Ecomama

Have you seen this?

I'm on Ecomama's blog...! (in Dutch, but Google translate shouldn't keep you from reading it, if Dutch isn't your native language)

It's been there for a while already, I just didn't mention it here...

Ecomama and Ecoweetjes were two of the first websites I came across when researching eco/bio stuff for babies, when I was pregnant with Joshua.
It's has lots of info and is a great resource for other Dutch websites.
A good starting point if you want to do/know more, not just for parenting...

Love, Caroline

Veggie Garden

It's been a while since I've written about my veggiegardenexperiment (nice scrabbleword!).

I've got a big amount of pictures for you. Some a big surprise, some sort of a big failure, but that's why it's an experiment. Next year I'm, obviously, changing some things...

Here we go:

Corn, only two seeds came up. I don't know what the
thing in the front is, but it doesn't look like all the other
weeds, so I'm leaving it where it is.

Currant, infested with aphids. Trying a natural repellant/
killer, using tomato leaves, I found on Pinterest tomorrow.

Grape. Not much to say, just happy it rooted.

Green chillies. I didn't thing these would work.
I planted them in a pot, 4 plants in one pot.
Not much earth for them, but about two weeks ago they
got flowers and now I have about 10 chillies already...!

Green peppers, same story as the chillies. Very surprised!

Herbs.
Left basket: Mint, parsley and chives. All doing very well.
Right basket: Oregano: doing well, dill: almost dead.
Basil: dead... A while already...

Right: Blackberry
Left: Raspberry being eaten, see picture below.
Under: Leftover Strawberryplants.
The Raspberry and Blackberry have a couple of flowers
at the moment, so maybe we'll get a little bit of fruit!

Close up of the caterpillars, can you see the little buggers?
Trying a natural repellant/killer, using garlic,
I found on Pinterest tomorrow.

Scallions, not a big succes yet, maybe if I disperse them,
they will be a succes.

Tomato plants. These are a HUGE surprise. Last year I had
one plant, which stayed small and gave two big,
green tomatoes that would turn red.
So this year I planted 4 sprouts, which grew into these
MONSTERS. And they are FULL.

Full of these: huge clusters of cherrytomatoes.
I'm already dreaming of loads of red, yummy, sweet tomatoes.
Of making fresh Pastasauce and Tomatoketchup, Jamie-style...  

Zucchini's. Green in the back, yellow in the front. These are
HUGE as well. Well, the green ones are, because I planted
them first. The yellow one was planted a lot later and
didn't grow as much.
I've had a lot of (baby)green zucchini's and I've seen a
picture of a zucchiniplant growing up, onto a support
of some sort, so they don't use a much "floorspace" as
they do now. I'm soooo trying that next year!

Appletree, we've planted it this year,
it has had three flower and it's growing three really tiny apples.
It's also infested with aphids.

Strawberries. Loads of them. Under the appletree.

What you didn't see in these pictures:
- The carrots that failed miserably, because I sowed them "under" the tomato-plants.
- The radishes I already harvested and were all kinds of weird shapes... :D
- Last years strawberryplants that didn't survive.
- The spinach which I still plan to test-sow in a pot, just to see how much space I'll need for that next year.
- The mulberry-trees. I actually have Mulberries, but I don't know what to do with them, so if anyone has idea's... Tell me..! Please...

As you can guess, I'm over the moon with my garden (which also has a lot of non-vegetable-or-fruit-plants in it).

Love, Caroline

Veggie Garden

Last years attempt to grow some vegetables, failed miserably.

We had about 6 radishes, 2 HUGE green cherrytomatoes and the peppers? Don't ask about the peppers.
The only thing that grew and produced something, were my strawberries and some of the herbs.

So this year, I decided a different approach.

I ordered a big pile of organic seeds from "de Bolster".
Hubby and a friend created about 2 m2 of veggiegarden where we used to have a patch of grass.
I also have a strip of usable soil in front of the fencing and so I started planning.

I'm planting sweetcorn, carrots red onions and spring onions in "the Strip". There is also a bulb of garlic which we planted last year in "the Strip", which unexpectedely came up.

In the patch that was created I'm planting spinach, fennel, green and yellow zucchini and radishes.
In a couple of large pots I'm planting tomato, red peppers and chilipeppers.

Last week I started the seedlings for a couple of veggies.
I found this idea on Pinterest (another addiction I plan to blog about).
So I started folding seedlingpots and hubby helped.
I started seedlings for (from L to R): sweetcorn, chilli, red pepper, tomato, fennel, red onion

After about a week and a half, this is what my seedlings look like:

Happy, happy, happy....

And it gets better!

After inspecting the pots in which last years strawberries grew, I discovered that the wallhanging tray is sprouting again!

The plants I didn't plant last summer but left in the plastic tray, are also sprouting!

Again: Happy, happy happy...

And it gets EVEN better! I did a great discovery at the DIYstore! 3+1 on all sorts of fruits (plants I mean, but you probably guessed that....).

I bought a blackberry, a raspberry, a currant and a muscat grape, for the grand total of: €7,50

They are now proudly planted in my veggiepatch...

Well, the grape and currant are and the raspberry and blackberry are currently in pots, untill I decide on the appropriate place for them...

And again: HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY...!

Last, but not least I wanted LOADS of herbs ofcourse... And since most of what I planted last year has been ruined by frost, I needed new herbs... Fortunately a couple of local supermarkets had organic herbs on sale.

I bought: Mint, chives ans pasley (in the square basket) and rosemary, basil, dill and oregano (in the round basket). The rosemary and basil are already almost ruined, but I still have hope they wil bloom...

I'll keep you updated on the veggiegarden-project...!

Love, Caroline

PS: As you probably noticed, not all my plants are organic, as isn't the base for my garden.

I try to use as much organic products as possible, but it has to be realizable within my garden (and finances ;-D)

Organic Babyfood

I've been really busy trying out all kinds of organic babyfoods from the supermarket.
Why? That's one of the things that has been keeping me really busy lately, but I can't (won't) tell you why, yet...

What I can tell you, is that I've started making my own babyfood last week.
Joshua ate potato/carrot puree last week, but that was just because we ate "hutspot" and I held back a couple of pieces carrot and potato.

Today I made some things just for him.

We went to the local farmersmarket and I bought quite a lot of fresh, organic veggies. I totally forgot to take a picture, but I got lots and not really a bad price.

Fruit cooking away

I got:
- 2 huge pears (800gr)
- 4 apples (1kg)
- 4 tomato's (420gr)
- mushrooms (500gr)
- beans (180gr)
- a bunch of carrots
For just €14,-

When we got home, I peeled and chopped the apples and pears and cooked them to a puree in a large pot. It's reeeeeaaaally good and no additions of any kind.

Veggies

I also tried out the babycook I bought a while ago.
Peeled and diced a potato, a large carrot and a handfull of beans, put themm in the steambasket and steamed them for about 15 minutes.
When they were cooked through, I mashed them in the blender and I had a small jar full of veggies.

Joshua ate the whole jar and about the same amount of fruitpuree.
Succes in my opinion!

 I still need to fill a lot of jars with the fruitpuree, so I don't know how many jars I get from this amount of fruit, but I did get creative and made a couple of cute labels...

Love, Caroline

Finished puree

Labels

Sunday Recap #4

This week wasn't really eventful...
- Tuesday we had a study day at work. I spend the morning being absolutely annoyed, because I found out the "teachers" hadn't made any progress with teaching my colleagues AT ALL in the last half year...
I wasn't the only one who was annoyed, a lot of my colleagues thought the whole morning was one big waste of (very precious) time...
The afternoon was reserved for filling out reportcards, and since my duo and I didn't have to fill them out, we had a lot of time to organize other stuff.
(My duo did spend some time reading reportcards, since we do have to do the parent-teachertalks....)

- I had a really fun conversation with someone from HiPP's distributor. They sent me a big box of organic babyfood for a project I'm working on... I was almost literally jumping up and down when I opened the box...!

- I read about 60 pages in "Groen Doen" and was inspired to do some research of my own.
I'm bloghopping organic and ecological weblogs, which is an interesting experience. I discovered loads of handy things, but I also scratch myself behind the ears at some of the things I read...
Making your own toothpaste? Using reuseable ladypads for monthly hygene? Not really my cup of tea... But a showercoach and a standby-killer are more up my alley...
I also discovered lots of sites which seem interesting, but need some more looking at, before I "promote" them here..
Two I am already a big fan of are: BabyBeGood and EcoMama...

- Joshua started seriously rolling on to his side!

- I made a cute card for someone who needed a little support... You know who you are!

- I made hubby some birthday breakfast... :D

- I figured out I need a different strategy for my Sunday Recaps...
Up until now (including this post), I write my SR's on Sunday.
But a lot of the stuff that seems interesting during the week, has been forgotten on Sunday...
So coming week, I'm going to make small notes, which can easily be uploaded on Sunday. I hope this works a bit better...

So this is it for this week...

Love,

Caroline

Sunday Recap #3

This week:
- My monday at work was a very pleasant surprise...
My new duopartner prepped everything for me, so I could really easily start the week with my our kids. There was a nice list of important stuff, the craftsupplies were ready and she switched names on the tasklist for me...

- My new boots arrived. I was a little bit weary about the size, but they're okay. I do have blisters after wearing them for one whole day. The kids at school really liked them too.

- I made arrangements with Andries' parents, for them to babysit Joshua every monday. They offered a few times and I didn't think they were really serious but they were.
I'm soooo grateful that they want to do this, which means Joshua gets to grow up and spend loooots of time with his grandparents.
Now to figure out a way for my mom to spend more time with our little guy, but that shouldn't be a big problem...

- I didn't read any books, too busy with other stuff...

- Rebekka and Sietse came over for a visit. Sietse playes with Joshua's Fisher Price garage and house. And Rebekka and I talked about lots of things...

- I recieved an e-mail from the lady who sold me the bathseat last week. Her husband gave it away, so the returned me my money.
I searched for another one on Marktplaats and I found lots, placed a bid on a bathseat with more play options and the next day I recieved an e-mail that I could buy this one.
I payed immediately and this seat was sent to us.
The day it came in the mail, I put Joshua in the bathtub in his new seat and he loved it!

- We went shopping for some babysupplies to leave at Andries' parents. A bottle, a pacifier (I <3 oma), a bib (I <3 opa), daipers, a bottle of organic juice (diksap), some organic fruitpurees and some milkpowderjars.

- We did some more work on the bathroom. Still a WIP, so no pictures...

- We removed 6 of the glass shelves that were in our hallway and had our Citroën modelcars on it. I'm in the process of photographing them, so I can put them on Marktplaats.
We're just done with them...

- My mom was admitted to the hospital. She hadn't been able to eat a normal meal in about three weeks and kept throwing up or at least feel nauseous. She had a lot of pain in her stomach.
To make a long story short: they removed het gall-bladder this Friday. It was inflamed and full of galstones.
She was released today, and has to take it veeeery easy. But the pain is gone and she can eat again, albeit small portions...

- This afternoon Andries' parents came to pick up Joshua (they were in Almere, so it saved us a drive to Putten) and now it's just the two of us at home...
It's kind of strange, no evening bottle, no bedtime songs, no watching him sleep... Just quiet....
Andries has already phoned his parents to hear if the little man is settled in....

So, that was my week...
How was yours?

Love,
Caroline

PS I also had a conversation with someone over the phone, which I'm absolutely ecstatic about, but I can't give any details about...! You have NO IDEA how hard it is to keep my mouth shut... ! ! !

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have all these cravings and sometimes I just give in to them.

But I don't want all the store bought crap, I love to bake myself and I use as much Organic ingrediënts as I can. So today I decided to bake some Chocolate Chip Cookies...

This is what you need for 12, quite large, cookies:

150 gr plain flour

100 gr dark caster sugar

55 gr "normal" sugar
125 gr soft butter

2 sachets vanilla sugar (about 15 grams) or

2 tablespoons vanilla essence

1 egg

1/2 tablespoon salt

1/2 tablespoon bakingpowder

100 gr dark chocolate

Pre-heat your oven to 180 °C (my oven does 175 or 200, so I picked 175 and added 2 extra minutes bakingtime).

Stir the butter and sugar to a soft mix, add the egg and stirr again.

Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt, stir again.

This is what you should get.

 

Bash the chocolate to pieces and add to your dough.

Line a bakingtray with bakingpaper and spoon spoonfulls of dough on the bakingtray.

I made 12 big lumps, but when they went in the oven, they flattened and stuck together.
I guess you could bake two batches with 24 smaller ones, or freeze half of the dough and bake 12 smaller ones...
It's all up to you...
If you bake the big ones, bake for 20 minutes, the smaller ones should be done in about 15 minutes.

Let them cool on the bakingtray for about 5 minutes, then transfer to a cake rack to cool further.

 

I have yet to taste them, but they smell amazing..!

Love, Caroline