now kids - get ready for it, make sure you are sitting down and have no liquid in your mouth, ok?
the dishwasher is finally back on the plastic-wrapped porch!!!! oh dear heavens...i am feeling faint with happiness and joy!
some of you already know that our kitchen is so small that 2 people can barely fit in it. and with all of the from-scratch, home-made cooking that we do - we dirty a lot of dishes in a day! having 3 bins on the porch to store dirty dishes until you have enough to run the dishwasher, and then carrying those 3 bins down to the basement through 4ft of snow just isn't fun. we try to make it fun. no, we really try. but it ISN'T. having the dishwasher back on the porch just causes so much joy for us (we're weird like that!). jambaloney disconnected all of the hosing and whatnot, climbed under the icky crawlspace and re-connected all of the hose and lugged that baby from the basement to the porch. he did it all in under an hour and we have been high-fiving each other for 2 straight days now. and fighting over who gets to bring the dirty coffee mug out and put it in the dishwasher WHICH IS NOW ON THE PORCH! only 4-5ft from the kitchen door. i tell you people, it's the little things that make life so awesome!
even tho it's been so nice out for the last 2 weeks, i have been on a soup-bender. i love soup. and make all of our soup from scratch using homemade bone broth. this is pureed butternut squash and homemade broth with cilantro and hemp hearts. oh and of course, homemade croutons. yummeh!
my absolute favourite soup is french onion soup. i make mine using homemade bone broth, caramelized onions, a big fat toasted homemade crouton, some mozzarella (or gruyere but i prefer mozzarella!) and some parsley. deelish!
jam was never a big soup fan but he worked in restaurants for years and ate their terrible soups. now he enjoys soup for dinner almost as much as me. but for supper you can always count on him wanting to grill up a steak.
served with homemade salsa and kimchi! or some liver, mushrooms, sauteed spinach with garlic and kimchi.
i hate to brag since i already bragged about getting the dishwasher out of the basement....but....we also set up our outdoor kitchen the other day! woohoo! you can wash 10 million cat plates a day using the outdoor kitchen...and we really do go through 10 million cat plates a day. check out our awesome set-up:
it's hard not to love life when you have all of these extra accroutrements....that jam found in the garbage - bahahahah!
we love homemade salsa around here and will eat it with every meal! soon, i'll be making it with our own fresh ingredients - woohoo! however, at least all of the greens came from our greenhouse - yummeh! nothing like fresh salad greens that you grow yourself!
in my previous post, i shared with you my faery garden. but i also do another "specific" garden called the medieval herber. both my faery garden and medieval garden i get from The Cottage Gardener in ontario. this year i will be able to collect and save enough seed to never have to order the seeds again.
make sure to enlarge the pics to know what traditional herbs were contained in a medieval herber.
here are my 2 medieval herbers soaking up the sun in the greenhouse. i will put them out on the deck sometime around the beginning of june.
hey - how about 56 tomatoe plants all successfully transplanted except for one little lost soldier. you can't see them all because the shelf at the back of the greenhouse is so big.
we wrap the big shelf up in plastic every evening to contain the heat and man is it working! i could never had the space to start this many tomatoes and have them at this size without the greenhouse!
and saving the best for last - all 160 potatoe seeds have been planted!
woohoo! woohoo! woohoo! i am doing the crazy dance right now! and heading off to start supper. it's been a long week and we are pretty happy with how well everything has been going. tomorrow night we are off to a special "chase the ace" and bingo game in our sister community in Fourchu and then sunday evening we are invited to supper by our super special brother and sister. we can't wait to meet up with them again.
i hope all of you have had a wonderful week and i hope that you all have a wonderful weekend.
You have really worked hard. You should have such a large crop in the summer. I have only done about 20 tomato plants and have lost one. But I am trying hard to produce as much as possible this year.
ReplyDeleteI hope we have a good summer in Cornwall this year.
Rosezeeta.
Rosezeeta - i have been looking through your blog and just love your house and yard. would you like me to add you to our blogroll? 20 tomatoe plants minus one should give you a good harvest, and i love that you are trying to produce as much as possible - so are we. and i hope that you have a truly beautiful summer in Cornwall. i will stop by your blog in a bit and leave a comment there for you. thank you for visiting and i hope that you come back!
DeleteOne thing about living close to the bone is that small joys take on new meaning!
ReplyDeleteMr. Smythe - no truer words have been spoken! learning how to live with a "less is more" philosophy, and learning to appreciate what you have is a beautiful journey. thank you, Sir!
Deletenice....
ReplyDeletethanks, buddy - nice to see you around these parts again!
DeleteGood for you guys! Looking forward to seeing the garden grow!
ReplyDeletethanks DFW - oh i can't wait for mid-summer when everything is planted in the ground and growing. it's going to be an awesome year!
DeleteBravo
ReplyDeletewell, monsieur, thank you very much. and now i take a bow. a proper bow (i was taught a proper bow in ballet) - much love buddy and i sure hope that you are feeling better!
DeleteHow did any of us cope without a dishwasher?? So glad you've got yours set up close to the kitchen!
ReplyDeleteI recognise those flower shaped plastic plates, aren't they from Ikea?
Joey - well for the first year that we were here, it was all handwashing dishes. but because i cook so much and dirty so many dishes - we neeeed that dishwasher! but during the winter when it lives in the basement, it is pure heck loading up bins to go outside through all the snow to the basement door to load, and unload the dishwasher. i am in pure heaven now that it is on the porch!
Deleteand yes, most observant one, those flower plates are from IKEA!!! are they still selling them? i swear i got mine for use as cat plates like 15yrs ago!!! they are awesome little plates! much love buddy!
As always, great food pictures.
ReplyDeleteMy ferrets crawled into the dish washer cabinent and chewed up the rubber gromets. So now I can't run the dishwasher. Since it takes me about two weeks to get one load for it, I don't care. But my wife wants a new one, she hated the old one. I guess we will go look at Home Depot but it seems like a needless expense to me. I'm fine to wash the few dishes we have in a wash pan in the sink.
thanks my friend. as you know, i really like making food.
Deleteas for the ferrets, why those little rascals will get into anything eh?
i don't mind washing dishes it's just that we have very little counter space, and at every meal, the kitchen is covered in dirty dishes because i make everything from scratch. having the dishwasher really, really improves my quality of life! much love to you and all of yours!
Kym,
ReplyDeleteYou have to tell me WHY I was thinking I would see Jam wrapped in plastic on the back porch! :-)
bahaahahhaha! it's one of 3 reasons Mike - either you know that jam does a lot of washing up while i am cooking, or you thought that i had whacked him, wrapped him in plastic and put him on the porch to dispose of later... or else your little mind is in the gutter - bahahahahahahah!
Deletekymber - Your meals always look so very appetising. I bet you can't wait to harvest from your greenhouse :)
ReplyDeleteDishwashers - I had to leave mine behind in town - not enough power here to run one. I do miss it though... Enjoy yours again :)
thanks so much Dani and, yes, you know i can't wait to start harvesting. other than lettuce and a few herbs, that's all i have for now. but soon, Dani....sooon!
Deletei understand that a dishwasher would pull way too much power and applaud your family once again for going full solar. you are an inspiration! xox
Your kitchen may be small but the delectable delights that come from there certainly aren't ! Keep up the amazing work ! Love to you both,
ReplyDeletethank you sweet Jane! we're still hoping you make it up to NS this year and if you - we will have to meet up! love back from both of us to you and all of yours! xoxoxo
DeleteI just love your enthusiasm and gratefulness for all things large and small. It always brings a smile to my face and gives me the inspiration to do the best I can with our homestead. You and Jambaloney are certainly a power packed couple. Nothing seems beyond you and yet I know that you probably have your moments of "what do we do now?" May your summer be fantastic and all your plants thrive. Keep posting photos of your delicious meals. Love your photos!
ReplyDeletegmv - you couldn't say a nicer thing to either of us. you should have seen us the first winter - shivering in an un-insulated house, stuff blowing up, pipes freezing and busting, poor jam trying to put in an attic door so that we could have some storage, no power, no heat, etc., etc. - oh what a learning curve! but we really do try to do as much as we can and learn as much as we can. we have learned much from various bloggers, like yourself, and others that we met on the APN/CPN. we want to live happily and enjoy each and every moment. and yes, there have been a bazillion times that we look like deer with their eyes caught in the headlights and say "oh no. what do we do now????". but we try to remember that those times are going to happen no matter what, and i think it's the way that we can get each other through those times that is the key. you are doing great with your homestead and i wish you all of the best with all that you are doing. and i hope that you have a fantastic summer and that all of your plants thrive, too. xoxo
DeleteFood looks good Kymber, as always. Especially the steak :)
ReplyDeleteThe green house and plants look awesome except for those nasty looking old tires :)
Rob says you owe me cookies BTW.
Love you guys.
Wait, What?? How did I get sucked into this. ??? Cookies I love cookies, but that's on my can't eat anymore list..:(
Deletethanks buddy - and ya, you would like jam's steak...he likes his rare and blueish. ick. the greenhouse is working wonders and you can say what you want about my tires - i think that they are beautiful because i know how much food they will produce - so there! and Rob DID NOT say anything about me sending you cookies - so there!!! and even tho yer still a wiener, you know that we love you back!
DeleteRob - buddy, you gotta start watching who you hang out with! i love PP and call him bro, but he's nothing but trouble, buddy! he'll get you into all kinds of messes. ask him about the episode in a bar in detroit - oh ya!
Deletei know that you can't eat cookies anymore and i feel for you. poor Rob. but stick to foods that the doctor recommends. i mean it. or i'll have to get those boots out - you know the ones!
i hope you are feeling better buddy, and we are sending our best wishes and prayers to you and yours always!
Seriously it wasn't Detroit it was across the river/lake thing where if you ask for a Canadian Beer it shouldn't be a friggin import.
DeleteThe girls were nice though.
Hey Sweet Kymber,
ReplyDeleteThis is the third time I'm writing the same comment. Blogger keeps messing with my head this evening.
It's really nice to have more room in your kitchen with moving your dishwasher outside of the house. Many years back we had a rolling dishwasher, talk about convenient. You could put that thing any where and just hook it up to any faucet.
After reading this post earlier, I had to have french onion soup for lunch. Dummy me didn't make it. We went into town to run an errand and stopped at a restaurant. They had french onion soup, don't get me wrong it was good. But didn't have enough cheese or any croutons. I would have been better making my own......or coming up there and eating yours :P Bahahahahahahaha!!!!
Between you and SCI you'll have enough tomatoes to last you both for years to come.
How many potatoes are you looking to get this year from your seedlings? My potatoes without exaggeration are now 4 feet tall. The flowers are blooming on several of the plants.
I have to stick to the tire planting of potatoes, they seem to like this process better than using plain straw without soil and compost.
I'm excited for you on the medieval herbers planters, I can't wait to see pictures of them popping out of the ground.
How did chase the ace go this weekend?
Sending hugs and love to you both.
Your Friend Sandy
P.S. Sent you and e-mail
Sweet Sandy - i hate it when i write a big comment and then lose it and then have to re-type it and then can't even remember what my original comment was - arghghghgh?!?!?! the dishwasher wasn't in the kitchen - it was in the basement and that was a royal pain. now that it's on the porch - oh sweet heaven. and yes, you should have made your own french onion soup...or at the very least, since you went into town, you should have driven up here and i could have made you some - bahahahah! oh Sandy, i hope that what you say is true...for both me and Sci. i hope we have tomatoes coming out of our ears. Sci never has problems with tomatoes, i remember last year she was giving 5 gallon buckets of tomatoes away!!!! i hope that i can get that much this year.
Deleteas to potatoes, based on calculations from several years' harvests, we are conservatively expecting 200lbs of eating potatoes, and 30 lbs of seed potatoes, God willing. Sandy, are you hilling your potatoes? the plants themselves should never be higher than 6-8 inches if you want the tubers, the potatoes, to keep growing. oh never mind - i'll write all of this in an email response to yours.
i am excited on the faery garden and medieval planters as well....no worries, i'll be boring you to death with pictures of them for you.
chase the ace went really well....our kitty is now up to about $1,000 and no one picked the ace this week - woohoo! lots of love to you and yours always, my sweet friend! xoxox
Looks yummy!
ReplyDelete