Small Town Girl Ro

Dose of REALITY causes REALITY check and I have made a decision

Spontaneous reality-check decision has been reached: Because I have been working on becoming myself (B*U), I am standing back and taking a good look at myself in many areas of my life. One of the things I can clearly see is that I often put my fingers into too many pies all at the same time. In the process, I miss the fact that I have lemon meringue on this hand and deep-dish peach pie on the other one. I don't get to eat those pies. I just get sticky.

I love the idea of this Small Town Girl Ro blog. I enjoyed working on it. I love the discussion that we have been having. But reality is setting in and I realize that it is simply too much- even for someone as nutty as me - to try to keep up two blogs AND write muses for the SG newsletter AND run a business AND try to have some semblance of a life as well. I have to take my fingers out of this blog-pie so that I can enjoy my other blog-pie more.

Believe it or not, I started to feel unfaithful to this blog when I post more over there. Is that silly or what?

Life Muses is clearly a blog of all kinds of miscellaneous topics and I might as well keep on being miscellaneous in it and talk about all of my life. If I cook, then hey... we'll have party over there! I'm going to keep posting recipes and such (when I manage to get time to cook), so you'll get to see them, too, because this experiment has shown me that this is fun to do - when I have the time.  I just need to remove the pressure I had started to feel (in my own mind) that I need to "perform" in this particular blog.

So please... if you have subscribed to this blog and if you have enjoyed the discussion, come on over and subscribe to Life Muses. I'm not going to stop talking about these family, home, bottling, sewing, cooking things... I'm just going to keep my life all in one blog so that I will feel less frantic. That's what organizing blog posts into categories is all about!

See you on the other side

It doesn't bode well

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that the snow that dumped all over my fruit trees today bodes well for a bumper fruit crop, especially since the temperature is supposed to go down to 32 degrees tonight. Freezing.

I noticed yesterday that the trees were blooming. I thought about getting some branches for the house.

Too bad I didn't.

Maybe there will be a fruit-miracle. Last year, the same thing happened to our apricot tree and we ended up with a beautiful crop. The freeze thinned the fruit down just enough that the apricots were larger than usual.

I can hope, right?

What's for supper? Subway.

The small-town girl went to the city last week. I confess. I didn't cook a single thing. Nothing. Nada. I barely ate. I was too busy.

Gary cooked a little bit (I forget what). He brought food home on three occasions. We bought sandwiches at Subway. I had a healthy one - turkey on whole wheat with lots of vegetables, vinegar and mustard - but then I blew the healthy meal thought I had away with a bag of chips and a pop.

I lost 2 pounds last week.

Life: Unexpected and inexplicable.

I am going to try to cook this week because I am so tired of fast food that I would rather eat one of these ball point pens I have falling all over the floor.

Pen and cheese, please? Hold the mayo.
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Go ahead... make me jealous. Have you had anything good to eat recently? What? I need inspiration.

Bug eradication complete

Now, that was a good day's work. Gary and I tackled the problem together (mainly because he felt sorry for me after hearing my continual shreaking as I encountered the nests of bugs) and now we have a sparkling, clean pantry. It was fun putting everything in their respective Rubbermaid containers. Gary pulled out the Dyno labeler (which I didn't know we owned) and I started labeling everything.

(Thanks, Sandy, for the tip. I have to tell you that I laughed all day long about what you said about putting your dog into a Rubbermaid container!)

Sorting through your food items is soothing work. My mind feels as uncluttered as my pantry looks. Obviously, I need to go shopping because we don't have any cereal in the house! (Bugs love the stuff.)

The little brown tent things are Pantry Pest Traps. I'm going to be like Christy now. I'll always have them in my pantry from now on!

(No, that is not a bug you see hanging out the end of the one, by the way. It's the little red pheremone thing that attracts them to the trap. Made you look! HA!)

Inspired by the results, I worked on the pantry cabinet in the kitchen. I store canneds fruits and vegetables in it. As you can see, I lined everything up and labeled the shelves. I realized that this will be very helpful to my family when they help put the groceries away because they are forever messing up my system. After a few weeks of them "helping me," I have no idea what we do or do not have.

Because that was fun, we cleaned the refrigerator.

(Not as fun. I think it may have been declared a public hazard if the health department had visited us this morning. Gross out.)

I decided to organize it and put some things that constantly get lost in the refrigerator into Rubbermaid containers, as well. The whole thing made Gary and I realize that we have been wasting a lot of leftovers and fresh food.

"We are shopping like we still have four growing children," I told him.

"You're right," he agreed.

"We don't need to go to Costo for this stuff, do we?" I said. "We need to buy small containers of fresh items."

The lightbulb went on. Gary is a big Sam's Club and Costco devotee. He now understands that he can stop buying fresh things at warehouse stores because most of it gets thrown out anyway.

You know what I'm loving the best of all? I can instantly make my shopping list by looking at the labels in my pantrys. I can look at the kitchen pantry photo and see that we are out of pineapple rings  and we only have one can of pinto beans. I can see which items I need place on my "buy when it's on sale" watch list.

I'm planning to do the same thing with the freezers in a couple of week because they are driving me insane. I have no idea at all what we have in those pits of darkness and dispair. Perhaps we have some treats buried under the frozen bread...

It will be a relief to open the freezer doors and say, "We need hamburger." Right now, I suspect we've got a bunch of it tucked into random places, but I have no idea where it is.

You kno wwhat? Maybe the bugs were a good thing. They helped me solve some problems I have had for years.

(Ewwwww.... Not.)

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Note: Tracie, I just read what you said about bay leaves helping keep away bugs. I'm going to try that. Thanks for the tip!

Hair crisis update: I am out of the Mom-Dog house

I waited a while to give you this update because...

A. I had to see how it would turn out.
B. I had to wait until she was happy enough with me to allow me to take a photo of her.

Is she blond? Nope. Do I think she's cute? Yep.

After it was all over (and the shop-owner fixed her hair), I decided that it wasn't the color that my mind was objecting to so much, it was that the previous dye job was so poor. Her hair didn't look healthy and most of it was black, which made her look all washed out.

It only took a day or two after the hair was repaired that I was excused from my bad-girl corner. But I suspect that neither one of us will ever forget the experience and I'm resigned to hearing her tell and re-tell the story about my misdeed for the rest of her life.

It will be penance for being rude.

Yes, a mother can be rude while trying to be helpful. I believe that I was rude. Oh dear.

Lesson learned forever, I hope.

Bugs in the Pantry 2: It's happened again. Ewww

They're back! The truly disgusting, make-me-want-to-hurl pests that invaded my office closet in December are back - only this time they have appeared in my (trying not to shudder) pantry. With my food.

EWWWWWWW!

Just in case you haven't heard about my gross bugs drama awhile back, I told the complete story in my other blog. 

I took the great advice of Christy and used some of the pest traps to get rid of them. And they did go away. Or so I thought. They had moved into my pantry and were hiding for months. I tried the pantry traps again and attempted to locate the foodstuff that they were feeding on.

I've thrown away a bunch of stuff and have cleaned. But, apparently, not good enough. They are still here, pestering to the point that I can hardly stand to go in there.

I am resorting to desperate measures. I spent a lot of money on Rubbermaid - cleaning Walmart out of several sizes - and will now engage in completely throwing away every grain-based item in the entire pantry. It's all going to go. The pantry will be emptied out completely - even the can goods -scrubbed down and then I'll go out and buy new food (sigh... double-sigh... triple-sigh...) and everything I get will go in the Rubbermaid. My big worry is that even with this significant investment, I don't have enough Rubbermaid. I guess I'll find out shortly.

Sigh.

Oh and about the pest traps? We have bought several boxes of them and they are going to go in there, too. I'm just grateful that I keep my flour down in my basement in that galvanized garbage can I told you about. It's bug free.

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Supplies: Kitchen Towels Paper Super Mini, Fancy Stitches Embellishment Mini, ScrapSimple Tools - Styles: Felt Biggie 6501

Ready to Garden?

Last weekend, Gary got the garden area ready to go. He was going to plant the peas on Monday, but it snowed. The snow is almost melted today, so I'm hopeful he can get them in tomorrow!

 

The garden space. It faces south and west. The people we bought the house from had a good garden, so we are hopeful. He's got his soaker hose all ready to put in.

Gary's rototiller. Urh. Urh. Urh.

We have two strawberry beds that are about the same size. I need to go out and clean them. They've also got shoots spilling over the edging, so I need to move them into the blank spots. Should be fun to do.

 

The man and his machine. Too bad he can't ride it to work. The Camry is getting up there in mileage.

Special Topics: A Reference Center

Hey you guys... I've decided to start putting together a reference center that we can all use. The first page I've started is a listing of the quick meal ideas we are all sharing. The link to this page is at the top-left hand side of the blog.

Thanks for sharing your ideas and if you have any more for us, just add them to this post.

P.S. Please tell me if I've missed yours!

Dessert first: Banana Bread

This morning, when I went in to eat my breakfast, I saw three pathetic bananas staring at me. They were soft and turning black... and were perfect for making banana bread.

Before I give you the recipe, I need to share something with you: I won my husband by making banana bread.

Before we married, Gary served a two-year mission for our church in Canada. We just barely knew each other at that point, but five days before he left, I ran into him in and bookstore and he asked me to write to him. I said, "If you write to me, I'll write back."

While I was doing this writing (because obviously, he wrote letter to me), I periodically sent him care packages. The first one included a loaf of banana bread. He begged me to send more banana bread and so I did.

It was only after we were married that he told me that sometimes, the banana bread arrived in a rather - oh shall we say - dicey condition. Sometimes the bread has mold on it because it took a while for the package to arrive. (This happened during the days when Canada was experiencing postal strikes.)

Ewwwww....

He didn't care. He liked it so much that he sliced off the back pieces and ate the rest of it. It's a wonder he's alive. But it does say that he thinks I make good banana bread.

This particular banana bread recipe is good because it is moist without being greasy and it makes three loaves out of three bananas. I belong to the cooking theory that says, "The more results I can get with the least amount of effort, the better." Obviously, three loaves are a better return than one loaf because it takes the same amount of time to stir up the batter, no matter what.

RECIPE

Cream together

• 1 cup shortening
• 3 cups sugar

Add and cream

• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups banana (I used three large bananas. This was plenty.)
• 1 cup buttermilk or sour milk (To make sour milk: Add 1 teaspoon vinegar to one cup of milk. Let sit for a few minutes until the milk thickens up.)

Mix together in a separate bowl. Then add to mixture and stir in until mixed.

• 4 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons soda
• 1 teaspoon salt

Optional: 1 cup walnuts (I didn't add any because walnuts give me cancer sores.)

Spray three bread pans with Pam. Divide batter in pans. As a note: I use a bigger pan than some people would because one of the issues you can have with banana bread if the loaf is too big (meaning that it will come out tall) is that the middle won't get cooked through before the outside is brown enough.

If you don't have that trouble, your recipe might not give you as moist as results as this one. I prefer a moist bread, even if the loaf is a little shorter.

Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 45 minutes. You can tell when it is done if you touch the center lightly with your finger and it bounces back. The edges will be slightly drawn away from the edge of the pan, as well. If the outside is looking brown enough and you can tell the center needs a little more time, turn the heat down to 325 degrees and bake about 5 more minutes.

By the way, this is also how you can tell if a cake is done without poking it with anything, did you know that?

My husband is now a happy man. He gets really helpful around the house when I make banana bread for him!

What's for supper? Tuna patties

I haven't made this one for years and honestly, I wasn't sure how my kids were going to respond. I was afraid they would say, "Gross!"

But that's not what happened. They loved them, lapped them, up and the only criticism I received was, "You should have made bigger ones." They want me to make them again. Since they are quick and cheap, I'm sure that will happen.

RECIPE

2 cans tuna
1/2 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup fine bread crumbs
2 tablespoon onions (I chopped up a couple of green onions.)

Shape into patties and fry on both sides until brown. Warm up the rest of the mushroom soup to use as gravy for the patties.