A Milk Update

Because I can't leave you with yesterday's cliffhanger . . .

Success!

I gambled on trying the tiny store in the village yesterday afternoon rather than driving a long way for a full grocery run, and was rewarded with the last gallon of milk they had. So now we'll be okay until A. goes to the bigger town for his hay run on Friday, which he can combine with a trip to Walmart for all the groceries.

Thus ends this week's milk saga. 

The Milk Situation

I spend more time that your average person plotting about milk. This is a result of both our remote location so far from stores, and the fact that we just go through so much milk. 

We will use five gallons a week of milk, if we have it. Keeping that much milk on hand at all times is very difficult when the nearest store is 60 miles away. And that store doesn't have reliably good milk, either.

Here's the breakdown for our milk supply*.

There is a very tiny kind of convenience store that's about 10 miles away that sometimes has milk. It's good quality, but sometimes it's all been purchased. And often, the store isn't open when it's supposed to be. So that's not a reliable source.

The next-closest store is 60 miles away. They have a good quantity of milk on hand at all times, but it often goes bad quickly, or is actually kind of off when we open it. I'm guessing that's because they're at the end of the supply lines and so the milk has had to travel a long time and be exposed to a lot of loading and unloading temperature changes on a truck. So I avoid buying milk there if I can.

There are a few regular grocery stores within 90 miles that always have milk, but one of them has the same problem of quality as the closer store because it's on the same trucking route. In fact, almost all the stores we go to have some problem with quality and longevity. More often than not, milk starts to separate or just plain taste bad before we get to the end of the four or five gallons we buy at a time.

The absolute best place to buy milk is Walmart. It is always fresh, it rarely goes bad within the week, and it's the cheapest, too. But of course, there is only one Walmart we can get to, and it's 90 miles away. 

Where we buy milk has everything to do with where we need to be for something else, usually a basketball game or a hay run in the winter.

And how much of this I want to stare at to get to it.

So figuring out when and where to buy milk this week looks like this:

We currently have 3/4 of a gallon of milk left. The last gallon of milk we opened from that same grocery run started separating immediately, which means this one will probably not last long. I can probably water it a little bit and make it last two days, but that's about it.

I had been planning to go to Walmart on Thursday and then stop at a basketball game on my way home, since I had to be going that way anyway. But now that basketball game isn't happening.

So.

Will the very small store in the next village over be open today? Will they have milk? If yes and I can get even one gallon of milk, we're good until Friday. The hay place in the big town with the Walmart is open on Fridays, so A. could go get milk then.

I could just go to Walmart this morning, bypassing the small store entirely, but that would be a trip solely to go to the grocery store, which feels like a waste because it's so far.

If I can't get milk at the small store and don't go to Walmart today, we will be out of milk for at least two days. This happens somewhat regularly and it's not the end of the world, but it's annoying.

I know someone is going to say, "Why don't you just get a milk cow?" Because I do not want a milk cow. I know exactly how much work that would be for me, and frankly, this sort of convoluted planning is easier for me than milking every day, sterilizing equipment, making cheese, etc.

Anyway, that's where I am today: Pondering whether I want to drive two hundred miles roundtrip for groceries. Stay tuned.

* I bet you never expected anything so fascintating when you showed up today, right? Right. 

Snapshots: A Selfie and Lambs

First up, a rare selfie from the previous week: 

Might as well take advantage of the clean hospital mirror, I guess.

There were no lasting issues from the metal that got in that son's eye, thank goodness.

Next! Spirit week the week of homecoming does not fill me with spirit, because I am really bad at coming up with outfits and costumes for all the children to wear for every theme day. It's like Halloween for a week straight. It's not my favorite.

But this year I did good! I came up with some really good outfits for dress like a celebrity--one son won by dressing like our UPS guy, who is for sure a celebrity here in our remote county--and Poppy won on the day they were supposed to dress like a first responder or a hero by wearing her brothers' old Army uniform costume.

I don't have any photos of that for you, but I do have this one of a child being an outlaw on a totally random day at our house.

Any day is a good day to be an outlaw. As I recall, I got held up for some cookies.

The older boys were gone on an all-day FFA trip the day before homecoming, so I told them I would iron their clothes for the homecoming dance for them. I strongly dislike ironing, so this was a very generous offer for me. 

I used starch and everything.

I was grumbling to myself as I was ironing, but as I told A., I really shouldn't be complaining that they want to look nice instead of slumping around in sweatpants or something.

All the special-occasion clothing last week, plus all the activities that kept me away from home, made me very grateful to have the clothes dryer so I could get laundry done when I needed to.

I have not, however, abandoned my clotheslines by any means, and I was happy to be able to use them this weekend for the laundry that needed to be done again.

Dry clothes in the setting sun.

Another lamb was born on Friday, just in time for the weather to warm up, thankfully.

The two older and bigger lambs on the left, tiny new lamb on the right.

So far, they're all ewe lambs. We have one more ewe that is still pregnant, and we're hoping for at least one male lamb for the freezer next fall. We shall see.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Homecoming Week

Friday 

Short version: Beans and rice, concession food at the game, leftovers at home

Long version: The cheerleader had a basketball game to cheer at, to which I also brought the younger two boys. They all had some pinto beans with butter and vinegar over leftover rice before we left, and then they all bought their own food at the concession stand at the game. Two had pizza and one had Frito pie, I think.

The remaining child at home had the last of the leftover lamb stew. A. had leftover elk burgers. I had a salad before I left.

Saturday

Short version: Spiral ham, baked potatoes, tomato and cucumber salad with feta

Long version: When ham was on sale for a dollar a pound around Christmas, I bought a few. This was one of them. Since the oven was on to bake the ham, I made baked potatoes.

I was very grateful I made the ham this day, as the rest of the week got very busy. The ham helped. So did canned refried beans and tortillas.

I had half a cucumber to use up, and I had found the good feta at the store I went to the other day, so I used some grape tomatoes to make a salad with those two things. Plus pickled onions. It was good, but nowhere near as good as the same salad I made a few months ago with cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden. Alas for garden produce.

Sunday

Short version: Not-stuffed shells, Italian sausage, peppers and onions, green salad with vinaigrette, pots de creme with cream

Long version: Awhile ago, A. brought home "jumbo" pasta shells and ricotta cheese. I was pretty sure this meant he wanted me to make stuffed shells. Unfortunately, I didn't have any asadero cheese--my mozzarella substitute--until this week, so it had to wait. And then when I went to make them, I found the jumbo shells were not actually that big and looked like they would be impossible to stuff. So I used all the same ingredients to make a baked pasta dish that was kind of like baked ziti. On my sister's recommendation, I didn't pre-boil the shells, instead just adding extra water to the pan with the sauce and dry shells, baking it covered until it was mostly done, then adding the cheese. This worked well. Thanks, sis!

I also made one package of Italian sausage, because the pasta wouldn't have been enough. And I had some peppers that were getting wrinkly, so I threw those in the oven with some onion and olive oil to roast, too.

An Italian-American feast.

I hadn't made pots de creme in a long time. It didn't fit our Italian theme, but as we all know, America is a melting pot. And that means that I, as an American, am free to serve a French (ish) dessert with an Italian (ish) meal.

I was informed by everyone that it was the smoothest pots de creme ever. I don't actually know why it was any different, so I guess I can't re-create it, but I guess it was nice that I got it just right this time.

Monday

Short version: Chicken, bean, and cheese quesadillas, raw tomatoes

Long version: I took the younger two children with me to their brother's basketball scrimmage in the evening, which meant I had about an hour to feed everyone between getting home from work and leaving again. I thought it was an opportune time to use one of the cans of chicken I bought awhile ago for rushed evenings. All I did was mix the drained chicken with salsa and put it in tortillas with cheese and refried beans. A serviceable meal, if far from gourmet. And only nominally homemade, but that's the way this week went.

The tomatoes were something labeled "cocktail tomatoes." I don't know what these are or what sort of cocktail they would be used for. They're small tomatoes on the vine, basically. They were a lot cheaper than the cherry tomatoes, although not as good. Good enough, though.

Tuesday

Short version: Rushed and late casserole, carrot sticks with curry dip, brownies

Long version: I had to sub for a teacher this day, and then I stayed after school to wait for Poppy to finish cheerleading practice. We had the older boys' friend staying with us this night so I could bring the three FFA boys to school for a 5:30 a.m. departure for a wool-judging clinic. Having a guest--and a guest who is a perpetually hungry teenage boy, at that--meant that I was not going to be getting by with quesadillas.

So I got home at 5:15 p.m. and started microwaving potatoes to chop and add to chopped ham, plus butter, the last of some chicken fat and juices, and garlic powder. I browned that under the broiler, and then added a bunch of grated cheddar to melt in. That was the casserole. 

At the same time, I cut up some carrot sticks and put those on the table with some curry dip (sweet curry powder+mayonnaise) for the hungry children. And I made the brownies.

We didn't eat until about 6 p.m., which is pretty late for us, but at least there was enough food. There was even a small serving of the casserole left to be my lunch at work the next day. Yay.

Wednesday

Short version: Lamb steaks, bread and butter, green salad with vinaigrette, bread with jam

Long version: This night we had another child-guest with us, but this was Poppy's friend, so she ate way less than our guest the night before (who happened to be her older brother). The FFA travelers came home hungry, and I luckily had half of a lamb steak left for them.

The bread and jam was the dessert stand-in, since I was working on Tuesday when I had been planning to bake cookies.

Thursday

Short version: Bean and cheese quesadillas, homecoming food

Long version: Crazy day for homecoming. I brought the three non-basketball-playing children home after the pep rally to gather all their required apparel* before going to the basketball player's game at 4 p.m. We were home about half an hour, which was long enough to make the three kids a quesadilla using canned refried beans, cheese, and the "extra grande" flour tortillas A. bought at the store.

They don't even fit in my biggest skillet, but if I fold them over, they mostly do, so I guess that's good enough.

We were at the homecoming festivities all night, so everyone got food at the concession stand, too. Mostly things involving more cheese, like pizza and nachos. Not the healthiest night, but homecoming comes but once a year, I guess.

I had a piece of the quesadilla one child didn't eat, plus some cottage cheese with strawberry jam, before we left at 3:30 p.m. and was so tired when we got home at 10 p.m. from the community dance that I wasn't hungry for anything but my bed. Thank goodness my friend offered to drop the older boys off on her way home from the dance.

Refrigerator check:

Needs some re-stocking.

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

* Poppy needed her cheer uniform plus a dress for her job as the queen's crown-bearer, the eldest son needed nice clothes because he was on the homecoming court, and the basketball player needed nice clothes brought to him for the community dance that evening.

The Bible in Less Than a Year

I decided last year that I would read the Bible. It seemed kind of dumb that as much of a reader as I am, I had never read the whole Bible, arguably the most influential book for all the literature of the following two thousand years. 

I spontaneously started on Ash Wednesday last year, which was in February. I didn't pick that day on purpose; that's just when my Bible was delivered. I ordered a new one because we only had a King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims Bible, neither of which are written in a style I prefer*. I more or less randomly bought something labeled the New Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Anglicized Text Bible. I didn't want a "study" Bible with a million footnotes. I just wanted to read the text.

So I started right at the beginning and just . . . read.

I didn't have a particular number of pages to read a day or anything, though I did have the goal to finish the whole thing in a year. Some days I read a lot. Some days I didn't read it at all. 

I finished last week, so it didn't take me quite a year.

Some random takeaways:

Man, those Old Testament books with all the battles are rough to get through. They're worse than the genealogical lists of names, in my opinion. I did actually read all those names. I found it interesting which names have survived to this day as popular names and which have been abandoned.

My favorite book was the Book of Sirach, which I had never read before. Good advice in that one, and easy to read.

The Book of Sirach in my actual Bible. I did not mark any passages, because I detest reading marked-up books. Too distracting.

It was surprisingly affecting to read all four of the Gospels all together. You know what's coming, but it's still shocking every time.

Also shocking is what Jesus is recorded as having really said. The popular idea of him as some kind of feel-good hippie is so far off from the actual teachings in the Gospels that it's actually funny.

Paul's letters are very, very interesting to read in their entirety. His personality comes through quite clearly.

I liked the version I had, and it was relatively easy to get through. 

So now I'm wondering what I should read next. A. suggested the Catechism of the Catholic Church. That would certainly be a challenge and would probably take another year. Maybe longer.

Have you ever read the Bible? What did you think?

* And of course, the King James Bible isn't Catholic and thus does not include all the books I wanted to read.

Snapshots: The Long-Anticipated Appliance

First, for my mother:

Look, Ma! I have a dryer!

In actual fact, I have had this dryer for some time now. I purchased it a month ago. It was delivered a bit over a week after I bought it. A. was very prompt in setting it up that very day, hooking up the vent and all. Which is when he discovered that the three-prong plug on the dryer was not the same as the three-prong outlet on our wall.

Sigh.

We had some kind of older style of 220-volt three-prong outlet. So he sent me the link to order the proper cord, we waited some more for that to be delivered, and he put it on yesterday.

And then I washed a load of laundry at 4:15 p.m. which was dry before I went to bed. The miracles of the modern age, indeed.

It's too bad I didn't have a (functional) dryer during our last spell of cold weather, during which I was literally hanging up laundry when it was 14 degrees outside. We did, however, have the good old woodstove. And I did figure out how to cook on it.

Some of you might remember the great pleasure I got out of cooking on our woodstove at Blackrock. The woodstove there was literally just a giant cast-iron box, which was perfect for cooking on. The whole thing was like a stove burner. Every part of it was blazing hot at all times. Good for pumping out heat and cooking on. Not so good for keeping small children from branding themselves accidentally. 

The woodstove in this house has a kind of metal grate enclosing the entirety of the firebox. Much better for non-branded children, but not so good for cooking on. The surface of this grate is not hot enough to simmer  a pot of water. Or food.

However! I no longer have tiny children! They can all understand the concept of keeping their bodies away from hot surfaces! And that meant I could lift the top of the safety grate thing to access the firebox itself.

Which is what I did to cook this pot of pinto beans.

Which then went into this chili.

I also kept a covered saucepan of water on there to stay hot, which was handy because our constantly-used electric kettle died right in the middle of this cold snap. We do have a microwave to heat water for tea or A.'s instant coffee, but the children were home for a couple of days doing their schooling online, and when our microwave is running for more than a minute, it messes with the Wi-Fi in most of the house and makes their Zoom meetings drop. 

Not on Zoom, but still using the Wi-Fi to do an online learning program for school.

So when A. went into the kitchen to get more coffee or tea, which is a frequent occurrence on very cold days, he could just use the already-hot water on the stove and microwave it for about thirty seconds to get it to a true boil.

 I also kept an uncovered pan of water on the stove to evaporate and put some much-needed moisture into the very dry air. And, as you can see, to thaw some frozen lamb stock for the coming chili.

I did order another kettle, which arrived a couple of days ago. The one we had was no longer available, so I got one that looked pretty much the same. Unfortunately, it doesn't heat quite as quickly, and also the button is on the handle at the top, rather than a small lever at the bottom. This makes it harder to find in the dark kitchen, which is where I hit the switch before I start getting dressed.

Still boils the water, though. And makes that trippy blue light.

Also related to the stretch of very wintery weather was the lamb carcass. A. slaughtered the last ram lamb some time ago and hung it in the tree out front to age. We were planning on butchering it on the really bad weather day when we would be inside anyway. But when he took it down from the tree in the morning, it was frozen solid. So we had to leave it inside to thaw. Our non-carpeted and relatively warm spots for this were pretty limited, so we put on the floor of the dining room.

I spy with my little eye . . .

Amusingly, every one of the children woke up, came into the dining room, and said not one word about the lamb carcass on the floor. Too accustomed to such things to comment on it, I suppose.

We never got to it that day, though, so we moved it into A.'s office until we could get to it. That room isn't really heated much above freezing, and the lamb had been frozen for the better part of its aging, so we figured it could use some more time to age properly. It did this on top of my washing machine, which is also in A.'s office.

And then I needed to actually use the washing machine, so we moved the carcass again. This time on top of the dog crates that were also in A.'s office. It seemed pretty mean that the dogs were sleeping in these crates literally right under all that delicious meat, but it would also have been mean to leave them outside when it was zero degrees. So they did indeed sleep under the lamb for several nights until we finally got around to cutting it up.

There you have it! My (winter) life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Away

Friday 

Short version: Ham and potatoes, leftovers, raw radishes

Long version: We had been thinking this day we might cut up the ram lamb that had been aging for a couple of weeks, in which case I would have cooked some of the backstrap for dinner. But then A. was busy most of the day preparing for the awful weather coming our way, so we didn't do the butchering.

I had prepared for this possibility by taking out of the freezer the last few cups of ham left from Christmas. I added that to some microwaved and chopped potatoes, fried it all, added cheese, and that was for the children. 

Last-minute food.

A. had the last of the lamb and chickpeas from the night before, plus the last of some leftover rice. I had a salad with hardboiled eggs in it.

Saturday

Short version: Italian sausage, pasta with pesto, frozen green peas

Long version: When I was at the overwhelmingly abundant grocery store in Albuquerque awhile ago, I found a store-brand version of Italian sausage. I bought four packages, which was all they had. I cooked two of them this night. Because, again, we had not gotten to the butchering and I needed something quick to thaw and cook.

Italian sausage is the only kind of sausage everyone in my family likes. I thought these were just okay, but the rest of the family as thrilled and told me I should always have it on hand. Sorry, guys. Two hundred miles is a little far to drive for sausage.

The pesto was the cubes I had frozen from the garden basil. A nice taste of summer on what was for sure a very wintery day.

Sunday

Short version: Green chili elk cheeseburgers, oven fries, squash or cucumbers, baked strawberries and rhubarb with cream

Long version: I was baking bread this day, so I used some of the dough to make buns. And then I made elk burgers to put on those buns. Plus some of the pureed roasted green chili from the freezer to make them that icon of New Mexico: The green chili cheeseburger.

All the male family members elected to have the green chili. Us girls are wimps and stuck with ketchup.

I used frozen strawberries from the store, rhubarb from the garden, and peach jam I had canned this summer for the baked fruit. My original plan had been to make a cobbler with it, but I figured with the buns, we had enough bread in this meal. So it was just baked fruit and then we poured cream on it.

Monday

Short version: Elk and bean chili, strawberry/rhubarb cobbler with whipped cream

Long version: The day before I had thawed about four pounds of ground elk. I used about three pounds for the burgers--and yes, they were all eaten that night, welcome to my life--leaving me with a pound to use this day. Chili works well to stretch a pound of meat into something that will feed the ravenous hordes in my house.

Also, it was snowing, blowing, and way below freezing all day, so the woodstove was cranking. And that meant I could simmer the pot of chili on there.

Woodstove chili.

This was the very first day since we've lived here that I've cooked on this woodstove. I'll tell you all about that later. But I did cook on it, first simmering a pot of pinto beans, most of which went into this chili.

Also in the chili: The rest of the pureed squash, some pureed green chili, and the liquid and fat from cleaning out the pan I had broiled the elkburgers on the day before. Thrifty. And delicious.

There were actually leftovers of the previous night's baked fruit. To that, I added a few more frozen strawberries and more sugar, and then topped it with a sweetened biscuit dough to make a small cobbler in a pie pan. I had to use dry milk for the milk in the biscuits, as we were getting very low on milk, but I buy whole milk powder for just such occasions, so it worked out fine.

A heartening end to a day of the dreaded virtual schooling.

A. was at first taken aback by the idea of whipping cream to top this, telling me that ice cream was always served with cobbler when he was a boy. We had no ice cream, however, and he did say the whipped cream was a good substitute for the ice cream. I had no idea of what is traditional to serve with cobbler, because it wasn't something I really ate as a kid. But whipped cream has A.'s seal of approval now, so there you go.

Tuesday

Short version: Ham sandwiches, generic corn chips, and Reese's peanut butter cups on the road, Spanish rice and peanut butter cookies at home

Long version: The basketball player had an away game that was only about thirty miles from the town in which I can get the giant blocks of asadero cheese. Asadero is what I use in place of mozzarella. It's full-fat, slightly saltier, and much better than the part-skim, low-moisture mozzarella that is typically my only other option for pizza and things. This one store is the only one that carries the asadero, and we hadn't been there in awhile, so I had run through my freezer stash.

All this to say that I went to the store before going to the basketball game. I had asked the basketball player what he likes to get at Subway, since there is a Subway in the very small town his game was in. I figured I could get him a sandwich before the game and then we could just get in the car and drive home while he ate, so we'd get home earlier. 

But when he told me that what he usually gets is a ham sandwich with just cheese and mustard on it, I decided I would just buy the ingredients for a sandwich at the store. I could get ingredients for about four sandwiches for the cost of one sandwich at Subway. So that is what I did.

I had brought some of my own bread with me, originally thinking I would use that for his sandwich. But then I got him actual sandwich rolls, and I used the bread for my own. So I made sandwiches on my lap in the car before I went into the game.

Lap sandwich.

He also had the store-brand Fritos and I bought a package of snack-size Reese's peanut butter cups. He had two of those, and I gave one to everyone at home when we got home.

I had left a pot of rice mixed with leftover chili and cheese for dinner for the rest of the family, plus the remainder of the peanut butter cookies I had frozen earlier in the week.

Wednesday

Short version: Emergency Sonic on the road, lamb stew and garlic bread at home

Long version: I had made the lamb stew the day before, and the garlic bread when I was baking bread on Sunday. I figured it would make for a nice after-work meal. A. ended up serving this meal, because I was in the small city at the emergency room with a kid who got a piece of metal in his eye when he was grinding metal in shop class.

The doctor didn't see anything still in his eye, thankfully, but by the time we got out of there, it was 6 p.m. and we had an 90-minute drive still to get home. So we went to the Sonic near the hospital. The eye patient got a double bacon cheeseburger and onion rings. I got a kid's meal with a cheeseburger and tater tots, which is apparently only two dollars on Wednesdays. A happy coincidence.

Also, the Sonic guy handed us some random mozzarella sticks for free. I don't know if someone ordered them and then didn't pick them up, or if they made them accidentally, or what. But they got eaten. Most of them were eaten by the home crew, actually, because we shared when we got home.

Thursday

Short version: Dad's special bacon cheeseburgers, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

Long version: A. and I finally butchered the ram lamb this day. The cold weather allowed us to keep it all week until we finally got around to it. We ground some of the lamb meat, and while we had the grinder out, we ground some more elk, too. A. used some of the ground elk to make bacon cheeseburgers while I was at another basketball game. I had thought I would be home around 5:30, but the game was later than I thought. 

I brought the younger two to the game with me. They bought themselves a piece of pizza each from the concession stand. A. made a cheeseburger for one of them and the basketball player when we got home around 7 p.m. 

I had a rice cake with cream cheese and ham on it before I left. And then some cookies when I got home.

Refrigerator check:

The only way to get eggs for less than $6 a dozen right now is to buy them five dozen at a time. Then they're about $5 a dozen. Boo.

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

Winter Flowers

On Sunday afternoon, in anticipation of a long day inside on Monday because of wretched weather, I went for a run.

As I trotted around our ghost village, I passed some plants on the side of the road that I remembered noting in the summer. They looked like small corn plants, and I had guessed they had grown from some feed that fell out of our neighbor's truck. There were only a few of them, but they stood out because they had turned red as they died and dried out, and they still maintained their red color.

A lot of the plants here turn interesting colors in the fall when they die, mostly reds, oranges, and yellows. If I pick them earlier in the fall, they will stay those colors in the house. But if they stay out, the colors get much more muted when the very cold weather arrives. These corn plants (or whatever) had stayed quite red.

So I decided to pick one of them and make a winter arrangement with whatever else I could find. I gathered several different things on my last lap around the village, and when I got home, I put it all together.

I used sunflower seed heads as my anchor flowers, with dried kochia and grasses as the background plants.

The sunflower seed heads are a range of colors, from a darker orangish brown, to light brown, to even white.

Close up of the plant that started it all.

This is obviously a highly flammable arrangement, so we have to careful with the candles on the table. 

Looks cool, though.

I find this kind of flower/weed arranging to be the most satisfying. Making something beautiful from nothing special is my favorite thing to do. And I'm happy to have something pretty to look on my table again.

Snapshots: Winter Prep

I spent a few hours at church on Friday with some of the children, putting away the Christmas decorations, cleaning, and changing the altar cloths from the white of the feast days to the green of ordinary time.

Christmas church.

Ordinary church.

And the Infant of Prague in his ordinary green robe.

It was remarkably warm on Friday, much to the pleasure of the two lambs we have now.

Both female.

We knew, however, that some nasty weather was on the way, so we spent the rest of Friday preparing for it. I assigned each of the children a chore involving firewood.

Filling the wood holder near the door, splitting kindling, picking up kindling, and filling the wood holder inside.

The snow, wind, and cold arrived on Saturday.

Brrr.

There was a lot of reading by the woodstove.

Sharing the stove with the frozen sausages thawing.

Even colder weather is expected in the next couple of days, so we'll see if we end up going to school. 

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Elkloaf

Friday 

Short version: Oven barbecue chicken, roasted potatoes, frozen peas, calabaza, chocolate chip cookies

Long version: I took out two of the big packages of chicken leg quarters to thaw, knowing that would be more than we needed for dinner. So when I roasted them, I kept them plain except for salt and pepper, and then added (homemade) barbecue sauce to just about 3/4 of them at the end of the baking. That way I had some plain ones left over for something else.

I had used both my half-sheet pans to make cookies earlier in the day--chocolate chip with crushed almonds--and so I used one of those for the chicken and one for the potatoes without bothering to wash them. 

I had also baked one of the big calabazas earlier in the day and pureed it all, so we had some of that too.

And apparently I took a picture:

Of A.'s plate, I do believe.

Saturday

Short version: Elk meatloaf, garlic bread, mashed potatoes, maple carrots, chocolate chip cookies

Long version: We had some unexpected guests come stay with us, so the plan I had for the leftover chicken was not going to be enough food for everyone. Quick-thawing ground elk to the rescue! Which I used to make the meatloaf.

I let the kids eat the garlic bread while we were waiting on dinner, because we ate later than we usually do and they were very hungry. I had been planning on saving the bread for some other day, but I didn't have any particular plan in mind for it, so it seemed like appeasing hungry children was a good use for it.

The carrots were a bag of the blanched carrots that I stuck in the oven in a covered casserole while the meatloaf was baking until they were soft, then I just added butter and a small amount of maple syrup to them.

And I didn't even have to make a dessert, since I already had cookies on hand. Yay for on-hand cookies.

Sunday

Short version: Chicken and bean toasted burritos, raw radishes and bell peppers, vanilla ice cream with maple syrup

Long version: This was the leftover chicken I had been planning to use the night before. I just heated it up with salsa and spices, and then made toasted burritos with it, cheese, and canned refried beans.

Monday

Short version: Choice of leftovers

Long version: A. and two children had leftover meatloaf and mashed potatoes, plus either pureed calabaza or raw vegetables.

The other two children wanted the chicken and vegetable soup I had made on Saturday with the leftover chicken bones and some meat. They also had cheese with their soup.

I had a salad with some leftover chicken in it.

Tuesday

Short version: Lamb curry (with chutney!), rice, peanut butter cookies

Long version: I took out a bag of lamb steaks that came from the back leg. This means they were quite tender meat that didn't need to be cooked a long time. I cut off the bony ends of them and used those pieces to make a stock, in which I cooked the onions, potatoes, carrots, peas, and diced lamb that came from the rest of the steaks. And I always add cream at the end to curry. 

I also had some pureed squash in the refrigerator, because our elderly neighbor --the one with whom we had butchered the bull--gave A. an odd squash she grew that she said did really well here. 

Luckily, it just barely fit in my biggest pan on the diagonal.

I pureed the resulting cooked squash, so I threw a few spoonfuls of that into the curry. 

And then last time I had cooked split peas, I made a whole pot and then froze some flat in quart bags for future curry-making. So I took some of those of the freezer to add to the curry too. The split peas and the squash thicken it nicely, as well as bulking it up and adding some more flavor and protein.

I am still very pleased to have the green tomato chutney again, even if only about half the family eats it on their curry.

These peanut butter cookies.

That recipe fills the cookie jar nicely.

Wednesday

Short version: More leftovers

Long version: Two kids had leftover meatloaf in sandwiches.

Very large sandwiches, as it turned out.

One had meatloaf with the last of the mashed potatoes. One kid and A. had leftover curry and rice. I had a salad with the last of the leftover chicken in it. 

Many containers removed from the refrigerator, which is always nice.

Thursday

Short version: Lamb and chickpeas, mashed potatoes

Long version: I had two big lamb steaks that I hadn't used for the curry. After simmering those so I could pull the meat off, I combined that lamb with already-cooked chickpeas I took out of the freezer, random pork stock from the freezer, duck stock from the freezer, some whole frozen tomatoes from the freezer, onion, garlic, and yogurt at the end. Plus some cornstarch to thicken it and make it saucy. That's what went over the mashed potatoes.

This is definitely the time of year when I shop my freezers heavily.

No, I did not forget to list the vegetable. I didn't make one. Oh well.

Refrigerator check:

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

Old Snapshots

I went into "New Post" this morning with absolutely no idea what I was going to write. So I thought, "Well, there's always photos."

And then I scrolled down my photos collection and started grabbing old ones to look at with you. Fun!

This, for instance, is exactly a year ago today, when we had terrible cold and rime.

This was the weather that froze our pipes for a few days. Good times. (Not really.)

We have a weekend of very cold, windy, and snowy weather coming up, and you'd better believe we're going to be extra careful of our pipes.

Here's a close-up of Cora from a couple of summers ago.

Glaring at me because I insist on putting children on her back and not letting her eat the delicious grass she's walking right past.

And here's Odin in the verdant grass of a wet summer a couple of years ago.

Well, as verdant as it ever gets around here.

Also from that summer: a gaggle of lambs.

Reclining at their ease in the sun. The lamb that was born yesterday morning has yet to experience this kind of luxury, poor thing. 

And I'll leave you with a dog photo:

Good old Jasper, always at my feet.

Snapshots: Winter Weather

 I put away all the Christmas stuff on Tuesday.

Getting all the nativity pieces back in this styrofoam holder was rather like a puzzle.

Wednesday didn't start out too well. I knocked over a jar of vinegar while I was turning on the light, and then I somehow managed to knock over my entire cup of coffee. I don't even know how I did that.

Cleaning it up required getting everything off this counter so I could mop it all up. And then I had to make more coffee.

The day improved when I got a call at 5:15 a.m. that we were going to have a two-hour delay because of fog. Hooray! Everyone can sleep in! No inspirational music necessary. 

It was pretty cold in my office when I finally got to school. Mostly because I don't actually have heat in there, except this very small space heater.

Which I park under my desk to trap as much heat as possible.

The next day, we had some really terrible wind in addition to cold. It was no weather to be out in. This cow at one of our bus stops agreed.

Pretty sure she was watching the house door, hoping to make a break for it.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.