this year, but I intend to use every one of them one way or another.

Sunflowers

I love sunflowers. Easy to grow, low maintaince, long lasting flowers, simple yet beautiful.

Shirts soon available at Thriftway- VASHON ISLAND

Just mailed out an order to the Vashon Island Thriftway. That store is incredible. THE nicest people! Their produce manager is going to carry the shirts in the produce section (ingenius!) and I am so honored... their produce section looks straight out of a magazine. Bayview Thriftway here in Olympia placed an order this week as well... so hopefully early October they will be available there as well.

dinner from home

Everything in our main dish was from our own hands/land. Carrots, potatoes, chives, tomatoes, zuchinni and some stew meat from our cows.

Look at how HUGE this carrot is!

The photo still doesn't do it justice... it was massive!

Boo-Hoo... I wanted all the dirt from that carrot too! =) He is kin to his mama and LOVES dirty carrots! They just taste better with dirt on them! YUM!?

Elle loves helping cook with the food we grew. She gets super excited about it. Here she is cutting up the tomatoes and zuchinni, she's gotten pretty good at it too!

And there it is! In the crockpot at 11am, ready for dinner at 5pm. Yummy!

Puyallup Fair!

The kids, my parents and I went to the fair last week. It was such a nice day for it. I hadn't been in YEARS and years and years... I didn't even get any photo's of my favorite part... the kids riding the sheep! "Mutton Busting" I think it's called... how FUN! Elle would be so good at that! I need to figure out how to sign her up. She kept asking if she could do it. How cute though. There was one little boy that held on all the way across until the sheep was running through all the other sheep and he just kept hanging on!

The animals at the fair were amazing, those HUGE draft horses, the rare rabbits, chickens and angora goats... love it...