You Know...

I grew up in the Mid-West.  Ohio, Illinois, and Oklahoma.  We had Snow - with a capital "S" when I was growing up.  I remember snow that came up above the roof of our one story house in Ohio.  I remember when we lost power - but it really didn't matter that much because the snow came well up past the halfway point on our house - and insulated the house from the worst of the cold.  I remember being able to open my window and grab a handful of snow to throw a quick snowball at my sister - inside of the house.

Snow and winter in the mid-west is different than snow in the Mid-Atlantic.

In the Mid-Atlantic, we typically get snow once or twice a year.  We'll have flurries on other days, but everything comes to a screeching halt when snow is in the forecast.  I usually laugh and carry on, and I enjoy the weather.

I revel in snow days.  It's a chance to enjoy the snow, and a great opportunity to spend time together as a family.  We bake, we play games, we go sledding.  In general, we have a ball.

A couple of years ago, we had Snowmaggedon - a series of winter storms that dumped a bunch of snow on us.  We missed well over a week of school, and had a ball hanging out together, watching old movies, and reading.  It was great!

And now, the weather forecast for the next few days is coming out...

 

image: http://www.footsforecast.org/



Wow.

I'm quoting directly from Foot's Forecast here:
 LEFT: Latest precipitation projections show 1.0-2.5 inches of liquid stretch from Louisiana to Maine for the period Tue 2/11 to Sun 2/16, suggesting a possible subtropical moisture feed (known as an "atmospheric river") may be a factor this storm's outcome.

Preliminary reports are coming in with the words "significant impact".

This is going to be awesome!

Bring it on!

My Accomplishments

This past week was very productive! 

Because of the snow and ice, I had no jobs outside of the house, but I got a lot done inside!

1) I stewed up a bunch of pumpkin and froze it in portions for pumpkin bread and pumpkin muffins.
I don't can pumpkin- the FDA advises against this, as it can harbor bad bacteria even after it's been processed. 

2) Celery was on sale at the grocery store.  I bought a lot of it, cut it down, and flash froze it on cookie sheets.  Another staple, frozen and ready to use later.

3) I finished the shawl I've been working on and mailed it out.

4) We didn't get the branches in the back yard cut up.  Instead, we helped cut down branches that had fallen off of several of the trees at the church.  We split the wood with the other family that showed up to clean up the deadfall Saturday morning.

5) We had no meals out this past week.  Every meal was cooked from scratch.  Chili, vegetable soup, veggie stir fry, and baked potatoes were among the items on our menu.  I made a couple of batches of gluten free muffins, and gluten free waffles.

6) I attempted to make a loaf of gluten free bread from scratch this week.  It's still not the final product I want, but it was more edible.  I've finally figured out how to make decent gluten free muffins, pizza crust, and waffles.  I still need to figure out the magic behind the bread.  I'll be doing a little more trial and error!

7) Even though it was cold and frozen outside, I used the indoor clothesline to line dry our clothes.  Not only did they not use any electricity to dry, the extra humidity from the drying clothes made the house a little more comfortable.

8) I renewed my teaching certificate.  Not only does it keep my options open should I ever need a teaching job, it translates into $25 extra for every day I work.  Pretty nice payback for keeping my certification current!

9) I've managed to get some form of exercise every day this week.  Important for my health, difficult to do in this weather.

10) I got my blood work done. Good to know that my numbers are right where they should be, better to know my doctor has baseline data on where my numbers are now.

What did you accomplish this week?

Stewing Pumpkins

Because of the weather, I've been at home more than usual this week.

I had a few pumpkins stored away that I needed to deal with. 

There are two kinds of pumpkins.  There are the big Jack O Lantern pumpkins that we see in October, gracing the front porches of homes and businesses everywhere.

Then, there are the smaller pie pumpkins.  These little gems are smaller.  I grow these in my yard, but I've picked them up at farm stands for a dollar or less.

These pumpkins are virtual powerhouses as far as stretching food goes.

Not only can the seeds be roasted and eaten, but the pumpkin itself is full of nutrient rich goodness that will keep you healthy and can be used in foods ranging from bread to soup!

Traditionally, I've cut up my pumpkins and roasted them in the oven.

This week, I decided to toss them in my crock pot to see if the job could be done more efficiently.

First, I washed the outside of the pumpkins well.  They've been sitting in storage for months now, and they are dusty.

Next, I cut them down into smaller pieces.  I saved the seeds in a colander so that I could clean them out and roast them later.

Pumpkin cut in half.
The seeds and pulp will get scooped out first.

Scooped and cut into smaller pieces.
This is about the size of pumpkin I used.
If I'd needed more space in my crock pot, I would have cut these pieces in half.

Finally, I put the pieces, rind side up into the slow cooker.  I covered the bottom of the pot with an inch or so of water, put the pot on low, and checked it every once in a while to see when they were finished, as well as to make certain that we didn't run out of water and burn a pot of pumpkin!

In the slow cooker.
The pumpkin rinds are facing up,
so the heart of the pumpkin will get steamed with the water.

4 hours later, I ended up with a wonderful pot of stewed pumpkin.

I pulled the pumpkin away from the rind, mashed the pumpkin with the potato masher, and threw the rinds onto the compost pile.

I used a cookie sheet for the mashed pumpkin.  Using an ice cream scoop, I put a large scoops of pumpkin on the cookie sheet.  I froze the pumpkin on the cookie sheet in the freezer.  Once it was completely frozen, I popped the scoops off of the cookie sheet and into a freezer bag.  I have a half cup of pumpkin in each scoop.  Most of my bread and muffin recipes call for 1 cup of pumpkin.  When I need it, I can pull out two scoops of pumpkin, give them a quick shot of heat in the microwave to defrost them, and then add them to my recipe. 

I used a potato masher for this because I enjoy doing things the old fashioned way.  I've also used a food mill and a blender to process my pumpkin.  You could also use a fork.  The pumpkin is very soft at this point - like a very ripe banana.  It's easy to mash!  You gotta work with the tools you have on hand!  Don't go out and buy something to process pumpkin - that kind of defeats the whole purpose of cooking from scratch to save money!

I smell pumpkin bread in my future!

In the Aftermath of an Ice Storm

The East Coast was hit with a massive snow and ice storm yesterday.  Here in our neck of the woods, we saw ice.  Lots of ice.  Preliminary estimates are coming in at 0.5 inches.  Half an inch of ice doesn't seem like enough, but it's enough to bring trees down - on power lines, houses, and cars.

 

Our neighborhood was fortunate.  We live in an old subdivision.  (As in 50 years old.)  The neighborhoods around us have been in place for 20 years or less.  I believe we are on a different circuit than the new neighborhoods, as we usually have power even when they lose power.  Even though our lights blinked on and off yesterday, we never once lost power.  There are some advantages to living in an older neighborhood!

 

The big disadvantage to living in an old neighborhood?  Our trees are big. They are very big.  They are old.  And they fell.  Yesterday morning, I awoke to the huge flash of light that was a transformer exploding somewhere.  (5:30 am)  Not sure how long our power was going to last, I hopped into the shower and then moved to an area of the house that would not be impacted should a tree fall down.

 

I went outside around 7 to take a look at the damage, and I could hear the sounds of tree branches cracking, breaking, and ripping followed by a loud "thud" as the branch hit the ground.  I watched as the neighbor down the street from us lost all of the trees in his yard in a 3 minute period.  Rip, crash, smash, branch after branch came down, and then the trees themselves split down the middle to the ground.

 

We could still get in and out of our neighborhood to the main road yesterday, but most of the streets to the neighborhoods were blocked with downed trees.  As soon as the ice stopped falling, people were out in our neighborhood with chain saws.  Since most of us use wood stoves to heat their houses, the wood was quickly cut down and added to woodpiles for next season.

 

Unfortunately, the damage north of us was significant.  Daughter and I drove up there this morning and had our breath taken away by the damage.  An entire Christmas Tree farm was wiped out.  The trees were destroyed by the ice.  A big wooded area close to the road had lost most of the old growth trees.  Live power lines were still down, and road crews and police officers were manning the ends of the roads, keeping people from venturing down the road.  Power is still out in large chunks of the county, and most of our schools are without power.  Those schools that have power are being used as shelters.  SO, we had no school today, I'm not sure if we will have school tomorrow or not.  The kids have been to school one day this week - Tuesday - and they went in as a 2 hour delay.

 

I've heard that those who are without power up North of us have moved food outdoors - to the north side of their house and buried it in the snow.  Some have put their milk and orange juice into their snowy bushes on the North Side of the house to keep it cool. 

 

Remember I had said yesterday that I had filled my freezer with water containers filled with water?  The purpose was to keep the freezer as cold as possible so that I wouldn't face this situation.  We also have a generator that we can run every so often in order to keep a freezer full of frozen food cold.  I think I would be worried about critters breaking into my food supply outdoors, buried in the snow.  I'd have my food in a cooler, filled with snow if it were me.  With all of the snow and ice, the critters are starved, and just a tarp or the packaging is not going to stop a hungry animal from digging into my food. 

 

One last thought about ice storms.  We do have a grill and a propane stove.  We have a sheltered area outdoors where we cook.  It has a little roof so that we can use it in inclement weather.  We've used it before when the power has been out.  We went to the trouble to make it sheltered and with a roof so that we could cook outdoors.  Cooking indoors on a propane stove is bad.  When you cook with propane, (or kerosene), you build up carbon monoxide in your house  Carbon Monoxide kills.  If you are without power, and need to cook, DO IT OUTSIDE. 

 

Be safe!

 

A few pictures from our ice storm:

 

This tree is old.  I'm not sure how old, but we're estimating close to 100.
It's been here since this neighborhood was farmland.
This tree was one of those trees that the farmer plowed around.
I took this picture at daybreak on Weds, a couple of hours after the storm had started.
You can already see the branches starting to pile up under the tree.

Icicles on the clothesline.

The berry bush in front of my house.

This is my tree this morning.  Take a look back at yesterday's picture and today's picture.
There's a lot less of the tree up in the air.
Look at those branches on the ground around the tree.

Branches on the ground.
You can't see it, but there are still several more, dangling overhead that have not yet dropped.

This was a big branch.
I'm 5'5" tall, and this branch is a good 6 or more inches higher than I am.
 

That birdhouse was up on a post under the tree branch on Tuesday.
Compare my hand to the size of the branch.
That was a big branch.
When we cut the branch down this weekend, I want to count the rings and see how old that branch was,
so I can get a better idea of how old the tree is.

A better view of the branch, looking up towards the end from where I was standing by the split.

Preparing for an Ice Storm

It's 6:10 am here, and we have had ice falling all night long.

I hate ice.  It's dangerous.

Yesterday, I dropped daughter off at school and then ran a couple of errands.  I ran to the grocery store and picked up some extra non-perishable canned foods and a few more bottles of water in case if we ran out of power.

I filled the car with gas.

When I returned home, we had a half cord of wood sitting in the driveway.  We spent last night moving the wood up under the carport.  If our power goes out, at least we'll have a way of keeping the house warm!  Even better, the wood is up under the carport, so it is dry.

All of our electronics have been charged and are still charging.  Cell phones, laptops, Kindles, Nooks, everything has been and is being charged.

For dinner last night, I made two huge pots of chili.  If the power goes out, we will have some cooked chili that we can heat up on the woodstove for dinner.

I have the rechargeable, hand cranked lantern ready to go.  Once the sun comes up, we'll have some kind of light.  I'd rather not pull the candles or the lantern out until tonight, if the power is out.

Even as I write this, our power keeps blanking in and out.  I have heard the explosions as transformers in the area are exploding.  I am curious how long we are going to keep power, and if it does go out, how long we stay out.

Oh- one last thing I did last night... I filled a whole bunch of water bottles with water and stuck them in the big freezer.  All of the empty spaces are filled with water bottles.  So, if our power goes out and I keep from opening the freezer, the food in there should remain good for quite some time.

The ice chest in the kitchen is on standby, too, ready to accept the stuff from our fridge, if need be.

I forgot to mention - our gas cans are filled, and we have the generator on stand by, under the carport, chained up to the bolts we installed just for the generator.

I just heard a major tree fall in our front yard.  I believe it may have taken out my Civic.

I am going to sign off now.  If  you are on the East Coast in this ice storm, stay safe. 

New Glasses

It's been five years.  The dreaded "you're getting old" note from the MVA is coming, letting me know that I have to have a note from my eye doctor stating that I've had my eyes checked in the last year before I'm allowed to renew my license.  Seeing as that note will be coming in July, I decided to be a little proactive, and get this taken care of early in the year so that renewal will be easy come July.

 

Of course, I need new glasses.  Even worse, I need bifocals.  I went ahead and got progressive lenses so that it won't be quite as obvious that I'm wearing bifocals.  (Although, the attempts to line up my glasses with the music in the choir loft on Sunday morning should have made that fact clear to anyone who was awake enough to pay attention.)

 

I'd never really been a fan of my old glasses.  They are round frames.  I have a round face.  It just seemed like too much "round" all in one small space!

These are my old glasses.  Honestly, for a pair of glasses that are 5 years old, they don't look bad, do they?

But look at the sides.  You can see the wear on the ear pieces.  The paint has peeled off of the metal.

Finding the glasses was a little harder than I expected.  Most frames are now those "hipster" plastic frames.  Yeah, no thanks.  I wore those plastic frames back in the 70's and the 80's.  I really don't care to go back to them.  Nothing is worse than plastic frames on a day when the humidity is running close to 100%, unless if it's the constant feeling that your glasses are sliding down your nose, and no matter how many times you push them up, they're going to keep falling down! 

Sadly, it's harder than you'd think to find a nice looking pair of metal frames right now as most of the frames are plastic.  Fortunately, we were able to find something I liked fairly quick.

These are them.  Pretty, aren't they?  They are Vera Bradley glasses.  (not a plug - it's what I could find!)
You can't even tell that they're progressive lenses!



Look!  The paint is intact!
I wish you could see the beautiful pattern on the outside of the frames.  It's a golden brown, dark golden brown pattern.
Simple and understated.
No matter how many times I tried, I just couldn't get the pattern to show in the picture!

The new frames!
There's a little bit of bling, just past the metal "y" on the frames.
 

The first couple of days with the progressive lenses was difficult.  My optometrist had warned me that I would have problems since there was such a difference between the previous prescription and the current prescription.  I did have a couple of days of headaches.

I'm still having trouble adjusting to the fact that I don't have to pull my glasses halfway down my nose and look over the top rim to read something.  Sunday morning was a hoot --- trying to line up the "reading" area of the lenses and see the choir director at the same time.  If he hadn't kept moving around so much, I might have had an easier time of things!

I was warned again and again to be careful going up and down stairs... that distances are deceptive with Progressive lenses, and I would trip and fall unless if I really made a point of putting my head down and looking at the stairs through the top part of my glasses. 

I learned that lesson quickly when I was walking out of the optometrist's office and out to the car.  I went to step down off of the curb to get out to the car and promptly fell off of the curb as I underestimated the distance from the curb to the pavement.  Lesson learned.  Besides the injury to my dignity, I was fine.

However, I do think my dignity has been permanently damaged.  Between falling in the parking lot at Wal-Mart on Thursday on a patch of ice, and then falling again with new glasses on Friday, I'm thinking the dignity might not ever recover.  Good thing I was wearing jeans and not a dress!

The biggest problem with the new glasses?  I can see all of the little bits of dirt and other stuff that I was missing before.  I've spent more time cleaning over the last few days.

Having said that, I'm off to go wash that pile of dirty dishes in the kitchen sink!

Enjoy your day!

My Accomplishments

It's been a couple of weeks!  We still had month left at the end of the money, so we were extremely creative.

We were able to put gas in both cars to get husband to work every day.  If I didn't have a sub job, I stayed home and worked on stuff around the house.

We've had some interesting dinners in the meantime:
Fajitas in Rice Wrappers
Baked Beans
Refried baked beans made into flour tortillas.  (I made the tortillas from scratch)
Veggie Soup
Pasta Fagioli
Arroz con Pollo
Veggie Stir Fry
Baked Potatoes with Broccoli and Cheddar Cheese
Roasted Potatoes
Waffles
Scrambled Eggs

Hubby got paid on Friday, the first things we did was go out and buy groceries.  We focused on the staples: sugar and flour, olive oil, lots and lots of root veggies: carrots, turnips, sweet potatoes, etc.  We also bought some meat, and it is safely tucked in the freezer, waiting to be used.

Last weekend, another one of my girls pulled off her Gold Award Project.  I spent the day with her, yet again amazed at the initiative, innovation, and enthusiasm of this young lady.  He project ran most of the day.  It was awesome.

I subbed for three days, and took oatmeal for lunch each day.  A very inexpensive meal, it has "staying" power, and keeps you filled up for hours.

Yesterday, I stopped by the grocery store and checked out the "seconds" of fruits and veggies.  I found six pounds of brown bananas for $1.  We are putting the brown ones into smoothies first.  The bananas are pretty heavily spotted, so we'll use the most heavily spotted ones first.  If they start to turn brown really fast, then I'll peel whatever is left, slice them and freeze them for smoothies.

We had a load of firewood delivered yesterday.  We got most of the wood stacked up under shelter, which is a good thing, considering that it is snowing again today.  We've got a warm and toasty fire going in the woodstove.  Hopefully, this will help keep the electric bills for heating down.

On Friday, I took the checkbook down to the college.  I bought textbooks for the oldest child.  Four hundred dollars, 3 textbooks.  Two of the three were used textbooks.  Two of them will be used next semester, so he won't have to pay for them next semester.  (But, there will still be more textbooks next semester.)  Still an outrageous sum, but I'm glad we paid cash.  We don't have to worry about paying for it when the credit card bills come in. 

We had a date at the dump on Saturday.  Since everything today is shut down because of the snow, we're going to spend the afternoon cleaning out some more of the basement.

Right now, daughter and I are watching Sherlock on PBS.  We're having a hard time getting moving this morning!

Have a wonderful week!