Sow This: Gardening 101

My grandpa used to keep three gardens. Sometimes all three at once or he would rotate them. Two of them were very large. He always encouraged me and my brother to help and there is no better reward for a day of work than your grandpa handing you a carrot pulled right out of the ground and rinsed off with the hose except of course a day spent with your grandpa. I miss these days terribly and I have spent a lot of time recently regretting that I didn't learn or retain the things that I learned from my grandpa. He was a very special man that because of the circumstances of his childhood knew how to do everything. Gardening is now the talent that I am admiring the most. Since Henry was conceived I have spent a LOT of time learning how to raise this baby in the best possible way. One of the things that I have been adamant about is not feeding him jarred processed baby food. Trying to keep him as preservative free as possible is going to be one of the biggest challenges. When we bought this house (right after we found out we were pregnant) I decided that a large portion of the sizable back yard would be dedicated to a garden. This sounds like a great idea...I will have something to do, I can teach these boys about food and work, and I can offer my family healthy food...then it dawned on me that I have no idea what I'm doing.
An old friend who has styled himself a farmer told me about seedsavers.org. I can buy seeds here and actually use the vegetables that I grow to create seed for future crops. Because of hybridization you cannot do this with seeds purchased at your run of the mill box store. So I visited seedsavers and proceeded to research and fill my basket with what I can only visualize as a beautiful bountiful garden. Then I realized that I have no idea how much space I will need for all of these things. Then I realized that I don't really know how to till. Then I realized that I don't know how to start seeds inside and keep the cats from destroying them. Then I realized that I don't know how to put up a fence to keep our yard bunnies out of our garden. Then I realized that I was about to spend a lot of money on seeds for a garden that I really don't know how to make happen.
So I printed all the material I could find on growing the things that I had picked out. I started working on measurements. Then I realized that I took so much time agonizing over this that my basket was unceremoniously emptied. Now I have to start all over. This is no small undertaking...it's not like I can just choose tomatoes...there a jillion to choose from...all beautiful and all with a story. But I don't remember what I chose. I guess maybe this is a good thing. Now I will work on my measurements first, dole out the space, THEN choose the seeds, and choose seeds that can just be thrown in the ground...none of this starting inside stuff. My cats are evil and crafty.
Now a rational person would read this and think "it's just a garden" but for me this has somehow become a measurement of my worth as a mother and nurturer. I've also discovered that having a baby makes you measure your worth in bizarre ways. So my new measurement is my grandpa. I will try to channel Doc and hope that he will send me the garden vibes and help me meet the bar that he set. It's a tall bar and it's big shoes.

Eat This: Paprikash Chicken

So Friday we got our tax refund and like all normal Americans we ate out all weekend. Now I've been thrusted back into normal money world...boo.
Two weeks ago my husband proclaimed that if he found things in the newspaper that sounded good, he would tell me, and I would make them. Once I stopped making "that" face I remembered that I am forever asking him what he wants for dinner because I'm tired of coming up with ideas and then getting really mad when he can't think of anything. So....hole dug.
Tonight's menu is now featuring newspaper paprikash chicken. Yippee for Hungarians. I would just put their recipe here, but frankly it needs a LOT of spicing up.....so this is my rendition.

4 pounds of chicken ( I hate chicken and even worse chicken on the bone - however this dish is for my husband so I will make it for him...so use boneless breasts or a whole fryer...whatever floats your boat.)
Some salt
3 Tbsp butter
3 Tbsp vegetable oil (not olive oil as it will smoke out)
2 Tbsp sweet paprika (if you are a slave to the regular grocery store, you may want to use more to insure the flavor comes through)
1 Tbsp garlic powder or granulated
**Whatever other flavors you like here...I put celery salt in everything and added some chili powder to spice it up a bit**
1/2 C tomato juice
1 C sour cream
3 Tbsp flour

Melt butter in the vegetable oil.
Lightly salt the chicken
Add the paprika, garlic, and spices of your choice, and saute for a minutes...not too long or it will burn as the chicken browns.
Add chicken and cook 4 minutes on each side or until browned
Remove the chicken and set aside
Add onions and saute until soft - about 4 minutes
Add tomato juice to pan (I used the juice from canned diced tomatoes so I added some of the tomatoes as well)
Return chicken, cover, cook on medium for about 40 minutes.
Remove chicken from pan
Mix flour and sour cream together and then stir into pan...stir constantly until the sauce thickens
Serve sauce over chicken


I served this over rice but I think it would be great over boiled or roasted potatoes or even lightly buttered egg noodles.
This turned out really oily...try cutting back on the vegetable oil. It was also a little blander than I care for so definitely taste it for seasoning before serving. Eating the chicken on bone was a bit tedious (aside from the fact that doing that grosses me out) and just for the sole purpose of cutting some of the fat out of this I would really recommend using boneless chicken breasts. This dish is also really lacking in the presentation department.
Those things aside, the husband seemed to really like it...so it's a keeper.

Grilled Chicken Spinach/BBQ Chicken Pizza

Sometimes I just really don't feel like cooking and sometimes I just don't have time to put forth the effort so I thought I would share our menu too.

Last night was one of those I just don't have time nights...which turns into pizza night and there is one thing I hate making is crust...pie crust, pizza crust, any light bread product...I hate it..so I am happy to freely admit that I buy pizza crust that is ready made...I don't even have to spread it out. So a big shout out to Kroger brand pizza crust!
Last night I made a pizza that was half grilled chicken and spinach and the other half was barbeque chicken. It was easy, easy to sneak veggies to the three year old and the husband, cheap, and was seriously really tasty.

1 pizza crust
A little less than a half a jar of Alfredo sauce
Some BBQ sauce
2 chicken breasts/cubed(I grilled them off on the Foreman with loads of garlic powder and pepper)
1 1/2 C frozen spinach (thaw in microwave)
However much italian type cheese you take on your pizza

**so alfredo on one side, bbq on the other. Spread chicken evenly. Sprinkle spinach on the alfredo side. top with cheese. bake as per crust directions.

In hindsight, the bbq side wouldve been really great with carmelized red onions and the spinach side wouldve been great with roasted red peppers.

And a great discovery for those with children that wont eat anything green or that doesnt look like cheese or a chicken finger...you can very easily hide spinach in a regular pizza with marinara. I pick my battles on the food front and am not above sneaking in vegetables.

New To The Game

So the best I can figure women go back to work after having kids solely for the purpose of being able to get something done in the house. With that being said, I will be holding out as long as humanly possible to raise my boys before returning to the draining world of information technology. In the meantime I will try to chronicle my trek through my trials, triumphs, and lessons learned.

My son is two months old and very literally occupies every moment of my time. Now I'm not going to pretend like I ever got a lot done before he was here, but I am so seriously getting nothing done these days. I have moments of brilliance when I can really clean the kitchen in 20 minutes flat or roll through loads and loads of laundry in a half a day....but these moments are few and far between. So like any normal person who doesn't have enough time to do their chores, I've decided it's a good idea to start up on my knitting projects again, get my nose in some long neglected books, and start blogging. Sure! Why not?

On The Needles:
One free form car seat blanket for my wee little man. I'm just doing a simple bordered blankie changing the pattern of the body as I get bored. I will post my progress with pictures just as soon as there is a tidied surface that I can take pictures on!

My Nose Is In:
Cryptonomicon - I'm only 15 pages in...now before getting pregnant, I read a lot and I read well. Well, 11 months of not reading anything but craft magazines has taken it's toll and I should've picked something much easier to get back into the reading game with. So far the premise is interesting and it is well written but the author is a little too proud of his vocabulary...or maybe I should just be ashamed of mine?? Either way at the rate of about two pages a day ( this is how much time I'm afforded by Henry) I should be done about the time he is graduating high school...which will be in the year 2027...how freaky old do I feel?

Now I have six hours to get this house cleaned, get dinner done, knit, read, watch Heroes, give Harris a bath and cut his hair, finish the load of laundry patiently waiting in the washer, and be nice to my husband all while holding the baby and trying not to wake him up. Any suggestions?