Snapshots: Spring Themed

A rare selfie at a track meet in which I am not hiding from the blazing sun under my dorky Mom hat. 

The sun was just starting to come out, but most of the meet was cool, cloudy, and windy. Except for the wind, it was such a relief.

After a too-long hiatus from running, I'm easing myself back in with intervals of running and walking.

This week's intervals were too random for me to remember easily, so I wrote it on my hand. I felt kind of like a fourth grader trying to remember homework.

The last of the spring bulbs bloomed in the heat just before Easter and we had a very random assortment on the table.

So long, daffodils and tulips.

And now I have some very exotic flowers on the bookcase, thanks to the purchased flowers for the Easter altar.

The only time of year I'll have store-bought flowers in my house.

Speaking of the altar flowers, I've started culling the wilting ones and rearranging what's left every week until I don't have any in good shape anymore. For this week, I used all the flowers in the arrangement in front of the lectern to fill in the main arrangement where I had to take flowers out. I also cut some lilacs to help fill things out.

More purple in it now, which is not totally liturgically correct for Easter, but oh well.

The arrangements on the saints' pedestals had held up pretty well and only needed a little re-arranging.

The potted hyacinths and tulips had finished blooming, so I just took those home and left the Easter lilies in front of the Holy Family.

Finally, as always, we dyed our hardboiled eggs for our after-church Easter egg hunt and then I made them into deviled eggs.

I am very basic with my deviled eggs: just mayonnaise, mustard, salt, and pepper in the mashed yolks, with paprika on top.

One of our guests at dinner had never heard of doing an egg hunt with real eggs. He's seventeen, so maybe it's a generational thing? I don't remember plastic eggs being a big thing when I was a kid, but it does seem to be all you see now. I refuse just because I'm stubborn and I don't like plastic. Nor do I wish to have more seasonal things to store. Plus, then we wouldn't have deviled eggs after church. 

I concede that I am counter-cultural in this, however. As in so many other things.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: The Easter Feast

Friday 

Short version: Fish sticks, baked potatoes, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: Before Lent started, I bought the biggest available bag of Great Value fish sticks. That was enough for two full meals for our family of six. This was the second of them.

As always, the Great Value ones are just fine, provided you absolutely do not follow the "bake for 18-20 minutes" nonsense on the bag. I baked these for a full hour at 450 degrees and they still could have used more crisping.

The longer baking time makes it convenient for also baking potatoes for an easy side dish, although baked potatoes don't seem to go with fish sticks, somehow. I was going for low effort, though, and this certainly was that.

I didn't even make tartar sauce this time. Everyone made do with ketchup. 

Saturday

Short version: Sausage, leftover pasta or fried potatoes, collard greens or still-frozen green beans

Long version: I cooked one package of Italian sausage links and one of jalapeno/cheddar sausages. The leftover pasta was the baked spaghetti I had made with the can of chicken. There wasn't quite enough of that for everyone, but since A. doesn't eat much pasta and one child doesn't like it that much, I just microwaved a couple of potatoes for them. Those I diced and fried in the pan with the sausage.

Sunday

Short version: Lamb gyros; potatoes and onion; peas with mint; strawberry-rhubarb pie, baked custard, brownies, vanilla ice cream; French 75s

Long version: I liked the French 75s so much when we had them on Fat Tuesday that I got everything to make them again. They're very much a special-occasion drink, what with the champagne and all. The champagne also makes them something best made when there are multiple people drinking, so the whole bottle of champagne is used in one night. There were three of us drinking them this night, which worked out. (We had guests. I did not give any to my minor children, thank you.)

When we butchered the two wethers a few weeks ago, A. boned out two of the back legs. I used both of those for our Easter feast. I shoved garlic into slits all over them, then covered them all with many spices plus olive oil before rolling them up and tying them for roasting.

Not quite done.

I thought one roast wouldn't be enough meat and two would be too much, but we had two guests with us and everyone ate an amazing amount, so we didn't really end up with a lot of leftovers.

I made pita bread so we could make gyros with the lamb. Also hummus and tzatziki sauce, and then I set out lettuce, tomato, pickled onions, and feta cheese. Because more toppings=more better with gyros.

Topping table.

The potatoes were just potato cubes with onion wedges that I covered with olive oil and the same spices that went on the lamb.

Ready for the feast.

I have learned that the best part of holiday desserts for my family is quantity. For that reason, I made a strawberry-rhubarb pie, and then I also made baked custard. I hadn't made that in a very long time, and everyone was very enthused about it. I made it in two smaller casserole dishes so I would have my bigger Pyrex for the potatoes*. One of my smaller casseroles is oval, which meant I had the opportunity to make an Easter egg custard with colored sugar.

The brownies were a last-minute thing I threw in the oven with the custard because, for various reasons, the kids' Easter baskets didn't have the overwhelming amount of chocolate in them that they usually do. And just for fun, I cut the brownies into a cross.

I made a very whimsical dessert table with all of this.

Also featuring Poppy's blanket and some of the flowers I didn't want to use on the church altar.

Anyway. There was a lot of food, all of it delicious, and everyone ate far too much and was pleased with that. Happy Easter!

Monday

Short version: Leftover lamb, mashed potatoes, leftover peas, leftover brownies

Long version: The only part of this meal I had to make this night was the mashed potatoes, because there weren't enough leftover potatoes from the Easter feast.

Tuesday

Short version: Baked beans and rice, ice cream

Long version: I had some baked beans that had been in the refrigerator for some time and needed to be used. There were only two children at home, because the older boys left this day for the state FFA convention.

I also had one serving of baked beans+ground beef in the freezer. I gave that to A. over rice, and then the children had the plain baked beans. This was a very fast meal to get on the table after getting home with Poppy from her First Communion class.

They had ice cream after dinner because Poppy had her first confession at class and I figured there should be something celebratory for that. Ice cream works.

Wednesday

Short version: Salisbury steaks with milk gravy, leftover mashed potatoes or rice, asparagus yay!

Long version: First asparagus!

Right in the pan with the meat.

The grasshoppers got after the asparagus last year and we weren't sure how it would come up this spring. It's looking really good so far, thankfully. Tasting good, too. Yum.

Thursday

Short version: Breakfast sausage patties, leftover Salisbury steak, leftover baked beans, garlic bread, asparagus, raw bell peppers

Long version: I took out one tube of breakfast sausage, which was enough because only A. and Poppy ate it. The third son and I had the leftover Salisbury steak. Everyone but me had the beans and garlic bread. The adults had the asparagus. The children had the raw bell pepper.

As an aside, it is SO much easier to cook for four people rather than six, especially because the missing two are teenage boys. I am seeing my future, and it has a lot less cooking in it . . .

Refrigerator check:

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

* Making two smaller dishes of custard was also helpful because then I had a whole other one to bribe the children to get out of bed on a reluctant Monday morning. Custard is an excellent breakfast.

Easter Altar Flowers

A few years ago I started buying fresh flowers for our church for Easter. I love fresh flowers, but this is the only time I buy them. Easter is the most important holiday in the Catholic church, and I feel like the altar decorations should reflect that.

Arranging flowers is one of my few hobbies. This is convenient, because buying all the arrangements I make at a florist would be several hundred dollars. Buying random assorted bouquets at Walmart and arranging them myself is much cheaper. Also, then I can make them exactly the way I want them.

Gathering the materials.

I bought all of these on Thursday and transported them home in buckets of water I brought with me. These stayed in A.'s relatively cool office until I was ready to put the arrangements together on Saturday.

I started by taking all the bouquets apart and putting like colors together.

Poppy helped me with this.

Staged.

I use the same box every year for the main altar arrangement. Last year, the plastic liner in it was leaking. I discovered to my great satisfaction, however, that the big plastic container of salad greens I bought awhile ago is big enough to function as a liner in this box, so I didn't have to buy a new one.

I don't have any of that foam florist's stuff to stick the stems into. I hate that stuff, anyway. It always falls apart. This year I tried using some of the sheep's wool we had from shearing, but when I got that wet, it compacted too much.

Last year I used criss-crossed branches inside the box to support everything, but that didn't work this year. I think because last year I was using a lot more lilac branches, which are stiffer than flower stems. I ended up finding a piece of chicken wire in the pasture and using that inside the box for structure.

I had several fits and starts with these flowers. They were fighting me. It took me awhile to figure out how to put them together in the way I wanted, with the right shape, height, and color mixing. I spent a little more than two hours on four different arrangements.

The central altar:

The lectern:

The saints' pedestals on either side of the tabernacle:

And then the potted flowers:

I'm not a huge fan of Easter lilies, so I only get a few.

And the bigger picture:

The view from our pew.

This is so much work, but it is also so worth it to me. It's an act of service that has the selfish result of making me very happy when I turn on the lights on Easter Sunday and see all those flowers.

Snapshots: Easter Prep

Happy Easter! We spent much of yesterday preparing for today, including . . .

Dyeing eggs.

This year I just used the light green eggs that were in the ones I get from my friend, rather than buying white eggs at the store. Because I use natural dyes--beet juice, curry powder, and paprika powder--they don't get as dark as if we were using one of those kits. That plus the green eggs made for some pretty subtle colors, but that's okay. They're still good for the egg hunt.

Poppy volunteered to iron the linen napkins for me.

She prefers to do this on the floor.

I had my nimble-fingered children help me skin a lot of chickpeas in preparation for making the hummus that will be a part of our Middle Eastern Easter dinner.

Middle-Easter dinner? No? Okay.

I made a pie. 

Strawberry-rhubarb. The rhubarb is up in the garden but not big enough to cut yet. I used the last bag in the freezer from last year's rhubarb for this pie.

And of course, I arranged the Easter flowers for church. That took a long time, as always. I'm going to do a whole post about that on Tuesday, but for now, here's the mess I made on my floor while I was doing it.

I just let the leaves fall where they may while I was in the middle of it and cleaned up later.

Because I just buy pre-packaged bouquets of flowers at Walmart and then take them apart to arrange them, I always end up with some that just don't fit with the arrangements I'm making. I had quite a few that I separated into different vases at home.

The tiny jar was for Poppy's dresser.

Well, I guess I can show you some of the church flowers, since I didn't really arrange these ones much. This year I bought some potted flowers and set them up in front of the Holy Family.

We can plant the hyacinth and tulip bulbs in our garden after I take them out of the church. 

There you have it! My Easter preparations, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Finger Salad

Friday 

Short version: Scrambled eggs, macaroni and cheese from a box, frozen peas

Long version: Talk about a low-effort meatless meal. However. 

Both of my friends with many chickens gave me a lot of eggs this week, so I had about seven dozen eggs in my refrigerator to use. And the lady at the post office asked me to take the rest of the excess commodities things that were sitting in the post office lobby. That included two cases of macaroni and cheese.

Sounds like dinner to me.

Green peas to relieve the overwhelming yellow and orange of this plate.

Saturday

Short version: Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, collard greens or still-frozen green beans

Long version: The collard greens were the ones I harvested before our vicious cold in January. Those who do not care for collard greens--that is, everyone under 18 years of age in our house--had the still-frozen green beans.

Sunday

Short version: Chicken and rice burritos, collard greens or still-frozen green beans, baked fruit with cream

Long version: The child with the delicate stomach was ready to start eating some solid food. The least-challenging solid food is rice. I had a container of chicken stock I had taken from the freezer that also had the chicken I had pulled off the bones when I made the stock. I used that to make rice with nothing else except salt added, so it was very plain chicken and rice.

For everyone else, I used that chicken and rice to make burrito filling by adding salsa, pinto beans, frozen corn, spices, and cheese.

The baked fruit was two quart jars of apples and one quart jar of pears, just baked with extra spices. I added a bit of maple syrup, too, when I served it. Plus cream on top, of course.

Monday

Short version: Chicken fried rice, crepe cake

Long version: I used more of the chicken and rice to make the fried rice, which also included onions, frozen green peas, some leftover cooked collards, a small bag of beet greens that had been hanging out in the little freezer for a long time, and a little bit of dandelion greens I picked by the back steps. Plus eggs, of course.

I mostly used the dandelion greens because Poppy is always unhappy to see collard greens in anything, even if she can't taste them. But she does love dandelions. When I told her there were dandelion greens in the fried rice, she was so pleased that she didn't remark on the collard greens. She doesn't love fried rice much, in any case, but she was happy I used some of the dandelion greens.

The many shades of green before the rice went in.

We had quite a few crepes left that A. had made after church on Sunday, and I had made strawberry jam, so I layered a few of the crepes with the jam and whipped cream for a much-appreciated Monday dessert.

Tuesday

Short version: All the leftovers, baked beans, and testing treats

Long version: I got home from First Communion class with Poppy and started pulling everything out of the refrigerator. I had just enough leftovers for everyone. I had some more or less plain ground beef I had cooked just to add to my salads that I used to make sloppy joe sandwiches for two of the children. There wasn't actually quite enough meat for that, but I had made baked beans earlier to use up some of the MANY cans of pinto beans the post office lady asked me to take*. I mixed some of the beans in with the meat for the sandwich filling.

I had a bit of that, too, with a little of the leftover chicken and rice.

The other two children had leftover meatloaf with leftover mashed potatoes mixed with cheese.

A. had meatloaf with some of the chicken rice topped with baked beans.

The older boys had standardized testing this day, and had been grumbling that the little kids always get treats when they have to test, but no one gives the older kids anything. So I had promised them I would make them a treat. I made crispy rice treats. And of course, everyone got a couple, not just those who had to take the PSAT this day.

Wednesday

Short version: Hamburgers and baked beans at home, sandwich and salad on the road

Long version: I went to a track meet in the afternoon. There was ground beef in the refrigerator, which A. used to make hamburgers for the four at home when he got back from his afternoon school bus run.

I brought a salami and cream cheese sandwich for the trackster to eat in the car on the way home. He ate that first, and then spent the rest of the ride home eating from the giant container of honey-roasted peanuts I had bought at the grocery store before going to the track meet. That will certainly replace any calories burned while running.

I had the salad I had brought with me. 

In my lap in the car, as always.

I realized when I got to the track meet and was preparing to eat it before going into the meet that I forgot a fork. Usually I have plastic utensils in my car, but those apparently had all been used and not put back.

Curses.

I spent a minute pondering my options: Hike to the meet and try to get a fork at the concession stand, wait to eat until I got home, or eat salad with my fingers.

I went with the last one. 

I did forgo the dressing, to make it less messy. Thankfully, the pickled beets and onions mixed with the egg yolks made a dressing of a sort. It wasn't too bad, actually, although I'm glad no one saw me.

Thursday

Short version: Baked spaghetti

Long version: This day was very busy, with a trip to Walmart to get the flowers for the Easter altar arrangements, a school event from 4:30-6, and then Maundy Thursday Mass at 7 p.m. I was planning to get a rotisserie chicken at Walmart to help me out with dinner, but they didn't have any. Boooo.

So instead, I used the one can of chicken breast I had in the pantry, plus broken spaghetti, tomato sauce, cooked onions from the freezer, spices, and some of the shredded asadero cheese from the freezer to make a casserole that A. heated up in the oven when he got home. Oh, and I also added some of the chopped collard greens that were in the refrigerator. I blended those into the tomato sauce with my immersion blender so they were indistinguishable from the spices.

Sneaky spaghetti.

That was hot when we got home so anyone who wanted it could eat before we went to church. The kids had eaten a lot of snacks at the school event, so they weren't all that hungry, but they ate some, anyway.

Refrigerator check:

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

* Excess commodities food often gets left in the tiny lobby of our tiny post office, and she really wanted it out of her way. So I ended up with three dozen cans of pinto beans.

A Vegetable Lull

The current contents of my refrigerator crisper drawers include five medium carrots, two mini bell peppers, and the last few small interior leaves of romaine lettuce. It has been two weeks since I have purchased any fresh produce at a store, and even that was just a minimal stop at a very small store in a very small town.

And yet, I eat salad every day.

I have been doing this by eking out my remaining lettuce with chopped collard greens from the freezer and relying on pickled beets and onions as other add-ins, besides the carrots and mini bell peppers.

Last night's salad before adding the pickled beets from the jar.

Similarly, vegetables for the rest of my family have mostly been coming from the freezer.

Last night's fried rice included frozen peas, collard greens, beet greens, and a few dandelion greens I picked by the back steps.

There's still cooked cabbage, squash, green beans, peas, and corn in the freezers. There is sauerkraut from what I canned last summer in jars on the office shelves.

We have zero fresh fruit right now, but I do still have canned apples and pears and applesauce. Plus some store canned peaches.

It has been a recurring event in my adult life to have periods of time where the stock of fresh produce in my house is very low, but it doesn't really bother me. It's just part of living really far from stores. And it's why I keep fall-back vegetables and fruit in freezers and jars.

Anyway, it just makes it that much more exciting when I do finally get to the store and come home with such thrilling things as oranges, bananas*, and cucumbers. It's the little things in life.

* My children do actually consider having fresh bananas to be a notable luxury. Low standards, as always.

Snapshots: Many Spring Things

 

Spring on the peach trees.

Spring on my table.

Spring in the garden as A. uses the propane torch thing to burn the emerging weeds.

Spring for the dogs, who are spending a lot of time lying around in the sun and rolling in dirt and dead leaves.

I subbed for a couple of hours in the preschool room on Wednesday, where I spent much of my time playing with one of the students in this bean table.

It's like a water or sand table, but with pinto beans. Much easier to clean up.

Poppy got home from school on Thursday and created the following visual of the days of the school week:

Looks about right.

And last, today is Palm Sunday. Our church is ready.

Waiting on Easter.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.