Suburban Omnivore

In a Jam

2011-09-02T10:33:00.007-04:00

We spent a blissful day last week in the berry patches at Alstede Farms in NJ. In fact, it was probably a bit TOO blissful, as we ODed on blackberries and raspberries (to the tune of 6 quarts for our family of four). And since berries have a notoriously short shelf life, we needed to figure out a way to preserve a little of that berry goodness. Thankfully, I remembered a cool little recipe for blueberry refrigerator jam that had been in a recent Real Simple. I figured what's good for blueberries would be just as good for raspberries and blackberries—and it turns out, I was right.

All you need is some berries, a little sugar, a pinch of salt and a little lemon juice. Mash the berries (a potato masher works great), and cook the whole mess in a saucepan on your stove, stirring frequently, until it's boiled and reduced to a thick jam. Let it cool, then store it in your fridge for up to a month, or your freezer for a year.

The flavor is richer, brighter and more true than even the fanciest jams out on the market. Try it at its most amazing on really good bread, with a slathering of Nutella beneath it. Divine!

We're working our way through some raspberry jam right now, and have some more raspberry and blackberry jams waiting in the freezer. It'll be nice to have that taste of summer during the cold winter months.

Here are the amounts:

5 cups berries (blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries—whatever you have on hand)
1/2 cup sugar (you may want more if your berries are on the tart side)
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 tsp kosher salt

Bon appetit!

Vanilla Coffee Syrup

2011-08-24T09:24:00.000-04:00

What makes iced coffee even better? Yummy flavored syrup. But you can skip the expensive Torani syrups and DIY it at home. In 15 minutes, you'll have fabulous syrup, at a fraction of the cost of the Torani (you can even pour your homemade syrup in a saved bottle, so it only looks expensive).

Here's what you need:

1 cup of sugar
1 cup of water
2-3 tsp. of vanilla extract

Stir all ingredients together in a medium-sized saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring, until sugar is dissolved. Let syrup boil and continue to stir occasionally, until the syrup is slightly thickened and is reduced by about half.

Let it cool, bottle it up, and keep it handy for your next coffee fix.

A Coffee Revelation

2011-08-23T20:52:00.002-04:00

I must confess: I make a really awful cup of coffee.

I honestly don't know what I'm doing wrong. This should not be a challenge: Add grounds to filter, add filtered water, and voila! Fabulous coffee. But mine ends up either weak or way too strong (or filled with grounds that made it through the filter). So I've given up and bought the Starbucks Via coffee packs, which are sinfully expensive but make a decent cup that I don't have to be embarrassed to serve (and that makes me feel like I'm treating myself every morning when I have my cup, after I drop off the kids and walk the dog).

But I've found something even better (and cheaper), that's perfect for the summer months. Pioneer Woman posted her method for making iced coffee by the gallonful, and stashing that liquid gold in the fridge for regular refills. It's super easy, too. All you need is a pound of coffee, a container big enough to hold a couple of gallons, some sort of filter (I used paper towels in lieu of cheesecloth), and about 8 hours for the brewing. You simply mix the coffee grounds into the water, let it sit, then filter out the grounds (that part takes a while....and expect to smell like coffee for a while after you squeeze out the liquid from the grounds through your paper towels).

The iced coffee this morning, which I had with a dose of skim milk and some homemade vanilla coffee syrup (recipe coming tomorrow), was simply divine—an equal of those pricey coffee drinks I love so much at Starbucks. I may try making my own frappuccinos with that tomorrow.

Stuffed Squash Blossoms

2011-08-09T16:37:00.004-04:00

What's cooler for two little flower girls than the opportunity to actually eat a flower? So when I saw squash blossoms at my grocery store, I just had to bite.

I used a variation on an Epicurious recipe to produce wonderful squash blossoms, stuffed with ricotta, dredged in egg and cornmeal, and fried up.

Stuffed Fried Squash Blossoms

8 squash blossoms
Oil for frying

Stuffing
3/4 cup of ricotta (we used low-fat)
2 tbsp fresh chopped mint
1 tbsp fresh chopped chives
1/3 cup shredded romano cheese
dash of salt and pepper

Coating
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 tbsp fresh chopped chives
dash of salt and pepper
2 eggs, beaten

1. Mix filling ingredients together, and carefully stuff into the blossoms (I used a small measuring spoon to scoop it in and gently push it in).

2. Batter up the squash blossoms by dipping them into the egg, then dredging them into the mixture of cornmeal, chives and salt and pepper.

3. Place squash blossoms carefully into a pan with hot oil. Cook for a few minutes each side, until golden brown.

4. Put on paper towel to remove excess oil, then eat and enjoy!

Harry Potter Party: Sourcing Materials

2011-07-28T07:55:00.003-04:00

Here's where I got most of the goodies for the party:

OrientalTrading.com: Aragog pinata and pinata candy, black and gold star paper plates, gold cake plates, rainbow lollipops for the "puffapods"

A.C. Moore: Black felt, dowels, oven dried clay

IKEA: black cocktail napkins, glass bottles and vases

Target: Puffapod planters, black flat sheet

Zazzle.com: Hogwarts crest stickers for invitations, and house crest pins for sorting

Etsy.com: Cute cake toppers from CraftyRosy

Online sources for labels & ideas

Dirt & Sunshine offered inspiration and a ton of great labels and signs for download

It's the Life for fabulous inspiration

Poppytalk for cute labels for favors and potions

Gray Sparrow for cute vintage labels

Fantasy Jr. for some great Potter-themed potion labels

Harry Potter Party: Favors

2011-07-28T07:47:00.005-04:00

All good things must come to an end, but at least our guests got parting gifts to keep the party going. (Most guests left after the cake and ice cream, but we had several who decided to stay for our screening of Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets.)

Our guests went home with:
Their house crest pins (Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, Slytherin or Ravenclaw, from Zazzle.com)
Their wands and "Magic for Muggles" class books
Their puffapod plants
Chocolate Frogs (though I forgot before many of the guests left!)
And their pinata loot

I already know I'm doing a repeat of this party in January, when my youngest turns 5. Should be a breeze, right?

Harry Potter Party: Group Activities

2011-07-28T07:38:00.004-04:00

We did combine the houses for our last few classes: transfiguration, defense against the dark arts, and broom racing.

Transfiguration was basically charades. The students turned themselves into an animal, and the rest of the class had to figure out what it was. (The big stumper? My daughter, the hippogriff.)

For Defense Against the Dark Arts, Aragog (a spider pinata) presented itself. The students had to take turns whacking it with their wands. (And yes, got more candy!)

Broom Racing was simple—we took the whole gang down the street to the playground and let them expend a little of that sugar on the playground equipment, then ran a relay race with the kids running with brooms. The kids had so much fun that they didn't stop at just one turn with the broom, and every team was declared a winner.

Next up? Party favors!

Harry Potter Party: Care of Magical Creatures Class

2011-07-28T07:35:00.000-04:00

How do you teach a magical creatures class when you don't actually have too many magical creatures at your house? Improvise!

We had two overturned milk crates for cages—one was empty, the other had my daughter's toy dragon in it. I went into detail about the "Chinese fireball" dragon, and told them that we need to feed that baby a combination of chicken's blood and brandy every half hour. (The boys loved the gross factor!)

The other looked empty, but it turned out it was filled with "gnargles," the magical creatures Luna Lovegood claimed stole all her stuff. We learned that eating flobberworms, though, would keep gnargles away from us. The kids all eagerly ate from a big jar of gummi worms. (And yes, I'm aware that the kids each walked away from this party about a pound of sugar heavier!)

I had placed an old baby gate off to the side in the yard, and said that they could go see the hippogriff. Imagine my surprise when it had escaped!

As the final (and most fun) aspect of the class, each house designed their own magical creatures—most featuring dozens of eyes, odd numbers of feet, and wings.

Harry Potter Party: Herbology Class

2011-07-28T07:31:00.000-04:00

The Herbology class rocked, thanks to a wonderful friend who not only brushed up on Professor Sprout, she made her own costume for the party. We held the class in my kids' playroom, where we'd amassed all of our plants, along with a few props, like a mini mandrake made from oven dried clay. The class included several activities:

1. Viewing the mandrake. In Harry Potter, mandrake screams can be deadly—but since this was a teeny, tiny baby mandrake, it was still silent.

2. Taste testing a plant. Gillyweed is a key plot point in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where it helps him to swim underwater for one of the challenges. We invented a near-twin plant, called "sillyweed," that makes the person act silly. We had them taste our plant (fresh mint from our garden) to determine which one it was...whether it was salty (gillyweed) or minty (sillyweed). No one grew gills, so I think we had some sillyweed on our hands.

3. Planting a magical plant. We labeled small buckets with each guest's name. They poured in a scoop of "dirt" (Jelly Bellys), then planted in a "seed" (jujubes). Lo and behold, before the party was over, they had grown "puffapods," which were lollipop flowers. (My helper snuck back up during dinner to put the flowers—two lollipops held together with pipe cleaners and decked with construction paper petals and leaves—in the pots.)

Harry Potter Party: Potions Class

2011-07-28T07:28:00.006-04:00

Truth be told, this was probably the coolest class we taught—thanks in no small part to my husband's ability to play a (kinder, gentler) Snape....and the wicked cool (drinkable!) Felix Felicis Potion we dreamed up.

Here's the how to do it:

Felix Felicis (a potion that brings you good luck in anything you try)

1 cup moondew (AKA lemon-lime soda)

1 tsp. phoenix tears (lemon juice with a little yellow food coloring)

1 tsp. powdered bicorn horn (baking soda mixed with a packet of KoolAid mix)

1 tbsp. dried boom berries (PopRocks)

We added some yellow food coloring to make the lemon juice pop a bit more, and my husband found that adding the bicorn horn (AKA a mix of baking soda and KoolAid powder) last made for an impressive finish. The potion would in turns: turn yellow (adding the lemon juice), start to pop and fizz (the Pop Rocks), turn red and fizz like crazy (the baking soda/KoolAid combo). And apparently, it tasted pretty darned good, too!

Harry Potter Party: Charms Class

2011-07-28T07:28:00.000-04:00

After the sorting, the kids each headed off with a different instructor. (If you're having as many kids as we had, 18, it helps to divide and conquer as often as possible!) Charms class was held in my living room, where the teachers taught the kids a few different spells to use for dueling:

Expelliarmus (opponent loses their wand)
Stupefy (opponent is frozen)
Riddikulus (opponent acts silly)
Wingardium Leviosa (opponent flies around the room)

The kids caught on really fast, and were having a ball stupefying their friends. (It probably helps that that classes instructor is a friend of mine who is a fabulous teacher!)

The spells were in their Magic for Muggles book, so they could bring the magic home...literally!

Harry Potter Party: Getting the Party Started

2011-07-28T07:16:00.000-04:00

This wasn't the kind of party where you just come, hang out and play with balloons, and walk off with a party favor. Nosiree.

Guests arrived in "Diagon Alley," where they visited Flourish and Blotts for their textbook, Magic for Muggles (I'll post the concept for that later), then on to Ollivanders, where they chose from a selection of wands—inspired by this blog's fabulous idea—made from wooden dowels that I stained, and some oven-dried clay. My husband and I spent an entertaining evening doing that and watching Inglourious Basterds. We're cool like that.

But you don't just grab a wand and that's that. You have to test it out. Fortunately, my sunroom ceiling fan has a remote control. So I hid that behind my back and had them say, "Lumos." Just to see if it worked. (It almost always did.)

Then it was through 9 3/4, and into the Great Hall for the sorting hat ceremony. The felt hat I glued together from the banner scraps looked delightfully scruffy. The guests put it on, then grabbed pins with the various house crests on them, to be "sorted" into their houses.

Once that was done, it was time to head out to their classes...

Harry Potter Party: The Party Food

2011-07-27T20:36:00.007-04:00

Let's face it: JK Rowling seems to like her sweets. She spends pages in every Harry Potter book going on about butterbeer, chocolate frogs, Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, and the like. And the rest of the food, the pumpkin pasties, the shepherd's pie, the blancmange, isn't exactly kid-friendly fare. (Well, maybe my kids, who adore stinky cheese and sushi, but for the rest of the gang, pizza was going to be the best option.)

To be honest, I usually spend a bit more time on food when I'm planning a party, because I love to cook for my friends. But in this case, with the decorations, scheduling and favors taking up so much of our time, the food kind of took a back seat. Here's what we served:

Pre-dinner snacks
Chips: I chose some blue potato chips along with my tortillas, just to get the element of the odd in there, to serve with salsa and guacamole.

Veggie tray with ranch dip: This was meant to be served in the herbology lab, but somehow never made it up there.

Drinks
Butterbeer: We used cream soda, diet and regular, with cool butterbeer labels someone designed online, and optional butterscotch syrup on the side).

Gillywater: Clearly marked for grownups only, this was an easy white wine sangria that's a go-to summer cocktail for us.

Bubble Juice: Also known as lemonade.

We also had water and plain old beer for grownups (didn't have a chance to doctor those labels). And there was the nifty potion we had our classes make—more on that later.

Dinner
We made this easy-peasy and reasonably cheap. Our favorite grocery delivery service, Fresh Direct, has pretty tasty frozen pizzas. We bought a few cheese, a few pepperoni, and a few more with barbecued chicken and artichokes. While we took the kids out to run around on broomsticks, my husband was pizza chef and did an admirable job getting them cooked and served on time.

Dessert
Cake and ice cream, of course. I built a Hogwarts cake with a couple of square cakes cut in half and stacked, and a few cupcakes and ice cream cones for the towers. Extra cupcakes were simply frosted and decked out with Harry's signature lightning scar, done up in glitter frosting. And I bought the cool fondant Harry, Hermione and Ron from Crafty Rosy on Etsy. (The cake was a bit more impressive BEFORE the kids all demolished it!)

Movie Snacks
During the movie, we served up "magic wands," chocolate licorice dipped in white chocolate. Those were a big hit!

Next up: The party gets started!

Harry Potter Party: The Decor

2011-07-27T20:10:00.008-04:00

We kept my color printer busy over the course of plotting this party. We printed out labels to decorate glass and soda bottles for a convincing potions display in my kitchen, and portraits of some of our favorite professors (and of course, the fat lady that guards Gryffindor tower) to tape over the paintings in the "Great Hall" (AKA the dining room).

We built Diagon Alley in our sunroom. Flourish and Blotts featured our Harry Potter books and a few old tomes, along with a special "Magic for Muggles" booklet we created (more on that in another post) as a take home.

At the beginning of our party, the living room served as Ollivander's, where guests could find their wands—then later, it became the charms classroom.

And we have a large archway between our living room and dining room that became Platform 9 3/4, with the addition of a clever sign, some old brown fabric and a tension rod. (Kids had a ball running through.)

My daughters' playroom was transformed into the herbology lab, with a set of props. Alas, I was too busy during set up to get any pictures before or during the party—I tried my best to recreate everything afterward. Enjoy!

Our "portrait wall" with photos of key characters—and the products of our houses' "create your own magical creature" brainstorms.

The Hogwarts banner in our Great Hall—made with a large piece of felt (the rest became our sorting hat), and a colorful printout of a Hogwarts crest glued on it. We used a black flat sheet as a tablecloth.

A shelf in our herbology lab, with silk flowers found in the dressup bin, a "mandrake" made from oven dried clay, garlic scapes, and the only plants in our house who haven't fallen victim to my black thumb.

"Potions" look extra creepy when they're set against a bright window.

Up next: Party Food!

Harry Potter Party: Invitations

2011-07-19T07:44:00.005-04:00

We waffled for a brief period about the type of invitations to use for the party. At first, we considered making a video—we'd dressed my oldest up as Princess Leia and had her say "Help me celebrate my birthday—you're my only hope" for her Star Wars party. And I figured she'd make a pretty mean Hermione.

But then I came up with something much simpler (and perhaps even cooler): I'd send out letters that were close copies of the famous acceptance letter Harry Potter received in the Sorcerer's Stone.

Here's how the wording went:
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear [Child's Name],

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, in order to celebrate the 7th birthday of one of our brightest students, [Birthday Girl's Name].

Term begins on [Date and Time of Party]; you may meet the Hogwarts Express at [Party Address].

We await your owl at [phone number and e-mail address] no later than [RSVP Date].

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress

We found and downloaded a cool (and free) Harry Potter font, LumosLatino, and a black and white jpeg of the Hogwarts crest for the top (also free, at http://fairies-n-pixies.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html). I printed it on creamy, heavyweight paper, and sent them out with Zazzle stickers with a colorful Hogwarts crest.

The invites probably took me about 20 minutes to design, and cost less than $10 to make 18 of them (and that includes having oodles of leftover paper to use for some of our other projects). If we'd had our act together, I would have hand delivered them all, to save on postage and get that "delivered by an owl" vibe.

The best part? Several of the kids thought the letters were authentic, and it made them doubly excited to visit our "Hogwarts."

Next up: Potter-Perfect Party Decor!

Harry Potter Party, Part 1

2011-07-11T17:49:00.004-04:00

One of my favorite parts of momdom is planning my daughters' birthday parties. And so, I have a tendency to go a TEENSY bit overboard when we celebrate. In past years, we've had artful monkey parties, a princess tea party (with costumes and real tea), and a Star Wars party with a special visit from a not-so-menacing Darth Vader.

But when my 7-year-old's passions coincided with one of mine (a certain young wizard and his magical world), my passion for planning went into overdrive. And so my daughter and 17 of her best friends got to spend a day in J.K. Rowling's magical world, complete with a trip to Diagon Alley and a full schedule of classes at Hogwarts.

Follow this blog over the next few days as I share the details of how I pulled together a Harry Potter party that my daughter still raves is the "best party ever."

Pinkalicious Strawberry Lemonade

2011-05-31T17:34:00.002-04:00

My daughters have been obsessed with having a lemonade stand, ever since they read that their favorite book heroine, Pinkalicious, had one. (Anything that combines two of their favorite loves—lemonade and cold, hard cash—is an obvious win-win for them.)

At our garage sale last weekend, they finally got their wish, and they managed to score about $6 on three jugs of lemonade. Not too bad a haul, considering they were generous with their 25-cent pours (and that they sampled quite a bit of their own product).

Maybe they could have scored even more if I'd skipped the from-concentrate version we served at our stand, and went straight for the holy grail—this amazing strawberry lemonade recipe, with real lemons and all.

Juice of 6-7 lemons (should yield about a cup of lemon juice)
1 cup of frozen strawberries
2/3 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups water

Place all ingredients in a blender, set to liquefy, then pour.

P.S. We were hoping to make this into more of a slushie texture (see the frozen strawberries). I think next time, we'd replace the 1/2 cup water with a 1/2 cup ice and see where that gets us.

Falling in Love with Fruit

2011-05-18T09:21:00.005-04:00

My name is Lisa, and I was a chocoholic. In fact, if there wasn't chocolate involved, I didn't consider it a real dessert.

But that was before last year's co-op bounty started expanding my horizons. I made cherry clafoutis, plum crisp, grilled peaches with honey. And now, I've found my ultimate fruit dessert, courtesy of Epicurious.com—a totally wonderful variation on strawberry shortcake—a buttermilk cake filled with mascarpone whipped cream and topped with liqueur-mascerated berries.

I've done my own take on it, though. In lieu of the sherry, I used amaretto (divine!)—and the first time I made it, I used ricotta cheese instead of mascarpone, which I couldn't find in the grocery store. And I use whatever berries I can find: One time ruby-red strawberries, another a mix of blackberries, raspberries and blueberries. And either way, it's perfectly divine. The buttermilk cake was wonderfully light and moist, the mascarpone filling the right amount of sweet, and the berries like sweet, vibrant jewels on top. Make this for your next dinner party (or your next just-because event). You won't be sorry.

Cooking Through a Kitchen Remodel

2011-04-25T22:44:00.002-04:00

We survived two full months with two small kids and (at best) about 25% of a working kitchen. And we did it without getting takeout more than a few nights a week. Here's how we did it.

• Invest in alternative cooking methods. We splurged on a slow cooker, discovered that there was more than one way to use my rice cooker (hello, steamer), and gave our grill a good workout (at least while the weather was warm).

• Ask your builder for help. See how soon your builder can hook you back up with the basics. We got our stove back within a few days of the project starting, and that made cooking a whole lot easier.

• Consider your cleaning plan. While the cooking was relatively easy, the cleanup was anything but--unless you consider scrubbing pots in the bathtub a fabulous idea. So we looked for a lot of one-pot meals, used paper plates and plastic forks (we made up for the bad environmental ju-ju with some serious conservation post-renovation), and relied on the kindness of neighbors for loaning us their dishwasher.

• Have fun with the idea of dinner. We sometimes served (healthy) snack foods as a dinner—-cheese, whole-grain crackers, veggies, hummus—-that qualifies as dinner, right?

• Keep your eyes on the prize. When your kitchen contents are piled high in every dusty corner of your house, and you're on your fifth day of mac and cheese, your stress levels are going to skyrocket. But keep remembering what you're in it for--and when you finally get to start cooking in that dream kitchen, the horrors of life without a proper kitchen will fade away.

A Fresh New Start

2011-04-22T14:12:00.004-04:00

So we survived the winter (and a massive kitchen remodel...more on that later!), thanks to some fabulous takeout restaurants and FreshDirect.com, our new favorite mode of grocery shopping when the farmer's market's been put out to pasture for the season.

And we're trying even harder to keep our consumption local, our products as green and low-chemical as possible, and ourselves healthier. And so far, it's working. Follow along with me as I try to green our family (and our diet).

Corn Salad

2010-09-08T23:50:00.003-04:00

The air has turned crisper, the farms are advertising apple picking—and that means that the days of fresh corn (and fresh tomatoes and basil from my garden) are numbered. But you may still have a week or two of great ingredients in which to make this killer corn salad. You need:

3 to 4 ears of corn
1 pint of cherry or grape tomatoes
a handful of basil leaves, chopped
juice of one lemon
4 oz. crumbled goat cheese
2 tbsp. olive oil

The corn can be served raw, or grilled for a smokier flavor. Cut the kernels off the husk, then mix in the tomatoes, goat cheese and chopped basil. Stir in the lemon and olive oil and enjoy—while you still can!

Tea for Me

2010-08-14T15:32:00.001-04:00

My family’s plastic recycling bin often overflowed, thanks to my addiction to diet sodas and sugar-free sparkling waters. But after reading about some serious concerns about ingredients in my beloved diet Coke—and some issues with the chemicals in the bottles themselves—I decided it was time to start trying to kick the habit. (Plus, I was feeling pretty bad about having the biggest recycling bin on the block.)

Still, plain old water wasn’t quite doing it for me—I needed a little flavor to my drink. And so I decided to start experimenting with iced teas. I’ve tried a few of the cold-brew bags that you can allow to steep in a cold glass of water for (almost) instant iced tea, and those definitely work in a pinch. But I have two go-to recipes for awesome teas.

The first tea has a little tart kick (and a great pink color) that I adore—but if you wanted to sweeten it, I would think ½ cup of sugar would do the trick.

Hibiscus-Lemon Tea
6 cups water
3 hibiscus tea bags
3 lemon zinger tea bags

Boil your water, then take it off the stove and steep the tea bags for 10 minutes. Let the mixture cool and enjoy it over ice.

This tea has a wonderful, fresh flavor—perfect for those hot summer days. Keep in mind that it has an ample amount of sugar, so this wouldn’t be considered a “diet” drink by any stretch of the imagination.

Mint Iced Tea

12 cups water
8 jasmine-green tea bags
1 cup mint leaves
1 cup sugar

Bring 12 cups of water to a boil, then turn off the heat and add in the tea bags and mint leaves. Cover the pot and let the tea steep for 15 minutes before removing the tea bags and mint. Stir in the sugar until it’s fully dissolved, then refrigerate the tea until it’s ready to serve.

Kitchen Redux

2010-08-12T12:31:00.003-04:00

When we bought our house, our kitchen was a selling point. Gorgeous green granite everywhere, newer appliances, even room for a table (a rarity in our neck of the woods).

But slowly, over a decade of living with the one-time kitchen of my dreams, I've fallen out of love with it. The granite floor is freezing cold in the winter, and a death sentence for pretty much anything that falls on it. (I still have a massive lump and bruise on my shin from a tripping incident three weeks ago.) The kitchen sink is rusting through, and the cupboards, which we knew were cheap going into this, are starting to fall apart.

And the "contractor" (I use that term extremely loosely) who owned it before us did countless little and large things wrong when he renovated the kitchen, and we're starting to pay the price for that.

So, we're considering a massive rehaul. We're busting down the wall between the kitchen and dining room, and putting up an island with stools, where we can do food prep. We're pulling down the cabinets and the countertops and putting up new, higher quality ones in its place. We're adding a massive pantry closet, and a desk where my kids can do their homework while I prep dinner. We're getting rid of the nasty, barely working ceiling fan and recessed lights, and putting in pretty pendants. We're ditching the granite floor and going for wood instead. And for good measure, we're fixing up our rundown little powder room, where the pedestal sink is in danger of falling over and the nasty wallpaper I was sure I'd ditch ASAP is starting to peel off the walls.

I'm super excited, more than a little nervous, and feeling guilty about sending all this stuff to the landfills. So I've contacted Green Demolitions, a company that salvages old building materials and sells them at a fraction of the cost. I'm hoping that, at the very least, they'll be able to find a good home for the granite.

Our contractor says it'll take about a month to get the whole thing squared away. I'm excited to see how it ends up, but wondering how we'll be cooking (and eating) through the construction. I'm forseeing a lot of takeout in our future.

Fruit Bug Zapper

2010-08-10T00:16:00.000-04:00

Farmer's market goodies seem to attract more than their fair share of fruit flies—and a banana that was hidden in a corner of my kitchen brought on a small storm of them. I searched the internet for a few quick tricks to nix the bugs. I decided to start with this "trap":

Put about 1/2 inch of dishwashing detergent at the bottom of a glass. Add in a teaspoon of water and swish to make it a little frothy. Top it off with a few tablespoons of apple cider vinegar.

Put a piece of plastic wrap over the top and poke small holes in it to allow flies to get in—they won't be able to figure out how to get back out.

But this bug zapper didn't work so well...I caught about three bugs this way. So I went to a much more successful method: vacuum cleaner. I was able to suck up most of them in no time flat.

If you do get fruit bugs—give that a try.

How We Got Here

2010-08-02T10:34:00.004-04:00

I never paid much attention to what I was eating—until college, when I decided that I wasn't going to eat most animals (only fish), and kept that lifestyle up for a decade and a half. Until last year, when two seismic shifts occurred in my life: my daughter's diagnosis with a host of food allergies, to dairy, eggs and wheat; and my book club's decision to read Barbara Kingsolver's treatise on the problems with our current food system, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

The first, which nixed some major sources of protein in our diet, forced us to reconsider our decision to avoid meat. And the second made us desire a more wholesome, farm-fresh diet.

And so, we've (almost) completely rethought our diet.

We're eating meat a few days a week—though we splurge on meat from a local farm, where the beef is grass fed, and the chickens are truly free range.

We belong to a food co-op which gives us farm-fresh food biweekly, and the bulk of the rest of our food comes from the local farmer's market–at least until the farmer's market closes up shop in October. We've started putting more of our (very little) swath of land to use growing tomatoes, herbs and fruit.

And it's translated into even bigger changes in our lifestyle. We look for (or make our own) eco-friendly cleaning products. We work harder to recycle and buy things with minimal packaging. And we do whatever we can to ensure that we aren't wasting what we have—and teaching our kids to do the same.

Our food tastes better, our waistlines have slimmed slightly, and we feel better about how we're living.