Eating the Opponent – The Tradition Continues

The New Orleans Saints were beating the Packers 17-0 when Chuck’s cousin in Texas posted “Did y’all forget to eat the opponent? What happened to the Packers?”

No, we didn’t forget. We had rice and beans with Andouille sausage (yum!) for supper, and we’d ordered Cajun specialties at a nearby pub for lunch on Friday. The Packers just weren’t showing up – yet.

Those of you who follow the NFL know the rest. Jordan Love led the Packers in a dramatic comeback win, 18-17.

This week, we’re working on Detroit. The Lions look good this year (wow), so I hope the Packers show up for all four quarters. We did our part with pasties (good Yooper main dish from the Upper Peninsula) followed by Coney Dogs the next day, with Vernor’s Ginger Ale (first served in Detroit) to drink.

Milwaukee Brewers are playoff bound. It’s early in the season for the Packers, but it’s never too early to start winning. Go! Pack! Go!

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Rhubarb galore!

Rhubarb thrives in a cool spring. A snowstorm on the first of May qualifies as cool, if not cold, right? My rhubarb sure thinks so. It’s sending out shoots right and left and center, and going to seed, too. I keep pulling the stalks that are flowering, and the next day I ask myself, “Self, did I miss that one yesterday?” Truth is, the plant wants to reproduce, and it keeps trying.

Yesterday I spent much of the day picking, cleaning, and chopping  rhubarb. I filled the sink with stalks, topped the compost heap with those huge leaves, and ran two batches through the food processor. Eventually, I dumped all the chopped rhubarb into a big bowl and covered it up for the night.

Today I tried three new recipes: Rhubarb Slush, Rhubarb-Ginger Jam, and Rhubarb Pie Filling. The slush was pretty easy. It’s in the freezer now, and I take it out and stir it about once an hour to prevent it turning into a block of rhubarb-flavored ice.

The Jam and the Pie Filling should have been easy. After all, I’ve made jams and jellies for years, and pie filling is just like a chunky applesauce, right? Right – sort of. I managed to print both recipes with metric measurements. Our stubborn United States insists on using the old fashioned “customary” measurement system, so I had to work to interpret the amounts on these two British style recipes. Fortunately, I have a scale that can measure in grams, and my glass measuring cups have metric measures on the side opposite the customary.

The end results were excellent. I’ll definitely make these again. In fact, I may need to do it again in a few weeks if the weather continues and the rhubarb continues to grow like a bush. The metric recipes, in fact, were for small batches. I will probably double them – or more, if the rhubarb plants keep thriving.

Readers, I wouldn’t mind hearing your rhubarb stories. The plant (a vegetable, not a fruit, I’m told) can be legendary.

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Earth Month Continues with Non Dairy Milk

From Earth Month Challenge: 30 Easy Actions:  

Replacing dairy milk with non-dairy milk in my coffee could cut my carbon footprint in half. However, I drink my coffee black. Chuck has been using oat milk since he developed a strong lactose intolerance, so I could dip into his carton for my cereal to give it a try.

Stay tuned for more eco-friendly actions throughout April – or go to Treehugger yourself!

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Earth Month – Dispense with Paper Towels

From Earth Month Challenge: 30 Easy Actions:  

For today, Treehugger suggests people try out Swedish dishcloths. These reusable cloths are super absorbent, can be washed more than 50 times, and eventually get tossed in the compost. I haven’t ordered mine yet, but the Treehugger folks swear by them.

I do make an effort to use rags and ordinary dish cloths as much as possible. We keep paper towels in the kitchen, but we don’t use many. I don’t think we use many. The best way to find out might be to put the paper towels somewhere less accessible so I don’t reach for them automatically.

Stay tuned for more eco-friendly actions throughout April – or go to Treehugger yourself!

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Catching Up With Earth Month

I posted Treehugger’s suggestions for April 1 – 5, and then got lost in real life. Here we go; days 6, 7, and 8 of Earth Month’s actions.

From Earth Month Challenge: 30 Easy Actions:  

April 6: Check for leaky faucets. One dripping faucet can waste a lot of water – treated water. This is an environmental and frugal action. Check the faucets and the toilets for leaks!

April 7: Cook pasta in its sauce, not water. This, again, is a water saving and money saving action. I’ll add my own suggestion: use homemade broth for cooking pasta – or rice. It adds a hint of flavor and uses a resource that’s available and created from potential waste products. At least, my broths are made from scraps that would otherwise land in the compost.

April 8, today: Skip meat and cheese for a day. This one is tougher. I can handle skipping meat or minimizing meat to a side dish portion, but cheese? I’m a true blue Wisconsinite. Cheese is everything! But since Chuck developed a lactose intolerance, we haven’t eaten as much cheese as we used to. I don’t top the spaghetti with parmesan and mozzarella automatically – just to my portion and maybe Amigo’s. And where do eggs stand in this challenge? I had leftover rice and beans with fried eggs for lunch. Delicious! I need to give this some thought.

Stay tuned for more eco-friendly actions throughout April – or go to Treehugger yourself!

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Water, Water Everywhere

So, Daisy, how’s the water catchment thing going?

Very well, thanks. Too well, if I’m honest. I ran out of containers, so I had to dump several buckets in the backyard, which was actually the original plan. The shelves in the back hallway are full. The kitchen table is covered with bottles and jars filled with water. Three water bottles and a two quart pitcher (full) sit on the counter waiting to be poured into the coffeemaker one of these days. I have a box full of cider bottles now full of water. We must use this water before cider season arrives!

I’ve got Chuck trained reasonably well now. He grabs a bottle of This Water for cooking before he turns on the tap. He drinks This Water most of the time, except for the batch that somehow developed a metallic taste. Overboiled in a metal pot, perhaps, is my theory.

The next question in the Water Catchment Saga is this: how long will the water last? We need to use up enough of it to make the containers available for vegetables in June, and all of the actual bottles by October for cidering.

The forecast is promising (temps in the 40s, no new snow), so I felt confident putting the buckets in the garage. If the back door icicles reappear, I’ll drag the buckets out again.

And the water saga will continue.

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Ice Melt and Springtime. Ah, Water.

It happens every year. The icicles near the back door take over my life. The dripping makes the area by the door very wet, which freezes overnight, and the ice just piles up and gets slipperier and slipperier. I spend all kinds of time chopping the ice and spreading sand and salt on it to protect the family from sliding and falling. This corner doesn’t get any sun, either.

Sigh.

This year, I had a brainstorm. (Chuck would say I watched too much of a Homestead Rescue marathon, and he wouldn’t be wrong.) I thought to myself, what if I captured this water instead of letting it freeze in this inopportune location? Based on that thought, I grabbed a few five gallon buckets, positioned them under the icicles, and collected water. Lots of water.

My original plan was simply to dump the buckets into the grate at the end of our driveway. The water would go to the river with the rest of the rainwater and snowmelt that goes that way. But Chuck said, hey, why don’t we keep it? Set the water aside and use it? (Haha, yes indeed, he did watch quite a bit of Homestead Rescue with me.)

Just to be safe, I strained the water through a clean towel and then boiled it. After the pots cooled, I filled canning jars and extra bottles and a few pitchers with this lovely, cost free, potable water. Now I have water that’s already boiled if I need to use my sinus rinse. I have water for cooking, making coffee, and more. All that, and I’m on a good quality municipal water system, too. The ice melt we collected is all bonus. All extra.

Best of all, I’m not slipping on the ice every time I walk out the door.

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Pizza, Always Pizza

We have a fun tradition in our home related to following our favorite NFL football team. We eat the opponent. Each week during the football season, we check our Green Bay Packers schedule, find out who our Packers will play, and then choose a signature food from the opponent’s home city.

In a discussion completely unrelated to the NFL, more along the lines of Hey, Honey, What’s for Supper, we realized that pizza fills our needs for several of the Packers’ regular opponents. Detroit style pizza – from Jett’s, of course – is our go-to for eating the Detroit Lions. We’ve had Chicago style pizza for the Bears, Cowboy pizza for, well, you know, and occasionally even New York style pizza for the Giants or the Jets. Chicago style and Cowboy pizza both come from one of my other favorite sources, Papa Murphy’s. Do they have a pizza we could call New York style? I may need to look through the menu again the next time our Packers play a team from New York.

We do have other options, including molasses cookies for Detroit and steaks for the Cowboys. Since the Jets and Giants actually play their games in New Jersey, we’ve been known to get Jersey bagels for those occasions, too. But it’s nice that we can fall back on pizza for just about anyone our team may face. Pizza is always welcome on my table.

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Typical Autumn Day – almost

It’s a typical fall day at the O.K. Chorale. Mostly typical, that is. Temperatures were warm – reached 70 this afternoon! – so we raked and mowed and swept leaves. I did look up at the neighbor’s maple and think “We’re not done yet,” but it still felt good to get a lot of this chore out of the way. We dumped some of our leaves on the pile in the street for the public works department to pick up, and we dumped a few tarps full in the garden to insulate the soil for the winter.

The not-so-typical piece? It’s November. We haven’t had a true killing frost or major overnight freeze yet. I’ve been turning the heat off by day because it’s plenty warm without it. And we wonder – is this our new normal?

Halloween was a wonderfully warm evening for trick-or-treat. Amigo sat on the front porch and handed out candy for most of the four hours. He’s very friendly, and he enjoys interacting with everyone who comes along and says “Trick or Treat!”

The local college sent out students, mainly student athletes, to collect for a food drive. Soccer players stopped at our house. We introduced ourselves as alumni, gathered a few boxes and cans, and handed them a few extra bags in the hopes that they’d be able to fill them.

After a successful Halloween night, one in which we did not run out of candy, I took a look at the leftovers. To me, the bowl of tiny peanut butter cups shouted, “Cookies!” Oatmeal cookies, to be exact, but with chopped peanut butter cups instead of chocolate chips or raisins.

Perfect. An unseasonably warm day, followed by cookies made from leftover candy. Readers, how is your weather? Are you concerned about climate change, too? And what did you do with your leftover candy?

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Drumroll – Canning Begins!

It’s not a typical canning season – or a purely typical farmers’ market season – or even a typical garden season here at the O.K. Chorale. I’m in the middle of a Foot Surgery Summer, and that makes a difference everywhere.

I decided not to plant the whole garden plot, so Chuck decided he would put in a three sisters garden in the places I left open. Then he decided we usually have more than enough beans, so his part of the garden became two sisters: corn and squash.

I worry about being out of commission when the major tomato season arrives, so I actually started early. I made and canned barbecue sauce this week, and Chuck applied it to grilled chicken right away.

I also canned three bean salad. We still had yellow and green beans in the freezer, and fresh beans will show up at the market soon, so I pulled out my recipe file and made three bean salad, enough to last months. That’s the goal of summer canning, right? Make enough to feed the family for a length of time.

With Chuck’s help, I prepared some incredibly delicious strawberries for the freezer. That’s another task that may fall through the cracks as my foot puts me down: filling the freezer.

Then again, Chuck is stepping up to the plate, er, the counter and putting in time on the canning front. Footwork or not, we’ll feed the family. The pantry will be filled.

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