A couple recent favorites for this Friday:

• Patti Smith’s Advice to the Young (really advice for humans in my opinion)
• Blackened Salmon Tacos with Avocado Corn Salsa & Cilantro Ranch Dressing

A few announcements:

• I’m in need of a little graphic design help.  Anyone interested in doing a trade?  I could trade for a class registration or some coaching or…
• You have until 5PM Mountain Time today to sign up for the care package giveaway.
• If you’re local (northwest Montana), I’m offering some canning classes next month.
• Stay tuned for info on the Summer Session of Homespun Seasonal Living, coming next week.

A few reminders about ways to stay in touch:

• Facebook
• Flickr
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• The Two Frog Home Newsletter (comes out once a month and I never share your email address)

I’ve done a little crafting and creating in recent weeks and months that I’d like to share.  I’ve sent some care packages to friends and family and today I’d like to do a little giveaway here on the blog to continue the sharing.

The care package giveaway will contain at a minimum:

• Patchouli soap (I used animal fat to make this soap, specifically pig lard.  That’s a warning for vegetarians or folks who might be opposed to the use of pig for religious reasons)
• Garden apron
• Seeds
• and probably some other bits that speak to me as I’m assembling the box for the winner…

To be entered, simply comment on this post before 5PM Mountain Time on Friday, May 17th.

So often, we talk about ‘making do’ as if it’s this giant hardship, as if it’s something of a burden, a reminder that we’re making do instead of having the latest and greatest gadget.  I don’t think any of that’s true, I think making do is an exercise in creativity, a blessing to my life, my wallet, and most likely the planet.  I also think making do gives us the greatest opportunity for gratitude, it gives us a chance to truly see how full our lives are with things and hopefully community and family.

I’ve working on a bunch of freelance magazine articles.  It’s been a great few weeks of assignments and stretching of my writing skills.  It’s also been quite a stretching of my photography skills.  I don’t have a fancy photo studio or much in the way of high-end equipment.  I do, however; have this porch that gets all this amazing light and tables and fabric and well I make do.  In making do, I found myself grateful for that light and that black cat that is always underfoot.

Hanging laundry out on the line over the weekend, I noticed a tear in one of our comforters.  We’ve had it a long while and didn’t pay much for it when we did buy it.  Plenty of folks, I’m sure would have just tossed it.  The comforter is wearing thin in a few places but rather than tossing it, I patched it.  I patched in fabric that didn’t match to highlight the patching even more.  I made do and I made do proudly.   Proud not because I think I’m better than someone who wouldn’t have made do, proud because I used the work of my own hands and bits of scrap fabric to extend the life of a blanket and to extend the use of our hard-earned dollars.

Making do shouldn’t be about hardship, it should be about pride in hard work and in making the most of one’s time and money and energy (and sometimes all of that is wrapped up in work for pay).  I don’t think I talk about making do in this way often enough and I do believe it’s a huge part of voluntary simplicity, frugality, and this quasi-homesteading life we lead.  It’s something I want to highlight more, especially as I talk and work with people getting started on this path.

How are you making do in grand style these days?

As a gardener and avid food preservationist, it’s fun for me to see how far our produce get us.  We’re out of peas for instance but new seed has already been planted.  We still have a goodly amount of salsa and that’s awesome considering I don’t expect to be making any more until late September.

The last of the buttercup squash was cooked up over the weekend, but one Lower Salmon River Squash remains from the 2012 harvest.  It will be eaten long before this year’s crop is ready.  For us, it’s not about always having winter squash on hand, but it is fun to always have something homegrown on hand.

The canned beets from last year will keep us going until the new peas are ready.  Then the fresh beets and summer squash will have us eating good until the tomatoes and then the winter squash come due.  It’s a wonderful pattern that keeps us connected to the seasons and the work of our own hands and in the end to each other, let’s face it – nothing brings people closer together than sharing a meal.

I realize gardening and food preserving on the scale we do it, isn’t for everyone.  Still, I’d love to encourage everyone to just try a little.  Take some of that rhubarb from the little old lady down the street and make jam.  Then hide a jar and pull it out in December.  I’d love to encourage you to just allow yourself to connect with the seasons by enjoying it now and preserving some of it for later.  I promise you won’t regret it.

Our weather does seem to be changing, finally, into a  proper spring.  We were able to move cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower starts from the greenhouse into the garden over the weekend.

It was a busy weekend of planting seeds in the garden and starting more seeds like cucumbers and squash in the greenhouse.  It was the kind of weekend that felt so good and so very exhausting at the same time.  It felt good at the end of each afternoon to sit on the porch with a glass of iced coffee and record everything in the garden journal.

What’s happening in your garden?

PS: The super fancy canning lid garden markers, remain one of my most popular posts.  For info on how to make them, go here.

Last week, while talking to my friend Joseph, the conversation turned to cheesecake.  Now, I love cheesecake but I haven’t had any since learning of my allergy to cow’s milk a few years back.  In the conversation, I mentioned making my own cheese and yogurt from goat’s milk and inspiration hit me.  I could make a cheesecake from yogurt cheese.  It wouldn’t be the baked cheesecake which I love so much but I believed it would be good.

It was good.  So good.

I ended up making individual cheesecakes with a homemade gluten-free crust.  This recipe is relatively easy, it takes time to make yogurt cheese but it’s not hands-on time.

Yogurt Cheese Cake

Crust:

• 1/4 Cup Rice Flour
• 1/4 Cup Almond Meal
• 1 Tablespoon Ground Flax
• 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 Tablespoons Maple Syrup

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease two ramekins.

Mix all ingredients together well.  Divide dough in half and press into the bottoms and up the side of the ramekins.

Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes or until lightly browned.

Allow to cool on wire racks before filling.

Filling:

• 1/2 Cup Yogurt Cheese
• 3 Tablespoons Sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

Mix everything together well.  Divide the filling between the two crusts, filling them equally.  Refrigerate for at least 3 hours before serving.

Notes: I used local, raw goat milk to make my yogurt and then my yogurt cheese.  However, I believe you could easily use a store bought yogurt to make yogurt cheese and I’m sure cow’s milk would work fine.  I’ve never tried making yogurt cheese out of the soy or coconut milk types but it might be possible and I’d for sure give it a try.

Saturday morning we planted the first bit of veggies in the garden soil.  We’re two weeks behind last year simply based on weather.  It was an exciting for me to pack my basket full of planting essentials and head out to the garden with Jeff.

Planting essentials being seeds, garden markers, twine, gloves (which never stay on), and The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery.  That book always comes out with me to help me remember planting depth and seed spacing.  As with all things, time has made these planting a bit easier.  We roll the trellises up in the winter so that they can be easily unrolled and pounded into the soil in the spring.  I think we were both a little surprised at how fast it went this year.  Planting snow pea and shelling pea seed that we’ve saved going 9 years now, that’s just an added bit of satisfaction.

I try not to get ahead of myself, but I don’t mind admitting that I’m looking forward to using that basket to harvest and bring things into the house rather than out to the garden.

A wonderful thing happened over the weekend, bits of the yard exploded with yellow star bursts.  Dandelions.  Oh sweet dandelions.  I know so many folks do everything imaginable to get rid of them, chemicals and digging and more chemicals and more digging and on it goes.  I on, the other hand, celebrate the return of these glorious yellow flowers.

These beautiful ‘weeds’ are good for me and my bees and lots of other pollinators too.  I also take them as a huge sign that despite unseasonably cold weather, spring and summer are indeed coming.  Yes they are.

I extoll the virtues of dandelions every year it seems.  Here are a few other ideas to make use of these amazingly edible and medicinal plants, none of which require a harsh chemical.

I’m always open to new ideas, so please tell me, how do you make use of dandelions?

My recent favorites:

• I just recently discovered Tiny House Swoon and yes, it is swoon-worthy.
• Stuck in the Doldrums: An Attack Plan – written from a mom’s point-of-view but I found plenty of nuggets I could apply to my own non-mom life.
• Cottonwood Bud Salve
• How to Dry Medicinal Plants
• Honey Rosemary Roasted Walnuts

As always, please feel free to link to your favorites in the comments.

“I’ve been at it a long time.”  I said to a younger woman in response to her wow comment about my lifestyle, about how she was jealous, and about how she thinks about just running off and living off what she could grow.

I don’t want to discourage her or anyone else, heck, I want to encourage anyone and everyone to grow their own food and preserve it with their own hands.  I want to shine the light on this amazing life I live and help anyone else seeking to live a life of hard, creative, and loving  work.  However, it’s not for everyone and I encourage taking it slow to make sure it is for you.  Beyond that, taking it slow increases chances of success in my experience.

Still it should never be doubted that I’ve been doing it a little while now.  I didn’t start out making chicken broth from bones and canning it in the pressure canner.  I started out doing tomatoes with my grandma when I had to stand on a kitchen chair to reach the counter.  When I moved into a house of my own, I canned peaches mostly and nothing else for years.  Then I started doing things like applesauce and pickles and salsa and eventually it just grew until I broke into pressure canning green beans, chicken broth, and beef stew.

It got easier because I had time and practice under my belt.  That will work for you too, I promise.  A little a time.  One small baby step at a time and before you know you to will be addicted to finding out just what else you can make happen with the works of your own hands.  So whatever it is that makes you go “wow,” go after it today, one small baby step at a time and before you know it all that practice will make perfect.