Vacationing in Southern Virginia with Teens, Tweens, and a Pre-Teen Wannabe...

...While Avoiding Theme Parks and Boardwalks!

When we decided to take a late-summer family vacation, I wasn't quite sure what we would do, but I knew it would not involve amusement parks, water parks, or crowded boardwalks.  The challenge was finding places to go and things to do that would keep the interests of two teenagers, two tweens, and a precocious six-year old who thinks she should be twelve.  Additionally, it would be nice if these middle-aged parents could enjoy part of the trip as well.  So where did we go?

Destination 1: Colonial Williamsburg

We started with a candle-lit ghost tour where our 9 year old son had the privilege of holding the lantern and leading the way through the dark streets.  This was a mile-long walk and took about an hour to learn about some of the buildings that have reported strange apparitions throughout the years.  Other than being incredibly humid, it was a perfect night with a crescent moon and a sky full of stars.

Over the next few days, we spent hours meandering the streets and stopping in various buildings and shops.  Even though it is free and open to the public, many of the houses require a ticket to enter.  Since we stayed in one of the Colonial Williamsburg facilities, our passes allowed us free entry to everything in the park for the duration of our stay.

I expected the streets to be crowded, but they weren't at all even though there were carriages, joggers, and families throughout.

The exception to this were the taverns at lunch time.  No reservations are accepted for lunch, so it is a first-come, first-serve kind of deal.  Within five minutes of opening, tables were filling up and patrons were waiting on benches outside.

Our favorite restaurant of the entire trip was Chowning's Tavern where my husband and I had beef and potato pasties, our 13 year old daughter marveled over shepherd's pie, and we listened to a colonial minstrel sing "Yankee Doodle Dandee" throughout the tavern.

We were expecting all of Williamsburg to be stifling hot, but we were pleasantly surprised to discover that the insides of buildings are now air-conditioned.

However, there are still plenty of outdoor exhibits that involved fire, and I wondered how these reenactors make it through the ninety degree days next to earth ovens and open fireplaces in their layers of colonial garb.  God bless them!

The one thing we all felt at the end of the day was tired feet!  Colonial Williamsburg means lots and lots of walking---miles and miles of it daily.  The positive side to that is that we walked off many of the calories consumed while there.  Next time I will not be vain and wear cute little sandals that give my feet no support.  I'll be breaking out my walking sneakers.

We didn't restrict our vacation to Colonial Williamsburg though.  There are so many things to do and see in southern Virginia that it was difficult to narrow them down to just a few.

Destination 2: Buckroe Beach

Wanting to avoid Virginia Beach, I decided to give this public beach and park a try.  We arrived mid-morning and had a huge part of the beach to ourselves.  There were several piers, pavilions with picnic facilities, a huge playground, and public restrooms.  This is located in Hampton at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

Our children would have liked to spend the entire day here since it was the first beach experience for most of them.  I have a husband, however, who doesn't enjoy the Atlantic beaches at all since the water is not clear like it is in the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean.  He (and one of our sons) is a tad bit uncomfortable with what might be lurking unseen in those waters.

There was initially a concern about possible jellyfish, but once they experienced those rolling waves, my kiddos didn't want to come out of the water.  I'm happy to report that we didn't see or feel a single jellyfish or any other sea creature for that matter.  At least not here...

...To Be Continued Tomorrow...

A Preppy Touch to Farmhouse Gifts

This week my teen daughter and I put together some gifts from our farm and we dressed them up with just a wee bit of preppy style. 

1. Peach Syrup: This is the peach chocolate mint jelly recipe we made last weekend that didn't gel.  It's delicious as a syrup however.  The recipe can be found here at one of my previous posts.  Although the peaches didn't come from our farm, the chocolate mint did, and the syrup was made with care by my husband.
2. Dried Apples: These are from last year's harvest and were dehydrated in our Excalibur dehydrator.  We added some cinnamon to the jar and shook it up to add a delicious fragrance (and taste) when you open the lid.  Our apple trees are full of apples this year, and we're hopeful that we'll have a great crop for pies, apple crisp, and apple schnitz this fall.
3. Dried Parsley Flakes: Dried in the dehydrator another year past from our herb garden.  This year's parsley got nibbled down to the ground---either by a rabbit or one of our goats when they found a way out of the pasture.  Believe it or not, we have a goat that can climb the fence stock panels like you climb a ladder!
4. Peppermint Foot Powder: This is actually the same recipe as the carpet freshener I made back in April and can be found here.  Instead of using the lemongrass oil, we used 8 drops of pure peppermint essential oil.  This is excellent to use on your feet or to put in shoes, especially in the heat of summer.

We found the black and white paisley handkerchiefs for $1, so I didn't feel guilty for cutting circles into them to put on the top of the Mason jar lids.  I found the green ribbons in a drawer in my dry sink, and I really wish I'd had some preppy pink ones too.  Of course, our basement is always full of Mason jars, and gold mailing labels make the perfect labels for these farm gifts.  This was a fun hour for the two of us, especially when we were doing the photo shoot outside, and our Maine coon cat kept dashing around our display.  Now I'm on the lookout for preppy accessories to use as we head into fall and the holidays that are just around the corner.

Sights on the Farm

Today I share pictures of life on and around our farm.

I hope your remaining days of summer are filled with beauty and peace.

5 Ways to Preserve Peaches in a Weekend

Last week my husband came home with half a bushel of fresh organic peaches from a local Amish farm.  Since I am desperately trying to avoid getting fruit flies in my house this summer, and the peaches were good and ripe, we had this weekend to do something with them.

Before I get started, let me just say that the fruit flies were not my only competitors for these peaches!

#1 Steamed Peach Juice

I don't particularly like to can produce, but my husband loves doing it, so he brought up the enamel water bath canning pot and our steam juicer from the basement and decided to make some jelly and peach juice.  Be forewarned that canning makes for a messy kitchen, so my pictures will not be pretty or decorator-perfect.

After washing everything from our very rustic, spider-loving farmhouse cellar, he placed the canning jars in boiling water to sterilize.  All he had to do with the peaches was cut out the pits.  The rest of the peaches went into the top of the Mehu-Liisa stainless steel steam juicer.  There is water in the bottom section for the steaming, and the pure juice settles in the middle with a tube that hangs out of it and into your clean mason jars.  

Within about 30 minutes, there was enough steamed peach juice to start pouring it into the canning jars.  This is a little bit thicker than juice, so we actually use it as concentrate and mix it with water in a pitcher for drinking.  Once all the juice had been extracted from the peaches, my husband placed the lids and rings on the full canning jars and placed them in the boiling water in the enamel canner with the lid on for about 20 minutes.  He made 6 quarts of juice to put on the pantry shelves for the winter (actually 5 because we drank one already.)

#2 Peach Mint Jelly

In the meantime, my hubby had picked 2 cups of fresh chocolate mint leaves from the side of our house and had it steeping on the stove.  This made about 4 cups of a strong mint tea concentrate, but only 1/2 cup of it got used in the recipe.  The remainder was made into a pitcher of iced chocolate mint tea.  Once the peach juice was finished being steamed, he reserved 4 cups of it for the jelly.

Then the trusty old Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving was pulled off the bookshelf and opened to page 36.  We used the recipe for Mint Jelly, but altered it quite a bit.  My husband doesn't always measure ingredients, so to the best of my knowledge, the following recipe is what he made:

Peach Chocolate Mint Jelly

Make the mint tea extract with 1 cup of fresh chocolate mint and 1 cup of boiling water.  Let steep  for about an hour.  Measure out 1/2 cup of it and combine with 4 cups of peach juice and 2 Tablespoons of lemon juice in a large saucepot.  Add 3 cups of sugar and stir until dissolved.  Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly.  *Cook until gelling point or until jelly sheets from a spoon.  Ladle hot jelly into hot jelly jars and put on caps.  Put into the hot water bath canner and boil for 10 minutes.

*This made 2 full pints and 6 half-pint jars of "jelly."  I must be honest here and admit that I was out of the house buying more sugar and freezer bags while Hubby was making this.  It did not set up like jelly, which has happened to him before.  I suspect he disregarded the part of the recipe that says to "cook till gelling point."  We are using the jars of "jelly" as syrup for pancakes and waffles and ice cream instead.  By the way, any kind of mint could be used.  It just so happens that the chocolate mint has been prolific here this summer.

#3  Peach Sauce

After the juice and jelly were made, there were still plenty of peach parts left.  All the pulp and skins were dumped out of the steam juicer and into our Roma Food Strainer shown above.  These strainers are so easy to find now.  I googled them and discovered they're even sold at Target and Kohl's.  We bought ours years ago from the Lehman's catalog, along with all kinds of other homesteading supplies and kitchen tools.

Once we ran the peach parts through the food mill, we were left with delicious peach sauce---just like apple sauce.  It was a little tart, so it was a good thing I went out and bought more sugar because we ended up adding 2 cups of it, along with 1 Tablespoon of nutmeg and 1 Tablespoon of cinnamon.

This made over 3 gallons of peach sauce, and Hubby scooped it into large ziplock freezer bags.  They went into our chest freezer to add to our winter collection.  The children got to eat a bit too after dinner that night.  Any pits, skins, or other bits of peaches were given to our goats, sheep, and any chickens smart enough to be nearby.

#4  Frozen Sliced Peaches

After the hard work of steam juicing, jelly making, saucing, and canning was done, I came along and sliced up another portion of the half bushel to freeze.  My husband actually hates to do this because it requires peeling and slicing the fruit, which drives him insane with boredom.  I went through 1/8 of a bushel and put about 1 1/2 gallons of sliced peaches in the freezer for making pies and cobbler in the winter.  Sometimes I add lemon juice or Fruit Fresh to prevent any discoloring.  Other times I add a little bit of sugar.  This weekend, however, I added nothing.  I figure we'll be stirring sugar into any dessert or pastry recipe anyway, and once they're baked, you won't be able to notice the discoloration.

#5  Dried Peaches

Our final method of preservation is probably our favorite: dehydration.  Our Excalibur Food Dehydrator is the best at drying fruits, vegetables, and herbs in our opinion.  It's now even sold in the coolest preppy colors!  Who would have thought?  I will write another post on all the things you can do with one of these, but for now, I'll stick to peaches.  We simply peeled and sliced the peaches, and then placed them on the dehydrator trays.

Once the trays were full, we put the lid back on the front, plugged it in, and set the temperature to 135 degrees.  It takes between 8-16 hours to dry, depending on how thick the peaches are sliced and how humid it is in the house.  We used to dehydrate in the kitchen, but the juice sometimes seeps out the bottom, and the fan on the dehydrator makes the kitchen more hot, so we now do it in our spooky (aka "rustic")  basement.

Out of the dehydrator came these delicious dried peaches that the children love.  If they're kept in longer, they are crisp like chips.  These were more chewy and are not good for teens with braces, by the way.  They can also be re-hydrated by putting them in a container of water in the refrigerator all day. We placed these in quart-sized ziplock bags which were stored inside large metal tins in our cellar to keep the dampness out.  They take up far less space than canning jars and don't require the electricity that a freezer uses.  A full dehydrator fills about 4 quart bags.

{She probably looks like she just swallowed a lemon, but she was actually savoring last year's dehydrated peaches and apples while her daddy made juice.}

All in all, a half bushel of peaches yielded 1 1/2 gallons of frozen peaches, over a gallon of dried peaches, 5 pints of "jelly," 6 quarts of juice concentrate, and 3 gallons of peach sauce,  not to mention what we ate and shared with neighbors.  This was done in a weekend, but we really could have finished it up in a day.  However, we have other projects and events going on, so we spread it out a bit.

**I would love to hear about any methods of peach preservation that you use!  Either make a comment below or go to my new "Contact Me" page and send me an e-mail.

Make Your Own Pizzas Without Spending All Day in the Kitchen

     For several years, most of our foods from the bread group were made by me from scratch.  This included bread, rolls, biscuits, pancakes and waffles, crackers, tortillas, pie and pizza crusts, and desserts.  I tried my hand at pasta making, but that didn't work out so well, so I did buy boxed pasta and rice.  I purchased flour in bulk and yeast in bags, not individual packets.  My family loved it, but after two years of spending all day in the kitchen every day of the week, I felt like Almanzo Wilder's mother in Farmer Boy...only I was NOT cheerful. 

     I awoke in the morning knowing I was going to be whipping up some coffee cake or pancakes or biscuits from scratch while gulping down some coffee and listening to hungry little ones whining about how long until breakfast was ready.  As soon as the breakfast dishes were washed by hand (no dishwasher in this old house,) it was time to start making the bread dough so it had plenty of time to rise before baking it for dinner.  Midday meant making snacks, punching down the bread dough, starting dessert, and washing more dishes.  By 4:00 I had to start preparing dinner and baking the bread. After spending all day in the kitchen (with little breaks to wash and hang laundry,) I had nothing to show for it because my family consumed every morsel ten times faster than it took me to prepare it. 

     I reached a point where I realized that I was not enjoying my life.  We had this wonderful farm on the side of a mountain with incredible views.  We had a big family full of beautiful, healthy children full of wonder and exuberance, but I was too exhausted at the end of the day to really enjoy them.  I felt years beyond my actual age, and I understood the weariness that mothers on the frontier must have experienced to get up each day and perform the same mundane tasks over and over just to feed and clothe their families.  It was then that I decided I didn't have to be Ma Ingalls, and I went to the grocery store and bought a loaf of bread---the first loaf of bread not made by me in over two years.  I haven't made bread since.

     But this week, some part of me missed the smell of yeast and the feel of dough squishing under my knuckles, and I decided to make homemade pizza once again.  It isn't nearly as time-consuming as bread making, and none of the pizza shop creations can compare to fresh, homemade pizza as it comes steaming out of the oven.  So I share our family's pizza recipe with you today in hopes that you and your little ones enjoy making this together as much as we do.

For the Crust:

1 envelope dry yeast (or 1 Tbsp.)

1 cup warm water

1 1/4 cup unbleached white flour

1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. olive oil

Soften the yeast in warm water in bowl.  Add 2 cups flour, salt and oil.  Add more flour as needed to make a soft dough.  Knead on a floured surface for about 5 minutes.  Place in a greased bowl.  Cover with a wet towel and let rise in a warm place until doubled.  I let it rise for most of the afternoon. Then punch dough down and pat into a greased pizza pan.  This recipe makes one large pizza.

For a quick, no-cook sauce, I use a small can of tomato sauce and add salt, pepper, garlic powder, fresh or dry basil, and fresh oregano and spread over the pizza crust.  For those of us who like spice, I add red pepper flakes.

Add mozzarella cheese and whatever toppings your family loves.  This week our pizzas were topped with ground spicy pork sausage, and one pizza also contained canned sliced mushrooms, and fresh banana peppers.  This is the part my younger children love to help with.

Making homemade pizzas used to be a Friday evening tradition for our family.  I've taken a sabbatical from my days in the kitchen when I made almost every food from scratch, and I'm beginning to miss a bit of it.  This dish is a good one to bring back into our lives without spending all day in our farmhouse kitchen.

Peach Cobbler: Healthy Breakfast or Delicious Dessert

This is my family's favorite cobbler recipe, and with peaches now in season here in the Northeast, I will be making this at least once a week.  We love this as dessert with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, but I have also been known to serve it up for breakfast since it's more healthy than many of the commercial breakfast items found in the supermarket.

Peach Cobbler

Filling:

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

4 tsp. cornstarch

1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

1/2 cup water

4 cups peeled and sliced fresh peaches (about 8-9 medium sized peaches)

1 Tbsp. butter

1 Tbsp. lemon juice

In a saucepan, combine the brown sugar, cornstarch, and nutmeg.  Add 1/2 cup of water.  Cook and stir on medium heat until thickened and bubbly (about 5-10 minutes.)  Add the sliced peaches, lemon juice, and butter.  Heat until warm.  Place on a warming burner or on very low heat.

Biscuit Topper:

1/2 cup unbleached white flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

2 Tbsp. sugar

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 cup softened butter

1 slightly beaten egg

1/4 cup milk

Stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Cut in the butter until the mixture is slightly crumbly.  Combine the egg and milk and beat gently with a fork.  Add all at once to dry ingredients and stir.

Put the hot peach mixture in a Pyrex baking dish or 1 1/2 quart casserole.  Scoop the biscuit topper in mounds on top.  Bake at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes.  Can serve with ice cream or whipped cream, or just eat plain.  This feeds our family of 7 with no leftovers and the children are begging for the "scrapings."

Summer Alternatives to Childhood Electronics

Last week I viewed a video by Buzzpo.com ("So Incredibly Sad: This is How 3 Generations Answer the Same Question") that was shared on Facebook.  It interviewed three generations of Americans and asked them how they spent their summers as children.

The grandparents mentioned berry picking, fishing, and helping in the garden.

The middle-aged parents said they gathered together neighborhood children to play baseball or build forts.

When today's children were asked how they spend their summer days, they described their love for video games, texting, and hours spent on their tablets.

They said they wouldn't know what they would do with themselves if they couldn't have their electronics.  

Their video games relieved their stress and made them forget about everything and everyone else around them.

While I agree with the message that was sent from this video---that children should spend more time in nature---I think that American families were misrepresented.

I know that my children are not the only ones who spend their summers building forts, making sailboats, and wading in creeks.  One of the blogs that I like to read describes what a summer day at her house was like when the children spent their afternoon and evening outside instead of being plugged in: thistlewood farms.

Amongst my friends, I see teenagers baling hay, raising animals for the fair, fishing, and kayaking.  Younger children are designing their own comic strips, sewing their own clothes, decorating cakes, reading numerous books, camping and swimming.  Some families are going to foreign countries to give aid to the needy.  The children that I know personally are not spending 6 hours in front of a screen daily.

While it can be challenging for parents to pull children away from their electronic devices, it is being done.  There are plenty of American families living a summer alternative to the hollow gaming and texting filled days portrayed in the video shown by buzzpo.  Even if the media doesn't show us, there are plenty of us throughout our nation.