My Kitchen Quirk

What kind of a cook are you? I've asked myself this question many times in recent years and the answer is always the same. I'm a self-described haphazard cook.

What do I mean by haphazard cook? I don't follow recipes. Most of the time.

I do follow recipes, especially if it's the first time I've made something, but my staples (spaghetti sauce, meatballs/meatloaf, chili, etc.) are all cooked without me looking at a recipe for more than an idea of what spices I should use. (I've never followed a recipe for making pasty, lasagna, or stew.) Even when following a recipe, I will often measure things out in pinches, palms, or "That looks about right" instead of tablespoons or teaspoons. It's happened where I've started making one thing only to stop halfway through and turn it into something else. Prime example-I was making chicken pot pie recently but the filling came too runny so I left it as a thin gravy and served it over biscuits instead. The next night, I thinned down the gravy with milk, added a cup of cheese, and voila, I had cheesy chicken soup. I've even tried combining random leftovers that sound like they might be good in hopes that something yummy is created. (example:diced leftover round steak, leftover navy beans, a can of diced tomatoes, and leftover chicken stock made a really tasty soup.)

Cooking like this guarantees I will never make the same dish taste the same twice but I like not knowing how things will turn out. That uncertainty makes it fun in a way. There is one thing, though, that L would like if I could cook it the right way every time. He's not a fan of VERY well-done steaks and that, unfortunately for him, is about the only way I seem to make them.

Our White Christmas...Tree that is

Being as it's the start of December and, thus, the Christmas season, decorating has been foremost on my mind these days. I've already conned myself into putting up white lights outside. Ostensibly, those lights are to provide light for the stairs but deep down I know the truth. I'm dreaming of paper chains, popcorn garlands, and candy canes. My recipe book 'magically' falls open to the recipe for sugar cookies even though I'm looking for meatloaf. So what's keeping me from getting things decorated? The fact that my house is in bits and pieces yet. I'm constantly moving piles/furniture/construction materials from here to there to make room for something else. There is precious little room in the house too, since we aren't able to use the bedroom yet. So my forlorn decorations will have to wait. However, this doesn't mean I haven't thought about decorating-especially The Tree. Since I have a monkey for a son and A is a human vacuum cleaner, I decided I didn't want to deal with needles falling from branches, watering a tree, or watching a tree topple over several times. Fake trees are out too since I don't want to store one til next year so my options were rapidly decreasing. Then I remembered an idea L had-why not use a birch tree instead of a spruce? The more I think about it, the more it sounds kind of cute-I'm thinking white lights, red bead garland, and candy canes as the main decorations. No needle mess to clean up, no watering, and it can be secured directly to our floor so I won't be hearing Timber! several times a day. Best of all, we have an overabundance of birch on our land but spruce, pine, and other such Christmas tree varieties are far and few between. Yes, I think I'm going to enjoy my white Christmas tree this year. No guarantees next year's tree will be white though.

House Update

Things have really been happenin' around here lately. The house is moved, the basement is almost done and they moved the addition up to the house today. There's still plenty to be done (backfilling, building the staircase/addition, finishing up the waterline, etc) but each day's work brings us closer to the finish of this phase of the project. It's amazing how much has been accomplished since the end of October. Hopefully we'll be done with the immediate work by Christmas but, if there's one thing I've learned since we decided to do this, is that there are no guarantees and it's best to be flexible. Hoping to get some pics up soon now that we have high speed internet. (L decided it was time to get the faster stuff. We've had it for about an hour and let me tell you, I'm loving it. :P)

House Renovations, and Telephone Lines

Isn't it just like a farmer to leave digging a basement until just before the ground freezes.... It took a summer of anxious waiting (on my part anyway), a bag full of discarded house plans, and watching one project after another fill up my hubby's spare time, but we were finally able to start our house renovations! We broke ground on our basement little over a week ago, the walls are done enough to move the house, and if things went as planned today the house will be on it's new 'home' tomorrow. It seems surreal to be at this point when two weeks ago, I wasn't sure it was going to happen at all. But it is. It's been so exciting to see the basement being dug and the walls going up. V has just LOVED 'helping' his daddy and the contractor "build the house" this last week. And since I didn't want to have the kids underfoot while the guys were moving the house (or deal with no water or electricity while the move is occuring) I took off to my parent's for a weekend. I do want to note that there will likely be few updates after this for a while as our telephone line is 1. a temporary line which usually equals spotty internet connections and 2. we have usually horrendously slow dial-up and it takes a half hour to load a web page...on a good day...(maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration but not by much) So I apologize if it seems I've dropped off the face of the earth.

Sometimes Mother Nature is your friend...

The early spring allowed us to get caught up on all the fieldwork from last fall that couldn't get done because it was so dry. Everything is running about two weeks ahead because the weather has been just wonderful lately-hot and humid for the corn, rains almost always when we needed them, dry heat for drying down the small grains, and just enough of a cool spell in between for me to stop complaining about the heat. Also it stayed dry enough for all the small grains to be combined. I hope it holds out. There's still plenty to be done before we can call Harvest Time complete. There's corn to harvest, sunflowers/beans/clover seed/buckwheat to combine, and (got my fingers crossed) our house to move. Yes, it's been decided our house renovation project MAY start in the next few weeks. We have a floor plan L and I can both live with, he called to get our utility lines marked out so we can start digging the basement, and I've already got a good start on boxing up the non-essentials so they can be put in temporary storage. It's starting to feel like this is really going to happen. But just like with the crops, there's still plenty of time for something to derail those plans. The biggest thing is the weather. If it's raining, the crop work can't get done but you can't dig a basement on a rainy day either. So, Mother Nature, please stay happy.

Garden of Weeds

I am, at best, a haphazard gardener. I don’t mind planting the seeds and I certainly enjoy eating my harvest, but everything in between I could do without. This is evident if you wander through my garden at present. It’s taken me a week to weed the garden and I am not even done. About a third of it will need weed whacking it’s so overgrown. It’s so bad I am amazed that I am getting any sort of a harvest at all. Every year, I start out with grand intentions of weekly weedings, regular waterings, and timely harvesting. And every year, those habits last about two weeks before I find other things to occupy myself. The weeds take over, plants start wilting, and everything gets overripe. This year is no exception. I just spent four days weeding my garden. It was necessary since you couldn’t distinguish the potato plants from the pigweed and the only way to find green beans was to get on hands and knees and hunt through the waist high quack grass. About a third of the garden will need to be weed whacked because it’s so overgrown. (At least there isn’t anything planted there this year…) What puzzles me so much is why I let it get so bad. I am aware that weekly weedings would take far less time and energy (and result in less sunburnt shoulders) than letting the weeds get waist high before pulling them. My plants wouldn’t look so pitifully spindly if I would water on a regular basis. I wouldn’t have to deal with the sore knees and aching back. My fingers wouldn’t be pricked by the sticker plants if I were to pull them at two inches instead of two feet. It would be far easier to just get out there and do what needs to be done every week instead of waiting a month (or more). So, as I head back out into my garden tonight to pick the overripe green beans and peas, I vow once again to be a better gardener. Let’s see if my good intentions last longer than a half hour.

It's Not Easter

Yet, I'm on a daily egg hunt. Once summertime truly started, our laying hens decided the nesting boxes weren't cutting it. My egg count went from 6-8 eggs a day to 4...if I'm lucky... I've spent a few hours hunting for their hiding places. The most luck I'd have would be to find empty, crushed eggshells here and there. We figured the crows or the dogs were getting to the eggs, hence the random shell pieces everywhere. Until today. I got lucky after investigating a chicken chattering away in the weeds by the holding pen. The darn bird kept returning to the same spot despite my trompsing through the waist-high grass looking for a hidden nest. A lucky stumble showed a hidden chicken calmly perched on a small grass clump amidst a particularly tall weed patch. Now, out of all the places to lay eggs on our farm, the feathered fiends decided to make a nest in the middle of a rather large thistle patch. So, now I'm trying to figure out what to do. I don't really want them laying eggs there because it's not easily accessible to me, other animals have been getting the eggs before I do, and the cows are spooking when a chicken unexpectedly pokes it's head out of the weeds and begins clucking during chores. On the other hand, now that we know where the eggs are, it means less egg hunting for me. Guess I'll have to figure out what's worse.

New additions to our 'brood'

We recently 'inherited' a bunch of laying hens from a neighbor. They are moving and obviously couldn't take the chickens with them so we are the lucky recipients. It's been fun having these feathery ladies clucking around in the front yard. Just wish V would learn to stay out of the chicken coop and Mindy (the dog) would leave the eggs alone. Not so much when you go out to collect eggs and all that's left is a bunch of egg shells. Also hoping to see a decrease in the amount of ticks that come into the house. So far, not seeing any difference.

My Two Men

V's very much like his daddy. It doesn't matter if it's a toy tractor, a block, or even a shoe...If it can be pushed while making Brrrrr sounds, it's a truck or tractor. Blocks become hay bales. His toy schoolhouse becomes a second barn. L is like that too. He can often picture 'what could be' while looking at 'what it is' (something that has helped while we are drawing up house plans).

Another way V is like his dad is they both share a love of climbing and the steeper the surface, hey all the better, right? The exception is L sticks to climbing rocks while V climbs all available surfaces in the house. My couch, chairs, book shelf, his crib, our bed, the kitchen table, his high chair, the cabinets, the toilet, etc...Anything he can find a way up onto, he will. I'm just waiting to find him on top the fridge...

Reading is another love they share. L reads books like The Non-Toxic Farmers Handbook, The Untold Story of Milk, and westerns. V reads Tootle, Berenstein Bears, and, his favorite, Ten Little Babies. (He even knows which page has the little boy hollering QUIET.)

And I can't forget tractors and farm equipment. Both of my men have several tractors at their disposal, most of them are green, and both boys spend quite a bit of their days working with them. The only difference is L plows the fields with his tractors and equipment while V plows the living room floor. They also spend several hours peering at the latest Tractor House magazines.

V absolutely adores his Daddy. Heaven forbid he have to ride with Mom to the barn in the van...No, he's got to go with Dad in the Be-bup (V speak for Pickup). The last time Daddy took him in the tractor V was waving Bye to me while heading for the door wearing only a diaper and shirt with no boots. He wasn't going to chance Dad leaving without him. No sirree. He saw the guys plowing and discing the pasture yesterday and spent part of the afternoon trying to rig up a plow of his own. It didn't work so he went back to loading 'bales' (blocks) into his wagon.

I can only wonder if my little girl will be just as enthusiastic as her brother about all things Farm.

Strange Diagnosis

I went to the chiro yesterday for an adjustment. After hearing me mention I was feeling a bit tired, he poked and prodded along my collarbone til I jumped. A Hmmm, a I've got to get something from the other room, and a Look at the flashlight later, I didn't hurt anymore. His diagnosis-I'm sunlight deficient.

Really? SUNLIGHT?

Weirdly enough, it's true. Apparently there's a gland that needs direct sunlight to function and it can affect everything from moods to muscles to your middle. My prescription for the next two weeks is to sit under a full-spectrum light for at least 15 minutes every day. Finally, a treatment I am actually enjoying. :)

Where's the Mousey?

V got a cute book for Christmas and in each scene you need to lift flaps to find hidden animals. There is also a mouse hidden in each picture and V absolutely LOVES to find the 'squeak, squeak mousey'. He's quite good at it.

Well, a couple weeks ago, we were visiting at my in-laws and V came wandering out of the toy room. He was oh-so-proudly showing his great-grandmother and grandmother the mousey he found while playing. Unfortunately, he didn't know the mouse he was holding was not a fake one but a real (dead) one caught in a trap! After hearing a few SHRIEKS, V thought he was being scolded and threw the trap on the floor. To make him feel better, Grandma T had him 'help' bring the dead mouse outside.

Poor kid didn't know what to think. He was only showing off his mouse! :)

Long Time No See

So it's been a while since I last posted on here...Oops, that's my mistake. I can't make excuses because there really aren't any. Well, I guess having two kids in various stages of growth, teething, and sinus/respiratory illnesses (aka the common cold) can count for some of the missed time but not all of it. So I apologize and will try to do better from here on out. Here's a little of what's been going on in the last few months at our house...

-V turned 2 just a few weeks ago. He certainly enjoyed his party, most especially the two toy cows he got for presents. Just hope he doesn't start expecting a cow for every year. :) He's turning into quite the mimic now. He and his daddy have a stretching contest every time L stretches. We are having to watch our words as he tries to say everything we do but the results can be hilarious, embarrassing, or simply horrifying since he can't pronounce all the sounds quite right.

-A is nearly four months and, like her brother, she's getting bigger by the day it seems. She can 'talk', giggle, roll from front to back and almost all the way back, and loves to sit up. She recently discovered the joys of applesauce but turned her nose up at the rice cereal. Picky eater already...

-We finally decided on a location for our house and plans are slowly moving along in that direction. I'm spending quite a bit of time dreaming of house plans and trying to fit everything we want into the size we have. It's like a big jigsaw puzzle. Some plans sound awesome but once drawn out, you see that something doesn't work. Others don't sound so promising but look pretty good once they are on paper. I can't wait to see what we come up with in the end.

-We've been having a very mild winter thus far with very few days in the 'frigid' range. It's been wonderful to take the kids for a walk in January but I wish we had a bit more snow. There's a dusting but it's iffy as to whether or not it would be good skiing yet so maybe tomorrow I'll take my skis out for a spin to see. I'm getting cabin fever so it would be lovely to get outdoors for some exercise if the weather is nice.

Well, I'm sure there's been plenty more happening in our little corner of the world but I can't think of anything of major importance at the moment. Maybe tomorrow... If I find the energy that is...