The Tolling of the Bells - Ringing my own bell

Hey there, time to sound off again.  I know I'm a day early but I really wanted to share!

    Big news this week!  I’ve regained the use of my knee!!  This is beyond wonderful.  A little over a year ago, right when we were moving in here on our little farm, I did something to my knee while trying to move furniture.  I went to the doctor after the swelling wouldn’t go down in a week or so and my range of motion was actually getting worse.  They sent me for x-rays and an MRI which both showed up nothing.  I still believe I tore my meniscus, but since the MRI couldn’t see anything due to all the fluid and swelling, they gave me some steroids, told me to do squats, and sent me home. 

    Squats.  With a busted knee.  I suck at squats anyway, but when I couldn’t even support the usual amount of weight on my knee without stabbing and intense pains, how was I supposed to do squats?  When I told them I couldn’t do squats, they said to do lunges.  These folks.  I swear.  And before anyone wonders why I didn’t try a different doctor to get some better advice, as a Tricare Prime customer, I don’t get that option.  The alternative would be Tricare Standard, which would give me more flexibility to who I go see but wouldn’t cover as much and costs almost as much, so there you go.  Government healthcare at its supposed finest, and we want to force everyone to do this, because government. 

     Anyway, political and governmental snarks aside, I felt pretty stuck.  I couldn’t use my knee.  I couldn’t get help to use my knee.  We tried walking, but that raised hell with my knee, hips, and back, because I’m just a bundle of fun problems and the knee was exacerbating all the rest.  Changing the sheets made me cry with the pain in various body parts.  Doing the laundry or dishes had to be done in fits and starts, often with my husband and I tag teaming the chore so neither of us was forced to do the whole thing.  My little boy would beg me to hold him, and I just couldn’t. 

     I was moody, feisty, depressed, and downright miserable.  I just didn’t quite realize how miserable, because life is actually really good.  I didn’t feel like I had a right to be miserable, but pain does that to a person.  We tried short walks around the property to recondition it, but that made everything hurt worse.  We tried yoga once.  Just once.  Five minutes in, after cow and cat and while the lady was telling us to “relax back on our heels into child’s pose,” the pain reached a crescendo that felt like ice, electricity, and something tearing all at once, and that was just my knee.  My hip felt like I had hot wires down my sacroiliac, and my lower back felt like I was wearing a belt of rusty nails.  So yoga was out.  Completely out.

     A guy I used to know was into Kung Fu.  He told me about Qigong.  That was almost 10 years ago, and it kind of just slipped my mind until now.  I used to do martial arts with my dad, and my husband trained with his dad, too, back when we were both in high school.  We were from different schools of martial arts with me being more heavily into Judo and grappling styles while my husband was Yoshukai, but the idea of discipline and body control is pretty universal, even if styles are different.  The catas were always something we both enjoyed, so Qigong came back into my mind. 

     That night, against Pa’s better judgement because we were both in a state from the morning’s yoga misadventure, I sweet talked him into trying the Eight Brocades with me.  Specifically, we did this video.  At the very start, during the warmup something in my knee made a weird movement, not quite a pop, not quite a crunch, but something moved.  After completing the entirety of the Eight Brocades, I was sweating and out of breath, despite how slow and gentle it is, but we both managed nearly all of it with some modifications to allow for our strength and flexibility levels. 

     I was a bit achy, but who wouldn’t be after basically three years of mostly inactivity.  Between pregnancy, surgery, recovery, injury, recovery, injury, recovery, and a very sedentary job, I haven’t been exactly the paragon of physical fitness over here.  I figured I’d give it till the next morning to see for sure how my knee responded. 

     The next morning, I had full range of motion back in my knee.  Read that again.  Full.  Range.  Of.  Motion.  After over a year of not being able to bend it past 90 degrees and not being able to straighten it fully, I had full range of motion back in my knee.  I could bear weight on it.  I kept catching myself standing funny to cater to my bad knee, and I would correct myself, stand up straight, do a little dance of pure joy, and stand on both feet.  My back, consequently, doesn’t hurt as back, because it’s not cocked funny due to poor posture.  Even my hip doesn’t hurt as bad, because I don’t have excess pressure on one hip versus the other constantly.  I was able to stand at the sink, do a whole sink of dishes and do laundry without having to take a break. 

     Pa says his back is unchanged, but that is still better than hurting worse like it did the day after our yoga misadventure.  We have been doing Qigong every other day.  I found a better video here that explains the moves and the breathing.  We’re hoping to move up to every day soon.  I still get out of breath and can’t do the meditative breathing properly, but that will come.  And in the meantime, I CAN USE MY KNEE!!!  Holy crap!  My attitude is improved.  My depression is gone.  I have more patience with my husband and my little boy.  This is a huge deal for me, and really for all of us.  I am not a super nice person when I am cranky, and I have been cranky for almost a solid year.

     Relief, happiness, peace, joy, excitement, all the good words you can think of, apply to me right now.  I want to find more forms to do.  In addition to the Eight Brocades, I've found the Five Elements and the Five Animals.  I imagine there are more.  I mean, it's a 5,000-year-old tradition.  I imagine there are a few more than 18 forms, but I could be wrong.  Maybe they refined and perfected and this is all that is needed.  We're going to focus on the Brocades until we have them down in muscle memory, then move on to the Elements.  The Animals are more complex and will require much more flexibility, strength, and focus.  I'm excited.  This may not be a weight-loss journey, but it will be a health-improving one, and that is more important, I think.  

Kristoff Carrots and Perfect Rice

     Today I thought I would share two recipes.  One is so basic that it didn’t seem right to dedicate an entire blog post to it, and the other is rice. 

     Wait, what?  Rice isn’t basic, you ask?  Nope, it ain’t.  I have been cooking for 32 years, and I just finally managed the perfect pot of rice.  I even did it on an electric stove top.  I didn’t think it was possible to get a perfect pot of rice on an electric stove top because it takes so long for the temperature to actually change after you’ve adjusted it, but you CAN get a perfect pot of rice on an electric burner, without having to use two burners. 

     I used to think, if you had an electric cook top, you had to use two burners, one on high to bring the water or broth to a boil, and one preheated on low to transfer the pot to when it reached the boil so it wouldn’t boil too long.  This only marginally helped my poor, mushy, sad, sorry rice, though.  I thought the best I could really hope for was not having a layer burnt to the bottom of the pan. 

     Gas stoves are much easier to cook on, because they respond immediately when the flow of gas is altered.  Electric elements take so danged long to heat up and cool down, even with new stoves, that it affects cook time and results for a lot of my food.  I’ve been using an electric stove for a little over a year now, and I still mess up dinner.  I feel like a newbie all over again. 

     Turns out there are two secrets to spectacular rice with actual individual grains that does not cook down to mush and does not burn to the bottom of the pan. 

1)  Wash it.  Wash the rice really well to remove the powdered rice that is in it from friction and the (possible) talc powder or cornstarch from processing.  All that extra starch contributes to sticking, burning, and mushiness. 

2)  Ignore the directions on the box/bag of plain white rice and follow the directions below instead.

     These two things will help you attain rice perfection! 

     Look at those individual grains!  No mush!  SO HAPPY!!

     I never use the parboiled stuff.  I buy bulk bags of plain white rice.  The directions say to put 1c of rice in 2c of boiling water, cover, and simmer 20 minutes, then fluff with a fork.  

     It doesn’t say anything about washing, first of all, and second of all, I have since learned that 2:1 ratio of water to rice is almost double the water actually needed. 

For absolutely perfect rice:

*Wash the rice well polishing it gently with your fingers until the water drains clear.  I fill my dish pan with cold water and put my rice in a berry sieve (one of those with the screen instead of a colander).  I put the berry sieve of rice into the dish pan and swirl the rice gently until the water looks almost like 1% milk.  I dump the water, refill it, and repeat the rinsing process for at least 3 rinses.  By then there is usually very little powder coming off the rice. 

*Drain well before cooking.  Leave the berry sieve sitting in the empty dish pan or in the sink for a while.  It will look almost dry again after about 10-15 minutes, give or take, depending on your humidity. I never time it.  I just get some other stuff ready while I let it drain. Just don't immediately dump it in with your water, or you'll still have too much water and mushy rice.

*Use 1c and 2 Tbsp water to each cup of rice 

     Bring the water and rice to a boil in the pot together, turn down to low, cover, and cook 20 minutes, then remove from heat and leave the lid on for another 10 minutes to finish steaming.

     I Googled around looking for recipes for the perfect rice, and all of the blog posts I found were in agreement:  Don’t use so much water.  So I didn’t.  And it was glorious!  You should definitely try it.  It’s amazing what a good basic pot of rice can do for an entire dish.  Everything I make that uses rice as the base is now 100% better!  My fried rice will never be the same!  Even rice as a side is amazingly improved.  I actually like plain steamed white rice.  Who knew?  Not me.  Not until I finally got it right.  

     And that second recipe I promised?  

     Kristoff Carrots.  If you’ve never seen Disney’s Frozen, you probably have no idea why I would name my carrots Kristoff.  Kristoff is one of the main male figures in the movie, and his best friend is a reindeer named Sven.  They share carrots.  My Little loves Frozen, and he loves Kristoff and Sven, and because of them, he will eat carrots, sometimes, if I fix them this way. So these are Kristoff Carrots.  Little named them LOL. 

Kristoff Carrots:

*1 lb carrots - baby, sliced, diced, chunked - just bite-sized.

*1-2 tsp vanilla extract or the seeds and pod from one vanilla bean

*some water

*some butter

*some salt and pepper

*some honey or real maple syrup - pancake syrup works just fine, and I’m sure you could use plain corn syrup, but I’d opt for dark rather than light.  You could even try molasses if that’s your thing.  I don’t much care for molasses myself. 

     The length of time this takes to cook depends entirely on how big your pieces of carrot are.  Usually it takes me about 20-30 minutes to get them as tender as Little likes them when they’re sliced, 10-15 minutes more if they’re baby carrots.  In the end, it’s personal preference, because you might like yours crunchier or softer than we do. 

     Put your carrots in a pot, and add enough water to come up to the top of the carrots.  Turn heat to high until it boils, then turn it down to a nice simmer until they’re as tender as you want them.  Drain.  I save the water for soups later, because it’s got carroty flavor and some of the water soluble vitamins from the carrots.  If you're using a whole vanilla bean, you would add it while the carrots are cooking to extract the flavor. 

     Add a pat of butter and enough of the sweet syrupy substance of your choice to glaze the carrots (a Tbsp or two is usually enough for us), add the vanilla, sprinkle with just a little salt and pepper (1/2t and 1/4t usually are plenty for us) to taste. 

    These are an all-around family favorite for us and I usually have to make two pounds of carrots at a time, because the Little will eat two or three helpings of them sometimes.  When he decides carrots aren’t the devil.  

**This recipe was modified from a Martha Stewart recipe for maple-vanilla glazed carrots, so it's not my original idea.  I just changed it around a bit.  

The Tolling of the Bells: A blessing and a ghostie (or two)

     It’s time to sound off again already.  The weeks are flying by over here.  I’ve been busier than a one-legged man in that proverbial butt kicking contest, and things are just going to get busier.  I got word from the court reporter I contract with that she got promoted to head reporter in her firm.  That means more work for both of us, which means more pay for both of us.  This is great news, because we got a new-to-us truck. 

     I just paid off our old truck, a little standard, all manual Tacoma.  It was a good little truck, with stress on the word little, and with everything being bare bones basic, it wasn’t exactly the most comfortable thing to ride in or drive around.  But it was a good little truck and paid for.  Matter of fact, paying off that truck is the primary reason we were able to get Internet. 

     Enter sweet deal part the first:  A Dodge 1500 Laramie, Longhorn edition, with all the bells and whistles.  Blue book sale value at about 27-28,000, sticker priced for 23,000.  It’s got all the things a broke-back grunt could want, primarily, a higher cab clearance and eight-way adjustable seats that are both heated and cooled.  Pretty much everything else could go hang, but the seats and the cab clearance needed an upgrade.  Pa could and did drive the Tacoma, but even for a short trip just down to the doctor and back, he’d come back barely able to walk, with one leg numb and the other misfiring.  He would be stove up for days just driving down to the next major town for a bit of shopping.  But even at 5,000 below blue book value, that truck was out of our price range.  We just couldn’t swing the payments for it. 

     Enter sweet deal part the second.  That Tacoma I mentioned?  It was a 2008, so no spring chicken, and it had cosmetic problems with both the interior and the exterior.  No mechanical problems, but being generous, private party sale blue book value would only have been 5,000.  Those guys at the car lot told Pa they’d give him 8,000 for the Tacoma and drop the price of a Laramie another 2,000.  So basically, we got double value for the Tacoma, and a very nice truck for 7,000 below blue book value. 

     So now we have a truck payment again, but we all love the new truck.  The old truck was a regular cab, so Little could only ride with Pa in it as long as they were tooling around through the pasture, not out on the road.  But the car seat has been officially moved to the truck, and despite the not-so-hot gas mileage, it appears to be the new family favorite.  My Santa Fe has definitely become my sole scoot-about for grocery runs and independent errands.  Pa can drive the new truck without anything like as much pain, and when he gets back from a trip, he doesn’t have the lingering nerve pain and flare-ups that he had kinked up in the Tacoma.  I honestly haven’t seen him use his cane since we got the new truck. 

     Also, we have at least two ghosts. 

     The first summer we spent in the house, Pa and I would hear what sounded like murmured conversation in the kitchen/dining room area late at night.  It was like two folks having a muted conversation over a late night cup of coffee after the kids have been put to bed. 

     Little said "Hello, girl behind the blinds!" back in October. Shortly after, we went to GA for a week or so around Thanksgiving, and when we got back to TX, Little got sick with a bad cough and nocturnal fevers. Nothing else seemed to be working, so I smudged the house with sage. Little got better, and I didn't think any more of it.  We didn’t have any more paranormal occurrences for months. 

     Now, a few days ago, Pa sees the girl in the pasture. Shortly after Little went to sleep that night, I get in the shower. While I'm in the shower, I hear Little's bed creaking and hear a high pitched voice talking. I assume it's Little and my shower woke him up. When I get out of the shower, I hear Little's ball pit balls rolling around and the high pitched voice, "Hi, what are you doing?" That's something Druid says to me all the time. "Hi, what are you doing, mama?" So I go in, thinking to steal some more kisses and tell him to go to sleep. Only he is asleep. He's snoring. He's three. He hasn't learned to fake sleep when I come to check on him, yet.

     So I go into our bedroom and ask Pa if he heard it or if he had been talking. He said he had been cussing under his breath at whatever is out in the shop rattling around. That's not what I heard.  I heard a little kid voice.  I also heard a young kid (older than Druid) say “Mom?” once when I was heading to the bathroom.  Little still calls me mama, not mom.  Very, very, rarely he might say mommy or mother, but it’s always in reference to a story or movie where that’s what they call the mom.
     Little was in the living room after lunch today and he suddenly yells, "Where is the boy, mama?! Where is that boy?"

     So Pa and I say, "What boy?"

     Little says, "That boy in that black wagon, mama! Bring back the boy?! Where is the boy?!!" He's crying like his best friend just went away.

     So I ask Pa about the black wagon. It's normally in the shed or the shop, but Bryan left it outside under the living room window yesterday after he got through mending one of the fences. We asked Little what the boy looked like, what color was his hair, skin, was he big or little, that kind of thing. Little said it was a little boy with "my gray hair," so I guess a blonde little boy was out in the wagon under the window, but now he's gone, and Little is very upset that he won't come back to play.

     I betcha I know what Pa is going to be doing next week while it's supposed to be raining all week. Maybe the library or the county clerk will be able to start us in the right direction to figure out some of our house’s history.  In my head, the late 30s don’t seem to be that long ago.  I guess because my Gramma never seemed old until she passed away, and those would’ve been her teenaged years.  But it’s an 80-year span.  Maybe something interesting happened here, or maybe there are just a couple of lost little kids who want someone to play with and miss their mama.  

     And here's a gratuitous picture of something recent that makes me even happier than a new truck and a vicarious promotion.  I love these two guys bigger than big!  

My Birthday Eld Shelf

    

     I have been so busy with work lately that I haven’t had a chance to flesh out many blog posts.  This one is a bit late, but better late than never, right? 

     My birthday was a week or so ago, and my wonderful husband made this for me to cater to my bibliophilia and to give me a special place for some of my very favorite books.  Obviously I can’t fit ALL my favorites on a single shelf, but these are definitely up in the very top of my list of literary loves. 

     Bonus points if you know what the shelf itself is made to represent J

Tolling of the Bells: Perspective

     Has it really been a week with nothing new posted?  There for a while I was on a daily roll, but life happened again. 

     I’ve had more scoping to do the past couple of weeks, and I haven’t had as much time for blogging or projects.  Most days I consider it good if the dishes get done and a load of laundry goes in the wash.  Scoping is a type of transcription.  I contract under a court reporter who sends me audio files to transcribe into text documents, formatted based on Morson’s English Guide for Court Reporters.  It’s exacting, and I’m not perfect at it, but fortunately my sister-in-law is the court reporter and she is perfect at punctuation, so between the two of us, we git ‘er done. 

     As a former deputy, I have had glimpses of criminal law and spent 5 years as one of many tending to almost 1,000 inmates.  One thing about scoping is it gives me windows into the civil disputes and divorce proceedings that people bring against one another.  It's quite different from the criminal side at times, but sometimes not so much.  Some of the things people do to one another, say about one another, hold against one another, it can be astonishing, sad, petty, awful, and utterly ridiculous.  But no matter what the scenario, what the context, it always gives me a perspective against which to hold my relationship and to realize that even though we have our moments, I am a very, very lucky woman. 

     Most anyone who knows me knows I turned away from the church pretty early on.  I couldn’t handle the utter hypocrisy, backstabbing, backbiting, mudslinging, trash talking, bad mouthing, hurtful, hateful, and utterly poisonous environment that was every church I had ever been forced to attend.  But that is not to say that I don’t believe that there are lessons to be learned in the Bible.  I just have no faith or calling towards organized religion.  I believe there are valuable lessons to be learned in many of the world's benign religions.  I consider myself a pagan, a heathen in the original sense:  one who dwells among the heath, a country person, rural; and also in the literal sense of one not belonging to Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. 

     I don’t hold to any of their tenants, although (with the exception of Islam which I have never and never intend to study) I do feel that there are valuable lessons to be learned.  Casting pearls before swine, as it were, seemed to be what was happening in every church I attended. 

     One of those strings of pearls is in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. 

4.  Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful,

5.  not proud, rude or selfish, not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs.

6.  Love does not gloat over other people’s sins but takes its delight in the truth.

7.  Love always bears up, always trusts, always hopes, always endures.

8.  Love never ends; but prophecies will pass, tongues will cease, knowledge will pass.

     I am not all these things.  I am not always kind or patient.  I can be jealous and rude.  I am occasionally boastful and selfish, and all the gods know I have a quick and fiery temper.  I can be honest to a fault and frequently lack tact, so I guess that’s a mixed blessing.  I have known lack of trust and the complete shattering of it, though not with my husband.  He’s never abused my trust.  I have many hopes.  I am fiercely protective, I will endure, and I have endured. 

     But my husband?  He is all of these things and more.  He is my teddy bear and my rock.  He’s my soft place to hide and the kick in the ass I need when I need it.  He is humble and generous and the best daddy in the world.  And yes, I am boasting.  I will brag about him to the moon and back.  He deserves it.  He puts up with so much crap from me.  He puts up with my anxiety and perfectionism.  He puts up with my crazy high standards for everything I do that sometimes makes me come across as a bit crazy and fixated.  Maybe I am crazy and fixated.  He tells me that I am good enough.  He shows me that I am good enough. 

     And some would say that we’ve only been married for a few years and are still in the honeymoon stage, maybe I'll get jaded.  I scoff at that.  Five years isn’t all that long to be married, but we’ve known each other for over 20 years.  He’s seen all my ugly, and I’ve seen all his pitiful.  We’ve seen each other’s mistakes, triumphs, wrongdoing, and watched helpless while the other was wronged.  We’ve been friends a lot longer than we’ve been anything else, and that’s, I think, the most important thing.  Friends don’t cheat one another, lie to one another, abuse one another or one another’s trust.  Friendship is love, and love can’t happen without friendship. 

     We both have our imperfections, and we both have to forgive one another on a regular basis, over and over again, for little things, petty things.  We both have bad days and lose our tempers.  We both wake up grumpy or grate on each other’s nerves.  We get even more opportunity to do that since he’s retired and I work from home.  We are *always* together, under one another’s feet, and that is quite a bit different than spending the majority of our days apart, only seeing each other in the evenings like many couples do and like we used to do. 

     But I know this:

I know he loves our little boy. 

I know that I never have to be afraid of him. 

I know that he will protect us as long as he is able. 

I know that he is a good man. 

I know that he is trustworthy. 

I know that I am a very lucky woman.

I know without a shadow of a doubt that he loves me.  

Peach Pie, Pretty Flowers, Place Mats: an update

Look at that!  I love the burgundy, which I think is a type of clover.  The little yellow flowers are all through the grass, lower growing and sneaky, so they might survive the mower. 

This stuff is all over our yard, and I’m trying to convince Pa that we don’t *have* to mow the grass just yet.  I love wildflowers.  Some people call them weeds, but a weed is just a wildflower that’s growing in the wrong spot.  But who decides what the right spot is? 

And our rose is back in full bloom.  We pruned it over the winter, and I was half afraid we might have ruined it, but it’s back and beautiful.  I’d like to train it to be bushier rather than straight up.  It only blooms at the top, and I think if I could get it to grow more out than up I’d have more blooms.  But I have no idea what I’m doing, so any advice will be welcome!

Also, the trees we planted last month are thriving.  We've been doing our best to make sure they get watered at least every other day.  I've been using the calendar on the side of the refrigerator to help me keep track of the rains so I don't let them go too long without water.  I am looking forward to more shade and more flowers!

And if you're having a lovely day, you should have something lovely to munch on while you enjoy the lovely day.  

I know peaches aren’t a spring thing.  They’re just past blossom here, but I had one of those big 10# cans of peaches that I bought last year with hand pies and smoothies in mind, and I just never seemed to get to it.  Today, I had just finished up my last transcript, Pa was out digging in the root cellar, and I put on Little’s favorite movie, Polar Express -- yes, I know, it’s a Christmas movie, but that kid LOVES it.  It’s the only thing that will keep him transfixed for more than 15 minutes.  

With everyone occupied for a bit, I cracked that monster can of peaches and set to cooking it down.  They’re so blah out of the can.  I bought two cans, and we did use one of them for smoothies as initially intended, but they were so blah they watered down the smoothies and made them about as flavorful as adding plain ice cubes.  So I knew they weren’t going to make good pies unless I did something to them.  With some cinnamon, ginger, and a lot of patience, I cooked them down to something resembling pie filling. 

 Even with corn starch added, they never did get quite thick enough.  But I figured I’d roll with it.  Hand pies, and pie in general, just aren’t my strong suit.  My Gramma could make the most amazing hand pies.  I swear she used biscuit dough, but I’ve never been able to get it right.  They’re either all dough or they bust.  This time I used a pie crust recipe from a book Ms. Terri sent me, The Best of Amish Cooking.  

This is supposed to make 3 double crusts or 6 single crusts.  I made 9 hand pies, two bottom crusts, and two cut-out partial crusts. 

* 4 c flour

* 3/4 tsp salt (I would probably double this for sweet pies, leave it as it is for savory)

* 1 c butter/lard

* 1 egg

* 5 Tbs cold water

* 1 Tbs vinegar

Mix the dry ingredients, cut in the butter/lard with a pastry cutter, forks, or a knife.  The reason you don't want to use your hands is because you don't want to melt the fat.  The lumps are where the flakiness comes from.  Mix in the egg and vinegar, then add the water 1 or 2 Tbs at a time till it forms a dry ball that can be worked.  Lightly flour your work surface and dust your dough as needed.  

Pie crust is one of those things, like biscuits and bread, that you have to learn the feel of.  A recipe is a great jumping off point, but there is no way to have a perfect pie crust recipe that works every single time.  Or if there is, I have never found the secret. 

This recipe, for example, calls for 5 Tbs of water. 

This is after close to 12 Tbs of water, and obviously that was still not enough.  Last time I made a pie crust, I made a smaller recipe, about half this size, for a single double-crust pie.  I only needed 3 Tbsp of water.  So environmental factors are going to mess with you and your pie and no recipe will always be 100% perfect.  Find one that has the flavor you like and work with it. 

When I say partial cut-out crusts, I thought I’d try to be fancy and spread the dough out a little farther at the same time.  After the 9 hand pies, I thought I’d try my hand at rolling out actual pie crusts.  I had three sections of dough left and enough peaches for two regular pies.  Instead of having one double-crust and one single, this was my solution. 

I baked them at 425 until golden.  Maybe 25-30 minutes.  After the official taste-tester (aka Pa) declared them delicious, I figured I better try one, just to verify his opinion.  You know, thoroughness is a virtue.  *winks*

I think it needs a tad more salt to be my favorite pie crust ever, but it’s definitely flaky and delicious.  Making 3-6 crusts at a time is a lot more convenient, too, because I can freeze the extras (assuming there are any) and have them on hand for pot pie, pasties, homemade hot pockets, etc. 

And before I go taste test the pie again, I promised an update on those place mats. 

I have discovered that sharpie will indeed stay on through a regular wash, but burlap on the other hand... Who knew it would shrink by roughly HALF its original size?!  That was really unexpected.  I thought it might unravel some, maybe even unravel to the point of being unsuitable, but I never thought it would shrink.  The muslin is not the culprit, because it was well used before becoming a place mat.  It had been a diaper, a light hand towel, a cleaning cloth, and finally this incarnation as a place mat.  It was definitely the burlap.  So now I know, and it would appear that I am going to have to deconstruct the place mats, preshrink the burlap, and then reconstruct them.  Fortunately, I have a good bit leftover from when I made these originally. 

And on that note, it is time for dinner.  Because I can’t have (more) pie until I have dinner. 

Until next time!

The Tolling of the Bells - Wants vs. Needs

     I thought I would try to actually do a weekly blog post.  I know in the past I usually have just done a post when I have something particular to share, like a successfully completed project, progress on a goal, a delicious recipe, et cetera.  But there are often times that I have no successes to share, or even failures.  There are weeks when all I’ve accomplished is just another successful week of life.  I suppose that’s really not something to sneer at, huh?  I mean, if I hadn’t managed to do that much, I’d be dead, so here’s to another week alive! *holds up her mason jar of sweet tea in salute*

     I know I'll probably forget, because good intentions have a way of getting derailed by life's interventions, but today I do actually have something on my mind.  Wants versus needs.  Folks are clamoring for higher minimum wage, because they just can’t seem to live on what they earn.  Then when they get the higher minimum wages, prices go up, hours get cut, benefits suffer, and they still can’t live on what they earn.  You know what the problem is?  No one taught them how to live on what they earn.

     We’ve gone from a culture where it was shame and dishonor on a family to be on the dole to a culture that considers it some kind of a mark of pride to exploit the system and get as much as they can out of it.  I’m of the old-school mindset.  I’ve never been on food stamps or welfare or any form of government assistance other than a year and a half on WIC while my son was eating us out of house and home in baby food.  And do you know my conscience ate me alive every time I used that card?  I felt like I was stealing.  As soon as he started eating solids, I quit redeeming the vouchers. 

     Folks say they can’t live on minimum wage, but the thing is folks just don’t know how to make do.  I lost count of how many times someone expressed surprise that a dish or dessert I sent with my husband to some function or other was homemade.  It was astounding to some of them, like it never occurred to them that *somebody* had to make the dish from scratch before it became a prefab convenience item in the grocery store’s freezer or boxed on the shelf. 

     Do you know what the average cost of a loaf of bread in the USA is?  According to Google, it’s around $2.37.  Do you know how much it costs to make a simple bread recipe?  About 50 to 75 cents, and that’s two standard loaves.  Folks will say, “But it takes too long.”  No, it doesn’t take that long.  I have an excellent on-demand recipe that takes five minutes to throw together.  Let it rise two hours, stick it in the fridge, and pull off a lump to bake whenever you want it.  I’ve smooshed it out into sandwich rounds that take 10-15 minutes to bake and make wonderful lunches.  Time is what you make of it.

     But learning to cook and saving on groceries is only part of it.  We’ve become such an instant gratification society that folks mistake their wants with needs.  Do we need Internet?  Some would argue yes, because so much nowadays demands that we have access to the Internet.  We can’t even get our Tricare information in paper form anymore.  We have to go online and have an e-mail address.  But do I really need Internet?  No.  McDonalds, the coffee shop, two or three gas stations, the cell phone store, the library, even the churches have Wi-Fi, and we live near a T-I-N-Y town.  If I can go jack some free Wi-Fi in Tinytown, Texas, I’m pretty sure folks can jack Wi-Fi most anywhere except possibly rural Montana and remote Alaska.  There’s $60-$80 a month that could stretch the grocery budget, pay a utility, or get put in savings.

     Do folks need cable TV, Netflix, Hulu, a smartphone, that data plan on your cell phone, all those minutes?  No, probably not.  We dumped our smartphones and cut our monthly bills by $120 by downgrading back to flip phones with no data plan.  We don’t have any TV subscription, no subscription movie services, no Game Fly or any of that.  Those are wants.  Folks can live without them just fine, they just don’t want to.

     Folks don’t need their hair professionally done, fancy nails, a steady supply of new clothes, that brand new car, an iPad, expensive sneakers, or that new gaming system.  Folks don’t need a million different beauty supplies, half a dozen cleaning supplies for every room, little chemical pots to plug into outlets and make their house smell.  If it comes down to it, it’s not necessary to shave every night, buy smelly lotions from fancy stores that you can smell before you can even see them, or have that moisturizing body wash that costs $5 or more for less than two cups.

     You know what folks need:  A roof overhead, food on the table, warmth in the winter, and a way to pay for those things.  Learn to cook, buy real food or, even better, grow it.  Buy in bulk and eat at home.  Skip the cafeteria and pack a lunch.  Ditch the smart phone, clean with vinegar or bleach, and ditch the fancy, smelly stuff.  Jewelry can’t be eaten.  That $20 worth of makeup won’t help cover the electric bill.  $10 a month for a Hulu or Netflix subscription doesn’t sound like much, but it boggles my brain when people say they can’t afford groceries but they keep shelling out for streaming movies. 

     Don’t say “I can’t afford food,” but go out on Friday nights.  Don’t say “I can’t live within my means,” then buy a new shirt instead of sewing on a lost button or buying new jeans instead of patching the old ones.  Don’t trade up for a new car every year, then complain because the electric got cut off again due to late payments.

     People love to talk about “the struggle” but in truth many have never struggled a day in their lives.  They need to take their entitled tails to a place where people really are struggling to live.  They need to recognize that it is no one else’s responsibility to bail them out.  Giving “government” funds to sinking businesses is stealing from one to pay for someone else’s bad choices.  Giving “government” funds to able-bodied people who won’t earn it is penalizing producers and rewarding laziness.  Government ordering businesses to double their payroll is just as bad, because it still has to come from somewhere.  The trickledown lands on the head of the people at the bottom, and those cost increases are going to hurt the little folks more than anyone else.  And guess what?  They still won’t be able to afford to live, because suddenly the cost of everything will have gone up, their hours will have been cut, their benefits will cost more, and they’ll still be yelling for more money, because they don’t seem to understand that. 

     People need to find their dignity again.  That’s most definitely a need. 

     These are some of the things we’re trying to withdraw from on our little homestead.  We want to reduce our dependence on the rat-race as well as reduce our contribution to it.  We’re evaluating our wants and our needs, deciding if those wants are even really worth it, merging them together where we can.  We’re still painfully in our infancy in this.  It’s amazing how much more capable my grandparents were than I am.  In just a single generation, we as an entire culture have lost so much knowledge and skills and abilities. 

     Once it was a matter of necessity to put away enough food for your family for the year.  Then it became a matter of pride to not have to work in the earth.  That fast, we lost so much, and trying to learn with no mentor to guise us is trial and error.  I still haven’t even successfully grown my first tomato plant, though I am trying again this year.  We will get there, if only through sheer determination and a heck of a lot of trial and error.  We’ll get there.  And you know what?  We’ll be danged proud of ourselves.  

Chicken Coop Update - and a beginning on a root cellar

     I posted way back when about that dang coop.  What happened?  Life happened.  We actually broke ground on the coop within days of doing the string line.  In less than a week, Pa, with a little help from me and Little, got the foundation walls laid.

We had to put the little one to work, or he was a perfect nuisance.  Give the kid a shovel, tell him to dig a hole, and he’s thrilled. 

We didn’t get much done on the first day, visually anyway, but we were all pretty dang tired. 

After that, things seemed to progress a bit more rapidly.  That first wall, though you can’t tell it, is actually two blocks deep.  We dug down to both create a more stable foundation and to deter creatures from digging in. 

By day 4, we had four walls.  We’d taken away Little’s shovel in exchange for a trowel and set him to filling the cinder blocks with sand and dirt. 

By the end of the 4th day, everyone went to bed with a sense of accomplishment!

And then the rains came.  Ha!  Of course they did.  For a solid week, it rained, and it flooded the pasture, and the fence that Pa had been trying to mend got knocked down again.  The runoff undercut the walls, and since we hadn’t had a chance to actually fill them and tamp them, and it was a hollow box just asking for filling, there was quite a bit of undercutting on the taller walls.  So the blocks had to be pulled out, it had to be releveled, relaid, and actually filled. 

So we did some math, and made an executive decision. 

Progress will be made!

And progress was made!  In just a single afternoon, Pa was able to scoop out a decent start on our root cellar and fill most of the chicken coop foundation.  In about 5 minutes he was able to triple the slow and tedious work we’d been laboring at by hand for a few weeks.  At the rate we were going, we wouldn’t even have started the walls of the coop till next spring, but in one afternoon, he has the foundation nearly filled. 

We’re still trying to convince this one to work for his supper and set him to stamping on the loose dirt to pack it down.  Fun and purposeful.  No, he doesn’t usually run around without pants, but this was just easier for playing in a mountain of dirt.  Besides, at 3, who needs pants?

     Tomorrow will see the coop foundation filled, and hopefully the cellar mostly dug.  We’ve got the thing for a whole week, and we’re going to use it to the fullest.  There are doings being done on the farm this month, and I’ll be sharing once the work is done. 

Until next time!  

VROOM! VROOM!