Making the Grade

It's school progress-report time! These are viewed with varying levels of interest by my children. The boys mostly don't care, although all of them do very well in school, so they don't have much to worry about.  

Poppy, however, is VERY interested in her progress reports and report cards. This is the first year that she's had actual grades, and she scrutinizes them carefully*.

Her latest progress report apparently inspired her to grade me, which was one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time.

Not too shabby.

So obviously my strengths are cooking and gardining. (Yes, with an "i." It's like Anne with an "e.") I do pretty well with caring, getting them to bed, and the woodstove. Cleaning needs a little work--I have to agree with that one--but the overall score is good.

I've never once been tardy. Go me. 

I'm not entirely sure what all those excused absences are. Maybe when I was gone at basketball games and so forth? I do know what the one unexcused absence was: That one night by myself at the hotel is obviously inexcusable. 

If I can get through this motherhood gig with an overall score of 99, though, I will take it.

*She also has absolutely nothing to worry about with her grades, which makes this a pleasurable activity for her rather than an anxious one.

Snapshots: Paw Prints

I got some eggs from my friend, and Poppy was delighted with the tiny egg included.

"It's a baby egg! It's so cute! Can I eat it?" She did.

The trees and plants are confused by our very warm winter and think it's spring.

The apricot tree is in full bloom.

And two tulips are open. (Ignore my finger. I had to take this very quickly before Jasper could see me leaning over and lick my face.)

Despite the warmer days, we have not yet given up on the woodstove for the season.

Which means kindling splitting continues apace.

Remember all those tumbleweeds? They have now commenced blowing around. I actually drove through a little tumbleweed twister on my way to the village this week.

All those things that look like spots on my windshield are tumbleweeds.

We've lived in this house for almost eight years now, and I just noticed these cat paw prints in some concrete around the base of the house.

I bet this cat was displeased at the state of its paws after this.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Fish, Chicken, Pork, Beef

Friday 

Short version: Fish sticks, mashed potatoes with cheese, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: I bought some fish sticks for Lent, which is the only time I do buy them. They were just Great Value ones, which are fine as long as you definitely do NOT follow the instructions for baking on the bag. Baking these for 15-20 minutes at 425 degrees would result in some seriously floppy, nasty fish sticks.

I baked them for at least 45 minutes at 450 degrees. They could even been in longer, but everyone was hungry and they got crispy enough that they weren't gross.

I made tartar sauce for the fish sticks, because everyone in my family prefers that to ketchup. I kind of use this recipe, but I never have capers and I use bottled lemon juice.

Saturday

Short version: Chicken, pork, and rice casserole, strawberry yogurt

Long version: I took out a big bag of chicken leg quarters to thaw and used two of the legs to make this casserole. I just simmered them in water with red chile peppers and onion until I could pull off the meat and there was chicken broth. I used the broth to cook the rice. The peppers and onion were pureed and put back with the shredded chicken, plus a can of black beans and frozen corn Then I mixed all of that with the rice and added spices, sour cream, and shredded cheddar cheese. At the last minute, I found about a cup of the burrito pork in the refrigerator and threw that in there, too.

Very much a throw-it-together sort of thing, but it worked out.

I had made strawberry jam and more yogurt this day, so everyone got themselves some of that after dinner.

Sunday

Short version: Trout, leftover pork, rice, green salad with vinaigrette, chocolate pudding with cream

Long version: A. went fishing with three of the children and they caught a big rainbow trout. They got home in time to have it for dinner. It was baked whole and mostly plain, with salt and parsley in the cavity, and then I made a lemon juice and olive oil dressing to pour over it after A. boned it out.

Boning in progress.

I had enough chicken-y rice that I had left out of the previous night's casserole for everyone to have it, and then I also fried the last of the pork shoulder to make the meal filling enough for all.

The pudding also helped to fill everyone up.

Monday

Short version: Greek chicken, garlic bread and hummus, carrot sticks, baked apples with cream

Long version: The majority of the bag of chicken leg quarters I had thawed was what we had this night. I used the rest of the lemon and olive oil to marinate the separated thighs and drumsticks, then baked those until they were done and browned them some under the broiler.

I had made the garlic bread the day before when I was baking bread. The hummus was some from a giant batch that I had frozen awhile ago. And the only reason I made baked apples was because the oven was on for awhile for the chicken anyway, so I figured I might as well dump a couple of jars of canned apples in a dish and bake those with more spices and maple syrup.

That was a good call.

Tuesday

Short version: Chicken and potatoes or leftover chicken and rice casserole, raw radishes or bell peppers

Long version: There were four pieces of chicken left. I stripped the meat from those, chopped it up, and fried it with some nuked potatoes, plus spices and frozen corn, before I left to take Poppy to First Communion class. When I got home, I re-heated that with grated cheddar cheese. 

Exceptionally ugly food.

Some had that, some had the casserole.

Wednesday

Short version: Salisbury steaks with milk and onion gravy, mashed potatoes, frozen peas, strawberry yogurt

Long version: Definitely time for a break from chicken and pork. The hungry boys were overjoyed to see large mounds of ground beef and gravy on their plates.

They didn't eat so much that they weren't able to find room for strawberry yogurt after dinner, though. That strawberry jam I made did not last very long.

Thursday

Short version: Sausages, cornbread, raw radishes and bell peppers

Long version: I cooked one package of sweet Italian sausage and one of jalapeno/cheddar, and then there were two Salisbury steaks left for the child who doesn't care for sausage.

The cornbread recipe I use calls for 2.5 cups of corn flour. I usually use about half masa and half cornmeal. This time, I had almost 2 cups left in the bag of masa. I wanted to use that up, so I only used a little cornmeal. This made a much softer cornbread. I thought it was good, but it was not popular with my family. Oh well.

Refrigerator check:

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

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.