Category Archives: the coffeepot’s on

The Garden Begins!

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My knees hurt.

Why do my knees hurt? We had a couple of really nice days – warm, dry, sunny days – and I knew there would be rain and cold on the weekend. I pushed myself to work outside as much as possible, and now I’m really achy and sore. It’s a good kind of achy, though. It’s the kind that makes me say to myself, “Hey, self, you’ve really accomplished a lot. You’ve earned a rest.” A rest, and a little ibuprofen, and coffee, and peanut m&ms. Right? Right.

During those two nice days I got outside and dumped compost on several sections of garden. I pulled up a lot of creeping ivy (Jenny or Charlie? Don’t know, don’t care), and spread the compost where the ivy had been.

The barrel near the garden edge is planted with spinach now. This barrel, scavenged from my old office before it could hit the dumpster, has grown kale, parsley, and more. This year it’s spinach. Lettuce is ready to grow in a long and thin planter that hangs off the deck railing. That’s an easy location; we can step outside and gather a little for a salad or sandwich any time we want it. Fresh lettuce: yum!

I have some larger pots ready to host peppers (jalapeno, mainly) and cherry tomatoes. The weather isn’t consistent enough to put them out yet, but when it warms up mid-May, I’ll be ready.

Meanwhile, I’ve left Earth Month recommendations behind, but I’m practicing what I preach by preparing to be a little more sustainable every day. Hey, readers, have you started playing in the dirt yet? What are you doing outside?

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And more Earth Month! Go, Green Freaks!

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From Earth Month Challenge: 30 Easy Actions:  

Day 14:  Read the Directions on Products

By reading the directions, you can avoid overuse. For example, you probably don’t need as much detergent in the laundry as you think you need.

But I’m not focused on reading packages (or manuals) right now. We are having a rare streak of warm, very warm days, and I’m getting outside every chance I get to do yard work and garden prep. So far today, I’ve loaded up a few large containers (five gallon ceramic crocks, for example) with yard waste and compost. This fills each one about half way. The rest will be potting soil, and I will transplant pepper plants and cherry tomatoes into these containers so they’re easily accessible for cooking and salad-making.

On that note, I wish I could find the manual for the worm farm set-up sitting in my garage. It’s a perfect example of good intentions being the way to you know where. In a handbasket, no doubt.

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

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Earth Month Continues with Non Dairy Milk

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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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Butternut Squash Soup

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The storage area that is usually cool and dry is, well, neither. Thanks to an unseasonably warm October and a streak of rainy days, the back hallway is not a good place to store my vegetables. I disposed of two potatoes, a large red onion, and half of a butternut squash this morning.

Then I cleaned the containers and added the little “dryers” that come in packages. Does this do any good? It can’t hurt.

And then I made soup with the remaining half of the butternut squash. I used my standard recipe and cut it down to match the amount of squash I had left. Here it is, folks, without adaptation. This is a lot of soup; use a BIG crock pot if you make the whole thing.

Ingredients:

1 large butternut squash (about 4 lb), peeled, seeded, and cut into pieces(estimated amount: 10 cups)

1 large apple, peeled, cored, cut into 1-inch pieces1 medium white onion, diced

1 large carrot, peeled, diced

2 teaspoons curry powder, 1/2 teaspoon sea salt, 1/8 teaspoon white pepper

3 1/2 cups chicken broth or chicken stock

1 Tablespoon minced fresh ginger root

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

Directions: Spray slow cooker with non-stick spray. In cooker, toss squash, apple, onion, carrot, curry powder, salt, and white pepper. Pour broth over vegetable mixture. Cover; cook on low for 8-10 hours or on high for 4-5 hours. Use immersion blender or remove small amounts of soup (3 cups at a time) into blender to blend until smooth. Add brown sugar (and milk or cream, optional) while blending. Turn heat setting to high. Cover; cook for another 30 minutes. Serve. Enjoy.

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Retirement Begins.

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I could get used to this. I mean, I will get used to this!

I’m getting used to seeing Chuck in the morning hours. When he worked a late shift and I worked a standard teacher day, we only saw each other awake and alert on weekends. I would leave my hearing aids out (to save a little battery power) until he got up. Now I’m putting in my “ears” much earlier!

Grocery shopping is different. I’m not making a lunch to take to work each day. In fact, I might ceremonially throw away my insulated lunch bag. It’s been useful for many years, and now it’s done. No longer needed. Gone.

I set a goal during my last week at the office: no lunch-making all week. My colleague and I examined the goal and deemed it attainable and measurable. Oh, educators. It may take a while for me to lose the jargon. Monday: Memorial Day. No school! Tuesday: convenience store turkey sandwich (I love their cranberry bread) and an apple. Wednesday: $5 sushi day at the nearby grocery – a California roll. Thursday: nearby fast food (drive through), eaten at our outdoor picnic tables. Now that I’ll be living on my pension instead of my salary, I probably won’t buy lunch very often. I can get used to that.

I’ve been already feeling the stress roll off my shoulders. I compared notes with a good friend who is leaving teaching, and we talked about summer commitments. This will be the first year in ages that we don’t have to plan or sign up for many hours of staff development. I used to plan a lot of our summer curriculum sessions and book studies. Now, someone else can step into that role.

The garden needs my attention. That’s a typical summer day, and now it will extend into the fall months. It’ll be nice to have more time to enjoy the fall canning tasks – applesauce, tomatoes, salsa, tomato sauce, cider, and more.

Now I guess I need to get used to sharing the kitchen with Chuck. We can do it! Retirement, here I come.

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Post- Thanksgiving News and Views

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Ah, Thanksgiving. In the absence of the fairies, we split the responsibilities and managed to put on a good spread ourselves. We learned a few things in the process, too.

Our kitchen needs more counter space. It’s a little like the commercial with the guy realizing he has enough food for his guests, but doesn’t have enough room in his refrigerator. I thought I was brilliant in the way I plugged in an outlet strip and connected the crock pots to it. There they were, spread out on the kitchen counter, heating the mashed potatoes, curried squash soup, two kinds of stuffing, and mulled apple cider. Then we took the turkey out of the oven and realized there was no room to carve it. Chuck ended up setting a large cutting board across two burners (turned off, of course) on the stove and carefully carving the bird there.

La Petite’s stuffing and mashed potato recipes were delicious. She even made small quantities of plain potatoes and stuffing for those family members known for their preferences toward the traditional versions.

When you’re seven years old, drinking mulled cider from a wine glass is really cool.

A traditional holiday is often a good time to create new traditions. We served the holiday dinner on Friday for suppertime instead of on the calendar’s Thursday. It meant more relaxing travel for those on the road, more sleep time for the late-shift person in the family, and all in all simply worked better. We’ll be open to moving Thanksgiving off the Thursday in the future if needed.

On the same note, my birthday and my sister-in-law’s birthday land near Thanksgiving every year. Chuck’s birthday and La Petite’s are in mid-December, just a few days after our niece’s (she of the apple cider wine glass). We were universally not ready with gifts wrapped, but we exchanged presents anyway. After we were all done, the laughter had died, but the smiles remained, we decided that maybe this No Wrapping was a good idea.

There’s a lot for which to be thankful this time around.  Chuck no longer has to fear getting sent off with the satellite truck. When our Packers played on Thanksgiving, that was a very real possibility. Chuck left the television industry about a year ago, and it was a good move. We were all (relatively) healthy. Everyone traveled safely. Most of all, we enjoyed spending time together.

And that, my friends, is the best tradition of all.

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Top Ten List – in which Daisy is under the weather

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Remember the Daisy Reality Show? It was the fictional creation of a reality show featuring yours truly, a television producer, and the producer’s bumbling assistant. Creating “Reality Show” posts lets me experiment with point of view and reassure myself that my life, in reality, is quite ordinary. Here’s a potential discussion between the producer and her assistant.

Producer: We won’t get much today. Daisy isn’t feeling well.

Assistant: Really? I hadn’t noticed. How can you tell? Give me one good way to tell that Daisy isn’t at her best!

Producer: I’ll do better than that.

  1. Daisy didn’t label or put away the applesauce she canned three days ago.
  2. The kitchen compost bucket is full.
  3. She stepped outside, said,”The container plants need watering,” and stepped inside without watering anything.
  4. The large hot water bath canner, full of water, still sits on the stove, taking up space.
  5. Daisy made coffee this morning and only drank half of what she brewed.
  6. Daisy ate popcorn for breakfast – stale popcorn, at that. Easy on the tummy, I guess.
  7. She didn’t empty the dishwasher, either. That’s one of her pet peeves; a dishwasher full of clean dishes, and a counter with piles of dirty dishes.
  8. The newspapers from the last two days are still in their (stupid, wasteful, plastic) delivery bags.
  9. Bunny didn’t get fed until quite late this morning, and the litter box still isn’t clean.
  10. And the biggest piece of evidence that Daisy might be ill: It’s Saturday, and she didn’t go to the downtown Farmers’ Market.

Assistant: Oh.

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In Season: Zucchini Bread with Cherries!

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This may become my go-to recipe for zucchini bread. I made a few minor changes (I hear you laughing, you who know me well), but the basic recipe is from the Essential New York Times Cookbook. I do have a beef with the way it’s indexed. This wasn’t listed under zucchini; I found it in the Q section for Quick Breads, and then under S for the name of the pastry chef who created the recipe itself. That’s a little bit like the way I saved so many recipes under E for Easy-to-make or D for Delicious.

But anyway, here’s my version. When cherries are no longer available at the farm markets, but zucchini is still prolific, I’ll probably make this with chocolate chips. Mmm.

Zucchini Bread with add-ins (cherries this time)

2 cups grated zucchini

1 1/2 cups sugar

3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

3 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 cups whole wheat pastry flour (or all-purpose flour)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3/4 cup chopped walnuts

1 cup fresh cherries, pitted and chopped

Combine sugar and butter in large mixing bowl. Beat together, adding eggs one at a time. Mix in vanilla.

In a medium bowl, sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Add this mixture gradually to the liquid mixture, alternating with grated zucchini. Fold in walnuts and cherries or other add-ins.

Bake in loaf pan or three small loaf pans for 50-60 minutes. Remove from pan and cool on wire rack before slicing.

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We mourned, we marched, and now —

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I saw it on social media. “Friday, we mourned. Saturday, we marched. Where will you be next?”

I remembered when we, the educators and the unions, packed the Wisconsin Capitol. We marched, we sang, we protested, and to no avail. Those in power still passed the ugly bill we called Act 10, sending our bargaining rights back by 40 to 50 years. Our numbers, our marches, our voices were ignored.

On Friday, January 20, many turned off the televisions and turned our backs on the scary sight of Donald Trump taking office as President of the United States. On Saturday, even more took to the streets. Rallies in Chicago, Washington D.C., and elsewhere attracted so many people that the corresponding marches could not take place. Attendees were so numerous that they already filled the march routes.

And for what did we march? For our health care, our rights as human beings, our respect – and self respect, too. We marched to remind people that women are scared, and despite our fears and worries, we won’t take any more steps backwards. We marched to say “Hey, we heard you. We heard you mock a disabled reporter. We heard you claim you had the right to grab women in their “pussy” because you were a celebrity. We heard you call immigrants from Mexico rapists and drug dealers. We heard you announce you would prevent people who are Muslim from entering this country, and we heard you suggest a registry for those who follow Islam.”

We heard you, Mr. Trump, and we won’t forget.

The question remains: what’s next? For some, it’ll be donations to Planned Parenthood, Emily’s List, or local and state progressive activist groups. For some, it’ll mean participating in more events like Saturday’s march. For others, what’s next will be emails and phone calls to elected officials, whether we voted for them or not.

Trust me on this, folks. I predict further activity. We are women, and we’ll roar, in numbers too big to ignore (Thanks, Helen!). We won’t lose our right to speak freely or peaceably assemble. We won’t lose the rights to make decisions about our own health and our own bodies.

And that, my readers, is where we’re going next.

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Snow Day – Ice Day prep

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We had an inkling that a day off might be in the works. Toward the end of the school day, we saw an email from downtown – the Powers That Be had cancelled all after school and evening events, and the morning wellness appointments had been rescheduled. I slid a little in the parking lot; the freezing rain had begun.

By the time I saw the announcement that our local schools would close the next day, I had already prepped for the possibility of power outages. Sometimes, the two go together. Ice, power outages, kind of like chocolate chips and cookies, Romeo and Juliet, or birds of a feather. It’s not a panic situation, but we’d rather not be forced to travel the slick roads in search of eggs or bread if the trip can be avoided.

Our pantry is pretty well stocked as a general rule. A quick stop for bunny food on the way home from work, and we can feed everyone under our roof.

Blankets: if the heat goes off, we’ll need to double up on blankets. We have plenty, and at any given time most are reasonably clean. Most.

Bean bag chairs. Just kidding – sort of. Amigo has several. Bean bag chairs plus blankets equal a cozy corner for relaxing and keeping warm.

Firewood: Bring in a good stack of dry or relatively dry wood. If the heat is off, we’ll huddle up in the den near the fireplace with bean bag chairs and blankets.

Charge everything that needs a charge. That’s probably the biggest challenge on the list. If I can’t plug anything in during or after a storm, I need to be ready to keep the major tools of life charged. To give you an idea, here’s a list.

  • Smart phones – three
  • Kindle
  • Laptop
  • FitBit (it keeps my vibrating alarm on time!)
  • Is that all? No, but those are the high priority items.

I don’t have a battery operated coffee maker. If we lived in a place where power outages were more common, I’d probably get one. A generator for the freezers would be useful, too. Our two chest freezers are full of vegetables from last summer and meat purchased on sale and a full stock of soup broths (haha). In a short outage, we just leave the freezers closed to maintain their temperatures.

So, folks, how did I spend my bonus day? Power stayed on. Heat stayed on. I relaxed on the couch, watched some HGTV and DIY (no news; after I had the closing confirmed, I didn’t want to see any more news), put a loaf of bread in the bread machine, cleaned a little, sipped my coffee, ran the dishwasher, and a whole batch of small chores. A day like this is a gift, when we’re prepared for it.

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