Sadly, I'm not usually the most productive person. I like things to be slow-paced and peaceful most of the time. I also like to take one thing at a time, so I can really focus and do a good job. Ok, mainly it's because I am completely incapable of multitasking. I know, I know, aren't women supposed to be born multi-taskers? Evidently not all of them. I have been known to wad up and throw away $20 bills while "cleaning" and talking on the phone at the same time. Dan now prefers that I stick to one task at a time :)
The only exception to the above is when I have a deadline and lots to do by then. Our deadline is vacation in 10 days. I have a packing list, a grocery/meal list, and a to-do list for the next 10 days. All of a sudden I've gotten incredibly productive. These past 72 hours have kind of been against the laws of physics. Since I'm not normally this productive, I felt compelled to share my accomplishments with all of you. (Plus, I've been slacking in the blogging area.) So here you go:
1. I recently read about how nutritious homemade chicken and beef broth is, and since we had some bones in our freezer from the 1/8th of a cow we bought last year, I thought we should make use of them! The bones we had made about 8 cups of beef broth, which I've frozen in 2 cup portions for later. I basically roasted the bones in the oven, then added water and Bragg's apple cider vinegar, and heated it up to a boil on the stove. After skimming off the top of the surface, I poured everything into the crockpot, added carrots, celery, onion, bay leaves, rosemary from the garden, and sea salt/pepper. Set the temperature to low and simmered for 24 hours. The house smelled so amazing by the end!
2. And then I did the same for the chicken broth, except I used an already roasted rotisserie chicken after we'd finished eating off of it.
3. So, I have three enormous basil plants outside. The fact that they are this large is due only to God and the "earth box" we were given as a gift by Dan's parents. I kill plants. Yet somehow, these not only survived, but thrived! So, not wanting to waste any of it, I've used it fresh, given some away to friends, and now planned to dry and freeze the rest of it before we leave for vacation. A daunting task! It took me 2 hours to harvest (and pick the leaves off the branches I'd cut) about a quarter of the basil. Oh boy. The picture below is what I have left to harvest. I'm saving the rest for next week!
4. We're borrowing my in-laws' dehydrator, which has been a lot of fun. After starting the pain-staking task of harvesting my over-abundant basil, I decided to dry some of it to use throughout the year. It took about 6-8 hours to dry 1-2 cups or so of basil and about a 1 cup of rosemary. I have more basil to dry in the coming days. You're supposed to leave the leaves whole until you use them, to preserve flavor, so I have them in a plastic baggie in my cupboard for now.
5. I had planned on making pesto with some of the basil, but I don't really feel like chopping it up, buying those expensive pine nuts, and using up our olive oil, plus the time to freeze it in small amounts. So, I found a technique of basically just freezing the leaves on a baking sheet individually, and then putting them in freezer bags! I think this will be my method of choice for the crazy amount of basil I have to deal with in a short time frame. I already have about 3 bags full in the freezer ready for use.
6. We had a couple sweet potatoes that were getting old, so I decided to make use of our dehydrator and make sweet potato chips with sea salt! Banana chips (dipped in lemon juice) are now also underway.Yum! Perfect snacks for Charlie to take along on our flights for vacation!
7. Last week, in preparation for vacation, I finally got down to making some natural sunscreen. Charlie has some Badger SPF 30, but it's a small, expensive tube. We wanted to also use something more natural on our skin, as well, but didn't want to spend the money. So, I found a recipe for homemade lotion that you basically add zinc oxide (non-nano size) to for a natural and healthy alternative for our skin! I made SPF 15 and SPF 7. Excited to try them out! Here's the recipe I used: http://www.mommypotamus.com/how-to-make-non-toxic-homemade-sunscreen/
So there you have it. I still have a long list of things to do in the next 10 days, but at least now I can check off "blog" from my list :)
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