While all my friends go away, this is why I stay!

    'Tis the season for all of my good friends to return back to Kansas City and for me to venture out to visit friends who have moved away. Two weeks ago, I got to have lunch with a friend who is living an exciting life teaching down in Guatemala. My best friend temporarily left her successful life in San Francisco to visit this past week. This week, I will be venturing down to Oklahoma to visit a great friend who relocated to Oklahoma for work. All of these trips remind me of how few of my friends are still in the KC area. Yet, as I wallow in self pity, I have to remind myself why I'm still here.
    There was a time early in my husband's and my relationship that we were dead set on moving to Texas. I think we had it in our heads that we could move near Austin, get good jobs (immigration is one of my research interests), and never have to shovel another driveway. That "dream" faded away (honestly, WTF were we thinking?), and we settled down in Kansas. Sure, Kansas is its own kind of special. When it makes the news, it's usually because Fred Phelps' group is spreading hate or our very, very conservative government (as in so conservative that some Republicans are siding with the liberal gubernatorial candidate this year) is denying some minority group its rights. Yet, despite Kansas' many attempts to make me want to leave, here I am. So in a Buzzfeed-like fashion, here are my top 6 reasons I'm still here:

1. You get a lot for your money- There was a piece on Buzzfeed (very scientific) about what kind of a house $300,000 can get you in different US cities. Number 8 on this list is Topeka, Kansas, where you can get a 5-bedroom house. Compare this to the spacious 1 bedroom/1 bath "homes" you can get in major cities on the coast. We certainly did not pay that much for our home, but we still have a decent sized home with an acre of land. We're close enough to our neighbors to interact with them when we want to and faraway enough to spend time outside without being bothered. I cannot even fathom what a house like this would cost in California or some other state I might consider living in. Sure, I know it's worth it when you love the place you live (a guy in Hawaii called it a "luxury tax"), but I prefer to just save money living in a place I like and then retire and live half of the year in the mountains and half of the year somewhere warm.

2. Kansas is beautiful- My eighteen-year-old self would smack me for saying this because this is a newer revelation for me. As a teenager, I thought Kansas was dull and flat. Trips across Kansas to get to Colorado seemed like torture, but as I got older and as my trips across Kansas became more frequent, I started appreciating the beauty that the Kansas landscape offers. We even have photos of the Konza prairie throughout our home! The wide open expanse of the prairie at sunset can be breathtaking. The sites I'm able to see while riding my bike through rural Kansas make me feel lucky to be here. In fact, last night I saw a man riding a horse down the road while talking on a cell phone. Where else can you see that?!

Lone barn south of Lawrence, Kansas

Our regular Sunday ride- look at that sky!

A lovely (but not so lovely on a bike) brick road south of Louisburg, KS

3. It's actually diverse!- We may not have the kind of diversity that larger cities enjoy, but we have a sizable population of immigrants and refugees living in the area. Even in the white-washed suburbs, small populations of immigrants thrive. For example, I'm helping conduct research at elementary schools in the suburbs whose populations are majority minority. The diverse people bring diverse food and diverse ideas to a place that really needs it! I have my anthropology students write a culture shock paper, in which they must go experience something out of their cultural zone. The range of restaurants, ethnic grocery stores, religious services, and special interest group meetings they can visit is amazing!

4. There's a lot to do....- This is another thing my teenager self would not have agreed with, but now that I've lived here for awhile (and am over 21), I can see there are tons of things to do. For one, there are now several neat, small breweries, including KC Bier Company, Big Rip Brewery, and Cinder Block Brewery. I haven't tried one yet, but we also have wineries. There are good places to see a show, and we have plenty of award-winning restaurants. One of the exciting things I'm doing this week is going to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle party at Alamo Drafthouse, where there will be all-you-can-eat pizza and a showing of the original TMNT movie. In addition to all these things, there are plenty of bikes rides, runs, and triathlons for the athletically-inclined. We even have an outdoor ski slope within an hour drive!

5. and you can get their pretty easily.- My friend from San Francisco could not believe the ease in which she and a friend were able to get in and out of the Justin Timberlake concert in KC. This is because when she saw him in San Fran, she waited 3 hours to leave the concert. Even though I live a little bit outside of the suburbs of KC, I can drive 30 minutes any direction and get to something interesting, whether it be downtown KC or the wonderful little college town Lawrence, Kansas, or the airport (I can't always stay in KS).

6. My family is here!- Both my husband's and my families still live in Kansas. Our parents are very important to us, especially to me as an only child. We want to make sure that our future kids are raised close to their grandparents. When we go out of town, we know our parents can watch our current children (cats), and we can doggy-sit for them. It's just nice to have that kind of support nearby. 

The real reasons why I stay: they can't survive a car ride longer than 5 minutes!

Dilly Beans: My First Attempt at Refrigerator Pickling

It's amazing how motivated I get to update this when I have a pile of essay exams to grade (as opposed to when I have a pile of Bob's Burgers to watch)....

The Smuber household is currently experiencing a green bean assault. My husband planted a lot of pole beans, and currently ALL YOUR BEAN ARE BELONG TO US!!1!! For the past two weeks, I have been able to pick a handful  or two of beans a day. I've steamed them, I've blanched them, and I've sauteed them. I like green beans, but I needed a new way to eat them. I thought about investing in a pressure canner, but I had trouble paying $200+ for a device that was only going to be canning green beans. Thankfully, my dad came to the rescue.

While I was at my parents' house one evening, my dad showed me a recipe he was wanting to try. It was for "dilly beans," refrigerator-pickled green beans. This appealed to me because 1) I could pickle without the added danger of extreme heat 2) I had found an alternative green bean preparation 3) I love almost anything pickled (it's the eastern European in my genes).

That day's haul of beans

Making dilly beans is actually quite easy. First you need to sterilize the jars and lids in boiling water. While the jars are drying, you start heating up a mixture of equal parts water and cider vinegar with some sugar and salt. As that comes to a boil, you start packing the jars with fresh dill, a garlic clove,dill seed, mustard seed, cayenne, and (of course) green beans. If you don't have all those spices and don't want to buy them, I have found it convenient to raid a culinary-inclined person's (my dad) spice rack and return what you've taken on a later date. It's also best to pay interest in the form of a jar of dilly beans.

Forty percent of what you see was stolen from another's spice rack. Sixty percent was obtained legally.

Once your liquids have come to a boil, pour the liquid over the beans in the jar. Seal the jars and let them cool. Into the refrigerator they go! Now, find something to do with yourself for the next two days.

In the words of Mumford and Sons: "I will wait, I will wait for you!"

Filling time during those two days. Did I mention our cucumbers have been big and delicious?

Before I could get home on day 2, positive reviews were flooding in:

I had paid my interest early, and my creditors were pleased.

When I got home on the night of day 2, my husband and I cracked open a jar and were pleased with the contents. It was like eating a pickle, but it was crunchier. They were just as delicious as a pickle but almost seemed easier to eat. We had found a new way to eat green beans!

Discriminating palates were won over!

My parting word of advice would be to make sure that you de-string your beans. I've never really had to do this until we grew this batch of beans. There is definitely a little more chew to the beans if you don't snap and remove the strings on outer edges of the bean. I cut the ends off for this recipe, but I have since learned to snap and de-string as I pick.

**If you're interested in the recipe, I'd be happy to send it to you! I took a picture of the recipe from a magazine, and I don't know how legal it is for me to post it here.

Solving Problems with Problems

My leaf problem:
Dedicated readers may remember that I have a lot of trees and that they love to spill tons of leaves into my yard every fall. Although I do my best to mow frequently, and thus mulch leaves in the process, there are always large piles of leaves gathering on my back porch (which is walled in), against my fence, and in any other nook and cranny they can find. It would probably be best to take care of my leaf issue in the fall, but I tend to like to procrastinate......for years. So those piles of leaves are getting quite large as we move into year 3 in our little rural paradise. My issue was what to do with all those leaves. I know they could fill many, many yard waste bags, as was made evident during one of my half-assed attempts to clean up the back porch last year. I filled up almost ten bags, and my porch isn't even that large. For some reason, my neighbors never put out yard waste bags. They have the added advantage of not having fences, so their leaves blow away (or against my fence). I don't want to be the neighborhood yard waste bag pariah.

My mulch problem:
During our first year in the house, we put down wood mulch in our garden and our flowerbeds to keep weeds away. When it came time to clean and prepare them for planting the next year, we had the fun task of cleaning out and dealing with lovely chunks of wood. We decided to do no wood mulch the following year, but I was too late putting down hay. Weeds were everywhere (as evidenced by earlier posts) and our plants suffered from not having good mulch to retain moisture.

The solution:
During late spring, I stumbled across a pin on Pinterest titled "Mulch Alternatives." It was as if mother nature was smiling down upon me and pointing me in the right direction. One of the more viable options it gave was using leaves. The leaves would have to mulched, though, to let air and moisture get to the soil. My dad had talked about his leaf mulching machine, so I asked to borrow it. One a warm sunny day, I mulched up all the leaves on our back patio and those stuck between our two fenced garden plots. I made a dent in some of the leaves piled against our fence. There is still work to be done and leaves to be mulched, but I have turned two problems into a solution!

The wonderful electric leaf mulcher. Good thing we have a lot of extension cords.

An assortment of leaves between the gardens. Who knew we had a walkway?!

The plants are digging their new mulch. Green beans to the right and front. Peppers in the middle. Cucs in the back.

Front flower beds: surprisingly attractive with alternative mulch

Let the 2014 season begin!

I have a confession. I led a very suburban life this winter. How can you not? Kansas was cold, so I would drive to work in my heated car, drive back home to my heated house, and then sit on my pre-heated couch (cats are very useful) watching Netflix. When I wanted to workout, I would drive to the gym and go to an overly heated spin class. That was basically my winter and early spring. Despite eating delicious homemade canned tomato sauce and knitting up a storm, it was pretty suburban.

We did break up the monotony by going to Italy, but we went to the tourist cities (Venice, Florence, and Rome). Although beautiful, fun, and full of history, Italy really brought home how much we love wide open spaces and nature and how much we dislike crowds of people.

Gladiatoring tour groups in the Colosseum!

Warm weather has come, and we're easing back into going outside and enjoying the longer days. Yet, even as my garden is planted and growing strong (a post to come), suburban issues arise. I worry if  I'm letting my grass get too high because despite the lack of an HOA, our neighbors sure are out there once, even twice, a week mowing. I worry that our lawn has a lot of weeds. I don't know why. The neighbor to the east of us only has weeds. The neighbor on our other side has a company come out to fertilize and weed. There are cracks in our driveway from a cold winter. I thought these were things I wouldn't have to worry about as much when we moved away from perfectly coiffed lawns and homes 6.5 feet apart.

Longer work days and teaching more classes has contributed to this overall stress, BUT Friday was my turn around point. It was the day that inspired me to come back and write. I had had a very long week of work (I'm teaching three classes this summer, which is a first), and I had not had anytime outside. I was always in the classroom or tutoring one-on-one in a windowless room. Friday was my day off, and I knew I needed a bike ride. My road bike was in the shop, so I got my oft neglected hybrid out (yes, I have more than one bike and I know this sounds very suburban). This bike doesn't have a speedometer hooked up. I could have turned on my Map My Ride app on my phone to see my speed, but I didn't. I could have strapped on my heart rate monitor to see how many calories I rode, but I didn't. I JUST RODE. I rode past chickens and cows and fields and horses and creeks. I don't know how fast I went up that huge hill, but I don't think the miniature horses that I rode past we're judging me.

If those miniature horses we're going to judge me, it should be for taking pictures while biking.

I can't see this without Dixie Chicks singing "Wide Open Spaces!"

And thus begins the 2014 season of a suburban girl seeking rural life. I'm gardening, knitting, canning, and biking through the countryside. Here's what's happening this year......

Everybody CAN CAN

Canning came on to my radar a couple years ago when my mom expressed interest in canning and my dad bought her all the proper supplies as a gift. Those supplies were, unsurprisingly, not used until my dad pickled some green tomatoes, peppers, and the like last year. I thought that looked like a good idea but assumed I'd just kill myself with botulism. Well, I got a garden of my own, some confidence, and tons of vegetables, so this year I decided I was going to can.

I tried a simple pickle recipe first. My friend made pickles for her graduation party, and I was tempted to steal the whole jar. God, they were good, and she was kind enough to lend me her great grandma's recipe. The best part about this recipe was that it didn't require a hot water bath or pressure cooking because they were sun pickles. Yes, kinda like sun tea but a lot more sour and crunchy. I just had to add the right ingredients to a jar, boil up a brine, and voila, sun pickles!

The secret ingredient is the kick from the anaheim pepper...oh and dill because any non-dill pickle fails at life

Sterilizing jars to save lives

I saw a deer approach these one day and about lost it.

The true test for these pickles was to pass my parents' discerning taste buds. My Polack mother and Polack-by-marriage father (Polacks know their pickles!) thought they were wonderful. Now I'm waiting for my cucumber plants to produce another crop so I can start another batch.

These pickles boosted my confidence, so this week I decided to go with something a little more complicated: pasta sauce. My tomato plants are producing slowly (and small-ly) but surely, BUT my in-laws, who are doing container gardening with bat guano fertilizer, have produced tons of beautiful large tomatoes. Since my ma-in-law went out of town, I was gifted with a grocery bag full of homegrown tomatoes. With a couple from my garden and my parents' garden thrown in, I had enough tomatoes to make enough pasta sauce for this winter and beyond.

I found a recipe in the book I mentioned in my last post (Homesweet Homegrown) that basically said to throw together a shoebox's worth of tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil, etc. There were no measurements, so I had fun assuming what a good amount of garlic would be. Besides no measurements, another hiccup I had was that my stove, a horrible flat top electric, is not ideal for canning. I have to use flat-bottomed cookware, and even then, heating large pots of boiling water (for sterilizing) could potentially crack my stovetop. This was almost an irrational dealbreaker when we were looking at this house, but my father-in-law mentioned we could run a gas line to the kitchen some day. I wait for that day....longingly.

Thankfully, my parents let me use their non-flat-bottomed canning pot on their glorious gas stove.

The gas stove in all its glory

Tomatoes stewing, waiting for their immersion blending

Everything popped like it should!

Now I have delicious tomato sauce to get my husband and I through the winter.When the next bumper crop comes through, I may try to make some more sauce or maybe something more exciting, like salsa. My next challenge will be to can something like green beans, but first I need to find a pressure canner since it's not an acidic food.

Garden 2013: War of the Weeds

Unlike last year, Kansas was cool and wet leading up to and into May. Rainy weekends continually postponed our planting, but we finally got our garden planted around mid-May. I had grand ideas of starting seedlings inside and planting broccoli and other cool weather vegetables in the spring, but due to a combination of work, laziness, and poor choices (watching Dr. Who seasons 1-4, for one), none of that happened. Lucky for us, the nursery is always happy to sell us plants grown by those who already know the dangers and ridiculousness of a time lord that fights "smart" robots with plungers for hands. We had a great time picking out multiple varieties of tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. We also got pumpkins and planted our own green beans and carrots, two things we didn't have last year. 

Planted outside of the garden this year so that the tomatoes don't get groped

Everything is doing well so far. Kansas actually has had rain, so I've not had to water as often. The green beans sprouted and grew insanely fast. My husband worked hard to build some really good-looking trellises only for us to find out they were bushing and not climbing beans. Oh well. They look so good that I don't care. We left for a week in Glacier National Park (pictures to come soon!) and even though I didn't see a single baby cucumber growing, there was a completely mature cucumber waiting for us. It was delicious to taste homegrowns again! I picked a few peppers off today and can't wait to try those. I'm now waiting anxiously for the tomatoes to get big and ripe.

I am having a couple issues with weeds and pests. Our garden is chock full of crab grass. It's EVERYWHERE. It was difficult to pull out when it was short, but now that it's long, it looks like a real mess. I've been out there for hours at a time, sometimes even with husband, picking the grass out. I have filled buckets upon buckets, but the best I have done is clear the area around the plants' bases. The rest of the garden is a jungle. 

The peppers and the tomatoes...and the weeds

Note the cucumber rebelliously growing on the fence despite my attempts to put it on the classy trellis. Also note the wonderful green been trellis.

I got a book on Kickstarter last year called Home Sweet Homegrown. It's basically a hippie's guide to growing and storing food- I love it! It has a few natural weed killing recipes that include either pouring boiling water on a weed or spraying it with a vinegar/water mixture. Since I would have to run the length of my fairly long yard with a boiling kettle of water, I decided to try the vinegar mixture. You're just supposed to spray it on the leaves of a weed on a sunny day and watch the plant wilt away. I don't know what I did wrong (maybe too late in the day?) but my weeds looked refreshed when I came out the next day. I plan on trying it again in the morning on the next sunny day.

One recipe I did have success with last year and am trying again this year is a natural bug repellant. Whirl five cloves of garlic, an onion, some red pepper flakes, water, and a squirt of organic dish soap together and let sit over night. Strain the liquid, add some more water, and you have a potent nose-burning bug-repelling spray. You're supposed to spray it on the leaves of your plants. Just don't make the same mistake I did last year: I sprayed it on my arugula and had the spiciest salad ever when I picked it.

The brewing concoction. It smells like burning.

Despite the pests and weeds, the garden is succeeding. I hope to plant even more late summer when cooler-weather-loving crops, like lettuces, spinach, and broccoli, can be planted again. But I hear there's a new Doctor so we'll see....

Dunu nununununu nunununununu BAT HOUSE! aka future fertilizer factory. Another great build by my husband.

The Perks of Snowmageddon

If you haven't been paying attention to the news, you may have missed that Kansas is buried under snow. We have had not one but TWO large snowfalls. Large amounts of snow may make you think that I would be questioning our move to a smaller town because our streets take forever to get plowed and cleaning our driveway is an all day affair. Yet, I've grown to appreciate our life out here more since Snowmageddon has happened.

Dharma appreciates the snow, too.

First of all, we have gotten to know more of our neighbors. When we first moved into our house, I imagined our front door being blocked with large baskets full of homemade baked goods from our loving neighbors. Instead, we got a riding lawnmower when one of my neighbors saw me pushing a mower around our very grassy acre of land. The rest of the neighbors have stayed closely shut in their houses. So much for country hospitality. Well last week, while my husband and I were struggling to shovel 10 inches of snow off our driveway with a shovel and a sled, our neighbor across the way, who we have never met, came to our rescue with a second shovel and proceeded to introduce herself....10 months after we first moved in. We had only met her cats before, so it was great to finally meet her.

Yes, she lives in the house at the bottom of our driveway, and it still took us 10 months to meet her.

We've also been able to enjoy the hospitality of our neighbors. The same neighbor who let me borrow his riding mower also owns a bobcat. He had our cul-de-sac and everyone's driveways shoveled hours before the city came by!

Bobcat FTW

The snow has cut into my trips to the gym, but who needs a gym when you have a unique form of exercise that works your quads, various arm muscles, and abs. Thanks to our steep, long driveway, I get all the exercise I could ever want....and more.

This is what we had to shovel when we had a light snow. Now add 9 inches.

Another perk of the snow was seeing the city's version of a snow plow. I looked out our door one evening to see a Transformer-like John Deere machine shoveling our road. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It looked like it could shovel snow and save the world.

The last neat thing about the snow is that it reveals how many creatures prowl our yard. Our front yard is covered in mysterious prints. The snow has also proved quite entertaining, because I get to watch creatures frolic and wade through the snow.

Hi-ho! Hi-ho! We wade through the snow!