Housewife Chronicles

Applesauce and Hand Knit Socks

This weekend was quite the busy weekend for all of us!  My house has smelled like Christmas since Friday and I love it! 

My husband and my Dad did a bunch of work on the house all day Saturday and Sunday.  I spent the day Saturday and most of Sunday peeling, cooking and canning apple butter, caramel apple jam and apple sauce. 

I ended up doubling the apple butter recipe and it took a lot longer than I thought it would!  I think part of my problem is that my crock-pot doesn't really cook that high on high.  I've  noticed before that foods tend to take a little longer to cook so it isn't that much of a surprise.  The recipe turned out FANTASTIC and I am really impressed with how easy and delicious it was!  (After the initial making of the apple sauce that is.  I like my apple sauce chunky, so making smooth apple sauce is kind of a pain.) 

Over the weekend I canned 19 1/2 pint jars of Caramel Apple Jam, 10 1/2 pint jars of apple butter and 7 pints of chunky apple sauce.  I probably have another 7 pints of sauce to make and can left.  

This cooler weather has me itching to make some hand-knit wool socks.  I took a sock making class once, but ended up not retaining much since it was the magic loop method and completely new to me.  This was also 5 years ago so I think I am going to pick out a beginner sock pattern from Ravelry and cast on this weekend!  I would really like to try some of the aloe infused sock yarn, but  not sure if the aloe is there to soothe your hands while you knit or there for your feet?  

We'll really see how far I get with that project! 

Apple Butter

Today I started the somewhat monumental project of making applesauce for apple butter. 

I hear you thinking, "How hard is it to make applesauce?"  and I reply with "You have NO idea!"  I need to keep my 2 year old daughter occupied and away from the stove, so that always adds to the excitement.  Thankfully this was a pretty hands-off way to make sauce. 

I cored and quartered (do not peel!) 16 medium to large apples and added them to a stock pot with an inch of apple cider in the bottom.  The cider was made at the same apple farm that I got the apples from so I thought that was a nice touch.  I cooked the apples on medium low for about an hour; stirring often.  When the apples are fork tender, I removed the pot from the burner and let the apples cool for about 30 minutes. 

I then ran the entire lot through a food mill - if you can get a hand crank one, great, but I used one of the old fashioned hand ones that has the wooden pestle thing.  It was a bit tedious, but better than buying a hand crank one.

I did this entire process twice and have my applesauce waiting in my crock pot to be made into butter.  I didn't add any spices or sugar since they will all be going in later on.  I am going to be using this recipefor the apple butter and then can it all - I can't wait! 

Meal Planning

I don't do a lot of meal planning and I know I should.  It is something I did in the past, and just got out of the habit - I usually just don't have things together when I go shopping, so I tend to just do a little shopping here and then a little there - just to get out of the house.  Now that the days have been so gray and rainy, I'm less prone to want to venture outside and then am stuck to find something to throw together for dinner! 

So now I'm going to go shopping on the day that my husband gets paid - on the 15th and 30th of the month.  I do not care to go shopping on the 15th of November since it is a Sunday (Oy too many shoppers) so I will probably do it on the 16th and join all the little old ladies going shopping Monday morning.  :-)  Which usually works out really well until Katie decides to belt out an ear piercing screech an then I get dirty looks from them.  Oops!  

I'm also going to start to try to make our meals budget meals except for one splurge a week - probably our Saturday or Sunday meal.  I'd also like to make as few prepackaged meals as I can - I rely on too much hamburger helper and grilled cheese.  There is nothing wrong with grilled cheese on busy nights like Tuesdays and Wednesdays for us when we don't roll in the door until 7:30 pm, but the rest of the week we need better meals.  

We'll see how things go on Friday!  What are you making for dinner?

Always Read The Package

I had bought some ground beef at Woodman's grocery store recently and thought I had gotten a really great deal - 3 lbs for $4!  Wow!  It was one of those big tubes of meat with a picture of ground beef printed on it.  I threw it in the freezer and pulled it out yesterday to thaw so I could make Bierocks this morning. 

When I opened the package, the meat looked funny so turned it over to read the ingredients and the first item listed was beef hearts and second was texturized soy protien!  I had bought "Beef Pattie Mix" which just the thougth of hearts made me kind of urpy. 

I won't eat organ meat - yeah I know, what would Anthony Bourdain say?  I think Tony would turn his nose up at this too. 

Well, now I know!

Anniversary Fun

This June 13th my husband and I will be celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary.  We usually don't do anything like going out for dinner or a weekend away - this time of year has been historically rough financially for us.  The past two years have also been difficult with Katie being so little and in all honesty - kids are so uncivilized.   She stayed overnight for the first time last month, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to have a really nice kid free dinner. 

But this year things are a bit different.  I made reservations at The 5 O'clock Club in Milwaukee.  (Apparently now it's called 5 O'clock Steakhouse.  Whatever.)  S and I had one of our first dates here almost 15 years ago, and we've always remembered it extremely fondly.  Their steaks are so good, they wrecked me for steaks for the rest of my life - nothing is as good as theirs! 

I made online reservations a couple of days ago - I was going to surprise Steve and not tell him about it until that day, but my surprise was foiled!  They called to confirm my reservation, and the Caller ID popped up on the TV screen and S was all "Oh!  5 O'clock club!  What are they calling for?!" in a happy excited puppy sort of way.   The jig was up, and I told him about my plans - he is very happy about them and I hope he can turn around and maybe surprise me with flowers or something.  [hint-hint]

Capri Sun Fail

CityMama asked recently in one of her blog posts "What was the worst lunch your mom ever packed for you?"  and I had to share my comment.  It was just too good  not to be a blog post, and it also made me feel really old when I realized that I was the same age that this happened that my son is right now.  MAN. 

I really don't remember many lunches - they were just there and must have been mediocre unless I would have remembered more. Although I do remember when Capri Sun came out (1981?) I would have been 8. I begged my Mom for WEEKS for them. Serrious lobbying for them.

Anyhow, she finally (and secretly to me) bought a pack and sent me off the school with one snug in my lunch box. Imagine my surprise and ecstasy when opening my lunch that day. No one in my class had one in their lunch yet. I was the cool kid! I think I may have gotten a twinkie in my lunch too - score!

Well, she "forgot" to put in my lunch the little hard, pointed straw that comes with each pouch. She added a regular bendy straw which of course did not puncture the heavy duty plastic front of that juice pouch. Years later she admitted that she thought the straw was too hard and pointy for an 8 year old and threw them away. d'oh!   My Mom was and still is over-protective and anxious about everything - you can imagine the fun that was curtailed over the years.  Thankfully my Dad is not the same way and let us run wild often enough.

Anyhow, every lunch lady and teacher tried to open the pouch with a can opener (the beer top kind) with other straws, with forks, with dullish knives and the damn thing would NOT open. I think I cried when one lunch lady went and snipped a corner off the pouch and poured the juice in a cup. Major fail!

At that point I was pretty embarrassed over the whole thing and sniffling into my sandwich. I also had to quickly eat my lunch and then drink my cup of juice down fast since lunch time was just about over. Some adult involved felt bad enough over it that they called my Mom and let her know what had happened. 

So as a child of a clinically anxious (anxiety disorder paired with panic attacks)  and over-protective parent, colassial fails seems to lurk around every corner for us.  Which now is kind of funny in a sad sort of way.

Go to SLEEP!

Last night was one of the most rough sleep nights that I've had in a long long time.

For starters, Stinky was up and wake and having a ball in her bed until 10:20 pm!  She went down at 8:40 pm, a little later than her normal 8:30 pm bed time, but was tired, but man, she had the staying power last night. 

She was having so much fun the laughter and shrieks coming from her room were loud people.  "One, two three go!  SQUEAL!"

So she finally fell asleep, but that at that point I was all involved with a movie on HBO so I finally crawled in bed at 11:00.  Then I tossed and turned until 1:00am.  Then Stinky got up again, crying, and then talking to her stuffed animals until almost 2:15.  (She was in bed the entire time.)

I finally fell asleep after 2 am, only to have the alarm go off at 4:30am for Steve.  He wouldn't get up, so I had to play snooze tag to get him out of the bed.  I finally fell back asleep at 5 am and slept until 6;45 am when the alarm went off for me to get Jamie up.

I heard Stinky getting restless at 6:45 and call out, but she is still asleep.  Yesterday morning, she slept until 8:45 am, because she had almost 2 hours of up in the middle of the night shenanigans in her room again.

Dude - almost 4 1/2 hours of sleep is just not enough!  I am dragging today - I even made an 8 cup pot of coffee instead of regular 6 cup.  Hopefully she will take a nice long nap this afternoon so I can lay down too, but things never work out that way, do they.

Winter Break: Ended

Today J goes back to school for the first time in 19 days.

Yes, you heard correctly, 19 days.  Some time around the middle of the month of December, Stinky also started to sleep longer than 5 am and has been getting up closer to 8 or 8:30 am.  Trade off, is that she takes a shorter afternoon nap, but heck, I'll take sleeping in for $300 Alex!

Winter Break was so much longer this year due to the holidays - and a snow day.  We got over 12 inches of snow on the last day of school before break.  I also think that the kids probably could have gone to school on the 22nd and 23rd, but then who the heck cares, right?  Our kids stay in school longer - they don't get out until June 15, what does two days matter?  (snort)

This morning was extremely hard to get up at 7 am, especially with Katie sleeping in still.  I was smart, however.  I pre-filled my coffee pot last night and set the timer so when I got up it was all ready to go.  Go me!  J's bus comes at 8:05 so I wasn't able to let him sleep in a little bit - we have so little time on our hands anyhow.  He is definitely crabby this morning and doing everything he can to piss me off - including trying to wake up Stinky. 

Side note:  We had a good Christmas, although hubby and I both got some sort of ick flu and immediately after, I got a cold, so it's been a rather snotty and poopy holiday, but at least we were at home to convalesce. I started to get sick on Christmas Day and didn't feel even half way human until New Years eve.  Yuck.  At leat the baby didn't get the sick.

My Aunt also managed to snap two photos of the kids together where Katie is not screaming her fool head off.  I took the kids to Sears and Pennys to have their portraits taken and then always ended in hysterical sobbing on Stinky's part, or extreeme pisssyness complete with screaming jumping crying tantrums when I tried to take the photos at home.  I was so happy with having at least two photos that don't show the back of my child's throat as she howls in anger, so generations to come won't think that she screamed all the live long day.

Katie was also obsessed with on ornament in particular on my Aunt's tree - it was a wooden cruise ship.  She was "Wowwowowowow!" ing at it all night long.

Cold...

it is -5 degrees out right now.

We are not leaving the house to say the least!  We've already decided that church is a no-go since parking is a mess by our church and I can never find decent close parking.  In all honesty, when it is less than 5 degrees, I really don't like taking the kids outside. 

I am going to make cut-out Christmas Cookies with the kids today and maybe fairy food.  We'll see how ambitious I really get. 

I do have a nice venison roast that I had told Steve I would make today, so I will need to run across the street to the grocery store for some taters and carrots later on.  I made some venison stroghanoff on Friday night, which turned out rather well and my two men ate with gusto.  I was very pleased.

Did I mention that Steve bought me a doe from a co-worker of his?  We've been going through some very lean times around here, and I had remarked that it was too bad that he didn't go deer hunting.  A month goes by, and he comes home from work three weeks ago with a huge box of venison. I was thrilled to say the least!  His co-worker already had his freezer full of venison, and shot all of his tags, so he was more than happy to share with us!

Huh?

Katie was up from 3:30 am until 4:45 am.  Thankfully, she was quietly talking to her self and playing in her crib - no screaming.  I may have screamed into my pillow after she started scraping her foot repeatedly against the wall for what seemed like hours, but was probably only 15 minutes.  (She had the fleece footie pajamas on and they  make this scritch scritch scritch noise against the wall which may be the whole point of the exercise for her.

Obviously, I am very tired this morning.  I went to bed closer to midnight, and am just beat.  I went to make coffee, and I used not my normal 6 cups of water, but 8 and forgot to up the coffee amount. 

So now I'm drinking very watered, tasteless coffee.

Grrrrr.....