Happy Valentines Day

From: http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter08/PATTheart.php

I really can knit anything.

Someone broke into our house

Bastards.

Imagine a pic of our broken front door here

Sometime on Thursday between 8:30 am and 5:30 pm, someone kicked in our oak front door.  Why?  Oh, right.  To steal our crappy stuff.

Imagine a pic of our trashed living room here

They took 2 old laptops, a  4 year old wii, the cash from kiddo's piggy bank, and my grandmother's engagement ring.  They destroyed our door.  They threw stuff at our dog who, while sick, old, and deaf apperently got up from his bed under the dining room table at some point.  There was stuff broken in the doorway between the living room and dining room and they did not touch anything in the dining room, kitchen, or basement.  They went through lots of stuff upstairs and generally made a mess.   To top that off, fingerprint dust is a real pain to clean up.  The evidence tech warned us.  Wow.

Imagine a pic of the tech dusting our TV for prints with shimmering dust motes in the air here

There is a special place in hell for someone who steals cash out of a child's piggy bank.

Imagine a pic of Dante's Inferno here

The street value of our stuff was probably less than $200.  It's going to cost a heck of a lot more than that to put our household back to rights.  It's also going to be a bit before the blog is back on track as I used to post from my netbook.

Pizza Roll

This is easy and good.

A friend told me about it at knitting one morning.  Where has this recipe been all of my life?  Even the kid likes it.  There are a bunch of recipes out there for this but something this simple seems like you should just be able to wing it.

You need:

pizza dough

Shredded Motzarella

Provolone cheese

pepperoni

grated Parmesan cheese

egg

tomato sauce

Preheat oven to 350-375

Roll out pizza dough.  I had to pull it over the corners of the cutting board to keep it from bouncing back.  The first time we made it we brushed the dough with beaten egg, the second time we didn't.  I didn't notice much difference.  Layer the dough with the cheeses and pepperoni. Once we didn't have any mozzarella and cut up a bunch of the little cheese sticks that we picked up for the kid's lunch. 

Roll the whole thing up and put on a baking sheet with the seam side down.  We used a silicone mat to keep it from sticking,.  Brush with egg and bake for about 40 min.

Slice and serve with warmed tomato sauce in a little bowl for dipping.

Ours has had a blow out on the side each time we have made it.  No big deal.  

I'm looking forward to tweaking this with all kinds of different ingredients.

Another week, another update

I have not bought any yarn.

I have been making some.  This is from 4 oz of alpaca pencil roving that I picked up at the Alpaca Expo in October. 

 

I'm knitting 3 projects at once...

The Susie Sweater is slowly growing.  Love the cables.

Second is a doll nightgown.  I made it once already and it was waaaaay too short so this is the second go with bigger needles.  I think I am going to run out of yarn.  It might be a doll skirt when I am done.

The last is the Farmer's birthday hat from the brown alpaca I was spinning last week.  It ended up being 426 yards in dk weight.  I'm test knitting a friend's hat pattern.  It starts out with 9" of k1p1 rib.

The next creative adventure is making felted mittens.  Someone in my knitting circle of friends made these really cool mittens out of felted wool sweater.  It inspired a bunch of us and "T" went thrift shopping.  Here they are arriving at the house to be felted.  Yes, I never took the sleds out of the car.

Also in the works is a cookbook with the Farmer's family's recipes.  We are using Create My Cookbook.  We are up to 27 recipes.  Nagging family members for more.  I will be posting recipes as we proof read and test cook them.

Darwin seems to be a bit off.  He is only eating about half his food.  This is the dog who gained 30# when he came to live with us because he had us conned that he was starving.  Waiting for a call back from the vet.

Finally, with yesterday's paycheck, February's budget is fully funded. We were also able to throw $188 at the car loan.  Not much, but it adds up.  $2,223.83 to go.

It's finally winter

Winter arrived really late this year.  January 13th is late.  This time last year we already had almost 100 inches of snow.

When snow arrives in central New York, the kids go sledding.  Even when it is 7 degrees.  There is nothing like sliding down a frozen hill, completely out of control, to make you scream like a little girl.  One guy brought a lawn chair.  I admit I was a bit jealous.

After sledding you must have hot cocoa.  Because we went early, before the hill got too crowded, we had ours at the No Name Diner.  According to Kiddo, they make the best chocolate chip pancakes on the planet.

 Winter is good.

January 14th

I'm still here.

I even finished something this week.  It's Bubbly Curtain from Mason Dixon Knitting. This is the third project I have made from the book.  I made the curtain last summer and ran out of yarn.  It was too small.

So, I made it again.  This time from a full cone of Peaches and Cream cotton yarn.

Much better.

I also have a few projects in the works and some goals for the year.

Our financial goal is to have all debts but the mortgage paid off.  Right now we are working on the second car loan.  $2,400 to go on that one.  Then there are 3 student loans.

My next goal is to keep the dining room table cleared off.  It is amazing how much crap accumulates there.  It took me the better part of an hour today to clear it off and put everything away.

Here it is with only the Farmer's laptop, kiddo's homework and the library book bin on it.

As usual, I am knitting and spinning stuff.  I'm knitting Susie Hoodie from More Big Girl Knits. I'm using Cascade Eco+.  It means the cables will be soft and not well defined, but all in all I really like the yarn.  I'm spinning an alpca blend from Autumn Mist Alpacas that the Farmer picked out at the Empire Alpaca Extravaganza.  It is sooooooo soft.  I spin about 30 minutes a day.  I'm hoping to have it spun up and knitted into a hat in time for the Farmer's birthday.

I'm going to try to get back into the habit of posting.

Remember the blankets for Ethiopia?

Here is the finished blanket.  I had fun finding my 10 squares.  Original post: Charity Knitting

Dueling Apple Pies

The little apple trees in the back yard have a long way to go before they are going to give us apples.  Two weekends ago we went up to a little orchard in Jordan, NY called Leubner's.  We exercised a great deal of restraint and only came home with 2 bushels.  For three people.  Oh, and Darwin.  He likes apple slices too.

Anyway, after two weeks of eating apple stuff nonstop and still looking at three seemlingly full bags sitting on the kitchen floor I decided enough was enough.  Applesauce day!  We made 21 half pint jars and a full quart for the fridge.  Still, there were more apples hiding in a bowl on the kitchen counter.

Late in the afternoon, we decided that instead defending ourselves against the invading hoards, we would pit them against each other.  Two pies.  Head to head.  Winner gets eaten.  We made Judy's Apple Pie, which has its very own post on this blog and Apple Pie by Grandma Ople.  Grandma Ople's pie is the first hit when you google "apple pie."  It also has 4,107 reviews and is rated as 5 stars.  Judy better watch out. 

The results?  They were both excellent.  Too different to really say which was better.   But really, the final result is that we do not have a single apple in this house.  Phew!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Whoops.  Been a while since I posted.

I made these.

From this

With this.  My dad gave me birthday money.

When It was yarn it looked like this.

It's addictive.

Dark spots and bright spots

This is my favorite piece of broadcasting reflecting on 9/11.

When it all happened, I was a Therapist in Watertown, NY.  A coworker (who happened to be a nun) told me.  I told her she was putting me on. It did not seem believable.  Shortly afterwards, the fighter jets scrambled out of Ft. Drum.  Being near the base we were used to maneuvers, but never so many at once. 

I went to NYC with the Red Cross as a Mental Health Technician.  It was several weeks later and they were rotating in fresh responders.  No one was cheering when we came.  The city was angry, tired, and grey.  People were on edge if the subway stopped and anthrax letters were all over the news.  I was assigned to Service Center #2 on Canal Street.  We worked hard.   I learned a lot.  I will never forget it.

Kiddo was just a hope at that point.  Now she is the center of my universe.  As I type this, she is playing on  her computer.  She is wearing a bunny costume and humming to herself.

I made her a Simple Yet Effective Shawl using two skeins of yarn that she gave me for my Birthday.  I alternated 2 rows of each skein.  I did not want big fat bands of color at the beginning and then really narrow bands at the end.  It still does that a bit, but it is not as pronounced.  I used every inch of yarn and Jenny's Suprisingly Stretch Bind Off.  It is very stretchy, but it uses a TON of yarn.  Even more surprising, she likes it.

So I guess there are dark days and bright ones.  From where I sit right now, the view is a pretty good one.

Oh, I'm still trying to do one little bit of decluttering each day.

Wednesday:  I washed the back screen door.  I figure decluttering grime counts

Thursday: pulled 7 old sweaters to make into a blanket and found a bag of donation stuff in the attic.

Friday: emptied a bin in the basement.

Saturday: went through everything in kiddos dresser.  That was a big one.

Vegging Out

Today was kiddo's 1st day of school.  Yesterday, I pretty much let her do whatever she wanted.  I offered to go play out and about but mostly she wanted to watch TV and play with her dolls.  I'm okay with that.  I think that sometimes you just need a day to veg out.  

 I veg'ed out too.  I have been roasting and freezing tomatos all summer.  The freezer basket was getting full.  On top of that, my Mother-in-Law brought tomatos from the Farmer's Grandfather.  I like that the sauce will have a few varieties of tomatos.  I think it adds some depth of flavor.  I also like that with Grandpa's tomatos it's like a family sauce.  In the end I had A LOT of tomatos.  They filled 2 stockpots.  It took forever to run them all through the food mill.  Do they make electronic food mills?  We cranked on and off for an hour or so until they had all been through.  They filled the big stock pot to within 2 inches of the brim.

The next step is to let the whole thing simmer down 'till it is reduced by 1/3 to 1/2 volume.  This is where I cheated.  I let it simmer and steam until it was reduced by a few inches.  Then, I added 4 cans of tomato paste.  Blasphamy, I know.  The paste thickens the sauce.  I get more sauce and don't have to wait until 9 pm to can.  A trick in the canning sauce is to line up all of your jars and add the lemon juice to all of them at once.  That way, you do not need to rack your brain trying to remeber if you added it or not.  It's in there.  I got 11 quarts.  That is the most ever!  I am a happy camper.

I did some decluttering too.  Lying on the basement floor in front of the canning shelf was the cardboard tray that had been under a litter box.  When Ella died, we consolodated the boxes.  Somehow that tray never got tossed.  It was like it had become a fixture and I no longer saw it.  I decided that the focus of the day would be the basement floor.  With the monster project of the sauce going on upstairs, I wanted something quick and simple.  How bad could it be?

We live in filth.  Well not really, but it was bad enough.  There was more stuff than I thought there would be.  Stuff down there feels damp and dirty.  Anyway, the tray is gone, as are some other misc boxes and random objects.  You know how metal coffee cans are so great for storing stuff?  I found 7 empty ones that I had taken down there just in case.  Several were a rusty and cob-webby.  Ick.  They are now in the recyling bin.  Also in the bin is an empty bottle of laundry detergent that I found under the table that lives next to the washer.  We have been making our own laundry soap for the past 2+ years so who knows how long that bottle has been there?  There were 5 stray socks hiding under there as well.  The best things I found were about $2.30 in loose change and an escapee wool dryer ball. 

The State Fair and a really nasty laundry basket

We went to the New York State Fair in the rain yesterday.  We used to have umbrellas and ponchos.  Used to. I looked all over for them with no luck.  But, I did find the missing laundry basket in the garage.  

The Fair is nice in the rain.  It is cool and uncrowded.  There are still more people than I would like, but it is way better than when the sun is out.  The Fair is huge and there is no way to see it all.  Wear comfortable shoes.  I like how there is a big emphasis on agriculture and there is a whole building devoted to poultry and bunnies.  There are enormous cows.  We went to a talk given by one of the Veterinarians of the Bronx Zoo.  There are historical demonstrations.  I learned how to make soap by watching the demos at the fair.   The kid likes the rides.  Of course there is weird fair food.  

Jumping really high!

Rolling around in a giant inflated hamster ball in a big pool.  She was really tired after that one.

After we got home, I decided my de-cluttering task would be re-claiming my laundry basket from the garage.  The Farmer used it to clean out the car sometime in the spring.  For some reason, he stopped in the middle and left the basket in the garage.  In it was: his winter coat, a bunch of papers from school and when the car went in for repairs, and unfortunately at least three lunches that he took to school but did not eat, as well as the fast food trash from what he ate instead. Phew!  I threw it all out containers and all.  The coat got washed by itself.  It was gross but the worst of it was done in about 4 minutes.  At the end of the day, his coat got washed and put away, a few papers got filed, a bag of trash was tossed ad I got my laundry basket back.  

What nastiness lurks in your garage?  Oh and one last pic.  She loves the vibrating foot massages.  Pure bliss.

I'm liking the declutter thing

I know it's only day three.  And actually we went to the fair yesterday and I came home with a headache and went straight to bed so I didn't do any yesterday.  So really, it's day 2.  To make up yesterday I did a double.  

I'm not going to post pictures of this because I want you to picture your space not mine.  The point is this is not for you to feel better because your house is tidier than mine.  It probably is.  The point is that most of us have too much crap and this might motivate you to let go of just a little bit of it.

The first target was  one of the kids bins.  I dumped it and collected her yarn, beads and crafty stuff in it.  There were a few items of trash, and a few things to be put away elsewhere: a dirty sock, a dog toy, and two pencils.  Not as much discarding as I might have hoped, but every little bit counts. While I was sitting on the floor, I also consolidated the toys that were in two cardboard boxes back into her other bins.  This is a tiny dent in the toy mountain, but every little bit helps.

Picture your child's toys here

I have a love-hate relationship with cardboard boxes.  A few weeks ago I had the brilliant idea of putting all of her toys out on the porch in boxes.  The plan was that as kiddo went and got things out of the boxes to play with we would put them away in the permanent bins.  Anything still left on the porch at the end of the month would be donated or tossed.  Sounds great in theory.  What actually happened is that the porch is now trashed and boxes got brought into the house and a moat formed around her regular toy bins.  Not so good.  No cardboard box storage in the living room.

The next target was the bottom drawer of my dresser.  As I got dressed today, I noticed that I had to move two pairs of pants that I don't like to get to the shorts that I wanted to wear.  Why are their pants that don't fit right in my dresser?  So I sorted.  I donated 3 pairs or pants and found 3 pairs of shorts that I would wear buried in the back.  I also found hair ties that I was looking for this morning and extra shampoo and hair care stuff buried in there.  Why?  That's now in the bathroom and off the grocery list.  Is de-cluttering going to save us some money?  Lastly I got to throw out a whole mess of stuff that I won't ever use.  There is a whole lot more room in the drawer now.

What does your bottom dresser drawer look like?

I know I'm bouncing around and I figure that that is okay.  The point is to just do some.  Let's see how long I can keep it up.

The Farm has too much stuff

Three nights in a row I have had to tell the kid to clear a path through the living room to get to the stairs.  We have tried to de-clutter.  We took a big load of toys to Tales and Toys.  It was great.  We cleared out some big stuff and she got new (to her) toys that she will play with.  I labeled 2 boxes: "Donation" and "Toys for Trade."   A week later and not much has found its way to the boxes.  There is just too much.  I find it oppressive.  I have a hard time concentrating.  The magnitude is overwhelming. 

I know the key is to do a little at a time.  I have been thinking about this for a while.   I make plans.  I don't follow through.  Flylady says that you cannot clean clutter.  You have to get rid of it.  She is right. 

Tonight, while again thinking about this issue, I decided to stop thinking and start doing. I was standing in front of the bookcase at the time.  I was going to just do one shelf of the bookcase.  I wound up doing the whole thing.  I pulled 6 books to let go, 2 paid bills from 2008, a case for Christmas cartoon DVDs, and a goodbye card from when I left a job in 2004.  I put away some lotion, cards, and bags to give away soap in.  I checked the books at Cash4Books but they were not buying any.  It took 6 min.  The shelves are less full and the house is a few pounds lighter.

Maybe I can keep doing a little bit each day and blog about it? Go let go of something.  You will feel better.  Maybe I will feel better once I tackle the moat around the TV in the living room.

I won a bet.

Goats do climb trees.

What was I thinking?

Do not cut up and seed 34 jalapeno peppers with your bare hands.  Ask me how I know.

The Farmer requested jalapeno peppers in the garden.  They are going gangbusters, and he was not eating them.  Pretty soon there were 20 of them on the kitchen counter.  I went out and picked 14 more and there are more out there.  What to do?

Jalapeno jelly uses up a ton of peppers.  Worth a shot.  

If the house was not stinky enough with the puke carpet, you can just imagine how it smelled with both the carpet and the boiling vinegar-pepper solution. 

 

All the recipes I found were really, really similar.  Just pick one.  I used fine mesh strainers instead of cheese cloth to strain it.  It might have been clearer has I used cloth.  Someone suggested shaking it as it cools to disperse the peppers through the jelly.  I tried.  Some jars are better than others.  We made a double recipe and got 4 pints of jelly.  

Now I guess we get to find out if we like jalapeno jelly.