Good News!

Finally, something we can agree on. This is my third last issue.

Hambone, Hambone, have you heard?

We had a tasty ham for our Christmas dinner this year.  Alton would have been proud.  As always, Chuck stepped in to carve the meat from the bone.  A nasty job that I seriously dislike.   I can crack open a chicken carcass and toss the neck and back in a bag for bulk stock and think it is no big deal but a ham bone makes me squidgy.  So when Chuck asked if he should save the shank bone from the ham I hesitated.  He, on the other hand, slapped it into some foil for later. Smart man there.  

Last week I plunked that nasty bone in a pot along with some aromatics, enough water to cover* and reduced it down for hours.  I knew it was a waste of energy and would probably end up smelling of dirty high school boy socks but I figured Chuck would eat it.  

You see, Chuck's family eats what they call "ham beans", a stew of sorts.  Combine the two obvious players, chopped onion and water, and there you have it.   I use to make it with chicken stock and it was good but not all that great to me.  I have never been a fan of ham stock until now. The ham stock turned those beans into something to sing about.  (get it? huh, huh? beans, beans the musical.... nm) 

I really don't have much of a recipe.  My non-recipe card carrying Mamish would be proud.

Ham Beans 

1.5 liters ham stock, strained

1c pintos, soaked over night

1c black beans**, soaked over night***

1 onion, chopped

2c ham, chopped to about bean size 

salt & pepper

1tsp Tony Catcher's cajun spices

(a bit of horseradish if you are Chuck)

Crockpot it all day or a slow simmer on the stove.  Please make yourself some cornbread to go with it.  And I don't mean that yellow yankee cornbread stuff either.  That is dessert in my house.  If you don't know how to make proper hilljack cornbread then let me know.  I might just help you out.

*I started with about 3qts water and reduced it down by about half.

**You can use another bean but I like black the best.

***If you care about your loved ones then you will rinse those soaking beans and NOT use the soak water.  Fresh water all the way

Greek Salad Love

If you know me at all then you know that I love to cook. I love finding a base recipe and tweaking it until it is my own. Then I like to stuff my friends silly with whatever is my current food obsession. (Yes, I know I have problems.)

Such is the case with the rough chopped simple beauty of the Greek salad. I have tried quite a few recipes then landed on a mixture of several. The outcome is absolutely perfect on my tastebuds.

Ingredients
4T extra virgin olive oil
2T lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, minced
3/4t dried oregano
1/2t kosher salt
1/4t fresh ground black pepper
2 heads romaine lettuce, hand torn to a good size
3-4 tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 English cucumber, quartered, seeded and chopped
1/2 green bell pepper
1/2 red bell pepper
1/2 red onion chopped
4oz feta cheese, crumbled
1/2 cup green olives, drained (for the love of gawd, use good olives)

Combine first six ingredients and set aside. Allow time for the flavors to blend. Plow through the chopping of all of the veggies and crumble your feta. I prefer to crumble mine with a fork. Feta fingers are a special kinda stinky. Toss everything together just before serving. Serve with crusty bread or some homemade crackers. Be still my heart.


Sorry for the crummy picture. I didn't think about taking one until it was too late. That is what remains after I had my way with the leftovers from a small gathering.

The Good Crackers

Give my family one of those famous golden buttery oval crackers and they stare back and ask for "the good crackers". If I had a dime for every time they asked for "the good crackers" then I would be a rich woman and Chuck would be collecting carts at Kroger after hours and asking for payment in dimes.

Knowing that homemade bread is so yummy I can only assume that homemade crackers would be equally satisfying. I finally landed on a recipe for rosemary crackers that sounded tasty and surprisingly simple. Finally a good reason to hack into the new rosemary bush sitting on the window sill.

Crisp Rosemary Flatbread
(yeah yeah yeah I know it says flatbread but its crackers darnit)
Gourmet Magazine July 2008

1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon chopped rosemary plus 2 (6-inch) sprigs
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup olive oil plus more for brushing
Flaky sea salt

Preheat oven to 450°F with a heavy baking sheet on rack in middle.

Stir together flour, chopped rosemary, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Make a well in center, then add water and oil and gradually stir into flour with a wooden spoon until a dough forms. Knead dough gently on a work surface 4 or 5 times.

Divide dough into 3 pieces and roll out 1 piece (keep remaining pieces covered with plastic wrap) on a sheet of parchment paper into a 10-inch round (shape can be rustic; dough should be thin).

Lightly brush top with additional oil and scatter small clusters of rosemary leaves on top, pressing in slightly. Sprinkle with sea salt. Slide round (still on parchment) onto preheated baking sheet and bake until pale golden and browned in spots, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer flatbread (discard parchment) to a rack to cool, then make 2 more rounds (1 at a time) on fresh parchment (do not oil or salt until just before baking). Break into pieces.

Flatbread can be made 2 days ahead and cooled completely, then kept in an airtight container at room temperature.

Of course once I got my first batch of crackers into the oven I realized that I was in serious need of something that would go well with the crackers. I cranked out a white bean dip that went perfectly. I snapped these into rustic pieces but next time I may try using a pizza cutter.

One Track Mind

There are times when I really need to stop the multi tasking and just do one thing at a time. This weekend was Kaileigh's dance recital so I was busy making a bouquet for her. Which turned out pretty darn nice I might add. So anyhow, someone in our house mentioned that egg nog really sounded nice so I grabbed Alton's recipe. Always a good place to start imo.

Tides turned when I began to cook the custardy mixture. *sigh* The smell was awesome and then I began to wonder why I smelled scrambled eggs? Lets just say that if you cook your mixture too hard and fast that it will turn to scrambled egg nog. Nothing can be done at this point except dump it. I am thankful that I did not use the Makers though. I would not be able to look Whitaker in the eye ever again.

Please step AWAY from the bag!

Excuse me while I get my rant on. WTF is up with the cashiers that get snippy when you refuse a plastic bag? I am pretty good about taking my reusable bags into the store with me but when I only need one or 2 items then why bother? I really am not a purse carrier so one of the tiny fold and take reusable bags that you toss in your purse does not work for me. I just keep my bags in the trunk and grab whatever I need before I go in. (and no, I am not sticking one in my pocket. My arse is big enough as it is thankyouverymuch)

On Friday, I went into an unnamed store (starts with K, ends in ls and has an OH in the center) just to get a pair of regular ol jeans for Chuck. No need for one of my bags from the trunk right? At checkout, the young plastic pushing clerk decides to get snippy when I inform her that I do not need a bag. I swear I smiled all nice and everything. She tells me that she is not allowed to. Then she shoves the jeans into a plastic bag and hands it to me. I smile again to show that I am a nice person and I understand her minimum wage plight but no way was I taking the damned bag. Three times we went over it.

Finally we ended our conversation when I slipped the jeans out of the bag and walked out the door with my receipt in hand.

I will stop now.

Skinny Arse Dog

Poor Jessie has zero intestinal fortitude. The last tummy rot had her down right scrawny before we could turn her around. She has since gained back a good amount of weight but she is still too skinny.

What to do for a skinny arse dog that has very little hair? Make her a coat out of an old fleece blanket of course! No pattern required. Just went free form. Pinned it on her and sewed around her giant schnauzer chest and scrawny belly. I even worked one of the corners into a wee hood.

She looks super cute and seemed pleased with being warm again. Now if only I had a remedy for a deranged kitten that won't leave her alone.

For the Love of Bread: Part II

This round of bread did not go well. As in, it looked pretty but was not anything that I want to sit down and eat unless I am starving. The birds are currently eating it though. So it was not a total waste.

All seemed to go well until I was ready for the sponge to rest in the fridge over night. I lifted the plastic wrap to see if I could smell some yeasty goodness. OH how big of a mistake was that. It smelled like what my grandfather use to make out in the smoke house with his buddies. Then I had to prove what a fool I am by taking another nosehair burning whiff. Then I followed up that stupidity by trying to get Chuck to join in on the madness. Smart man that he is, he declined.

I did not give up. I was hopeful that the alcohol-ness would burn off over night which it did for the most part. However, a faint alcohol whiff was present all through the second rise. Bread baked up and looked good but I won't be going that route again.

I do have another spent grain recipe brewing in my mind so after next brew I will give it a go.

For the Love of Bread

Normally I love to bake and cook but the last six months or so my love of the culinary arts has been on an extended vacation. At the top of my list of food favs is bread. Especially of the homemade sort. At times, I eat enough carbs to make a South Beach dieter pass out with envy (or maybe it is fear). I am getting my groove back on though.

Watching Chuck pitch two tons of spent beer grains in the compost woke something up in my mind. He had already dashed my hopes and dreams of using the leftover yeast cake for bread. Turns out that the beer yeast and the bread yeast are different. Go figure. But the grains! The grains are still usable, right? We shall see.

I took a basic bread sponge recipe from "Baking with Julia" and altered it a bit. The sponge will rise on the counter for 4-5 hours and then rest overnight in the fridge. Hopefully by tomorrow it will smell yummy, yeasty and much less like a feed bucket.

Sponge Recipe
1c spent grains
1c water
1c fresh ground Golden 86 wheat flour
2t sugar
2.5tsp yeast
-add water and spent grains to the blender until they are as smooth as you wish.
-dump into a big honkin bowl and stir in the rest of the items by hand.
-give it a good sniff because you know you wanna see what horse grains smell like
-cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise on the counter

Insomnimomma

I am a bed snob. There I have said it. I like sleeping in my insanely comfy bed that is wrapped in 10 million thread count sheets. Unless I am camping cause that is a totally different mummy bag. Slipping between the cool sheets each night and snuggling down onto my 'forms to my own arse' memory foam mattress. Ah yeah, that is goodness. Acres upon acres of king sized goodness.

I love my darn bed so why shouldn't I hop into it and quickly slip off into lala land? Not the case my friend. That is so not the case. I have never been that kind of girl. I need to read a few chapters, preferably alone. Nothing embarrasses me more than when I am reading a chapter or two of a great book and I get totally lost and snort from laughing. Then I hear movement next to me and it totally blows my literary moment cause chicks that snort when they laugh... not that cute.

I was having a bit of a problem going to sleep until I was absolutely exhausted then I forced myself into better sleeping health (I really hate that phrase) with a schedule. Looks like I am heading that way again. Yep, no more late nights watching Netflix or catching up on a little bloggy reading or trying to find ways to mutilate the orange gourds on my front porch into something tasty. *sigh*

Maybe I should just convince Chuck that it is perfectly normal to sleep in the camper while it is parked in the driveway. Always an excellent sleep there.

Sooki Sue 1994?- September 25, 2008

Yesterday afternoon we said goodbye to Sooki . I have no words to match my sadness.

The Smoothie King Incident

Aw smoothies. One of my favorite treats and probably the healthiest of them all. So when I passed along the rot of 1999 to Chuck, I thought I would be nice and bring him a big fat smoothie from Smoothie King. Tropical somethingerother with strawberries, nanners and various other good things. "Various other good things" must be smoothie crack because I have never been able to make them quite as good as the king. I walk in his door and I am not even off the entry way tile and it slips from my mittened hands and lands right on his white carpet. (who the heck puts white carpet in an apartment?) Yay me! Chuck spent the next day at home sick with his best friend mr rental rug doctor.

I have not been allowed to forget but I do sometimes make up for it by offering my version of a Smoothie King smoothie.

1 banana
1 handful of frozen strawberries
1/4-1/2c OJ
blend like a fewl and serve

My family sways from total banana frenzies to casting off bananas til they are nothing but fruit fly fodder. We are not a family that loves the spotty nanners. My solution is to toss the bananas into the deep freeze with their skins on and bring them out as needed. Simply snip the ends off with kitchen shears and squeeze them into your blender.

One smoothie that we tried recently was a take on Jo's smoothie. I am by no means as big of a peanut butter lover as Jo but I still do like my peanutty fix.

1 frozen banana (helps to lop them into 2-3 pieces before you blend but not required)
1 blob of vanilla yogurt
1/4-1/2c milk
big ol blob of peanut butter. Seriously, don't waste your time with measuring. I use about 2-4T if you had to pin me down for an answer but scoop and dump and it is all good.

I also like to thaw the bananas out over night and squash them up for pancakes, oatmeal, banana bread and rice crispies.

mmmmmm yum

Caroline

Kaileigh loves Old Crow Medicine Show. The first song she really loved, outside of singing E-L-M-O over and over, was Wagon Wheel . I love OCMS myself so I am perfectly happy to have someone else sing along with me as we roll on down the road.

This year my brother and his wife had their first baby, Caroline. Caroline and Kaileigh share the exact same birthday. How cool is that? Even cooler is that OCMS has a song entitled Caroline. Click and listen if you wish. Kaileigh sings it like it is a love song because she misses Caroline.
Luck would have it that they will be visiting soon. Not soon enough or long enough I am sure but either way Kaileigh is super excited.

See you soon Caroline.... oh Jeff and Fiona too of course. ahem :)

Sicker Than a Dog

Poor Jessie. She has been pretty darn sickly lately. So we carted her off to the vet. Not our normal vet that we know, trust and love. They were booked so I figured we would just pop into the office of one of the vets we use to take our herd to when I was a kid. Somewhere along the line, this country vet turned into a fancy pants vet that no longer believes in using his degree to flipping figure anything out. Oh no. They must use tests and more tests to say to you, "Yep, we aren't sure what it is without more tests so here's some antibiotics. Take two and call me in two days. Oh and here is some fancy pants food made by a crap company but we like to charge $3 a can." Which btw I hear most dogs won't touch with a ten foot pole. That says alot to me. If you can spend a good five minutes licking your nethers then you really should have no issues with crap food.


Way too much spent for no real diagnosis and we have a dog that is back to her usual self (give or take half her body weight). Laying on her back in whatever patch of sun shines in. We have switched her diet to a modified BARF diet (yep, I'm a wimp and can't hand her a hunk of raw meat yet) so she is transitioning to a homemade diet which is basically what I feed the other dogs but chopped up more cause she is without toofers.

How to Catch Flies the Green(tea) Way

With two punks in the house and all of their friends, we really should have considered putting in a revolving door. I am constantly saying "shut the door, shut the door, shut the door". Flies around here must be drugged with all the skeeter spray the city uses so they see my door open and they fly right on in. Sooki is great at handling flies but as she gets older she really does not stalk them like she use to.

I have a remedy. A natural remedy that is super easy. First you brew up your fav green tea or whatever tea you really enjoy. I am pretty sure it has to be tea that you like too. Sugar the tea to your liking and set off to do whatever tasks in the house you have. Make sure that you come back and drink your tea often. At some point, the flies will see that you like your tea. They will smarten up and do a couple fly bys and then dive head flipping first into your tea when you are not looking . Now you have caught your fly. Hooray!

Just remember to look into your glass before each sip. Nothing like live fly+tea in your mouth to ruin your glass of tea.

Gotta go scrub my mouth free of fly germs again.

Pesky Skeeters!

*This is your friendly tmi alert. If you have issues with that then move along people. You have been warned.*

We just returned from our first big vacation in our new popup camper. I have to say that I love that darned thing. The memories are still fresh in my head (yes, I will blog about the trip soon, Tabitha. I know what a popup lover you are.) as are the the bug bites. I really do not understand why in the world the little blood suckers like me so much. All I know is that those South Carolina skeeters are pervs. They did not aim for the easy parts like oh say an exposed leg or something. Nope, they wanted flesh that no skeeter has ever chomped on before. They headed straight for the hills and valleys the little bastards that they are.

They were sadly not frightened off by my hippy bug spray either. Heck they didn't even care when I threw caution to the wind and deeted up. I apparetly am like sweet feed for skeeters. Have you ever seen a horse that knows you keep the sweet feed in the Rubbermaid bucket and the plain ol feed in the metal bucket? I am pretty sure that is how the skeeters react when when I open our camper door. Only they do not make that beautiful sound of hooves running in a pasture. Do they even make a sound at all? Only sound a skeeter makes that I enjoy is the sound of my hand smacking them silly. Which is followed by Kaileigh running to see if there was any blood involved. Yelling "did you kill the blood suckers!!??"

Thank you Benedryl gel for keeping me from scratching like a flea bitten hound in public.

Kaileigh has had acid reflux since she was born and was put on Zantac
syrup at 5 months. Back then it was easy to medicate her. Squirt the
liquid into a bottle with a bit of milk and she was good to go.
Jump forward to 18 months and we have a toddler that hates the minty nasty
syrup. Seriously, what toddler likes mint? We tried different flavors
available at the pharmacy and they were all bad. I tried sucking up Tang into the
syringe but still yucky. Then we tried mixing it with chocolate milk.
Behold the power of chocolate!

Kaileigh is now 4, she knows the meds are in the chocolate milk, and still
she drinks it down like a trooper. I was never happy with the chocolate syrups
or powders on the market. So I started using Alton Brown's chocolate sauce recipe. Love it.
Jump forward a bit more and you have a 4yr old that loves to help me cook.
I double the batch usually. Today, I was busy trying to answer questions
that were spewing forth from Kaileigh. Before I knew it, I had dumped in
waaaay too much cocoa powder. Grab your buckets people and stop on by. I
have a vat of chocolate sauce sitting here cooling. If you are too far
away to stop on by then make up your own sauce.

Alton's Chocolate Sauce to the rescue

1 1/2 cups water
3 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups Dutch-processed cocoa
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons light corn syrup

In a small pot, bring water and sugar to a boil and whisk in cocoa,
vanilla, salt, and corn syrup. Whisk until all of the solids have
dissolved. Reduce sauce until slightly thickened. Strain if needed and cool to room
temperature. Alton says to put it into a squeeze bottle but I like just using one of my pint canning jars.

Free is good.

I put the word out in my family that I was looking for canning jars. Have you all even looked at the price of those darn things recently? So I scored quite a few of them from my mother in law. Yeehaw!

Free is good. Free can also be dirty. These jars had been in the attic for who knows how long and they had a funky film on them that would not go away no matter how hard I scrubbed. I ran them through the diswasher once. Then I brought out the scrubby pad and tried that. Nope. Sorry. No can do. Try that same scrubby pad with some dry baking soda and woohoo. We have clean jars. Clean FREE jars.

Now I can store my bulk spices and teas. Oh and maybe can some of these perfect pickle sized cucumbers that are growing in the garden. Awww, I love summer.

Get Your Fluids Here!

I know you all know how important it is to keep the fluids flowing when you are sick but a electrolyte replacer such as Pedialyte is darned expensive. $5-$6 a liter is just plain silly especially when the stuff really doesn't taste so great. I have yet to see a kid just suck it down either.

I found several recipes for a homemade version but none of them tasted all that great. Adding sugarfree koolaid or crystal light helped but eh still not all that. This week I had the lovely chance to make enough batches of the stuff that I found one that works for my family.

1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 C Juice Drink Mix (from the Bishops Store House)
1 1/3 Liter cold water (yeah, odd amt of water but that is the size of my container)

Mix it all up and chill.

If you don't have access to the Bishop's Store House then you could try another sweetened beverage but I honestly have not found a match. Store what you use and use what you store.

As the Stomach Churns...

Ah the joys of being sick. A week ago, Kaileigh had an insanely high fever that lasted for a day. The next morning she totally rebounded and went back to bouncing off the walls. Few days later and I have a fever too. After a week of being sickly, I am finally getting over whatever it was that attacked my tummy. Now poor Chuck is in bed. Ircing me making pitiful requests for sustenance and warmth.

Last years spree of illnesses introduced us to Wiggy's Poncho Liner. Yeah, I know. What in the world does a poncho liner have to do with pneumonia? Have you ever had the freezing cold shakes that come along with an illness? This will cure what ails ya. Chuck grabbed two of them for us and I have to say that I have never had a warmer blanket. They certainly aren't the cutest things ever but screw cute when it comes to warmth.

I just ordered a few more for our 72hr kits too. Oh and I am not sure if it is something Wiggy's worked into it or not but they shed water well. So pour yourself a tall glass of homemade electrolyte replacer and cuddle up.

We All Scream For Snowcream!!!

Hooray! We finally have snow! Chuck suggested that we make snow cream. Normally I poopoo the idea because I was raised to think that snow is gross. You avoid the yellow snow. You don't eat the snow and you certainly don't bring it into the house, add stuff to it and pretend that it is a fine dish of ice cream. I was an avid reader of the Little House books so I convinced my mom one year to make some snow cream. What we created was far from anything you would want to eat. It resembled the slop that they serve street urchins that then chant "please sir, can we have some more?".

Today was different. I was so super excited about the snow that I agreed. I could make something better than all those years ago. We quickly layered on enough clothes to make the mom in "A Christmas Story" grin with pride. I grabbed two big mixing bowls and headed outside.

After we trashed most of the snow with all of our angels, snow ball throwing and dog wallowing I found several small patches of pristine snow. I started to carefully scoop the top layer. Ignoring the vast amount of snow balls that were hitting me in the back.
I left my two huge bowls outside with the family while I came in to prep the following:

1/2 can Evap Milk (aprox)
2 cups half & half (aprox)
1c sugar
2t vanilla
2 big bowls of snow

Mix everything well. Bring in your snow and nest one bowl in the other to keep the top one properly chilled. Dump the milk mixture onto the snow and begin to mix away. Serve in chilled bowls. Follow up with straws if it melts too quickly.

Holy cow was it good. I cannot believe all these years I have missed out on it. *sigh* Never again!

Now get out there and find some snow and start scooping!

Foofy Foof Mermaid Tutus

The other morning I got an update: "Mommy, I don't want a Jungle Book party anymore. I want a MERMAID party. Everyone has to be a mermaid. Mermaids with foofy skirts". Off hops the almost 4yr old as she dictates mermaid colors. Goodbye jungle party. I really wasn't looking forward to a sand pit anyhow.

Foofy skirts should be easy enough right? A few hundred yards of tulle in various blues and greens, slicing it into sections and knot tying right? Lucky for me, tulle is on sale so off we go. Ten foofs down and I start getting requests for stuffed animals to have foofs. I drew the line on the dog foofs. Not because the dogs would care but I grow tired of tulle. The ladies at the fabric store always want to know why you are getting whatever fabric. Especially when you buy 40yrds of tulle. I have heard how they all dislike tulle. Each has their own little story about having to roll up yards of tulle from flopped weddings.

After all the slicing is said and done, I cannot wait to see all the kids in their foofy foofs. Now I just have to decide if I should do something else for the kids that don't want a skirt. Off to ponder.