How to NOT spend a ton of $ on wedding stationery (Part 1)

I'm frugal.  I'll admit.  Sometimes too much.  I also like the challenge of creating things on my own with what I have to prevent myself from buying things.  This allows a personal touch to what I've made and knowing that no one else has the same thing makes me feel original.

In the last couple weeks, I've sent out the save the date cards (STD's as some call them, hehehe) for our upcoming wedding.  Seeing as how it's a semi-destimation wedding (only because there's a ferry ride involved), a holiday weekend, and we have a lot of out of town guests, we decided a save the date card was in order to give our peeps a heads up.

For those of you who don't know, wedding stationery is expensive.  So I made my own.  Last year I discovered the awesomeness of block printing so I made some prints first.  Then I found a postcard template on Word and typed something up.  This was the hardest part since moving the text boxes and stuff until it was just right was pretty painstaking.  Then I found some card stock that was nice-looking and printed out my cards at home, 4 to a sheet.

Very carefully, I cut out the postcards....

and decorated with the block prints.

Sprayed them with finishing spray, since the block print ink is water-based, and slappity-slapped a stamp on each and sent them away!

Final product: pretty classy, eh?

The backs have the usual: a little message, the addresses of our peeps, as well as a return address for us.

P.S.  The block prints are fiddlehead ferns, just in case you couldn't tell.  (I don't blame you.)

P.P.S.  The first "save the date" print I made I made backwards, the worst mistake any block printer can make.  Major fail.

Sunday Harvest

The tomatoes are coming in, the zucchini and cucumbers are petering out, and fall is just around the corner. 

There are still plenty more tomatoes on the vine, and the weather forecast for this week indicates they still have a chance of ripening up.  I made salsa last week with some of the 'maters and the jalapeno that we also got from Shawn's plant.  It was delicious.  I think I'll make more soon... I'm hoping to make a batch of marinara also.  I was surprised they did fine during the rainstorm we had this weekend, I was sure some of them would split and fall off. 

Not pictured below is the kabocha squash that a squirrel decided was ready to harvest from the front yard.  Note to squirrel: you were wrong.  It was small, (a little bigger than a baseball,) and pretty good when my dad bbq'd it.  It tasted a little green yet, but it was edible.

The peas are from the second batch I planted in late July.  I may have planted them too early in the summer, and should have fertilized the soil because these plants are smaller than the first ones.

Note the sad little cabbage....

Mmmm... Purin

Purin is basically Japanese flan.  It's an egg custard with burnt sugar on the bottom.  I've never made flan before but I think the difference is that purin is a little lighter than flan and is made in individual cups. 

It's delicious.

Ingredients (to make 4 servings, though I usually do a batch an a half)
2 cups milk
8 tbs sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
dash of salt

6 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons water

First you need to prepare the molds and the oven.  I use small coffee mugs for the molds.  Anything that can be put in the oven will work.  Spray the bottoms with a little bit of oil and set aside.  Place a jelly roll pan (or whatever flat pan with sides you have) in the oven with a half inch of water.  Heat the oven to 325 degrees.

Now you make the burnt sugar sauce.  (This is the best part.)  Put the 6 tablespoons of sugar and 2 tbs of water into a small saucepan over medium high heat.  Dissolve the sugar in the water and let it come to a boil.  Let the sugar boil until all the water has evaporated out and the sugar is bubbling away.  You'll know when this happens because the bubbles will start to sound like glass.  Really cool.  Prepare a tbs. of water to keep handy next to you.  Stir the sugar occasionally and it'll start to turn brown and smell burnt.  Make sure you watch it closely for this part.  Just as it gets to a nice shade of darkish brown, add the small amount of water next to you.  It will be angry and hiss and bubble and maybe scare you.  But be strong, stand back and show it who's boss.  (Don't forget this part, it can lead to disaster if you don't add any water or add too much.  1 tbs, that's all she wrote.)  Stir in the water then divide the sauce up into the 6 molds you prepared.  There should only be enough for a few spoonfulls in each cup.

Now the egg part.  Easy peasy.  Put the milk into a saucepan and put it on low heat.  You just want it warm enough to melt the sugar.  While that's going, crack the eggs into a separate bowl and beat it for a bit.  Stir the sugar, salt, and vanilla into the milk.  Making sure that the milk is just warm and not hot, slowly add the milk to the eggs and whisk together.

Now check the sugar mixture before adding the egg mixture into the molds.  If the sugar is too runny, pouring the eggs/milk in will just mix 'em up and then you'll lose your awesome sauce that you risked your life to make.  Put the molds in the 'fridge if they're too runny.  Divide the egg mixture into your cups/molds.

Now put the molds into the oven on their nice jelly roll pan jacuzzi and bake for 35-40 minutes.  Chill, and try not to eat them all in one sitting!

The mugs that no one uses are happy today.

You can put it on a plate or eat it right out of the cup like I do...

P.S.  If you don't trust me, (I'm not offended if you don't) you can check out how this person makes purin.  It's similar but she might describe it better and has nicer pictures.

Sunday Harvest

Lots of color this week. 

I wasn't expecting much of the carrots I pulled since the tops weren't that impressive, but these are the best ones yet.  I'm totally waiting on pulling the rest of them.  More and more tomatoes are turning red, maybe we'll get a few more before the weather goes to crap at the end of the week.  Th kale just keeps going and going.  These are gonna turn into kale chips. This is the last of the green beans, I'm leaving the rest to mature so I can use them for seeds next year.  As the garden slows down, I really need to start making an effort to save seeds for next year.  I'll let you know how that goes.

Have a great day!

Staying ahead of the zucchini

Any backyard gardener knows the issues that zucchini can cause in one's vegetable inventory.  Let's just say there's a reason why there is a national "leave a zucchini on your neighbor's front porch day."  (Too late, it was August 8th.) 

Though my zucchini plants didn't produce as much as they have in past years, we've still gotten enough to fill our summer squash needs and more.  The last two that we picked were both monsters so some creativity was in order, which resulted in today's dinner: Stuffed Zucchini and Zucchini bread!

Stuffed Zucchini

Ingredients
1 large zucchini that got away
1 pound of your choice of meat (I used hockey pucks)
1/2 an onion, chopped
1 cup marinara sauce
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1 clove of garlic
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup grated cheese

Saute the onion and meat in some olive oil until browned.  Add the garlic, salt and pepper, and marinara sauce.  While that cools, slice your giant bandit zucchini in half lengthwise and use a spoon to carve out the seeds.  Some of the stuff that comes out can be chopped and added to the meat/marinara mixture so you don't have to throw it away.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Place the zucchini halves in a baking dish with a little cooking spray on the bottom.  Mix in the bread crumbs into the meat/marinara mixture then fill the zucchinis with the mixture and top with the cheese.  Bake for 40 minutes or so until the cheese is browned.  Enjoy!

Zucchini Bread

Ingredients
3 Cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
3 tsps cinnamon
3 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 applesauce
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup light agave
3 cups grated giant zucchini
optional: chopped nuts of your choice (I was out of walnuts so I used toasted almonds.)

The oven should be set around 335-350 degrees.  (It was 350 for me because I wanted to bake the two things at the same time.)  Sift the flour baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon together.  In a separate bowl mix together the sugar, agave, eggs, vegetable oil, and applesauce.  Stir together the contents of the two bowls until combined and add the zucchini and nuts.  Pour the mixture into a bundt pan and bake for 50 minutes or until done.

A note on agave:  I've been using a lot of it in my cooking lately.  It's slowly gaining popularity as the sweetener of choice for many.  I don't really know much about it but apparently diabetics can eat it easier than sugar because it doesn't cause spikes in our blood sugar like regular sugar does.  I like it because it doesn't taste like crap like all other sugar substitutes do.  (Stevia?  Seriously?  Disgusting.)  I think it tastes kind of like a liquid brown sugar.  We got two giant bottles for free from Shawn's uncle who works for UPS and gets lots of stuff for free so I've been trying to think of ways to use it up.  So far so good.  I like it.

So there you go, two deeelicious zucchini recipes that will make you sad when zucchini season is over. Happy homesteading!

Purple Fingernails

In case you haven't noticed it's blackberry season.  I have a love/hate relationship with blackberries.  I love the excessive amounts of free deliciousness that can be foraged in nearly every urban park in the Seattle area, but hate the fact that it is taking over in every urban park in the Seattle area.  Himalayan blackberries, which constitute probably 99% of the blackberries that can be picked around here is a horribly invasive plant that has no regard for where it grows and who's habitat it is stealing.  And once it's around it's a major bi-otch to try to get rid of.  You can't just cut it down (which is hard enough with all the thorns) but you have to dig up all the roots or it'll just grow back stronger.  It really is horrible stuff.

Picking the berries is actually doing good for the environment because every berry that is picked and ingested by us means all those seeds in there aren't planted somewhere else.  So go out and pick berries people!

That's what we've been doing for the last several weeks.  But what to do with them?  The possibilities are endless!  We've made several berry cobblers and muffins with them, but the majority have been juiced to become jam. 

Juicing blacberries is a little painstaking but a necessity when making jam because their seeds are so big and tough.  Blackberry jam with or without seeds is delicious but the lack of seeds makes the eating experience just a little better.

Today, I started with the 10 pounds of blackberries my parents picked for me over the weekend.  I had to do three batches because there were just so many.  I put some in a pot and put the heat on medium low.  As they were warming up, I took a bottle (in this case a sake bottle) and mashed the berries with it.

Once it was pretty warm (it doesn't have to boil) I poured it into some cheesecloth that was placed over a bowl.  Depending on how warm the berries are, you may have to let them cool before starting the squeezing process.

 This is what results in purple-dyed fingernails.  You really have to caress and work the bag to get the most juice out of the pulp.  It can be pretty hot so watch out.  I probably spent about a good 5-10 minutes for each squeezing session.

This is the result.  Five quarts of berries equals 2 quarts of pure, thick, blackberry juice.  That should get me about 5-6 batches of blackberry rhubard jam.  Time to start chopping rhubard and preparing jars!

Yeah, I make this look gooood...

Tuesday Harvest

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend!  Mine was pretty good, lots of food, puppies, dirt, and lake water left me feeling exhausted but satisfied.  Back to real life.  Mine unfortunately includes unemployment.  I'm trying to make the most of all my free time but it still kinda sucks.  You'll be hearing a lot more from me in the near future, I'll bet.

Aaaand the harvest.  WE GOT TOMATOES!!!  Two of 'em.  That's two more than last year.  Oh, and I think it might be zucchini bread time.  How do 3-pound zucchinis hide from us?  They're enormous.  Camouflage is the name of the game, people.

The jalapeno is a little smaller than the last one, but I'm sure deliciously spicy nonetheless.  The blackberries are not from my backyard, they're thanks to my awesome parents who got them at Hamlin park yesterday.  We've been picking a ton lately, more on that and the rhubarb later.

Until next time!

P.S. There's a squirrel in my apple tree above my head who I'm convinced was trying to kill me earlier.  It was right above me dropping large apples like bombs.  Now it has finally settled on one and is eating it while dropping little bits that Frannie is gobbling up as they fall.  Freakin' adorable.