Here We Go Again

Last spring, about this time, A. came home with a pack of collard green seedlings for me. There were nine seedlings in the six-cell pack. I planted all of them.

We got quite a bit of rain early in the growing season, which made them grow very quickly.

Even though the grasshoppers got after them, they couldn't kill the collards. The plants were already pretty big, and the grasshoppers ate the bigger leaves towards the outside, leaving the new growth in the center that kept the plant going.

I cut greens for months, sharing them with anyone who wanted them. The cold that made the grasshoppers go away didn't phase the collard greens. They kept growing into the new year, even more luxuriantly without grasshoppers gnawing at them.

When we had our very cold spell, I harvested the rest of the collard leaves, but I left a few of the stalks in the garden. I wanted to see what would happen.

Well . . .

Can't keep a good plant down.

That's the one where I left the smallest leaves in the center. It's growing quite quickly from that center. The other stalks where I pulled the whole head off are actually sprouting new leaves along the stems. 

It appears that collards, like carrots, have a two-year life cycle, meaning that these plants should produce flowers and seeds this year. It remains to be seen if the leaves that are growing will be good to eat, or too bitter to bother with, but it's been fun to watch their resurgence.

Snapshots: Subbing and Sheep

I subbed at school last week, so this was the first time I worked in the new building.

Same kids, new playground.

There is also a lot of new furniture in the new building. I particularly like these chairs.

Very stable.

The little kids always wanted to use those wobbly stool things, which I hated. I guess the idea was that it would allow them to fidget while still paying attention, but really it was just distracting and they fell off of them all the time. There are no wobbly stools in the classrooms anymore, thank goodness.

Poppy had these reading fluency articles that she brought home every week as part of her homework. She reads at a very high level, so she doesn't have to bring them home anymore, but this was the last one she brought home.

I feel like this is targeted at me. (I love sugar. It does not love me.)

This photo of A. with the ram during shearing is so funny to me.

It looks like they're having a bonding moment, but really he's just keeping it in a headlock until the shearer got to it.

I am always amused to see how my living room candles burn down, because they never burn evenly.

This one for some reason reminded me of the crown on the witch in Sleeping Beauty. Or the witch's castles we used to make by dripping wet sand on the beach. Something witchy, anyway.

I had to take a trip to town on Friday morning, and Poppy wanted to come with me. She brought an apple and her book and was happy as could be riding shotgun.

Feet on the dash, apple in hand. Life is good.

Her book, incidentally, was The Saturdays, which is the first in a series called The Melendy Quartet. They're about the kids in the Melendy family, written in the '40s or '50s by Elizabeth Enright, and they are great. She loves them, and her brothers and I enjoyed them, too.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Emergency Sonic

Friday 

Short version: Leftover pasta, cheese omelet

Long version: I changed my mind several times about what to make for our meatless Friday meal. I had enough of the Ash Wednesday pasta for that to be a side dish, and in the end I supplemented that with a big cheese omelet to split up.

Saturday

Short version: Baked beans with ground beef, rice

Long version: I had intended to make a pork shoulder and rice pudding in the morning before going to the last basketball game in the afternoon., but when I got up in the morning, the two-pack of pork shoulders that had been thawing in the sink (one side wrapped in plastic bags so it wouldn't thaw and I could put one back in the freezer) was still frozen enough that I couldn't easily separate them. 

Plan B! Which needs to be quick-thawing. And, in this case, something I could make ahead.

First I cooked the last of a bag of pinto beans. Then I made those into baked beans. To make it more hearty, I browned ground beef, too, and put that in with the simmering baked beans. I made rice before I left for the game as well, so everything just needed to be re-heated when we got home.

Three of the four children were at the game, though, and all of them ate something from the concession stand there, so they didn't eat much dinner.

Sunday

Short version: Leftover baked beans and rice, grape tomatoes, leftover crispy rice treats

Long version: Four of us went to a church event in the early afternoon at which we were fed and everyone contributed a dessert. I brought crispy rice treats.

The very late and heavy lunch meant no one was particularly hungry at dinner; they just ate some of the leftovers. Including leftover crispy rice treats, even though they for sure did not need any more sugar.

Monday

Short version: Pasta and meatballs, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: I subbed at school this day, so once again, I couldn't cook the pork shoulder that had been in the refrigerator for two days. 

Instead, while I was at work, I defrosted some meatballs I had made awhile ago and froze. When I got home I broiled those and then added sauce before I baked them to finish. For the sauce, I used one of my own jars of roasted and pureed tomatoes, with already-cooked onions, garlic powder, oregano, and basil.

I didn't have enough tomato sauce for the pasta, so for that, I added butter, Romano, and garlic powder, and then poured into it the accumulated liquid and fat from cooking the meatballs. 

Ready to drain.

Tuesday

Short version: Finally the pork shoulder, cornbread, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: Home to cook the pork, jiggety jig. I made this all ahead and just had A. re-heat it while I was at First Communion class.

We've been eating a lot of salad because I bought my annual giant plastic container of greens just to have the containers for starting seeds. There really are a lot of greens in those things.

Wednesday

Short version: Leftovers, cucumbers with salt and vinegar, ice cream in a bag

Long version: Most of the kids had leftover pasta and meatballs. A. and the one child who doesn't really love pasta had pork and rice.

And there it is.

At dinner we were told all about this year's "Ag. in the Classroom" activity for FFA week. The older kids made ice cream with the younger ones by putting the ice cream ingredients in a bag and then putting that bag in a bigger one containing ice and rock salt. Both bags were then shaken enthusiastically until it became ice cream.

This was, as you might imagine, a very popular activity. The middle schooler didn't get any ice cream, though, because it took so long for him to help one of the preschoolers make his ice cream that all the ingredients were gone by the time they finished. If only, middle schooler said wistfully, we had rock salt at home, I could make some right now.

Well, do I have good news for you, son!

My sister had brought us a box of ice cream salt like three years ago that dated from when her daughter did some project with it in high school. Which would be, uh, five years ago now, maybe. But it's not like salt goes bad, and there it was, in my cabinet.

Ice cream was duly made.

Vanilla.

I tasted a spoonful. It was very good. Very soft, too, and prone to melting, but it didn't sit around long enough to melt much.

Thursday

Short version: Pork burritos, emergency Sonic

Long version: I had a few pieces of pork I had cut off the giant pork shoulder to make it fit in the casserole dish I cook it in. I managed to fit those in for the last couple of hours of cooking, when the large piece had shrunk enough, but they didn't get tender. So in the morning this day I put those pieces in a pot with water, a couple of dried red chiles, and half an onion to simmer until I could pull them apart. Then I reduced the remaining liquid and pureed it with my immersion blender to make a sauce for the pork.

I did all of this by about two o'clock, and it was a good thing I did. At 3:15 p.m. I got a call from the school that one of my children was having an allergic reaction to an aerosol deodorant someone had sprayed in an enclosed room. By the time I got there, he was in anaphylatic shock. He looked like he was having a seizure and he definitely couldn't breathe. If the paramedic hadn't arrived a few minutes after I did and administered epinephrine immediately, he would have died right there.

Not our best day. 

He's fine now, except for a very sore arm where he got the shot of epinephrine. The ambulance brought him to the nearest hospital, and I of course followed them. We were only there about an hour and a half so they could monitor his vitals for awhile, and when we left at 7 p.m., the patient wanted Sonic. He got a triple Sonic smasher and I got a kid's meal with chicken strips and tator tots.

We went through the drive-through for this, and the car in front of us was taking awhile to pay. When we got to the window to pay, the employee told us the gentleman in the car in front of us had paid for our food. My son told me this is a thing all over social media, so I guess we were the beneficiaries of a new fad. But given the afternoon we had had, it seemed like a divine grace. 

So thank you to the anonymous guy in the car with the Kansas plates at the Sonic in a little nowhere, New Mexico town. You will join Leroy as an example of the angels among us.

A. used the pork on the stove to make burritos for the family at home. 

Refrigerator check:

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

Homemade Brown Sugar

Did you know you can make your own brown sugar? Brown sugar is literally just white sugar and molasses. I knew I could make it. I even knew how to make it. And yet, I have not been making it.

Logically, I knew I should. I use a lot of it, given how much I bake. It's much cheaper to make than to buy, especially since I prefer dark brown sugar, which is always more expensive than light brown sugar. And I already have a gallon of molasses.

I kept telling myself I should start making it next time I ran out. But then my laziness would overcome me and I would buy more brown sugar when I was at the store.

However.

Here we go.

I finally did it. I used two tablespoons of molasses per cup of white sugar, which makes very dark brown sugar.

I mixed it in my food processor. It wasn't hard, of course, although I did overfill the food processor and have to split the sugar in half to get it all combined evenly.

The most annoying part of making it is getting sugar all over the counters and floor, which seems inevitable with this quantity of sugar. But now I have a lot of brown sugar on hand, and I can always make more when I need it.

Snapshots: Spring Flowers and Shearing

 The week started with a grim, wintery feel outside:

Moody, bare Chinese elm trees against a cloudy sky.

But now look!

Crocuses, yay!

There are quite a few bulbs coming up in the three beds we have them in. They all need to be watered, because we still haven't had any rain or snow, but they're coming. Hooray!

We have some spring inside the house, too. A. cut some apricot branches to force inside. 

The first one to open.

And now there are more. (It's very hard to get a picture of them, though.)

Speaking of flowers . . .

This past week was homecoming spirit week at school. It was a cruise ship theme this year, and we did pretty well finding appropriate clothing for every day. I was, however, kind of stymied by the day when they were supposed to wear "tropical tourist" clothing. We are not a tropical clothing sort of family. Poppy had a dress she could wear that had flowers on it. One boy wore his older brother's palm-tree-printed swim trunks (over his jeans). But the other two boys had nothing appropriate at all.

I mentioned this to A., and he said, "Too bad we don't have any white T-shirts. I could paint tropical flowers on them."

Oh, really? HOLD THAT THOUGHT.

I found two old, stained white T-shirts for him. He got out his watercolor paints* and . . .

Perfect. So handy having an artist in the family.

Our shearer came out on Thursday morning for a slightly earlier than usual shearing. It was windy and cold, but the actual shearing takes place in the shed, so it was bearable.

First one down.

Nice fleece.

They always look like goats to me after shearing.

I was dicing mini bell peppers for our Fat Tuesday jambalaya and scraping them off to the side of the cutting board as I finished each one. Look what I accidentally created.

A slightly wonky heart. Fun.

And last, this is a mayordoma month for me. I stopped in at church on Thursday morning to make sure I had turned off the heat after our Ash Wednesday Mass (I had), and was delighted by the light coming in through the windows.

Especially the pattern on the aisle.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

* Watercolor painting is his new hobby. He's really quite good. He mostly paints small greeting cards with flowers and birds.

Friday Food: A Fat Tuesday Feast

Friday 

Short version: Leftovers, raw radishes

Long version: We had leftovers of both birthday lasagna, and ham and rice casserole. And that was it.

Saturday

Short version: Frito pie, chocolate budino

Long version: I had a bag of Great Value Corn Chips that I bought sometime before Christmas, thinking I would make Frito pie for our Christmas Eve dinner. I didn't do it then, but I did it now.

I was already simmering a pot of pinto beans this day, most of which went into the chili along with ground beef.

Chocolate budino is the most insanely rich chocolate pudding ever. I saw a recipe for it randomly the day before Valentine's Day. My family's love for All Things Pudding is well-known, and so that is what I made for our special dessert.

This is a crazy dessert. There is no milk in it at all, only heavy cream. It's thickened with five egg yolks, which makes it very, very thick indeed. It's pretty much solid when chilled. It's supposed to be served with whipped cream. However, my children requested that I just pour heavy cream right on top, as we do with pots de creme, which it kind of reminded me of.

A. and eldest were actually gone, so it was just the four of us eating this recipe that is supposed to make 8 servings. I had a very small serving, which meant that my three children were eating more than a double serving of it. This is not typically a problem for them, but this dessert almost defeated them. They finished their bowls, but not without some effort.

It was very, very good though. Not something I would make often, but I'm sure I'll be making it again. I think it would be better with the whipped cream, however.

Oh, and from that same recipe I jumped to suggestions for recipes that use the five egg whites left after separating the eggs. I used four of the egg whites to make a double recipe of chocolate chip meringue cookies, which were also very popular even though I didn't bake them long enough and they were quite sticky. Much like marshmallows with chocolate chips in them. 

The last egg white I used to make spiced almonds.

That chocolate budino sure had a ripple effect in the kitchen.

Sunday

Short version: Chili and rice skillet, King Cake

Long version: Still just the three younger children and me for dinner. I used some of the leftover chili and leftover rice to make a skillet meal, with the addition of cheese and sour cream. 

The King Cake was sent by my mother. 

We didn't eat the beads and coins.

We ate it warmed up, with butter on top, as is proper.

Monday

Short version: Enchilada casserole, carrot sticks

Long version: I had some broken pieces of corn tortillas to use up, so I used the rest of the chili to make an enchilada casserole. I also had to supplement with some of the plain beans I had in the refrigerator, which I flavored with spices and salsa, so it ended up being a very bean-heavy casserole.

A study in orange.

Tuesday

Short version: French 75s and a cheese plate, jambalaya, butter-swim biscuits, green salad with vinaigrette, butterscotch pudding

Long version: Fat Tuesday, hooray! This year I added a cocktail to our now-traditional jambalaya dinner. I thought about Hurricanes, which are very much associated with New Orleans, but they had too many ingredients and too much sugar. Instead, I got the ingredients for a cocktail called a French 75: 1 ounce gin, half an ounce each of simple syrup and lemon juice, shaken with ice to chill, and then topped with 3 ounces of champagne. 

These were so good. Actually the best part of the meal for me. When I was reading about this cocktail, I saw that some older recipes for it call for cognac instead of gin. I like cognac, so I may try that next time. It was awfully good with the gin, though. Not too sweet, but a little less dry than straight champagne.

The cheese plate was solely because I was at a rarely-visited store a couple of weeks ago when I went to get our beef, and this store has interesting cheeses. I bought Edam, blue cheese, and goat cheese, and then kind of forgot about them. But this was the perfect night for a cheese plate before dinner, being not only a feast, but also a night when we had two guests with us. So that worked out.

I even had crackers, which is not always the case.

For the actual meal, we had the jambalaya, of course, for which I very loosely follow this recipe, making a recipe and a half. I mostly use the recipe for the spices. I don't use that method, though, instead sauteeing the vegetables--I used onion, bell pepper, and a little garlic--until very soft and then frying the raw rice in with those plus the spices before adding the meats and chicken stock to cook the rice.

I had made the stock while simmering the rooster I used for the chicken meat. I also separately browned the diced andouille sausage and chopped chicken before adding it to the rice and vegetables. And I used the tip given to me here previously of putting a layer of foil on the top of the pot before putting the lid on, to steam the rice properly. This worked, yay! Thanks, Casey!

I must note that I used olive oil and bacon fat to cook the vegetables, then another cup of rendered lard to brown the meats, and then added another cup of butter to the pot before cooking the rice. And then! I put the resulting cooked jambalaya into a Pyrex casserole dish so it would be easier to re-heat evenly before dinner, and when I did that, I put another maybe half cup of butter on the top.

Before adding the top butter layer.

That means there were at least two and a half cups of fat in this dish. And it STILL wasn't at all greasy, just tasty. Amazing.

I made this ahead because I was at First Communion class until 5:30 p.m. I also par-baked the butter-swim biscuits before I left (meaning I just baked them until they were pretty much cooked through but not browned), so that when I got home I just needed to stick the foil-covered jambalaya back in the oven with the pan of biscuits. Interestingly, the biscuits fully absorbed most of the butter during their rest and were much less greasy in the end. Everyone preferred them this way, so that's good to know.

I made a double recipe of this butterscotch pudding, as always adding a little extra molasses and, this time, a cup of cream in place of some milk. I made this because one of our guests was our priest. It was his birthday, so I told him he could pick dessert. Much to my children's delight, this pudding is what he chose. So nice for them that he shares their opinion that dairy desserts trump cake any day.

Wednesday

Short version: Fried eggs, pasta

Long version: No more feasting, since this was Ash Wednesday. We always have our Ash Wednesday Mass at 5 p.m. at our church in the village. Because school gets out at 4 p.m., I just keep the kids with me in the village and we don't get home until around 6 p.m. Everyone is always very hungry by then, so I always make something (meatless) that can be ready very quickly. This time, that meant I made the pasta before I left home. Then I just needed to fry eggs and microwave the pasta when we got home.

The pasta was very random. I made the sauce with a cube of frozen tomato paste, heavy cream, someone's leftover milk in the refrigerator, already-cooked onions, about a third of a package of cream cheese, garlic powder, and a can of kidney beans. I blended all of this together because I thought my children would balk at whole kidney beans in their pasta. Then I added some frozen peas. It was fine. Not great, but fine. 

Thursday

Short version: Homecoming food, leftover jambalaya

Long version: I was at homecoming with three of the children. They had various concession things, including a burrito and nachos, I think. The two at home had leftover jambalaya.

Refrigerator check:

Blurry, because it was late and I was tired.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

Let's Talk Books

A friend of the MiL's (hi, Mikey!) apparently mentioned that I haven't talked much about what books I've been reading lately.

Well! Allow me to remedy that!

Here they are:

Secular on top, religious on the bottom, because why not?

I didn't actually intend to get that many religious books. This seems to be my tradition now for Lent, though, as I did the same thing last year kind of on accident.

He Leadeth Me is by the same priest who wrote With God in Russia. My sons really enjoyed that one, as did I, so I thought we'd try his other book. I haven't read it yet.

Seasons of the Soul was recommended by our priest. I  haven't read that one yet, either.

I'm part of the way through A Canticle for Liebowitz, though I'm not sure if I'll finish it. It's a novel that takes place at a monastery in the future after a nuclear exchange. A. bought it and read it, as did one of the boys. Both of them said it was okay, though not great, and that's what I'm thinking so far.

I did read the Mother Teresa book. That was a challenging one. I'm not sure I would recommend it to a lot of people--it's pretty startling and depressing in some ways--but it certainly made me think, and I'm not sorry I read it.

I haven't read Go Set a Watchman yet. That one I bought mostly for the boy whose favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird. I may save it for his Easter basket.

I read pretty much every Agatha Christie book when I was in middle school, I think. Ten Little Indians is one of my favorites. The youngest boy saw me reading it and asked me about it. I'll give it to him next, and probably his older brother would like it, too.

Katherine Center is one of my favorite new authors. I don't like most modern authors, especially those who write romcoms, but she's good. Her books are like literary junk food without being stupid and irritating, which is more than I can say for the majority of books in that genre. Hello, Stranger is one of her newer books. I read it in about two hours and liked it very much.

An American Childhood is by Annie Dillard. I was not familiar with her as an author. This was the book I bought at the antique shop during my overnight in town. It's just what it sounds like: The story of her childhood growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s. She was an unusual child, but her childhood was in many ways very typical of the time. I enjoyed it, although I don't think I'll seek out anymore of her books.

Ditto Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamund Lehmann. She was a prolific author in the 1930s. The book was good enough that I finished it, although I didn't find it all that gripping. It wasn't really about anything significant. In that way it reminded me of Jane Austen. I looked up the author's other books, and the others are apparently much less innocent than this one, so I probably won't read any more by this author.

There! That's what I've been reading lately, or am about to read. How about you?