Category: Spring

On The Court

Winter sports have started and parents everywhere are volunteering for coach their kid’s park and recreation teams. And I am that parent-coach.

After spending quite a few years working with kids, you learn firsthand that not all kids learn the same way. But one learning style that all kids have in common is that they have to have a visual of some kind. And when you’re on a sideline, during a game, and you can’t walk out on the court/field to physically show your team what you want them to do, the next best thing is a whiteboard clipboard of your court/field. (So you don’t have to wait for school athletics for kids to be learn from this court map.)

For whatever reason, if you want to have the benefit of having a court/field dry erase board but don’t want to go through the expense of buying one, I’m going to show you a couple of different ways that you can make one rather inexpensively. (This is a huge perk for summer camps where counselors are coaching and you don’t want to worry about misplacing or breaking a nice board.)

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Laminated Court

I went this route because I already had in my craft room a clipboard, laminating machine, laminate, paper, printer, magnets, white board pen, ink pen (you never know when you need an ink pen), and hot glue gun. All in all, for the materials I spent under $4. So this is really inexpensive and gets the job done.

First you either want to make or down load a copy of a basketball court (or any other court or field you’re coaching) and print it off.

Run it through a laminating machine with a laminate cover. And as soon as it’s cooled, this mock white board is ready to write on.

I can’t tell you how many different of these “white boards” I’ve made for homeschooling with worksheets that I want to use over and over again. Yes, some colors like to stain the laminate (red and blue are the two colors that cause problems in my house). BUT they’re super easy to clean up. Take a cotton ball with rubbing alcohol and you’re back to a crystal clear “white board”. And if you’ve ever found out that you grabbed a permanent market instead of a white board pen. Don’t worry! Rubbing alcohol will also take that right off. Or if you ran out… simply take a dry erase pen over the permanent marker and erase. The permanent marker comes right off! (It’s the same trick for with a real white board.)

Now I modified my white board. After my first practice I got tired of fishing my pen out of my pocket. So on the back of my clip board I hot glued a magnet for my dry erase pen and for my ink pen. I hot glued magnets to my pens, in a place where they wouldn’t interfere with how I hold my pens (near center, in the crook between my thumb and first finger).

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Depending on your pen, hot glue may not work. Hot glue works like a dream on plastic finishes, but if you grab a metal pen like I did its 50/50 if the glue will hold. My pen popped off with a minimum amount of glue. This second time I used a very generous amount (where I had to wipe off a large glob of left over glue) and the magnet has stayed on the pen. My back up for another glue failure is to switch over to liquid cement glue that is formulated to work on metal and ceramic. I didn’t start with that glue because I didn’t want to rig up something to hold the magnet in place while the glue dried.

As you can see, I don’t have to worry about making sure I have pockets while coaching and my pens are taken care of without having to worry about tying my pen to the clip on the clipboard.

But what if you don’t have a lamination machine that you can use???

Plastic Holder

This one is another one of my homeschooling hacks. And I love it for absolutely everything, including a recipe protector in the kitchen if you have a sauce or frying and you get liquids flying next to your stove.

So far I’ve only seen these plastic holders at the dollar store. If anyone else has found them anywhere else (other than Amazon), please comment below!

But with this option, all you have to do is find a court or field that you want and print it out on a piece of letter sized printer paper and then you just slide it in. White board pens work on this plastic just the same as the laminate option above and white boards! So for under $2 this is really affordable for any scenario where your “basketball clipboard” will go missing. Or even if you have young kids who want to pretend play “coach”!

This option is also good if you want to be hands free coaching, but want your board with you. Connect it to a lanyard or a retractable key set on your belt loop. It’s handy when you need it and the pouch can also hold your pen.

Files Used For This Project

Don’t want to hunt down another basketball court image to print? You can use this PDF file here. Other sports fields and courts will be added to this link. If you don’t see the one you’re looking for, please leave a comment!

Other Items that may interest you

This post contains affiliate links that give us commissions on products purchased at no additional cost to you. These items listed here are from Amazon but may be purchased at local markets.

Basketball Coaches Clipboard

15 mm disc magnets I know these can be found in your local store. I used magnets, of this size, that I had found at my local dollar store (traditional black refrigerator magnets).

Plastic Paper Sleeves

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Lost on What to Bring?

It never fails that there is a family get together that you don’t know what to bring. Or maybe it’s an office or friends get together. And this is especially painful for those of us who cook well and bring an amazing dish but no one wants to touch it because it’s not one of those Pinterest fad dishes.

This is what you want to bring!

Back at Easter I found a Pillsbury cream cheese and crescent appetizer. I can’t find the exact one, but this link is their fall version in case you want to use an official recipe.

The problem I had was that after more than a decade of marriage, no one in my husband’s family told me that they preferred salty/savory dishes over sweet dishes. And I love cooking pastries and sweets. So once I got that bit of information I finally got the secret to making something that they always want to eat, I feel loved, and I’m not bringing tons of leftovers home of my dish (because they don’t want to take any home).

Again, the above link is for the thanksgiving version. But the Easter version focused on fresh parsley instead of the cranberries. I wanted to keep my Thanksgiving appetizer simple, so I just recreated the Easter version and put it in a cup instead of in a carrot shape, like I did this past spring.

You really don’t need the recipe. For the parsley version all you need on hand is:

  • Pillsbury crescent rolls (feel free to use the generic brand, it’s just the carrier for the cream cheese!)
  • Cream cheese
  • Parsley
  • Flavored Salt (I love garlic so I use garlic salt, but feel free to use any herb/flavored salt you have on hand)

Create Your Shell

For Easter I made a carrot shape by wrapping strips around a cone of foil. For Thanksgiving, I made a bowl by cutting squares and baking them over the bottom of my silicone cupcake molds.

Here’s the trick! If you want to create bite size pieces, use mini cupcake molds. The standard cupcake molds creates pieces that take about 4 bites. Know the people at your party. My family wants the bites that they can just pop in their mouths (or take two bites if they’re being dainty and polite). So the mini is perfect for your grazing appetizer get-togethers. If you’re doing something like a sit down side, the larger (regular size cupcake mold) is perfect for preparing pre-made plates for your get together.

TIP: Use the oven temperature on the package of your crescent rolls. But cut back on the cook time. The minimum cook time on the package I used was 9 minutes. The perfect golden brown I found came at 7 minutes.

Mix Your Filling

For the two packages of crescent rolls that I used, I mixed up about 32 oz of cream cheese. At Easter I found that 16 oz was barely enough to fill my carrots. In fact, I scraped from some carrots to fill others just to make sure that there was “enough” for all the carrots. And this filling is great to have leftovers with because you can spread it on bagels or toast and you will love it just the same!

Taking from my days at working in a University Dining Hall, if you want creamy cream cheese, you want to take the 10 minutes or so to aerate your cream cheese. All you do is take your cream cheese and put it in a bowl and use a hand mixer on high speed. (The Pillsbury recipes never tell you this trick, but believe me you want to do it!)

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When you first start mixing, you will feel the chunk and clunk of the dense cheese. After 10 minutes you will notice that it feels like you’re mixing a thick butter cream frosting. At this point is when you want to season the cheese. Everyone’s salt preferences are going to be different, so I’m not going to tell you an exact measurement to put in. I prefer to barely taste the salt, in fact I would never salt cream cheese for feeding me or my boys. For my husband’s family, though, I salt it a touch beyond my comfort zone–this hits their food pleasure center. So if you are no or low salt making these for people who love salty food, season the cheese enough that it’s just outside your comfort zone but not a salt bomb. If you like salty food, season it to your exact preference. If people tell you that you like salt too much, season the cheese so that it tastes bland to you, but you can still barely taste the salt.

Once the cheese is seasoned, then you want to add your seasonal flavor embellishment. Parsley is good no matter what time of year. I like using just parsley because it’s not going to clash or taste bad eating before or after another appetizer. Plus, parsley is known as a palate cleanser. So if someone eats an appetizer that did not sit well on their tongue, they can come right back to yours and reset their mouth to go on with their party eating.

TIP: Right before Thanksgiving, Monday to be exact, all the parsley was severely picked over and the bunch I bought, when I got home and opened it had some slimy wilted parsley in the center. I couldn’t serve that to family, so I grabbed my dehydrated parsley off my herb shelf. While I love fresh herbs, I keep dried herbs for this precise reason. So don’t be afraid to use any dried herbs that you have on hand!

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With the above recipe link, you will notice that Pillsbury used cranberries and jalapeño. Don’t be afraid to use other flavors during the rest of the year. For example, back for Easter I grated some carrots and put carrots in with the fresh parsley. For spring and summer you could definitely use dehydrated or freeze dried berries. (Just be careful of your water content from berries if you use fresh. They can loosen your cream cheese so it becomes too soft and sloppy.) For a fall and winter option, don’t be afraid to add some Pecans, Walnuts, or other winter nut. Even a candied nut can be your friend for a little bit of sweet and savory combo!

Putting it Together

It is possible to pipe the cream cheese mixture into your crescent shell. You will want to do this when you’re finished mixing your filling. And if you don’t have a piping back and tips in your kitchen, all you have to do is put your cheese into a zip lock bag, snip and bottom corner (after you zipped it up with all the air pressed out). The only drawback to this method is that if your cheese was put back into the fridge or not aerated, then the bag is going to burst.

What do you do if the bag bursts?

Take two small spoons from your drawer. I teaspoon full of cream cheese is more than enough to fill the shells made from the bottom of the mini cupcake molds.

Once your shells are filled, you can finish them off with a dusting of parsley or other flavoring that you put into the cheese (crushed nuts, berries, fruit, etc.).

There you have it!

This is how you can make an impressive appetizer without spending a fortune and doesn’t require a degree from a chef school. But even if you have even less time or say that you burn boiling water, if you can bake crescent rolls then you can spend a little more and get the fancy flavored cream cheese that is pre-made for you.

Even if you seriously can’t cook the crescent rolls, skip the chip and dip route. Pick up the pre-made flavored cream cheese and swing by the bakery department in your local grocery store. You can find pre-sliced bread or even baguettes. Slice up the bread, spread some cheese on top, and sprinkle some parsley (or other ingredients mentioned above).

What’s your favorite appetizer to take to a party?

Items that might interest you for making this appetizer

These links are affiliate links. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links, but at no extra cost to you.

Standard Sized Silicone Cupcake Molds

Mini Sized Silicone Cupcake Molds

The silver platter I used was a wedding present. Here is a Silver Tray available in a similar style.

Or perhaps you’re looking for a Ceramic Tray.

Various Freeze Dried Fruits to choose from. These Cranberries are a seasonal favorite that’s unique from the fresh berries in the store where they are good for a year after opening.

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Comfort In a Jar

Hello Fall. Hello Soup Season.

I won’t even say what else comes with this season. Let’s just say that as a mom of three young children, I’m fully aware of what the change of season means. And this past week, that came and knocked the energy out of me. Shoot I didn’t know I had any more energy to be knocked out! I thought my kiddos drained it from me to fuel their never ending supply of energy.

And yet, I was so grateful to have this soup already canned up and ready to go in my pantry. The chicken stock I make, I add antiviral herbs to it. Let me just say that Lemon Balm is my new favorite antiviral herb to cook with! (In a few weeks I’ll share more with you everything I put into my Chicken Stock. You’re going to love it!)

I want to share with you this recipe for Chicken Soup that is perfect for those days where you need healing chicken soup but don’t have the time or energy to make it from scratch. You will absolutely love this because it takes only 5 minutes to warm up–the same amount of time it takes to make condensed soup from the grocery store. BUT it has less ingredients and more immune boosting goodness. And even if your sick days are few and far between, this soup is quicker to heat up than going through a fast food drive through. Plus as the added bonus of being that IT item to use up some leftovers you have sitting in your fridge on the day you crack open this jar of soup.

Yields: 7 Quarts of canned soup

  1. Clean your jars and lids.
  2. Prep your ingredients.
  3. Cold pack your chicken, split evenly between all 7 jars.
  4. For each of your ingredients, split evenly between all 7 jars. Start with the larger cut ingredients and end with the smaller peas and lentils.

(It’s easier to shake the smaller ingredients down into the cracks of larger ingredients than to shove the larger ones in on the smaller.)

  • Fill each of the Quart size jars with about 2 cups of chicken stock.
  • If you have Kosher or Sea Salt, you can season your soup now. Otherwise, do not put in your table salt or iodized salt. You will season your soup when you open you jar before serving.
  • Clean the rims of your jars with vinegar and then place lids and rings, finger tight.
  • Prepare your pressure canner.

Follow your canner’s directions for the correct process of canning with your canner.

For example, I am Sea Level – 1,000 foot elevation so I can the Chicken Soup with 10 lbs of pressure for 90 minutes in my weighted canner.

  • Once time is complete, turn off the heat and let your canner naturally release pressure.
  • When you can remove your lid, let the cans sit for an additional 10 minutes before removing them from the canner.
  • Allow your jars to sit 12-24 hours to seal. Then remove the rings and clean your jars before storing.

With new lids preserving your canned goods for up to 18 months, you have plenty of shelf life for this soup.

There are many options you have for this Chicken Soup.

  • You can season it and eat as is.
  • If you have left over rice or noodles in your fridge you can add those ingredients and still have rice and chicken or chicken noodle soup that is ready to eat with a 5 minute warm up on your stove.
  • With adding a thickening agent (slurry or corn starch) you can turn this into chicken and dumplings or a pot pie filling.
  • Maybe you have other small amounts of leftover meat, like Italian Sausage. You can use this meat to bulk up the soup, add some kale and parmesan and have a Tuscan style soup.
  • Or maybe you’re looking for something Latin in flavor. Grab some tortilla strips, grated jack cheese and add in Latin American seasonings and you can have Tortilla soup.

These ideas are a far cry from being authentic cultural cuisines. However I want to give you a few ideas on how you can turn one of your canned soups into a blank slate for some variety.

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I know a lot of us really do not have time to prep meals for our families. In fact “meal prep” might have a double four letter word effect in your ears. And that’s okay. For roughly the same time it would take me to cook a soup from scratch for my family, I can make 7 meals that I can crack open and serve dinner in less time than it is for me to go through a drive through. And it’s healthier for us.

To heat up this dinner in 5 minutes, this is all I do:

  1. Grab my jar from the pantry.
  2. Grab my soup pot. And turn my burner on high.
  3. Open the jar and pour the soup into the pot.
  4. Fill the jar with Water and pour into the pot.
  5. Put the jar in the dishwasher and set the table.
  6. Taste the soup to make sure it’s seasoned the way I want it. (Add salt, because I usually only have table salt readily available, so it got canned without salt.)
  7. And it’s dinner time.

If you have a college student who’s coming up on Mid Terms or Finals, this is perfect for them! Often times they’re up late and find themselves hungry after the cafeteria is already closed. This is something they can cook from their dorm room with a microwave or hot plate and have the brain food that they need. Or maybe they’ve caught a cold and need a little mama’s love in the form of soup. This is super convenient and perfect for a care package.

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Looking for a gift idea for this Holiday Season?

This is soup is perfect for the new mother getting use to having baby at home, an elderly family member who retired their pots and pans, someone who is an avid camper or loves cooking by camp fire, or anyone else who can benefit from a quick home cooked meal without all the fuss.

Maybe you’re the type of person who loves gifting food to a neighbor, friend, or family when they become ill. Here is a quick way of gifting all that healthy goodness without your schedule batting an eye.

I highly recommend this recipe for everyone!

Do you need another gift idea?

This one is personal and doesn’t require you to have a master’s degree in art to make!

Here are some supplies that you will need:

  • Canvas
  • Paint
  • Paintbrush
  • Clear Acrylic Spray
  • Chalk pen/crayon, Paint pen, Pastel, or like craft item you can write with
  • (Optional) Sponge, Paper towel, Napkin, or Tissue
  • (Optional) Embellishments such as pre-cut vinyl design

Paint a design on your canvas. You can do whatever design you would like. Here are some examples of canvases that I already have on hand. There are the canvases that my boys made 3 years ago.

And these are the ones that I have in the prepped stage for various projects that I have in the works. You can use coordinating colors, monochromatic colors, are shades for an abstract scene.

Let your canvas dry.

Spray your canvas with Clear Acrylic Spray and let dry. This step is important, because accidents happen and sometimes you want to “erase” a mistake. I’m a phonetic speller and sometimes I just get a word wrong. No worries. By having the acrylic spray dried before you start writing with your crafting pen of choice, you have the option of wiping away the mistake with a wet cloth. The only writing medium that gets to be a bit tricky is acrylic pens. That one you may not find having an “erasing” quality. Chalk pens and most pastels will generally work for excessive editing.

With your writing medium of choice write your message, series of quotes, words of encouragement, or whatever you’re inspired to say. When I made these gifts for nieces and nephews, it took about 7 quotes that I pulled from online to fill the 8×10 canvas with medium small print from top to bottom. You can write as large or small as you would like. Just be aware that the writing medium you choose to use will help you decide how small you are able to write. I used a chalk crayon that had a relatively large nib, so I wrote as small as I could and the words were as tall as the width of my pinky.

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Decide if you would like to leave your writing clear and readable or if you would like to smudge the words to make an added texture on top of the painted design that you made. This choice is perfect for the people who believe that their handwriting isn’t pretty. By smudging your writing, you remove the uneven, shaky, or other characteristics of your handwriting that you may be self conscious of. If you choose to smudge, I recommend printing out a copy of your message that you can give with your gift, so the recipient has the opportunity to read the love that you wrote for them. For direction of smudging, that is completely up to your eye. I personally like smudging my work from left to right because I love using horizontal strokes when I paint. I do have some pieces that the strokes are vertical and so my esthetic is to smudge vertical with those, so the “text” doesn’t compete with the flow. But you could choose to smudge diagonally, circular, zigzag… each direction you go will give a different feel to your piece.

Once you are done writing and/or smudging spray your canvas with the Clear Acrylic Spray again. This is going to be a critical step for you. If you chose to smudge your “text”, the spray will prevent further smudging. If you want to add vinyl or HTV on top of your art, this spray is going to anchor your vinyl down. I’ve tried applying vinyl and HTV straight on a painted canvas and both have peeled off, taking paint with it. But every time that I’ve used the Acrylic Spray, vinyl and HTV both stay on the canvas perfectly.

Embellish your gift. Your options are endless at this point. You can choose to make something and personal with just adding your recipient’s name. You can add scrapbooking embellishments with hot glue to add some glam or character. You could pray a frame with a metallic paint and make a modern framed art. Or perhaps you want to do four panels and keep them frameless. And then there’s always the option making a 3D piece using other crafting techniques, such as this.

If you find that you are on a budget this Holiday season, this is a perfect gift option for you. We are in a time in history where people need to hear how much they are loved and valued. So when you can poor into another person and share with them a hope of a future with them, it can hold profound meaning in their life right now. I have never before seen so many people facing suicide and thoughts of hopelessness like I’ve seen in the last few years. Sharing with someone how much they mean to you is something that you will never regret. And you never know that it might be the one thing that offers them hope in a time where it seems like everything is so wrong.

What is inspiring you right now? Do you have ideas sparking in your mind?

Right now I’m inspired with many of the changes that come with fall. This is the season that always has inspired me. In fact, my boys found a whole acorn that I so want to use as a piece of 3D art. I’m hoping I can find some more and have more than a single nut to work with!

Please comment below with what you want to make and even send me some pictures. I would love to see what creativity jumps to life in you!

Files used today

Spring Triple Panel comes with all you see here. Or you can select individual elements.

Jelly Fish element from my Jelly Fish Collection

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Fresh From The Garden

(This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links, but at no extra cost to you.)

I am so happy that the recent sun and high heats have hit my garden the last couple of weeks. The spring here has been cold and wet and I second guessed, third guessed, and fourth guessed whether my spring plantings were going to be viable in making produce.

The great news is that my leafy greens are all doing well and have come to maturity for harvesting. My tomatoes are finally putting forth fruit. Truth be told, I keep looking for more blossoms and hunting for more new fruit. I really want to put away more pasta sauce and try my hand at tomato paste. Usually we just go through so much sauce that I really don’t get the opportunity to make anything else. So fingers crossed, I am so hoping to make other tomato products.

My corn is finally starting to outgrow my oldest child. Fortunately I drive past farms that grow fields of corn, so I compare my humble hobby garden to the professionals. And I’m glad that my few rows of corn are keeping pace with the large farms. So there’s hope. And particularly since I grew popping corn last year, for the first time, my boys are hooked with “our” popcorn. And I planted more corn than I’ve ever done before in hopes of making a year’s worth of popping corn. When the ears have matured, I’ll make a post on this so you can know which types of corn to grow to make your own popping corn. Also, you can see just how easy it is to make pop corn. Other than the wait, making pop corn is super easy!

I won’t go into all the details of everything that I’ve grown this year, but I will end here by stating that my fall seeds have already sprouted and are doing so much better than my spring planting. And even today, I’ve come across so many videos on YouTube talking about what crops you can plant in August and still harvest in the remaining time for this growing season. So if you are curious to try your hand at growing something before fall hits, there is definitely still time!

Fresh is what’s for dinner!

Out of the five items I harvested from my garden this morning, I used three of them for dinner tonight; Cabbage, Bok Choy, and Mizuna.

If you’re asking, “what is mizuna?” believe me, so did I. This past fall I bought seeds from Baker Creek. (Not an affiliate link, just a great product.) When I got that delivery I found out that the gift packet of seeds I got from them was mizuna. I had never heard of this green before. So I took a chance and grew it on the blind. And tonight I found out that it is a type of bitter green. Some of the bitter greens are quite bitter and I have to douse restaurant salads that come with them, because they’re so bitter. However the mizuna is not so strong. It has a mild bitter flavor, but is not bad at all if you’re sensitive to the bitter profiles, like I am.

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Knowing that I have so many green to bring in starting tomorrow and for the next week or so, I had to come up with a new idea on how to use them. Other than dehydrating my greens and turning it into a powder to use in countless recipes, I can’t think of a way (other than freeze drying, but I don’t have that machine yet) of preserving them without becoming a wilty mess. Granted Cabbage is good for kraut and ferments–which I will be doing when I get a few more heads ready for harvest. Once my green cabbage comes in I’ll post an amazing Italian ferment that I found. And with the red cabbage I’ll post on making a red kraut. So there are a few things to keep an eye out for.

Back to dinner, I needed to find a use for these three greens to make dinner. Cabbage and Bok Choy can both handle some cooking. But one look at Mizuna and I knew I couldn’t do a stir fry with it. It’s definitely a salad green.

But Asian sounded so good!

And that’s when inspiration hit. Two of the three greens could handle the heat, so I cooked my rice and chicken in a marinade (Mr. Yoshida’s Original Gourmet).

While everything cooked, I prepped the greens.

For a single plate I used (from top to bottom) 4 stalks of Bok Choy, a few leaves of Cabbage (the head was small, so I used about 5 leaves), and 4 stalks of Mizuna.

The Bok Choy and Mizuna I chopped. Because the cabbage is raw, I rolled the leaves together and julienne cut the leaves. Once these are cut, they just mix together easily like this.

I usually dread buying mixed salads at the store because either their mixes don’t taste good to me, are old, don’t keep long in the fridge, or all the various recalls over the last few years. Now that I have these greens ready to pull from my garden (plus spinach once it reaches maturity), I can put together a salad mix that is far superior than what’s found in the stores AND it takes less time than driving to my local store (about 4 minutes away).

The great thing about this mix combo is that I can place hot rice right on top of the salad and it retains its crisp texture. Cabbage isn’t phased by the heat. Bok Choy naturally can be cooked for a couple of minutes and keep firm texture in the stalk with mild wilt in the leaf, but retain full pleasurable taste. Mizuna, I fully expected to not hold up to the heat, just because it did wilt in the time between me rinsing the greens off and making dinner.

All in all Mizuna acted much like Bok Choy. The greens did wilt. BUT the beautiful purple stalks remained crunchy just like the Bok Choy stalk.

Top off the salad greens with rice, and then marinated chicken. And as a side note, left over chicken is just as perfect as having warm chicken. I ate this both ways.

You can see here that the rice I had on hand in my kitchen is basmati rice. I couldn’t have picked a better rice for this dish. White (short or long grain) rice tends to be sticky and would just be globular bunches of rice on this dish. Brown rice could be used. But if given the choice between basmati and brown rice, I would pick basmati for textual reasons. But know that you can choose your favorite rice.

Alternate Ingredients

I don’t have much experience with grain alternates to rice. I wouldn’t recommend quinoa (too nutty for this flavor profile), potato, or riced cauliflower(too gummy of a texture). Couscous could work, especially if you use a different marinade for the chicken.

If you didn’t want to use Mr. Yoshida’s Original Gourmet, Teriyaki would be just as perfect for this rice on salad. Sweet and Sour would be a fun alternate. I’m leaning toward trying the next time I make this, using a honey ginger sauce. And maybe you’re not into a sauce at all, for any dietary reason, but prefer vinaigrettes. You are most certainly not limited in how you dress your chicken or rice.

And once you opt for a different dressing, you can make any of your other alternate grains work in the place of rice.

You’ve also then opened up the window for other additional ingredients. Have garbanzo beans that you’ve been looking for something new to make with it? What about dehydrated fruits or vegetable chips? Pomegranates, fruit slices (fruit or canned)… as you can now see, you can really turn your salad on its head with adding a heated element on top of something traditionally thought of as being a cold entre. You can use dehydrated or preserved ingredients–especially if you need to use up some of your previously shelved preserves to make room for what is coming up in your current garden.

I can’t even begin to share with you just how excited I am about this! With all the recent hot weather and the lack of desire to cook dinners, I am actually looking forward to making this a meal a couple of times a week, different meats, different dressings, different additions. Plus it’s the bonus of eating all the leafy greens that don’t normally keep well, like some of the other produce I grow to preserve. And that’s not even taking into consideration all the edible flowers that abound this time of year (such as culinary lavender and dandelions)!

As you can see here, with how beautifully this all mixed together I’m positive your imagination has already added in additional ingredients to make this meal individually you!!!

Here’s the cut files that were newly released this past week. New files are released every Monday!

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Just A Touch of Spice

Long before I met my husband, his father had made and gifted him (and his siblings) a handmade spice rack. For well over a decade, we had intentions of displaying this gift and filling it with spices. However, the convenience of buying spices really took away the need of using the tins.

A few years ago I played around with my dehydrating skills and found new seasonings to cook with that I never thought of making.

I love mushrooms. There’s a gentle earthiness that comes with using them in a recipe. And when your family doesn’t go out of their way to eat mushrooms, I sneak them into sauces by dehydrating the mushroom and then grinding them down to a powder with a spice blender. Now I can have the benefit of having the flavor profile without my family seeing it and making their picky faces.

My absolutely favorite “spice” to cook with is actually butternut squash. I roast the squash in my oven. When it’s finished cooking I remove the flesh from the skin and mash it. From there, I take the mash and spread it across the fruit roll up tray of my dehydrator. Once the mash dries out, I also put that in my spice grinder and turn it into powder.

Here’s the absolutely most beautiful thing about turning your vegetables into powder! If you have a child or family member who turns their nose up at even the mention of vegetables, you turn it into a powder and season your food with it and your family has absolutely no idea that they are eating vegetables!

Not only this, but if you’ve made sauces before you are fully aware of how the traditional flour and corn starch have no benefit of flavor. You have to remember to cook down your flour. And if you use too much corn starch, and have sensitive taste buds, you can actually taste it. So there’s the issue of the texture; corn starch has a different texture and appearance than flour. But…instead of using these two traditional thickeners you can use dehydrated vegetables.

I prefer using potato flakes over flour and corn starch hands down. You can use potato flakes minutes from finishing your cook time. So if you forgot to cook flour to make rue, you have potato flakes. If you hate making slurry with corn starch and then wait for it to set, use potato flakes. I’ve had slurry take anywhere up to 10 minutes to take effect. But with potato flakes, it’s generally set in about two minutes.

That is my #1 mom hack of thickening a sauce, stew, or soup.

My #2 mom hack is using butternut squash instead of sugar!

If you’ve made your own tomato sauce before, you know the debate among the community: use sugar or not. Sometimes you need that sweetness to balance out that flavor profile. However, if you’re trying to eliminate sugar, or keep it to a minimum, what do you do?

You add butternut squash powder!

It’s sweet. You have an added vegetable in your meal. Plus, you have the added bonus of having yet another thickening agent that is healthy for you.

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You would think, for as much as I make seasoning and thickening agents from vegetables, why haven’t I grown my own herbs yet?

It wasn’t until this year that I set out, with intention, growing herbs. And it was a great thing that I focused on herbs this year.

A family member tested positive this year with the strain of covid with assaults the gastro-intestinal track. But I had fresh herbs on hand that are anti-viral in nature, giving your body the building blocks to strengthen your immune system to do its job that it was designed to do.

Bay leaves are anti-viral, good for your body no matter which virus your body is fighting.

Lemon balm is also an anti-viral, but its properties are good for the whole coronal family of viruses. So it’s good if you test positive or if you’re fighting off the common cold (it’s from the same family).

So with these two herbs, and my homemade chicken stock, I had the building blocks to make a broth for this family member. Because their GI was being affected, of course food is sounding pretty horrible compared to other strains. To this broth, I added other herbs that I knew were beneficial for delicate GI and combating nausea; ginger, mint….

I’m still working on the recipe to making it recreatable. But I know I’m on the right track because this family member asked me to make a second batch of broth, because it tasted good AND it soothed their stomach so they could get some nutrients into their body.

The whole point of the broth was not to cure them from the virus. The whole goal was to get the nutrients into their body for them to get their body everything they need to fight the virus. Our bodies are amazing things. They’re meant to fight off disease. We just need to give them the building blocks to do their job.

And that is what is amazing about growing a garden. Whether you’re growing food to put on the table or growing herbs to make food taste better without all the extra ingredients in the now $6-10 bottles of seasoning at the store (sometimes more, and if they’re on the shelf).

Consider what it is that you can grow for your family. You may not have the yard to grow a garden. But with a sunny window, you can grow a few easy low maintenance herbs that are good for fighting colds and viruses. I buy bay leaves, because I don’t have the space for a bay tree. But Lemon Balm can be grown in a pot in a sunny window. And the mint family (which lemon balm comes from) is prolific and among the easies things you can grow. Plus it’s something that you plant once and it will keep coming back and grow.

Please comment below with the herbs you grow or with any hacks you have for using vegetables in a new way!

The file, Seasoning Labels, I used for these herb layers are now live in my shop here. The file comes with the labels oval in shape. To create these in the round, I just resized the oval into a circle. This font is amazing for retaining its shape!

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