A cute video and a recipe!

The Move, Paper Animation from Mandy Smith on Vimeo.

SO CUTE AND AMAZING!

Today I worked my face off and I'm just putting the finishing touches up on my pattern submission! I made loaf this morning, chili in the crockpot for dinner (even though i don't really like chili), and am excited to finish up a knit for @kalinhop for her birthday, maybe get to work on my sweater, and go to be a little earlier than last night. XO

Zucchini Gingerbread Loaf

This past summer I put up bag after bag of grated zucchini in my freezer and last week when I was doing a general overview of what we had left to consume from our cold box, I realized we hadn't yet eaten any of the zucchini. So I pulled a bag out and it sat in our fridge for a few days while I thought of what to do with it. And then I started craving gingerbread and the rest is history.

There aren't a lot of zucchini gingerbread recipes out here on the internet. I found this one, and Martha's, and ended up modifying a Mennonite Girls Can Cook recipe with a recipe Northern Purly Girl sent me back in the middle of the harvest. I replaced the sugar with honey, reduced the fat (by a little), added oats, and gingerbready goodness. YUM.

In a large bowl combine:
2 cups previously-frozen grated zucchini
1/3 cup oil
3/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1/2 cup molasses

In a separate bowl combine:
3 cups flour
1 cup oats
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves

Add dry ingredients to wet and mix until they're just combined. Divide batter among two well-greased loaf pans and bake at 350F for 50-60 minutes.

Note: If you like nuts feel free to add 1 cup of your favourite chopped nut! Of course, walnuts or pecans would taste best, but whatever works in a pinch will do, of course. Same goes for seeds (sunflower, pumpkin), but I'd recommend only adding 1/2 cup of seeds.

i have the riff from a sleigh bells song in my head

Happy Monday!

I'm so impressed with this teenager!

The article in the NY times is a good portrait of the self-imposed farmer life of a young woman. She wanted to grow food as a summer job and started a little buying club (CSA) and has turned part of her family's yard into an every producing garden. SO COOL. so fruitful. so wonderful! go youth! I look at her garden and I know she's feeding the neighbourhood but I wish I had a better garden. at least my tomatoes now have more than one flower! one year at a time me thinks!

in other news last week we received this letter from the federal government saying we weren't privy to a bunch of the sweet tax breaks canadians get for not having much income because last year stewart and i broke the 50K mark (just barely). so while i want to jump for joy at getting into the middle class (hahahaha) i totally wept because i thought it meant we weren't getting ANY of the sweet benefits! this year my income has gone from 34K down to 12K and we're getting by just fine, but the tri-monthly GST/carbon tax/HST credit would be nice. you know, to float us a bit. but i thought it meant we wouldn't get child tax credit. and lo and behold we do! YAY! so the first thing i did with our child tax credit was buy yarn! i haven't bought yarn since April (when i spent $20 on the patons to make my stripey cardigan) and then not since the holidays. the rest has already disappeared to groceries and gas to fill our tank for the month as well as face wash (i've been using bar soap for months) and some canning supplies so i can make jam. anyway, i got the yarn from KnittyDirtyGirl, who you should shop from right now.

seth is 9 weeks today which means that it's time to get his vaccination. we're going to hopefully do it tomorrow or wednesday. which means we'll need lots of sleep just in case things go awry and he's super sad. in the meantime we're going to watch hot tub time machine and eat really expensive ice cream. YAY! xo