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Sandy’s Special 10

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According to the National Weather Service, we are in the path of  Hurricane Sandy (whom we affectionately call “Frankenstorm”).

If you are reading this, and it is Tuesday, I may be clinging to a bent-over tree in the backyard surrounded by flood waters.

Here are Ten Other Things I Might Be Doing During The Hurricane

1) Eating the remains of our ‘hurricane stash’ of Kashi cereal (just because it’s an emergency doesn’t mean we need to eat crappy stuff – I stocked up last week)

2) Rafting down Otter Creek on my Volvo accompanied by my handsome hubby and a banjo

3) Using the hurricane force winds to parasail my way West

4) Seeking higher ground

5) Cooking bear meat over a fire I made in the street wearing skins and dreadlocks because I’ve gone a day without a hot shower

6) Digging a community latrine in the backyard (because there’s no water)

7) Finally using that gorgeous hurricane lamp Mr. Brown gave us for a wedding present

8) Lighting All The Candles and eating the emergency chocolate reserves

9) Playing air guitar on our silent electric guitar

10) Knitting

The Working Ten

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We all have a lot of jobs that we must do in life, from teething to raising kids to putting away the dishes after dinner – there is always something to be done, some sort of work. It’s a good thing, it keep life moving in the right direction.

Here are Ten Jobs – all of which I have done at some point in my life.

1) Don’t let this pig through

2) Clean up that vomit

3) Milk these cows

4) Bring them fries

5) Sort these bolts – all of them

6) Lance her abscess

7) Pick the dead flowers off these 7,000 geraniums

8) Carry this knife

9) Walk to the end, turn and walk back. Smile.

10) Don’t overfill those donuts

Maybe you’ve been working on the railroad all the livelong day and want to talk about it… go ahead, it’s your turn to share some of the jobs you’ve had to do in life…

homeschool heartache

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“OUCH!”

My husband says,

“My face hurts – I feel like I just got slapped with Home-school.”

He loves to tease me about my history as a geeky home-schooler and it gets worse when I talk about knitting sweaters for fictional literary characters, or admit that I had a wicked crush on Jimmy Stewart as a teen and not Brad Pitt, or argue that the Civil War had precious little to do with slavery. His life with me has been one very long slap of home-school. What can I say – I’m his first home-school experience, I want him to get his money’s worth.

I have little home-school moments when I feel like no one understands me and I revert to a Jane Eyre-esque state of stoic hysteria.

 

“Do you think that because I was home-schooled I have no heart? No sense of fashion? A slanted education? No interest in the world around me? No understanding of popular culture? No dreams, no needs, no desires?”

 

 

Then sometimes, it’s more like this:

 

I am a Home-schooler. Hath not a home-schooler eyes? Hath not a home-schooler hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter
and summer, as a public schooler is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If
you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?

 

I’m talking sackcloth and ashes home-school heartbreak.

Then I get over it and move on to the next sweater, the next fond memory of my dead-man crushes, the next argument about states’ rights and how I think pot should be legalized.

Ok, that last gem was more of a Hippie thing than a Home-school thing.

Just sayin’.

 

psssssst…

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I wanted to tell you about something. Come closer… because I’m actually whispering.

I have come up with a meal planning idea that just might work. Just might.

Thanks to the many dozens of people I have stalked and creepily asked about their meal planning methodology, I do believe that I’ve found something that will suit our needs PERFECTLY.

Ok, you can move away now, I’m done whispering.

Here it is in black and white (because I can’t figure out how to change the color of the fonts on this silly program).

Each week I will pick 7 meals using ingredients I have or will purchase:

1 Breakfast (because I think breakfast needs a chance to be the ‘most popular’ meal)

1 Casserole/Soup ( two things I would love to make more of)

1 “Ethnic” (Curry, yum…)

1 Salad/Vegetarian ( we like to have a ‘lighter’ meal now and again)

1 Easy/Quick/Simple (for the days we spend away and get home minutes before dinner time)

1 Never Before Tried (can you say ‘cabbage rolls’)

1 Other  (sort of self-explanatory – - and if it isn’t, hang in there, I’ll explain in a bit)

So – once the meals are picked, I can arrange them through the week as needed. The nights I work we can have the casserole or easy dish, a night we have more time I could fix something new and exciting. If I have certain ingredients that need to be used sooner, that meal will come at the beginning of the week. The “Other” meal can be used for leftovers or if we eat out or just decided to have a ‘movie and a snack night’, which happens sometimes. This way, there’s always something different going on at meal time and at least once a week we’ll try something totally new. I’m inordinately excited about it.

Ta-stinking-da.

Alright, I just needed to share that.

Bye now.

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the menu board. in its former life it was a cheap picture frame at Wal*Mart… we made it into something Awesome with a little chalk board paint – boy howdy, I love that stuff!!

This is the way we scrub the tub

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Seems like my natural cleaning idea got some cogs turning, so I thought I would write a little and share my first homemade cleaning product adventure.

Aren’t you excited?

Better get some popcorn, I’ll wait.

So – I thought that we’d just slowly transition as we ran out of cleaning products, and then anything still left clinging to the side of the cupboard at the turn of the year will be ousted and replaced.

What was the first cleaning buddy to finish the race? Scouring Powder, because I love it so and use it on everything. Everything. AND – I am a die-hard brand nazi on this one, Comet is the *only* way to go. I’ve tried the all-natural stuff, Bar Keeper’s Friend, and several other brands and never found one I was as satisfied with as Comet. Unfortunately, it’s not that good for you. Not good at all. I can’t deny that it does a kick-butt job cleaning, though. The only problem I’ve ever had is that it seems to NEVER wash off. I don’t care how many times I rinse, there remains a light, bleachy, powdery film – yum – don’t you just want that left all over your baking pans and tub?

I didn’t think so. Well, neither do I. The Comet ran out this morning and I turned to the first homemade replacement in my recipe file (I’ve been collecting homemade cleaning product recipes – like a geek).

Baking Soda; it’s the other white scouring powder. You can buy it for a ridiculously little amount of money and it’s not going to kill you, always a bonus when considering something you clean with.

I filled a quart jar with baking soda that I bought at the co-op (for about a dollar) and then added a few drops of various essential oils; peppermint, basil and lavender. Then I shook the daylights out of it to mix the oils into the powder. Already the stuff smelled a whole lot better then Comet (although, who isn’t secretly attracted to the scent of bleach??)

Viola – we’re ready to scrub-a-dub-dub!

To be super cool, and nifty-like, I cut the top off of an empty salt container and used that for the lid of the jar, screwing the band around it so it stayed on. It now has a handy pouring spout. Thank you, Pinterest, for making me look so clever.

Time to clean the bathroom. I usually use Comet to scrub the sink, inside of the toilet bowl and shower stall/tub. Today I just shook my scenty baking powder all over and then doused it with some white vinegar (in a squirt bottle, the same vinegar I use for my hair). It makes a satisfying volcano of cleaning power and all I can think is that it’s like those cleaning bubble guys you see on T.V. – on steroids. I then proceeded to clean as I usually do, scrubbing and singing and rinsing and everything came out spotless – with no creepy, bleachy residue. The tub squeaked with cleanliness and the sink faucet shone. It didn’t take me any longer to clean this way, in fact I think I had to rinse everything a whole lot less which made it quicker.

Sorry, Comet – you done been shown up, big time.

…the dynamic cleaning duo…

My cleaning basket and its residents. Comet has given its spot to baking soda. The remaining items are; Windex, Murphy’s Floor cleaner, and Simple Green all purpose cleaner.

step into my confessional

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So.

As most of you probably remember, in last week’s 10 Things I declared my intention to cut fried foods and caffeine completely out of my diet.

(And I still feel a little creepy every time I write it, like – who am I kidding?)

I have good reasons to make such a commitment, really good reasons – excellent reasons. Super-Duper reasons.

BUT.

As most of you probably *don’t* know, this past week was fair week here in my corner of the Green Mountain State, and being the good locals that we are, my husband and I went to said fair, accompanied by my lovely mom-in-law, Elaine.

Elaine, Alex and I trooped off to the show where we were accosted by the glories of Stormy the Dancing Pony, Rosie’s Fabulous Racing Pigs, and every sort of 4H project imaginable. And of course, the roadway was positively punctuated with fried food fiends sent from hell to destroy us all. Or, at least to destroy me.

Me, who suddenly felt compelled to start with my no fried foods commitment *tomorrow*. Because really – what’s a fair without fried foods?

I ate french fries and then I ate too much of a beautiful blooming onion and got high on whatever heavenly sauce they serve with it. HIGH, I say. It was amazing. Alex, good soul that he is, didn’t partake of anything deep fried (though I tried to talk him into a deep-fried Snickers Bar) but he did enjoy some really good ribs (I enjoyed them too…) while Elaine dove to the depths with me and shared the blooming onion and the euphoria that followed.

Oh my.

I didn’t get sick, or struck by lightning, but I felt I needed to come and confess to my gentle readership that if I were forced to take some sort of a ‘fried food drug test’, I would fail, and miserably. But – this is a new week, another chance and I am determined to do it justice. And just to try and wipe a little of the black smudge off my good name, I will say that for breakfast the next day I had decaf herbal tea instead of coffee. Yes, yes I did. And we can be very proud of that.

The End.

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the big binder theory

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‘… zealfully attending life …’

She attended life with her accustomed zeal – and now – with organization.

The Big Book of Organization

This is my Big Book of Organization. I am very pleased with myself for having created one, but I can’t take the credit for the idea. My friend Maureen is the most organized person I have ever met. Just being around her is like being embraced by every handy, nifty, thrifty, clever, ingenious, and downright organized household trick ever conceived by man or wife. I mean, this woman has a system for *everything* from getting the absolute lowest price at the meat counter to menu planning and keeping the bathrooms clean. I’ve never been in a house that is run so smoothly – it’s almost a bit surreal. I’ve watched her cook in utter fascination as every container is marked, every recipe filed away under some encoded system that she has devised, every spice pre-measured, and I’m sitting there like, “How does her brain work?”

It’s honestly a little overwhelming, but in a good way. Every time I’m around her (which isn’t much, she lives quite a ways away) I learn something new. I’m a slow learner, a lot more bounces off my forehead than what actually gets absorbed, but it’s sinking in…

On this last trip, Maureen introduced me to the idea of keeping sheet sets inside pillowcases so that they’re all contained. Oh. My. Word. No more searching for lost pillowcases, or lone ranger top sheets – they’re right there in the pillow case. This has been invaluable advice, since we don’t have a linen cabinet in this apartment and the sheets just kind of live ‘wherever’. Now they’re in a neat stack of sheet ‘kits’, ready to be hauled off the pile and put on the bed. Viola.

She also got me hooked on the whole Binder Theory.

The theory is this: if you have everything written down and contained in one location – you won’t loose you mind trying to remember it all. So very clever. She even outfitted me with a binder (“I always pick them up at garage sales and keep them – you never know when you need an empty binder! We use them for everything…” she says.) some paper and a few page protectors – a Binder Starter Kit.

a glimpse into the secret passages contained therein

Lest I go home without anything in my new Binder, she passed along her recipe for sourdough bread (as well as the starter- which, for the record, is kept in the fridge, not the Binder… just saying.), instructions for making fertility tracking beads (people are getting antsy for us to start having kids, I’m thinking…) and a few recipes for popular condiments that can be made at home for a fraction of the cost of buying them at the store. Salad dressings, ketchup, mayonnaise – I have the recipes in my Binder and I feel like such a legit housewoman!

Oh yes. I have since added more paper and more page protectors and have set up various ‘sections’ for home, some day farm, kitchen, health, finances, and knitting. Yup, knitting gets a whole section in the Binder. Not sure why – it just does. The End.

So I’m thinking meal plans. Does anyone out there do this? Right now we go from day to day or week to week with groceries and I usually have *some* idea about what to cook next, but I would love to get to the point where it’s a monthly thing. Monthly meal plans and then just shop according. My hubs *loves* to go grocery shopping, so this will probably continue to be a weekly occurrence, which is cool, but I’d still like to plan ahead more. Is that even possible? Is that silly to do since there are just two of us?  I just think of all the brain space I could use on a daily basis if I weren’t consumed with figuring out what to have for dinner…

My thinking is this – someday, fertility tracking beads or no, if the good Lord so wills, we will have children. I’ve been thinking about that an awful lot lately, not exactly in a wishy-washy way, or a ‘tear up when I see a baby in the store’ way, but it’s almost like I’ve gone into Planning Mode. Weird, huh? Me – who plans for nothing. Who has No Plan. Suddenly – everything about my world is, “How is this going to work when we have kids?”

I don’t want to be a crazy mom who can’t stay on top of the game, you know? I certainly don’t want to schedule the fun out of life, but I don’t want to be so stressed out due to lack of knowledge and plannig that I can’t enjoy life.  I think the key is not in being perfect, not in having a spotless house, not in never having an unplanned moment, but simply Knowing What You Are About.

I have to admit, since living so far from Maureen, my ol’ buddy Pinterest has become my go-to place for ideas about getting my brain in order. Talk about organization overload! Printable meal plans, chore checklists, ideas and inspiration, recipes – it’s like an Internet Binder that fills itself -without page protectors. I’m lovin’ it.

So what do you do to keep yourself in check? Any tips? Any wives and/or mothers out there with advice to pass along to this here Pleb?

I’m all ears…

P.S. …thought I’d add some links of sites I’ve been on recently that fueled and inspired my nesting drive… more to come

A Bowl Full of Lemons

The Nest Effect

10 things I do

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I think that we, the people, should write a song about Tuesday… any ideas?

 

10 Stupid Things I Do

 

1) Stand up too quick, even though I know what happens there after – I usually temporarily pass out due to my low blood pressure. It isn’t life-threatening or dangerous, just stupid and annoying and I do it All The Time.

2) Count the telephone poles as we drive past them. Yup. I also count to the beat of the windshield wipers if it’s raining. No, that’s not weird at all.

3) Use the purple potholder – even though I know it has little holes in it and I WILL burn my hand. Do I remove it from the pile? Nope. Just keep using it -

just keep on using it.

4) Hit the little HOME button on the bottom of my iPod when I mean to hit the BACK button and I accidentally exit from whatever it was I was doing. Annoying.

5) Mix up dates. Always. Just last week I found myself sitting outside next to the road with my overnight bag, waiting for 50 minutes for the ride that wasn’t going to come because the wedding was NEXT week. NEXT week. Take your bags and go back inside, Ann. Now. Just go.

6) Take that first sip of boiling hot coffee from those stupid take-out cup covers that funnel the burning liquid onto your lips. Ouch. It hurts every time, for a long time.

7) Overestimate the time it takes for me to ride my bike to work. On a bike, it takes exactly 1 minute to get to my work. 1 minute. 60 seconds. Then why do I usually leave a good 20 minutes early? In case I hit traffic on the sidewalk going down? In case I develop a cramp and have to walk the last 10 feet? It makes no sense.

8) Go to bed late. Get up early. Drink coffee. Don’t nap. Just keep going.

9) Obsess about my weight. It’s a dumb thing, and I do it all too often, like – almost every time I eat or get dressed in the morning. I need to just get over it, right? It’s that evil comfort zone in my mind whenever I’m stressing or upset about anything else, I take it out on my weight. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

10) After 9 Stupid things, aren’t you ready for something a little less demoralizing?

What’s something Not Stupid that I do?

I write this blog for a bunch of pretty cool people that have come from all corners of the Internet Void and decided to share a bit of translucent, web-like life with one such as I, even though I do Dumb things.

It’s your turn.

Ever done anything Dumb?

bacon haters gonna hate

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But that’s not going to stop me, no way.

I read this statistic once that claimed that people who eat a mere two pieces of bacon a day can expect a 20% higher mortality rate than non-daily-bacon-eating people.

Given the inerrant accuracy of Internet statistics, and comparing the 20% mortality rate with other mortality rates such as those tacked to smoking or taming lions or riding in cars on highways – I figure that my current bacon-eating ratio of 2 pieces every third month shouldn’t kill me any time soon.

Having said all that…

What if I add chocolate to bacon, and sugar, and eggs? What if I tempt fate and wrap marshmallows in bacon before I roast them and eat them like that? What about a bacon-wrapped s’mores?

I feel my mortality rate spinning out of control just thinking of it. The rush is making me feel dizzy and Alive. How far can we go without doing serious damage to our life expectancy? Or better yet, how can we make bacon into something that isn’t so prone to be hated on?

What about Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies?

Yes. Let’s do it.

Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies

*dedicated to Andy and Lizzy, two people who will go out with a smile on their lips, no doubt*

4-6 pieces of  uncured bacon, cooked until crispy, drained well and then crumbled

1/2 stick butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

 1/3 cup egg whites

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup and 2 tablespoons flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Before we dive into the actual making of the cookies, let’s sit down and have a word about the ingredients, shall we? You are about to start a culinary revolution in your oven and I don’t want anyone rushing into this without having given it enough thought.

I borrowed the basic chocolate chip cookie recipe from my trusty, batter-splattered copy of Irma Rombauer and Marion Becker’s immortal classic, “Joy of Cooking” cookbook and altered the daylights out of it. Firstly, I cut the amount of butter called for in half (figuring that the bacon will add a little fat on its own) and instead of using whole eggs, I used whites, trying to save a little on the cholesterol intake and thus lowering our overall mortality rate to about 17.5% higher than those who wouldn’t touch the cookies. As for the flour, I mixed half whole wheat and half white, and I figure that brings us to an even 14%. Lastly, but not least, I spent the extra couple of dollars and bought the all natural, uncured bacon *without* nitrites. No nitrites?  No problem. These cookies are practically health food.

Now, for the business end of things.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees

In a large bowl or stand mixer, cream the butter and then gradually add the two sugars, then beat them well.

Now add the egg whites and vanilla and beat again, until everything is smooth and creamy.

Stir in the flour, salt and soda with a wooden spoon or spatula.

When everything is all mixed up and there are no pockets of dry ingredients – fold in the chocolate chips and bacon crumbles. Go ahead and sample some while you do, you have my permission.

Drop the cookies by tablespoons onto a lightly greased cookie tray and then bake them for about 10 minutes. When they’re golden brown – and remember, if you use whole wheat flour they will be a bit darker than if you use only white – take them out of the oven and put them on a cooling rack so that they can cool off. Once thoroughly cooled, they are ready to enjoy. And enjoy them you will.

This recipe made about a dozen cookies for me, but this is because I like them decent-sized and I ate a good deal of the cookie dough while waiting for the oven to finish heating up. True story. Use smaller spoons, don’t eat the dough, get more cookies -it’s really very simple. Not saying that I’ll do it any differently next time… but it’s a good thought.

hate me if you dare