Snapshots: A Sleepy Butterfly

Our Sundays start pretty early, because Mass at our church is at 8 a.m. We don't have time for anything elaborate for breakfast before we leave, so this is the one day of the week that the kids have cereal. I do make a second breakfast when we get home around 9 a.m., though. Last Sunday, I made biscuits. I set out all the available biscuit toppings on the table when they were ready.

Butter, honey, plum butter (thanks, sis!), strawberry preserves, and apricot jam. There were enough biscuits for everyone to try every one of these things. On separate biscuits, I mean.

I recently used the last of the rendered tallow I had in the refrigerator. I need to render some more of the many pounds of suet in the freezer. It's difficult to find the motivation to do this sometimes, as it's a tedious and greasy job, but this jar of tallow I saw at the grocery store is a pretty good motivator.

Twenty dollars for a pint certainly made me think WOW!!, but not because I was amazed at the low price.

This is the time of year the Monarch butterflies are migrating to their warmer overwintering regions. I'm not sure if we're on the route for the butterflies that are going to Mexico, or the ones going to California, but in any case, there are a LOT of Monarchs floating around right now. I spied this one in the planter outside the bank last week.

A pretty rest stop during a long trip.

Jasper hasn't taken any long trips lately, but he still feels the need to rest.

Sleepy dog.

We are definitely coming to the end of fresh flower season. We could get a freeze at any time now, which means every week might be the last week for flowers. But for this week, I still have some.

On the table (look at those wee sunflowers).

And on the bookcase.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Kitchen Work for a Cause

Friday 

Short version: Pollock, mashed potatoes, fancy collard salad, cucumber salad, crepe cake

Long version: I had three bags of Pollock fillets that I got from commodities. At least, I think they were fillets. Maybe they were planks? They were very regular rectangles that looked to have been cut from fillet, anyway. Each bag had eight planks. Two bags would have been enough for this meal, but I decided to cook all of them in anticipation of making a fish pie with leftovers.

To that end, I put all the fish pieces in my biggest Pyrex in the oven, covered with foil, and then on top of those put the leeks I had cooked in chicken stock and cream.

And then they just would.not.get.cooked. 

I had put them in frozen, because that's what the package said to do. The package also said one bag would cook from frozen in twenty minutes. After an hour, they were so far from cooked they were still cold.

At that point I split them up into two Pyrexes in the oven. Still not cooking fast enough given that it was now 6:15 p.m. So I put two-thirds of them in my biggest stainless steel pan on the stove and simmered them until they were done. Which took only about fifteen minutes.

So annoying.

I made the fancy collard salad--fancy meaning it had dried cranberries, toasted pecans, and pickled onion slivers in it--because our priest was joining us for dinner and he actually likes collard salads as much as I do.

The cucumber salad was just cucumbers, pickled onions, and ranch dressing. For those who do not appreciate collard salads.

I made the crepe cake to use the five leftover crepes from the previous Sunday's after church breakfast. I layered them with sweetened whipped cream and rhubarb jam to which I had added some plain mashed strawberries.

Saturday

Short version: Breakfast sausage patties, beans and rice, carrot sticks, cookies

Long version: Two tubes of Great Value premium breakfast sausage made into thin patties and broiled. 

I took out one quart jar of frozen pinto beans that appeared to have been cooked with a ham bone, given the fat on top of the beans. I added a sauteed onion, garlic, and some tomato sauce to them. Since there was quite a bit of liquid in the beans, I cooked rice right in with the beans, and then I added some leftover cooked rice to it, along with butter. At the last minute, I also dumped in the grease in the sausage pan. 

That's three kinds of fat in the beans and rice. Predictably, my family thought they were the best beans ever.

The cookies were this week's snack cookies: peanut butter, oats, and chocolate chips.

Sunday

Short version: Fish pie, frozen peas, coconut cake

Long version: I used to make this fish pie all the time when we lived on the lake in New York and ate lots of lake trout. It's a good use for leftover fish. In this case, all that leftover Pollock. 

The original recipe came from Darina Allen's Forgotten Skills of Cooking. That recipe calls for mushrooms and peas in the fish part, which I did not use, and thyme and parsley, which I did use. 

Come to think of it, I didn't actually use the recipe much at all except for the herbs. Instead I just dumped all the saved juices from cooking the fish, which included all the cream and leeks left, into a pan with another sliced leek and simmered that until the leek was soft. Then I thickened it with cornstarch before adding it to the fish.

Creamy. And herby.

I also had almost enough mashed potatoes for the topping on the fish pie. I used some of the instant potato flakes we've been getting from commodities to bulk up the leftover mashed potatoes so there would be enough. 

This really is a surprisingly good use for leftover fish. Even Poppy said, "I don't even like fish, but this is so good."

For the cake, I used one of the bags of yellow cake mix we got from commodities. I made it into a sheet cake and used coconut oil instead of butter in it, plus coconut extract and shredded sweetened coconut. The frosting was more or less a buttercream with a little cream cheese and more coconut extract. And then there was more coconut all over the top.

Everyone LOVED this. I don't know why I've been under the impression that my family doesn't like cake all that much. Maybe because they never actually request it. They certainly eat it with enthusiasm when I make it, though.

Monday

Short version: Sausage, leftover fish pie, cucumbers, leftover cake

Long version: I didn't have quite enough of the fish pie for it to be the main course, but I had enough of it to be a side dish. Which is why I cooked one package of smoked beef sausage. Then there was enough for everyone.

Sausage and leftovers.

No one thought there was enough cake, since there was only enough left for everyone to have one small piece. but a small piece is better than none. That's what I told them, anyway.

Tuesday

Short version: Cheeseburgers on homemade buns, fried potatoes, pickles, cranberry-pecan bread

Long version: I had made the hamburger buns the day before when I was baking bread, which made this a relatively quick meal to make. The fried potatoes were just a few big potatoes that I peeled and diced before frying in tallow, covered first to get soft, and then uncovered to get crispy.

The bread was this oat and yogurt bread, with extra honey added, as well as pecans and some of the many dried cranberries we've been getting from commodities. It's a good way to use up a lot of the cranberries, and it is a very good bread.

Wednesday

Short version: Low-effort hamburger with baked beans, rice, cucumbers with ranch dip

Long version: I spent all afternoon in the kitchen cooking for a gathering of priests that our priest was hosting the next day. One of the things I made for them was baked beans. I was heartily sick of the kitchen by the time dinner rolled around, so I just browned some ground beef and ladled in some of the baked beans to serve over rice.

I also, handily, still had a jar of the juices from the oven chicken I had made the week before that was more or less similar to barbecue sauce spices. So I put some of that in with the meat, too, to flavor it some more. 

Thursday

Short version: Leftovers or concession food

Long version: On this day I spent all morning in the kitchen, baking for a silent auction at school to benefit one of our high school students who has been in and out of the hospital with a difficult-to-treat condition. I made a coconut cake, crispy rice treats, and cranberry-walnut bread.

The brownies were Poppy's contribution. She got up twenty minutes early so she could make them before school.

The auction was during the volleyball game after school, to which I went and at which Poppy was cheering. The football player met us there after practice, too, so the two kids with me had concession food for dinner. Before I left for the game, I had a salad with some of the leftover meat from the night before in it.

The ones at home had the leftover hamburger/baked beans/rice from the night before. Plus a few crispy rice treats I saved for them.

Refrigerator check:

Ginger ale for the upset stomach that we had in the house this week.

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

An Unexpected Wedding

Early last week, our priest asked me if I would be able to witness a wedding he would be celebrating at one of our mission churches. 

This church, to be specific.

He needed two witnesses to sign the official paperwork, both for the church and for the state. This couple was coming from out of state, knew no one in the area, and wasn't bring their own witnesses.

This meant I had never met the two people getting married. However! I love weddings, and I love this particular church, so I said I would be happy to attend and act as a witness. Another parishioner who lives near the church agreed to be the second witness, and we were all set.

I was very curious to meet this couple and to know how this wedding came to be at this particular church. I felt sure there was a story there. Indeed there was, and now I will share it with you.

Let's call the couple Henry and Jessica, in the interests of their privacy. They were very friendly and chatty, and very happy to share their story.

In 2016, Henry rode 4,000 miles on a bicycle from Florida to California as part of an initiative to raise funds and awareness for housing non-profits like Habitat for Humanity. Their route took them through our county. He has a picture of himself standing in front of that mission church's sign. He never forgot the church, or New Mexico. He told me that this was his favorite state of the ones he rode through.

Fast forward to now. Henry and Jessica live in Michigan. They have birthdays just one day apart in the first week of October and planned a trip to New Mexico so Henry could introduce Jessica to the state, and also so they could attend the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque to celebrate their birthdays. They were engaged, but didn't want the big wedding their families would insist on. 

Jessica is Catholic, and they did their pre-marital preparations at her parish in Michigan. But when they decided to make this trip to New Mexico, Henry showed her his photos of his time here and she saw the one of the church in the middle of nowhere. She suggested they get married there while they were on vacation. They didn't tell anyone they knew that they were going to do this.

They contacted our archdiocese, from whom they got the necessary approval and who contacted our parish priest, and there they were, with a wedding scheduled for 2 p.m. on a Thursday at a mostly-closed, remote New Mexico church.

And there I was, witnessing the wedding of two very nice people I met five minutes before their ceremony.

They didn't have a photographer, either, so I took some pictures of the ceremony for them with my phone, which I will not share with you because, again, privacy. But here's the altar just before the wedding.

After the wedding, they were continuing their New Mexico tour by going to Taos, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque. I'm sure they'll have a lot of fun and go home with a lot of stories to tell from those places, but I'm also sure nothing will beat the story of their wedding. 

Snapshots: First Fire and Flowers

It's the shoulder season of fall, and that means that we have both fresh flowers:

On the table.

And on the bookcase.

Plus the ones I put together just yesterday.

And fire:

The first fire of the season, yesterday morning.

I had a heck of a time getting that fire going, thanks to the fact that it looked like this outside.

That's not fog. It's a cloud, and our elevation is high enough that we were just in it.

Everything was damp, there was no draft, and every time I opened the stove to check on the fire or add wood, it just billowed smoke out. It was very unpleasant. I did get it going eventually, though.

The morning before, it was 59 degrees in the house. That would have been a good morning to have a fire, but all the wood was wet from being in an untidy pile outside on the ground, where it was dumped when it was delivered unexpectedly on Monday. 

The kids went to work yesterday afternoon, though, and had it all stacked within a couple of hours. They were helped in this endeavor, amusingly, by our priest. He came to dinner and was very eager to help stack wood. I suppose he appreciates such a straightforward, physical task, that is so unlike what he usually has to do.

We are happy to oblige him by providing the opportunity for labor. Never in short supply at our house.

On Michaelmas, we had fire and flowers together at breakfast. Our usual candles were joined by our St. Michael candle--these are readily available at any grocery store in New Mexico--and the youngest boy's St. Michael keychain that he carries in his pocket every day.

A very liturgically appropriate breakfast table.

Continuing the religious theme, I was amused to see that Poppy's brown scapular that she wears every day under her shirt was perfectly framed by the opening in the back of her shirt yesterday.

I spy with my little eye . . .

Another back shot for Poppy so I could show her what her hair looked like before Mass on Sunday:

Big bow on a looped braid.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: A Lot of Midweek Desserts

Friday 

Short version: Tuna spaghetti casserole, radishes, concession food

Long version: Homecoming this day at the school we do a sports co-op with. There were volleyball games starting at 2 p.m. and the football game was at 7 p.m. I was hoping to be able to come home in between those two things to eat dinner (and not be sitting on hard bleachers for 8 hours straight). Also, not everyone went to the games, so there needed to be something for them at home.

To that end, I made a casserole in the morning with many of the things we've been getting from commodities and the food boxes the school is now sending home: cream of mushroom soup, canned tuna, spaghetti. I just more or less randomly added things like cream, milk, and cheese to the cream of mushroom soup to make the sauce. I got it just right. Yay, me.

I did end up rushing home in between events, mostly to pick up something the football player forgot. I called ahead and asked the eldest to put the casserole in the oven before I got home. However, the younger two stayed at school to see the last of the varsity volleyball game, so they ate their dinner from the concession stand. 

Homecoming is always nuts.

Saturday

Short version: Beef and bean quesadillas, corn on the cob, bread and butter

Long version: This ended up being a much busier day than I had anticipated, so dinner was more simple than I had anticipated. I had thawed some ground beef, which I used to make taco meat with some of the big pot of black beans I had cooked earlier in the week. That filling went into flour tortillas for quesadillas.

We got the corn on the cob, randomly, from commodities. It didn't quite go with the quesadillas somehow, but I needed to use it and my kids always love corn, so there we go.

The bread and butter is just because floppy store bread with butter on it is the easiest way to butter corn. You just wrap the buttered bread around the hot corn and slide it all around to spread the butter. 

A plate full of starch.

Sunday

Short version: Grilled steaks with herb butter and caramelized onions, fried potatoes, cucumbers, brownies and vanilla ice cream

Long version: I had just a little charcoal left, and this was one of the last really warm days we're going to have, so I decided to grill the steaks I thawed. I really dislike grilling. We just have a charcoal kettle grill, and I find it very difficult to get the heat level right. This time it wasn't quite hot enough, so I had to finish the steaks under the broiler. They still had the taste of grilled meat, it's just annoying to have to use two sources of cooking.

I still have a lot of caramelized onions in the freezer, and they are the youngest boy's favorite with steak. The herb butter is also that boy's preference with steak. I used finely chopped basil, parsley, and green onion for the herb butter, along with a little garlic powder.

I fried the potatoes just because I had a big skillet still on the stove and mostly clean from the after-church crepes. So I used that skillet to fry the potatoes, just putting potato cubes in with tallow, covering until they were soft, and then uncovering to get them crispy.

Monday

Short version: Leftover steak in sauce, herby rice, cucumbers and pickles, leftover brownies

Long version: I had quite a bit of steak left. The consensus was that it had been a bit chewy, even though it was definitely not overcooked. Just the cut of steaks, I guess. So I decided to sort of stew the leftovers to tenderize them. I did this by trimming and slicing the leftover steak into smaller pieces and then simmering it with the leftover caramelized onions, a bit of tomato sauce from an open can, and some chicken stock I had in the refrigerator.

When I went out to the garden to get collard greens for my salad, I was reminded that we have A LOT of leeks that I need to start using. So I pulled one big leek, sliced that thinly, and added that to the steak pan. When everything was tender, I added cream mixed with cornstarch to thicken the sauce. It turned out well.

I used the leftover herb butter in the rice, which handily used up all the leftovers from the night before.

I only cut up one cucumber, so everyone also got pickles spears. Cucumber variety is the spice of life.

Tuesday

Short version: Chicken thighs, mashed potatoes, maple carrots or raw broccoli, stabby cake

Long version: This was the Feast of the Archangels, but in our house, we pretty much just celebrate St. Michael. Sorry, Gabriel and and Raphael.

Anyway, September 29th has traditionally just been Michaelmas, which is St. Michael's feast. And the traditional food for Michaelmas was goose.

I don't have access to a goose to roast, so I make do with chicken. Usually I would make a whole roast chicken, but this year I just cooked chicken thighs. They were on sale when I was at the store the day before, and I also wanted to make something I could share with the teacher at school who was coming home from a hospital stay with her son. A whole roast chicken is harder to split up than a bunch of chicken thighs.

I made this recipe, with about 12 pounds of chicken thighs. The power went off at about 10 a.m. and didn't come back on until almost 1 p.m. I didn't want to open the refrigerator in that time, so I had to wait until we had power again to get the chicken out and get going. This meant it didn't brine as long as it should have, but it was still good.

I really didn't like how much aluminum foil I had to use to make foil packets for all this chicken.

So much trashed foil.

Next time I might try baking it in my giant casserole dish with a lid that I usually use when I make pork shoulder.

Anyway. The chicken came out well.

And there was a lot of it.

That was before putting it under the broiler to get crispy. The smaller pan at the front of the photo went to the teacher, and we had the bigger pan in the back.

Our other St. Michael tradition is the stabby cake. I bake a devil's food cake and then we say the St. Michael prayer and everyone stabs their piece of cake with toothpicks. Because St. Michael is traditionally depicted using a sword to fight the devil. Get it?

This year, I had a bag of chocolate cake mix that came with the food boxes the kids are getting at school. I knew it would be an anemic "chocolate" cake if I just used the mix, so I added some more things to it. Like a full cup more cocoa powder, some molasses, and coffee in place of about half the water called for. 

I never make frosting for the stabby cake, but I did dust it with powdered sugar. And we had some ice cream to go with it. Happy Michaelmas, indeed.

Wednesday

Short version: Enchilada casserole, cucumbers with ranch dip, cupcakes

Long version: I used the rest of the taco meat/beans, plus the package of corn tortillas that came in the school food box, to make the casserole.

Dinner ready to go by 9:13 a.m.

The cake mix I had used the day before would have made two 8-inch layers, but I made a dozen cupcakes with part of it instead. I frosted them with peanut butter frosting. Half of those went to the teacher, and then we had the other half for everyone at home this night. 

Nothing like an unexpected Wednesday cupcake.

Thursday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: I was at a wedding in the late afternoon--for two people I had never met, story to come later--and didn't get home until around 4 p.m. I changed quickly and went to the school for volleyball, where Poppy was cheering. The games were done pretty early, so we got home around 7 p.m. and I have the two children who had been with me leftover mashed potatoes and cheese or a salami sandwich.

The three who had been at home at leftover enchilada casserole, plus canned peaches and cottage cheese.

Refrigerator check:

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

An Adventure in Dyeing (with an "e")

I am speaking here of dyeing clothing a new color. That is why I made the distinction in the title. Otherwise it might be a little concerning.

Nothing to worry about, though! It was just my first experience with clothes dyeing!

The reason I decided to try dyeing clothing with permanent dye was because we have another wedding coming up. This time it's my niece's wedding in Vermont. Two of my children are coming with me*, including Poppy.

This is a fall wedding, which means the colors appropriate for wedding apparel are darker than Poppy typically wears. She didn't have a dress that was formal enough and of a dark enough color for this wedding.

She did, however, have quite a few formal white dresses, thanks to the several First Communion dresses that were passed down to me. Of course, she couldn't wear a white dress to a wedding that is not her own. 

This is what gave me the idea to dye one of the dresses. They were free, so I figured it wouldn't be a big deal if it didn't work.

Accordingly, I asked Poppy what color she wanted--blue--and ordered a bottle of dye.

I dicovered that one of my friends used to dye clothes from thrift stores frequently, and she had several helpful tips for me. The first was to make sure that I got dye appropriate for the dress material. In this case, that was polyester. The dye for natural materials is very different from the dye for man-made materials, so it's important to get the right one.

She also said to get the dress wet before submerging it in the dye, as that will make for a much more even absorption of the dye water. Made sense.

I did not want to be messing around with permanent dye in my kitchen, so I decided to do it outside. This meant I needed nice weather and the time to figure it out. Also, it had to be a day when Poppy would be here to help me. Of course.

I decided this past Saturday that we were going to just go ahead. 

This is when I read the directions on the bottle of dye. 

Yikes.

It's not just dunking the clothing in some colored water and voila. The water has to be kept at a steady 200 degrees for at least 30 minutes. The clothing has to be continuously agitated in that water for the entire time. It's sort of a pain.

I was not anticipating needing to keep the water at a high temperature like that. I still didn't want to have to do this in my kitchen. Luckily, A. had the idea to use the camping stove I gave him for our anniversary, so I could keep the pot of dye water hot. I wanted to set it up somewhere I could just dump the water in the ground when I was done, without having to carry an extremely heavy pot any distance. 

A. helped me set all this up, even building a little wall around the camp stove to make sure the wind didn't extinguish it.

I was a little leery of using a cooking pot to dye clothing, but I didn't see much choice, so I used my pressure cooker/canner, which is the biggest pot I have. It's also stainless steel. I figured that was more likely to scrub clean.

So! Water to 200 degrees on the stove inside (so as not to use up the small fuel canisters from the camp stove), then hauled outside to the camp stove. Per instructions, one teaspoon of dish soap added (more or less), then the dye, and finally, the dress.

We used a broom handle to stir it. Still attached to the broom, so of course the handle is now dyed blue, but it's my outside broom, so it doesn't matter.

Poppy and I took ten-minute turns stirring.

Of course I quoted Macbeth. It was irresistible. 

Poppy noted that this was quite tedious. It was. The instructions said to keep it in the dye until it's just a little darker than the intended color. We kept it in there for forty minutes. After that, there were several rounds of rinsing until the water was clear. This is important so that Poppy doesn't turn blue when she wears it.**

Then I washed it in the pot with a bit of laundry detergent and we hung it up to dry.

It looked more purple when we first hung it up, but it dried more blue.

There were some tiny pearls on the lace detail that took the dye strangely and turned brown. Poppy carefully snipped those off. 

She is very, very pleased with her "new" dress. I was surprised with how well it worked. Although I'm not too motivated to dye clothing regularly, given how much of a process it is, but it was certainly worth it for this event.

* The other two aren't, because one boy is competing at the FFA national convention that weekend in Indianapolis and another had a football game. A. is staying home to manage all of that.

**We did amuse ourselves by saying she could be Smurfette for Halloween if she dyed herself blue.

Snapshots: Rain!

Friday's homecoming football game was slightly delayed because of lightning. Coincidentally, the game the week before was delayed for the same reason. Very cool sky once the storm started to clear, though.

There was a rainbow between the trees, which looks in this sunset photo to be a tongue of fire rising from the ground. Dramatic.

The middle part of this week featured rain, and a lot of it. We have not had significant rain in months. We got 2.5 inches over a couple of days.

The proof is in the rain gauge.

Thankfully, our soil is very absorbent and was also very dry. Since the rain came steadily, rather than in torrents, it soaked in without any flooding or anything.

When I went to pick up the football player on Wednesday evening from the post office, where he's dropped off after practice, Poppy came with me. It was pouring rain. Her best friend was there with her mom, waiting for her brother too. The girls were thrilled to be able to play in the rain.

Our rainstorms are typically thunderstorms, and the accompanying lightning means the kids don't get to play in the rain very often.

Poppy asked for a big blue bow hair tie to be put in her braid for the day they were supposed to have on school colors. I ended up looping her braid up with the bow, which was kind of neat. I always have to take a picture of the back of her head whenever I do anything different with her hair, so she can see how it looks.

This of course did not stay put through recess, but that's okay.

And last, I randomly came across this terrible poem online. I appreciate the sentiment, but the rhyming and meter are really unfortunate.

 "Thou who didst love to give men food, in room or by the sea." In room? Is this referring to the Last Supper, perhaps? Who knows.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.