Organic Grapefruit Thyme Marmalade Recipe

We have a beautiful grapefruit tree that produces more fruit than we can handle so I'm working on ways to put it to use.  Here is a fabulous grapefruit thyme marmalade recipe I came up with.  It is an unusual combination but oh so yummy!  Something about adding thyme makes it breakfast worthy but also gourmet appetizer worthy at the same time.  I hope you enjoy it as much as we are!

Grapefruit Thyme Marmalade:

• 8 medium grapefruit.
• 1 medium lemon.
• Zest of lemon and 1/2 grapefruit.
• 7.5 cups organic can sugar.
• 1 medium apple.  I used Red Delicious.
• 20-30 sprigs of thyme.  1 package if purchasing from market.
• 8 8oz mason jars.

Peel and core apple and chop into small cubes.  Zest lemon and half of grapefruit.  Juice grapefruit and lemon by hand including as much pulp as possible without getting any white grapefruit rind.  Gently glide thyme leaves off stem.  Place all ingredients in a medium pot on stove on high heat and cook for approximately 40 minutes making sure not to burn bottom.  It will have a lot of liquid that needs to be cooked down so about 20 minutes into cooking check by placing a spoon full in the freezer to see if it sets when cooled.  If you want a thicker consistency and it's not cooking down you can add another apple.  The apple is replacing the need for processed pectin.  The grapefruit skin also has pectic and will help it set as well as help lower your cholesterol......just thought I'd throw that in. 

Spoon into sterilized jars and bathe in boiling water for approximately 12 minutes.  Listen for jars to pop after pulling them out.  If a jar doesn't seal than place in fridge to be used. 

I would love to hear how your Grapefruit Thyme Marmalade turns out! 

Sewing in memory of Kathreen from Whipup

Saturday I was browsing all my favorite blogs in search of something to make 2 sweet little twin girls for their 3rd birthday when I came across the tragic news that Kathreen, founder of Whipup, and her partner Rob were killed in a car accident while vacationing in Australia with their 2 children.  You can read about it here. 

I was so saddened by this news.  I don't know the family personally but in this crafty blog world we share it can feel personal at times.  We share about our lives and our families and feel touched and inspired when we come in contact with one another.  There is a fund set up to help the children if you want to help.   You can also purchase one, or several, of the amazing down loadable magazines for sale on Kathreen's site.  I purchased one today and it was automatically e-mailed to me.  I highly recommend heading over and checking out the magazines!  There are science ideas, handicrafts, gardening, cooking, and many more.  My kids love to browse these for ideas when they are feeling crafty.  I do too!  Whipup Shop. 

For the birthday gifts I decided to use a tutorial from Whipup.  How to make a chef's hat.

They turned out super cute!

I added elastic since I couldn't measure their heads.

And we are no longer amused.

Thank you Kathreen . Your family is in our prayers....

Increasing soil fertility

There are 2 schools of thought when it comes to using wood chips in the garden.  Some believe it's the best option and others believe its detrimental to a healthy garden.  I personally have done a lot of research and can appreciate both arguments but where we live I have chosen to use wood chips for 2 reasons.  The first is they are free!  The second reason is we live in Florida where it's hot and the soil gets scorched by the sun turning every exposed piece of top soil into sandy dry fluff.  Covering the soil with yard waste and even purchasing hay or pine needles only stays on the surface for a short period  before drying up and disintegrating once again exposing dry, sandy, and dead top soil. 

With wood chips I may get more fungus than normal but as the wood chips break down I also get a garden full of worms that are adding the beneficial bacteria that plants love.  Fungus plus bacteria is a win win!  I also like to grow beautiful and productive plants which is what I get when I use wood chips.



After adding compost but before adding wood chips




Only half mulched at this point.  I've added edibles to the space,  Zucchini, lima beans and tomatoes.



2 years ago I planted a butterfly garden by our pool and filled it with beautiful plants that I knew would thrive since it was such a sunny spot.  Now, 2 years later, I have a sad butterfly garden where only the hardiest of plants remain and the rest go to die.  You can see the original post here.  I know longer use weed liner, unless it's a short term problem solver, and all of it has been removed at this point.

My attention has been on the front garden but I finally decided to devote a little time to bringing this bed back to life.  The problem is that it's located at the top of a slope in the yard, gets extreme afternoon sun, and the only thing covering the soil is some pine bark remnants so the soil is sandy and dead.

To bring it back to life I added rich compost full of worms from the compost pile.  My pile is mostly chicken manure, food waste, and a small amount of yard waste and is not completely broken down so it's full of worms with every scoop but it can be a little potent to use as soil. If you are wanting to just use the soil it's best to wait until the worms have finished their job and have moved on.  In this case however my goal was to give the soil a little jump start so I needed those precious worms.  I made sure to only add a thin layer across all exposed top soil, harvested some Yarrow from the garden and spread that throughout the bed to hopefully aid in the breakdown process of the wood chips Yarrow Info, and topped it with approximately 6" of wood chips in open spots and 3" around the base of existing plants.  This should solve the problem and hopefully this bed will be in full bloom soon!
I'll keep you posted on the progress.....
Happy gardening! 

Eating What We Grow.

I have grown food every year but it has always been minimal.  Now the garden is filling in with an abundance of good food and it has been a bit of a learning curve coming up with different ways to eat the things that are available.

I tend to stick with the simple recipe free staples like roasting.  A little olive oil, sea salt, and a mix of garden veggies in a roasting pan cooked at 425 degrees is always a favorite.

Boiled until slightly tender and topped with fresh herbs is another.

We have lots of Kale growing.  My 2 favorite ways to prepare it is massage it with olive oil, sea salt, and a little lemon juice or I make  a dressing out of this recipe I came up with.
4 teaspoons miso (white)
3 tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon white rice vinegar
3/4 tablespoon evaporated cane juice

Mix and toss in the kale.  You can add all kinds of other ingredients.  I added roasted garlic and pine nuts.

This is suppose to be a cucumber dill dip. The recipe I followed was awful so I modified it and added lots of hot peppers from the garden.  I love mixing high and low foods.  I removed the seeds from the peppers which left my hands on fire but will hopefully cut out most of the heat.  The peppers I used are Jalapeno, Holy Molly, and Cayenne.  Yikes!

And the most important to our house hold is the salad.  It's what I eat most days and provides something green, healthy, and delicious on the table every night. 

What are you growing and how do you bring it to the table?

Urban Homestead Happenings

 

It has been a busy but fun time on our little homestead.  It feels so good to be moving forward on our vision for this property of ours to be sustainable.  Our most recent adventure was hatching chicks.  We started with 12 fertile eggs from a local farmer friend down the street as a fun way to educate ourselves and the children on what it takes to incubate eggs.  I learned so much through this process!  To live it makes it so much easier to help and know what is going on with hens who you choose to allow to brood on their own.  I will say if you want to do this more than once buy a good incubator that has a temperature regulator.  We had the worst luck with ours and about 9 days before hatch day it stopped working all together.  Luckily it still heated but even on the lowest setting the temperature would creep up really high and I would have to open it up and cool it down.  This caused a problem with some of the chicks.  The one in the photo above was stuck to the membrane and couldn't hatch on it's own.  It piped and then remained beak out for about 24 hours.  I peeled back that shell just like the chick would do leaving the membrane in tack but that still didn't work.  I had to peel away the shell and membrane adding moisture to free this little chick.  It's super tiny but strong and seems to be doing great so far.  It still has it's beak tooth which was a big thrill for the boys.  Another one chirped for 24 hours but never piped.  I heard it trying and decided to give it some time to hatch on it's own but it never did.  I piped it but it was no longer moving by the time I decided to intervene.  There is still one we are waiting on.  I can see movement when I candle it but it just won't hatch.  I'm guessing it will have problems if it does but the boys are praying for it so you never know.

 We finished our Classical Conversations group for the year.  I made these herb and Zinnia arrangements for the tables for our closing ceremony.  It was a great way to add color and life to the tables without wasting money on flowers that will be tossed.  These will be going straight in the ground this week.  To make them I just cut up a  paper back and made a bottom by squaring off the sides with a glue gun.  The burlap was then wrapped around the exposed roots pulling tight to give it a pot like shape.  The burlap is held together by hot glue gun as well.  I loved the beautiful fragrance they gave off. 

On the food front, we are still processed foods free.  Free is the best way to describe it!  I feel like I have been freed of the toxic waste that has become our food system, freed from children who are picky and won't eat anything but mac and cheese, freed from wasted time reading box labels only to be disappointed.....  We still buy organic sandwich meats, cheeses, and milk which are technically processed but we only eat whole ingredient foods and minimize these as much as possible.  I also read Wheat Belly which sent me down a rabbit hole of research on modern wheat and we have decided to cut that out as well.  Now we are eating spelt and kamut.  I've been able to modify most whole wheat recipes with freshly milled spelt and kamut, usually a combination of the two, and it has been pretty easy.  Kamut and spelt make much lighter breads than whole wheat which my family actually prefers.  I'll share recipes and more on our food choices soon.

We are fencing off the back half of the property to allow the chickens to pasture graze and I'm researching meat birds!!  The hubby is still not as enthusiastic as I am about this but he knows the quality of our meat would be so much better.  I'm looking into butchers to do the dirty work.  Neither of us are ready to add chicken slaughter to our "to do" list just yet....or ever.

In the garden there are lots of delicious foods available to eat daily and many more popping up.  I missed lots of planting opportunities this season but over all I'm happy with our progress.  I'm chipping away at the yard a little everyday eliminating grass and planting food.  I've recently discovered permaculture gardening and I have been working in some of the gardening practices.  It's a lot of things I have learned just by gardening and getting to know plants over the years but with so much more purpose put into the design so that it is truly sustainable.  I have always broken the rules with gardening and had great success, permaculture breaks all gardening rules but none of natures.  It assumes there is a way to supply every plant naturally with everything it needs through the use of other plants to get the highest quality food.  It's really beautiful and just another example of how God perfectly designs everything for our good. 

If you are interested in producing your own food but think your property is too small, just watch this video! 

Quilted dress made from scrap fabric.

One of my goals this year is to find ways to use the piles of fabric scraps that I have saved up.  I have a bad habit of running to the fabric store every time I have a project in mind leaving me with a sewing room busting at the seams with beautiful fabric scraps.  For years I have been saving it for quilts but quilting is not something that fits into my life right now and some of this fabric has got to go! 

My newest passion is using it to make quilted dresses.  I have made several and will post more pics soon but here is one that I made for my sweet niece for her first birthday. 

I also made her a doll using the pattern I mentioned in this post and placed them both in a bag made out of more beautiful scrap fabric.

I would love to here what you do with your scrap fabric!

Growing potatoes vertically

I had great success growing potatoes last year but they are hard to manage in an edible landscape where plants are planted close together.  This year I've decided to grow most of our potatoes vertically to avoid having the plants take up too much space and to make harvesting more simple.

I chose this antique wagon from Vietnam to grow Yukon Gold.  I purchased this wagon about 7 years ago at an antique fair and it has been a favorite garden piece of mine ever since.  I used linen burlap for the lining and made the bag by tracing the inside of the wagon onto the fabric and sewing it together.  It is attached to the top with staples.

Growing potatoes vertically is simple.  You will want to make sure you have good drainage in what ever container you choose.  Start by adding 6" of compost or good quality soil.  Next you will want to cut up an already sprouting potato trying to get 2 or more sprouts per cut if possible, I keep potatoes in the kitchen drawer to sprout.  Place potato pieces sprouting side up and cover with another 6" of compost.  As the plant breaks through the top of the soil you are going to add another 6" of soil to the top.  Continue this process of adding soil every time plant growth breaks through until the soil reaches the top.  At that point you enjoy watching the beautiful green foliage as it grows and blooms. Harvest when greens start to die back long after the plant flowers.

Here is one we harvested for Easter.  I harvested early so I could get another batch started.  I just couldn't resist!