Summer Garden Lunch - Tomato Zucchini Stackers

Hello Summer! We went from rainy to HOT! How about you?

Even though I have bemoaned the rain, and not-so-silently wished it would go away, my garden loved all the wet weather we had. My gazillion tomatoes are just now ripening and my zucchini has been giving me giants for a week or two. I planted twice as many basil plants this year than last because I kept running out last year. This year I have WAY too much to use. My in-laws have also been giving me some produce from their garden, so today I whipped up a yummy lunch using tomatoes, zucchini and basil from the garden.

Usually I have all kinds of cooked meats because I tend to cook 10 pounds at a time and put the extra in the freezer in 1 or 2 pound bags. [It is my best attempt at OAM cooking.] But all I had in the freezer was chicken, so I had to actually cook meat. I wanted a pizza feel for this dish to appeal to my younger kids, so I went with Italian sausage. [I'm sure chicken would have been great, but to be honest, I really wanted the sausage, and it was thawed, so it had to be cooked.]

While the Italian sausage browned, I sliced the zucchini and tomatoes. I was going for half-inch thick slices, but the tomatoes were a little thicker. While the sausage finished browning, Little Bits and I went out and picked some fresh basil from the garden.

I threw a little oil in our large skillet and started the zucchini which I sprinkled with Italian seasoning, garlic, salt and pepper to taste. It sizzled away on medium high heat, making the kitchen smell delicious.








Meanwhile, I cleaned and chopped the basil. After a few minutes, when the bottom side was starting to brown, I flipped them over.



Can you tell I forgot to time this recipe? At this point, I had just enough time to clear the spices and knife and cutting board off the counter and get out the cheese and plates before the next step.

Does anyone else tell time by how much they can get done? Like, pancakes cook faster than I can change out the laundry, but I can change it out and fold a whole load while waiting on eggs to boil. I can unload the cups from the dishwasher while waiting on over hard eggs to cook. With my kids I tell time by shows on netflix. "Lunch will be ready in 20 minutes." I say. "How long is that?" Little bits will ask. So I'll say, it is like one episode of Sophia. of course, she usually takes that as an invitation to actually WATCH an episode!

Anyway, cook the zucchini a few minutes on each side, until they are golden brown.

Scoot them to the side of the pan and add your tomatoes.

Sprinkle the basil over the tomatoes.

There is no quantitative measurement of basil or any spices for this recipe. it is "to taste" but I used about 1/8 cup of chopped basil. (Then I sprinkled more on my personal plate when I ate. I love basil!)


Watch the tomatoes. They don't take nearly as long to cook as the zucchini. You are not trying to make them mush, just get them hot. Depending on the thickness of your slices this will only take a minute or two on each side.

Basically, you are done. Easy!

Now, the fun part! Stack a tomato slice, a zucchini slice or two and a scoop of sausage onto your plate and top with mozzarella cheese.

You can throw the whole thing in the microwave for 20 -30 seconds to melt the cheese if you want.

If you don't have a picky eater who hates cheese (how did I get a child who hates cheese???), you could combine it all in one pan and melt the cheese on top -- like a skillet casserole.

OR, bake this in the oven. This is what I am planning to try next time. I will bake the veggies, then stack them and put them under the broiler to melt the cheese. I think they will be a little crispier that way. But still, this was SO yummy! I just had to share. Enjoy!

How are you using your garden produce this summer?

Organizing the Linen Closet

We live in a big, partially unfinished house WAY out in the country. Like, 40 minutes from a Wal-Mart or Lowe's or any kind of store that might have home improvement stuff. (If you are my 5 year old, that also means 40 minutes from McDonald's or Wendy's or Braum's)!

So home improvement projects have to be planned. Right now we are working on a MASSIVE project to try to stop the basement from flooding every time it rains. More on that here, but while waiting for the arrival of dirt, I chose to do a small, indoor project: Cleaning and organizing the linen closet. Mainly because I wanted to put something away in there and couldn't because it looked like this:

Ugh!

In the past (right after we moved here) I had sheet sets sorted into those large plastic zippered storage bags. It was great, EXCEPT they never got put back into the correct bag. The size was written on the front of the bags, but [the kids] would just throw them on the shelf instead of opening the bag. And if the bag was left open, the contents would fall out.
That system just wasn't working. {Plus the sheets smelled a little off after being stored in a plastic bag for months.}

So the bags went. But then we just had chaos. You've seen the picture. Ridiculous! Can't find anything! We went on a mission trip this summer and I kid you not, my son took a pillow with NO PILLOWCASE. Besides the EWWWW factor, I was so embarrassed. He said he couldn't find a pillowcase.

Sigh!

Something had to be done. But stacking them according to size as I've been doing didn't have lasting orderliness as you can see in the picture. I needed a new system.

When God blessed us with this house, the main goal was to be closer to my husband's family. We have 6 kids, so we wanted a large house. What a blessing this house has been!

We moved from a house with extra storage. Extra finished closets behind each room upstairs, large attic, large garage, etc. THIS house has larger rooms, and more rooms, but smaller closets, no attic, no garage. Storage is an issue. Not because there isn't room, but because we don't have storage shelves and closets like we did. We have one linen closet instead of two. I use a large trunk for blanket storage. So really, in this closet I mainly need to have a place for sheets and pillows and the special blankets we are keeping (handmade baby blanket gifts for six kids I can't bear to part with...). I was sure we had more room than we needed. That closet is big enough. Surely!

First I needed to figure out what we NEED, what we USE. Then I could assess the space I needed. And hopefully get rid of stuff, too.

Step 1: Assessing the need...

It makes me happy to have company. We call our place Camp Woodruff and several times a year we have multiple families or a youth group stay for a weekend. I love it. (My introverted hubby not so much, but he indulges me!)

To accommodate our large family and guests, we have 7 bedrooms with several extra beds. Perfect for those retreat-y weekends. In all, we have 1 King, 2 Queen, 2 Full, 5 Twin plus 2 twin size air mattresses and 1 full size air mattress. (And one toddler bed that really needs to be put in storage.) We can sleep an army!

Awesome!

But that means we need several sheet sets and sets in every size. And to be realistic about it, I needed the sets sorted and stored by size so they are easy to pull out AND put away. I didn't want to go with lidded totes or bags.

Had we still lived in Tulsa, I'd have hopped in the car and gone shopping. But I'd have spent all my time driving instead of cleaning, so I "shopped" the house. I went looking for storage tools that were being unused or underutilized, and found a set of stackable open basket things that would be perfect. They were holding my daughter's dishes and play food for her play kitchen. Except her play food and stuff would easily fit on one or two, and she had six. I snagged them and brought them upstairs. After cleaning the bits of dust and playdough out, I stacked them in the closet. I wanted two to a shelf, but they would not fit. UGH!

So I moved the shelf so they would fit. Fortunately that only meant moving a couple of long bloacks of wood we'd used for shelf supports. Yay for cordless screwdrivers! (Yes, that is me, sitting on the lower shelf, holding the shelf bracket with my foot while I screwed in the wood screw -- while taking the picture!)

I made stacks in the hallway and folded the sheets in sets, sorted by size. I used a Sharpie marker to mark the size on the tag so it could be identified at a glance. I was 30 minutes into this when I had an epiphany! I refolded all the sets so the tags are on the outside. The fitted sheet is on the outside of the sheet set with the flat sheet and pillowcases inside.

For the one king bed, I needed only one extra sheet set. That was easy. But how many extra sets do I need for the 5 twin beds and 2 twin air mattresses? We only use 3 twins regularly. But we have used them all at once on more than one occasion. Do I need 8 sets? We don't even have 8 sets. Last time we had a crowd, I threw a flat sheet on one of the air mattresses and someone used a sleeping bag and no sheets. Hmmm...

Well I didn't throw out ANY twin anything. And I'm going to buy another set or two of twin sheets at a garage sale or thrift store before we have another group come out. I kept three extra full size sets even though we only have 2 full size beds. I will use them on the twins. I kept two extra Queen size sets, too, because one set is my daughter's and someday her bed and two sets of sheets will go with her.

The rest I boxed up to go away. YAY!!

Here is the finished closet. With an entire huge stack of extra pillowcases...

Whew! That feels good!

The top shelf of the closet was curtains. I took out the ones I still want to use around the house and boxed up the rest. And I boxed up the bazillion baby blankets and smallish kid blankets we didn't need, too. Everything fit back in with room to spare. I put a few comforters and heavy blankets in the top where the curtains had been. We won't need those until fall.

Since I had room, I added a bag organizer to the mix. It goes over the door top and bottom to hold it taut. Perfect for the kids to grab a bag for co-op or an overnight stay at grandma's.

DONE!

Without a trip to town. Yay! Double win!

Preparing for Dirt Work - Window Wells

As part of Operation NoMoWaBa -- oh, did I explain that?

(Pronounced: 

No 

Mo - rhymes with no

Wa - rhymes with ahhhh

Ba - rhymes with ahhh

Stands for:

No

More

Water in the

Basement)

As part of Operation NoMoWaBa, we are filling in the gap around our house with dirt and sloping it away from the house so water will drain away from the house instead of into our french drain system.

As with many basements, we have windows in the rooms. Small windows near the top of the wall. Typical basement. Outside, our windows are below ground level. No big deal when you have a two-to-three foot ditch all the way around your house. Light gets in and you can kind of see the sky. Nice. A little bigger deal when you are trying to fill in said gap with dirt and rocks. We can't just cover them up with the dirt, although my husband is incredibly tempted. I'm pretty sure he did some research to see about cementing them in or bricking them up. Especially the ones that still leak. Oh, so tempting...

But I still want windows in those rooms. The basement is so dark as it is. Sunlight is GOOD.

We already knew we needed to build a wall around the A/C unit, so we could build walls around the windows, too, but that would be a bit labor-intensive. In the end, we installed window wells. Imagine putting half a skinny, giant doughnut up against the window. We got ours at Lowe's. They come in at least two different sizes and they can stack on top of each other. It took a couple of trips because they only had a few in stock.

Here is what they look like. (Photo from Lowe's website.)

Here's a link. http://www.lowes.com/pd_11198-205-75208_1z10o7e__?productId=1119415&pl=1

[I'm not affiliated with Lowe's and I don't get anything for linking. Not even a Christmas Card. You'd think I'd get cards for every holiday since we spend so much time and money there, but no, they don't even call me by name when I go in. The paving stone guy did remember me the other day, though, so that day may be coming! "Hi Staci, what do you need today?"]

Installing Window Wells:

1. The description gives the dimensions, but in order to install it, you need to measure the distance between the screw holes. This means you measure from the middle of one hole to the middle of the opposite hole. 

The tricky part is that these are flexible since they are made from some kind of semi-rigid plastic. Great if you have to work around other objects on the outside of your home. Great so they can work for windows of multiple sizes. Not so great if you want to put a cover on it. BUY THEM TOGETHER and set them up before measuring! Although we found one that fit the wells we purchased, we never did find a cover to work for our house, and it would not have mattered if we'd done the wells with a different curve. Our windows are under the eaves, so we think they will be OK without covers. If not, we will cover them with a greenhouse-type plexiglass stuff my in-laws have on hand.

2. Take that measured distance (from one screw hole to the hole on the opposite side) and divide it by two to get the midpoint. For instance, lets say your screw holes are 36 inches apart. That would mean 18 inches is your midpoint. Remember this number for later.

3. Measure the width of the window. Determine the half-way point of the window by dividing the window measurement by two. Make a mark at the half-way point above the window and another one below the window. If you have a 30 inch wide window, it now has a mark at 15 inches. Chalk is a good tool to use for making marks because it washes off easily. If your wall is getting ready to be covered with dirt, a permanent marker is also fine. Red, that can be seen from several feet away -- or whatever.

4. Measure from the half-way point of the window (in our example it was 15 inches) to the right, and make a mark at the distance from step 2. Repeat for the left side. This will center your well on your window. For example, if I have a 30 inch window, my center mark is at 15 inches. I start from the center point and measure out 18 inches to make my mark on both sides. This gives a 3 inch margin on each side.

5. Make another set of marks at the bottom of the window. Draw a faint vertical line connecting the marks, hopefully ensuring your well will be straight.

6. Determine how high you want your well to go. We have dirt going higher than the top of the windows, so we installed ours higher than the top of the window.

7. Drill a pilot hole if needed (we were installing them into concrete, so we used a hammer drill and a concrete bit) for the first screw on your line. This is fun. You need to drill slowly and pull the bit out every so often as you go to pull the dust out of your hole. Be careful. Those big hammer drills are powerful, and the bit gets HOT. Like, blister-your-finger-if-you-touch-it-a-minute-later, hot. So use a different drill for the screws if you can. You will waste a lot of time changing out bits. And those kinds of drill are not really made to be screwdrivers. They are also heavy. Wow. But how cool is it to be drilling into solid concrete!? Choose a bit size the same size as your screw or slightly smaller. Too much smaller and you can't get the screw in. Any bigger at all and the screw won't grab. The bits usually have their size etched in the base. Screws also have different sizes. The package will say. You will need concrete screws if you are going into concrete. They are often (always?) a very pretty royal blue color. I don't know why. Perhaps so you can see them from several feet away...

AND, you can't use just any drill bit. Did you know concrete bits have an extra flap-thing on the very end? When they get used a lot, that extra flap wears off and you have to get a new one. We went through several with all these projects, and did some of all of them at the same time. And we have six windows. I can't say for sure you will use one up doing your windows, but it won't hurt to have two. If the store is 30 minutes away, I'd say for sure get two.

8. Screw in the first screw. The holes on these window wells are huge. I have no idea what size screws are SUPPOSED to be used on them, but the concrete screws we had didn't have large heads on them, so I used a washer. Hubby didn't on the top holes, but even he had to on the bottom holes. I had my first window well just come off the wall before I got the second screw in, so I opted to use washers for every screw from then on. I'm not a fan of having to redo work.

9. Double check. Move the well on the first screw until the line is visible through the hole on the opposite side. Check to see if it is level (if you are a perfectionist), and mark the exact placement for the other screws. 

10. Drill the pilot holes for the other screws. We did four screws per window well. There are multiple holes. It is OK at this point to shift the well out of your way if you want. And, if you find that you have hit something (re-bar maybe?) and the bit gets chewed up instead of making a hole, then you can just try with another hole. Not that I had to do that --twice-- or anything.

11. Put the well back in place if you have twisted it away from where it goes, and screw in the rest of the screws, using washers as needed. You can check to see if it is still level and straight, but seriously, are you going to redo it if it isn't? How off could it be?

12. Install covers if you've got them. Since we didn't get any, I can't comment on this process. Good luck.

13. Repeat as needed for other windows. We had six to do. Hubby and I both got good at this process. Yay!

14. Clean up your work area and put away your tools.  Somehow this step seems to be forgotten a lot at our house...

What projects are you doing this year?

Operation NoMoWaBa - AKA: No More Water in the Basement

My precious five-year old thanked God for watering our garden the other day. All I could think was, "I am sick of the rain." Maybe Noah was more sick than me, but maybe not.

I know the crops need it.

I know it has put water in places that have been in drought.

I know it has been so good. And I'm trying to be thankful for it. Really.

But every time it rains hard my basement floods. I'm so sick and tired of it flooding.

Here's what happened last time:

It had been raining. We'd had the wettest May on the books. June was already wet. And a tropical storm was on its way. We prepared. two sump pumps, stuff off the floor, etc.

It was VBS week at the local church, and we'd been attending all week. We had a friend coming. It was Thursday. Busy night scheduled. Son was working, we had to get to the VBS wrap up program, then rush to the airport to pick up my hubby and back to get my son from work. (One car family.) It was going to be a lot of driving and people were going to have to wait.

Then it started really raining. Hard. Just as the friend showed up, the basement started flooding. I was downstairs with a wet vac when the mom (my cousin) found me. Thirty minutes later we were ankle-deep in water trying to figure out why the pump wasn't working very well. (Clogged with a piece of cloth.) An hour later we were still working at it. Hours later we left the water to drain out the basement door and I went to pick up hubs and son who were waiting.

Enough!

We were SO done. Especially when water poured out near us as someone flushed the toilet upstairs.

Yes, you read that correctly. Water from the toilets goes into the manhole that houses the sump pump. The same pump that wasn't working well, that was full of water, overflowing with water when someone flushed. Twice. Um. STOP! They don't know. They think of a closed system with dirty water going to the city refuse collection and cleaning site. They didn't know.

Eww!

When it is dry, ours is a common, and fairly adequate system. The waste water from all over the house travels down pipes to the man hole where a super-heavy-duty sump pump with a grinder on the bottom pumps the {ahem} water to the septic tank and lateral lines. This is a normal set up. You can even buy the stuff to DIY at Lowe's.

Seriously, if that was all, we think we/it would never have a problem.

But the basement of our home was built below ground level, below the water level, deep into the bedrock. The guy who built it had to dynamite down, WAY down to get it to the level he wanted. So, knowing there would be water issues, he installed a series of drains (I think technically they are French Drains) that takes water from around the house to the same man hole for the same pump to whisk it away into the sewer system. During a light rain, no problem. You can see the water draining into the manhole from 4 little pipes and watch the pump drain it away. It is surprisingly quiet, and efficient.

I imagine this worked great for years, but over time, erosion has sloped the yard toward the house meaning more and more water rushes through that drainage system, and now, with the rains we've had, the system can't keep up.

The sump pump gets overwhelmed, and water spills over the top of the manhole. The basin outside the basement door doesn't drain, and water rushes in through the crack beneath the door. The overflow drain in the laundry room becomes a bubbling brook.

It is not pretty. 2400 feet of ankle-deep water. Muddy, ankle-deep water mixed with whatever water is flushed or drained from anywhere in the house.

And once it is gone -- it will eventually drain out, mostly -- we are left with a mess. We've never had carpet, but we had large rugs -- now we have wet concrete floors, puddles, wet doors, wet door frames, humidity, and silt. Muddy footprints and water streaks are everywhere.

Days of clean up every time. Even if the kids' rooms are clean and the school room is clean. But that isn't an everyday occurrence!

I have no idea how many, many dollars of books we've lost or how many loads of laundry I've washed because of floods. Toys ruined. Books gone. Stuff too wet or moldy to keep. Oh, the mess.

Enough!

We've been trying to stop the water.

We replaced leaking, cracked windows and fixed flashing. That stopped the leaks from rain hitting the house. But we still flooded.

We made a screen to keep stuff from falling into the manhole and clogging the sump pump. That would help it work, but it could not keep up, so we added a second pump outside in the basin. It helped, but still we flooded.

There is simply too much water going into the system. Mainly because all the way around, three to four feet away from the house, the ground slopes toward the house and there is no guttering to carry water away off the roof. Gallons of water needlessly pour toward the house with each rain, draining into the manhole, overwhelming the sump pump system.

We have to fix that particular part of the problem.

We are tackling this in two ways. The first is easy -- guttering. We called and got two estimates. Went with B&B Guttering. They were out last week and installed it. $850 well spent. We need a rain barrel for the back porch, roll-up extensions and splash pads to finish it out. It'll be about $1000 when it is all said and done, but worth it.

Additionally, we need to slope the dirt away from the house. In some places we have a chasm 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep, so we have to bring in dirt. Loads and loads of dirt. We are estimating 60 cubit yards. But we have to prepare for that dirt. That means building walls and digging footings. Window wells and fun outside landscaping projects.

More on that later...

What projects are YOU doing this summer?