Question: Vacation Meal Planning

You all have been a wonderful at resource to my questions. I love your ideas for children's cookbooks! Do you mind if I ask another question?

We are planning our very first week long family vacation this month. Since we will be staying at a house with a kitchen, I'm hoping to cook all our meals. Not only will it be cheaper, and healthier, but waiting in a restaurant with four hungry tired children is not my idea of a vacation.

On the other hand, spending hours in the kitchen is not really a vacation either. I'd appreciate any ideas for simple meals that I could prepare ahead. We will have a full kitchen, grill and I may take my crockpot. It would be nice to have some meals that could be packed along for the day and others that we would eat when we return to our vacation home.

I'm looking forward to your ideas! Thank you!

Summer Menu Planning

I have a love/hate relationship with menu planning. I don't really enjoy menu planning but when I discipline myself to menu plan I'm amazed at the amount of time and stress I save! It is also one of those areas that get easier with practice. Menu planning takes me much less time now then it once did.

I like to menu plan by giving each day a "theme". I've tried meat themes (chicken, fish, beef) but what has worked best for me is designing my themes around types of dishes (soup, casserole, crock pot, Mexican).

Our menus also seem to fluctuate with the changing seasons. In the winter I crave comfort food - soups, stews, and casseroles. In the summer, I crave vegetables - fresh, home grown vegetables of every sort.

I'm always trying to add more vegetables into our diet, as well as use up the garden excess. It seems foolish to freeze or can vegetables (though I do plenty of preserving too) if we are not eating as many vegetables as we can when they are fresh.

Last summer I brain stormed ways to add more vegetables to our diet plus make menu planning easier. It worked so well that I'm using the same system again this year.

These were my summer themes:
Sunday: simple (often grilling or a simple picnic lunch at a park)
Monday: stirfry (some type of marinated meat with whatever vegetable was in season)
Tuesday: salad (a main course salad like taco salad)
Wednesday: quiche (with seasonal vegetables) or other casserole full of veggies
Thursday: crock-pot (often this is my errand day)
Friday: pizza (again with seasonal veggies and often served with salad)
Saturday: grilling (often burgers)

Each week, I'd take a look at what vegetables were on hand or ripening in the garden and plan my menu specifics. Often I would try to plan ahead, maybe when grilling chicken I would do extra to add to a salad, or quiche, or pizza. The menu worked well because it was flexible but gave me a workable plan to alleviate the 5:00 what-are-we-going-to-eat tonight woes. The days of the week were very flexible with what I felt like making that night or what worked best with our schedule.

Just to give an example - here was our menu this week. Right now there isn't too much in our garden. We have kale, a little asparagus and lots of lettuce. As the garden selection increases so will my menu options.

Pork/asparagus stirfry on rice
Meat loaf and cheesy potatoes (a freezer meal) with salad
Kale/ham quiche
Pizza and salad
Chicken and frozen veggies in crockpot
Grilled steak with crockpot baked beans and salad

I'd love to hear your ideas for summer menu planning and how you incorporate seasonal veggies.

Sprouter

We just began growing our own sprouts this spring. We had recently found a great deal on a Thompson & Morgan sprouter. It has been working well for us.

My mom just found 20 brand new Thompson & Morgan sprouters at a yard sale. She bought one but there are plenty more!

I was wishing I knew someone who wanted one - so in the slim chance that someone will read this that lives local and wants a sprouter, I thought I'd mention it!

Give me a call if you want to know where to find one for yourself!

Edit to add: Oops! Forgot to mention that they cost $2.00. Usually they sell for around $20.00. Of course you can just use a jar and cheesecloth, but we liked how this sprouter worked.

Book Review - Four-Season Harvest

"Organic vegetables from you home garden all year long." It was a bold claim. When I learned that the author Eliot Coleman gardened in Maine, the Four-Season Harvest went on my "must-read" list. I was thrilled to win this book in a giveaway from Homestead Revival.

Year round harvest brings to my mind forcing tomatoes in heated greenhouses, with subsequent expense and work. This book shares much simpler techniques for eating fresh produce year round. With cold frames and unheated tunnels, even in the harsh Maine winters, Coleman succeeds in growing food.

One of the keys of year round gardening is plant selection. No, it isn't possible to grow tomatoes, sweet corn, or watermelon in Maine January. But there are many vegetables that can be grown. Instead of wasting time, energy, and expense in growing heat loving plants, choose plants that will flourish in the lowering temperatures.

Though I expected lots of good advice on cold frames, this book also contained chapters on compost making, root cellars, and plant pests. The appendix contains a alphabetical list of all common (and some not-so-common) vegetables with growing info, storage tips, and favorite varieties. Interspersed throughout the book are stories from Coleman's winter trip to southern France. Surprisingly, Maine shares the same latitude as France. Though Maine has a harsher climate, they receive the same amount of sunlight, even in the middle of the winter, as the fresh vegetable capital!

Last year we experimented with growing salad greens in a small hoop house with good success. Now I'm eager to try a few new tips and maybe increase our winter harvest.

My favorite gardening books are written by gardeners who share from their years of personal experience. This book will join the ranks of authors like Gene Logsdon in my library. Some authors give so much information that gardening appears to be a task only for seasoned veterans. Four Season Gardening was an informative but immensely encouraging. It was the perfect spring read and one I'm sure to turn to often this summer and fall.

Frugal Gardening Tip #3- Grow Annual Flowers from Seed

Buying a pack of annual flowers at the garden center isn't expensive. But if you want to cover a large plot of ground with color, or if you want a cutting garden, you can't get cheaper then planting annuals from seed.

But don't you need a greenhouse or grow lights, potting soil, and pots to grow plants from seed?

You don't need all that to start flowers from seed. You can start seeds in the house simply on a sunny window sill in paper cups. I usually start a few seeds just because I have the urge to get my hands in soil by February. But it isn't necessary to start plants indoors. Many flowers grow quickly and easily just by planting seeds directly in the garden soil.

This time of year, every garden center and even grocery stores have a seed rack. For a dollar or two you can purchase a pack of seeds that will produce an amazing number of plants. Seeds are one item that still gives a good return on the dollar!

Here are some of my favorite annual flowers to grow from seed. All these can be sowed directly in the soil. In fact, most of these flowers do not like their roots disturbed and will grow much better if they are started in the ground.
Zinnia - The first flower I ever grew, these are perfect for beginning gardeners. Easy to grow and so bright and cheerful!

Cosmos- These flowers in shades of pink and white, always bring memories of my Grandpa's flower garden and the bouquets he would pick.

Marigolds - The classic easy plant for children. Planted in the vegetable garden, they help discourage some garden pests.

Nasturtiums- These flower seeds are huge and great for small hands to plant.

Morning Glories - A vine to plant along a fence or post.

Sunflowers - Not all are the familiar huge flowers. Pick a shorter variety or one of the special non-pollen varieties that are good cut flowers.

Many of these flowers are good for cut flowers. With a little planning, you can have fresh bouquets all summer. If you've checked the prices of cut flowers, you'll soon see that little pack of seeds is a real bargain.

I love Blooms for the Soul's idea of growing cut flowers to take to shut ins and nursing homes. What an encouragement and day brightener for a lonely person!

If you are not yet convinced of the frugality of growing annual flowers from seed, many of the flowers mentioned above are very easy to save seed from. Let a few zinnia, marigold, or cosmos flowers dry up on the stalk. Once they are very dry, cut the flower seeds and store in a dry place until next spring. If your plants were hybrids, the seeds may produce plants that are different then their parent but I've saved seeds from zinnias for years with great success. Buy a packet of seeds this year and you could go years without buying another pack!

It will soon be May, the safe seed planting date for our area. Go get some seeds and start planting some flowers to enjoy this summer!

Home library additions

"A home without books is like a room without windows. A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessities of life." Henry Ward Beecher

This past week found some new additions to our home library. I can't think of anything more fun then a day spent looking, feeling, and talking about books. Since the past week contained two such days - it was a good week!

First, I visited my first homeschool curriculum fair. What fun to actually see books I've only read about in catalogs. The best part was spending the day with the Naptime Seamstress and talking non-stop about books!

As fun as the curriculum fair was, the prices weren't what I like to see. I'm am spoiled from too many used book sales.
But this past week was the date of the largest used book sale in our area. I missed this one last year because my baby was only a week old. It was such fun to go back this year.

I hauled 55 more books home and only paid $50.00. The most expensive book I purchased was $5.00 and the cheapest 30 cents with most of them $1.00.

Some of my favorite finds-
The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter
James Herriot's Treasury for Children
A Child's Garden of Verses illustrated by Tasha Tudor
several field guides including Reptiles, Birds and Butterflies
and lots of great picture books

Next question: Where to put all these books?

Enjoying God's World - April Nature Study Plans

Maybe I'd better share this month's nature study plans before the month is over.

The weather this month has had us outside at every possible moment. I haven't had to force the children to go out for a nature walk amidst groans. Since my goal for my young children is very informal nature study, I'm sure they are not even aware of how much we've learned this month. They are constantly asking questions, poking sticks into holes, and bringing me something squirmy to identify. I hope they never lose their curiosity!

April Goals (What we've done or still hope to do in the next week.)

1. Look for blossoms on the early flowering trees. (Both the showy blossoms like cherry and the more discreet blossoms on the maple trees.)

2. Dig in the ground to find earth worms and other creepy crawlers.

3. Look for tree seedlings. Dig them out and find the seed or nut.

4. Grow some sprouts to eat. (Yummy additions to our spring greens salads.)

5. Examine the roots of a plant

6. Look for more signs of spring.