Friday Food: It's Egg Season

Friday 

Short version: Fried eggs, leftover mashed potatoes and cheese, cucumbers with vinegar and salt, raw green beans

Long version: None of the children were all that enthused to see eggs for dinner, but, well, we had a lot of eggs thanks to the fact that my friend's chickens are laying more than she can eat. And eggs are fast.

Leftover mashed potatoes re-heated with cheddar cheese are way better than plain mashed potatoes. This was a staple of my diet during my winter pregnancy with Cubby. Very comforting and sustaining.

Saturday

Short version: Beef and bean tacos, carrot sticks

Long version: I did my Church Lady thing for our monthly Saturday Vigil Mass, while A. took the three younger kids to Cubby's basketball game about an hour away. I got home around 5 p.m. They got home about an hour later, of course starving and wanting dinner right away.

Which is why I had already made a skillet of taco meat with ground beef and pinto beans. All I had to do was heat it up in the microwave with corn tortillas and cheese.

Good thing those hungry children have such a clever mom.

Sunday

Short version: Sirloin steaks, chicken-y rice, raw green beans, sauteed green beans and onion, cookies

Long version: One of my children will only eat rice if it's cooked in chicken stock and mixed with a LOT of butter, so this was a good night for him.

I only sauteed the green beans because there was a pan on the stove left from breakfast that still had bacon grease in it. And I only added the onion to the pan because there was half an onion left from making soup in the afternoon--and we always just cook the onion, right? And then the onion, of all things, was what the children ended up fighting over.

You just never know.

In-progress food photo:

Welcome to my cast iron kitchen.

Monday

Short version: Leftovers, soup, rye crisps, cheese

Long version: The children had leftover steak and rice, plus some leftover pizza from the school lunch, and raw green beans.

A. and I had the soup I had made the day before with the leftover taco meat and beans, plus various vegetables. A very good thing I had that soup, as I was feeling the beginnings of a cold and not only did I not want to cook, I wanted to eat something soft and soothing. 

Hooray for serendipitous advance cooking.

Tuesday

Short version: Chili, tortillas and cheese

Long version: This was some well-traveled chili. I had brought it with us to Texas, frozen, kept it in the freezer there, and never used it on the trip. So it came back home with us and went right back into the freezer. It was none the worse for having been across the state line, however. 

And it's a good thing no one in Texas caught me with it, because it had beans in it. SHOCKING.

Wednesday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, bacon, bread and butter, raw green beans

Long version: I had briefly entertained the notion earlier in the day of making spaghetti carbonara with the bacon and eggs, but then I got home from work and all that ambition was definitely gone.

Bacon and fried eggs it is!

Thursday

Short version: Meatloaf, baked potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, raw broccoli, redemption cookies

Long version: The cookie jar was empty for all of two days, and there were children asking somewhat sadly if I might possibly be able to make cookies again on my day off of work.

How quickly they become accustomed to the bottomless cookie jar.

Rapunzel and I rectified that sad situation.

Tiaras make everything taste better.

I was determined to make more-edible oatmeal-raisin cookies to redeem myself after the nasty baking powder cookies. Following the MiL's recommendation, I used the recipe on the Quaker Oats website, with the slight adjustment for high altitude noted, and they were indeed much better. Thanks, MiL.

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

Growing Food: Soil

I'm afraid this particular post might not be very helpful for many of you, since all I'm doing with this series is explaining what I do in the hopes that it might work for someone else. This one, however . . . well, you need sheep.

Lemme 'splain.

Soil is obviously a big deal for your plants. It's their home! It's their source of nutrients! It's how they store their water! 

It's also highly, highly variable by location.

I have gardened in only three places: Blackrock, which had pretty heavy clay soil. On the Canadian border, which had surprisingly good, workable soil. And here, which is rocky in a lot of spots, sometimes sandy, but has decent soil otherwise. 

The common denominator for all of my gardens has been sheep-soiled hay.

As long as I have grown a garden, A. has had sheep. At Blackrock, we used the old hay from the barns extensively as a mulch/fertilizer combo. Over time, this somewhat balanced out the heaviness of the clay and made the soil much easier to work and more likely to drain.

We also use old hay extensively as mulch and fertilizer at this house, but here it actually gives more structure to the loose soil we have and makes it better at retaining water. And the actual hay as mulch helps keep soil from drying out via evaporation after we water.

It also provides an exciting opportunity for scratching and pecking if you're a chicken (this is the winter-mulched asparagus).

All this to say that this is the reason I have never tested my soil or added any purchased amendments. We just add large quantities of animal waste and hay to it every year and call it good.

As I mentioned at the start, this is probably not helpful to those of you living a normal, sheep-free lifestyle. But! If you have access to any type of manure/waste hay situation, you should absolutely take advantage of it.

Sorry that was not more widely applicable, but that's the reality of my gardening life.

I don't know what the topic will be next week, but I'm sure I'll come up with something. Until then, let us all huddle close to our woodstoves (or heating vents) and enjoy happy dreams of spring and growing things.

A Nice Surprise

I am not generally a complainer when it comes to companies and purchases. I usually just accept that the whole "being a consumer" thing is unpleasant and occasionally results in a bad outcome. I have been known more than once to just keep purchased clothing to donate rather than going through the hassle of returning it. If I get a bad bag of apples or something, I just give them to the chickens and move on.

A lot of this has to do with our distance from stores and shipping centers, though. So when I got my last Misfits Market order and the grapes that were in it were already partially inedible on delivery*, I was annoyed enough to do something about it.

Grapes are something we can rarely get in good condition, given our place at the very end of the supply chain. When I buy them at local stores, I expect them to be a bit soft and old. But these grapes were not from the end of the supply chain, and I did NOT expect them to be on their way out as soon as I got them. 

So I went to the Misfits Market website and clicked through a couple of screens to register my complaint.

And what do you know? After about thirty seconds of clicking on boxes, I was brought to a window that asked me if I would like my refund as a credit to my account. And there was $4.99 back on my account. 

I was very impressed. 

I don't know if this would be so easy if I wanted to, say, cancel my account and get actual money back, but since this is only the second time there's been an issue with my produce, I'm still planning on using the service and am quite happy with a refund.

So thank you to Misfits Market for not being a jerk about refunds. And if any of you wanted to try getting a box of produce from a non-jerky company, you can use this link to get $10 off (which also gives me $10 in credit, so thanks!).

*  Only inedible for us, however. We actually call nasty grapes "chicken grapes," because they won't turn their beaks up at a brown, wrinkled, and fermenting grape.

Snapshots: Poppy and Church

A little weekend ride on Bill the Pony.

Cooking eggs.

While I was doing my Church Lady thing, I took some pictures.

There are two of these cool hand-hewn beams that I think might actually pre-date the building (1920s).

A very old organ, last played a decade or so ago by our neighbor Ms. Amelia.

The old confessionals.

The sun was just about to set when I finally left church, and there was some interesting light in the village.

Spotlight on the tree.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.