Scottish Ale for Spring

For the first beer brewed in our new home we chose a Scottish ale. Scottish ales have always been a personal favorite of mine. They are a smooth malty ale with a settle hop flavor. This particular recipe called for honey malt, caramel malt, pale chocolate malt, black patent and finished with Willamette hops (What's not to love!). In brewing there are three main stages: making the wort, fermentation, and bottling. We had our little hiccups along the way, but the next beer will be that much better because of it.

Making the Wort
This is were is all begins. Your equipment is sterilized and ready to go and you are throwing all your ingredients in a large boiling pot of water and following your recipe very carefully to make your wort (wort will become beer after the fermentation process). At at the end you cool your pot very quickly in an ice bath and then pitch your yeast.

This is where we went wrong. We forgot to activate the yeast! This caused about a two hour delay as we waited for the yeast to activate. Always activate your yeast before you start to brew your wort.

Fermentation
The fermentation process is the easy part. After you pitch your yeast into your wort you seal it up in a 5 gallon bucket and put in the closet for a few weeks.

No problems here!

Bottling
After 3-4 weeks or so you take your beer out of the closet and add a sugar mix (we used honey) and siphon  the beer into sterilized bottles.

We were able to fill 22- 22oz bottles before we had siphon issues. It didn't help that Lyra was screaming with all her might at us from her pack n play in the corner as we bottled as fast as we could. Can't have the baby chewing on sterile bottles! We decided that 22 bottles was enough and we capped them all and away they go in the closet to carbonate in the bottles for another couple of weeks.

Cody capping the beer

 

 Ready to go into the closet for another couple weeks

  We tried some of the beer before bottling and to our relief it tasted exactly like it should!

  

What Does Sleep Training Mean?

If you are a parent you have heard the phrase "sleep training." Some parents will ask "What sleep program are you using?" I always stayed away from anything with the word "sleep training" because it made me feel like I was treating my child like a computer to be programmed. That said I try never to judge parents who use these programs because every lifestyle and child is different. In fact I am writing this because our child has decided that co-sleeping = playtime. Problem? Yes!

When Lyra was born we were in a one bedroom apartment so naturally her crib was in our room and she slept in the bed with us where I could easily nurse her throughout the night when needed. At one month she was sleeping through the night without milk in the bed with us. This was fine by us as long as she was sleeping. At around 10 months she got a nasty stomach flu and stopped eating solid foods so her breast milk intake increased to all hours of the night in order to stay hydrated. After recovering from the flu and picking up solid foods again she continued to want to nurse about three times a night. I tried to slowly wean night time milk intake down but this resulted in much screaming. Then about a week before her first birthday she decided that at 1 AM mommy and daddy should get up and play! We thought maybe it was one time thing, since, some nights are better than others. On the fifth night we realized we had a problem. By then she decided she wanted to play at 9 PM, 1 AM, and 3 AM. This had to stop if we were going to survive.

One night I knew I had to do something. So, I bought an album of natural white noise and set Lyra in her crib. I sat in the rocking chair next to the crib and let her cry for 30 minutes and then she passed out. When she woke up at 5 AM I brought her into the bed and she slept for another hour. We started doing this every night and we just finished our fourth night. When she wakes up we check her diaper give her some water then sit with her until she went back the sleep. By the second night it was only taking 10 minutes to go back to sleep. 5 minutes on the third and last night. So far everyone is getting more sleep at night. We hope the trend will continue.

Cody getting sleep when he can with Lyra 

Gluten Free Birthday!

This weekend was Lyra's first birthday. Lyra is the first and only grandchild on both sides of the family so this birthday was a bigger deal than most. The night before her birthday I made three dozen gluten free cupcakes. Our family has a large number of gluten sensitive folks, my husband included. I have been working on my gluten free baking for three years now and have finally found a flour blend that doesn't taste like beans. 1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes, by Carol Fenster, is one of the best books I have found for gluten free baked desserts. The flour blend in this book is 35% Sorghum flour, 35% potato starch/cornstarch, 30% tapioca flour. The great thing about these recipes is that they can easily be made vegan by replacing butter with Earth Balance (a non-dairy butter spread) and eggs with a gluten free egg replacer. I made two dozen chai-spiced cupcakes and a dozen black forest chocolate cupcakes. For all the cupcakes I used a cream cheese frosting. They seemed to be a hit.

Photo taken by Auntie Baylie

Lyra enjoyed a gluten free, dairy-free black forest chocolate cupcake with no frosting as her first cupcake. It gave her a burst of sugar so she was ready to open all her presents and drag wrapping paper all over the house. What could be more fun! By her second birthday I maybe able to work my baking courage up to attempt a whole gluten free cake.

Cloth Diapers...Not That Hard, Really!

For all those who told me I would give up and move to disposable diapers, guess what? My daughter will be a year on Saturday and she is still rocking cloth diapers. Oh, and here is another shocker for you, my husband is still on board too! Why, you might ask? Well, money for one thing and it is in some ways easier than disposables. I thought I would take a moment to walk folks through my arsenal of cloth diapers and my process.

There are many different types of cloth diapers on the market. What you choose to use really depends on your child and your lifestyle. For instant I am a stay at home mom and have a child with skinny legs and is a heavy wetter at night. These are very important things to know when deciding on what cloth diapers to purchase. We chose three types of one size diapers for our arsenal. One size means they are not fitted and adjust to your child's size as they grow so you only have to buy them once. Here are the three types of diapers and purpose. 

1.) For our daughter's everyday wear we chose an "all in two" diaper (means cloth inserts can be removed from shell and replaced). Since, our daughter has skinny legs we wanted a diaper that had adjustable legs so we chose the fleece lined "Soft Bums: Echo." We purchased 6 shells, 18 standard inserts, and 24 infant inserts for the first two months of infancy. Three of the shells are Velcro and three are snaps. Velcro may seem like the easier route until your child learns how to pull off his or her's diaper in a public setting, then you will be wanting those more complicated snaps!

All in two diaper, Soft Bums: Echo

2.) For night time wear we chose a "pocket" diaper (means you stuff the inserts into the diaper instead of laying them in the diaper like an "all in two"). Pocket diapers allow you to stuff in more inserts if your baby happens to be a heavy wetter. For this we purchased four the fleece lined, adjustable leg "Soft Bums: Omni"  pocket diapers, which came with one insert each. We also could use the inserts from her everyday diapers if needed.

Pocket diaper, Soft Bums: Omni

3.) For out and about we chose the thinner "Flip" diaper. We purchased four shells and six cloth inserts. This is a fairly inexpensive diaper shell with no lining so the can be rinsed and dry quickly when traveling or on the go. The inserts can be cloth or disposable. That's right! You can purchase composting inserts that can be disposed of on the go and will actually break down in the dump. These take up half the room of her everyday diapers in the diaper bag.

Travel diaper, Flip with disposable insert 

Finally, the odds and ends:

• Cloth wipes are a must really. If you are already washing cloth diapers it would be silly not to use cloth wipes. We purchased three dozen wipes.

• Cloth wet bags for the diaper bag. Just throw them into the diaper pail with the diapers after use. We have two of these which I made from waterproof PUL fabric from the local fabric store.

• A sprayer that hooks into your toilet to spray that poop right into the toilet is not a must but very nice to have.

• A diaper pail! We have plastic pail with a locking lid designed for bio hazard material. Never an issue with smell. Wipe clean after each time you empty it.

• Bac-out by Biokleen is a must. It keeps bacterial growth in check. After you spray poop off a diaper add a couple sprays of bac-out and into the pail. Use it to wipe out you diaper pail and add to the wash if it is a particularly stinky load of diapers. Also, it works great on stains such as food, blood, and vomit.

Got everything! Now to washing. Some people have a very strict washing routine when it comes to cloth diapers. I wash when it looks like I am getting low on either shells or inserts. Wash once on cold with 1/3 the amount of detergent (free and clear, of course) you would use on a normal load and again on hot with no detergent. Then into the dryer or air dry and that's it.

Easier? Well, I never have to make extra trips to the store for diapers or wipes and fewer trips out to the garbage can. The washer is closer and inside, I might add.

Rain Garden Planning

What kind of hippy mom would I be if I didn't have at least one rain garden? What is a rain garden? A rain garden is a sunken garden bed designed to catch storm water and filter water back into the ground naturally. Rain gardens have many benefits. They are a simple way to protect our streams and rivers, provide food and habitat for birds and butterflies, and best of all, are planted with hardy low-maintenance plants.

 I have been taking rain garden workshops from East Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District, so I like to think I sort of know what I am doing. My yard is more or less a blank canvas of weeds and crab grass. Sounds terrible? Not at all! This is an opportunity to let my imagination run wild. My first project will be a couple of rain barrels plumbed into rain gardens. There is actually a lot of planning that goes into engineering a rain garden. First, I drew a layout of my house and property and calculated the area (sq/ft) of roof draining into each down spout. Then, I took 10% of the total area and that is how many square feet my rain garden will have to be.

After drawing everything out we dug a one foot by one foot hole and filled it with water a couple of times and timed how fast the water drained out. If it drains out too slowly or not at all then a rain garden is not for you. To our luck the soil was fabulous draining at about an 6 inches an hour in the back yard and  12 inches an hour in the front yard. That is fast draining soil! However, in an actual Pacific Northwest rain event complete soil saturation will likely cause a slower drainage rate.

My goal is to have the gardens finished by the end of February. I will post the progress over the next couple of months. The next step is to draw out the individual beds and select the plants. 

Surprise! It is Pink!

As many of you know every year at Christmas I make soap. Some years the soap turns out better than others. This year we added Shea Butter which required a whole new recipe. The soap this year is 40% olive oil, 30% coconut oil, 20% palm oil, and 10% Shea butter. We chose to do a spicy scent of clove and cinnamon oil. To dress it up we decided to add some green shimmer to make it festive. So we set out to mix our oils and lye.

The shimmer is where things got interesting. We poured the soap into our molds and let is sit for 24 hours. It was then when we removed the molds that we got a surprise. There was no green to be had! The shimmer triggered some sort of chemical reaction with the oils that turned the soap pink. Yes, pink!

I always test my soap on myself first and the soap is safe to use, so I went ahead and cut and trimmed the soap. 2012 the year of the pink soap! Hope folks enjoy it.

Bags to Wrapping Paper

Since we were in grade school we have heard the words "reduce, reuse, recycle!" So with that said I make it a point to never buy wrapping paper. With the plastic bag ban movement in Portland growing I have accumulated many paper bags (with a baby I often forget my reusable shopping bags). Why not use those paper bags to wrap presents.

Items you will need:

• Paper Bags
• Festive Colored Ink Pad
• Festive Rubber Stamps
• Festive Ribbon

1.) Start with your paper bag.

2.) Cut down one corner and around the bottom leaving the sides

3.) The take your ink and stamps and stamp away

4.) Wrap and ribbon!

Then deliver your beautiful reused and recyclable wrapped presents! Santa approved!