Tuesday, September 25, 2012

This is going to be easier than I thought

Rich cleaned out some bookshelves over the weekend (oy, huge mess in the living room for a few hours). After going through the giant stack he pulled out, he came in and deposited a stack of those Sunset-type books—you know, the big, thin paperbacks that were always some kind of How To guide or basic reference books—on my desk. They were mostly about gardening (flower, bulb, vegetable) and houseplants, but there were a few about canning, pickling and the like. (Apparently we had some big plans in self-sufficiency when we first met, though it could also be that the books were just on sale. At the time, neither of us could much resist a marked-down book.)

One of them was 12 Months Harvest, an interesting book about—duh—preserving food. And making cheese, soap and bread (delicious together) as well as covering a few other Foxfire-type subjects. (It was published in the hippie-dippie 70s, so that might be rather shaping my impression of it.)

Since I've made a tiny little foray into the world of preserving food (boiled cider, aka apple molasses and freezer strawberry jam), I've kind of gotten the bug. I asked for and received a canning starter kit (I had to borrow from Rich's friend Ron to put up the boiled cider), so now I'm really ready to get going. And this is Autumn! It's harvest season. There should be lots of stuff to preserve!

Yeah. I'm still thinking about it.

There is one thing I'm definitely going to try, though. In that stack of books there was also a copy (a hard back copy) of Better Homes and Gardens Home Canning Cook Book. That one contains a recipe that solves a forty-year conundrum for me. When I was in high school (circa the dawn of time), my cousin Mike and his Massachusetts-born wife Kathy gave my parents a jar of cranberry jelly. This is not the same stuff you serve with turkey at Thanksgiving. It's actual jelly, made to spread on toast. It was delicious. I ate it every morning until it was gone. And there was no more.

Now, children, keep in mind this was long before the Innerwebs existed. All I could do in those primitive times was keep an eye out in the grocery store, and hope that my travels might one day take me through cranberry jelly country. Many years passed, and the IETF fellows put together the Internet thing. I used it to search for cranberry jelly. I found (and tried) jam, preserves, spreadable fruit…but nothing was ever exactly right.

Somehow it never occurred to me to look for a recipe for it. The Home Canning Cook Book has one. It's complicated and exotic, requiring many ingredients and painstakingly precise chemistry: You boil cranberry juice cocktail and sugar, add pectin and put it in jars. Whew!

So soon I'll once again have cranberry jelly on my toast. And someone will, no doubt, be getting some via the Homemade Christmas Gift Grab Bag. That makes the book mess all worthwhile, I guess. Who knows? Maybe I'll even try a little soap to go with it.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

When I don't feel like cooking

Cooking dinner can be a challenge. Not that it's especially hard to do, most of the time—particularly for those of us with home offices, who can slip out to put the potatoes on or turn down the oven when we need to. It's the dailiness of the thing. Having to come up with something for your hungry household to eat every single, solitary night that comes along. If nothing else, it gets tedious.

Those of us with a few years' experience at it all have our go-to dishes and recipes for those nights when we really don't feel like cooking at all. Until now mine has been spaghetti and meat sauce. Like my mother used to make—McCormick's sauce mix and a pound of ground beef.

Just recently, though, I discovered that if I realize early enough in the day that I'm not going to feel like cooking, there's an even easier way around it. And it's really good, too.

(Adapted from WikiHowHow to Make Crockpot Chicken Tacos)

Slow Cooker Chicken Tacos

This isn't mine. I'll take a picture of mine when they're done.
4–8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
Chopped onion

1 packet taco seasoning mix
16 ounces (a medium-sized jar or 2 cups) chunky salsa

Tortillas
Toppings (shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, guacamole or sliced avocado, sour cream, shredded cheese, etc.)

Mix the taco mix with the salsa. (I use medium heat salsa, usually, because I'm not a complete wimp. Suit yourself and your own pain threshold.) Pour a little in the bottom of the slow cooker. Put the chicken and chopped onion on top of that. Pour the rest of the salsa combination over it.

Cook on high for about 4 hours or on low for about 6. When the chicken can be shredded easily with a fork, it's done. Remove the chicken and do that…shred with a fork. Return to slow cooker and mix with juices.

Serve wrapped in tortillas with whatever toppings you like. Pinto, refried or black beans, plus Spanish rice, round out the meal.

These tacos are so good, they remind me of my very first taste of Mexican food ever. It was 1966, I was nine, and we had just moved from Prichard, Alabama (okay, it's a suburb of Mobile, so not quite as Podunk Junction as it sounds) to San Antonio. We were living in an apartment (another first) while we looked for a house, and went to a drive-in Mexican place down the street. As I remember, my very first bite of my very first chicken taco tasted a lot like these. That taco made me a fan for life.

And these tacos make it very easy (in every sense of the word) to recall.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Make do (even if you won't have to do without)


I love making do.

That might not come as a surprise because I'm a knitter. I always thought that the image of someone who knits was kind of a genteel hobbyist, someone who appreciates serenity and has great patience. My clever niece pointed out, though, and quite correctly, that knitters are more closely related to brave pioneers and subsistence gardeners. We know how to do for ourselves. By being involved in the creation of garments that most people never even think of as homemade — like socks — we tend to be a 'get down to brass tacks' kind of group. What does it take to make a thing happen? How do we take something and turn it into that very useful, or even essential, item?

The percentage of knitters who keep chickens, for example, is much higher than in the general population. (I'm basing this on my own casual survey of my knitting friends. I'll conduct a controlled scientific study the minute I have a minute.) We also tend to spin, sew, weave, can, hunt, grow our own vegetables and herbs, brew our own beer, collect rainwater for irrigation and reuse things more than most people.

I'll tell you, there's something extremely satisfying about thinking you'll buy something and realizing that you can make it yourself instead. It's way better.

So I'm actually fine with living on a budget. Of course, I'm also fine with never having to think about money and just buying whatever I feel like. But I find being thrifty rather fulfilling.

And besides, my name isn't Campbell for nothing.

And in that same vein, there are a few kitchen…well, staples isn't exactly the word. Ordinary ingredients might describe them, I guess, or at least not-exactly-exotic ingredients. There are some things you can make yourself that you might not have thought of. One is extracts. After using commercial orange extract to make some really disappointing Creamsicle Fudge, I investigated and learned that it's easy as pie to make your own, as long as you don't need it for a month.

You can slap a label on it. It doesn't have to be straight.
Homemade Orange Extract


What you'll need:
An orange or two, with a nice, bright firm peel
Vodka
Glass jar with a tight fitting lid
To make:
Wash the orange. Zest it (I used my handy Oxo Good Grips peeler), taking care to only remove the orange part. No white. Chop the strips of orange zest into smallish pieces.
Put the pieces of zest in the jar. Add enough vodka to cover the zest. Put the lid on.
Make note of the date. Your extract will be fragrant and ready to use in a about month.

This works with lemons, too. It's much better than most of the commercial brands, and a whole lot cheaper.

You can also make your own sweetened condensed milk. Personally, I'm fine with dropping a few bucks on Eagle Brand, but I also only use it sporadically. If I do buy it when I'm not planning a specific recipe, I all too often end up discovering the can at the back of the cabinet a few years later, after its "use by" date is long past. So it's nice to know I can make it when I need it, instead of having to make a trip to the grocery store. (Thanks to Dish Away blog for the recipe!)

Monday, September 10, 2012

One of Life's Little Condundrums: Laundry Imbalance

I just sorted the mountain of dirty clothes in our bathroom (that's something I tend to let go when I get busy) and I noticed something odd: Rich had two or three sets of underpants/undershirts/socks for every shirt and pair of shorts in the hamper.

I haven't noticed him changing his underwear and socks twice a day but, on the other hand, surely I would have caught him before he actually went out not wearing clothes, right? Or at least I would have heard about afterwards, after he made bail. Right?

Monday, September 3, 2012

Happy Labor Day, part 2 (and more Downton Abbey)

We've discovered, Rich and I, that we really and truly can't stop watching Downton Abbey. We zoomed through the seven episodes on Netflix in two nights, then happily connected a laptop to the TV in order to start streaming the next series/season through Amazon.

We watch it free on Amazon because we're Prime members. Just so you know, I can't recommend Amazon Prime highly enough. We end up ordering a bunch of stuff from Amazon anyway, and Prime gives us free shipping (free two-day shipping). Plus free access to a ton of their streaming video content, like the entire second season/series of Downton Abbey.

So we watched two more episodes from Amazon, and ended at around 1:15am. That's not that big a deal for me, because I'm a night owl anyway, but that's astonishing for Rich. He's Mr. Early to Bed, Early to Rise. And the fact that he suggested, "just one more" at midnight shows you how engaging it is.

We slept late today (duh). We're going for a late lunch at Red Robin, where they have the most fabulous burgers (one of my top three favorite burger places), because they're giving me a free burger for my birthday. (Ah, they know me so well!) In an absolutely brilliant move, Red Robin has a loyalty club, and rather than require members to bring in certificates, they attach rewards and special deals to the loyalty card number. That way, all you have to do is show up and give your card number to get the rewards. So there's a free Whiskey River BBQ Burger in my immediate future.

Then we'll come home and start (early) on Downton Abbey, since we've both admitted we'll simply watch until we've finished them all. We'll break at some point and feed the zoo, and at that point I'll put together some snacky kind of things—deviled eggs, maybe some chips & hummus, and this fabulous Cheddar Tailgating Bread from Rebecca at Foodie With Family. At least it looks fabulous. I've been trying to find an excuse to make it. And sure it'll go just as well with Masterpiece Classic as it does with college football, right?

Again, I hope your Labor Day is as enjoyable as mine is going to be!

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Happy Labor Day!

I can't believe it's September already! I can't believe it's the 2nd and I haven't changed all the calendars yet! (That might be easier to understand when you learn that I have four calendars just in my office, and one of the ones in the kitchen is a rack with little squares the I have to take down and rearrange each month.)

September is special to me, because my birthday is this month. In fact, my dear brother-in-law (the one I grew up with, not the one I married…uh, into) has a birthday almost this month (8/30), my beloved niece's b'day is the 7th, a life-long family friend's is the 1st, my sister's is the 14th, and niece's friend-since-middle-school's birthday is the 18th. And while we're at it, my grandmother, a few great aunts, at least one great uncle, a couple of cousins (first and second) and my late aunt were all born in September. It's a good birthday month. (And to save you the trouble of counting backwards, it's the long, cold December nights that does it.)

So I'm glad it's September. Oktoberfest is getting closer, and I'm finally starting to relax about the volunteer stuff. We're more or less covered, except for the Children's Area and, in fact, we could (and probably will have to) hire people to work there. So…so far, so good. And October getting here means it'll be DONE for a while. (There's next year to look forward to. Huzzah.)

I'm working on getting some socks done. If you check out the earlier post, you'll see that I'd better get on it. I've learned—nay, practically perfected—two-at-a-time socks on two circular needles. I'm still working on two-at-a-time on one circular, which is just another way of saying Magic Loop, which truly makes me crazy. (FYI, for you non-knitters, most people like either Magic Loop or double point needles and sincerely hate the other. I'm in the DPN crowd.) Right now I'm searching for the perfect circular needle, the one that will let me use this technique without getting tangled up in curly cables. No luck so far. I have the whole Knit Picks set of circulars. I spent some money getting one Hiya Hiya circular to try out, thinking that a knitting friend had told me they were tangle-free. (I was remembering wrong.) So now I've ordered one Kollage Square circular needle. We'll see if that smooth, soft cable will do the trick, or if I have to go with socks on two circulars forever (not exactly a crisis, as far as I'm concerned, but it's the principle of the thing).

We'll be continuing our Downton Abbey marathon tonight. We started watching it last night, through Netflix, and kept going for four episodes. I had heard it was good, but really didn't realize how fast we'd get hooked! Does anyone know if the second series/season is available anywhere? (I think I'm going to react the same way I did after I discovered Dick Francis and read all his books, one right after another. When I finished them all, I thought, indignantly, "Well, what am I supposed to do now?")

Hope your Labor Day is going well, too.