happy halloween

Happy Halloween from our little stinkbug.

annual pumpkin patch visit

Thanks to Grandma Gottula, who scouted many many pumpkin patch options (most of which weren't actually options since they didn't open until 4 PM and only catered to the teen-ager-corn-maze crowd), we had an awesome visit to the Country Merchantile pumpkin patch in the TriCities a couple weekends ago.

A photo essay of our terrific fall adventure (with photographic credit also to Grandma!):

(hayride out to the pumpkin field)


(pumpkins as far as the eye can see)


(the one!)



(they had cute animal-themed posters all around for photo opps)

("I'm this tall this year, Ma!")

(this is where we got LOTS of smiles... the toddler-sized hay-bale maze. so fun!!)






(this is our newest desktop image on our computer...)

(umm... a-dor-able!)


(we did the tunnel too on the big hay pyramid, but Wesley was a little confused by it all)

(fun at the petting zoo...including seeing a real live reindeer!!)

(we got to take a train ride, very cool!)

(our last stop... playing on the John Deere tractor!)

(ok LOVE the look on his face)

Happy Fall to you and yours from us and ours!

harvest

Just a quick blog update to report the harvest from my upside-down tomato planter. Since this weekend is expected to be our first major Seattle cold snap, it was time to be done with the summertime hanging garden.

I was thrilled I had all these budding little tomatoes.... too bad they didn't have time to ripen. I noticed, probably early last week, that ONE was getting red -- wow! YAY! And then when I went to pick them all, it was gone! What? I was shocked. The only explanation was that it ripened and fell off! I went down to the ground level of our building (we live on the third floor, and our hanging planter is over the side of our balcony), and I found it on the someone's patio! I snatched it up and brought it upstairs and ate it. Yum.

Then I picked all the green ones off the monstrous plant.


But what to do with all these green buggers? No sweat; I'd had lots of friends recommend recipes like green tomato pie (seriously), green tomato pasta, and green tomato salsa.

For your visual enjoyment, here is the fruits of my labor... one batch of green tomato salsa which went on some marinated chicken, served with broccoli and sweet potatoes last night. I feel all grown up. Shane loved the salsa. It had jalapeno in it and I don't know what possessed me to do that. I touched my nose and it burned for hours.


But it was great. Nice healthy dinner, right? I feel good. I'm excited to try it again next year (and earlier, for sure).

Tomorrow's food adventure? Canning 25 pounds of apples...

ashes to ashes

This weekend we took a fun trip to the TriCities to visit Shane's family. It was a couple weeks before our annual ward Halloween party and the mountain passes still didn't have any snow, so we figured it was a good time to get away before fall/winter really hit.

Saturday morning while we were doing crafts at Church, I got an email on my phone about a fire at our Church building at home. What? I almost thought it was a joke. Then, I went to a few news Web sites on my phone... and it wasn't just a fire. Our entire Church building burned down.

According to some of the news sites, it was a "two-alarm" fire, which means when the first set of firefighters showed up, they realized they couldn't handle it, so they called in reinforcements. The fire was first called in at 3 AM, but it could have been set much earlier. Everything inside the building could have been burning for hours -- the books in the library, the chairs in the foyer, my ward newsletters, the lacquer on the gymnasium floor. Then the main structure was ablaze, and the firefighters decided to only act defensively. They did not enter the building. They weren't fighting the fire. They were making sure it didn't spread. The building was a lost cause.

Most of us found out about it Saturday. There was supposed to be a two-part Relief Society service project. I was going to miss the Saturday session, but I was planning to go tonight (Tuesday) to help finish up. They had a phone tree to let most of the sisters know, um, it had been canceled.

A lot of people went to the Church. One friend on her blog said that wasn't a good idea for their kids; her 5-year-old took it really hard. I suppose I would have, too, if I saw the building still smoldering. Firefighters stayed on hand all day, well into the evening, putting out the flames.

Of my Church building.

Where I have felt the Spirit so many times. Where I have laughed -- where I have cried. Where Wesley goes to nursery and has his favorite school bus toys. Where my son was blessed as an infant, in fact. Where we gather to worship.

And, as Saturday progressed, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms investigated and said, in fact, that this fire was deliberately set. Someone burned our building down. I found one video that spoke about "suspicious cans" found near the back entrance of the building, where they believe the fire originated.

We could speculate all day about what this means, and believe me I have, but our stake president gave us as a ward some counsel and said really no good comes of that. We don't need to be angry, we don't need to judge, we don't need to let this drag us down. In fact, we will be looked upon to see if we respond in a Christ-like manner, and we must. We should emphasize the positive and move on.

True, no one was hurt. True, it was "just stuff" that was lost. True, our religion is more than just a building. If someone thinks they can smolder our spirit by burning our building, they are wrong. It doesn't matter where we meet, the Church and the Spirit are the same.

In fact, I heard there have been incredible out-pourings of support from the community. Everyone is incredulous that a church was destroyed, no matter whose church it was. The morning of the fire, when the Mukilteo City Council heard we had to cancel our service project, they made their City Hall available for us to use. Our organist plays professionally for another Church in the area, and they offered their building for our ward to meet in temporarily. You'll see in my pictures below, high-school students (the high school is next door!) have left flowers and notes in front of the ashes.

On Sunday, a Stake Conference was going on in Everett, so our ward was able to use a building left vacant for the day. My friends have reported how wild that experience was. The two scheduled speakers cut it really short, and the Bishop and Stake President spoke for most of Sacrament Meeting. Sunday School and third hour went on as planned. I even heard they had Ward Council in the morning! It was business as usual.

The media was there, and our leadership specifically asked a few people to go and speak with them so we could appear positive and uplifting amid this affliction. Our Bishop called it that -- an affliction. It's not a trial we placed upon ourselves by sin or weakness, it's something that has been afflicted on us for the time being.

In the Bishop's talk, he expressed that he hadn't felt unity of our ward the way he felt it that day. It was true, something like this will totally unify a ward. And indeed, that can be a blessing in this affliction. I was grateful to all my friends who took copious notes for me and reported back! :-)

In this video, you can see basically, um everyone from my ward. I mean, WOW!




We got back from our weekend away late Sunday night, and I finally went by the building Monday afternoon to see it for myself.

I could smell the charred wood. The building was surrounded by a chain-link fence. Our meetinghouse is a total loss. It was disheartening.

(front door)

(flowers from high school students)


(Collapsed roof over the Young Women's Room)

(side door... Bishop's office is to the right; I take photos for the Bishop's photo board and just reorganized it a week and a half ago! He said he loved it! And now? Toast!)

(back door... this is where they say the fire started, and you can really see how it looks worse than the front)

(I did these two since you can see into the Primary Room... you can see the melted clock on the wall, and chairs stacked in the corner ready for a new Sunday. Sigh.)

Our Stake President has said many times that we will rebuild, although it isn't confirmed that it'll be on the same spot, or how long that will take. I imagine the Church has building plans and they can submit and get permits quick. Maybe this will be a boon for some local construction firms -- another blessing in the affliction.

As awful as this is, if it brings us together as a ward and community, if it helps gets people more involved in Church, if we are able to be good examples and shine love through ourselves, it could be considered a blessing. And that is how we have to look at it. We'll get new hymn books and more exciting nursery toys. We'll make new tablecloths for the Young Women's room and flower arrangements for the Chapel.

I'm grateful for my Church and my testimony and the Spirit that is with me, telling me this is all going to be OK.

i saw an L!!!

My newest obsession is seriously silly. But I find it interesting, and so I share it today.


In the glorious State of Washington, our license plate numerations have recently changed. For a long time we were three numbers and then three letters, but evidently they ran out of configurations so now it's three letters followed by four numbers (with no dash).

Well. When I first realized this had happened, I started noticing license plates. Everywhere. And in my mind, I pinged the time-frame of the licensing of the car. For example, my car, bought in January 2008, is an XEG. So I see a lot of Xs, Ys, Zs, and that means they are all after me. I suppose in 2008 and 2009 we went through the rest of the alphabet, and in 2010 they started with the AAA1111s.

But not only this, I kept looking for older licenses. I'd see Ss every once in awhile; Shane's new (used) car is a U. Once I saw a P and about peed in my pants. And then the other day -- not once, not twice, but three times -- I saw an L. WOW! Can you imagine how old an L car is?

The lesson here is that wow, we as a people go through cars like we go through underwear. I am shocked at how the vast majority of the cars are after X -- meaning they are newer than 2008. Really? We all bought a new (or used, new to us) car in the last two years? That's insane!

Tangent: This reminds me of when I was in college, I'd go for a run in the morning and pass lots of cars parked on the street. I'd play a guessing game with myself -- are they automatic or manual? I was obsessive about it! Every day on my morning runs I'd be pegging transmissions. License plates are simply my newest vehicle identification hangup. Weird.

Anyway, Shane says sometimes the state makes you re-license, but I'm not sure how often that happens. For the most part, it appears no one keeps their cars for awhile.

This just in! I found this article on the Seattle Times from 2007 that talks about this! I missed it the first time around or of course I would have been fascinated. It says plates are re-issued every 7 years (hmmm not sure those L people are obeying that law), there are lots of three-letter combos they can't use (I hadn't thought about that!), and they estimated they'd run out of configurations in July 2009. I hadn't started seeing the changes until recently, so I think they got some more time.

Anyway, now that I've spread the gospel of license plates maybe you'll notice them all, too. And become obsessed like me.

i can, i can!

What have I been doing for the last 5 hours, you ask? Thanks for asking! I've been spending loads of time making something I can buy for 79 cents at the store. Was it worth it? We'll see.

I recently finished a book (more on the book in a forthcoming post) on living a more provident life, specifically eating non-processed and local (i.e., in-season) foods. The book is very much in favor of the "local farmer," which is cool with me. I lived near farms growing up; I remember picking strawberries across the street from Grandma's house and buying corn from the produce hut on the corner, throwing a couple quarters into the honor-system lockbox. I'm not against local farmers by any means.

It just that eating this way takes time and energy. Growing it yourself? Time and energy. Finding a farm to support and choosing not to buy from the grocery store? Time and energy (and money). Taking your summer abundance and prepping it for winter? Time and energy.

This morning, I got up at 8 am and drove 40 minutes to a farmer's produce stand where I bought 25 pounds of tomatoes for $13.50. For the heck of it, I picked up 22 pounds of apples, plus some other weekly produce staples like corn on the cob, zucchini, bell peppers, and more.

The catch with my box of tomatoes was that they needed to be eaten. Now. Which means today I planned my first adventure in at-home water bath canning. (Thanks to my bud Rebecca for letting me borrow her stuff!)

I planned to use the majority of the tomatoes for spaghetti sauce and the rest for simple diced/crushed tomatoes. I chose to make something I could buy for 79 cents at the store. Although it is (likely) true that my in-season, local tomatoes are more healthy in their diced versions than the sodium- and high-fructose-corn-syrup-loaded varieties from Fred Meyer, but still, it took some serious time and energy to make them. I have yet to decide how I feel about that.

Five hours later, I'm exhausted. Canning is multi-tasking to the max. I talked to lots of friends about it and visited lots of Web sites. After surviving this afternoon, here's a run-down of my how-to:

1. Boil a huge pot of water and make an adjacent ice bath to blanch the tomatoes. You need to remove their skins since cooked tomato skins are tough and non-yummy. I ended up doing this in three rounds, since my largest cutting board is only so big.
   
   
   
2. Remove the core and seeds. After the first third was skinned, I used an apple corer on each tomato, one at a time, then picked up the whole seeping thing and gushed all the seeds out in the sink. (Bless heaven for garbage disposals.) I tore off the core and put everything "crushed" into a separate bowl. (Clearing my cutting board. Whew.)
   
   
3. Try not to freak out by red tomato guts everywhere.
   
   
4. "Sterilize" your glass jars in the dishwasher. I started the load at about this point. Take out everything from the dishwasher, make sure there is no soap, and run a cycle. Leave the jars in there until you're ready to fill them -- they stay warm and germ-free.
   
   
5. Start the spaghetti sauce. I did this on the back burner. I had to drop chunks of un-seeded, chopped tomatoes into the blender to puree them, then measure them out with a measuring cup. I had 5 quarts -- 20 cups of pureed tomatoes. I put them in the biggest pot I had. Note also that I halved the recipe for this sauce!! Insane. It filled my pot. Finally when all the ingredients were in, I went back to more tomato massacring.
   
   
   
6. Get the water bath going for the diced tomatoes. After the third and final round of blanching, seeding, de-gunking, I could can the diced tomatoes (while the spaghetti sauce was still simmering). I made four pint jars' worth.
   
   
7. Get another boiler going to dump in your lids and rings. Even the tops of the jars need to be hot and sterilized. I used a hot pot for this.
   
   
8. Load the jars with tomatoes and add lemon juice and salt. Because of the acidity of the tomatoes, to make them safe you have to add lemon juice when you're water-bath canning. Use a knife to mix it all up and get rid of any air bubbles.
   
   
9. Dry the lids and rings, wipe clean the rim of the pint jars, put them together, and drop the jars in the boiling water. Make sure there is at least one inch of water above the tops of the jars. Set microwave timer for 35 minutes.
   
   
10. Read the newspaper. Chase Wesley. Eat a cheese stick and maybe some cookies. (Notice I didn't clean up. We weren't done yet. The kitchen looked like a literal blood bath.)
    
    
    
11. Squeal at the sound of the microwave timer. Take the diced tomato jars out of the water bath. Don't let the jars clink each other or they'll explode!! (I've totally heard.)
    
    
12. Sterilize your second batch of lids and rings while filling your quart jars with spaghetti sauce. Repeat process from Steps 8 and 9: add lemon juice, wipe rims, seal jars, and dump in water bath. Set microwave timer for 40 minutes (40 minutes for quarts -- more than pints).
    
    
    
13. NOW clean up. Do a whole load of dishes and dispose of a lot of tomato cores and peels and guts. Wipe the splattered tile backsplash. Celebrate cleanliness.
    
    
14. Take out the quarts when the microwave beeps. Remember not to clink (See Step 11).
    
    
15. In 24 hours, check the seals on the jars. You can even remove the rings if you'd like. The seal will stay --and you did it right -- as long as the center doesn't "pop-pop" up and down. You've done it!
    

There you go. Canning for dummies. I get to do it again in a couple weeks with the 22 pounds of apples. I'm thinking: applesauce, pie filling, apple butter? Yum!

In the end, I got 5 quarts of spaghetti sauce and 4 pints of diced tomatoes out of my $13.50. When you add in the cost of about ~$20 for the (reusable) jars, that's um, $3.72 a jar. Or, if we just factor the cost of the produce we're at $1.50. Clearly more than 79 cents, but local, in-season, healthier food. That I canned myself. (Shane made fun of me: "All that for nine cans?" he said.)


If I was a person who lived in a farm or had a crazy garden and did this like every other weekend over the summer, I'd maybe die. Or maybe I'd become a pro and it would be easier. That would be nice.

In the end, my reflection on the experience is that I am simply astounded at the sheer effort it took to get those dang seeds out of the tomatoes. It took forever. I had wrinkly fingers like I had taken a bath for two hours! My apron was soaked! I also half wish I would have saved all the juices and seeds. Maybe I could have sieved them and drank real tomato juice??

So, was it fun? I had fun having a new project. Trying something interesting and different. I am sure I'll do it again, so I guess that means I enjoyed myself.

OK I'm tired. Are any of you expert canners? I'd love to hear about your experiences. Is it worth it? Do you love it? What makes you do it?

are you my mother??

Grandma Twining has (rightfully so) been clamouring for some new Wesley videos. Here is the latest and greatest of what we've been up to.... reading books over and over and over again so they are essentially memorized. This is one of his favorites... we have an "abbreviated version" in a board book, and the "official version" in a real book, and we've read both so many times he can fill in almost any word when we pause in either version -- and sometimes we combine the two.

And, if you allow me a personal moment here, this was actually the first book I could read myself when I was a wee lass. The book we have is actually MINE from the 1980s! Can you believe it? I love how books can have a new life with new readers. And I love that Wesley loves this book.

My favorite parts of the video are probably "moh-mer," "plop!" "I will, I will!" and "oh, no!"




Here are the words, for your benefit...

A mother bird sat on her egg
The egg jumped
"I must get something for my baby bird to eat!" she said.
So away she went.
Inside the nest the egg jumped... it jumped and jumped and jumped until...
out came a baby bird!
"Where is my mother?" he said.
He did not see her anywhere.
"I will go and look for her" he said.
Out of the nest he went... down, down, down, plop! The baby bird could not fly.
But he could walk. "Now I will go and find my mother," he said.
"Are you my mother?" the baby bird asked a kitten.
The kitten just looked and looked; it did not say a thing.
"Are you my mother?" the baby bird asked a hen.
"No," said the hen.
"Are you my mother?" the baby bird asked a dog.
"I am not your mother; I am a dog," said the dog.
"Are you my mother?" the baby bird asked a cow.
"How could I be your mother?" said the cow. "I am a cow."
The baby bird stopped to think. The kitten and the hen were not his mother. The dog and the cow were not his mother.
"I have a mother," said the baby bird. "I know I do. I have to find her; I will, I will!"
Just then the baby bird saw a BIG THING. "You are my mother!" he said.
The big thing just said "Snort!"
"Oh no!" said the baby bird. "You are not my mother. You are a scary Snort!"
The Snort lifted the baby bird up, up, up...
Then something happened. The Snort put the baby bird right back in the tree. The baby bird was home.
Just then the mother bird came back.
"I know who you are!" said the baby bird.
You are not a kitten or a hen or a dog, you are not a cow or a Snort! You are a bird, and you are my mother."

:-)