Wild Violet Lemonade (Water Kefir) Recipe & the Newest Additions to Our Flock

 The warm weather is finally here so I can start planning my mini-garden. I was told by the old-time farmers here to wait until Memorial Day before planting anything outdoors so I am still having to play the waiting game for just a bit longer. In the meantime the kids and I are busy foraging for chickweed, dandelions, ramps and violets. Endless amounts of violets!! They are one of Baby F's current favorite snacks straight out of the ground. I enjoy them a but more in salads, personally. As for the rest of my family, they love them fresh from the ground, too but their favorite way of having them is in Wild Violet Lemonade Water Kefir. I thought I would share the recipe with all of you.

 To make it you first need to make a Wild Violet Syrup:
Gather 2 cups of violets (flowers only) and bring them inside to rinse off. Heat 1 cup of water in a sauce pan just to a simmer. Turn off the heat and then add your violets. Stir well. Let sit for 24 hours.
Now strain the violets and feed them to your chickens or compost them. Pour the violet water back into the sauce pan. Add about 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice to the violet water. This is my children's favorite part - you get to see the color go from a muted blue/purple to a bright purple in seconds! Now add 2 cups of sugar to the sauce pan and stir constantly over a low heat. Do not boil! You'll lose that beautiful color. Store in your refrigerator. Ours lasts us about 2 -3 weeks but that is because we use it all up by then.

Now that you have your Wild Violet Syrup, it is time to make it into lemonade. We make ours using our water kefir grains for gut health. Just add 1/4 cup lemon juice and 1/4 cup Wild Violet Syrup to 1 quart of water kefir (grains removed - this will be your 2nd ferment). Stir to combine and store in your refrigerator. You can drink it right away but I would recommend waiting until it is chilled. The longer it its in the refrigerator, the more the flavor will develop. You could make wild violet lemonade without the kefir by just adding lemon juice and the syrup to water.

Enjoy!


p.s. - I realized that I never shared photos from our latest flock. They arrived back in March and actually just graduated from brooders in my girls' room to living outside in the coop with the big chickens.

Wild Violet Lemonade (Water Kefir) Recipe & the Newest Additions to Our Flock

K's Birthday (and her apple doughnut recipe)

Hey there! I am still here, slowly crawling out of the hole of sickness and exhaustion. Apologies in advance for a scatterbrained post. That cold that Baby F had ended up making its rounds and we all came down with it minus Little L. We even got poor Purple Grandma sick, who came all the way out here from PA. We did quite a bit of celebrating the whole week of K's twelfth birthday (TWELVE!! Let's take a moment to acknowledge how old my baby is. 😲 My how she has grown.), including meeting up with some dear friends at Flock and Fiber, but for now I thought I would share just a few photographs.

  I am sad to say that all of our birthday supplies (including K's birthday crown, the birthday ring and our other traditions) are in storage as I never expected to be in this house for so long. Talk about total mama guilt. Thankfully K was understanding and I was able to pull off some of our other birthday traditions like her homemade apple doughnuts with hot apple cider for breakfast (recipe to follow). She requested zucchini lasagna for lunch, play time at the local park and her usual pumpkin soup for dinner. We had plans to go to the ocean, too, but it rained a lot that day (and would you believe all our rain gear is also in storage?!). However, we did make up for it later in the week, but more on those adventures later.

I have been asked by a few people on IG about our traditional homemade apple doughnuts so I thought I would share the recipe here. I found it online many, many years ago and unfortunately no longer have the source. If anyone happens to recognize it and knows where it is from please do let me know.

K's Birthday Apple Doughnuts

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups AP flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup brown sugar (we have substituted maple syrup for this in the past)
3 tablespoons coconut oil (or margarine)
1 egg equivalent (we use 1 tablespoon ground flax seed mixed in 2 tablespoons water)
1/4 cup apple cider
1/4 cup almond milk
1 grated apple (peeled first)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
oil for frying


Directions:

In a large bowl combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon. In your mixer, cream together sugar and butter and then beat in the egg replacer. Add the apple cider, almond milk and vanilla to the creamed mixture and beat all together. Add the dry mixture into the creamed mixture and beat until smooth. Gently stir the apple into the batter.
Cover and chill the dough for one hour.
Place half the dough on a floured board and knead lightly. Roll out to about 1/2" thick. Cut with a doughnut cutter if you have one. We use the 3 - 4" canning jar lids to cut ours out and then just cut a hole in the middle with a knife. Heat the oil in a wok or skillet to about 375 degrees. Fry the dough for 1 - 2 minutes on each side, until golden brown. Drain on paper towels. Allow to cool and eat plain or dip them in confectioners sugar.  Serve with hot apple cider with cinnamon sticks as straws. Enjoy!


p.s. -
I usually get quite a few questions about her gifts so I thought I would do a run down here of what she received from us and extended family members.You'll notice a theme of Narnia/C.S. Lewis and books.

- Courage Dear Heart shirt and jean skirt (I had to get the woman's size!)
- A Family Guide to Narnia: Biblical Truths in C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia
- Companion to Narnia
- Childhood Chronicles Before Narnia: Boxen (She loves writing stories so this seemed very appropriate)
- This lion pattern along with yarn and knitting needles
- St. Therese/Sts. Louis and Zelie Bracelet 
- Father Brown Readers 
- The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings set 

This post contains affiliate links

K's Birthday (and her apple doughnut recipe)

Wildly Affordable Organic

While I don't  believe being frugal/on a tight budget and organic, healthy living necessarily go hand in hand - I do think it is a possibility. I have made it my personal mission this year to find a way to make it truly work for my family.

As I mentioned in the previous budget post, a large amount of our money goes towards groceries. The cost of living here in Idaho is nothing compared to Portland, Oregon but the grocery prices are pretty much the same. We think that is due to the organic produce having to travel so far to get to us in the middle of nowhere as well as a low demand for it. I am not ready to give up on healthy eating for my family due to these issues. This means that we really have to make our money stretch.

I know the garden we have been planning and preparing the earth for will be a tremendous help, but we have quite awhile until that takes effect (Assuming that we can even get a garden up and running here in the desert). In the meantime we are growing some herbs in C's AquaFarm as well as growing more celery and scallions from the leftovers of ones we bought at the store. On a side note: If you haven't tried this, go do it now! Just trim the bunch of celery about 3" above its base and place in a shallow dish of water. Leaves start growing out of the center in as little as a week. The transplant it to soil (indoors for us right now) and it will grow a whole new plant. For the scallions, just place your scallions in a cup of water and the will quickly regrow. I had the one pictured above cut down to the roots and in just three days it already nearly doubled in size. Not only does it help the budget but it's also a fun experiment for the children!

This brings me to the book I mentioned last week that has already begun to help us out - Wildly Affordable Organic. It seems to me that a lot of books, blogs and articles on eating better and spending less assume that you eat out all the time and cook convenience foods the rest of the time. So their directions on how to cook and advice to eat out less doesn't really help me. I have been making our food from scratch for years and we rarely eat out (thanks in part to there only being one restaurant within an hour's drive that has vegan options). Thankfully, while Wildly Affordable Organic does cover these things, the content of the entire book doesn't revolve around them. The author Linda Watson created her wildly affordable cooking plans after being inspired by Michael Pollan and a national challenge to eat on a food-stamp budget. Reading about her journey on the challenge (no more than $1 a meal per person), especially her first shopping trip on a tight budget, really hit home for me. The emotions and exhaustion she experienced that first shopping trip described how I feel every shopping trip.

Linda has some well thought out seasonal meal plans in her book with detailed shopping lists. I have just started incorporating them into our monthly meal plans. So far, so good! She talks about doing a lot of your cooking or at least preparing one day of the week. She mentioned Sunday as being a good day to do this but I wanted to keep Sunday as our day of rest. Honestly, the whole idea just seemed too labor intensive for me at first but now that I have started doing it, I am loving the results. It worked out really well, too, as we just adjusted our homeschooling schedule. We used to do school Monday through Thursday and take Fridays off but  K has her religious education classes on Monday and I found myself getting stressed trying to cram all of our day's work into a shorter amount of time. So now we take Mondays off and do school Tuesday - Friday. Monday has now become the girls' "wash day" (they do their laundry then) and my "making day".  I go ahead and make anything we might need for the week in bulk which ends up saving us money and time. Some examples of things I make this day are: dishwasher detergent, some WAO bread dough, soaking beans and nuts needed for meals during the week, almond butter, hummus, yogurt, shampoo and any other necessities we are running low on.

Now that bring me to another way I am trying to help our budget, our health and the environment is by making as many of our everyday items myself. This applies to food (Some examples are almond butter, yogurt, bread, hummus) as well as household cleaners (like the all purpose citrus vinegar spray I shared last week, dishwasher detergent, furniture polish) and personal items (such as shampoo, toothpaste, lotion, deodorant, etc. ) I have experienced some major failures with some of my experiments (like the lemon almond yogurt you see pictured that never set) but instead of stressing out over the money lost I am trying to make do (we ended up making smoothies with the failed yogurt attempt), learn from my mistakes and carry on.

I have written more detailed posts about healthy living and food budgets before. This post in particular has some great advice and ideas in the comments. I was inspired all over again as I reread them today. I am also working on a budget wise, healthy living resources widget over on the sidebar. I will add more items as I think of them. If you have any that you think should be included, please do tell!

You guys left some incredibly helpful comments in my last post about budgeting and now I would love to hear what advice, hints, tricks and tips you might have on eating well while on a budget. I will continue to post more thoughts and ideas I have, as well as recipes as I move forward. In the meantime I do have another recipe to share with you;

Lets just ignore my chicken scratch writing in the picture above, shall we? I was in quit a hurry when I wrote that.

Dishwasher Detergent

3/4 cup citric acid
3 cups borax

3 cups baking soda

30 drops orange essential oil

45 drops lemon essential oil

 

Place all ingredients in a large jar. Place the lid on and shake until mixed. Use two tablespoons per load of dishes.

 

This recipe has been working well for us, but I do have to say you can not overload your dishwasher when using it.

 

 

ETA: I just found the recipe for the Wildly Affordable Organic bread (that we are loving) online! You can find it here.

Wildly Affordable Organic

Worth the wait {and a cookie recipe}

Shark! You know we just had to do it.
Last week I let Little L in on a secret - I had plans to make us some vegan goldfish crackers. Of course, as soon as he heard my secret he wanted to make them right then, but I informed him that I had just ordered the fish cookie cutter the day before so it would be a few days before we could do it. He was disappointed but vowed to check the mail every day until it came. So every day we would walk to the mail box (it's in the middle of our neighborhood) to see if it came, and every day we would leave empty handed. That is until just the other day. When Little L saw the padded envelope in our box he started jumping up and down and giggling hysterically. It finally came! This meant dropping everything and baking some crackers straight away. We used a recipe I found here. They were really quite simple and fast to make. The only problem was that my children ate them as fast as I could bake them. I only had a partially filled jar to photograph. That, too, was devoured right after I snapped the pic. They asked me to triple the recipe next time. I have a feeling that will be very soon. I think that means they were worth the wait! If you are vegan or avoiding dairy I implore you to run to your pantry now and make some! We already had all of the ingredients on hand (minus the special cutter!)
And since we are on the topic of delicious snacks, I thought I would share my family's favorite go-to recipe for when we are craving a sweet. It's a recipe we adapted from The Waldorf Kindergarten Snack Book. I would have these on hand at all times if possible, but again they are devoured within a day or two.

Almond Butter Cookies

1 cup almond butter
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1 - 1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup earth balance soy free margarine
jam of your choice (we like the Trader Joes Organic sugar-free strawberry jam)

This recipe makes about 24 or so.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream margarine and almond butter together by hand or in your mixer. Stir in maple syrup. Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and then add them to the wet ingredients. Mix until combined.
The dough should look something like this: Roll the dough into small balls (about a tablespoon or less) and place on a cookie sheet. You can leave them as they are and just have plain almond butter cookies (C's favorite way) or press the center of the balls with your thumb and then fill the thumbprints with jam. Bake for 10 minutes. Let cool and enjoy! We love them with a cup of hot tea.

Worth the wait {and a cookie recipe}

*Drink Your Greens*

Of course with Easter and C's birthday just around the corner, we all came down with sicknesses. Murphy's law, right? But our miserable state gave us the excuse to try the flu-fighter sunshine smoothie from a cookbook that just arrived in the mail today. We had all of the ingredients on hand minus one. That forced us out into the fresh air for a bike ride to the store, which then led to flower picking and nature observing. Ah yes, we needed that ride. A nice reminder that no matter what life throws at you, there is always something good waiting around the corner.

Speaking of smoothies, we have been on quite the smoothie kick the past few weeks, thanks to our tax return splurge - a Vitamix! Our most recent family favorite concoction is inspired by a drink we tasted at Whole Foods back in January. This smoothie is a good way to start your day, or as in my case lately - an evening pick me up to help me with my late night crafting endeavors. Whichever way you chose to drink it, your body will thank you for it.

Drink Your Greens
makes enough for our family of five

3 1/2 cups apple juice
2 frozen bananas, chopped
5 tsp spirulina*
2 c kale (frozen preferred)
2 c frozen strawberries
a handful of ice

Place the ingredients in your blender in the order they are listed. Vitamix or other high powered blenders work best for this. Blend on high for one minute. Pour into cups and enjoy!

*If your family is not used to the taste of spirulina you may want to start with 2 tsp or so of it and then gradually increase it to 5 over time. Also, not all spirulina is created equal. We have tried a few different brands and some of them have quite the strong flavor *ahem*. Thankfully we discovered pure Hawaiian spirulina pacifica which has a nice mild flavor and blends into our drink quite well.

*Drink Your Greens*

Snow in the kitchen

A good chunk of our day revolved around snow. Either outside playing in it or inside crafting recipes with it in our kitchen. We were so very glad for the distraction it provided for us. K seemed to have woken up on the wrong side of the bed but then after a hard couple of hours into our day she just started sobbing uncontrollably saying she really missed her friends back home (and especially her "D friends".) Such heartache is enough to make anyone have a rough day! We talked about it quite a bit and then we looked at pictures of our dear friends, talked about when we would see them again and then switched gears to snow.

The girls had been asking to make snow ice cream since we moved here and today seemed like the perfect occasion to do it. The ingredients are simple enough (we based ours off this recipe):
-16 cups of clean, freshly fallen snow
-1 tablespoon vanilla
-vanilla almond drink

K mixed the vanilla into the snow and then we added some vanilla almond drink into the mixture just a little at a time, until it was a nice ice cream consistency. We chose to omit the sugar called for in the original recipe since the almond drink was already sweetened. The children devoured it. I had a couple of spoonfuls and I have to say it tasted like a vanilla milk shake!

Later on in the day, just before dinnertime, we decided to make some sugar snow maple candy. We followed this recipe but I admit I was a bit stingy and we only used one cup of maple syrup (it's expensive!) It was a slightly messy project (due to this Mama using too small of a pot and the syrup boiling over), but lots of fun. C kept exclaiming, "I really feel like we are Laura and Mary Ingalls right now!" She quickly got out her potholder loom and got to work on it telling me it was just like the winter sewing that the Ingalls girls did in the Little House in the Big Woods. I adore her enthusiasm. 

Our candy cooked a bit too long so it ended up being more like maple syrup hard candy but that  didn't stop us from eating many servings of it! We just had to brush our teeth extra good before bed. It was really more about the process than the end result anyway. But I have a feeling that we'll be trying this recipe again with our next snow fall.

Even with all of the day's fun, K was heartbroken again by bedtime. But the comfort C gave her seemed to help immensely. I will be saying an extra prayer for her tonight to help her heart heal and I have hope that her siblings have already done the same.

Snow in the kitchen