Today’s double-the-fun recipe is part 2-of-2 on how to make your very own homemade s’mores—and is a companion to the homemade marshmallows from Glamping with MaryJane.
For those of you who weren’t with us last week, we learned how to make fluffy Homemade Marshmallows.
Today, we gather up molasses and coconut to make homemade graham crackers. Aren’t your friends going to be i-m-p-r-e-s-s-e-d when they get a taste of the real thing?
Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)
Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)
My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Shannon Hudson!!!
Shannon Hudson (hudsonsinaf, #5349) has received a certificate of achievement in Garden Gate for earning a Beginner, Intermediate & Expert Level Putting Away for Winter Merit Badge!
““For the Beginner badge, my oldest daughter and I froze strawberries, tomatoes, and most recently, blueberries. The strawberries and blueberries we freeze on trays individually first, and then place in freezer bags. The tomatoes we wash off, and then just put them in the freezer in a container. I also shared this information on my Henhouse.
We enjoy frozen produce, especially fruit. With the summers being so excruciatingly hot, pulling frozen fruit out to eat, or for smoothies, is extremely refreshing.
For my Intermediate badge, I dehydrated tomatoes, peppers (both sweet and hot) and multiple types of herbs. I also investigated different methods for drying produce. We generally use a dehydrator, though some of my herbs, I air dried. You can also sun dry, oven dry, or microwave dry. For my family, I made spaghetti, using frozen tomatoes, with dehydrated peppers and herbs.
Making spaghetti sauce is one of our favorite ways of using frozen tomatoes. When I pull them out of the freezer, I place them in a colander. As they thaw, a lot of the excess fluid drains out, this reduces the cooking time for the sauce.
For the Expert badge, I investigated the different methods for canning food – there is oven canning (I haven’t tried this one yet!), water bath canning, and pressure canning. We have canned tomatoes, fruit products (sauces, preserves, jams, syrups, pie filling, and just sliced fruits), dried beans, green beans, and broths. I also made some beef jerky in my dehydrator using grass fed brisket, as well as sharing about canning with the Henhouse.
For the dish using foods I had preserved, we made chili. I used both frozen and canned tomatoes, canned kidney beans, dehydrated peppers, and dehydrated herbs. It turned out scrumptious. I really want to try my hand at oven canning… I would like to learn to make gluten free pasta, that I dehydrate, and then oven can. Still working on this one though.”
I mentioned “gardens in lace” in my space salad post, promising to tell you more.
So …
Believe your eyes.
Those are pics of LACE garden fences.
Yup, lace.
Like a dream come true, right? Doily heaven.
This artistic installment, a collaboration between Swiss landscape architect Anouk Vogel and creative design company De Makers Van, appeared in Amsterdam a few years ago, transforming the courtyard of a city housing block into an ethereal garden of white flowers and lace. It’s no surprise that the location has become a popular spot for wedding photos.
Little did I know …
Well, now that I know, I hope the trend catches on here in the U.S. Leading the way is the Philadelphia University Design Center, which commissioned De Makers Van to craft a fence segment for their 2009 Lace in Translation exhibition.
Photo courtesy of the Philadelphia University Design Center via Facebook.com/designcenter
Mind you, this “lace” isn’t exactly what it appears to be. If you’re an old-school fabric fanatic like me, you’re thinking needle, cutwork, crochet … but, no.
Photo courtesy of the Philadelphia University Design Center via Facebook.com/designcenter
Rather than stitching thread to form a fence or weaving into an existing chain-link fence, De Makers Van’s creations are actually crafted using mysterious high-end galvanized metal wire that is “knitted” (don’t ask me how) to create lovely—and deceptively dainty—illusions of lace.
Look closely at this fence in Belgium:
Photo courtesy of the Philadelphia University Design Center via Facebook.com/designcenter
Remarkable, isn’t it? There are several more photos of fabulous fences here.
“In our projects, we often combine the sensitive and the small with the powerful, large, and industrial,” explains the De Makers Van team. “Fencing is a sign of how we have modified and cultivated our environment. Like brambles, fences are rising rampantly around us. What would happen if a patch of embroidered wire would meet with, and continue as, an industrial fence? Hostility versus kindness, industrial versus craft.”
A sound artistic sentiment, but I still want one for my garden, don’t you?
Until lace fencing goes mainstream, we may simply have to content ourselves with outbursts of crochet, knitting, and weaving to give our fences festive flair. I’m picturing something along the inspiring lines of Brooklyn yarn bomber London Kaye’s fleeting installments of urban joy:
Gardens in buckets,
Gardens in lace,
Gardens on rooftops …
Gardens in space?
Captain Kirk never dared to dream such succulence.
Nevertheless, it’s not science fiction.
On August 10, astronauts at the International Space Station ate fresh food grown in space for the very first time. In a collapsible and expandable Veggie Unit dubbed Lada, the astronaut gardeners grew a real, live crop of red romaine lettuce out there among the stars, and the taste test was documented in live-stream fashion:
Sure, it’s a little avant-garde in the realm of gardening, but it sure beats the Jetson’s Meal-o-Matic fare.
Image courtesy of Mike Licht via Flickr
Driven by more than mere curiosity (and serious cravings for fresh salad), NASA is experimenting with space-grown food in hopes that it might aid astronauts in extended expeditions through the galaxy.
Watch out, Mars, here we come.
Photo by Cmichel67 via Wikimedia Commons
P.S. If you’re “spacing” out and still wondering about the “gardens in lace” mentioned in line two, come back for tomorrow’s post!
I’m going to talk to you about words, but I don’t want to drumble. Not familiar with drumble? (Neither is my writing program, because that word was underlined in red as soon as I typed it.) It’s a new verb meaning to drone, blather, or ramble on, and it was one of the more than 500 words and phrases added to the Oxford English Dictionary in June of this year. Each quarter, the OED is updated to include revised versions of current entries as well as new listings from A to Z. We like to think of all of these additions as original to the times, but some of the words we’re using today have a long-standing history.
photo by mrpolyonymous via Wikimedia Commons
For example, the recent dance move known as twerking claims its origins from the 1990s dance clubs of New Orleans, but it was actually used as a noun over 170 years ago in a letter written by Charles Clairmont (author Mary Shelley’s stepbrother): ‘Really the Germans do allow themselves such twists & twirks of the pen, that it would puzzle any one.’
Or how about choss, a specialized vocabulary word used by rock climbers and mountaineers to mean a friable, crumbly, or loose rock, typically considered unsafe or unpleasant to climb? The OED’s first citation of this word is from a letter written by Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind, in 1937: “The excellent word our family used to denote the condition of our house when painters, paperers, and upholsterers were ravaging it—’choss’. We have been in a state of choss for some time, and the smell of newly painted woodwork was so bad that it gave both of us colds and bronchial coughs.”
Other trendy words added last month include crowdfund, declutter, freegan, hot mess, meh, photo bomb, retweet, SCOTUS, totes (as in totally), webisode and yarnbomb. The complete list of additions can be found at Oxford English Dictionary.
Buy props used in MaryJane’s books and magazine!
5% of profits will benefit www.firstbook.org, a non-profit that provides new books to children from low-income families throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Here’s how:
MaryJane will post a photo and a description of a prop and its cost along with a few details as to its condition here: https://shop.maryjanesfarm.org/MaryJanesCurations. It’s a playful way to be the new owner of a little bit of farm herstory.
