What to Feed Your kids in the Summer

When it's hot out and I don't want to cook I still have to, ughhh shot through the heart. Jokingly, I once said I have a few ways to cook meals in the summer. Then I got to looking at it and found out shockingly it's mostly true. I think the original list went something like this:

• grill everything
• crock pot everything
• anything can be a salad
• hummus is never wrong(and so versatile)

Lets look at these a little closer. I've linked some of my favorite posts to help plan your summer meals, it may be hot but you still have to feed your kids, I think that's a law somewhere.

ONE--Grill everything, yes meat can be grilled, greens can too, vegetables are wonderful on the grill. I love to make grilled pizza and yes it is delicious. If you make it for guests they will be WOWED, my kids are anyway, so guests must be in there somewhere. Hobo Stew is ALWAYS a hit with my kids, fun to make and eat.

Crock Pot everything, even cake. Seriously I make a mean Mexican Lasagne that my kids will hurt each other to get to but something more simple like pinto beans in the crock pot are easy and delicious. Without presoaking and cooking on the stove beans can successfully be cooked for 8 hours in a crock pot and ready to eat for dinner, if you get them in the pot in the morning. Wrap those babies up in a tortilla or simply top with cheese and salsa for a quick meal.

Anything can be a salad. TRUE. We love a mean taco salad with or without meat. Make a VAT of quinoa early in the morning before it's hot. Let it cool, then add chopped tomatoes, feta(makes everything betta!!), chopped cucumbers, olive oil, walnuts, mix well and chill until dinner. Or use couscous or fettuccine noodles. Thai Beef Salad, Cold Thai Peanut Salad and Asian Coleslaw are a few of our family favorites, notice a theme there?

Hummus is easily made at home and eaten with anything. ANYTHING. Tortillas rolled up, crackers, bread, bowls of fresh vegetables, a spoon and best of all your fingers (this is true ask my five year old!) We love hummus and we make it all the time. Cook the beans in a crock pot and you'll save yourself a bucket of money over buying premade hummus. Plus if you make it yourself you can add any spices or other goodies you like, consider chive blossoms a prime flavor ingredient!

So there you are, that's how we eat in the summer, I'm planning on following our food rhythm all summer but working in these hot weather techniques to help me cope with having to feed these people who live with me.

Last day to enter to win Alaskan Salmon and Alaskan Halibut! Go quickly and enter now, good luck.

Peace and Love--

Just Another Meatless Monday #62 Ode to the Lowly Dandelion

I'm one of those people, yes, I let weeds live happily in my lawn. As long as it's green and alive I really don't care what it is. I have no interest in a perfect svelte green lawn. Mine is wild, long, overgrown and annoying to most people. I used to get a real high off mowing my lawn, it was instant gratification but now we have a reel mower that I hate to use, so my lawn mowing pleasure is gone.

With it's exit has come a whole new world though, eating my former rivals. I like to think of it as revenge eating, sort of "you think you get to live here for free and crowd out my grass? disrupt my vegetable growing? check it out I'm going to eat you" And we do. In Alaska you can eat: nettles, dandelions, lambs quarter (we called it pig weed when I was little), chickweed, clover and shepards purse, talk about gardeners revenge!

Today I took my camera out in the sun to play in the dandelions, I was planning on picking some for a quick salad or stirfry but those plans were waylaid by planting the garden. We have about 90 days of guaranteed frost free days up here, so when the end of May swings around the only place to find folks is in their garden. And that's where I was most of the day, I have the sunburn to prove it. I should have picked the greens and headed inside for a bit to get out of the sun but no, I stayed outside. Then my mother in law invited our little boys to spend the night and before I knew it dinner time had come and gone and no dandelions were consumed.

But they can be! The greens make an excellent peppy salad full, literally full of vitamin A, more than a full days supply. They have about a third of the vitamin C you need everyday too. Woohhoo. They can be eaten raw when small or when bigger and more mature you can steam them.

The flowers can be picked and made into dandelion wine. There are hundreds of recipe for this, pick one and have a go. Make sure you have the other ingredients on hand though because you don't want to pick a gallon of these

and not have yeast.

The roots can be dug, cleaned, dried, toasted and ground for making a drink like coffee. This is a great liver cleanser but go easy, I've heard headaches accompany more than one cup. I have some roots drying on the counter right now, I'll be drinking a cup of this about once a month from now on. The roots are very long, a tap root, they bring nutrients up from deep in the earth to feed themselves.

The bees love them, as one of the first flowers of spring they provide the first food for bumble bees and honey bees alike. Local to your area honey can lessen spring and summer allergies.

See why I'm one of those? So many good things coming from just one so called weed. I just can't see poisoning things I can eat. And plants that vex you in the garden truly taste better, gardeners revenge.

Peace and Love--

The Penny Worthy Project

The Penny Worthy Project is my response to tightening our belts. Gas is so expensive, food is too, everything seems to cost more theses days. How are you getting by? Do you sell on Etsy? Ebay? Thrift shop regularly? How are you getting by on less when everything costs more? I'd love to know! Leave a comment or a link to your blog post to join in and tell the world how you are making it.

Apron Thrift Girl just had a post about creating an online garage sale group the other, something in her post sparked my interest and I created a facebook group about 2 minutes later. We are almost to a hundred members and it's up and selling goodies already. No one is going to get rich off the yardsale group but certainly we'll have folks connecting and selling to locals in a whole new way. What a great way to sell locally, buy locally and make new friends. An added and unknown benefit of the group is the generosity of the members, we've had plenty of freebies posted and lots of great stuff too. Another great thing happening is people asking for what they need, before heading to the box store they're asking their neighbors if they have anything to sell. I am loving this group and I see a lot of success stories in the future. If you're local why not consider joining up? If you're not local maybe you could consider creating your own group?

Believe it or not I started back to school shopping this week, much to the chagrin of both little boys. Apparently in spirit only though because I only found one shirt worth buying. But oh, what a shirt!

Check out what little Mr.SirPrize will be wearing to kindergarten in the fall.

In the words of my friend Jodie, ADORBS.

Great milk glass vase and a sweet little self sealing jar. The rubber ring on the jar isn't all crumbly which seems to be typical of the jars I find.

I also found a great book for Mr.SirPrize who'll be six before we know it. The stories are great and how can you miss with drawings like this?

And the mystery is solved! These jars are Kromex, thanks Amanda, so glad you chimed in on that one.

Last but not least why not eat free? I'm giving away a custom Alaskan Halibut and Alaskan Salmon gift pack from Anderson Seafoods! Go enter.

Peace and Love--

Damn You Lion King

and your stupid circle of life song. Seriously, I want to write about the cycle of pulling weeds and feeding them to chickens and all I can hear is this crescendo in my head "and it's the circle, the circle of life" All Broadway show musical style. Let me tell you there is nothing Broadway about pulling weeds, bent over with mosquitoes dive bombing your unprotected bits but still there it is "the ciiiiiiiirrrrrrrcleeee" rattling around in your head.

Dropping the bucket of weeds off for the chickens is equally non Broadway-ish, who ever stepped in chicken manure Broadway style? Maybe a step and slide might qualify as 'dancing' but I can guarantee that none of those actors came up sputtering and swearing from an unexpected skid. Ever.

I fill the bucket up with compost and head back to dig it into the garden box, thinking lovely thoughts of how we don't waste anything. What the girls eat as weeds get recycled back to the garden as compost and there it is haunting me still"huummmmmm" Dancing signing lions all mixed up in my head. Cartoons and musical intertwined now as one.

Really that song doesn't have a lot in common with composted chicken manure for garden food and then feeding weeds back to chickens. That song is about life rolling on as we find our place in the world or lions do, whatever. I can relate to that, I think I fit right in to my life growing food to feed us, our animals and working to be good and kind to the earth. A circle of life within a circle the of life? Wait, within a bigger circle of life? I think I just hurt my brain. Damn you Lion King, leave me alone.

Peace and Love--

Salmon and Halibut .:Giveaway:.

There are many things I love about living in Alaska. We have an abundance of beautiful scenery

room to move (and then some)

plentiful wild foods, both flora

and fauna,

and 20 hours of daylight in the summer.

Of course on the flip side there are 40˚ below zero nights that last 20 hours,

6 months of snow

and parcel post can take 3-4 weeks to get here.

Mail and delivery seem to be a problem even when I'm doing a giveaway. Anderson Seafoods wanted to set up a review and giveaway with me, except they don't deliver to Alaska. Something about length of delivery time, time is of the essences sort of thing. I guess that makes sense when you want to provide the best, freshest seafood to your customers. Boo for me! But being the ever resourceful blogger that I am I worked around their limitations and figured out how to make it work for you.

I get to eat salmon and halibut just about weekly, so I know how delicious it is, do you? Want a chance to try some? I'm giving away Alaskan Sockeye Salmon and Alaskan Halibut, here's how you can win.

1. pop over to Anderson Seafoods and check them out, leave a comment letting me know your favorite kind of seafood
2. become a follower for an extra entry or if you are a follower leave me a comment
3. blog roll Hey What's for Dinner Mom? for one more entry

This giveaway runs until May 31st and the winner will be announced on June 1st and is open to residents of the continental United States. Good Luck!

I received no compensation for this giveaway, the prize has been provided by Anderson Seafood.

Peace and Love-

Tortellini and Kale Soup

My friend Kelly made this soup for our May Faire a few weeks back, she made 18 quarts of it, I didn't even get a bowl. It was that good. Tortellini nestled in with sausage surrounded by tons of good for you veggies makes even the pickiest of eaters happy to have a bowl. It was so popular people came back and bought second bowls, yet somehow I still didn't get a bowl.

Luckily Kelly likes me and she gave me the recipe. Shhh don't tell her but I'm going to give it to you. I'm passing it on because if you want to introduce your kids to kale, this is the perfect recipe. It's there, but the soup is so good they won't really notice until they've eaten it all and ask for more.

Tortellini and Kale Soup

2 TBSP oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced or crushed and chopped
5 links of sweet italian sausage or hot if that's what you like
20 ounce package of refrigerated tortellini, I like three cheese
4 quarts good chicken or vegetable broth
1 market bunch of kale, stems removed and chopped
4 cups frozen corn or other assorted fresh or frozen vegetables, carrots, zucchini, green beans
water to cook tortellini

heat the oil in a large dutch oven over medium heat
add the onion and saute for a few minutes
meanwhile decide if you want the sausage in slices or out of the casing, prepare accordingly
add the garlic to the onion and cook for about 30 seconds
then add the sausage and continue cooking for about 5 minutes
while the sausage it cooking prepare the tortellini almost according to package directions, remove from cooking water before completely finished cooking, set aside the tortellini
save the cooking water from the tortellini in case the soup needs a bit more broth, trust me on this one it tastes wonderful
add the broth to the sausage and quickly bring to a boil
add the kale, tortellini and the vegetables to the soup, then reduce heat, simmer for 15 minutes until heated through
add more pasta water as needed if the tortellini suck up too much broth

Thank you Kelly for giving me another kale recipe to add to my arsenal. I'm always looking for ways to squeeze in more veggies.

Peace and Love--

Just Another Meatless Monday #61 Pizza Bread

This Pizza Bread lies somewhere between a savory monkey bread and a simple vegetarian pizza. It's fun to make with kids, it's fun to eat with kids too.  Pizza Bread is a killer dish to bring to a potluck because it's tastes great even when it's cold. Although that never happens because it doesn't stick around long enough to get cold. If it's just you and a friend cut the recipe in half or package up the leftovers for lunches, this recipe make a lot of food. Seriously.



Pizza Bread

bread dough for two loaves of bread
garlic powder or granules
1 cup pizza sauce
2 cups mozzarella cheese
1 cup fresh spinach, washed and dried
1/4 cup fresh basil, washed and dried

preheat oven to 375˚
generously grease a 9x13 baking dish
using kitchen shears snip one loaf of bread dough into the 9x13
sprinkle a generous amount of garlic powder onto the dough
spread half the sauce over the dough
sprinkle on half the cheese
then using the shears snip the spinach and basil over the cheese
snip the remaining loaf of dough over the top of the greens
sprinkle with more garlic if desired
spread on the rest of the sauce
sprinkle with remaining cheese
bake for 40 minutes in the the oven
then run under the broiler for 5 minutes to brown the top if desired
serve in the pan with a small spatula at a party or precut slices for easy serving at the table

Peace and Love--

The Penny Worthy Project

18 years to this moment:

My week has been consumed by high school graduation, I'm not complaining either, simply stating a fact. Check it out, party time

the big walk

the diploma and tassel

I did find an incredibly awesome cookbook, when a cookbook has a recipe for spud nut doughnuts and 5 recipes for cheese you buy the book!

I also inherited these beautiful spice jars, wish I knew anything about them.

Christina sent me my auction winnings, lovely FireKing covered fridge dishes. Here is one with some Bean with Salmon Soup, yum!

 Did you win vintage FireKing from me? You might want to check out the The Winner and The Pot to find out the winner, you can also just scroll down too.

How do you live a thrifty life? Laundry on the line, meal plans, thrifty living tips, Etsy Shop, Ebay reseller, frugal living, creative outlets are ALL examples of living thrifty in this life. Please share a link to how you live and thrive in today's world. 

Peace and Love--

Foraging in Alaska

It's time to get back out there and start foraging for fresh greens. A group of us went out a few days ago in search of edible greens, boy did we score. A day on the mountain with girlfriends and kids is soothing to the soul and so healthy for you.

The fresh air was so wonderful after being inside so much the last 6 months. It felt so good to be free and alive. We saw 6 moose but not one of them bothered us, I'm pretty sure our little group made enough noise to scare them away, who wants to tango with three 2 year olds? Look at these wild things!

Now is the time to be on the look out for fireweed shoots(pick 'em now and they won't be around to make you sneeze this fall), fresh nettles (just pinch the tops off), fiddleheads, devils club tips, twisted stalk and chickweed (gardeners revenge!)

Please follow a few simple rules if you plan to forage:

1. take someone with you who knows whats what, you don't want to mistake a false hellebore with a twisted stalk
2. And never ever pick your location clean, pick some from each plant and leave enough for the plant to grow over the summer, over picking will kill your plants
3. thank the earth for her bounty 
4. and be sure to use what you harvest

We steamed fiddleheads, fireweed shoots and nettles, then gave them a good dose of butter and a pinch of salt. Delicious.


Peace and Love--