Runaway October

Good thing I proof­read or the title of this post would have been Mange Habanero Jam, and I don’t think that would sound nearly as appetizing.

I was recently reac­quainted with a local source of pro­duce, by my friend Niki. Lemme back up, actu­ally. My boys — Matt included — can go through fruit like it’s going out of  style. (As a mat­ter of fact, my 2 year old just snuck out of bed, came down stairs, snatched a tan­ger­ine and asked me to peel it. At 10:30pm.) On just about any given day, I have to start telling them no or I have to face the, uh, bio­log­i­cal after­math. Not fun. So one of my com­mon quests is to find the best deal for us on pro­duce. We’ve tried local co-ops, we’ve begrudg­ingly paid super high prices at health food stores, we’ve gone for the cheap­est pos­si­ble ala Wal­Fart. But it seems you always end up where you started.

Mango Jalapeño and Mango Habanero Jam

The Super­sti­tion Ranch Mar­ket on Apache Trail always has one good deal or another. Some of you non-Arizonians have to real­ize that not much grows here, so 4 pounds of pears for $1 is a smok­ing deal. Or Honey Crisp apples at $1/pound. Or a quart of black­ber­ries for $.69. We’re pretty much in heaven every time we go in. Some­times we go a lit­tle too crazy and we can’t eat our spoils fast enough. So Niki and I have turned to jam. But I’m not gonna lie. We’re kinda test­ing the waters to see if we’d make it with our own Farmer’s Mar­ket booth.

Mango Habanero Jam

We came across this recipe at 28 cooks and knew we had to try it. It was sim­ple, took only a few ingre­di­ents and sounded pos­i­tively deli­cious. The prep was sim­ple and there was hardly any work involved. Just blend it up, boil it and pour it into jars. It set up beau­ti­fully. 28 Cooks says it’s not as hot as you may think, but don’t be fooled. It has a kick, albeit a very deli­cious one. I’ve tried it on sharp ched­dar (yum), cot­tage cheese (yum), bread (yum) and a soft goat cheese spread (yum). It’ll make a deli­cious glaze for roasts. I’ve heard it’s deli­cious on grilled cheese sand­wiches? I’ll  have to try that too.

It very much reminds me of the spicysweet tamarind mex­i­can candy as well, and I can see myself eat­ing this straight out of the jar… Wait, Niki, my mom and I have all already done that…

Niki opted to use half jalapeños and half habaneros in her batch, hence the very green jam instead of orange like mine. It’s def­i­nitely more kid friendly that way, but still has a nice bit of spice and an amaz­ing taste.

So if it sounds like some­thing you’d like to try, drop on by and see Niki or myself, or just make it your­self! It’s easy! Head over to 28 Cooks. The recipe is right here.

Mango Jalapeño Jam

Wow! It’s been awhile. When I picked ‘Run­away Octo­ber’ as my blog name I wasn’t kid­ding. Things just pick up and move so fast this time of year.

- Our nor­mal com­puter is down for the count. I believe I need a new power sup­ply for it, but funds are very lim­ited. It’s much harder to blog when you don’t have your nor­mal setup, with pro­grams and FTPs and the like. Trust me.

- Rowan turned 1 year old last month. He has 8 teeth, and is def­i­nitely on the move. He still prefers to crawl, but he’s got it down and I bet he stops crawl­ing entirely soon. He just walked all the way across the bed­room, as a mat­ter of fact. He seems to walk bet­ter hold­ing some­thing in one hand, like it gives him a mission.

- A fel­low bloggy friend just had a very large benign brain tumor suc­cess­fully removed. Be sure and visit her and send her well wishes.

- My Christ­mas craft­ing is not going as well as planned. I get so stuck when try­ing to think of gifts for every­one. Then I start wor­ry­ing about mak­ing every­thing per­fect. Then I worry that the gift will not be liked and I’ll find it a Good­will in a cou­ple of months, etc etc. I’m also find­ing that hand­made does not mean cheaper. 

- We are all get­ting over a dou­ble round of the stom­ach bug. It’s so hard to watch kids be sick, and pukey sick is even worse. I guess you never really think about learn­ing to puke, but it’s so obvi­ous when some­one doesn’t know how. Declan is a very loud and vio­lent puker.

- Speak­ing of Declan, we took him to the doc­tor to have a wheezy cough looked at.  It turns out it was asthma. He’s cur­rently tak­ing Orapred and thrice daily breath­ing treat­ments of Xopenex. He’s doing much bet­ter. Thank­fully he’s not on a full time reg­i­ment of meds. The Xopenex is $45 a week alone after insurance!

- I’m woe­fully behind on my Sun­day Stash. I don’t know if I’ll get caught up, but hope­fully I’ll stay on top of things.

That’s all for now my pret­ties. Hope­fully I’ll be a lit­tle more reg­u­lar on my posts. I try, I swear. A blog is a lot of work!

Today the big D-Meister turns 3. As a mat­ter of fact it wlll be exactly 3 years to the minute as I write this post. Man, how things have changed since his birth.

It’s been a long haul so far. So much to learn, so much to change, so much to cel­e­brate. Before I had chil­dren I would always tell Matt that I wanted 17 kids. I would think of my mother and how she had 6 kids and thought I could do that too, no prob­lem. Now that I have two lit­tle boys my want for 17 kids has dropped a lit­tle to a more man­age­able num­ber. I still think of my mother and how things make more sense, yet I don’t know how she managed.

While child­less it never occurred to me just how much work it took to do your best. How often you fall short of ideal. How self­less you have to become. In all hon­esty, it has been hard. When I crack my eye­lids in the morn­ing, before the sun, because Rowan is gig­gling and try­ing to stuff Legos in my ears I long for the days that I could sleep until 2 o’clock in the after­noon. After spend­ing a full day clean­ing, cook­ing three meals and nurs­ing non-stop all I want is a long hot bath, by myself. But Declan doesn’t like the water too hot and Rowan can’t stay in too long or he gets too prune-y.

But there are so many price­less moments that I would never want to miss. The feel­ing of pure eupho­ria when your baby finally comes home from the NICU. The first steps. The first time you hear Mama. When he runs past other peo­ple cry­ing because he wants com­fort from you. The lit­tle feel­ing of dread­ful but­ter­flies when he does some­thing so amaz­ingly grown up and the thought of how big he’s really get­ting. Being awestruck by how large his men­tal capac­i­ties have become in 3 short years.

There is so much grow­ing that goes on with chil­dren about, not their growth but mine as well (and not just the size of my butt). My heart has truly grown.

Happy Birth­day Declan Pierce. I love you so much, baby. (This is where he would say “I’m not baby. Declan is big boy. Rowan is lit­tle baby!”  )

Well, it looks like we’re pretty much in the clear. The boys are back to their old selves and thank­fully the sick­ness didn’t require any doc­tors vis­its and what­not. I pretty much over-reacted because the thought of vomit is dis­tress­ing to me.

Thank you to every­one with your kind words of encour­age­ment and advice. Grandma, I’m pretty sure they had some kind of Rotavirus. I never would have thought of that had you not men­tioned it. (Did you get my email?) Nicky, how’s Del doing? Back to her­self?

Hope­fully now that all of that is taken care of I’ll have more time to actu­ally post. Wait, I always say that. I have been work­ing on the blog lay­out. If you use an RSS Feeder click on over and give it a look. Tell me what you think. The ‘Run­away Octo­ber’ in the header image is dri­ving me nuts. I’m huge on typog­ra­phy, as a mat­ter of fact I lovelovelove typog­ra­phy. It just seems to clash up there. I have to fig­ure our how to change it because it’s not part of the sta­tic image.

In other news we made our first sale from our book­store! Yay! One of you kind read­ers was… kind, I already said that, nice enough to use our link and we made a lit­tle bit of change on it. If you haven’t seen our book­store check it out here.