post-party.

This weekend was our goodbye party for tom and bria. It was much fun, but also sad. They are packing up and moving in a flash, so it was nice to take a night and celebrate them, slow down, eat some tacos. Post party, we feel a little like this:

But, we have some great leftovers. My cast iron skillet is my absolute favorite item of our kitchen (better than a microwave). I highly recommend one for every kitchen. Very multi-purpose. Once you get a skillet, I highly recommend this cookbook.   Anyhow, using this pan, I cooked up the best breakfast taco I've ever eaten in my life.

That's some al pastor from Murphy's (favorite meat of the night, better than carne asada!), a corn tortilla,  and my husband's famous poached egg. They combined to make this wonderful post-party breakfast. 

Bria and Tom, you will be missed. Let us eat tacos together for many more years to come, despite what coast we're on. 

location, location, location!

People are often confused about where exactly we live.  The assumption is often made that since we have a little bit of land, we must be way out east and they tend to be thrown off a little when I tell them we are only about 5 miles from downtown.  One of the biggest reasons that we all kind of made a jump for it and picked up this property was because of its proximity to everything.  We are definitely within San Diego City limits.  As said before, it's about 5 miles from downtown and about a 10 minute drive to the beach.  As the crow flies, I reckon we are about 12 miles north of the Mexican border, which is crazy to think about!  Here is a map, I circled Encanto with a red oval.

Now, another interesting point to make about this property that we chose is that it is in Southeast San Diego.  This is interesting because, according the the gang series on NPR, this is the part of San Diego with the highest amount of gang activity in the region.  Here is a link to that map.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/oct/06/north-county-comes-grips-gang-problems/
I know that a lot of people may not have chosen, necessarily, to live in this part of town.  Another big part of our hope and dream is that we can really be a place in the community where people can convene, where we can come together for dialogue and be a very fruitful place in THIS community.  Hopefully, one day, people will see this as a shiny spot in an awesome community with a hugely diverse range of people.  We have already met a wide range of amazing people that we can call our neighbors, and it seems - so far - like just the right fit.

Tur-duck-en

Since I told you I would...

First, you debone all of the birds but leave the wee little leg bones intact in the turkey.  Next, open up the biggest bird, layer some stuffing on top and then lay the middle-sized bird on top of that.  Do it one more time, topping it off with the smallest bird.  Once you've got the layers down, you work your way back to the bottom stitching up each bird as you go.  Some recipes call for cranberry sauce and different types of stuffing in each layer, but I wasn't about to get that crazy.

This thing took me about 2-3 hours to prep.  I de-boned my first (and second, AND third) bird ever.  When we slaughtered our ducks a few months ago, I wrapped one up really well and stuck it in the back of the freezer expressly for this purpose.  Let me tell you, there is nothing more fulfilling then slicing open your very own hot and steamy hand-made turducken.

Looking ahead.

Just getting off of an interesting week of change.  One kid is finally getting over her sinus-to-ear infection with a hefty dose of antibiotics (sigh).  This past week a big change occurred for all of us!  We have officially grown our farm numbers from 4 adults and two kids to 5 adults + 2.  Yes, yes, we acquired another adult somewhere along the way.  Colin will be living with us for a period of time.  It's very exciting because he is really into the FARMING aspect of all of this, and since none of us really have the time and energy to put as much as we'd like into it, he will be the designated farm hand for the next few months.  We've got projects on the drawing board and hopefully will be able to really make some movement towards feeling like a real farm!  Aside from our poultry endeavors and some rogue fruit trees we've managed to stick in the ground, we've been pretty lax about this food production thing.  It makes me so sad when I have to buy salad and chard every week!  This is all stuff that God has given us the ability to grow ourselves with nothing more than a little tenderness and time, yet we still haven't put seeds in the ground.

Another big change that happened last week was that I finally QUIT my JOB!  This is a big deal, and I'm still hyperventilating a little.  It seems that since I've started there, it's just been so tough for me to achieve any type of balance in my life.  It's a super high stress job and it's been difficult for me to manage and still feel good about the dedication I've been giving my friends and family (non-existent to some of you this past year, I know!  And I feel really bad about it, and that's going to CHANGE!)  My last day is the end of this month.  I will be entering the world of personal chef-dom, so if you know anyone that is interested in having a fantastic chef make all of their meals every week, send them my way!  I also hope to begin teaching more fitness classes and just be a better mom, wife, and friend in general.  BREATHE.

In the next week or two we will finally be getting our travel trailer!  Initially we had put some money down on an old vintage Airstream, which didn't pan out.  Turns out my gramps has an old 1960-ish Travel-Eze sitting on his lot that he offered to donate to our farm for free!  It's gonna need some TLC, but we can't wait to get to work fixing her up.  Here's a pic.  I don't for some reason have any full pictures of the thing, but you can get the gist.

We will be having a celebration next weekend for some of our friends that are moving to New York.  It's a fantastic opportunity for them and we are of course thrilled, but it's always so bittersweet to say goodbye.  I suppose it just means we'll have to take a trip out that way sometime soon!  We have friends in Boston we've been meaning to go visit as well, so maybe this will be the nudge we need.

I promise to look back soon and post those pictures and the turducken process.  Take care!