T.T.: Halloween Compensation

This week, as I'm sure you all know, is the week leading up to Halloween on Sunday. And I'm also sure all my fellow parents know that this means a veritable tidal wave of sugar will wash over your children.

It's inevitable. In addition to the actual day of Halloween, there are class parties and community parties and random adults who happen to have a stash of candy on hand that they will pass out with abandon to any children they come across.

I accept this, but I do my best to mitigate the sugar intake in my own home. Because that's the only place I can control it.

That means that for the week leading up to and at least part of the week after Halloween, there is as little additional sugar in my children's food as I can reasonably manage. They don't regularly eat a lot of sweet things, but I avoid even things like oatmeal for breakfast (maple syrup) or yogurt (also maple syrup) or Ovaltine in their hot milk or cornbread with dinner (they eat it with honey). 

Cinnamon toast will also have to wait.

I do this around every holiday that results in an avalanche of sweet treats at school. So Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter . . . It's kind of like a mini Lenten sugar fast every time in our house. I announce it to the children so they know why I'm saying no to graham crackers with peanut butter, and they actually accept the logic of this.

All I'm really trying to do is average out the amount of sweet stuff they get in that short period of time so that it stays within a relatively reasonable range. I do this by limiting them at home, so when they're somewhere I can't limit them at all, the average is still okay.

So! If you also have children who are being inundated with sugar at school or elsewhere*, try to mitigate the sugar damage at home, so they can enjoy themselves elsewhere.

* This is also applicable, of course, to adults who have periods of time at work or parties or whatever when unhealthy foods abound. I'm thinking here of my sister, who is a veterinarian and told me she is absolutely buried under sweets and treats during the holidays, when every client expresses their appreciation for the vet clinic with something containing sugar.

Monday Bouquets: Exotic Visitors

When my sister comes to visit us, she always stops at the grocery store in the city she flies into before she drives to our house. And she always gets flowers. She knows I love flowers.

This time, she got flowers for both the birthday girl and for me. So that is why I have a completely different arrangement on my table right now.

Bet you didn't see these coming.

The contrast between these and my own arrangement that I took off the table was pretty funny.

A study in contrasts.

Those grocery store flowers last an incredibly long time, but not as long as my own dried arrangement of fall plants. So I still have my Halloween flowers on the windowsill. They will patiently outwait the beautiful but ultimately doomed interlopers and then resume their place in the center of the table.

I hope you have a lovely Monday, with or without flowers.

Snapshots: Bulbs and Bows

A few weeks ago, A. told me, "I ordered you some spring bulbs to plant."

Having been married to him for 18 years now, I knew what that meant.

"How many?" I asked with justifiable suspicion.

"Oh, around a hundred."

They came last week. There were more like 230*. I KNEW IT.

Needless to say, I was not going to be planting all of those myself.

So I took my digging machine out (A., who is as close to a machine with a shovel as it is possible for a human to be) and we planted all of them in about an hour.

We had help, of course.

Although, as always with children, that should be "help."

Poppy found her own shovel and asked for a bulb to plant by herself.

I happened to have one to spare.

If you look closely, you can see that hard-working digger up there has some pretty fancy hair decorations. One of her birthday requests was hairbows. Sparkly, rainbow hairbows, just like her friend's. I submitted this request to my mother, and the birthday girl duly received a package of six hairbows.

No sparkles, but certainly her favorite colors.

I must admit, by the way, that as the mother of boy after boy, I sort of rolled my eyes at the idea of things like pink and purple hairbows. And now I love them, because honestly, they are JUST SO CUTE. 

Lastly, would it be a Snapshots post without some photos of my morning walk? No. 

But honestly, would you look at that sky?

And just for fun, let's see what was behind me to the east.

The lingering moon, of course.

And there you have it! My life, snapshotted.

* I am now going to list every kind of bulb we planted, in the hopes that I'll be able to identify them when they start coming up in the very random places I planted them: many assorted tulips, some mixed daffodils, Dutch iris, Muscari Armeniacum, mixed allium, mixed crocuses, mixed anemone blanda, grape hyacinths, windflowers, and Glory of the Snow.

Friday Food: What's the Ugliest Cake of All?

Friday 

Short version: Filet mignon, oven fries, green salad with vinaigrette, strawberries and cream

Long version: Cubby and A. were camping in advance of their hunt the next morning, so they had a packet of hamburgers and boiled potatoes to heat up in their campfire.

We had the much fancier version of meat and potatoes at home, in honor of my sister, who very much likes steak. I made the oven fries with some more of the rendered fat from our last meat chicken, which makes for some extra crispy fries.

My sister brought the strawberries. Happy children.

Bill the Pony probably would have been happy with strawberries, too, but he had to settle for dried corn.

Saturday

Short version: Barbecue meatballs, garlic bread, coleslaw, baked pears with cream

Long version: I got three quite small heads of cabbage out of the garden last week, and used one to make coleslaw. It made just enough for the five of us.

The pears were some we had gotten from the gentleman at church. A bunch were ripe, and my sister had made a ginger syrup for cocktails (sliced ginger root steeped in simple syrup--yum), so I baked some peeled and diced pears in the ginger syrup. Very good.

Sunday

Short version: Taco feast, the ugliest cake in the land

Long version: My sister had also brought avocados, limes, and tortilla chips. They were GIANT avocados, the biggest I'd ever seen. Just three of them made a ton of guacamole, which we ate with chips and then used liberally on our tacos. Those were ground beef taco meat and homemade corn tortillas.

And now . . . the cake.

Poppy wanted to bring cupcakes to school on her birthday, so I made six cupcakes for her class and then a thin cake with the extra batter (Grandma Bishop's chocolate cake, of course) and frosting (half a recipe of this one). 

I had some trouble getting the cake out of the pan, and I didn't really have enough frosting left to cover the sides of the cake, so it was . . .

The Ugly Cake to end all Ugly Cakes.

It was, however, delicious, and Poppy was delighted with the "L" in pink sugar. So there.

Monday

Short version: Lots of leftovers, raw cabbage, brownies with vanilla ice cream

Long version: We had steak, meatballs, and taco meat left over, as well as lots of guacamole and chips. So everyone had various combinations of those, plus some raw cabbage on the side.

As we had had cake the night before, and Poppy had her cupcakes at school, I made brownies Sunday to have on her actual birthday. It was a day I had to work, so it was good I could make something ahead. I had some ice cream we bought a couple of weeks ago that I had been saving, and she was very happy with her birthday dessert.  

Tuesday

Short version: Italian sliders, pasta with pesto, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: One of these days I should actually post a "recipe" for Italian sliders, just so I can link to it and not have to explain every time that it's just very small hamburger patties seasoned like meatballs, then fried and topped with marinara sauce and mozzarella (or, in our case, asadero, cheese). 

This time I didn't want to dirty another bowl to mix the meat with spices, so I just salted and peppered them right in the pan as they were cooking, and I couldn't even tell a difference. Lazy win.

I used some leftover pizza sauce, too, which means it was extra lazy.

The very last fresh pesto from the very last fresh basil I pulled out of the garden last week. I do have some frozen cubes of pesto, but not enough. It's never enough.

Wednesday

Short version: Bunless cheeseburgers, fried mushrooms and green beans, bread and butter, carrot sticks with curry dip

Long version: How many days of ground beef in a row is too many? Probably this many. Too bad! 

I had taken out about six pounds of ground beef on Saturday, and needed to use it up. I was going to just have tacos with the leftover taco meat, as it was a work day for me, but the kids had ground beef nachos at school, so I made cheeseburgers instead. And fried mushrooms! AND curry dip!

I know you are all awed by my great efforts in the kitchen.

And why did I have green beans in with the mushrooms? Because I had some frozen green beans and room in the pan with the mushrooms and garlic. That's pretty much how my kitchen works.

Thursday

Short version: Roast beef with tomatoes and onions, baked potatoes, fried cabbage and onions, still-frozen green beans

Long version: I figured it was time for a break from the ground beef. So we had roast beef instead.

This is the sort of thing that happens when you buy a whole steer for your freezer.

I actually went to all the work of larding the meat with slivers of garlic, which I usually consider too tedious to bother with. It is kind of tedious, but delicious.

I filled the perimeter of the Pyrex pan the meat roasted in with tomatoes, onions, and olive oil. Why? Because there was room in the pan. Are you seeing a theme here?

Also, I had some tomatoes I had pulled out the garden last week on the same day as the basil that were starting to look kind of sad, so they needed to be salvaged. It made a kind of sauce for the meat, which was a nice side benefit.

Meat!

I had half a very small head of garden cabbage in the refrigerator that I sliced and fried with the other half of the onion after I had put onion in with the meat. Because you should always just cook the onion. 

Still-frozen green beans for the children who do not like cooked cabbage. 

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

T.T.: Good Dogs

A few nights ago, just as we were about to get ready for bed, I heard both dogs barking frantically outside. Jasper barks at everything, so I don't pay too much attention to him, but when Odin joins in, it's a safe bet there really is something notable going on outside.

Jasper is the canine equivalent of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. The Dog Who Barks Coyote? Sure.

So I went out with the big spotlight to see what was happening.

I found that both dogs had launched themselves over our five-foot perimeter fence and were circling a patch of weeds on the side of the road about fifty yards from our house.

It was a raccoon.

This is the first raccoon we've seen here--they prefer places with more trees--and I can't say I've missed them. We had raccoons around alll the time at Blackrock, constantly trying to get at our chickens. That's what this raccoon was doing, too. Cubby had noticed just that afternoon that our rooster was missing his long tail feathers, and we found a dead hen in the chicken coop.

And now we knew the culprit.

Raccoons are nasty creatures, very aggressive and well able to badly injure dogs. So I called in The Man with the Gun, and that was the end of the raccoon.

All of this got me to thinking how much we have depended on our dogs over the years. At Blackrock, our pack of collies was constantly on the alert for raccoons, woodchucks, deer, coyotes, and possums. 

Here, Jasper and Odin are our alert system for snakes, ringtails, coyotes, bears, and apparently raccoons. They also let us know when the horses and sheep are somewhere they are not supposed to be, and will actually herd the animals into a corner and keep them there until we take care of the situation.

Always alert.

We need fierce dogs, and we have them. But we also need dogs that we can trust with children--both our own and other people's--and our domestic animals. It's no good having dogs that will attack a raccoon but will also attack a chicken, or one of our children's friends. 

Which brings me to a tip!

It is very, very important to choose a dog that will fit your life. Maybe that means you need a dog that is happy hanging out in your house and taking one walk a day. Maybe that means a dog that loves running long miles. Maybe that means a dog that will bark. Or one that won't.

A dog that isn't a good fit for your life will cause constant problems. I can't imagine our dogs, for instance, living in a suburb. They--and whoever they lived with--would be miserable. They're very good dogs for us, but they wouldn't be good dogs for everyone.

And, well, that's all. I should have a clever closing here, but I'll just leave it there.

Monday Bouquets: Birthday Flowers for the Birthday Girl

Today is Poppy's fourth birthday. My sister brought her some flowers for her very own.

In her favorite colors, of course.

And here's the birthday girl getting her hair french-braided by her flower-bearing aunt.

Too bad the birthday girl's mom has no idea how to do fancy hair like that.

Happy birthday, Poppy. Long may you reign.

Snapshots: Sunrise, Sunset

In a bold departure, I took a sunset walk with the dogs last week, rather my typical sunrise walk. Because at sunrise it was blowing a gale, while at sunset it was calm and dry.

This meant all the dramatic light was behind the old schoolhouse, rather than the windmill you're accustomed to seeing. 

Kind of moody, as the sun was actually behind that low cloud.

It did make one last glorious appearance before going down for real, though.

I live on the corner of Fourth and Madison, which amuses me no end as it sounds like a New York City street address, but is actually . . .

Quite obviously NOT New York City.

All the other days, I had my usual (before) sunrise walk.

There's the windmill silhouette we all know and love.

Fall has definitely arrived. As proof, I present the following evidence.

Yellow-spotted apricot tree.

Morning woodstove lighting.

And the squash harvest.

And there you have it! My life, snapshotted.