Growing up in the South, sweet tea was a mainstay. A cold drink on a hot day. Or a cold drink on a cold day. Didn’t matter the time of year, we almost always had sweet tea around.

My mother-in-law introduced me to sun tea recently - a GREAT way to stay even cooler by not boiling water on the stove. Just throw your tea bags in a full pitcher of water….

…Then, cover the pitcher to keep the bugs out and sit out in the sun to steep. Add sugar, if desired, and Ahhhh! So refreshing!

I received this lovely Apple computer from my family for my 30th birthday almost a year ago, but I’ve had very little time to spend learning how to use it. Well, I FINALLY figured out how to organize my photos with iPhoto and I’m very excited. During naptimes and evenings this week I’ve sorted all of our digital photos.

Here’s how I sort mine so they’re easy to locate for gifts, scrapbooks and albums.

• I have a folder for each year (2008, 2009, 2010…)
• Once the photos are uploaded, I create albums to contain different events (i.e. Strawberry Picking, Italy, Baby’s First Month…you get the idea).

Another way to sort photos within albums is by month. This way you have a chronological account. I find that I can’t keep track of when certain events happen and end up looking through several months to find the photos I’m looking for, which is why I sort by event.

• Once I sort them, THEN I edit photos and delete those I don’t want. I find it easier to see which photos are worth keeping once I upload them.
• I’m still figuring out how often to print digital photos. For me, I know that over time I probably don’t need EVERY photo I’ve taken on a vacation to be in hard copy, but if I wait for too long they may never be printed. I’m leaning towards printing out photos annually to add to my own albums, with a handful of extras for our “travel” scrapbooks.
• Lastly, thanks to a great idea from a fave blog, Young House Love, I’m going to create CD’s of our photos annually to store in a fireproof safe. Plus, we have additional back-up by uploading many of our favorites to Flickr and our family blog.

Now, my next project is to sort through all my photo albums and get them down to a manageable number.

How do you store your photos digital and otherwise? Do you print out your digital photos? Do all of your photo albums match or is your collection more of an “acquired over time” look?

My son has passed the 6 month mark. Hard to believe. It’s time to start him on some real food and I wanted to start off right, with fresh, whole ingredients that I made for him myself. At least I wanted to give it a try.

I’ve had many friends rave about making homemade baby food, and others who found it daunting. Now that I’ve begun, and since I’ve been making alot of our food from scratch, I can see that it does require time and that my being a stay-at-home mom allows me the freedom to try more homemade food.

Baby’s first food was avocado, and since then I’ve pretty much followed the mash-it-up and ice cube tray storage method. It has worked well for me and made it easy to pull a couple cubes out of the freezer each morning. Since baby is only learning to eat real food, I removed the cubes from the trays, cut in half and through the halved cubes in ziplocks. I find I’m wasting less this way.

The one food I’ve tried that hasn’t gone as smoothly is homemade brown rice cereal. I’m having a hard time making only 2-3 days worth and getting the consistency I want. Baby is NOT excited about brown rice cereal, so I’m going to wait on that a little longer until he can handle a chunkier consistency.

It feels good to know that, for the most part, he is learning to eat “mommy’s cooking” from the start, and we only need to rely on jars of food in a pinch or while traveling. For now, making his food from scratch is an option that is working for us.

I must have an obsession with cupcakes. I mean, they are the trendy treat-of-choice right now, with cupcake shops popping up everywhere. Cupcakes were my major craving while pregnant.

Aren’t these tea towel cupcakes from Yoonie at Home adorable? I think they would make great wedding shower favors.

I’ve been making some progress on my homemade wish list and have come up with a few more to add. It’s really fun to make things from scratch to see what actually goes into the things that we usually buy from the grocery store.

I’ve made yogurt several times, and hummus, one of our favorite snacks.

I’ve also successfully made whole wheat pizza dough and think next time I’ll make a few at the same time and freeze a couple. Super easy, and tasted so fresh!

I used a recipe from Simply in Season. The KitchenAid mixer with bread hook made the 8 minutes of kneading a breeze. Then only time was needed for the dough to rise, from this…

To this…

Then we just rolled it out and baked it briefly before adding our toppings. A delicious, healthful and easy dinner.

The Pillsbury crust I usually bought was $2.99. The store does carry “fresh” crust for about $1.99. My homemade crust cost less than a dollar. And I know every ingredient that went into my crust, so that’s worth something too.

Haven’t tried crackers or pie crusts, but have added a couple other items to my list:

• mayonnaise
• granola cereal
• mozzarella

I have a habit of purging items that haven’t been used. Clothing is one of them, but kitchen items are another favorite.

One random item my husband received as a gift a couple years ago as his cooking became more adventurous was a mandolin slicer. Very fun gift, but it sat on a shelf for well over a year. So the ultimatum came. Use the mandolin or say goodbye to it.

I did help him in the process of using it, coming up with an anniversary dinner menu that included homemade scalloped potatoes - the perfect dish to use our mandolin. And we did.

Needless to say, it wasn’t the easiest thing to use, although quicker to slice potatoes thinly. It was even harder to clean. I think we’ll try it a few more times - on some homemade potato chips or waffle fries, and a mini lasagna using zucchini noodles. But, I’m still not sure this contraption will survive in our kitchen for the long-term.

What appliances do you have stashed that you should use or lose?

We went peach picking spontaneously last weekend. You could smell the ripe peaches as we walked through the grove.

We enjoyed eating fresh peaches all week and grilled some to top dinner salads a couple of nights, based on this Paula Deen recipe. I baked a double batch of peach muffins, which were delicious, and froze half to enjoy later.

To enjoy the rest of the peaches over the next few months, we froze two quarts of peaches sweetened with simple syrup and two quarts without sugar. Here’s how we prepped them:

• Drop whole, ripe, peaches in boiling water for 2 minutes. It’s important that the peaches are ripe.
• Remove to an ice bath to stop cooking process.
• The skin should slide off the peach fairly easily at this point.
• Slice peaches, removing pit.
• For those peaches that will be sweetened, cover with lemon juice to avoid browning, then add simple syrup until well coated.
• Ladle into quart-size ziplock freezer bags.
• For unsweetened peaches, mix with lemon juice to avoid browning and freeze flat on was paper in a cookie sheet so they do not stick together and then store in ziplock freezer bags.
• Don’t forget to label the bags with the contents and date!

I never would have predicted that having a baby would bring out the cook in me. Granted, my hubby and I have long loved trying new flavors, cooking together, testing new recipes. But the fact that I’m doing most of the cooking now as a stay-at-home mom, our smaller budget since becoming a one-income family, and my recent commitment to buy local whenever possible, I’ve gone gang-buster for making-from-scratch foods I would have typically bought at the grocery store.

I’m using Super Baby Food as one of my resources as I plan to make as much of my son’s food as possible. And because the hubby and I eat so much yogurt, I thought I’d try that well in advance of when baby is eating yogurt, so I can get the hang of it.

In the last week we’ve made 6 quart-size batches of yogurt - 3 have failed (although we’ve used that tangy milk for smoothies), but we’ve been enjoying our 3 successful quarts.

The How…

(there are many recipes online)

• First, we scalded the milk to 185 degrees Farenheit
• Then, we let the milk cool to approximately 115 degrees Farenheit (the milk needs to remain between 90-120 degrees in order for the yogurt cultures to survive)
• Once cooled, we mixed in 2 Tablespoons of plain yogurt with live active cultures (using plain Stoneyfield Farm yogurt for the first batch - no we can use the yogurt we made as a “starter”)
• After covering the jars, we’ve tried a few different methods for incubating the yogurt, which takes many hours. The option that has worked for us is keeping the jars of yogurt-in-the-making in a water bath on the stove on the lowest temperature. Every hour or so we’ll move the yogurt off the heat so the temperature doesn’t rise too much.
• After 4-14 hours (the longer you incubate, the tangier the yogurt), refrigerate to thicken the yogurt further and voila! Homemade Yogurt!

Afterthoughts…

This (and many others from our perspective) method does require some baby-sitting, so it’s best to do when you plan to be home most of the day. If we find we are making alot of yogurt I may invest in a yogurt-maker.

For us, whole milk came out the thickest and creamiest not surprisingly, but we also had a batch of 2% milk work. To make the resulting yogurt thicker, we strained the whey out through cheesecloth to achieve the desired texture.

The cost breakdown…

I generally buy either individual servings of organic Stonyfield Farm yogurt for $.99 a pop, or the quart size occasionally for $3.99.

Our yogurt (using organic milk for $3.69/half gallon) costs about $1.50/quart. Definitely a cost savings that’s worth it!

Making food for me has become a new creative outlet. Once someone who hated spending time in the kitchen, I now relish trying new recipes, making food on a budget, planning meals around some random item that’s already in the cabinet (for example a jar of roasted red peppers will be perfect for weeknight paninis), and trying to make food from scratch.

We recently made jam, and tried our hand at yogurt (post coming soon). But I’m also interested in making several other items to see if it’s worth my time to make more from scratch, like:

• Hummus (excited to try this recipe courtesy of Food in Jars)
• Crackers
• Pizza Dough
• Pie Crusts

I think I’ll make one of my summer goals to try at least a couple new “from scratch” recipes a month. I’ll keep you posted!

I continue to learn new ways to simplify with an infant. While I had many systems that helped my productivity while I was working in an office, I’m finding that I need to create whole new set of routines as a stay-at-home mom.

I’ve always been a serious multi-tasker, but I don’t think that’s the healthiest, simplest way to live. Multi-tasking require more energy and often produces less. However, I do think there a few ways for healthy multi-tasking.

Excercise

I’m on a mission to lose all that pre-pregnancy weight, but I also want my son to be out in nature as much as possible and take in some of the sunny Vitamin D and fresh air. We have a nice routine going in our daily walk. This means guaranteed outdoor time for him, a good workout for me, not having to fit in a drive to the gym (or gym fees in our budget!) I even did this all bundled up in winter on sunny days. This is a wonderful way to rejuvenate. On rainy or extremely hot days, I head to the mall to walk and can run a few errands at the same time.

Kitchen Tools

I’m ALL about kitchen tools that multi-task. In fact, I’ve decluttered a number of them in the last 5 years, including our garlic press and most-recently our salad spinner. We chop our garlic with a good knife as we’re chopping the rest of our veggies, which means one less item to wash. And a kitchen towel does just fine drying our lettuce. Plus, we learned a trick awhile back to keep lettuce wilt-free longer - adding a paper towel to a ziplock bag or tupperware container where you store your lettuce will absorb any extra moisture. We rarely have wilty (and therefore wasted) lettuce by doing this.

Excursions

One of our favorite family activities is taking a day trip to a new place or spending time outdoors with a nice hike and a picnic. We try to do this often, and in addition to memorable family time, we get a nice workout from our walk, enjoy the fresh air and a break on our wallets with this usually free outing.

Cooking

Now that I’m at home during the day, I’ve been enjoying learning to cook. From simple crockpot recipes to meals using local food, it’s a wonderful hobby, but I also want to be smart about my time. So in addition to time (and dishwashing) saving meals in the crockpot, which usually last us for at least two days, I’m also learning to double recipes or make two. For example, when I make a quiche or lasagna, I make two and put one in the freezer for a later date. Soup is also a great “save some for later” meal.

Since I tend to feel more productive when I multi-task, I’m enjoying these healthier ways to do just that. What are some ways that you multi-task or are you trying to do less of that?