What's for Supper?

This is a question I ask myself daily.  Hopefully before anybody else asks me so that I can have an answer.  I have successfully done the meal planning thing in the past and somehow gotten away from it.  I really need to get back to that.  It was such a load off to get everything figured out ahead of time.  That was not the case last night though.  I got home from work around 7 pm with still no plan in mind.  I thought maybe I'd resort to my default scrambled eggs meal, but nobody was interested.

So, I opened the cupboard to see what inspired me.  This is what I came up with (and no, I don't keep frozen veggies and cooked meat in my pantry).  It doesn't really have a name.  It was creamy roast turkey with broccoli and fettuccine noodles.  Yes it includes cream soup. Sorry.  I was in a time and energy crunch. Feel free to make your own gluten/MSG/random ingredient free version of this ingredient.  It also includes sour cream.  That didn't make the picture because I added it as an afterthought at the end to achieve a more desirable texture to the "sauce".  In case you are wondering, yes I do keep bags of frozen roast turkey in my freezer.  I buy them around Thanksgiving when they are either free or dirt cheap with my grocery order then roast them up, shred the meat and package it up for individual meals.  Its a lifesaver on nights like this.

The lineup: fettuccine, shredded roasted turkey, chicken soup base,  golden mushroom soup, broccoli florets, dried minced garlic, my not-so-super-secret savory herb rub, oh and sour cream.

This is what the "sauce" looks like when its cooked and before  I thought to add sour cream.

This is pretty straight forward.  Boil water for the noodles.  Plop frozen turkey chunks into a big deep skillet with some chicken broth (hence the soup base).  I mixed up about 2 cups of broth for this.  Season with herb rub, garlic and some black pepper.  When the turkey is sufficiently thawed and shredding apart, add mushroom soup and stir.  Then add broccoli and cook til tender crisp.  

Meanwhile, boil your noodles til just about done.  Drain the noodles, but save a cup or so of pasta water in case you need more liquid in your sauce.  Dump most of the noodles into the pan with the sauce, toss around a bit to mix, simmer a minute or two to let everything come together and the pasta finish cooking.  This is also when it occurred to me to add some sour cream.  It just wasn't "saucy" enough once I added all the pasta.

The finished product.  Served with mandarin oranges and sliced strawberries.  This is my son's plate.  He was slow coming to the table, so his plate got to be my prop.

The kids loved this meal.  I thought it was ok, but missing something, so if anybody reading this has a great idea to add something that will take it up a notch, please leave me a comment.  

Rhubarb: The Sequel

I am finally getting around to posting about the sparkling rhubarb jelly that I promised to make a few weeks ago.  I did make it.  It is neither red, nor sparkly.  All around, it reminds me of pink lemonade.  Its about the same color as pink lemonade and kind of sweet and puckery at the same time, like pink lemonade.  

The recipe book said that it would be red and sparkly.  Like I said, it is pink, not red.  I'm sure due to the variety of rhubarb I used.  If you want a darker color jelly, you'd need to get your hands on some really red rhubarb (say that five times fast).  It is also not sparkly.  I made this twice and took care not to squeeze the jelly cloth (which puts little bits of fruit solids in the juice, resulting in cloudy jelly) and both times it turned out cloudy.  

Its still pretty though.  And it tastes pretty good on a crunchy English muffin.  I think its something I'd make again next year, if only because its unique and will make a good gift.

Sparkling Rhubarb Jelly

A Chicken Post

We have a new baby at our house!  One fluffy little Araucana chick was hatched a about two weeks ago now. We think its a baby girl chick.  Yay!  This little one is the first one we have ever had hatch at our house.  We usually go into the local fleet supply store in the spring and pick out a few new babies to add to the flock.  This year, we have both a rooster and a broody hen, so we thought we'd give it a shot and see what we came up with.  We've had chickens for years, but never a broody hen while we had a rooster around.  The only other time we had a broody hen, she almost starved to death trying to hatch a golf ball.  (You don't raise chickens 'cause they're smart.)  The kids are very excited to show their friends the new little peeper, and ok, the grownups are too.  Which might be why I feel compelled to blog about it...

She is starting to get her first grownup feathers along her wings.  I can't wait to see what color she's going to be.  The fun thing about Araucanas is that they are all different colors.  They aren't a "true" breed, so they don't have definite characteristics other than that they lay colored eggs.  They are sometimes called Easter Eggers because they lay eggs in pastel colors.  Each hen will always lay the same color eggs, but if you have 2 or more in the same flock, they may all lay different colors of eggs.  Ours are mostly shades of soft green, but some are more blue and one is a bit on the creamy almost pink side.  Cool huh?  Ok, chicken class dismissed.

Rhubarb!

My wonderful father-in-law gave me a few rhubarb plants about 3 years ago.  It takes them a few years to get established and really start growing, so I have been patiently waiting. And waiting.  Last year I had some nice plants coming up, then we got a hail storm in May that pummeled my poor rhubarb patch.  But this year, at last, a harvestable (is that a real word?) amount of rhubarb!  

So, I set out to see just what wonderful things I could do with it.  I made a batch of old-fashioned rhubarb muffins. muffin recipe here They're lovely.  And, nobody else likes them too much, so I actually get to eat them.

  I also made a batch of rhubarb bars.  They're much like a fruit crisp, but the crusty part is more like an oatmeal cookie so you can eat it on the go.  This is a recipe I got from a friend who said that they never hang out long at her house.  Guess what.  They don't hang out long at my house either.  The whole 9 x 13 pan was gone in less than 24 hours.  The kids loved them.  I loved them.  I think Matt would have loved them too, had he been a little quicker to get to the pan. I'll have to make them again. Soon. I did some googling and found the recipe online to share with my adoring public.  rhubarb crunch recipe here

Next on my rhubarb spree is to try rhubarb jelly.  It is supposed to be pretty and red and all around wonderful.  I know that all two of my readers will be staying up nights to hear how it turns out.  Never fear.  I will let you know as soon as the verdict is in.

Rainy Day Blues?

Ok, so we have had a LOT of rain here in the last week.  Lots and Lots of rain.  And, naturally it is a three day weekend.  Three precious days that could be spent planting gardens, mowing lawn, fishing, picnicking, pretty much anything outdoors.  This much rain is a real roadblock for that sort of thing.  But that's ok.  We found other outdoor things to do.

We can't plant or mow, but there are lots and lots of puddles and a ditch with several inches of standing water in it.  All four of us have rubber boots and rain coats, so we went out anyway.  The kids ran and jumped and splashed all their little hearts desired.  Matt and I were close by, since playing in the ditch means that they were awfully close to the road (which is normally off limits).  It was fun watching them make up games and laugh their little heads off.

Meow was not amused by all the splashing.  But she couldn't help  watching anyway.

The rain stopped and it almost cleared off in the afternoon, so we decided to try some fishing.  Natalie had worked so hard to collect nightcrawlers and slugs and she just couldn't stand it any more.  We just HAD to go fishing.  So we went.  Joey's line got too close to the motor and got some grease on it which took exactly 15 minutes and 5 casts for that grease to eat through the line and send my favorite lure off into the depths of the lake.  Oh well. Things happen right?  So, Matt set to work trimming off the yucky line and getting Joey set up again while Natalie was casting.  I was watching her cast with a particularly fluid motion when not only her lure went in but the whole dang pole!  Ok, this is not going well.  As we helplessly watched her Lightning  McQueen rod & reel equipped with a red-eyed wiggler (a large silver lure with red eyes on it that costs about $8) sank out of sight.  Well, now we're down to one rod and have two crying kids.  Time to pull anchor and head back to shore.  Lo and behold, when I pulled the anchor up, Natalie's line was across it.  I was able to pull her whole setup back into the boat.  Whew!  That was a close one.  Her line was also toast by this time, so we still had to head back.  We didn't even get to use one worm.  We weren't out long enough.  There's always tomorrow...(In case anyone reads this and wonders why we give the kids heavy lures, its because we were casting into the wind toward a sand point for northerns.  Casting into the wind is hard with a grown up sized pole and dang near impossible with a kid sized one).

We did have some good nature sightings when we were out though.  We watched an osprey fish along the shore.  We saw a bald eagle, three canvas back ducks, cedar waxwings and found a colony of red-winged blackbirds building nests near the boat landing.  And of course the kids found plenty of snail shells and managed to get soaked, again.

looking for shells

male cedar waxwing

red-winged blackbird nest 

I can't help it, I love baskets.

Confession.  I'm kind of addicted to organizing things.  In my defense I live in a pretty small house (864 square feet to be exact).  There are four people who live here.  Things need to be organized or chaos would reign.  I live by the motto a "place for everything and everything in its place".    That means that I have a lot of baskets, buckets and bins to hold all our stuff.  


As you might imagine, an 864 square foot house doesn't come with a lot of closets/cupboards/drawers.  So, we have shelves and baskets.  Every room has at least one basket to corral something.  In the kitchen, which is the main entrance to our house, there are two baskets.  One is for hats & mittens in the winter and sunglasses & bug spray/sunscreen in the summer and the other is for potholders. The living room has a small basket by the tv for remotes.  The bathroom has a small galvanized pail for toothbrushes and one for the kids brushes and combs.  The list goes on, but I don't want to make this too painfully boring to read.


I like baskets.  Baskets are pretty.  They're rustic and fit in with my whole eclectic/country/cottage thing pretty well.  By the way, eclectic/country/cottage are all nice words for a tiny house with mismatched furnishings.  Baskets take my jumbled messes and make them look tidy and like they're just part of the decor. 


I have recently been made aware that the cleanliness and organization of my house grate on some people that come over.  I went shopping with a friend earlier this week and picked up a new basket to replace one that no longer served the purpose since I had a coupon to use.  This is when I found out that my use of baskets annoys her.  Bummer.  I'm pretty sure that friend won't stop coming over though.  She likes my cooking too much.  Besides that, she has a birthday coming up and she may just get a basket full of organizing supplies and re-usable shopping bags from me.  I can't help it.  Its my inner Bree Van De Camp coming out.  One may want to be careful of telling me that my house makes them feel like they're at a Bed Bath & Beyond.  I'll take it as a compliment and help you make your house feel like that too. (Insert maniacal laugh here).

I wish all weekends were like this

We had a really great weekend.  So peaceful and wonderful that I hated to re-enter the world of work and scheduling today.  So what was so wonderful? Spending time together as a family.  Just the four of us working together on some outdoor springtime projects at home.  We got a big piece of our yard cleaned up and burned off so that we will have a nice clear area to build the kids playhouse.  We worked together to build a little pen for our broody hen and her clutch of eggs where she can safely hatch them out away from the other hens.  We tilled and plucked many a weed plant from our gardens.  Natalie and I went for a bike ride and took pictures of random things around our neighborhood.  The kids helped me weed the flower bed.  We grilled steaks.  Natalie found a wild bunny, Joey gave us a giggle at his idea of outdoor cap-gun shooting attire. We enjoyed each others' company.  We were a team.  We worked and played together for two whole days.  I don't know if it can get better than that.

Matt working the tiller.  Mulching in lots of leaves and old chicken bedding.

Natalie plucking weeds and worms.

Joey collecting firewood.

cowslips just starting to bloom.

pussy willows going to seed.

An old barn on the corner.  I could take pictures of it all day.

The new bunny.  Not sure how long we'll have him, but he's here fore as long as he likes.

Joey's fancy outfit.  Laplander hat, Woody & Buzz  pj shirt, Nemo underwear, polka dot slippers and a cap gun.

Side note: Also included in our weekend were about 37 loads of muddy laundry and peed on bedding, at least two hours spent balancing the checkbook, a good scrub of our very filthy bathroom and an unplanned extra trip into town.  Just sayin'.