Kaake Family Blog

We got our D2D box today and here's what we found in it. 5 bunches red leaf lettuce - very large. I had 2 to share with a friend :) 2 avocados 1 package grape tomatoes 2 cucumbers 4 lemons 1 bunch of beets 1 bunch of turnips 6 barlett pears 6 gala apples 6 cara cara oranges 1 bunch of bananas 2 large onions That's a lot of produce when it's all pilling up on the table! I've never done anything with turnips other than put them in homemade chicken soup. Since I made my soup today and these arrived after it was finished, I'm trying out the below recipe. I also have never done anything with beets other than cook them whole. I'll let you know how I like the recipes below. In response to my last D2D Organics purchase, we loved the pasta made with the greens. On to the recipes :) Recipes was taken from here . While I love avocado's, I will not be putting them in my salad. I am also going to caramelize my walnuts in maple syrup and a dash of salt for my salad...

Ok I changed the name around a bit but you still get to see what we're eating :) Here goes for the next two weeks. This will start when hubby gets his check tomorrow. I'm no longer putting my meals in order by day of the week. I've found it's easier to make a list of meals and shop for those; then on hard days, I can pick something easier to make. Here goes:) 1. Homemade chicken soup for my Jon. 2. Chicken on salad greens w/soup. 3. Chicken tacos with all the toppings.. 4. Goulash with salad and garlic bread - mmmm! 5. Pizza on the grill with salad. 6. BBQ chicken, and potato salad. 7. Fried chicken fingers, mashed potatoes and salad. 8. Fish, baked potatoes and coleslaw. 9. Frankfurters (from Turtlebee Farms) tator tots and veggie. 10. Breakfast for dinner using sausage from Turtlebee Farms and eggs from a local farm. 11. BLT's - bacon from Turtlebee Farms. Maybe some homemade guacamole and chips too. 12. Eating out - giving mama a break! 13. Cr...

Picking Dandelions. Picking grass. Using grass as a bandaid. My sweet boy and his baby blues. Dandelions - Five Iron Frenzy In a field of yellow flowers, underneath the sun, bluest eyes that spark with lightning, boy with shoes undone. He is young, so full of hope, reveling in tiny dreams, filling up, his arms with flowers, right for giving any queen. Running to her beaming bright, while cradling his prize. A flickering of yellow light, within his mother's eyes. She holds them to her heart, keeping them where they'll be safe, clasped within her very marrow, dandelions in a vase. She sees love, where anyone else would see weeds. all hope is found. Here is everything he needs. Fathomless your endless mercy, weight I could not lift. Where do I fit in this puzzle, what good are these gifts? Not a martyr, or a saint, scarcely can I struggle through. All that I have ever wanted, was to give my best to you. Lord, search my heart, create in ...

My daughter and I had so much fun planting more seeds today. I planted 28 pepper seeds and will hopefully have 100% yield. Ok even 50% would be cool. She planted 72 seeds consisting of Impatiens, Marigolds and Zinnias. As you can see above, she had a lot of fun doing this. There are a lot of sites out there for kids activities for earth day. I'm only going to give you one link. The below link is celebrating the creator, not the creation. Let's keep that in mind as Earth Day approaches. I do feel as Christians we do need to take care of what he has given us in any way we can or know how. :) http://www.christianpreschoolprintables.com/EarthDay.html In lieu of the coming Earth Day 2010, we're going to have a giveaway. We will send you the leftover seeds of what we're using this year and a few from last year. So far the mix includes marigolds, basil, a few organic pepper seeds and more. There's the possibility there may be some other goodies in the...

Picture taken from here . Everyone (or most everyone) knows how picky I can be when it comes to dental care. A couple years or so back I went to the dentist for my first filling. It was horrendous! I decided not to have pain meds because of a personal preference and boy did I have pain! They were working around an exposed nerve. Since then I had been too scared to go back to have the rest of the work done. Fast forward a year. My husband kept telling me we should go see Larry Bush, a friend, fellow Christian and as you would have it, a dentist. I kept telling him I did not want him seeing into my mouth. I also didn't want him seeing me in pain because of not using pain meds. Well, come to find out, they use a laser. Hmmm, something worth checking into right? A couple days ago I went to see Dr. Larry and was more than impressed. He cleaned out my old fillings, opened them up and with the laser I had virtually no pain. There were a couple times it was getting a bi...

Matt planting our $5 tree. It's 3 years old now and is gorgeous!!! A variety of basil panted in a container. Our lovely calendula. This is a family favorite grown from seed. Cherry tomatoes. Squash Another variety of basil. That was just a bit of what I grew a couple years ago. Bean plant. Lovely lavender! Many times I've wanted to plant a massive garden or have several plants I could simply not afford. Not just that but other things such as mulch, weed blankets and more. I hope you find the tips below as helpful as we have. Please feel free to add your own gardening tips. 1. Purchase trees at the end of the season. We've gotten a few trees for $5 and $10 at the end of the season. We planted them and they've done just fine! Talk about a huge savings! You can also do this with bulbs and other plants. :) 2. Use newspaper for weed barrier protection instead of the weed blankets. You'll want to do this fairly thick; anywhere from 5...

Kids just love to garden, there's no doubt about that. I was trying to figure out what to do with Jon this year to get him more excited about gardening and being more hands on. I decided on bean plants since they grow quickly - which is key in getting younger children more excited about gardening. If it takes too long to grow, you might as well hang it up. The next thing I needed to figure out was how to make things simple as well as little mess as possible. Because of that and cost, we decided to pick up some soil pellets from Walmart. We got 36 pellets for under $3! Not bad. We next picked up some organic bean seeds. We'd only need 3 for what we were doing. Here's what we did. 1. We found a plastic container we didn't care much about and put the pellets in there to rehydrate. Jon loved watching this part! 2. Next, we took 3 bean seeds out of our package (we got organic from WalMart). We took one seed at a time and pushed it down a bit into t...