Corn Chowder--Not Just For Your Grandmother

When I was a child, we didn't really eat corn chowder.  Probably because my mom thought we wouldn't like it (and to be honest, it wouldn't have been my favourite soup-like option).  I remember eating it at my grandparents' though, and while I dutifully ate my whole bowl, I remember my younger cousin from Ontario loving it.  I can still picture her with her little blonde head, sitting at the card table that was set up in the kitchen for the kids to eat at, happily consuming a big bowl of it while we wondered whether or not we liked it.

I love corn chowder now though, and with corn on sale last week at Sobeys, I made a batch with our leftovers.  I based the recipe on this one, but made a few changes to it to suit our tastes a little better!

Corn Chowder


2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp (or so) summer savoury (the original recipe calls for thyme leaves from 6 sprigs)
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
6 cups vegetable stock, or chicken stock (I used both)
2 cups whole milk
2 potatoes, diced
Kernels from 6 ears of corn
6-8 slices bacon, fried till crisp and crumbled
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (I used marble)
salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley or a tbsp or so dried

Heat the butter and olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat.  Add the onion, garlic, and summer savoury and cook until the veggies are nice and soft, about 8-10 minutes.  Add the flour and stir well.  Pour in the stock and bring to a boil, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens and taking care to prevent lumps from forming.  Add potatoes and boil hard for 8 minutes or so, until the potatoes are soft and start to break down.  Add the corn kernels and milk (mine were already cooked, you could put them in earlier if you were cutting them off raw cobs), and simmer a little longer (try not to return to a boil as you don't want your milk to separate). Before serving, stir in the cheese, bacon bits, parsley, salt and pepper, and a little drizzle of olive oil.  Ladle into bowls and serve with some crusty bread.

Ode To A Clothesline

What a breath of fresh air, literally, now that clothesline season is back in full force.  I know some people let their clothes freeze solid on the line during the winter, and I think that's great--but mine was broken until about a week and a half ago and so I'm just once again starting to take deep breaths of springtime olfactory delight when I fall asleep on line-dried sheets or dry myself with that rough, outdoorsy scratchiness of towels straight in from outside.  I love my clothesline so much that my husband is getting tired of hearing me randomly blurt out "I love being able to use our clothesline again!"  And I felt it had to be expressed here, in words and images.

Five Reasons I Love My Clothesline


1)  The way the clothes smell when you bring them inside.  I think I already covered this, but it has to be included; isn't it everyone's favourite thing about clotheslines?  That smell of fresh air, ruddy cheeks, freshly mown grass, dried leaves, hyacinth perfume, bird song, and puffy cumulus clouds.  An aroma like that just cannot be duplicated anywhere else, other than in freshly washed fabric, blown in the wind and lovingly gathered in a basket.

2) Saving money and electricity.  Once the clothesline is operational again, I don't ever want to use the dryer.  Even with an energy efficient one, it still uses a lot of electricity, which means I subsequently contribute more carbon emissions into our saturated atmosphere and I end up with a higher municipal electric bill (and those puppies are bad enough as it is!).  It isn't any less convenient to do laundry this way, it just might take a little more planning, but as I may have mentioned before, I love to plan.  Just check the weather forecast for the next few days and the night before a nice day, pop a load into the washer before bed.  When you get up, you can put it on the line, then take it off by lunchtime to stick another load on for the afternoon.  Who really needs to do more laundry than that a day, if you remember to do some every nice day that you have?

Note the fleece baby clothes and the absence of emerged leaves in the background--oh! To have a truly warm spring arrive...

3)  Keeping your clothes more organized.  Now, I realize that this may sound at first like I have some sort of a problem, but I swear it works really well.  When I am hanging the wet clothes on the line, I like to pre-sort them into certain categories.  For example, large and small items, pants, shirts, onesies, socks, underwear, etc.  Then I keep each item with its own kind.  When you then come back to pull them in, they are already in a very efficient, handy order.  When you fold them (which is also easier, since the legs of your skinny jeans are not tangled around the sleeves of your favourite henley, and your diaper cover velcro is not firmly attached to a knit acrylic sweater), you can stack them according to where they need to go without losing time sorting them.  Oh Craig, you're looking for your socks?  They're all here.  Need to run a few things down to the kids' room?  Here they are, all in a pre-established pile.  I love it.  (Some people I know, based on other aspects of my life, such as my old work desk that was covered in used tea bags, papers, photos of family, spare socks, and bits of random leaves and other plants that I collected in my wanderings, may have trouble believing me to be this obsessive.  But I swear, I can be quite organized in other areas!)

Here they are: Susannah's onesies (and sleepers in the background) are sorted before they're even dry!

4) The quiet, contemplative time it give a busy schedule.  Now I do not claim to particularly enjoy doing laundry.  Quite the opposite, in fact, I'd much rather wash dishes.  But clotheslines make laundry fun again.  Why?  Yes, it may take longer, but those 10-15 minutes that you spend pinning the clothes on the line and then taking them off to bring inside are 10-15 minutes of peace, fresh air, and opportunity to quietly think without interruption that you really wouldn't have otherwise.  I like putting the clothes on the line when Susannah is napping (9:30-10:30 am, and 2-3 pm) and James is either playing quietly in the yard or asleep.  I listen to the sounds of the neighbourhood: to birds singing and leaves rustling in the breeze and neighbours walking their dogs and taking out the garbage and puttering about in their yards.  I breathe the fresh air and think about what I need to get done that day, or how much I love my family, or about the book that I can't wait to get back to, or about my prayer life, or just about how much I like doing laundry again.  It's a mindless but focused activity that just feels good and gives me a quick breather.  Ahhhhhh.

I think the photo says it all. :)

Not sure I can really express how much I love this picture and the little bum that fits in these covers.

5)  A glimpse into a person's life.  Now I'm not particularly nosy, it's more that I have a keen interest in other people and a vivid imagination, and as a biologist, maybe a stronger than normal appreciation for detailed observations.  But when I see a neighbour's clothes out on the line, I absolutely love that it is an opportunity to peek into his or her life and form a picture in my mind of what that life is like.  Clothes tell a story about the person who wears (or line dries!) them, and some very personal information can be hung out for all to see as it flaps in the breeze.  One glimpse of a clothesline is like the briefest character sketch about the people surrounding you every day, and gives you a chance to get to know each of them a little more deeply than you previously did.  It reminds me of what one of my aunts, who has a heart for things poetic, said a few years ago after the fall time change: "I've made friends with November."  She was referring to the fact that after the clocks go back, you can easily see inside the homes of others when it's dark outside and their lights are on.  You can see them gathered around a kitchen table together as a family, or cleaning the living room, or reading near a cozy fire.  It isn't that you want to know their business, so much, as that you can appreciate the simple beauty of knowing that these people (who you may or may not speak to on a regular basis) are just like you, living just as you do, a few doors down from you.  It makes the world seem smaller, more friendly, more connected in these days of such a busy pace of life.  And I love a good story.

Lamby (and his twin brother) is a very important member of our family.

Homemade Thousand Island Dressing

We haven't been eating very many fresh greens lately and I have been craving a salad.  My husband's favourite salad dressing is Thousand Island, and we didn't have any (well, technically we do actually have a bottle in the fridge that I have not yet removed although it expired months ago--we don't eat a lot of salads when it isn't barbecue season).  I really wanted to have a salad tonight with supper, so I looked up homemade thousand island style dressings online, and combined a few to make this.  It's super easy and it tastes just as good (if not better, with a bit more oomph!) than the bottled variety.

Some day maybe I'll really make it from scratch with homemade mayo and ketchup but for now, I'll do it the easy way, with the Hellmann's and Heinz varieties.  The great thing about this dressing is I can pretty much guarantee you have everything you need in your house right now!


Thousand Island Dressing


1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp white vinegar
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp sweet pickle relish
1 tsp finely minced onion (I used Epicure 3 Onion Dip Mix to make it even easier)
2 shakes of Worcestershire sauce
a couple shakes of salt
some freshly ground black pepper

Whisk together in a bowl until smooth and creamy and spoon over a fresh salad, in this case, romaine lettuce, diced red onion, grated carrot, and walnut.  Yum.  I love pantry staples turned into something easy and yummy!

This post is shared with Homestead Barn Hop #59 at The Prairie Homestead.

6 Little, Easy Ways to Be More Frugal

I like living simply, and I love doing things for my family with my own two hands.  I'm learning more and more every day, and I love the way that creating things that my family needs with my own know-how and with items that I already have in the house allows me to be more frugal.  This is especially important to me right now as I am going back to university in the fall, which is a pretty expensive prospect when you have little ones at home, and jobs aren't exactly growing on trees at the moment, particularly in the conservation field.

Some of these homemaking activities require (or will require, as I haven't started them all yet!) time and commitment and work, but for me, they are so rewarding that it doesn't matter.  It's actually kind of addictive, and Pinterest and blog-reading are fuelling the fire.  Oh--you make your own deodorant?  I should try that!  You have a recipe for homemade ginge rale? Sign me up!  You sewed your own apron which beautifully gathers so you can put your freshly plucked organic vegetables in it when out in the garden?  Where is the pattern?!

Obviously, I'm just starting down this path.  There are oodles of people WAY ahead of me.  And maybe, some people who drop by this blog are with me in the early phases or are just figuring out that they'd like to explore these ideas a little more, which is why I am including a few easy ways to live more frugally and do things for yourself, by yourself.  You can be kinder to the planet, have fun with items already in your home, and save a few pennies (or soon-to-be nickels, in Canada I guess!).  Some of these you've seen before in blog posts, but I thought it would be fun to do a quick review in a list format!

 1.  Make your own bread.  Really.  It isn't hard to do, and this recipe is super easy, forgiving, adaptable, uses less yeast so even less expensive, and it's no-knead.  You mix it up, leave it alone, come back, flip it around a few times, put it in a pan, give it a break, then put it in the oven.  Before you know it, your house smells like a bakery and you feel a sense of accomplishment.  It tastes way better than what you would buy in the store, for a fraction of the cost and probably even saves time in the long run because you don't have to drive to a store, pick out a loaf, wait in line at the check-out counter, get home and put it away. :)

2-3. Grow your own vegetables.  This one is sort of a frugality double whammy, are you ready?  Grow your own vegetables from seed (all of them) rather than buying the seedlings at the garden centre.  This is loads of fun, gives you an activity to interest your active three-year-old son and prevents him from endlessly, noisily crashing his cars around you, or colouring on your bedroom door, and costs less than buying the seedlings (which in turn costs less than buying the full-fledged vegetables).  Frugal tip number three: grow them in cut up toilet paper and paper towel rolls.  Save them and then plant in them when you need to.  They hold the soil, can be planted as they are in the ground because they'll decompose and you won't have to disturb the roots shaking them out of the pot, reduce household waste, and save you loads of money on unsustainable peat pots.

4. Save your eggshells for your garden.  Egg shells break down in the soil, add to the compost that you are hopefully already adding to your garden, and provide much-needed calcium to the most beautiful of all garden crops, tomatoes.  Also, slugs don't like to cross them so they can act as an effective barrier to those horrid slimy creatures (and as a biologist I say that with love and no discrimination against a natural creature of any kind).  If you eat lots of omelettes or angel food cakes, you'll collect quite the pail-full of these in no time at all, and your afore-mentioned three-year-old boy will love helping you crunch them up!

5. Use vegetable crisper compost to make new veggies!  Specifically, celery (above) and green onions (not pictured).  I don't know if there are other veggies you can do this with but these are the two I've tried.  When you cut them back to nothing and all you have is the bottom of the celery or the silly little white onion bulb from the green onions, just as you're about to toss them in your compost bin, think again and stick them in a glass of water.  They'll grow and you can harvest them again!  Gets you a lot more bang for your 99 cents (or $1.49, if it's the celery and it's on sale!).  It also provides a fun little experiment for your kids and it doesn't take long--those celery leaves are 5 days old.

6. Use orange peels to make your own environmentally friendly household cleaner.  Have you noticed yet that I save a lot of garbage?  Toilet paper rolls, egg shells, celery bottoms (what is the correct term for those anyway?) and now orange peels.  And it's not only me saving them, I have my parents and my sister saving them for me too.  And I require that my husband take home the orange peels leftover from his lunch.  But I like this cleaner, it's fun to make, smells better than cleaning with straight vinegar and it only takes a few minutes using something that would end up in your compost bin.

I love little tips like these!  Please share yours and I can delightedly add to my little rituals of using weird items to cut down on waste and create great new things.