Friday, March 21, 2008

Just catching up....

It's been a while since I posted, I know. I'm not even sure anyone is reading, so you may not have noticed. But, if you have a secret addiction to my blog, consider this your dealer's apology. Anyway, you can bank on the fact that if I'm not posting then I'm busy. The past few weeks are no exception.

We're slowly going more and more natural around the house here. We recently started acquiring our milk from a new "source". Our not-so-mainstream milk, you might say. So far, it's delicious and amazing. We're loving it. I've been experimenting with creating dairy products, and so far have managed to produce butter, buttermilk (not culured; that's this week), whey, yogurt, cream cheese, sour cream, and ice cream. Granted, the cream for the ice cream still had too much milk in it, so became low-fat ice milk, but Godson ate it anyway. Good boy, that one. Considering Brian drinks about 2 gallons of milk a week, and figuring in some cooking/baking here and there, that's a considerable amount of milk for two people. Add in some whole milk weekly for the Rugrat Coalition, and we may as well buy a cow! I wonder how the neighbors would feel about that? While I'm at it, I'd go ahead and get some chickens and a goat, too. Is it possible to get evicted from a house you own? Probably.

We're slowly going from plastic and disposable things to glass, too. Our milk bottles are glass now, and a lot of our storage containers. In fact, there are so many Ball jars in our kitchen, it looks like we're makin' shine. Just let me find a good recipe.... We're using more and more cloth, too. I bet a roll of paper towels around here lasts a month or more. It makes for one load of laundry a week to use cloth napkins, dishtowels for spills and such, and to use reusable cloth options for things. Really not a big deal.

In addition, we recently made acquisition of a fabulous chest freezer. We initially started looking at a 5.5 cubic foot freezer. Then we found one that was 6.9 cf, and that led to one that was 7.9 cf for the same money. Score! Then we finally found The One, and it was 8.2 cubic feet. We headed back to the DIY Megastore to pick it up, and discovered that they were out of stock. Since we had taken the time to research all this, and since we had dragged my father along with my cousin's truck, we decided we HAD to get a freezer TODAY. Luckily they had one just slightly bigger that was comparably priced. It was 14.4 cubic feet. Perfect size for two, huh? Right. It's huge. However, it's great to have so much room. If anyone has a body or other object they need frozen and stored, call me! Since our local grocery store was offering free hams for Easter if you spent a certain amount of money in a certain period of time, we received a big ol' ham this past weekend. For free! As of Wednesday, it's been reduced to 2 large steaks, 4 small steaks, 4 pieces of ham for breakfast suitable for frying, two packages of chunks to go in macaroni and cheese, a bag of miscellaneous scraps suitable for soups, and a big bag of bones, fat, and generally left over stuff for stock or soup bases. All this went in the freezer for later. It seems like everything goes in there lately!

We recently had general care of The Godson for 10 days. Seems his mom had something going on. I don't know..something like getting married! She married Brian's cousin, and they can be found right here in Blog Land at sweetteaandmack.blogspot.com. They did it just right, I think, and it's adorable that they managed to pull off the perfect elopement. And, just for the record, I knew The Cousin was perfect for The Bum the minute I met him. Sure, he was still married and probably hated most women at that point, but he was still tailor-made for her. I totally pegged this. **pat, pat on my back** It was great to have The Godson here for a week or so. He's generally a great kid, and hilarious for an 11 year old. He does eat like a horse and takes up 5' 6" of space (yes, at 11) usually in the middle of my floor, but it's all good. He's easily entertained. We took him to the Highland County Maple Festival, and the highlight of his day was the maple tour. Or more specifically, seeing a dead squirrel at the foot of one of the sugar maples. He was fascinated. I think pancakes and unlimited access to maple syrup to the day may have helped! His whole stay here was fun, but I have to say that getting up to put a kid on the bus officially sucks. If we weren't already planning on homeschooling our kids, putting someone on the bus in the dark at 6:55 would have totally convinced me.
Well, the red beans and rice are starting to smell fabulous. It's become a Good Friday/Black Friday tradition around our house to make red beans and rice. No Zataran's for us, no sir. This involves ham hocks and andouille sausage, thank you very much. The recipe makes a huge stock pot full, and we eat it for about two or three days before freezing about two days more. And then some to Little Bro, Mama, and The Bum to share the wealth. I should figure out how much it is per meal, but I seriously doubt it's more than $1. Ham hocks are the biggest expense here, and how much does 6 ham hocks really cost, anyway? I could look it up, but I'm not going to. Just rest assured that if you ever want dinner on Good Friday, stop by around 7:30 to get it. As The Bum says, it'll make your tongue beat your brains out!

1 comment:

agoodwitchtoo said...

Did someone say red beans and rice? :)

You may just have to hook me up with your milk connection. I'm determined to overcome that phobia!

Can you believe that they actually sell Zatarain's in the shops in N'awlins? Seriously. More appalling is that people buy that mix and then buy a Cajun Cookbook. Duh.

Thanks for watching the Rugrat for us! He's all about me starting some of that tea. Which he's totally going to have to help me spell.

Much love,
Mrs. Adkins-Baileys (tee hee)