Unfortunate Weekend Events and A Week of Ham

Our weekend didn't turn out at all like we expected.  We had planned a nice visit here at home with my sister and brother-in-law on Saturday afternoon, with them staying overnight in the RV, then on Sunday we were going to join up with my niece and her family, as well as my daughter and son-in-law and spend the day at the zoo.

Instead, shortly after they arrived, my brother-in-law fell ill with some episodes of dangerously low blood pressure and he and sis spent the entire weekend in the hospital, with us making a few trips back and forth ourselves.  My BIL is 68, and has a known serious heart problem, but they ruled that out as the cause right away.  He is also diabetic and I think they have determined that some late and missed meals on Friday and Saturday, as well as some late medication, were the main reason his blood pressure was plummeting.  His blood pressure has since stabilized and he should be released today after one more precautionary test on his heart.

Because of the sudden change in plans, I have a ton of food in the house.  In anticipation of our weekend, I had baked a large spaghetti casserole for our meal on Saturday, prepped ahead a big pan of breakfast enchiladas, and I had thawed a half ham to cook today.  I also bought several kinds of individual-wrapped snacks that I had planned to take with us into the zoo.  Of course, very little of the prepared food was actually eaten, and I still have that ham to bake today.

I invited my daughter and son-in-law over for supper last night, so that took care of half the spaghetti casserole, and I individually wrapped half the breakfast enchiladas and stuck them in the freezer.  They'll go with us on our first camping trip in two weeks, along with the pre-packaged snacks.

Here's what I plan to do with the ham:

Monday:  Baked ham, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, asparagus, rolls.

Tuesday:  Ham with parsley sauce, boiled potatoes, green beans, salad.

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Wednesday:  The rest of the Baked spaghetti casserole, garlic toast, salad, home-canned peaches.

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Thursday:  All-American Ham and Cheese Roll, potato cakes, corn, asparagus.

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Friday:  Hawaiian Ham Quesadillas, tater tots, salad.

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Saturday:  Ham and shrimp pasta, garlic toast, salad.

Haphazard Homestead Happenings

Where does the time go?  The days are just flying by lately and so much is happening around here.

The gardening is beginning to show signs of growth.  Except for the potatoes, onions and ginger, everything we planted this year went directly into the ground as seeds.  Almost all the little seedlings have started to come up.  We have carrots, onion, radishes, peas, lettuces, Swiss chard, spinach, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kohlrabi, turnips, and beets.  No signs of cauliflower yet, though.  We've been eating asparagus on a regular basis, and some of our rhubarb is almost ready to harvest.

We had a couple of nights of freezing temps last week (in late April?), but we covered everything and it all made it.  The weather, and therefore the garden, are running a few weeks behind this year, and I'm wondering now if we'll have any room for our late spring plantings that I had thought would follow behind some of the early crops.  Oh well, we might just have to build another raised bed or two.

Like everything else, our flowering trees are behind schedule.  Our red bud, white bud and crab apple are just now starting to bloom.  One of our young rhododendrons is in full splendor right now, though.

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I have almost completed my April craft project and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to finish by tomorrow afternoon.  Look for it on Wednesday, along with the rest of my April goals update.

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For those who enjoy hearing about Bob the Basement Cat, he is doing well, but we've come to the conclusion that he is either partial or completely deaf.  I'm not sure how we missed it, actually.  We can often go in and out of the basement and do whatever we need to do, and if he's asleep or just looking away from us, he might never realize we're there.  Also, when you speak or make other noises, his ears don't move toward the sound, not even a little.  It might also explain why his meows are so very loud and might be the reason he craves touch so much.

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Our weekend schedules are filling up fast for spring/summer.  A couple of biggish home improvement projects, a trip to the zoo on Mother's Day, a day of city-wide garage sales, and camping, have us booked up for most weekends until after Independence Day.

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19 more days until school is out for Kat, possibly for good!  We have decided we will unschool her once this year is over.  Learning about this lifestyle change is huge in our lives right now and is what I've been spending much of my time on recently.  I promise, though, that this shift won't turn this into an unschooling blog.  I'm not sure I'll blog about it much at all, but if I do, I'll spin it off to a separate blog much like I do with our RVing stories.  Just thought I'd mention it, since it's been taking me away from the blog and Facebook page lately.

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I apologize again for not being around to visit your blogs and pages much lately, but I'm going to try to remedy that this week. 

To Forage or Not To Forage?

An odd but decidedly cool thing happened in our family recently. 

A couple of weeks ago, I entered a book giveaway for a book about foraging called Dandelion Hunter:  Foraging the Urban Wilderness.  I was lucky enough to win, and I started reading it last week.

At about the same time, without having discussed the book I won, Shane joined a Facebook group centered on foraging Missouri wild edibles.

Also at the same time, without any of us knowing what the others were doing, my son-in-law began foraging for wild edibles in his own neighborhood.

While we've each eaten the occasional berries, nuts, wild mushroom or wild greens, as far as I know, none of us have ever had a driving interest in foraging wild edibles for either culinary or medicinal uses.

Some say there are no coincidences, so I'm taking this as a sign we're on the right track in taking up this line of study, whether for fun now or for more serious reasons in some unforeseen future.  Many plants and fungi can be mistaken for others, causing skin irritations, illness or even death.  The way I see it, three sets of knowledgeable eyes are better than one or two.

Meanwhile, I'm beginning to believe we have a lot more to eat in our garden than we planted!

Do you forage wild edibles or do you know anyone who does?  If so, are your reasons more culinary or medicinal?

Mute Monday

Pottering About

Last week during spring break, Kat, her mom (my daughter T) and I spent an afternoon at Paint, Glaze & Fire Ceramics and Coffee House.

The concept at Paint, Glaze & Fire is fun and simple.  Customers choose and pay for unfinished pottery pieces, then pay an additional small studio fee to paint them there in the shop while also enjoying hot or cold coffee drinks or tea.  The staff then glazes and fires the pieces and they're ready to pick up a few days later. 

I remember doing a little ceramic work as a Girl Scout when I was young, but this was the first time for Kat and T.

I chose a spoon rest to paint, largely because I broke my old ceramic spoon rest a few months ago and I needed a new one.  I think my sponge-painting technique leaves a lot of room for improvement, but the colors - a deep sea green, browns and tans -- are spot on for my kitchen.

Kat chose a couple of 5-inch tiles to do free-form coasters.  Doctor Who fans will recognize her rendition of the Tardis, and the muffin (if I'm not mistaken) represents some aspect of the My Little Pony cartoons and toys.

I liked T's oversized coffee mug the best.  The drizzle effect was another experimental technique that turned out great, in my opinion.  The colors chooses were shades of purple and teal on a cream colored background.

We had lots of fun that afternoon, and I plan on returning and trying something completely different next time.  The shop also features a comfortable lounge area and free wi-fi, as well as classes, parties and even a summer ceramics camp.  If you're local to the Kansas City area, you should check it out and have some creative fun!

Settling Back In

We had a very nice spring break last week, but whew! -- I'm glad to get back to some usual routines this week.  Kat is back to school, Shane is working out of town 4 days a week, which has become almost "normal" for us, and winter appears to finally be settling down into spring.  Here are a few highlights from the weekend:

Kat was with her mom and step-dad for the weekend, and they took in a special Doctor Who event at a local theater.

Kat, my son-in-law M, and friends.

Meanwhile, Shane did some work on our back deck - by himself on Saturday and with my dad's help on Sunday.  The condensed story is that we had a deck, we removed the railings to put up a sun room.  We decided against the sun room in favor of building a larger deck, then we decided against the idea of a larger deck and in favor of just putting the railings back up. 

Of course, the original railings were long gone, we we had to buy new lumber.   We used some extra fence pickets to put a privacy wall at one end of the deck.  We'll be the first to admit our own yard is pretty junky looking right now, but our neighbor's yard on that side is a real eyesore with a shed that is falling in on itself and a trampoline that is hanging in shreds.  We'd rather not see it, and we'd rather not have their dog go into a barking frenzy every time we step out onto the deck, so the privacy wall helps with both of those issues.  Looks pretty nice, too, if you ask me.

Our deck is a tall one, 6-7 feet above ground level, so we still need to buy siding of some sort to underskirt it, and of course we need to stain and seal the new lumber, but this is a nice start.

While the guys worked on the deck, I managed to fix breakfast for us, do several loads of laundry, and prep and plant one of the raised beds with snow peas and onions.  We ended the weekend with a nice meal out with my dad and some friends.

I have a full week planned.  I plan to back outside to plant more of our raised beds, make a batch of soap, complete my menu plan for April, return to my M-W-F blogging schedule, and possibly start my next craft project.

What is on your schedule for this week?

Best of...?

I'm not one of those bloggers who likes to publish a "Best of..." post at the end of the year.

I figure if you want to spend your last few hours of 2012 looking at my humble little blog, then by all means, go for it.  But you'll have to dig around on your own.   I'm not going to tell you which posts are the "best".  If you really want to know, there's a widget over there --------> that shows which of my posts have been viewed the most.

On the other hand, if you're like most folks, you aren't even reading this message.  You're off partying with friends or playing board games with your kids or listening to a radio countdown or watching a ball drop on TV.  Which is as it should be, I think.  I'm headed that way myself.

Enjoy yourself tonight.  Enjoy your family and friends.  Have fun.  Stay safe.

I'll see you next year!

And I Thought Memory Was The First Thing To Go

Yep, that's me.  Yesterday was my birthday and I turned 49. Now, I didn't know this, but when you turn 49, you lose all ability to make decisions. 

Shane asked me what I wanted to do yesterday, but I couldn't decide. 

I sat with my recipes in front of me (aka, Pinterest) and considered what to make for dinner, but I couldn't decide.

When I asked Shane what we should do about lunch, and he bounced it back to me with "It's your birthday, what do YOU want to do for lunch?", I didn't know whether to laugh, scream, cry or strangle him.  Not only couldn't I decide about lunch, but I couldn't even decide how to feel.
Yep, it was one of those days.  I finally asked him to please take over because I didn't know what the hell I wanted other than to not have to make decisions.

So, in the end, we stayed home all day in our jammies, ate chicken soup for lunch and I made meatloaf for supper.  Turned out to be a pretty good birthday after all

And, you know, I'm feeling much more decisive this morning.  Today I'm going to make cookies.  Definitely cookies, or maybe I'll make fudge.  Some brownies might be nice instead...

Friday Foto Fest with Random Ramblings

I caught Siesta drinking water from Shane's glass and trampling his blueprints.

Up On The Rooftop.

Shirt-sleeve weather on Dec. 1 and 2 was perfect weather
for hanging Christmas lights...

and waving to me while hanging on for dear life.

Blurry, but I like it!

End result.  The white blobs in front and center are deer.

New, thinner tree fits our room much better. 
Blob in front and center is Siesta.

Purple and gold.  We unintentionally picked our school colors.

  

Some days, all you can do is sleep...

or scowl.

Nowadays, Even Sandwiches Are Controversial

I hope all of you had a very nice Thanksgiving.  Ours was wonderful, if very un-traditional.  I made most of the dishes ahead of time, so yesterday all that needed to be made was turkey and stuffing.

Kat went to a midday feast with her mom and step-dad, which left Shane and I with several hours of free time.  I spent mine in the RV, sewing.  Shane spent his in, out, and under the RV, getting it winterized for the off-season.  Around 4:00, we came in and started working on our Thanksgiving supper.  Shane deep-fried the turkey while I heated the side dishes.  By the time everything was ready, Kat was home to eat with us.  We enjoyed our meal while watching a movie.  Eating in front of the TV made it as much a holiday as anything else did; that's not something we do often.

We really enjoyed our casual, quiet holiday.  I think making side dishes ahead of time is the way I'll "do" holidays from now on.  Although we ate late in the day, we weren't tired from cooking all day, so cleaning up was a breeze.

So now, what to do with the leftovers?  Enter the controversy.  I plan on making Kentucky Hot Brown sandwiches.  I have never had one, have never been to the Brown Hotel, and in fact, have never been to Louisville at all.  I just thought the sandwich I saw in a magazine looked tasty.

Apparently, though, some folks get a little "tetchy" if the sandwich isn't made exactly according to The Brown Hotel's original recipe.  And, OMG, if you accidentally (or intentionally) call it a Hot Browns instead of Hot Brown, watch out!  Bobby Flay uses white cheddar and gives the bread a French toast treatment, both of which are apparently no-nos.  My Recipes' version calls for Parmesan (Mornay sauce), but is otherwise similar to the original.

Photo: Becky Luigart-Stayner; Styling: Buffy Hargett, via My Recipes

My version will probably include white cheddar (which I have on hand) and Parmesan (which I have on hand), and will probably not include the egg-dipped bread.  It will probably have double the bacon.  And for that reason alone, it will probably be the best recipe of the bunch.

Grinding Away

I know I haven't been around much.  Here's why:


- Between Thursday of last week and yesterday, we processed and froze 84 pounds of venison.

- We killed our meat grinder.

- I made Shane a cake for his birthday, which was yesterday.  I used this recipe, but made some changes to include cocoa and little molasses.

- I set up some Spicy Cranberry Relish to lacto-ferment.  It should be done by Thursday.

- I made Make-Ahead Gravy for Thursday's feast.

- After using what I needed for the gravy, I canned 4 pints of perpetual chicken bone broth.

- I zested and juiced some lemons and limes for future recipes.

- I'm making these French fries to go with tonight's supper.  I'm trying the twice-fried or double-fried method this time.  These are between fryings.  If you are interested, do a Google search.  There are WAY too many results to link just one.

- I managed to work in a little bit of laundry and housework between other jobs.

- Somehow, I managed to find time to plan meals until the end of the year.  Mostly just the main dishes, but it's a good starting point for more busy days ahead.

- And just for fun, we had dinner with some friends on Saturday evening.


I'm on a roll!  If you don't hear from me by Black Friday, send a search party.

The Measure of a Marriage

Her measuring cups and spoons. This makes perfect sense to me.  I cook a lot.  It's good to always have a clean, dry measuring utensil within reach.

His tape measures.  Seven in this picture.  I could put my hands on at least two more within seconds, and I'm sure he has at least one in his truck.  These belong to a man who can routinely hang something on a wall just by eyeballing it and be within a quarter-inch of dead center.  I know he's a construction worker, but I still don't get it.

I guess there are just some things I'm not meant to understand.

Today's Post Brought To You By The Letter B: Bob, Backyard, Butterfly

It's been quite a while since I posted an update on skinny ol' Bob, the stray cat who adopted us in July.  It's hard to get a good picture of him because he doesn't look up when you talk to him and doesn't like to make eye contact.  But he's as sweet a cat as ever and is finally starting to look more like a cat than a bag of bones.  Still, I'd like to see him put on a little more weight before winter gets here.

And since we're outside, lets take a look at what's still growing in the backyard.

We have lots of big, bushy tomato plants left, but because of the heat and drought, they just didn't do as well this year as they have in the past.  We're still getting 3-4 small tomatoes a day, though.

This bunch of collard greens was strictly volunteer.  It didn't do much of anything until we started getting rain again, then it took off.  I'm just going to leave it there for a while, since they are said to be sweeter after a frost.

We planted and harvested (dry) pinto beans earlier in the summer and then replanted with green beans.  They are just now starting to set beans on, so hopefully we'll get a few jars' worth.  The ones we planted with the corn (in a Three Sisters planting) didn't do anything.

Kat still has two large Moon and Stars watermelons in her garden.  We already picked three.
You can see the stars on the rinds and the leaves, but none have had spots big enough to call moons.

The squashes we planted as part of the Three Sisters planting fared better.  We were late getting them in, but I think they will ripen before we get frost.  I can see several butternuts like the one above and several acorn squashes.  The zucchini plants gave us a few, but we weren't overrun with zukes like we usually are.

These last pics are of a butterfly (or is it a moth of some sort?) that Bob was chasing and that Kat rescued from him.  It seemed stunned, but unhurt.She and Shane were able to hold it for a while until it finally walked up Kat's arm and flew away.