Jam Week, Day 4!

The winner of Tuesday's jam, Mango Lime, is Sonja a.k.a. "Rusty"! Using the very scientific method of having my 10 year old roll a die, comment #2 was the winner. Sonja, I have your mailing address already and I will send your jam out very soon!

It has been a very long day after another mostly sleepless night. I have been out of the house since this morning, so I have not made jam. I think I am going to cut myself a break and skip it tonight. I have 3 different jams planned for tomorrow, so have no fear. There will be plenty of opportunities to win jam. The jam making will continue through Sunday, with the final winner announced Tuesday.


Don't forget to enter to win Wednesday's jam, Double Strawberry! It set up very well, I am thrilled! Valid comments need to be left before midnight tonight, AK time. See you tomorrow!

Jam Week Day 3!

The winner of Monday's jam, Pineapple Rhubarb, is Elaura Nevares! Since she was the only one that commented, she wins! Elaura, I will contact you via facebook for your mailing address and the jam will be on it's way soon!

I have had a headache for most of the afternoon after a sleepless night. The jam is just now cooling and I have a few minutes before I usher the children to bed, so I will tell you about today's jam.

Double Strawberry Jam!

It's not quite as mysterious as it sounds. I had 4 cups of frozen wild arctic strawberries left and decided to use them for jam combined with domestic strawberries. It is very tasty! I miss the wild strawberries and copious amounts of raspberries that grew at the house we rented before buying Ireland Manor.

The flavor of wild, pink strawberries cannot be beat. However, they don't can well, turning into a mushy, sweet, pale mess. Combining them with the bright red store bought berries resulted in a very dark red. Almost as dark as canned cherries. I can't wait to see if it sets up! I cooked the heck out of it because I am not so great at making strawberry jam. It seems to separate no matter what I do! I even let it sit up in the pot before I put it into the jars. We shall see...

Jam making is usually not this complicated for me! *shrug* Do you lose your jam gift if you don't use it?

To enter to win one 1/2 pint of Double Strawberry jam, leave a comment below and tell me your favorite way to eat strawberries! The deadline for today's giveaway will end at midnight on Thursday (tomorrow) and the winner will be announced Friday. :)

Jam Week Day 2!

Today's jam is Mango Lime.

I LOVE mangos. Seriously. I could eat one every day and never get sick of them. This is a jam I started making 4 or 5 years ago because I needed to have mangos year round. It is absolutely terrific as a cake filling and very easy to dehydrate for fruit leather. I prefer fresh mangos, but I froze so many last year that I couldn't justify buying more until I had used them. I freeze a lot of fruit in season and then use if for jams or desserts later. I do the same with lemons and limes - I dry the zest and then freeze the juice into ice cubes. When I freeze mangos though, I put lime zest and juice in with the fruit. I find mango and lime to go so well together that I can't imagine using mangos in a recipe without lime.

I had about 10 cups of mango puree when I started and finished with 7 1/2 pints. The puree was a nice bright yellow with little flecks of green lime zest, but again, the end result is not the color it should be and I think I know why. Its the sugar. I switched sugar 2 years ago and haven't made mango jam or lemon curd since before that, only berry jams, and I didn't realize that the Organic sugar would change the color so much! I'm not willing to switch back to C&H (nor should you be, read this) , so I will have to sacrifice color or switch to another sweetener.

I use Pomona's for my jams and jellies. I love it because I can use any kind of sweetener that I want and I can use LESS of it. For instance, to make strawberry jam, a box of Sure requires 5 cups of fruit and 7 cups of sugar! That is a 1.4 cups of sugar to every cup of jam! Madness! With Pomona's, the recommended amount is 3/4 to 2 cups sugar (your choice how much) for 4 cups of fruit. A 1/2 cup of sugar or less for every cup. I can use honey, apple or grape juice concentrate, stevia, or nothing at all! I add sugar just because I have a sweet tooth and was raised on sugary jam :)

To enter to win a half pint of today's Mango Lime jam, leave a comment below telling me about the best mango dessert or dish you have ever had! Today's drawing closes at midnight on Wednesday and the winner will be notified Thursday.

Check back tomorrow to see what kind of jam I will make :)

It's Jam Week!!

Hooray! It's jam week!

I skipped making jam last fall. Its a bit of a blur, but I think I was busy with a baby? Well she is almost a toddler and sleeps much more regularly now, so I have a little bit of time to make jam and replenish the dwindling supply.

I will be making at least one type of jam every day this week. And if you follow along and play my game, I will be giving away one jar of jam a day :)

Day 1 -
Today's jam is Pineapple Rhubarb!

This was a new one for me last year. I was very surprised that we all enjoyed it so much! It is sweet, not tart at all and it a really great way to use up rhubarb. I like Strawberry Rhubarb as well, but this is my new favorite way to use rhubarb.

The last time I made it I used only green rhubarb, and I have to admit, it was a nicer color. I didn't have quite as much green frozen this year, so I had to add some red rhubarb to equal the amount of pineapple and the jam is not the nice pale green it should be. I ended up with about 10 pints of Pineapple Rhubarb jam!

To enter to win a small jar (not a pint, not pictured) of Pineapple Rhubarb jam, leave a comment below and tell me your favorite what your favorite pineapple dish is! The winner will be chosen at random and announced on Wednesday's post :)

Marching on

March has come and gone without so much as an inkling of real progress.
Our plan of a major project a month has fallen by the way side, as all good intentions and resolutions eventually do. It looks more like this now:

March - Where did it go?
April - Still winter. Not much can be done. Plant seeds, plan and revise.
May - Flooring upstairs, Bathrooms (when we can finally get the bathtub out of the basement)
June - Paint house, yard, REPLACE Porch Roof!
July - Yard, etc. Kitchen? Maybe.
August - more yard work
September - trim work!

I hate the idea of spending the next 2 decades working on this house and I really have no intention of letting things take that long, but to maintain peace I really can't expect or push things along as fast as I want them to happen. Ya' gotta go with the flow and work with what you have, right? Its the Alaskan way! Work like crazy all summer and then go crazy in the winter because you didn't get enough done last summer!

What has been happening around here?

Over the last few weeks, Spring has been trying to break through the deep snow. The ice has been melting and sliding off our metal roof. Several times we have been woken by the slam of ice as it drops from the main roof to the porch roof a dozen feet below. One of these actually broke the supports for the porch roof! Not only did the enormous piece of ice break the extra bracing, it actually broke the original timber in 2 additional places!






























When we began the process of buying this house, we were told by the bank that the house was not financeable in its condition. The bank that owned the house gave us permission to do some minor repairs to get it up to the minimum standards. One of those repairs was the porch roof! Mr. Ireland braced the broken supports, it passed the inspection, and we put a new porch roof on our list for "not immediate but in the near future" repairs. We want a dormer over the steps and this year we really got a taste of how bad the steps are to navigate when there is ice constantly dropping in sheets onto them. Guess what project just got bumped to the top of the summer project list?


We also started our garden. Well, we started seeds for our garden. I don't think this will be enough food for our family for the winter, but it is a start. I have a feeling I will be annexing more of the back yard for a garden!
























All the kids helped plant seeds!






Mr. Ireland finally found time to fix my car! I am so grateful to Mr. Ireland's brother, Mr. Ireland, for loaning me his vehicle for the last 2 months but I am very happy to be back in my van.


Are you ready for some REALLY bad line drawings?

Most of my time has been spent looking around, planning and day dreaming. I have taken a few pictures of our yard, trying to catch the path of light around the property and thinking about the best locations for the next chicken coop and a greenhouse. I think I have a great place for the coop. I will be able to see my chickens from the kitchen window and I can walk out the kitchen door right to the gate, if I move the coop here. It will be nice to watch the chickens while I am doing the dishes. Moving the coop is a big job. I will have to do most of it myself, since Mr. Ireland is not what I would call an animal lover! He really wants nothing to do with the chickens. So its up to me to attempt to move this decaying structure. I figure I have nothing to lose! If it works, great! If not, well I was already going to have to build a new coop. I'm thinking the best time to try this is as soon as the ground is dry. Any volunteers?!





























That is the back deck in the bottom right corner. The back of the coop would face a very steep hill. It may have to sit up on stilts.

As for a green house... Mr. Ireland wants a garage and I think I have convinced him to extend the roof line on the east side of his garage to make a green house. That will give it a mostly southern face and on our property that is where most of the light hits in the winter. This is pretty important to me because I have a handful of fruit trees growing in pots in my house that will eventually need a year round green house! I have a couple of avocados, banana, apricot and meyer lemon trees. The collection is only going to get bigger. If the green house is part of the garage, the space can be heated to keep my trees from dying! I think it is totally possible if we take out the island of trees next to our driveway.





























There's no sense in dreaming if you don't dream big, right?

An acre in town sounds like a lot of land. It is and it isn't. A significant portion of the property is drive way and septic field and house. Does any one know if I can plant things on top of my septic leach field? I don't need to rototill, I can layer growing material on top. I'm thinking potatoes. I need to find more space for plants! Please feel free to share your thoughts on this :)

Get Back to Work!

January is gone and February is well under way. We have been so busy around here! Doing what? Not all that much. It feels a bit like reorganizing, but I can't be sure. Most of January was spent working in the basement, a space that is vital to the rest of our house being finished. If the basement is a jumble, we will have to hunt down every tool, clamber over piles to get a can of paint and dig out the last scrap of wood or screw just to move on to the next project. We have continued to sort and unpack boxes and even move a few boxes off to storage.

Yes, storage. The word makes me want to cringe. I come from a LONG line of storage unit owners (I refuse to say hoarders and bring a curse upon myself!) and I know that once an item goes into storage it will almost certainly stay there. Forever. Mr. Ireland won't allow that to happen, however, and has set a time limit. All items must be sold or donated by the end of July. With his resolve and my "zero waste" kick, we are sure we can meet that deadline. So I shuffle things off to storage a couple times a week and it has freed up a lot of space in the basement. Enough to dig out the treadmill! Which I may or may not get around to using in February...

I've been taking pictures of things that are going to the yard sale. This is a tiny porcelain box given to me a long time ago by my little brother. It is pretty, but I never use it and everything will come under scrutiny during "the purge". If something you gave me ends up in the sale, I'm sorry, but I just can't keep everything and I'm not really a knick knack kind of girl.

We have also set a lofty goal of having *most* projects indoors completed by the end of May. We have set a major goal for each month and wouldn't you know it, we are already behind! Here is our new list:

January - Basement: Organize, purge, make room (check)
February - Remodel bathrooms...(nothing has happened with that YET)
March - Kitchen remodel
April - Trim work
May - Flooring upstairs
June - Paint house, yard
July - Yard, etc.

The back porch. Rotten, almost useless and covered with snow. This is coming down and will eventually be replaced. With a roof over head.













I attempt to trick myself by listing the fewest words possible when I write down a job, that way I look at it and say to myself "Oh look! How difficult could this be? There are only two words here!" It doesn't work for long.

Now that the baby takes real naps, I can pick up my saw and get back to work. I have a lot of wood projects waiting to be done, but the first is a sample board for bottle cap flooring. I hope to have that finished by the 15th and get a picture up. If you have any bottle caps that you have been saving for us, now is the time to send those on! Callen has collected 7 jars of caps! That's 70 dollars worth of caps - we will buy the caps from him and half of that money will be going to a charity of his choice. Thank you to everyone who has donated bottle caps!

Sweetest baby ever!












I have most of the materials for remodeling my bathroom, but we need to start upstairs. I am afraid that we will remodel mine and then decide not to do the upstairs and it is UGLY. We have decided to replace the upstairs shower with a corner shower. The bathroom is dark and light is cut off by a wall that houses the plumbing, which Mr. Ireland will move, so the wall can come down and that will really open up the tiny upstairs bathroom. I will be painting the bathroom and replacing the vanity light. I am also looking for a small window to install above the toilet. I have to have window's in bathrooms! Not everyone needs that, but I do. I need natural light. Just for fun, answer my poll to the right and let me know how YOU feel about bathrooms that have a window!

Enter to win at Cooking Traditional Foods

Are you looking at the new year and thinking about making some resolutions? Is one of them eating better? How about eating locally? Well, we here at Ireland Manor are focused on the same thing. We have always leaned towards a more natural foods diet around here, but this year we are going to be more committed to it! Don't get me wrong - we love our junk foods, but even those can be made in a healthier way, using healthier fats and fermented ingredients.

If this is the sort of thing that interests you, or you are looking for a way to plan healthy meals without having to do all the leg work, you are in luck. Right now, Cooking Traditional Foods is having a giveaway for a FULL YEAR of their menu mailer! You will get a menu mailer each week, complete with a pantry and shopping list and prep page. It really couldn't be easier to feed your family healthy foods! Enter HERE to win!

We have been using their menu mailer for about 6 months and every issue has a great selection of family friendly meals. All meals are based on seasonal items and each menu contains a dessert and crock pot friendly meals. Go on, make a change and get some help along the way by entering to win!

If that link won't work, copy and paste the link below
http://www.cookingtf.com/2011/12/30/giveaway-one-year-menu-mailer-package-subscription/