Little's New Shades

I started making roman shades for Little's bedroom about six months ago. They were prompted by the fact that the sun doesn't go down until 10pm in the summer and bedtime was getting increasingly hard. In a fit of desperation, I tacked a (temporary) blue blanket to the top of his window frame and there it remained for the summer, fall, and winter. 

The daily explosion of toys coupled with the blue blanket tied up in swags with kitchen twine gave Little's room the appearance of a shanty town -- squatters and all. Thankfully, my mom came to town earlier in January and helped me finish my roman shade project. She and I combined forces and cranked out the unfinished shades in a day and a half. 

Not only are they a great improvement over the blue blanket, but they were also incredibly cheap. I found the fabric at Fabric Depot for $5/yard -- the thermal backing and notions actually cost more than the main fabric on the front. The nautical theme is also quite relevant, given my sailors mouth trying to mount the damn things in the window frame. Here's a shot of the first shade hung next to the temporary blanket. 

And the finished product, which is Little and Mama approved. Next step is to finally hang some art and try to get the room looking like a space fit for a toddler, rather than a belligerent hobo (although some days the former greatly resembles the latter). More photos to come as we make progress!

Blueberries!

We went blueberry picking this past weekend in Canby, OR. The name of the orchard escapes me, but they allowed small children, which apparently is a hard thing to find. I can understand why, since Little ate his weight in blueberries, but come on, not allowing little kids? 

Anyway, we were directed to the Elliott bushes, since they're in peak season right now, but found that the berries were entirely too tart for anything but baking. Right next to the Elliott berries though were the Brigetta, which are probably the sweetest blueberries I've ever tasted. They didn't have an abundance of berries, but there were more than enough to fill our buckets (and snack as we picked).

Little happily helped hold the bucket, and picked quite a few for himself on the low hanging branches. Blueberries are great for picking because they're airy, don't have thorns, and grow berries high and low, so anyone can find as many as they need at eye or waist level. I don't think we realized just how many berries filled up each small plastic bucket and we spent about 2 hours picking with slow progress on filling them up. At one point, Little wandered off in the raspberries  and was found staring blankly at two old ladies that were clucking about his orange dinosaur shirt. They were very nice and waited there with him until his frantic mom was able to scoop him up and relocate him amongst the blueberries again.

We ended up with three buckets filled about 1/2-3/4 full, totaling about 18 pounds of berries. The fourth bucket was for Little, so he would stop poaching from our stash. He thought it was pretty cool that he got a "big one" all to himself. We were all hungry and stopped by Burgerville on the way home for their seasonal blackberry smoothies and a snack. 

We got back home, plopped the berries on the counter and wondered how the heck we were going to fit them all in the refrigerator. We pulled out all of the berry containers that we'd be saving for recycling and started stacking pints and pints of berries on the shelves. Last night, M made a blueberry kuchen, which was fantastic, and tonight we're going to take a stab at low-sugar blueberry jam (since the berries are so sweet on their own). The rest will be frozen for use in the winter when we're aching for a blueberry pie or crumble. 

I love that summer is finally in full swing and we're getting to enjoy the bounty. 

Pork!

We were fortunate to find a great house, but even more lucky to move to a block with awesome neighbors who love food. Our latest adventure is with a professional size smoker that our neighbor received to review (he's a food writer who specializes in mixology). The smoker is big enough to comfortably fit about 60lbs of pork shoulder and the challenge was taken seriously -- three neighbors, three rubs, and three 20lb packages of pork shoulder. 

Each of us were in charge of making our own rub. We chose a chili chocolate concoction which was basically sugar, salt, onion and garlic powder, Chili 9000 from Penzey's, black pepper, chipotle powder, and some dark dutch processed coco. J set the alarm clock for 5:30am and the smoking began across the street promptly at 6am. We finished up about 6pm and all sampled the fare. It is fantastic. And now, a peek at deliciousness:

J applying the rub.

Ready for the refrigerator.

Removing the pork from the smoker after about 12 hours.

And this is what 60lbs of deliciousness looks like.

Strawberry Jam

As part of our CSA in June, we got nine pints of incredibly ripe and delicious strawberries. Since there was no way that four of us could consume that many in a day or two, J and I decided to do our first canning project in the new house. We brought back a few Weck (pronounced veck) jars from our Santa Cruz trip and I picked up another case at a great little store in Sellwood, called Portland Homestead Supply Co. The jars are great for several reasons: they're good looking, all of the parts (including the gasket) are reusable, and there's not one trace of BPA or other plastics that are present on the disposable metal canning lids. The Germans have been using them since the turn of the 20th century, so that's a pretty good track record in my book. 

We initially we planned to do the canning process in just an evening, but then read the directions and found that it was a bit more involved than we thought. So, while watching a few episodes of one of our favorite shows, Archer, we stemmed and chopped strawberries and combined them with lemons and about equal parts sugar to sit overnight and macerate. Because strawberries do not have much pectin, they need some help to jell into jam, so the lemon rinds and seeds were reserved to cook with the mixture. 

The next night, we set out to make the jam and can it. You bring the berries up to a light boil and simmer for about 30 minutes until they reach 221º (the jell point) all while ladling off the copious amounts of foam that rises from the lemons, berries, and sugar rolling around. Apparently getting rid of the foam makes for a nice clear jam in the end. As the temperature got up to the 200ºs, I had J run out to the garage and get a work glove to protect my fingers from the steam. Yes, next time I will invest in a candy thermometer that just clips to the edge. 

After the jam made it to temperature, we took it off the stove and ladled the delicious mixture into our sterilized and prepped Weck jars. J's mom has a great canner that we used to process them in a hot water bath for 10 minutes, until they'd reached safe temperature. And here is the finished product, about 12 cute little jars of perfectly delicious strawberry jam.

Back Yard Progress

It seems like we just planted the beds in our back yard, but after looking back at our weekend extravaganza in June, I realized that we've made a lot of progress in just a month. It's a completely new space that is so much more inviting than what what originally there:

East facing - Left: June 4th, 2012   Right: July 9, 2012

West facing - Left: June 4th, 2012    Right: July 9, 2012

Tomato plant progress - Left: June 4th, 2012     Right: July 9, 2012