Category Archives: home

2024, Family, Food, gardening, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Eating it Up!

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“We need to go grocery shopping.”  “We need groceries.” ” We have to go shopping.”  These are very frequent litanies at our house.  YA occasionally cooks (and she’s fine at it) but she prefers quicker meals.  This means she doesn’t recognize foodstuffs that aren’t already “meals”.  She can open the cabinet, see a can of black beans, a can of corn and a can of Rotel tomatoes sitting next to each other and not see a meal.

In my reality, we hardly have room in the fridge, in the freezer or the cabinets for more food.  But if I say, I can make ________ from the cans in the cabinet or frozen items, she is often not interested.  So we go round and round and neither of us ever “wins”. 

She left for London last Thursday and I decided that I would spend her 12 days out of town eatting only what is in the house.  With the exception of milk, I am not going to purchase any food.  Unfortunately it’s not much of a stretch goal.

However after a few days, I realize that I’m running up against a “quirk” of mine.  My mom was born in 1932 and so her formative years were depression years and she came out of them with a “waste not, want not” attitude.  When I was growing up, we had what she lovingly called “goulash” at least once a week – any leftovers saved up and then lumped together when there was enough for a pot-ful.  I don’t remember any of them being ghastly and will admit that as an adult, I have more than once combined leftovers.

BUT, this waste not/want not that she passed to me has morphed over the years into a strong desire to “finish” things.  When I eat the last slice of bread or heat up the last helping of a dish, it makes me feel good, almost lofty.  This can unfortunately lead me to finishing things when I don’t really need to.  No need to eat three slices of bread because there are only three slices left in the bag… that kind of thing. 

While YA is gone, I’m having to balance my desire to finish things with my desire to eat only stuff that is in the house.  So far so good.   Chips/cheese/salsa.  Made a panzanella with a baguette and shaved parmesan I found in the fridge (and tomatoes and basil from the garden).  11 jars of tomato sauce for the freezer.  Ate the last English muffin from Breadsmith.  Got through the pesto pasta with tomatoes that I made right before she left.  Discovered chocolate, marshmallows and graham crackers – smores.  A couple of smoothies so far using lots of frozen fruit.  I harvested the rosemary and it smelled to good that instead of freezing it all, I made a focaccia.

This is all a lot of fun so far.  We’ll see how the next week goes!

How do you feel about leftovers?

2024, animals, Food, home

Flaming Hot

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You all know I’m of two minds where the squirrels are concerned.  Honestly I don’t mind that when I feed the birds, I’m also feeding the squirrels; I just don’t like when the little rodents get piggy. 

Over the years I thought I had come to some balance – one feeder that I think of as the squirrel feeder and three others that I think of as for the birds.  Two of these feeders have little ledges for the birds can perch on but if a heavier squirrel tries to get on, it pulls down the outer part of the feeder to close up the holes.  The third has very small holes so the squirrels can’t get their noses or paws in.  I was feeling that we had finally achieved equilibrium – until I looked out the window and saw two squirrels shaking the little-holed feeder from side to side so that the seed was spilling out onto the ground.  Aaarrggghhh.

A few days later I was at Gertens to take my terrarium class and I was checking prices in the birdseed section when one of the associates asked me if I was finding what I wanted.  As I was still a bit raw about the squirrels, I made some off-hand remark about something the birds like but the squirrels don’t.  Her eyes lit up and she said “I have just the thing for you”.   She led me over to an section and showed me something called Flaming Hot Feast by the Mr. Bird company.  It has hot sauce in it and this gal explained that birds don’t register capsaicin but squirrels do. 

I was extremely skeptical but since I was still mad I thought I would at least try it.  I bought a small cylinder and because I wasn’t willing to risk more money, I didn’t even buy the cylinder holder; when I got home I jerry-rigged a holder and hung it up on one of the shepherds poles in the backyard.  I was amazed that it lived up to it’s name and hype.  Not only did the squirrels completely ignore it, the birds clearly loved it.  In fact it has led to an explosion of birds on all the feeders.  That first week when YA and I were sitting out back, I counted 35 birds at one point. 

I did eventually go get the cylinder holder and I’ve moved up to the larger cylinder as it’s a better per ounce price.  I also sourced a rain cover.  It’s like a little hat that sits above; rain is the only enemy of Flaming Hot Feast as it washes the “sticky” off and the cylinder kind of melts.  Luckily they sell FHF at Bachmans just down the street so I don’t have to go all the way to St. Paul for it.  I’ve sourced it online and have found it a bit cheaper but to get the better price you have to purchase at least 4 at a time and it hurts my pocketbook to spend that much money on birdseed at one time. Since I had initially jerry-rigged the cylinder holder I thought maybe I should made my own hot sauce for the feeder but knowing myself, this will be much easier.

So the squirrels are still getting fed in my backyard but for now, the birds are benefitting the most, which is more to my liking.  I am sure that with time, the squirrels will figure out a way to get around the Flaming Hot Feast but for the time being I’m happy.

What’s the last thing you “jerry-rigged”?

2024, Family, Food, home, Kids, Theatre

He Made Me Ice Cream

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I brought a crate of peaches to Brookings, and for some reason, I started thinking about peach ice cream. That led to the memory of a friend of mine telling me about some ice cream she had made with a special ice cream maker she had just bought-a Ninja Creami.

Well, wouldn’t you know that the Brookings Walmart had one of those, so I bought it, and Grandson and I have had the best time this week making ice cream. He assisted in making all the mixes and running the machinery. The mixes were mainly cream and flavorings, but no eggs.

The whole premise of this contraption is that you can make a small amount of ice cream quickly after the mix has been in the freezer over night. The mixes are easy and don’t need to be cooked. Then, you put the container in the machine, which sends a whirly blade into the frozen mixture and tuns it into ice cream or sorbet.

We made lemon sorbet, coffee ice cream, peach ice cream, strawberry ice cream, vanilla ice cream, and mixed berry sorbet. Grandson quickly figured out how to get the thing set up. He was so proud and happy seeing his parents eat the ice cream he had made. He said the coffee ice cream was his favorite.

I remember family members struggling with ice, salt, and noisy electric or hand cranked ice cream makers. Boy, it tasted good, though, but it was quite a production. This was easy. Too easy!

What are your favorite ice creams? Memories of ice cream making? Ever seen the musical She Loves Me?

2024, Family, Games, home, Kids, Media, Uncategorized

Croquet, Anyone?

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As you read this, I am on my way to South Dakota with several hundred children’s books, about a dozen Tintin comic books, pesto, home canned tomato puree, and a croquet set. The Tintin books are for my son. (Daughter will eventually get the Calvin and Hobbes three volume boxed set.) My son and daughter in law may view this as me just coming to babysit, but I see this as a way of clearing things out of the basement and garage as we get ready to move.

We played croquet about 10 years ago when our son and daughter in law were here for a visit. I think we had bought it new at that time. Grandson was not yet born. It was an impulse buy on Husband’s part. Prior to that visit, I don’t think I had played croquet for more than 40 years. I remember cutthroat games at my cousins’ farm in Magnolia, MN. There was always the possibility that Cousin Jack would club Cousin Jeff as part of their never ending conflicts and struggles for supremacy. I never got clubbed.

Our son and daughter in law have a huge back yard, so I think Grandson and I and his parents will have some croquet games during my visit. My memories of the rules and the setup of the wickets are foggy, so I will go on-line to figure out how to set up and play. I promise not to club anyone if I lose.

What outdoor games did you like to play? Any Tintin or Calvin and Hobbes fans? Any conflictual cousins?

2024, home, Uncategorized, Weather

Rain And Flood

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Header photo courtesy of City of Bismarck

Tuesday, Bismack got torrential rains, between 4 and 5 inches over the space of about an hour that caused flooding all over the city. One of the major hospitals flooded. There were photos of the flooded MRI room all over the internet.

The hospital was somehow able to remain open. People were hydroplaning all over the place, and there were many flooded basements and businesses. It took my supervisor who works in Bismarck 1.5 hours to drive 6 miles to his house. Some cars floated away. I guest there weren’t any people in them at least. Wednesday they had another 1.58 inches in about an hour. I can’t imagine the mess. It was bad enough when Husband left a hose on and we had about an inch of water in two basement bedrooms. I imagine the water damage mitigating companies and insurance agents in Bismarck are pretty busy right now. Ish!

Ever been in a flood? Any insurance horror stories to tell? Do you own an umbrella??

2024, Business, Family, Food, home, Technology, Uncategorized

The Yeast Of My Worries

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We typically have pretty good luck with orders and deliveries here, that is, until recently. On July 30 I ordered six, 2 oz packages of fresh yeast on Amazon. Husband has a Nordic baking book that uses fresh yeast in the recipes. Since I had thrown out the remainder of a huge shipment of fresh yeast that I had ordered about a year ago (it got too old in the freezer) it was time to order a more manageable amount.

The order was supposed to arrive on August 5. I tried to track it on Amazon as soon as I got notification that it had shipped, but had no luck. The 5th arrived, and still no yeast. I knew it had to be kept cold or it would start to do its yeasty thing and start growing and expanding. I received a notice that it would arrive on the 9th. It didn’t. By this time, I knew something had gone amiss, and finally Amazon said that it was lost and I could have a refund. It was a bit of an ordeal, but I got the refund and ordered more. This time around I have been able to actually track where it is. It is to arrive today or tomorrow.

The most unreliable delivery service seems to be the US Postal Service. UPS, FEDEX, and Speedee Delivery all do a good job. The latter always makes me think of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Husband is excited that the yeast will arrive soon. I worry that it hasn’t been kept cold. We shall see.

What delivery disasters have you encountered? What are your favorite memories of Mr. Rogers or other children’s programming? What are you worrying about these days?

2024, Fantasy, Food, home, Mysteries

Monster Candy

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Most mornings I try to squeeze in an online crossword puzzle.  My default is the Washington Post puzzles, partly because I already have a WAPO account and partly because there are options, depending on how much time I want to spend.  I’m not too much of a purist… if the puzzle is hard and it’s starting to take too long, the “show me my errors” button gets clicked.  If I make it all the way through without having to “cheat”, I like it, but not enough to struggle and struggle. 

Yesterday morning, early into the puzzle, I read the clue “Godzilla’s rival” for a five-letter word across.  Easy peasy – Rodin.  Then as I was circling back to do the down words, nothing was fitting with Rodin.  And when I got to “Tallinn’s Country” and “Estonia” didn’t fit, I knew something was wrong with my Rodin answer.  I sat for a few minutes thinking of the other monsters that Godzilla doesn’t like.  Gigan?  No.  Manda?  No.  Zilla?  No.  Mothra?  Too long.  Megalon?  Too long.  King Ghidorah?  Way too long.

The only hard/fast rule that I have for crosswords is not to click onto another tab on the internet and look up a word.  So I sat for a bit more, not coming up with any other five-letter Godzilla nemeses.  Then my eyes focused on the clue list and realized that I had mis-read it.  It wasn’t “Godzilla rival”, it was “Godiva rival”.   That was good a for an out-loud laugh – I startled the dog.

Sad but true, I didn’t get the correct answer until I had a couple more letters (Lindt).  What does it say about me that I know so many more of Godzilla’s enemies off the top of my head than I know worldwide famous chocolate companies? 

What is Godzilla’s favorite candy?  What’s YOUR favorite candy?

2024, Family, Food, home, Uncategorized

Menu Planning

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I grew up with a dad who had a small business and a mom who, when she wasn’t teaching, was helping my dad at his coffee shop. That left me at home to fend for myself for meals. If my mom cooked, it was usually on Sunday. During the week and after school I lived on toast, bologna sandwiches, and cereal until I was about 10 when I started to cook real food for myself. Husband grew up in a more traditional family that had three set meals a day, as his mom was a homemaker who had the time to plan and prepare meals. It was easier for me to adjust to his expectations for daily meals than it was for him to scrounge without planning. That made him anxious.

Our meals lately have been planned on the spur of the moment, as we never know what fresh veggies we may find in the garden or the Farmers Market. We can’t bear to let anything go to waste, so we are always planning how to cook up the surplus veggies that weren’t used in any dish we just cooked. So, if I cook too many white beans or chickpeas, we have to find another recipe that will use up the surplus, which usually means yet another trip to the grocery store to get what we don’t have for the new recipe to use the leftovers in.

I blame Bill, the Hutterites at the Farmers market, and the New York Times for the unusual dishes we made recently. I mentioned the other day on the Trail that we had 8 eggplant plants, and Bill commented that was a lot of Baba Ghanoush. Well, that forced me to buy a large jar of tahini, and Husband decided we should make a tahini-yoghurt sauce for some lamb burgers he cooked on the grill, and then I suggested that if we just bought one more pint of cherry tomatoes to go with the leftover pint we had from an earlier white bean caprese salad, and got some curly pasta, we could make this tahini-parmesan pasta salad recipe from the NYT. We did, and it was delicious.

The Hutterites were selling sweet corn on Saturday at the Farmers Market, and wouldn’t you know, the NYT featured a charred corn and chickpea salad with lime crema. We had limes we needed to use up. I cooked a pound of dry chickpeas and we ate that salad Saturday night. I only needed half of the chickpeas I cooked, so we had the other half last night in an Indian curry. You see how this goes.

I feel fortunate to have a love for cooking, a partner who also loves to cook, and a budget that allows us to eat the way we do. I will probably need to get another jar of tahini sometime next week, though. The eggplants have set fruit and are getting bigger.

What is your strategy for meal planning? What was your family’s pattern for meals? Favorite pasta salads?

2024, History, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Good Friends

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When we moved to our neighborhood in 1988, it felt as though we had moved to and outpost of the Czech Republic. The Karskys, the Knopiks, the Kovash family, and the Dvoraks all lived next door or across the street. They were all somehow related to one another. Mrs. Karsky described us as “a nice young couple with a young son” to the other neighbors, information she had got from our real estate agent. Everyone was excited when we moved in, as most of the people on the block were older and/or retired. There were no children on the block.

36 years later, we are the older people on the block happy to see new and younger faces in the neighborhood. Only the Knopiks remain as the Czech contingent. There are lots of young children, especially on our side of the street. A couple of houses south of us lives a hard working family from Zimbabwe. They have a teenager who walks back and forth past our house most days during the school year to get to the Catholic High School, as well as several younger daughters and a young son who are friends with the Hispanic family on the corner. The other day I was driving past those houses when I saw the three Hispanic little girls, their brother, and all the Zimbabwe children sitting in a row on the curb. They had exhausted themselves in the enormous jumper house that the Hispanic dad had inflated for them all to bounce around in.

We share surplus garden vegetables with the neighbors, and everyone gets along. It is so nice to see the neighborhood continue to be a haven for young families and for the more mature, longer term residents.

What was your neighborhood like to grow up in? Any “bad apples” or nice grandparent-types as neighbors? Who were your best childhood friends?

2024, Food, home, Uncategorized

Perfecting Pastries

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When we visited our daughter in Washington last April, we went to a cookware shop in Gig Harbor. I found a new pastry cookbook there, and last weekend was my first attempt at the recipes. I tried the dough for laminated pastries, and made croissants and Franzbrotchen.

The book New European Baking is by an American baker, Lauren Kratochvila, who was trained in France and runs a bakery in Berlin. The recipes look wonderful, although are pretty complicated. There were illustrations that were helpful, and the finished dough tasted wonderful. I don’t know how many baboons have made their own croissant dough, but the basic premise is that you envelope a 10 inch square of butter (about 9 oz) in a 10 inch round of dough, and then proceed to roll the dough into a 30 inch length, fold the dough in a specific way, chill it, roll it again to 30 inches, fold it again, chill it, and then roll it out into a 20 X 12 rectangle and cut the dough into rolls. The end product has hundreds of butter/dough layers because of the folds. This all has to be done really quickly so the butter doesn’t get soft in between the dough layers and ooze out. I was so irritable and stressed during all this that Husband was afraid to come into the kitchen.

I have made Julia Child’s croissant recipe in the past. This recipe was more complicated, but I am determined to try it again. My rolls turned out pretty good for a first try, although they didn’t have the perfect shape that the book author showed in the book photos. They were light and airy and buttery. The Franzbrotchen have a cinnamon filling and are supposed to look like squashed bicycle tires. You can see the rolls I made in the header photo. I considered this first try a learning experience, and I am going to try them until I get them as perfect as I can.

What have you tried to perfect and with what success? What pastry would you like to learn to make?