Waking up too early

I'll make you strawberry pancakes, pretend like it's the weekend now. Well, it is the weekend, but Joe is on call which means that it may as well be a Tuesday. I started off the morning with this strawberry pancake recipe and I will never buy pancake mix again. Ever.

As a family, we're moving away from the grocery store more and more. I've found local resources for dairy and meat and our farmer's market is stocked with all of the fruit and produce we need. We have a few green grocers that have bulk dry goods and I'm trying to navigate the world of understanding flours and grains. I want to learn more about preserving food. As it is, I'm so sad that we only have a few bags of strawberries left in the freezer from our berry picking adventure.

Our farm offered up an opportunity to go raspberry picking in late August and after the kids went nuts over strawberries in June I jumped on the chance to take them. My kids rarely eat raspberries, but the ability to pick them off the bushes blew them away. They probably ate two pints. I joked with the farmers that they should have weighed my kids before and after we picked so that we could have paid our fair share.

A few weeks ago I took a sewing class from a woman opening up a small business out of an old rectory who plans to teach home ec-based classes within the community (find out more about her courses here). Our CSA Coordinator left her position with our farm to focus on her work with From Scratch Club, an organization dedicated to sustainable, local living. And while looking at course offerings through FSC, I stumbled upon a bevy of culinary arts programs through a local arts center (some of the courses are a perfect option for date night).

There seems to be a growing trend toward getting back to the basics and living closer to home. My kids eat more when I use fresh ingredients and make their food from scratch. I've tried so many times to get them to eat mac and cheese (they love mac, they love cheese -- should be a no brainer!) but the only time they'll eat it is when I make my own sauce. And who can blame them, this tastes so much better and cooks in the same amount of time.

Rebekah, from Wild Ink Press, just posted a recipe for homemade pasta with a roasted tomato sauce. How good does that look? I remember being a little girl and going to my Great Aunt Blanche's house and seeing pasta drying all over the place. Literally on tables, furniture, kitchen counters. She'd have to move pasta so you could sit down and I thought this was SO weird. Now I wish I would have asked her to teach me her secrets.

The new house has a sunroom that will double as a playroom for the kids. It's all windows, with southern exposure. I cannot wait to teach the kids about plants and start seedlings for our garden with them this Spring. We have a hill on our property up away from the house that is going to be perfect for raised planter beds. Grace, from Finley and Oliver, graciously posted information on her (spectacular) raised planters earlier this year and I've had it bookmarked ever since.

Puff has shown so much interest in the kitchen and every chance I get I let her climb up on a chair and help me. A fun side effect to doing so much at home cooking is their involvement in our meals. I saw these learning ladders and I'm thinking it has Christmas or 2nd Birthday written all over it. Seriously though, is there anything sweeter than a toddler helping in the kitchen?

Engaging the kids in our meals and actually having them eat (rather than throw) what we make has been an amazing, but unexpected, side effect of our shift to local food and home cooking.