Saturday Morning Project: Gathered Clutch

I typically look like I'm headed to my first day of school when I go to work every morning. I have a little blue backpack that I put my lunch, a good book and sometimes my homework (aka my computer). The reason for the backpack is to avoid having too much baggage going into work with a laptop bag/purse/lunch bag etc- I get too scatterbrained sometimes during the day to keep track of it all.

So, in an effort to cut out the necessity for a purse- I pack all of my purse essentials into my backpack every morning. Likewise, every evening, I have to make sure to transfer it all back to my purse. That's a lot of stuff that could get lost in transit!

This morning, with some help from my Mom, I created my solution to keep me organized. My Gathered Clutch is small enough to fit in my backpack and purse but big enough to hold all of my random stuff! So I just need to grab this little bag and go! This is the 2nd sewing project I've done since home-ec back in 7th grade and I must say I'm very happy with the result. :)

SherPlante Garden 2011

This is the 2nd year I've tried my hand at growing some veggies in our garden. I'm learning many lessons and fine-tuning which of these foods I would consider growing in years to come.

Clockwise starting from the upper left:

• Carrots- They do taste better straight from the garden (or maybe I'm a little biased). I think that next year I'll have to actually thin out the crop so that I get some bigger ones. This year is more a crop of baby carrots :)


• Kale- I think this is one of the nicer looking plants in my little plot. One row of this stuff has been contributing all summer to lunchtime salads at the Sherplante's. It's really good for you too I found!


• Marigolds- We don't eat these, they're mostly for show.


• Peppers- We have a few late bloomers on our plants. I'm not sure I would do these guys again because we paid for 4 pepper plants and will probably get about 4 peppers out of the plants. (I figure then that each pepper would end up being about $2 more than the ones you can buy at the store). Blech!


• Tomatoes- Once we found the one sunny spot in our yard we have a mini forest of tomato plants. As you can see by the picture we are looking forward to lots of tomatoes in our future.


• Not Pictured- Beets (they suffered similar to the carrots because I didn't thin them out)
  Raspberries (They're all done at our house for the year- which is sad...)

Next year? Definitely Kale, Carrots, Tomatos and perhaps we can try some cucumbers or cabbage....hmmmm oh the options!

Feel free to send suggestions!

Adventures in Paleo Cooking

So Casey and I have a few books especially geared towards our "crazy hippy diet" (aka Paleo diet). Tonight we tried a really easy recipe from one that was literally just smoked kielbasa sausage and cabbage baked in the oven at 350 for 40 min. I must say that despite my natural Sherwood aversion to green vegetable like foods I thought this was very tasty!

Now normally we wouldn't make anything like this but since we've been getting a head of cabbage each week in our CSA we need to find creative ways to eat it. (Anybody with good sauerkraut recipe should sent it our way!) I actually think this week was the first time I actually cut into a head of cabbage. I decided it is a very pretty vegetable along with tasting good. Check out the alternating star-like pattern with every row!

My CSA Cabbage :

My CSA Cabbage chopped up and mixed with Sausage:
Finally- in closing, how do you suppose Henry learned to do this? He was really sneaky earlier tonight while we had the freezer door open deciding what to make tomorrow night for dinner.