My recent favorites:

• I haven’t watched all six hours yet, but I will and must say I love Tales from the Green Valley (I’d seen Victorian Farm before but not this pre-cursor series)
• This Must Be The Place (thanks to Anna at The Road to the Farm for passing this on)
• The New USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map – Check to see if your zone has changed.
• 35 Natural Pest & Disease Remedies for the Garden
• Letters of Note – A new discovery that as a fan of letter-writing I’m pouring over

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This idea has been ruminating in my brain for a few weeks and so, on Sunday I decided to give it a whirl.  I must say it’s pretty darn yummy.

 Clementine Rum Marmalade

• 1 1/2 Pounds of Clementines, well scrubbed
• 2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
• 6 1/2 Cups Hot Water
• 5 1/2 Cups Granulated Sugar
• 1/4 Cup Rum

Place a dampened cheesecloth on the inside of strainer on top of bowl.  Cut the clementines in half cross-wise.  Squeeze juice into the cheesecloth.  When finished squeezing juice, pull the pulp off the rind and place on the cheesecloth.  Tie the edges of the cheesecloth, making a large spice bag.  Place the juice from the bowl, lemon juice, and bag of pulp in a jam pot.

Cut the peel into thin strips and place all of that into the jam pot with the hot water.  Bring to a boil over high heat.  Reduce heat but keep boiling, stirring occasionally until reduced by half and peel is tender.  This takes about 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Remove from heat.  Place the cheesecloth bag into a wire mesh strainer and press with a spoon to squeeze out juice.  Measure out 4 1/2 Cups of juice, peel mixture.  Put that in a pot with 5 1/2 cups sugar.  Boil until gel stage is reached – this took me about 20 minutes.  Add the rum and boil for another two minutes.

Pour into sterilized jars.  Process in a water bath for 15 minutes.  Makes about 6 half pints.

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I am blessed to use an entire spare bedroom as my office / sewing studio.  A lot of stuff happens in there.  This blog gets written, Jeff’s pants get mended, magazines get queried, and class ideas form.  It’s not a large space, but perfect enough.  I do have a small desk on which my laptop generally sits, but sometimes, I move.  I like to be closer to the window which is where the cutting table sits, you see.  All that natural light and vitamin D calls to me and often.

The cutting table becomes a large desk and as you can see I have no problem spreading out.  There are some very exciting projects in the works, here at Two Frog Home.  The first of which I informally announced yesterday.  I’m going to be doing a series of classes at The Apple Barrel in Kalispell, Montana.  These will be do-it-yourself classes focusing on cooking from scratch and food preservation including my popular canning classes.  Jeff and I are so excited about this partnership, we’ve been customers and fans of The Apple Barrel for years and as they’ve expanded and grown we’ve watched in awe and proud to have such a source for food in our community.

Recently The Apple Barrel, added a tasting room for the Glacier Sun Winery and expanded their kitchen to include a meeting space.  We stopped by to ask about teaching classes one day last week and the owners were super excited and only fed into our excitement over the idea.  The first class will be Preserving Citrus on February 18th from 1 to 4 PM.

If you’re local and interested in attending please drop me an e-mail at mtkatiecakes@yahoo.com to register.  I can also forward printable flyers.  We’re so very excited about the many classes we have planned and the possibility of working with so many new folks interested in preserving their own food whether homegrown or purchased by the case at The Apple Barrel (which is what we did before we kept such a large garden and what we still do when something fails or we simply can’t or don’t grow something like pears or citrus).

Thanks to everyone locally and not-so-locally who have supported and encouraged me over the years.  It’s your support and encouragement that allow me to dream big and go after those dreams so fearlessly.  It might seem like a small step, these classes, but truly there isn’t much I enjoy more than teaching folks how to practice home canning.

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Locally we tried to have a food swap in November.  We were told by the health department that such food swaps are illegal and so cancelled.  In the meantime, several of us have become friends and have gotten together for private swaps.  Saturday we got together in a quaint cabin, ate some yummy food, shared recipes, talked canning and gardening, and swapped food.

This is just another way in which I’m growing my food community.  If you’re able too, I highly recommend such an adventure.  Oh the food joys that await the joyful swapper!

Do you swap food in your community?  If so, how are such swaps organized?

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My recent favorites:

• I always like looking at new ways to make natural and herbal cleaning products
• Not just sometimes, I want it real and imperfect all the time, thank you very much
• Touchscreen
• The Great Grapefruit Scouring Scrub – I know grapefruit is supposed to have some antibacterial properties but I’m thinking you could do this scrub with any dried citrus peels

Please feel free to share your favorites in the comments, I always love checking them out.

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January life seems to be made up of small, quiet moments for me.  Nothing is moving too fast and everything has this sleepy quality.  Everything seems to be in a holding pattern waiting for spring.

I enjoying watching the snow fall and land in fluffy piles.  We’ve been strangely without the white stuff until recently.

The cats like Jeff and I seek out the sun rays whenever they appear and bask in them our faces absorbing as much warmth and Vitamin D as we can.

There are plenty of quiet moments with the sewing machine and knitting needles too – photos of those projects coming soon.

How about you, what moments are you enjoying?

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I meet once a month with a group of women, a group of friends who I call my simplicity circle.  It’s always a great time, a time of great rejuvenation for me.  Generally we hang out for about 2 hours, we eat an incredible pot luck meal and then tackle some kind of project together.  We visit, we share trials, tribulations, successes, dreams, and plans, we get and share advice and most of all we have a good time.

This past weekend we got together for our monthly gathering and we made lip balm together.  It was a ton of fun and three different and absolutley delicious flavors of balm were created – chocolate mint, honey lemon, and a mint healing & cooling.

These women are amazing on so many different levels and while we don’t hang out much in between gatherings, I consider them my closest friends.  They inspire me to just try whatever crazy idea I come up with next.  Nothing is too outlandish or silly to them, do-it-yourselfers each and every one of them.

It seems cliche to say that I have found my tribe, but that is exactly how I feel.  This group of women who give of themselves, share skills, offer good advice, trade garden produce and more, have helped me create a community for which I am continually blessed.

 My wish for you, dear reader, on this Monday is that you find a community that blesses you in some way.

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My recent favorites:

• 5 Tips for Food Photography
• Susy’s new blog: Eat Outside the Bag
• No Maple Syrup by 2100?
• Allergy Free Brownies, I seriously can’t stop thinking about those.  I have a potluck this weekend and might have to make and take those to avoid too much temptation
• Somebody That I Used to Know by Walk Off the Earth

How about you, care to share your favorites?  If so, share away in the comments.

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My kitchen and cooking habits are more seasonal than even I realize sometimes.  It’s not always about what’s being prepared, though there is that too, I’m not cooking any asparagus this time of year for example.  My routines are seasonal too.   We eat more soups in fall and winter, salads in spring and summer.  More things are coming out of glass jars during this season whereas in late summer tons of goodness is being put into jars and shelved for these days right now.

There are some fresh meals but not as many as in the garden flush days of summer.  Still most everything is slow cooked over a period of a day and again lots of soups made with homemade bone broths.

In fact homemade bone broths are the only thing going into jars and canners these days.  They don’t stick around for long, jars seem to empty almost as quickly as they were filled.  Still, it’s all so very satisfying – the cooking of the broth, the watching of the pressure gauge, the ping of jars sealing, the whoosh of air as the jar comes unsealed, and of course the devouring of rich, healthy broth is never a bad thing.

What’s happening in your kitchen these days?

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There isn’t much snow here in northwest Montana.  It’s been unusually sunny and bright too, this winter.  I’m not complaining about the sunshine but the lack of snow is a little disconcerting.  Still instead of worrying to much about something I can’t control, I choose to enjoy it.  We take walks around the yard, investigating the remaining bits of apples the birds are picking apart.  The cats follow, although Meggy doesn’t really care for walking in the snow much, she stops often to lift and shake her paws.

The snow we do get seems to melt and run from the roof in the matter of minutes, though it’s more like hours.

I can’t complain really, we spend so much of our time inside the home this time of year that it is always nice to get outside and see what’s happening on the grounds too.

How are you enjoying home today, whether indoors or out?

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