I have a huge WIP to share with you this week: a 24′ long mural! A little shy of a month ago I was hired to design and paint a mural for an elementary school. It was in honor of their successful community garden and the idea was to kick it off on the very appropriate earth day. They wanted me to design it in such a way that the kids could all come out and help paint. I would have loved to help paint a mural as a kid and was delighted to make it possible for them.

Get all the details, full sized photos, and the back story after the jump!

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I mentioned this in my post a couple of weeks ago about my “go to” meals. It’s a delicious dish that’s fast, pretty healthy, and freaking delicious! Get the recipe after the jump over to Craft Leftovers:

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May Flowers! Maybe we aren’t quite there yet, but with flowers all around me I couldn’t help but be inspired by them. See all the posts I loved this weekend after the jump!

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Since I was sick for so long, I really let things go around the house. I’m still recovering from the pile of dirty dishes and the dust monsters – they’ve gone so far past those docile sounding “bunnies”. Now that I’m healthy and able again, one of my biggest goals this past week was to get myself cooking delicious meals. But where to start. After being pent up, I really wanted to just go eat out all the time. Not just for the ease of food, but also just to get out of the house. It turned into a vicious cycle. Time to get back on track!

I realized more than anything else, these were the three ways I keep inspired to cook daily. And if I start feeling “blah” about cooking, I run through it as a mental checklist.

Surefire Cooking Excitement!

One: Clean up the kitchen. Seriously. It’s not so much that I can’t cook in a messy kitchen, it’s just that I know I’m prone not to. On days the kitchen is clean I jump to the task, on days the dishes are piled up I procrastinate and then the ominous words “Hey Jason, you want to just go get something to eat?” trickle out of my mouth.

Two: I cook what I want most. Not every day. If that were the case I’d just alternate between tacos, pizza, breakfast for dinner (pancakes) and mac ‘n’ cheese! But when I’m feeling the urge to slink away from the kitchen, I fix one of my favorites. Like tonight is totally a frozen pizza night!

Three: The third part of the procrastination equation for me is getting the groceries we need in the first place. Instead of seeing going to the grocery store as a chore, I look to it as an adventure! And I say, okay, go do this, and you can get some weirdo item that you have no idea what to do with – or special treat like that amazing cheese/dill spread at the Hy-vee deli counter! Yeah, I totally bribe myself to do my chores :P

What do you do to get reved up about cooking?

Monday’s weekly round up! A great way to get the creative juices flowing and beat the Monday blues!

I am definitely in a bread mood lately! Maybe it’s because I’ve been limiting my calorie consumption starting last Monday. Nothing nuts, just getting my eating back under control. That first day I tracked my regular eating habits, I was at like 3000 calories! Holy moly. The only bread I should really be making is that Polymer clay toast I showed you on Thursday!

1. Rugbrauo Icelandic Thunder Bread on Midwest Exposure – my friend brought this to dinner the weekend before last and it was gone as soon as it was set. It’s made from whole grains, but because of the steaming it’s super moist and, dare I say it, fluffy!

2. Orange Pistachio Biscotti with a Smidge of Chocolate on Midwest Exposure – after falling in love with her Rugbrauo Icelandic Thunder Bread, read back through the posts I had missed and found this gem! I can’t wait to try them.

3. Emily Dickinson’s love of Baking on the Emily Dickinson Museum Website – on a side note, did you know that Emily Dickinson loved baking and was amazing at it?

4. How Baking Became Making on House on Hill Road – baking as a creative process

5. Homestyle Bread here on Craft Leftovers – one of my favorite breads to bake.

6. Dinner Sandwiches on Rosy Little Things – delicious looking bread, delicious looking sandwich!

7. My other favorite White Bread here on Craft Leftovers – it’s a traditional recipe – seriously just flour, yeast, salt, and water.

8. Bread Flower on Rosy Little Things, I love no knead breads and I think this one will be great to add to my recipe collection.

Now go out there and bake some bread!

Happy Baking!
Kristin Roach

I love toast! I was freaking *de-light-ed* in Chicago and went into a japanese toy store and saw Kawaii Toast! So cute! Love them! But I didn’t really want a keychain. Or a coin purse. I just wanted a little toast to bring me joy and hang out on my shelf.

So, surprise surprise, I made it myself! And here’s how you can too!

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This year I decided move a few things around in my yard. The coop is in the corner and the chickens get their own space (so Bob doesn’t terrorize them) and instead of having the garden in a square, I’m moving it along the fence. The hope is that this will considerably open up the feel of the yard while over doubling my garden in size.

But there is the matter of the grass (weeds) where I want the garden to go.

Step One: Mark out the garden

Use a measuring tape and then mark the borders with a piece of wood or spray paint. While my guestimations were good, they were also very cock-eyed. We straightened things up with some spray paint and a measuring tape.

Step Two: Lift away the grass

I cut the sod into 6″ squares with my shovel and lifted it away a chunk at a time. This is the first part of the weed free equation, by removing the grass completely, it won’t crop up again in a week or two like it does when you use a rototiller.

Step Three: Cover the bare dirt

Covering the dirt has a two-fold purpose. One is it keeps moisture in. Two is it keeps new weeds from cropping up. Straw (not hay which has seed heads still attached) or grass clippings work great.

Dig dig dig.

Cover cover cover.

Here’s Michelle lifting the final bit of sod out of the first garden bed. The total size of the new garden is 4′ deep by 50 feet long.

And what did we do with all that sod bits? Well we tossed it onto bare patches in hopes that it would take root (doubtful). Seriously though I’m using it to fill holes the chickens dug all over the yard. Which is another reason they are now confined to a corner for most of the day. If you want to compost them, put them roots up on the driveway and dry them out before adding to the compost bin.

Now, this is something I hadn’t thought of, but there might be more steps if you live outside the midwest. I’ve taken our awesome soil for granted, but Michelle (whose helping me in the garden this year for a share of the space and bounty) kept saying “oh my gosh, this dirt is so black!” She just moved here from Texas and the soil is all clay and sand. So if you live elsewhere, you’ll need to dig in some compost and top soil before topping it off with straw or mulch.

I hope you all are having a great spring!
Kristin

Mondays are always full of so many possibilities that my creative juices come to a complete freeze. Kind of like staring at a blank canvas – too many options! I’ve decided to start out each week with a blogging warm up: Round up Mondays each week!

And now I’m ready to leap into writing my post for tomorrow, a Little Woods Homestead how-to on digging a new garden bed! Enjoy and shake off those Monday dulldrums and go make stuff (or at least think about making stuff!).

1. Make a Pretty Pouf Ottoman - I’ve been wanting to make one of these for awhile now. And I was thinking that I could extend it out make a yoga bolster as well.

2. Ombre Chair via Craft

3. Lemon Puddings - I saw this post and instantly started drooling.

4. What is Indie and What is Corporate with Beth Casey - Craft Leftovers is actually sponsoring this podcast on CraftyPod so you should all go check it out and give Diane some love!

5. How I Stay Productive and Get Massive Amounts of Shit Done - ah, the 5th wonder of the universe, if only I could figure this one out. This post does inspire.

6. Make Your Own Bubble Pickles via Craft - I’m planting a crap-load of cucumbers this year with the hope that I can make this along with One Million other pickle recipes.

7. DIY Cut Paper Candle Holders - Lovely!

8. 34 Things I’ve Learned about Life and Adventure on the Art of Non-conformity, since being sick and coming face to face with my own fears of being bed-ridden (that’s a long story maybe I’ll share someday), I’ve started facing every day as an adventure. Which has included a lot more hiking and camping around than before.

Happy Monday!
Kristin Roach

The thing that keeps me from eating out more than anything else is an easy, delicious, fast meal. Jason and I will hit that 7:00PM wall where dinner really needs to be on the table like a half hour ago, we’re both hungry, we are both tired from working all day, and I don’t really want to spend an hour in the kitchen making a fill-in-the-blank-overly-ambitious-item-on-my-meal-plan. So we go out to eat. And by the time we’ve let Bob out, crated him, decided where to go, ordered, and gotten our food I realize “wow, that took (at least) a half hour and I could have made fill-in-the-blank-easy-item-on-my-meal-plan in just 20 minutes”. I’ve decided to start stacking the odds in my favor and I make sure to always have the ingredients on hand for the follow 5 meals.The staples of which can be used for other great things like salads or just hang out in the freezer until it’s time to make them.

You’ll notice two big things with these meals.

One: While I try to eat healthy, I see these dinners as a boost to keep me on track to eating at home and cooking our own food, not Ideal dinners for healthy living. So using the microwave (which I try my best to avoid), and canned foods (another usual to avoid) comes into play. 

Two:The fresh weekly items are a regular group of staples I tend to always have because they are pretty much salad ingredients and/or common for other recipes I make each week. So they are eaten often enough to always just keep them around.

One: Spaghetti from a Jar

I know, totally not the most “healthy” meal, but commme-onnnnn, who does really deep down love spaghetti from a jar.  In the Pantry/Freezer:

• Spaghetti noodles
• 1 lb Ground Beef/turkey/chicken OR 2lb sautéed veg (mushroom, zucchini, and onions are great)
• Pre-jarred spaghetti sauce of choice (we vary between the ultra cheap ragu to the super fancy homemade sauce I jar myself)
• Salad dressing (or oil and vinegar if that’s what you like)

Fresh Weekly: 

• Salad greens (this week was spinach)
• Tomato
• Cheese of choice

All you have to go is boil some noodles, grab your meat/veg of choice, saute it up in a pan, add the sauce and boom, dinner! We round it with a salad (lettuce, tomatoes + whatever cheese is in the house) and toast (whatever bread item is in the house). It feels fancy and put together, and takes about 15 minutes. 

Two: Tacos

(Totally want to try making these homemade tortillas, yum! photo from The Health Seeker’s Kitchen)

This is another lovely meal that tastes great, tacos are my favorite, looks super put together, and takes just 15 minutes to make, maybe 20 depending on the rice.  In the Pantry/Freezer:

• Taco Seasoning (make your own with this recipe here on Craft Leftovers, or buy your favorite taco seasoning mix)
• Ground Beef/Turkey/Chicken or TVP (textured vegetable protein)
• Spanish Rice Mix
• Canned Diced Tomatoes
• Refried Beans
• Taco shells

Fresh Weekly:

• Lettuce
• Cilantro
• Onions
• Tomatoes
• Sour cream
• Taco sauce
• Avocado

Start up the spanish rice (I like zatteran’s the best), brown/hydrate your “meat”, add the seasoning and let simmer, chop up the veggies for the filling, and then warm up the refried beans. And that’s it!

Three: Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup

This is probably the fastest and most nostalgic recipe on the list. Love this combo, it’s warm and tasty, and makes me think of sitting at the kitchen counter watching my mom make it when I was a kid. I’ve added the avocado and tomato since living on my own, but the memories are all the same.  In the Pantry:

• Canned Tomato Soup

Fresh Weekly:

• Cheese
• Bread
• Butter
• Tomatoes
• Avocado

Four: Curried Chicken

This is Jason’s go-to when I’m out of town, that’s how easy and delicious it is! In the Pantry/Freezer:

• Chicken
• Curry powder (we get ours from our local co-0p)
• Walnuts
• Raisins
• Honey
• Rice of choice

Fresh Weekly:

• Celery or carrots (or both!)
• Salad stuff

Thaw the chicken ahead of time if you think of it in the morning, place a chicken breast in a bowl of water if you think of it 2 hours before dinner, or use the (least preferred) microwave to thaw it out in a pinch (adds about 15 minutes to total time). I looked for a recipe for how I make it, and couldn’t find it. So what I do is: (1) chop up the chicken so it’s bite sized, (2) heat up a pan with about 1T olive oil in it, (3) toss in the walnuts, raisins, and any veggies, remove the walnuts and raisins still pretty firm, (4) cook the chicken and add about 1T curry powder (to taste), (5) cover it until the chicken is cooked, (6) toss the walnuts and such back in, then dump loads of honey into the mix. Add-ons:If it’s watery I’ll add a little corn starch or arrow root. If I have it, I’ll add a small (4 oz) can of coconut milk. Then I serve it over the rice with a salad in a bowl on the side. If you want (leave me a comment if you do), I can post a better step by step recipe post on it’s own.

Five: Pepper Steak with Rice

This is another oldie but goodie. My mom first got the recipe from our neighbor Deb. I got the recipe from my memory. I’m not sure how true it is to Deb’s version (step in here in the comments Deb if you see this!), but I still make it all the time and LOVE it. Jason’s always impressed. It takes about 20 minutes to make if the meat’s thawed, about 30 if I need to zap it in the microwave.  In the Pantry/Freezer:

• Round steak
• Soy sauce
• Corn starch
• Canned diced tomatoes (fresh is better)
• Cracked Pepper
• Rice of choice

Fresh weekly:

• Garlic (crushed or diced or crushed and then diced)
• 2 Green and/or Red bell peppers
• 1/2 medium Onion (of choice)

Here’s how I make it:Start up the rice first, cut the round steak into bite sized (about 1/2″ wide and 2″ long), saute the garlic, onions and peppers in a little olive oil. Remove from the pan. Cook the beef until it’s just about done, mix together 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup hot water, and 1 T corn starch and add to the beef. Let simmer until the sauce thickens, add the veggies back to the mix. Add either 1 Large diced tomato OR one can (drained) diced tomatoes. Serve over the rice.

So now I have to ask, what’s your favorite quick, but delicious and semi healthy meal to make?

Happy cooking! Kristin Roach