New Favorite Soup

I made this soup yesterday and the recipe quickly found a special place in my ever-growing Favorites Recipe Book’. The recipe came from Good Life eats.

Katie Goodman author of goodLife (eats) finds and shares the most wonderful food recipes. Bless you Katie and Thank-You!

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Chili

serves 4

1 1/2 onions, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 poblano pepper, diced (deseed if you like)

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 1/4 teaspoons cumin

1 tablespoons chili powder

15 ounces crushed tomatoes

8 ounces vegetable broth

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

1 large carrot, peeled and diced

2/3 cup diced sweet potato

1 cup frozen corn

37.5 ounces canned black beans, drained but not rinsed

1/2 cup fire roasted salsa

2 bay leaves

14 ounce can petite diced tomatoes

1 1/4 teaspoon cornstarch

toppings for serving: Monterrey jack cheese or feta and cilantro

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add the diced onion and sauté for 5 minutes, until tender and golden. Add the garlic and poblano pepper and sauté another minute, until fragrant. Add the cumin and chili powder and sauté another 2 minutes.

Lower heat to medium-low and stir in the crushed tomatoes and broth (reserve 1/4 cup of broth), scraping to remove any browned bits in the pan. Add the remaining ingredients except the cornstarch and toppings.

In a small bowl whisk together the reserved 1/4 cup of broth and the cornstarch until smooth. Pour the cornstarch slurry into the chili pot. Stir until well mixed. Bring chili to a boil for 2 minutes and then lower heat to low. Simmer over low heat uncovered for one hour. Then, simmer covered with a lid for 30 minutes.

Serve topped with your choice of toppings.

Getting Into Gear, Loving the Internet and Breaking Stereotypes

There have been a lot of your typical run-of-the-mill household projects that have been neglected around the house since we moved in six years ago….I can’t believe it has been six years already. Now that I’ve extra time on my hands I’m finally getting into the ‘mood’ or ‘spirit’….what ever you want to call it….to start decorating, cleaning, and just basic home maintenance. Could it have something to do with the onset of winter and not being able to get out into the garden? Maybe.

Procrastination can go a long way towards creating a false sense of ‘all is right with the world’ if you justify it correctly and often enough. J I mean, why should I expend all that energy to work in the house after I have been outside in the garden, in the sunshine, all day? Well, the time I can spend in my garden has been winding down a little earlier than normal this year due to a major funk I got into late last winter that stemmed from some unfortunate personal issues. It came on at a very crucial time in the garden season when I should have been ordering seeds, starting seeds, and planning for the coming Fall’s harvest and canning. Anyway, the time has finally come to get my butt in gear and work on my very long, and patient, to do list.

Project lists are good to have when you need to organize tasks, but, really, some of the lists I have compiled are just too long and have been collecting dust. J Also, they are a bit outdated. Things I thought would be nice to have or do then just aren’t valid any longer. Weekly lists are always needed to keep me on task to get those necessary daily things done. Such as, general cleaning, laundry, cooking, gardening, shopping, etc.

My wife works outside the home so I have become the ‘homemaker’. How’s that for a sexist term? But is it sexist for the man to be the homemaker? Don’t get me wrong, I love the position I am in. I find it rewarding and fulfilling. I guess you could say I am getting in touch with my creative side. I have stumbled across so many wonderful crafting blogs and home decorating blogs have a fire has been lit under me and that heat has gotten me motivated. It’s going to be difficult to do everything I want to do on a limited budget but I will get done what I can, when I can.

The walls and doors in every room need attention. Scuff marks on baseboards, dents from moving furniture, holes from rearranging picture frames (the patches don’t seem to be as unnoticeable as they once were), general painting, etc.

The list of crafts I wish to learn is being updated almost daily as I discover tips, how-to’s and DIY’s highlighting ideas I never would have seen if it had not been for the internet and blogs.

The advent of the internet….and blogs….has opened up so many new ideas and knowledge that I cannot imagine what life would be without access to it. I have been able to save money, time and effort by being able to research in the comfort of my own home instead of making endless trips to the library. I have been able to save time and money by learning what materials are needed (and learning which materials to avoid or seek out) for a project by putting together a list before heading to the store. My new found love of everything from home decorating and furniture refurbishing to cooking and baking has grown because of all the wonderful ideas being shared on the internet.

My wife and I are currently patching drywall holes we had to make in two of our bathrooms while searching for an elusive leak. Let me take this time to gush about my wife. Her talent at general home improvement is something that I find totally amazing. She has done all of our plumbing repairs, electrical troubleshooting and repairs, our drywall repairs, and she is very good at it. All the while I have been happily content to be her ‘assistant’ and all around go-fer. I have learned much from her and have been slowly taking on some of those ‘duties’ that in the past have been delegated to the ‘man of the house’. Neither one of us have ever put much stock in the standard domestic stereotypes and we get along famously for it.

While she is out working, mainly because she doesn’t like ‘sitting around the house’ like I do, J I have plenty of time on my hands to experiment with and learn about ‘everything’ to my hearts content. And my heart and soul both want to learn and do all sorts of crafty things. I think this new chapter of my life will be very exciting.

Wish me luck.

 

My main desire for home décor is country living. But I am not afraid to add other elements as well.

Keep our rooted traditions alive

I feel that we, as a society, are at a crossroads between tradition and modernization. We are in danger of losing something very important in the name of progress. Our roots.

It was only 100 years ago that families would live, work and play close to home and carry on their family’s traditions. Traditions that are being replaced by the notion of cheaper methods, ‘improved’ products, and so called globalization.

We used to grow our own food, process it, store it and eat it to nourish our bodies. This process stoked local economies. Now it is cheaper to buy food in a can, usually grown far away on some factory farm and then shipped to us and purchased with money that is in return shipped far away. The cost of this ‘convenience’ and access to out-of-season foods comes at a high price that is all but invisible. The reason it is invisible is because we refuse to see it. Convenience can be its own evil.

There is a movement, actually movement is too grand a term and denotes too much organization, let’s call it a desire among a growing number of people to hang on to the old traditions. Not just from a ‘comfort zone’ perspective but to ward off the dangers that go with placing our health and welfare in the hands of others who don’t give a wit about us beyond our purchasing power.

Growing our own food may not be perceived as financially cheaper than buying cans from Walmart but we know we are not bringing home chemicals, salmonella and non-food additives to our family.

Growing food on a large scale also introduces many other factors that belie its cheapness. Factors such as the high fertilizer requirements of growing corn used in virtually all processed food, beverages and junk food. Devoting so much farm land to Corn and Soybeans, creating a near mono-culture, could be devastating if a disease or bacteria were to wipe it all out. The rise of CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) is polluting and damaging communities and watersheds and introduces more and stronger antibiotics into the meat supply required by over-crowded conditions.

Food today is forced to grow at a rate beyond its ability to properly develop its natural nutritional value. The final product is so bland and anemic that non-food additives (declared by the FDA to be ‘safe’ for consumption, notice I did not say nutritional) are used to make the food palatable. If you have ever tasted a home- grown tomato side-by-side with tomatoes from a can you will notice the difference immediately.

We are becoming a nation of buyers instead of makers and creators. Better life through chemistry is not the answer it once promised.

The art of crafting, the spirit of do-it-yourself and the pride that comes from growing and creating your own is being tossed aside and replaced by a generic sameness that is killing our collective individualism.

I greatly admire those people who are keeping crafting and DIY and individualism alive. These people are attempting to preserve a way of life that cannot be bought during a trip to the store.

The attempt to get people to recycle, reuse, repurpose, whatever you want to call it, is a very difficult undertaking. We have the foreboding sense that we are using up the planets resources at a far greater rate than ever before and the end is looming. Yet, far too many people are not getting it. Buying manufactured goods, using so-called ‘greener’ methods is still enslaving ourselves to a process that continues the destruction of the planet and human traditions. It is also filling our landfills at a ever increasing rate. We need to slow down our desire to have the latest gadget which leads to throwing away last-years still useable products. We need to shun the shiny new product that is at best only slightly more effective or efficient than what we already own. Nowhere is this out-of-control trend more obvious and destructive than the purchase of cell phones and cars.

It comes down to helping ourselves instead of helping the manufacturing process that sends money overseas and uses up our limited supply of resources.

I’m not espousing returning to the dark ages or living in caves. Let’s just keep our rooted traditions alive. Buy and eat locally, learn how to make as many of your own products as possible, and extend the life of what we already own.

Things That Go to Make Up a Life

I have so many interests I sometimes wonder if one lifetime will be enough to experience everything life has to offer.

This is going to be an attempt at a journal of things I do as well as things I find on the internet, in books, movies, as well as things I learn from friends and family.

It will not be in any kind of order, just as random as life itself is.

I enjoy keeping my hands and mind busy with hobbies, crafts, gardening (growing everything), hiking, camping, fishing, bird watching, gaming, cooking, travel, architecture, art, reading, music, movies. You get the idea, this list just keeps going on and on.

As almost everyone else is, I am on a limited budget but have never allowed that to get me down. I love doing and learning everything on a Do It Yourself basis.

We don't all follow the same path through life and I want to share as much as possible with everyone. I'll try not to bore you with what may turn out to be a lot of rehashing of stuff you can find everywhere else. At the same time I hope you'll feel the desire to share things you find interesting as well.