Remember how I “curated” the pantry and it was fairly neat and tidy?
Also remember how last year my new (to me) seed bench was so big it only fit in the living room due to the pantry not being curated?
Well, heh heh … this year the seed bench is in the pantry!
Rosie: “Good thing too — you could almost move around in there!”
More on seed-starting below, with a frugal hack that tens of you may be marginally interested in!
Podcast: I did the podcast, as promised, and hope to have a link for you early next week. It will be hosted on The Center for the Restoration of Christian Culture (aka The Thomas More Center, due to it being a project of the Thomas More College for the Liberal Arts).
If you are not podcast-oriented, don't worry, you won't miss much. It's sort of an introduction to the things we do here at LMLD and the material in my new books, but for people who mainly find out about such things via podcasts.
Apparently there are many who just want to listen to a podcast! I have no particular ambitions for myself, but I do think that it's good to reach these others with the message that making the home, educating children, and bringing the ordinary beauty that is an instrument of peace, as Roger Scruton put it, into the world, are all worth doing.
I also chat about some practical ways to become more competent in managing a household when we don't have the usual abundance at our fingertips. Of course, living on one income for many years brings along with it lots of strategies for frugality, for sure — just want to keep that collective memory alive.
I touch on gardening and how now is the time (at least here in the northern hemisphere, you know what I mean) to get planting! Some things, at least: The last frost date here in Central MA (zone 6a) is May 4, although the ground really doesn't warm up until Memorial Day, not for things like peppers and eggplant, and gosh, it has snowed here on my birthday — May 17! But that's okay, there are other things to get started!
When I think about what I am happy to have had this winter, harvest-wise, I know I will plant more onions, winter squash, kale, parsnips, and herbs. I have plenty of garlic left and have already planted next year's harvest (it goes in the ground in the Fall). I loved making asparagus and parsnip soup for Christmas dinner's first course (a recipe that I hope to share with you at some point). Having asparagus in the freezer was great, and that's a crop that you plant once and harvest for decades.
Looking at food prices (with a side-eye towards inflation), I can say that it will be important to have some food inventory. If you can plant a garden, those are the things to focus on, along with paste tomatoes to roast up and freeze, sweet potatoes, cabbage, and potatoes. Many things store pretty easily in a cool spot (like my pantry, a basement store-room, or a garage), without much special provision — I mean who wouldn't love a root cellar, but between the fridge and the pantry, we can make this happen. Even if you have room for only a couple of beds, see what you can do.
And as I say, now is the time to plan it. I highly recommend spending some time with Charles Dowding. Learning his no-dig method is a game-changer — time is precious and it's super demoralizing to spend it all on weed-abatement. He is practical and cuts through the complications and truisms of gardening, which makes his ideas more frugal. For instance, he dismisses the idea that you have to sterilize your seed trays or worry about fertilizers. Phew. Yes, there is an army of interns behind the scenes in his gardens, so you have to apply the discount to all that and be satisfied with a smidge less perfection. And his climate is very different from what I have here. Still. He is a trove of information.
I'm all about trying my hardest not to come up with that $500 tomato and the $600 salad, so starting seeds frugally is a priority. I use a soldering iron that turned up in the craft closet to make drainage holes in those handy baby lettuce/spinach containers, and don't forget solo cups when it's time to move little seedlings into bigger pots. Aluminum pans, trays discarded from restaurants, packing material…
Here's how the winter sowing is going.
I had to liberate these things from their icy containers. Soon it will warm up and they will start growing. I have broccoli, celeriac, beets, cleome, basil, marjoram, and elacampine (never heard of it but apparently it's a medicinal herb) going out there, with vervain and arugula up next, now that I have more milk jugs (scrounged from my friend — we drink milk by the quart around here now!).
And now, the frugal hack! DIY soil blocking!
Are you familiar with this concept of soil blocking?
But again, spending money on things… I think I found a simple way to do it. I prefer videos where the person gets right to the thing you want to know, and I certainly do not do that here, sorry, I'll try to be better next time — I have no idea what I am doing:
bits & pieces
- Another deep reflection on the Lenten journey from Carl Olson (see last week's b&p for the previous one): Temptation in the Desert and the Divinity of Christ. (Olson is helpfully connecting us to the spiritual masters of the past — once again I must urge everyone not to restrict spiritual reading to what is found from contemporary spiritual aid sources that rely on content produced by influencers who are not steeped in tradition.)
“The whole story of the Temptation is misconceived,” wrote Monsignor Ronald Knox, “if we do not recognize that it was an attempt made by Satan to find out whether our Lord was the Son of God or not.” In so writing, he echoed many of the Church Fathers, who pondered the question of what Satan knew and what he wished to accomplish in tempting Jesus in the desert.
- My review of Bishop Schneider's book, The Catholic Mass: Steps to Restore the Centrality of God in the Liturgy in the latest issue of Inside the Vatican.
- By now we should know that we need solid criteria to judge the voices that urge us towards one action or another regarding current events — virtually every source of information is compromised one way or another. We need first principles. Our friend Fr. Jerry Pokorsky gets the ball rolling on Just War Theory in this article (of course there is a much, much deeper study to be done, but it's a start for clarification): The Ukraine Mess: Points to ponder about narratives, criteria, possible responses.
Since marriage provides the very framework and fabric of the moral life of society, healthy marriages are necessary, not merely for the individual happiness of the spouses but for the common good of society itself. In this sense, Pride and Prejudice serves as a timely witness to the need for the traditional family at a time when all aspects of family life are under relentless attack.
- My friend got her butchered pig and it came with 20 lbs of lard! Here's the BBC's collection of lard recipes — 91 of them! Do you have that much lard? Do you have any favorites to share?
from the archives
- Speaking of lard, I use some lard in my butter pie crust. Lard is what people used before vegetable shortening (which is not good for you) replaced it in the national consciousness. This Ham and Cheese and Spinach Pie — a family favorite since my mother-in-law served it to us about 40 years ago, is a good example of a good use of lard (or bacon fat if good lard is not available)! Also a good “Save a Step” recipe for after you've served a ham with spinach on the side and stashed away the leftovers. (Not super Lenten of course… )
- Planning a wedding? Deirdre wrote a whole series for you! {Pretty, Happy, Real Weddings}!
liturgical living
Today is the Saturday of the Spring Ember Days.
There are many lovely feast days coming up. Let's celebrate them with delicacy and joy.
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My book, The Summa Domestica: Order and Wonder in Family Life is available now from Sophia Press! And it’s 30% off (along with everything on the site) until Feb. 9!) All the thoughts from this blog collected into three volumes, beautifully presented with illustrations from Deirdre, an index in each volume, and ribbons!
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Blayne R says
I am so looking forward to your podcast, which I hope will become a regular thing for you! I personally need practically daily encouragement to keeping trudging along haha! I have been inspired to start a garden in the backyard, however small, but my dog has other plans. I need to find a way to combat her destructive ways!
Julie VS says
With the inflation and supply issues, I have been thinking it is high time I actually started growing some of our produce. It is daunting, however, as an absolute novice, who only recently acquired an actual outdoor space we could use. I poked about the No-Dig site you shared, and it looks quite useful and inspiring. Do you have any resources for rank beginners that you recommend and can point me toward?
Leila says
For me, the learning curve was SO STEEP. My advice is to stay away from a lot of in-depth “how tos” which cover Every Single Aspect and instead think about what you would really love to grow and see how people grow those particular things (in a similar climate to yours).
So if you could make two raised beds, what would you prioritize in them? Probably tomatoes, basil… The no-dig method is great because it’s so simple — no exhausting digging and so on. Though it seems to me he doesn’t really plant tomatoes (more greens). For those, I do a modification. Most of the bed has a layer of cardboard covered with a thin layer of grass clippings or leaf mold and then a little compost. I pierce the cardboard where I want to plant my tomatoes, dig out enough to stick a plant in, put in compost, and then plant. By the time the plant is big enough to need more than the hole I dug out for it, the worms have done their thing.
This is the key to his method: you are basically suppressing weeds (cardboard) and encouraging worms (compost). The WORMS do the “digging” if that makes sense… they turn the soil and leave castings, making a perfect environment for the plants.
Just start small 🙂
Also, the things that store well — potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash — can be plunked in and forgotten about. I have found Instagram very helpful on my learning curve! Search the hashtags “allotment” “allotmentlove” and “backyarvegetabledgardening
Julie VS says
Thank you, Auntie Leila! That is most helpful.
Julie VS says
Also! I cannot wait to make that pie in Easter week. It looks like a more delicious version of one I have sometimes made for Easter (Italian, again).
Lard is wonderful.
Mrs. Bee says
It looks like you had to drink a lot of wine to make room for the seed bench in the pantry :-)) With not much space on our lot that gets good sun, mainly due to huge trees and a hill on the east side, we don’t grow much – we concentrate on what we use most and is most expensive at the store, like tomatoes and basil (I make a lot of pesto.) I had not heard of the no-dig method, we started our little garden with the square-gardening approach – I’m sure my daughter will love learning the no-dig as well!
Last fall I bought two olive tree saplings at Trader Joe’s, after a friend of mine said she got a grape vine there years ago, she was able to plant it and is now giving them grapes! Where I live winters are too cold to plant olive trees outside, so they spent these past few months by the living room windows. I did not manage the transition indoors very well (I have a black thumb), so they lost almost all their leaves and I was despairing a bit, but you should see them now, they’re growing like crazy! I’m not sure I’ll ever get olives out of them, but it warms my heart to own olive trees – and in Italy that’s what they use on Palm Sunday, olive branches, it’s actually called Olive Tree Sunday (Domenica degli Ulivi).
I enjoyed your book review a lot – I’m haunted by something I read quite some time ago, something the Pope Emeritus once said that if we don’t get the liturgy right, we won’t get anything right. I fear we make no connection between our ravaged liturgy and the troubles plaguing us.
Pride and Prejudice is a gem, and such a useful tool, too, a gift given to parents to discuss these topics with their growing teens – there is such a huge slice of humanity represented in it, and it all revolves around the most momentous decision most people will make. And all packaged in a delightful prose, truly a gem!
Leila says
Re wine: LOL I moved it but yes, we did drink some for sure 🙂
Re olive trees: apparently this is what these trees do! My friend Molly who gave me the hibiscus plants/trees (against my better judgement and warnings that I would kill them) told me that they would lose their leaves but then grow them back, and that is what happened!
Re: JA: Don’t forget to read The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After if you haven’t!
Leila says
Also, haha, we moved the wine elsewhere… and drank some too, although not much because LENT!
Mrs. Bee says
I know, it was a cheap joke about the wine 🙂 You have recommended the JA Guide before, now I finally went ahead and got a copy, I look forward to it. Just the other day I asked my daughter if she could spot a Wickham – it’s a fun way to have an important discussion!
Athena says
Wow! You have the sweetest voice and most feminine hand gestures, I love the soil blocking video. I’ve wanted to try this, but like you, I didn’t want to buy another gadget for the garden. I will most definitely do this. Your “greenhouse” tip from last year (?) worked wonderfully for me.
I’m not familiar with how to use roasted, frozen tomatoes? That method would be so much simpler than canning in the hottest part of the summer.
Kelsey says
Athena, I am sure that Leila has a very fabulous method for roasting and freezing tomatoes, but I’ll share one easy tip. Several months ago, I placed a grocery delivery order in which I mistook the unit of sale for fresh plum tomatoes, and I ended up with an enormous quantity. I just washed and dried the tomatoes, and froze them on a cookie sheet. Once they were frozen solid, I transferred them to gallon-size freezer bags and they’ve worked really well to add to sauces/stews and the like. Super easy.
Jacki says
I roast our tomatoes with lots of olive oil, whole garlic cloves, and basil and freeze in small portions (a little goes a long way). It’s a great way to use up the tons of cherry tomatoes we get. During winter, they are heavenly tossed with pasta or rice for a side. I often add some extra cooked chicken to make it a meal.
Leila says
Thank you for the compliments! Believe me, it’s super awkward…
Not wanting to can the tomatoes (I’m just not set up for that right now), I instead cut them in half, gently squeeze out the seeds and jelly, and toss in a large pan with onions, garlic, basil, and olive oil. Some batches I also added the sweet peppers (red and green) that I had, and even some celery. Roast at around 400 degrees until they are, well, roasted! The liquid should reduce and there should be some browning. Although you can stop this at any stage of cooking, but they store more compactly when reduced.
The resulting product is just very nice — a sort of concentrate of tomato goodness, seasoned to give it depth. I simply used it the way I would use sauce in cooking, for pizza, pasta, lasagna, etc. If I wanted to make a real ragu kind of sauce, I might add some tomato paste and wine and cook up so that the elements fall apart and homogenize a bit, but mostly I just used it straight.
Leila says
Also, you are heating the oven up, so it’s still hot for the hot summer, but I found that if I was baking other things, like bread, I could pop in the tray of tomatoes. Or I could do it at night before bed.
Lisa says
I can’t wait to start my seedlings next week for zone 5a in Maine.They always give me hope that spring is on the way despite what I see out my window. I never seem to produce enough to make a sizable dent in our grocery bill, but this is certainly the inflationary time to try. I plant the Sunday after Mother’s Day at the earliest. We live at the end of a long, dead end street where the snow grows to a mountain from the snowplow. It’s a tradition to guess the date when the pile completely melts. I think the latest has been April 26th. Snow is May just seems wrong.
Abigail Badillo says
I’ve found, through experimenting with planting dates, that the first of April is perfect for us for peppers, and a week or so later for tomatoes & basil (zone 5a – it isn’t worth putting our plants in the garden before Memorial Day at the earliest, and first of June for things that like warm feet, because the soil doesn’t warm that fast even if the risk of frost is low). It does make a massive difference whether you’re using grow lights or not, they grow so much faster under lights than on the window sill. We moved two years ago to a property that allows us to have a big garden, and I grow starter plants for myself and my parents – last year I grew ~50 tomato seedlings! I’ve already started onions, which we *don’t* use lights for (you want those to get the slowly increasing normal daylight, because too many hours of daylight trigger bulbing) and they do great out on an unheated sun porch that stays in the high 20s – low 50s this time of year. Absolutely agree that growing as much of our own food as possible is always a good idea, but even more in these uncertain times – not just because of the cost, but I worry over availability. When I ran the numbers last year, we saved about $600 w/ the produce from our land, even after deducting the cost of seeds, soil, organic fertilizer, and other items. And we don’t even have a huge property, it’s just over an acre w/ a stream taking some of the useable land out of the middle.
One question that maybe you or your readers could help me with – HOW can I freeze my green beans and have them edible once thawed? So many people tell me they freeze beans with no problem, and every time I try, they are just disgusting – cardboard outside, water inside, no flavor.. *I* won’t even eat them, much less my kids. It’s sad because we always have such abundant green bean harvests! Snap peas pose the same problem, although last year I discovered quick pickling those in the fridge, which at least extends their usability a bit and also provides some variety..
It’s snowing hard here today, so thanks for turning my mind towards the near prospect of spring!
Leila says
Oh, great tip about the onions! I will get them out of the seed bench for sure. I don’t have a sun room or anything like it, alas, but I will figure something out.
I agree about green beans. They are not easy. I use the ones I freeze in soup (like minestrone, mostly). I use older ones, past the slender tender phase, and cook them slowly with tomato until they are quite tender but not mushy. The key is slowly… as in this article: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018907-long-cooked-vegetables
That’s when I freeze them. This way they come out more the way they went in. They are good as a side dish when you aren’t expecting “fresh crisp-tender young beans” — served with ham etc.
We have to think about the garden! It’s icy snow outside as I type this!
Abigail Badillo says
That is a great tip about cooking the green beans very thoroughly before freezing. Actually makes me think I’ll experiment with freezing oven roasted ones – we love green beans roasted with garlic, and I have a suspicion that (since the roasting process thoroughly cooks them and removes quite a lot of the water) they might freeze a lot better that way. And if they did, it would be a double bonus, since they could be reheated quickly as a side that way, or added to a soup… Your way of cooking with tomato sounds like a win, too! Seems like I’ll have lots of experimenting to do, come summer.
You could keep your onions on your seed bench but you’d want to approximate the hours of daylight outside at this time of year, which isn’t ideal for your other plants.. I would imagine if you have a sunny window anywhere else in the house they would do well there, and if you have any kind of greenhouse or cold frame or even a way to rig some kind of a cover, they’d be fine outdoors before too much longer. They definitely tolerate some pretty cold temps and keep right on growing nicely.
Leila says
I could put the onions on the bottom shelf of the bench. Each shelf is independent (or can be).
I also found with asparagus (but haven’t tried with green beans) that blanching, freezing, and then going straight to roasting works well.
Mrs. T says
I just put an order in for another round of baby chicks and have been saving egg carton containers for the budding gardener in my family.
I agree with you that gardening is a steep learning curve…around here every new season is an experiment. I am able to get several meals, but never enough to can. I’ve learned so much over the past couple years and at least one or two children are learning along with me. I hope of of them becomes an avid gardener.
I’ve began trimming away at my forsythias, butterfly bush, etc…the tulips are starting to pop up! My apple trees are small but sturdy, gave them a good spray of Neem oil. Need to plant more….so much to do, but I can’t wait! Fresh air, dirty hands, ruddy cheeks! Bring it on!!
Married life with children is such a wonder, isn’t it? I chuckle at my former self, newly married and barely able to scramble eggs or pot a plant. Amazing how much we learn. Our Lord knows us so well.
raphaelarchangelus says
It’s wonderful to read your advice and I’ve loved perusing the comments. It’s encouraging seeing so many women gardening. We don’t have a yard (yet! Praying to St Joseph for land!) but I do what I can and some friends have been very generous and let me help them garden in exchange for produce. Providing for my family in this way is so rewarding!!
I do find it sad that in the course of less than 100 years the knowledge of growing/preserving our own food has been lost. My grandparents, God rest their souls, grew up farming with horses and doing most everything themselves. Two generations later, I’m having to learn everything from scratch.
I like to pray to St Isidore the Farmer when I’m planting etc. When I was in Carmel his feast day, May 15, marked the beginning of outdoor planting. I followed that method my first year of marriage, but it’s too cold here. 😂 My plants did make it, barely, but two years later, I wait a couple of weeks before putting things on our porch!
Lisa says
We just got a half of a pig from our friends (who raise pigs on their farm) and with the meat, my dear friend gifted me several bags of lard. “Rendering lard” is on my to-do list this week, and I scratched “Crisco” off my shopping list. Fingers crossed I get it right!
Ellen says
My mother in law grew up on a farm and sees gardening as another chore demanding hard work. Her advice to me was to let the garden be the thing i do for the summer. That is, plan to spend lots of the day outside, think of what I’ll need to have the kids and the baby outside around me, either playing nearby or working with me a bit. And don’t take on other projects in the first years while I’m learning. I thought that was smart. Also i grow alot in huge (24in across) plastic pots on the deck near the hose. You sometimes ask for these from garden centers as they just get recycled. Potatoes, tomatoes, lettuces and herbs all do well in pots for me. Im in zone 4b/3 so almost the coldest you can get and still grow food
Katherine C. says
Another seed starting tip: I made wood seed starting trays (something like this: http://www.englishhomestead.com/2020/03/wooden-seed-trays.html) with untreated wood from Home Depot. I’m in my second year using them, and it’s been great to ditch one more plastic item from the house. I dry the boxes out in the sun at the beginning and end of the season to kill off mold. I plant the seeds in rows in the boxes, and then when it’s time to plant, I gently pull the seedlings out with a butter knife and stick them in the ground. Granted, I am fortunate to live in zone 7, so I don’t have to start too many things inside. I am also blessed with two wide, sunny windowsills where I can start seeds without the use of heat mats or lights. I’m probably not getting tomatoes quite as early as I could using these methods, but it’s extremely low maintenance, and that works well for me right now!
I start pepper seeds on damp paper towels in plastic bags on top of the fridge, where it’s warmest. Anyone with a wood stove could probably keep their seed box near the stove until things sprout, and then move them to a sunny spot, since most seeds don’t need sunlight until they’ve poked their leaves out.
Corinne says
Do you cover the seeds on top of the blocks with soil, or just leave them exposed? It goes against my gardening instincts to not tuck them into bed with a little soil cover and a pat!
Leila says
Some get covered, some stay exposed. Some seeds NEED to be exposed to the light! The packet should tell you which ones.