Adventures In Farm Shares-Week One-Day Four

(You can see day one here and day two here.)

It occurs to me that I still have a head of cabbage that I have not touched. Time to find some cabbage based recipes. There is always coleslaw. I would need to buy carrots and use low fat mayo to try to ease the calories. Easy to do and something my husband would eat but I'm not a big fan of coleslaw so I would rather find something else.

Breakfast was grapefruit from the farm share box. We ate it straight. It was fine. Nothing worth writing home about.

We made kale chips with the last of the kale. Recipe from allrecipe.com found here. I forgot to take a picture. It was nothing like a potato chip. It was very crunchy but seemed to fall apart on your tongue. I would eat them again but with less salt.

Hubby sautéed himself one of the onions in olive oil with the last of the bok choy and ate that straight. Not to my taste but he is both using vegetables from the farm share and not eating something horrible so I consider that a win.

I ate some left over soup from day two and we both had some of the leftover chicken from the rotisserie chicken I bought for day two.

Really the only thing we did new was the kale chips. As I said, I would try them again. I still need to find a use for the cabbage. I am leaning towards a cabbage and chorizo dish and hubby is leaning towards coleslaw. We will see tomorrow.

Of the original farm share from Wednesday, we have 1 lemon, 2 onions, 1 sweet potato, 1 grapefruit, some celery and a head of cabbage left.

Adventures In Farm Shares-Week One-Day Two

(You can find day one here.)

For day two, I wanted to use as many of the different vegetables in my shiny new farm share box as I could. After googling combinations, I went with this Chicken, Sweet Potato & Kale soup from skinnytaste.com. Here is a picture of my final result.

It calls for celery, sweet potatoes, onions and kale; allowing me to use four of the veggies in my box in one meal.

It was a big success. I would absolutely do this one again. I did make some changes in order to make it easier to do on a work night. The recipe calls for raw chicken to be cooked in the broth for 20 minutes. I grabbed an already cooked rotisseries chicken from the grocery store and rough chopped the breast meat and just skipped that part entirely. I also used the spices I had on hand which did not include a jalapeno or cilantro.

I sauteed the chopped onions in oil in my Dutch oven before adding the celery. After about 5 minutes, I add minced garlic along with salt, pepper and Italian spice mix and some ground chili powder I had. In about another 3 minutes, I added in the chicken broth and the shredded breast meat from the rotisserie chicken along with the kale and sweet potatoes. I put the cover on and left it on medium low heat (about 4 on my dial) for 30 minutes; stirring half way through.

It was delicious. I will definitely be going back to skinnytaste.com to check out some other recipes. We both ate and we still had about two bowls worth for left overs for later.

For dessert, I chopped up those 6 strawberries we got and served it with a couple of spoons of whipped topping.

Result: I used onions, kale, sweet potatoes, celery and the strawberries. All I bought was the rotisserie chicken and my husband is already planning on eating the drumsticks for lunch tomorrow. This one was a definite success. The soup was fairly filling and had a sweet and savory taste to it. Tomorrow night my in-laws are taking us out to dinner for my husband's birthday so no experimenting tomorrow. I have already started looking for Saturday's meal though.

Adventures In Farm Shares-Week One-Day One

Today is the first day of our first attempt at joining a farm share. There are only 2 of us so we went with the small share.

Here is what we were told to expect:

Kale   Grapefruit     Sweet Potatoes     Lemons

Onions     Eggplant    Strawberries    Cabbage   Celery

 

We received:

1 bunch of Kale    2 Grapefruit  2 Sweet Potatoes

1 Lemon     4 Onions    No Eggplant     6 Strawberries

1 head of Cabbage     1 bunch of Celery and 2 small Bok Choy

Right off my husband was disappointed in the lack of eggplant and I could not help but feel we got a token amount of the grapefruit, kale, lemon and strawberries at best. We have the most onions of anything and I don't like onions. Again, we did order the small share but at $30+ a week I guess I had expected it to not be quite so small.

I emailed the farm share that my husband was disappointed in the lack of the promised eggplant as it is his favorite and would there be eggplant in the future? They responded that it is difficult to predict how much produce they need the first week since many people sign up at the last minute so 14 boxes got different supplies than the rest and we must have been one of them. They said there would most likely be eggplant in the future, they gave us lots of lovely bok choy and we would not have to worry about things spoiling. Basically, it sounds like they ran out of stuff and we got what was left. But hey, now we don't have to worry about any veggies going bad! How kind of them.

Week 1 so far off to a poor start in my opinion.

But since we got bok choy, I am making stir fried bok choy and kale fried rice for dinner. Here is the recipe I am using. http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/03/bok-choy-kale-fried-rice-garlic-chinese-recipe.html

Update:
We did have the bok choy/kale stir fried rice for dinner.  Here is a picture of the finished product. I burned the first batch of garlic that it required. They are not kidding about it only taking a few seconds to cook. I tossed that one out and started over.

The final result was not bad. It was all I had made for dinner. It made enough for one serving for me and two for my husband. No leftovers. It was very chewy as both the kale and the bok choy seem to be chewy vegetables and it was very garlicy. I would do it again but I would cut back on the garlic. I would also think about adding some protein like chicken (and I would watch the pot better).

Outside Review of Things Every Goddess Should Know

I was ego surfing and I came across a review of my Things Every Goddess Should Know book that completely warmed my heart. The reviewer absolutely got what I was trying to say.

Review can be found here

Here is a quote from the review:

"The book also shatters the myth of perfection and being perfect, instead telling readers to pursue excellence. To search for colors in every person instead of their sunset is again another piece of inspiring advice and reiterates the fact that all us can make a difference to the world."

Thank you, Reviewer. We have never met but right now I feel very close to you. I feel as though you have reached across cyber space and said, "I get you." I love hearing that you found something of value in my book because my book is a part of me. I wrote it tell other women that we are all valuable.

In many ways, being a writer is rather like standing by yourself on a hill and whispering to passersby to please take this piece of me. Sometimes they do; sometimes they don't. Sometimes they don't like it and sometimes they do. And sometimes they make you feel like they get it, they value it and that makes it all worthwhile.

Why I Can't Afford To Win The HGTV Dream Home

HGTV is giving away another dream home. This year it is in Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  According to the website:

"The grand prize includes:

• A 3-bedroom, 3 ½-bathroom, approximately 3,200 square-foot Cape Cod-style getaway located on Martha's Vineyard
• Luxurious furnishings from Ethan Allen
• A 2015 GMC® Acadia Denali
• $250,000 cash prize provided by national mortgage lender Quicken Loan"

You can enter to win here:

 http://www.hgtv.com/design/hgtv-dream-home/sweepstakes/enter

It sounds beautiful. It looks beautiful. Here is the official picture from their website.

As soon as I saw it, my brain turned to thoughts of how nice it would be to have a vacation home like that. We could rent it out on off weeks and have the family down and  . . . and . . .

But I am nothing if not a practical woman. I can't afford to win this house.

First, the price has a value of approximately $2,265,000. Here in the US, the federal government is going to consider that income which means you get to pay income tax on almost $2.3 million. The $250,000 in cash is just a down payment on the taxes you will need to pay. Then 45 out of 50 states also charge income tax. Between the IRS and your local state, you can expect to have to pay 40 to 50% of the value in taxes. That is anywhere from $700,000 to $1.1 million dollars you have to pay out.

You also have to worry about property taxes. Edgartown is currently $3.80 per thousand. On a $2 million property that is about $76,000 every year. You will need home insurance. That will probably cost you $5000 to $7000 a year as well. Do you need to get a burglar alarm or hire a service to take care of the house while you are gone?

Between the upfront taxes and the upkeep, there is absolutely no way I could afford to win this house. It hardly seems fair that it should cost so much to win something but that is how taxes work here in America.

Fortunately, HGTV has an alternative.The winner can decline the prize and instead take a cash sum of a little over $1 million. Even with giving half of it to the government, you can still have a lot of fun with what is left. So yes, I still entered. And if I win, I will always be a little sad that I could not keep that beautiful house but I will console myself with my hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Santa Is Not The Only One Who Can Give Presents

I remember hearing a story about a young family. It was Christmas morning and Mom and Dad had spent hundreds of dollars on presents for the child. The child eagerly jumped in to open and exclaim over all of the presents from Santa. After opening a bunch of packages the child looked around and said, "Mommy and Daddy, did you not get me a present?"

I can not even imagine the chagrin those young parents must have felt. They had worked so hard and spent so much money and in the end, all of the credit went to Santa. A fact that would probably have been fine except the child thought Mommy and Daddy had not bothered.

Ever since I heard this story, I have thought that every parent should save the very best present--the one that the child has been salivating over--and don't have that one be from Santa. Take the number one gift and write out the tag to say it is from Mommy or Daddy or whatever your child calls you. I know the point of Christmas presents is to make your child happy but why does that mean you can't get some of the credit and the joy yourself? You worked hard. Go ahead and put your name on it.

Why should Santa get all of the credit? Why shouldn't your child get a gift that they know came from you?

Things Every Goddess Should Know. . . On Sale US and UK

Things Every Goddess Should Know and We Are All Goddesses is on sale in the US and UK for a limited time.

 

For the next 2 days, 99 cents will get you the e-book in the US (67% off) and then it will be available for $1.99 for 4 days. It is also on sale in the UK for the next 5 days, it is 99 at Amazon UK then it goes back to full price.

You can also order the paperback as a gift and get a free copy of the e-book for yourself.

http://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00HJEAWLM in the US

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HJEAWLM in the UK