February 22, 2009

Food ambitions for this year:
  • get a second crop and harvest of peas - one in the spring, one in the fall
  • prepare and freeze more pesto
  • make a hard cheese - cheddar or gouda
  • make blackberry jam
  • make apricot jam
  • put up a roasted red pepper spread
  • and a tomato preserve
  • come up with a scheme that will allow me to purchase pastured chicken from the farmers' market and store it so that I can use it in small portions without cooking the whole thing and then freezing the bulk of it (which makes for yucky chicken)
  • put up a comparable quantity of tomatoes as last year
  • experiment with an alternative onion storage technique, and store more onions
  • research grain mills with an eye toward being able to grind my own whole wheat flour; bonus points if the mill is electric but retrofit-able for hand grinding
  • freeze some broccoli
  • freeze more corn
  • do the math for the economics of making my own butter
  • dry more celery
  • look into making mayonnaise; this is especially interesting if I can do it in small batches or if it keeps well
  • find Caitlyn a replacement for her "nut covered raisins" breakfast cereal, something that doesn't have corn syrup or hydrogenated stuff in it
  • read up on making pasta - not likely to be something I do regularly but it would be good to know how to do it
  • harvest more of the "fringe" berries - the huckleberries and lingonberries - in the yard
  • experiment with more of those good-for-you veggies like beets and turnips, both growing and eating


Other ambitions:
  • attempt making soap
  • sew more of our clothes; especially see if I can extend the life of things Caitlyn outgrows by lengthening or repurposing
  • complete some more quilts, especially some of those that have been waiting in the cedar chest for proper backings or those I've been intending to make out of old t-shirts
  • write more regularly, even if it's blogging
  • balance my reading diet of fantasy fiction with serious fiction and non-fiction
  • find some non-neighborhood volunteer activity; I'm infatuated with the idea of helping out on a farm
  • laugh more
  • get myself sufficiently extricated from neighborhood association stuff that I'm interested in doing stuff with the broader community (tackling the anti-clothesline rule or teaching sewing or something)
  • add a new client or two to the roster
  • bring in more money each month than it costs us for Caitlyn's preschool
  • worry less, especially about The State of Things - all I can do is prepare as best I can for the space I'm in and worrying isn't going to change what happens, or make it happen faster or slower
  • find a better balance between what I want to do and what Caitlyn wants to do
  • go for more hikes
  • come to some decision about what comes after preschool
  • get more exercise
  • organize the garage to better use the space
  • let go of useless stuff I've been hanging on to, like all my notes from my college courses; I probably have all my AP US history notes from high school around here somewhere, too

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