An Unusual Benefit of Online Shopping

Several months ago I stumbled upon a YouTube series of videos that followed a family living in the mountains of somewhere in Eastern Europe. It was a remote place, and the way of life there was markedly unlike our modern American life. This family heated their house and cooked on a wood-fueled stove, which the mother of the family started every morning.

I also start our woodstove every morning, so I was interested to see how she did it. She used a small stick that she shaved into a firestarter by splitting it very finely with a big knife all on one end.

It looked like a serious drag to have to do that every morning. 

I start our woodstove using the kids' old math books (thin paper that catches easily), torn-up Amazon delivery boxes, and kindling my boys split for me.

The nascent fire.

Five minutes later. 

What that mother wouldn't give for paper and cardboard to easily start her fire, and here I am drowning in it.

As always, a little perspective is an excellent thing.

Snapshots: Mardi Gras

We had an unfortunate start to our new school semester this month. Our new school was supposed to be ready for the students when we got back to school after break. The entire last week of last semester was spent moving into the new classrooms. But when the time came, there were some issues that kept the new facility from passing inspection for the kids to be there.

The old classrooms were already in the process of demolition. There was nowhere for the students to go.

BOOOOO.

The first week of classes was outright canceled. The second week was online. 

Poppy having a cheerily-named Brain Break, which pretty much means an opportunity for the kids to get up and move. This was some weird video where they were hopping around trying to avoid a Yeti.

Not a single person in this house likes online schooling, at all, so we're all relieved that we can go back in person tomorrow. 

The house always looks a little bare after the Christmas decorations are put away, so I put out some Mardi Gras decorations I had.

The latest re-made candles were, coincidentally, purple, which is perfect for Mardi Gras.

I didn't have very many Mardi Gras decorations, so I decided to add something to them. I had seen randomly online somewhere the idea of a Mardi Gras tree, which is just a Christmas tree decorated in the Mardi Gras colors of green, purple, and gold. I liked this idea, so I bought a foot-tall tree, some additional beads, and a dozen small ornaments.

Poppy and I spent some time fluffing up the tree, adjusting the ornament strings to make them smaller (the long strings were ugly and made the tree look sort of hairy), and strategically draping beads.

Poppy asked what we would use for a star. I didn't really have anything, but as she was playing around with the extra gold string we had cut from the ornaments, she discovered that if she pulled along them, they unraveled and got kind of fluffy. She did this to all of the extra strings, and then I took them all and tied them together to make a sparkly, fluffy decoration for the top of the tree.

The finished tree.

I am not a "decor" person, and this is definitely silly, but I love it.

I particularly like how it reflects the candlelight.

I needed just a little bit of tomato for some chicken corn chowder I was making, and I didn't want to open a whole can of them. I remembered a bag of whole tomatoes I had stuck in the freezer just before we left for New Orleans. They were the last of the small garden tomatoes that had been ripening in the kitchen, and I didn't want them to get wrinkly and gross while we were gone. I just rinsed them off and threw them in a bag to put in the freezer.

A taste of summer.

It always seems like it won't be worth the bother of putting such a small quantity in the freezer, but they always get used.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: Accidental Stew

Friday 

Short version: Nachos, raw bell peppers and radishes

Long version: I had quite a bit of the pork taco meat and beans left from the night before, and some of the toppings, too. My first thought was to make burritos with the flour tortillas I also had, but then I remembered the bag of tortilla chips I bought before Christmas and decided to make nachos.

They were really good. I mean, obviously. How could nachos not be good?

Saturday

Short version: Chicken and rice skillet, cucumbers

Long version: I had taken a rooster out of the freezer and cooked it by simply dropping it in water with carrot peelings, onion tops, and bay leaves to simmer until the meat came off easily. It was a fairly small rooster, but there was enough meat on it to make something like this recipe, which relies almost entirely on a ton of caramelized onions for flavor. I still have several bags of commodities onions to use, so I made a pan of caramelized onions and then used that same pan to brown the chicken pieces and cook the rice in the chicken stock. I added a bit of balsamic vinegar, because I knew it would be better with the optional wine but I didn't have any.

I have a really hard time getting rice cooked evenly in a wide skillet, though, every time. Maybe the lid for my biggest skillet doesn't fit tight enough or something, but I always have a layer of crunchy rice on the top. I had to stir it a few times and add more chicken stock, but eventually got it all cooked.

The plethora of onions and the thyme apparently made this taste like turkey stuffing to my family, which was kind of funny. They all liked it, though.

Sunday

Short version: Breakfast sausage and gravy, pinto beans, bread and butter, cucumbers, pumpkin pie with whipped cream or doughnuts

Long version: The "premium" Walmart-brand breakfast sausage is pretty good. I used one of the 12-ounce tubes, which made 5 patties. Then I added some of the leftover caramelized onions to it plus cornstarch and milk to make a gravy.

That would obviously not have been enough for our family, which is why I also took a container of cooked pinto beans out of the freezer. Those I re-heated with more of the caramelized onions, garlic powder, butter, and balsamic vinegar.

I had meant to make cornbread, but I was waiting to see if A. and eldest had eaten in town before I started dinner, and by the time they got home I didn't have time to make the cornbread. So, bread and butter it is.

Not a pretty meal, nor very colorful, but quite tasty.

I made pumpkin pie for Sunday dessert because I always have enough pureed squash to make a double batch of the pumpkin filling when I make pie for Thanksgiving. I freeze half of it for later. I also had a pie crust in the freezer, because the recipe I use makes enough for a double-crust pie and I only used one for the New Year's Day pecan pie. So all I needed to do was add the dairy to the squash mixture, roll out the pie crust, and assemble.

The doughnuts were a box of a dozen Entemann's doughnuts that A. bought when he was at the store. He was going to get ice cream for the children who don't like pumpkin pie, but he didn't have a cooler with him. I have no idea why he went with the box of doughnuts, but he was dismayed to find when he paid for them that they were seven dollars. Coincidentally the same price as a gallon of Walmart ice cream.

They were a fun novelty for the children, anyway, although I do not think he'll be buying them again.

Monday

Short version: Pizzas, carrot sticks and ranch dip, leftover pumpkin pie

Long version: We hadn't had pizza in awhile because A. hadn't been to the one store that carries the big blocks of cheap asadero cheese I use in place of mozzarella. He went the day before, though, and came home with asadero. Thus, pizza.

Only about half the family really likes pumpkin pie, which is why there was some leftover. Not a common fate of desserts in our house.

Tuesday

Short version: Leftover pizza, scrambled eggs, leftover beans

Long version: We had enough pizza left over for everyone to have a couple of pieces. I had eldest son put that in the oven to start heating up while I was at First Communion class with Poppy, and then I quickly scrambled some eggs and re-heated the pinto beans when I got home to fill out the plates.

There were a lot of fruits to choose from after dinner, so I didn't bother with a vegetable.

Wednesday

Short version: Pork, cornbread, frozen peas, baked rice pudding

Long version: Yet another of the giant pork butts, cooked until tender and then fried in its own rendered lard with spices. Predictable, yet still tasty.

The rice pudding is also predictable now, as I pretty much always make it when I have the oven on for so long to cook the pork. It feels more efficient to cook two things for a long time. And no one has ever said we're having rice pudding too often, unlike in this poem.

Thursday

Short version: Unexpected chickpea and pork stew

Long version: I did not intend to make this for dinner until I was in the middle of it. I had opened one of the food-service-sized cans of chickpeas my sister had brought me, as well as a similarly sized can of tomato paste, so my thought was to make chickpeas with tomato. To this end, I made a skillet of caramelized onions, most of which I added to the pot of chickpeas and tomatoes. Also a few cloves of garlic and some paprika and chicken stock.

Then I added salt. Way too much salt, as it turned out. 

Dang it.

In the case of too much salt, more of something else is the only solution. This time, that was potatoes, collard greens, more water, and some of the leftover pork to make stew. This ended up being delicious, so it was a happy accident in the end.

Refrigerator check:

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

The Plague of Scent

The other day, I bought trash bags. I am always careful to check that the bags I'm getting are unscented. I find scented trash bags to be disgusting. If trash is going to smell, it will smell, and the scent of lavender or whatever in the trash bags is not going to help that. 

All is well.

I also needed big garbage bags for the dump. I get the biggest ones of these I can find, and the strongest. I detest small bags or big bags that rip whenever I try to pull them out of the big trash can in the shop. Walmart sells big contractor bags, and that is what I got.

I brought them home, took one out to put it in the can and . . . what is that smell? Are these contractor bags SCENTED?

"May contain a light scent" indeed.

I cannot imagine why my "extra-TOUGH" contractor bags "made for professional cleanup jobs" are scented. It's not a nice scent, either. They smell like a porta potty. Maybe that's what contractors expect in their trash bags?

I don't know, but it's gross and I am displeased. 

Thankfully, these bags are only ever outside, so I'm not confronted with their stench in my house, but still. I think that was unnecessary.

Snapshots: Starting with Epiphany

The Wise Men finally made it to the manger scene on Epiphany.

The whole gang's together.

The next day I put away all the Christmas stuff. This includes the tree, which of course had dropped needles all over the rug in the living room. I know better than to try to use the vacuum to clean those up now, though, because one of my least-favorite things is cleaning out a clogged vacuum. And that is exactly what cedar needles will do, every time.

Thus, I picked up all the needles on the rug by hand.

Fun.

We took the church decorations down that afternoon, and I found that the fake tree there also shed needles. I guess there's no such thing as a non-shedding Christmas tree.

Taking the small chili pepper tree off the table meant I had nothing there. I mentioned to Poppy that it was too bad I didn't have anything for the middle of the table, and she ran off to her room to find something for me.

She made this button flower craft at a school event. Perfect.

A couple of days after that . . .

Cold cattle.

Cold road.

We got around two inches of snow Friday morning. Enough for the kids to play in, at least.

One of her brothers gave Poppy two tiny plastic pigs for Christmas. She decided they needed a nice place to rest, so she made them a bed. She sewed a mattress and blanket for it, too.

She also made some troughs and pig food.

I bought a new mattress for A. and me when I was in town last. When we hauled the old memory foam mattress out, the children begged to keep it to play on for awhile. We couldn't get it to the dump right away anyway, so we left it on the porch, where it became the crash pad for many daredevil jumps from the freezer or the trampoline.

And then, inevitably . . .

Jasper was quite pleased to find such a soft, large bed in his territory and immediately moved in.

I made some more candles from the church candle stubs, which means we have a ready supply for the living room.

I thought using two wicks in this larger hexagonal candle would help it burn down evenly.

It did not.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: In Quantity

Friday

Short version: Bar food for me, leftovers for everyone else

Long version: This was the night I was staying at a hotel. I had a club sandwich and french fries in the hotel bar.

And very large it was, too.

I much prefer eating in the bar instead of the restaurant. There are always interesting people to listen to in the bar. This time, it was a middle-aged construction worker from out of town who struck up a conversation with the table of old hippies near him. He ended up buying them all a round of fireball shots. 

There were lots of leftovers at home from our New Year's Day feast, so that's what the family had.

Saturday

Short version: Cottage pie, cucumber slices

Long version: This particular cottage pie had the usual frozen peas and corn I use in the meat mixture, but also pureed calabaza and finely diced collard greens. Always good to stuff some more vegetables in there.

I made a 10"x15" pan of this, which is the biggest one I have.

Before . . .

And after. Impressive consumption.

I guess everyone was hungry.

Sunday

Short version: Chicken Spanish rice, apple crisp with whipped cream

Long version: I guess this was kind of Spanish rice. I pulled a bag of three chicken leg quarters from the freezer, which would not have been enough just baked as chicken pieces. Therefore, I simmered those to make stock and to get the meat tender, and then used that shredded chicken in something like Spanish rice, with leftover rice, a can of beans, frozen corn, pureed tomatoes, spices, and cheese.

I made the apple crisp with the last bag of apple slices I put in the freezer this fall. I'm trying to clear out the freezer a bit before we have a whole cow to put in there in a couple of weeks.

An excellent freezer-cleaning result.

Monday 

Short version: Ram curry, rice, garlic bread, fruit

Long version: I found one quart jar of ram curry I had frozen in August, according to the date I had written on the container. It had carrots and tomatoes from the garden in it, and then I added collard greens, potatoes, and sour cream to it when I heated it up.

I gave the kids the garlic bread before dinner, just because I had baked some along with the sandwich bread and didn't have any particular plan in mind for it.

I bought apples, bananas, AND oranges at the store on Saturday, so everyone had a piece of fruit after dinner, too. This is a great treat for them, as we do not always have fresh fruit on hand.

Tuesday

Short version: Epiphany lasagna, green salad with vinaigrette, Poppy's brownies

Long version: Lasagna really has nothing to do with Epiphany, which is the feast of the Three Wise Men. I just made it because it's not something I make often and it seemed like a good special-occasion meal to celebrate the last day of our Christmas season. 

I made it with both ground beef and ground Italian sausage, as well as ricotta and grated asadero cheese. I did not have enough asadero cheese, so I also used some Latino cheese, which is a salty, melty cheese that tastes kind of like a cross between mozzarella and parmesan.

It needed more cheese, but was, of course, still good.

One child doesn't like pasta with tomato sauce, and a couple of others were starting to come down with a cold, so only about half of this was eaten this night.

Poppy made dessert. Brownies, of course. Her specialty.

Wednesday

Short version: Leftover lasagna, raw radishes

Long version: Nah.

Thursday

Short version: So much food

Long version: We had four additional young men join us for dinner this night. In order to feed ten people, eight of them heavy feeders, I made one of the giant pork roasts A. had bought into taco meat by cooking it in the oven for a very long time with dried red chilis, onion, garlic, salt, and vinegar. Then Poppy helped me make a large batch of corn tortillas. 

I also made a pot of pinto beans. These just had salt in them. However, when I drained off the pork liquid and de-fatted it, I used my immersion blender to puree the remaining solids. I had thought I would serve it with the pork, but it was a bit too salty on its own. It was very flavorful, though, so I dumped it in with the beans instead. Good call. And good beans.

So! The tortillas, beans, and meat went on the woodstove to stay warm as everyone served themselves. Then on the liquor cabinet, I set out grated cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickled onions, sour cream, salsa, pureed roasted green chilis, and two kinds of hot sauce.

I put all this out buffet-style so everyone could just make their own plates. And get more easily. 

Everyone got seconds, and I still had two tortillas left after dinner. I often don't make enough tortillas for everyone to have as many as they want, so I was pleased with that.

I didn't serve a separate vegetable, because I had put out a tray of carrots, bell peppers, and radishes with ranch dip while everyone was sitting around talking before dinner. 

For dessert, I had made a baked rice pudding--half with raisins, half without--and then also set out the rest of the Lindt truffles from Christmas, and some of the Walker's shortbread one of the boys got for his birthday.

Dessert waiting on everyone to come back in after their trip outside to learn how to box from A. We have both a heavy bag and a small focus bag, plus three pairs of gloves, so everyone got a turn.

Refrigerator check:

Yes, the slider on the deli drawer is broken yet again. They last about six months in our house. I have another one arriving on Tuesday.

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

The Christmas Pilgrimage

Last December, on a very bright, moonlit night, we took a walk to the unused church I can see from my kitchen window that our neighbor spotlights every Christmas season.

Poppy remembered this and wanted to do that again. Right before Christmas, however, I was disabled with a pinched nerve and wasn't walking anywhere. Right after Christmas, A. was hunting with the younger two boys. Then it was really windy.

But finally, Saturday night it wasn't windy, it wasn't cold, and everyone was here. So we walked to the church in the dark.

Well, there was still a little bit of light in the western sky, but it was mostly dark.

We started out using flashlights because of the clouds, but about halfway to the church, the moon rose above the clouds. Just like last year, it was bright enough to turn the flashlights off.

Nature's flashlight.

Getting closer. (The brightest light is the church. The smaller light to the left is our neighbor's house.)

We stayed at the church awhile, playing shadow puppets on the wall.

Yet another Christmas tradition observed, and just in time. Today is Epiphany, the feast commemorating the visit of the Magi to the newborn Jesus. This is the last day of the Christmas season for us. The kids all get one more present under the tree, as well as a few more Lindt truffles. I'm making a lasagna and Poppy is making brownies, and that's a wrap on Christmas 2025. The decorations will be put away tomorrow.

How about you? How long do you leave your Christmas decorations up?