Valentine Prep & Menu Plan Update

Happy Valentine's Day!  Ellis is in pre-school, which means we needed to make some Valentines for his classmates. I love me some recycled crayon hearts and I had lots of Valentine-y paper and thrifted doilies.  So we made collage-y Valentine cards with recycled crayon hearts.

I'm sure E's classmates will have awesome store-bought cards with candy.  I'm trying not to feel inferior.   I'm trying not to add Spiderman stickers. I know it's okay to do homemade, but sometimes I get a complex.  Oh, the courage of my convictions is often hard to come by.

Ellis helped.  It was hard for me to release control over how beautiful the finished product would be.

In other news, I forgot to keep you posted on our meals this week.  The Beef and Broccoli was amazing.  Total make-again.

The Irish Blue Cheese soup was also very good, but I found it to be a bit rich, and that's reducing the cheese by half.  I am still adjusting to a more meat and fat intensive diet, so I am probably not a good control subject.  However, I'd sub most of the cheese for sour cream next time and spice it up a bit.  In any case, it's totally worth making.  A very flexible tomato soup recipe.

While I was in Minnesota, I made some freezer meals for my parents.  The big hit was a Split Pea and Ham Slow-Cooker soup.  My mom is currently making it on repeat.  It couldn't be easier:

Slow-Cooker Split Pea Soup with Ham (or Vegetarian!)

Put this in the slow-cooker:  20-24 oz. split peas, 1 chopped onion, 2 cloves chopped garlic, 2 chopped carrots, (plus any other veggies you like, all chopped small.  Potato would be great!), some ham (either a ham hock or whatever), enough broth or water to cover everything (Around 6-8 cups.  We used 365 Chicken Broth, because it is soy free and not crazy expensive.  Homemade would be best.)  Cook on low for 6-8 hours.  Remove ham and chop it up.  Blend with immersion blender if you want things smooth.  Or don't.  Put ham back in.  Enjoy!  If you're the veggie sort, omit ham and use mushroom broth and more veggies.  You'll also probably want to adjust seasonings, with salt, pepper and thyme and maybe a bay leaf to add the depth the ham provides.

Embroidery! On An Embroidery Blog, No Less.

The art content around here has been less than I'd like.  Of course, I've been busy, inspiration has been hard to come by,  and the light, frankly, has been crapola as far as pictures are concerned.

I got sort of stalled on this piece, which was surprising to me.  I'd planned it out more than usual to avoid getting stuck, to give me a roadmap to work with.  But then I didn't love where it was going and I couldn't break out of the map.  When it doubt, put a flower with it.

That got me going again.  Well, that and some variegated threads.

Here's Josie the cat checking out the neighborhood.  Isn't she pretty?

This piece is about silence--and not silence, inspired by Audre Lorde who said, "Your silence will not protect you."  When I'm feeling shy about my life, which is not conventional, per se, I remind myself of those words.  This piece is about being loud in regular life, about the right kinds of loud, about speaking up.

This bit is from a vintage hankie with one torn up corner.  Thank goodness for torn up corners or I'd never be able to cut into the vintage linens.

Pressure Canning, or Beans are Stinky

Some friends and I got together to learn to use our pressure canners on Thursday.

 

We canned 9 bazillion pints of beans.  More accurately, we canned 3 x 16 pints.  We were at Robin's until 3 am.  I am still catching up on sleep.  Also, it did not smell yummy.

Canning your own beans works out to about 1/4 the price of cans from the store, don't require soaking and prepping the day before like dried beans (because you've already done it prior to canning), and contain much-reduced levels of BPA.

I wish they contained zero chemicals of any kind, but that's hard to do in this day and age. The Ball and Knorr lids do contain BPA, so during the canning process, your food is vulnerable.  However, as long as you store them upright, the exposure is limited to during the actual canning.

If I had a million dollars, I'd can everything in these.  Alas, I do not have a million dollars.  Is is weird that one of my When-I-Win-The-Lottery Fantasies, is using fancy jars for my home-canning needs?  I guess that's how I know I'm a real hippie.

We put up kidney beans, pinto beans, black beans, white northern beans, black eyed peas, and chick peas.  During the downtime, we played Hearts and gossiped, just like the hippies of yore.  Let it be known, I lost big.  Anne is a formidable opponent.

I advocate canning with friends.  It takes forever and has lots of time where you aren't doing much but still need to sort of be paying attention.  Pressure canning in particular needs to be monitored to prevent some sort of produce-based Hiroshima.

As a side note, I'm thinking of making something like this in which to store my canned bounty.  What do you think?  Whose husband can I convince to make it for us?

Today was a thrift day. Check out my new fabric shelf.  $10.

Thrifted dinosaurs.  Roar!

The Sun Is Out, The Sky Is Blue

The sun is out today.  I am more than glad to see it.

Meanwhile, Tuesday's dinner was less yummy than I'd hoped.  Wednesday's was more yummy.

I call that even steven, baby.  We had a rotisserie chicken from Whole Foods (on sale for $6.99) on Tuesdays.  The deliciousness of the dinner was undermined by Ellis' questions: Does it hurt the chicken when we eat it?  Does it have a name?  I lost my appetite a bit.

The cucumber tomato salad was both less flavorful and more runny than I would like.  I suppose it'd be much more delicious if cucumbers and tomatoes were actually in season.  In Illinois in February, the only thing in season is clouds.

Old School Taco Night was a home run.

In honor of my mom, I made tacos the was she has always made them, the way only a white girl from Minnesota can, though with a few important updates.  Ground Beef plus a packet of taco mix, store bought crunchy taco shells, iceberg lettuce, shredded cheddar cheese topped off with a tomato.  That's how mom used to make 'em.

 Here's what I do.

For meat:

1 lb. ground beef, browned

1 TBS. Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1/4 onion, chopped small

1 large clove garlic, more or less to taste

1 TBS. cumin

1 tsp. chili powder

2 shakes cayenne

salt to taste

1/2 cup water or broth

Heat EVOO in pan.  Saute onion and garlic until onion is soft, about 5 minutes.  Add ground beef, spices, and water.  Saute until well mixed and yummy.

Assemble tacos with the following:

chopped tomatoes

shredded cheese of your choice (tonight we used Trader Joe's Raw Milk Cheddar)

shredded lettuce (I prefer romaine, but any greens will do)

chopped avocado

sprouted grain tortillas  (I prefer Ezekiel brand)

salsa (we love this!)

sour cream 

If you have a three year old, serve with each item separated.  By all means, do NOT allow one ingredient to touch the other.  Also, I keep the spices mild for the kid.  Feel free to spice it up!  If you're a vegetarian or don't eat red meat, I recommend making black beans with mushroom broth in place of the ground beef.  Brown rice is also a great addition.

For tonight, I have Beef and Broccoli in the slow-cooker.

A picture of the outside of the slow-cooker will have to suffice.  There is nothing more yucky looking than a picture of raw meat. I just tasted it and it is delish, but probably a bit over-spicy for Ellis.  Next time I'll reduce the ginger and chili paste.

I'm also going to learn to use a pressure canner tonight.  Yeah.  It's a good life.

(Thrift notes:  Like my thrifted Fiesta Plate?  $1 at a yard sale, baby.)

Meal Planning

So, we're on a budget.  That's the hearts and flowers way of saying that we really don't have any extra money and we feel pretty poor most of the time (though we are not poor, really).  One income, living in Chicago, paying off debts, raising kids and pets.

It all means that every cent counts.  Finances often seem really out of control for me, so it helps to do what I can to make me feel more in control.  Menu planning is one way to do this.

Since the new year, I've been implementing my new Eat Like An Adult Food Regime.  This basically amounts to cutting out processed foods (particularly pizza rolls and sugar), laying off the coffee and wine, and eating three real food meals a day.  I've been heavily influenced by Nina Planck's book Real Food.  If you haven't read it and you want to be inspired to kick the sugar and white flour habit, this book is a great place to start.  If you want to continue living in dark about what processed food does to your body, don't read it.  It'll only piss you off.

I doubt I'll post our weekly meal plan, but here is this week's, just for fun.  I'll try to write a bit about how the actual prep and eating goes each day.

Tuesday:  Rotisserie Chicken with Cucumber & Tomato Salad
Wednesday: Taco Night
Thursday:  Slow-Cooker Beef and Broccoli
Friday:  Irish Blue Cheese Soup with Green Salad
Saturday: Red Coconut Curry Soup OR Leftovers
Sunday:  BLT's
Monday:  Chicken Soup or Lentil Soup

We are trying to buy more sustainable high-quality meat, which can get pricey.  To stretch my limited budget, I'll make chicken salad on Wednesday for lunch from the leftover rotisserie chicken (on sale at Whole Foods on Tuesdays), and make and freeze chicken soup for Monday.  The Tacos will easily roll over into lunch on Thursday.  I'll increase the soup recipes a bit to freeze for future lunches.

I do really miss my fall-back easy meal of pasta and red sauce from a jar and the even easier frozen pizza.

(Full disclosure:  The pics are all older.  I didn't have any food-related images from today!)

Home Sweet Home

I'm glad to be home.  I did feel a bit under the weather yesterday, fighting a cold or something.  The plane ride gave me a sinus headache the size of Illinois.  But I rallied.  Today is better.

I love my home.

I am reintegrating into my life.  I have some vegetable broth simmering on the stove.  This means both a yummy smell in my house and more room in my fridge and freezer.  Good things both.

I reorganized the linen closet.

First of all, in Chicago, I am super lucky to have a linen closet at all.  It's as if architects in 1920 thought, well, people won't probably need towels or soap.  They won't need extra space.  Chicago closet space is hard to come by.  News flash, loser architects:  everyone needs space.  Our place, though, is closet-rich.

My organizational system is from the dollar store.  For 8 months, I have been planning to make earth-friendly biodegradable storage from recycled or up-cycled materials.  And I just haven't gotten around to it.  Finally, I just decided to buy it.  I feel bad about creating more landfill and all of that.  Guilt.  Bite me.

But I do love my newly organized closet.

The time away from my work also gave me some perspective on things.  In particular, seeing this piece for the first time in a week told me that it's finished.

This is my favorite part.  (Sorry it's sideways.  Argh.)

I don't know what the destiny of this piece is.  Essentially, it was practice, as is everything I've been doing just lately.  I'm trying to find something, though I don't know just what.

I borrowed heavily from other artists I admire while making this; I'm not sure it's truly mine.  Still, I like looking at this piece.  I feel like it could be it's own thing, or it could be a useful object, a pillow or something.

Honestly, though, I'm not sure it's sturdy enough for pillowness.

I will give it a few more days.

It takes time to figure out what you want to be when you grow up.