Spicy Celebration

The kids all came into my room this morning asking, "is it finished Mom? Is it really done?". I was relieved to finally be able to reply, "yes!". This book production project that i wrapped up last night, has taken up most of my spare time over the last five months and while we still participated in the activities the kids are involved in, we didn't have time for much else. Tonight was a sweet night. Adam and I took the kids to Walmart to get David his Pokemon cards. Anna and Hudson wanted some play for the kitchen set and Johnny wanted to swap out a game at the GameStop. We did all our errands together and then went out to this Thai/sushi restaurant. Johnny tried his first full out spicy tuna roll and did it like a champ. No wasabi was spared! It was a lovely way to celebrate the completion of this job.

Lunch Bags

When the kids were smaller at lunch time I would plate the food, taking a moment to make sure that it was arranged nicely on a cute colored dish. Kind of silly, yes. I still do this when they are home, but now I make their school lunches every evening. I realize that I should use lunch boxes—it is the green thing, but then I wouldn't be able to decorate their names with a sharpie on their bags. That would take all the fun out of it for me. I'm thinking that I will move on from this at some point—perhaps notes in their lunch boxes would suffice. But for now, this is our thing. I don’t know how much longer the kids will enjoy my lightning bolts, smiley faces, hearts and block letters.

Graphic Design Bootcamp

Graphic Design Bootcamp includes long periods of sitting at a desk, tilting my head to the side, and crunching, lots of crunching (mostly popcorn, sometimes carrots). I am at the end of a several month project and I am beginning to feel the same mental challenge as I do when I'm racing—a tunnel vision focus on the finish line. On Tuesday I rolled out of bed and headed up to our office to begin indexing the book project I'm working on. I stayed there until 2:00 am only making it to the letter s. Wednesday was website day. A personal tutor come to the house to give me a lesson on how to handle my design for our company’s website. I have A LOT to learn and A LOT of work to do—but I am excited to do it! Thursday was back to indexing and formatting—more revisions. Friday is more of the same. I really need this project to be done. In fact, I am forcing myself to stop and not barrel through because the quality of work suffers (and I’m on cold medication). Once I am done and once I clean up the mess in my house, I am tempted to try making toothpaste. Went to the walgreens today to try and buy glycerin for this purpose. They pointed me to the suppositories. I'll keep trying.

Bring Back the Bread Machines

It has been almost 1 month since I reclaimed a bread machine from in-laws’ attic. I am proud to say that I am still using it. AND since getting it, I have only purchased 1 (maybe 2) loaves of bread. That’s a lot of money NOT spent. When I first got it I was able to look up the model number online and there were even instructions from the mid-nineties that someone had posted. A few weeks ago, I graduated from letting the bread machine do the entire loaf to just using it for the kneading and rising of the dough. The bread recipe that has been working well is an Italian bread recipe that I can shape into a cute little loaf, cut a little design into and wash with egg. The loaves look pretty and that is fun for me. The bad part—this gluten-free girl has been sampling a bit. Now my stomach hurts.

Italian Bread Using a Bread Machine
featured on allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon light brown sugar
• 1 1/3 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon water
• 2 tablespoons cornmeal

Directions

1. Place flour, brown sugar, warm water, salt, olive oil and yeast in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select dough cycle; press Start.
2. Deflate the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Form dough into two loaves. Place the loaves seam side down on a cutting board generously sprinkled with cornmeal. Cover the loaves with a damp cloth and let rise, until doubled in volume about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
3. In a small bowl, beat together egg and 1 tablespoon water. Brush the risen loaves with egg mixture. Make a single long, quick cut down the center of the loaves with a sharp knife. Gently shake the cutting board to make sure that the loaves are not sticking. If they stick, use a spatula or pastry knife to loosen. Slide the loaves onto a baking sheet with one quick but careful motion.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes.

This week will feature me learning how to index a reference book and a highly competitive Scrabble tournament with Adam.

What David Thinks

Me and my brother johnny started basketball. My coaches name is Ryan. But I dont no what Johnny's coach is. But I think my team is prity good. this week we Saw baby lincion get dedicated to the lord. Afterwards, we went to Stephanie's house to eat lunch. Then we all had a bunch of cookies and cupcakes. Then Nana Bets took us back in her car to listen to a disc about Swiss Family Robinson. I followed the words with my finger. Then we arrived at our house. Then Nana Bets gave us cards and our prize for having our cards from last year. Then we all did a clean up and now we are making dinner.

The Mantle

The details of the week can be learned simply by looking at the kitchen mantle. It is an ideal spot to be adorned with choice items that change with the seasons, but it also doubles as a landing spot for random stuff.

Yesterday we made cheese. Adam wants to keep the empty milk jugs—they go up on the mantle.
Adam used a screwdriver to fix the dishwasher—it goes up on the mantle.
The kid's made a gingerbread boy character--he goes up on the mantle.
Mom and Dad are currently deciding if a video game is appropriate--it goes up on the mantle until the jury completes deliberations.

Currently the lineup is as follows. Milk jug, milk jug, votive candle, votive candle, vintage valentine, egg scale, ceramic rooster, wallet, votive candle, votive candle, Lego, conroy the gingerbread boy, hair clip, screwdriver, vintage valentine, keys.

Dishwasher Mania

I spend an enormous amount of time in the kitchen. It is a compact area that has one lovely wall lined with cupboards. It is a daydream kitchen-set for grown ups. My dishwasher was installed when the house was built in '92. It’s an old model that has paneling to match the rest of the wood on the cupboard doors. Early in December it broke. We toughed it out for a bit, but it was painful and dishes filled the counter. If anything, my dishwasher serves as a holding pen. Adam, who never posts on Facebook, deemed his experience of doing the dishes one night worthy of a status update.

Rewind to two days prior to early in December. I had a notion to make soap, this extended into laundry detergent and dishsoap. I was excited to discover that with only a few ingredients, I could cover most of the cleaning products that I use regularly. I made the dish soap and proudly poured the powder into the soap dispenser. It washed them—yay. The next day it was broken. It's a 20 year old dishwasher, it very well could have just been it's time.

We decided to search craigslist for a solution. Adam found a unit that was the same model as ours—and for only $15! He picked it up, replaced it, took the good parts from ours and reinstalled it with the other dishwasher. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that I was totally pumped about this. $15!! Not having to spend Christmas money on a new dishwasher! My husband is a STUD! I was bragging about it everywhere I went (maybe two places).

Christmas Eve: I put the kids to bed after a fun-filled day at my folks, load the dishwasher and fill the dispenser with my homemade dishsoap. What a lovely day.

Christmas Morning: Dishwasher is broken. WAS IT MY DISHSOAP?!! I am sorry to say that my whole day was wretchedly affected by the state of the dishwasher. I was totally depressed. 

Back to doing the dishes for the week. Adam decides to try and fix it again. He does. I was SO excited that he got it to work and joyfully purchased new dish soap from the store.

Mid-January: Unfortunately, it is broken again. At least now I know it wasn't the soap.

Anna’s Thoughts #1

  Guess what ? I need to wear a cast for 3 weeks. I have worn it for 2 weeks and have 1 more to go. At school I'm learning multiplying double digits. I'm terrible at multiplying so its not that fun. Every single day I have not been feeling that well. 1 thing that's good is that there's finally snow!!!!! I'm also in Annie so if you want to come, come. It's on Feb. 9, 11, 12, and 10 its going to be great.

Granola Forever

I was inspired recently by a lovely girl in my book club. Over the holidays we had a dinner and she had brought me a batch of her homemade granola as a treat. It reminded me that granola is a great replacement for cereal, which costs me a lot of money on my grocery bill.

About 5 years ago I made granola with a friend and it was fun, but not exactly the cost-saving solution we had hoped for. So, I never thought to try again. However, my kids were not the cereal monsters they are today and I realized that I can make it a lot more inexpensively that I initially thought.

In an attempt to get my kids on board with my non-boxed cereal plan, I thought that each child could customize their own batch, i.e. add cinnamon or walnuts etc. and then chose a name and design a label for it. It was pretty fun actually. We have been making granola for a couple weeks now and are still having good attitudes about it.

Here’s the basic recipe to start playing around with:

2 1/2 cups oats
(This can be any combination of oats, corn cereal, flax seed, steel-cut, whatever you want or whatever you’ve got)

1/4 cup sweet
(I love maple syrup—especially the kind our friends gave us from the maple trees they tapped themselves. It could be honey, brown rice syrup, blue agave, whatever combination you like.)

3 Tbls. oil
(coconut oil is the best! but you can other non-flavored oils as well)

1 Tbls. brown sugar
(can be omitted)

1/4 tsp. salt

1 Tbls. water
(using a little water is supposed to help form clumps... or so I’ve read)

1/4 cup chopped nuts of any sort

1/2 cup cococut
(I use unsweetened since there is plenty of sweet in the recipe already)

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Stir all the chosen ingredients together and press down into a layer about 1/2 in thick on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Bake about an hour and 45 min. or until the granola will break apart as a clump.

Let it cool before breaking into pieces and putting into container’s decorated and labeled Anna's Oaties, or Davey’s Coco-Chip Crunch.

Black Eyes and Pop-It Beads

I have this sweet memory of when I was young:
I was very sick and home from school for the day—maybe even the week. My mom let me have the privilege of laying on her bed and watching what I remember to be as the black-and-white t.v. in their bedroom. She cut up a bunch of fruit and put it into a bowl and brought it up to me. When my dad came home from work he had brought me a bag of Pop-It Beads. I felt especially loved and cared for that day—so much, that I still remember it 25 or so years later.

Johnny got a black eye yesterday. I’m still not exactly sure how. Something about dropping a bat while lying down on the floor. Must have been a pretty hard drop because we only have nerf style bats at the house. Anyhow, it looks awful. While it didn't seem to bother him a ton yesterday, he was hurting today. My response to this was to let him lay in my bed, play on the ipad and drink a smoothie. Hoping he feels better soon.

144 Toothbrushes

We have so much difficulty when it comes to brushing teeth. All the kids are constantly complaining that someone is using their toothbrush or they can’t find their toothbrush or whatever excuse they can find when it comes to brushing their teeth.

A couple of months ago I thought I could put an end to this. I went online and found a site that sold toothbrushes in a bulk package of four different colors. Anna would be purple, David red, Johnny green and Hudson blue. The package arrived with 144 plastic wrapped toothbrushes that could last us until the kids left for college. Tah dah! Solved.

Here’s the reality. I have been so busy lately working on a design project that I haven't even been up in the kids’ bathroom for a couple weeks. I was desperate to do laundry and that requires me to put it away (eventually). I went to put the towels away and I just about fell to the floor. I cannot believe the mess that was in the bathroom. Actually, I can. I just wanted to ignore it and pretend it wasn’t that bad. At least they all had their toothbrushes?

My problem as a housekeeper is that if I can’t perform a cleaning or household task in the way that I think it should be done, I don't. I just ignore it until it gets so so bad that I am forced to confront it. It’s not incredibly smart that I’m writing this as post in my journal of day-to-day memories, because I hope nobody will remember this!

Venison Chili

One of the first dinners I ever made was chili. I used to regularly experiment with different recipes, but several years ago, for reasons I can't remember, Adam started making the chili and it has been his deal ever since.

My husband and his best friend regularly do camp outs and sleepovers with all the kids—7 kids between the two of them. As a mom, I really appreciate that fact that my kids have a dad that takes ownership of the time he spends with them. Our boys each have a matching playmate. Anna is the only girl, but she manages herself as the queen bee. Last night Seth and his boys came down and Adam pulled out the chili fixings for the occasion.

Adam’s Venison Chili
(adapted from Award Winning Chili on allrecipes.com)

30 oz stewed tomatoes
12 oz tomato paste
2 carrots sliced
2 onions chopped
4 stalks of celery chopped
1 tsp. red pepper flakes (or more if desired)
2 green bell peppers
2/3 cup steak sauce (i.e. Heinz 57, but generic works just fine)
1 pack bacon
3 lbs. venison roast
2 packs chili seasoning
1 tsp. ground cumin
30 oz. kidney beans
2 Tbls. fresh cilantro
1 large can tomato juice or V8

(Basically, just make sure all the stuff above gets into a big pot and cooks for awhile)

We cook the venison in a slow cooker, but more recently a pressure cooker.

In a large (very large) stock pot, combine tomatoes, tomato paste, carrot, onion, celery, pepper, pepper flakes and steak sauce over medium-low heat.

Cook bacon until crisp. Pull venison roast apart with fork. Add both meats into the stock pot with chili seasoning and cumin.

Stir in beans and parsley. We always add a can of tomato sauce to achieve the proper thickness.

Tastes better the longer the flavors have blended. Serve with cilantro on top.

Cardinals

My husband loves birds. He is always trying to get me to stop what I am doing and appreciate them. I'm coming around. We have a pair of cardinals that comes back every year. I just noticed the male bird again yesterday and it makes me smile to see him. He is just so beautiful--especially when we have snow to contrast the red. This particular male cardinal is always at war with his enemy (his reflection). He continues to fight his image in the side view mirrors of Adam's truck. This is his third year of this. He must be getting tired of all the fighting.

In other bird news, we watched a bluejay take a chunk of my left over bread up into a tree. He may or may not have liked it. Perhaps he is using it to build a shelter.

Today Adam is going to start rebuilding our coffee and end tables with barnwood, the chickens have opted to stay in the coop, we need to remember to flip the cheese, Anna has CYT practice, I am going to run with Britt, boys have basketball assessments and this evening Seth and his boys are coming over while I work on the China book.

Yogurt (ish) Success

I was talking on the phone to my brother this week and we both agreed that one of our favorite comfort foods growing up was a homemade yogurt recipe that my mom used to make. I used to make it earlier in my married years, but Adam has never really been a yogurt person and I stopped eating dairy about 8 years ago so it fell by the wayside.

Fast forward to today. In the spirit of making everything, which is the spirit I have lately, I pulled up the recipe and made it with Johnny about two weeks ago. I really wanted it to work out well so that I can include it in their school lunches. They initially enjoyed the recipe, but then decided that they didn't. Bummer. "C'mon kids! This was my favorite growing up!"

Soooooo, for the last couple of weeks I have been experimenting, reading different recipe posts and trying to figure this out. Funny, because it is really simple and easy. I just haven't gotten it right yet. Until today! The kids all sampled it this morning when I pulled it out of the oven. Thumbs up all around!

Here's what I did:

3 cups 2% milk
2 cups dry milk
2 cups tepid water
1 can evaporated milk
1 container starter yogurt (I used stonyfield farm plain)
1 Tbls. sugar

Turn the oven on to 250 degrees. Wisk all the above ingredients together in a big metal or ceramic bowl and cover with tin foil. Once the oven is heated, turn it off and immediately put the yogurt mixture into the oven. Leave it undisturbed overnight. In the morning, add fruit and sweetness to desired taste. Refrigerate.

Most of my issues were trying to find a way to create the proper temperature for the cultures. This oven method was a successful one.

Yogurt conquered!

Well, mostly conquered. Depending on what the definition of yogurt is. The yogurt had a very nice texture in the morning when I first wrote this triumphant post. However, when I added the sugar and strawberries to the mix, it ended up more like a kefir rather than a yogurt. Regardless, it remains a success because Johnny said, “It's unstoppable” and all the kids enjoyed the drinkable version after school today.

I also decided to throw a small amount into the ice cream maker I picked up last week at a thrift store. That worked out pretty nicely as well.

I'm Going to Want to Remember This

My sister-in-law makes these lovely books at the end of each year. They have photo highlights and small blurbs about the fun family events that took place. Over the holidays I enjoyed sitting on her couch flipping through the pages and enjoying the memories. I'm not great with a camera, nor do I look cute enough on a regular basis to be photographed—so I thought I could adapt the idea a bit and create a memory of this year as we are living it through an online journal. The plan is to spend 30 minutes doing blog posts of this year. The goal is to create a collection of memories of what life is like in our family during the year 2012.

I'm excited for this year. We have things we are hopeful for. My husband's construction business has been slow over the last four years, but we have a new business that is gaining some momentum. The kids are at sweet ages and I want to write down the day-to-day details so that when they are grown up they can look back and laugh at their childhood memories. 

At present, I am home a ton—money is low and gas is high. We have about 3 1/2 acres that we live on and we are going to do as much with it as possible.

I have been totally focused lately on how I can make things from scratch. It has been a fun experiment for me. Fortunately, I have my own little crew of critics to let me know how things are going. This year it is a goal of mine to cut costs with groceries simply by making and producing as much as I can. Over the last couple of months there has been many failures and some successes, but it has been fun and I feel like the kids are learning something by watching and playing this game alongside of me.

Right now I am sitting in my new favorite chair hen pecking this post on my ipad. Adam just made a venison pot roast with our new Chrismas present pressure cooker. The kids are restless upstairs and hoping for a snow day tomorrow. I happen to know that there is a delayed start tomorrow, but I haven't told them yet because I love surprises.