Welcome to the Winter Wonder Land

Title courtesy of the sign Poppy made for our door:

She wanted to prepare everyone for what was outside the door, which was . . .

A winter wonder land, indeed.

We didn't really get much snow, maybe an inch. It's just that before it snowed, we were in a frozen cloud that deposited a layer of rime on everything. What little snow we got stuck right to that and made for a very frosty coating.

We didn't see the sun for two days, during which time I kept the living room candle burning continuously.

A single central wick is definitely the way to go with the larger hexagonal candles. This one burned down much more evenly than the last one.

The flu ran through the basketball team and landed on our basketball player this weekend. He had a fever for about 24 hours that laid him out. He alternated between my bed with the heated mattress pad on, and a nest I made for him on the couch with two sheepskins, the microwaveable heated bag thing, and a blanket.

The MiL always maintained that sheepskins are effective in healing illness.

He's feeling somewhat better now, and so far there are no signs of anyone else succumbing. Fingers crossed.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: In Which We Eat Feet

Friday

Short version: Meatballs, leftover pasta, cucumbers with ranch dressing

Long version: I had taken a package of loose Italian sausage from the freezer, thinking I would use it somehow with some leftover pasta and tomato sauce. Then A. came home from the store with ground beef. So instead, I used that plus the sausage to make meatballs and just heated up the leftover pasta. 

I made extra sauce for the meatballs with the rest of the giant can of tomato paste I had opened earlier in the week, plus caramelized onions I had on hand, garlic, and spices. I blended this all up with my immersion blender.

A. was near a store because he was bringing the cow we brought to our neighbor to the butcher, which means that in a few weeks, we will have many hundreds of pounds of ground beef on hand. And ti won't be watery store ground beef either. So exciting.

A. brought the cucumber home, too. That I just sliced and mixed with the last of the ranch dressing in the refrigerator.

And there it is.

Saturday

Short version: Pigs' feet and ramen, butterscotch pudding

Long version: I think you can probably guess that I was not the one who made this meal. Anytime you see feet or other, um, unorthodox meat products, you can be sure A. is behind it. And so he was.

He cooked the pigs' feet in water, soy sauce, etc. first to get them tender, then strained out the solids and put the feet back in the strained liquid with collard greens. At the end, he put in the ramen noodles from several packets of the instant kind.

I was highly amused by this illustration on one of the bags of pigs' feet. 

All the kids ate the ramen. Most of them ate the feet. They are more adventurous than I am. I had a salad with leftover pork in it.

I had made the pudding just because we had about half a gallon of milk that the children informed me was no longer good for drinking. It seemed okay to me when I tasted it, so I used the rest of it to make this butterscotch pudding.

For some reason, it was quite thin. I don't know if it's because I didn't use the optional cream this time, or if I didn't heat it long enough, but it was still eaten.

Sunday 

Short version: Ham, baked potatoes, green salad with vinaigrette, apple crisp with whipped cream

Long version: An extra spiral-cut ham I bought when they were on sale around Christmas and baked potatoes in the oven makes for a very easy dinner.

I made the crisp using a few Gala apples that the kids weren't enthused about eating raw, plus a jar of the apple slices I canned last fall. The topping needed more butter, even though I used almost two whole sticks. 

We didn't have any ice cream on hand, but whipped cream is an acceptable substitute. I just in the last few months realized that I have a whisk attachment for my immersion blender that is perfect for making whipped cream.

I've had this for like three years now and just figured this out. Oh well. Better late than never!

Monday

Short version: Leftovers, elderly cookies

Long version: A. and the one child who really likes them had leftover pigs' feet and ramen. The rest of us had leftover chickpea stew with some leftover ham added to it.

The cookies were some the youngest boy had brought home from school. He had an entire quart jar of double-chocolate peanut butter cookies he had left at school before Christmas break. Which meant they had been there a full month. Curious, I tried one. And it was fine.

Kind of amazing. I mean, it was maybe a little drier than when they were fresh, but still amazingly good. So everyone ate those.

Tuesday

Short version: Ham and potato casserole, raw bell peppers or cucumber, yogurt with strawberry jam

Long version: I almost always make something early in the day on Tuesdays that can just be heated in the oven by someone else while I'm at First Communion class with Poppy. This time, I chopped up a bunch of leftover ham, some peeled potatoes, and some caramelized onion, plus rendered lard, and stuck that in the oven covered with foil while I was baking bread. This got the potatoes all the way cooked. 

Eldest put that in a 400-degree oven, uncovered, about half an hour before I got home, so it would get a little crispy. I added some grated cheddar at the end, too.

Teamwork dinner.

I hadn't made strawberry jam in awhile, and when I did this day, I ended up with some that didn't fit in the jar. My family really loves yogurt with jam, but I don't often let them have it because it uses so much jam so quickly to sweeten the plain yogurt. However, if they put just a small scoop of jam in the yogurt, and then sweeten further with maple syrup, the strawberry flavor is there without decimating the jam. So that's what they did.

Wednesday

Short version: Mediocre pork chops, rice, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: A. got a package of assorted pork chops that were all very large and somewhat thin. These are a challenge to cook in the quantity I need, because they don't really fit in pans very well. I had to split them between a half-sheet baking pan, which I stuck under the broiler to brown, and a skillet in which I browned the remaining three. They all had soy sauce, vinegar, and garlic powder on them, and they all went in the oven to finish baking after being browned. Except the ones under the broiler didn't really brown very well because they released too much liquid.

I used the skillet to make a kind of stir-fry sauce for them with more soy sauce and vinegar, plus ginger, sugar, and some of the liquid I had strained out from cooking the pigs' feet. And cornstarch to thicken.

I also used some of the pigs' feet liquid to cook the rice. I typically make basmati rice, but only had the short-grain rice on hand that I use for rice pudding. This is much stickier, and not preferred by my family, but as it was all I had, that's what they got.

All together, not the highest quality meal that's ever come out of my kitchen, but it was fine. 

Thursday

Short version: Leftovers at home, salad and concessions food on the road

Long version: I went to a basketball game in the afternoon, leaving a pot of pasta I had made with the remainder of the sauce from the meatballs, plus grated asadero cheese. Also leftover pork chops and rice, which didn't really go flavor-wise with the pasta, but everyone managed.

I brought a salad with me in the car and ate that before going into the game at 4 p.m. 

Road food.

The basketball player was desperately hungry after his game, and the concession stand had already closed. I stopped at a gas station before we left town and bought him two chimichangas. He ate half of one before admitting he didn't feel well. So I ate the other one on the way home. And then he was feeling a little better when we got home and ate some of the pasta.

Refrigerator check:

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

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.