Texas Trip

Howdy ya'll! Yesterday we returned from our 7 day vacation in San Antonio, Texas. We had the pleasure of staying with our good friends, the Millers, and were able to visit with more good friends, the Hoerschgens & the Dantes. We also were able to do a little sight-seeing, as you can see from this picture of us at the Alamo. Specifically, we saw the Alamo, River Walk, La Villita, San Fernando Cathedral, Mission San Jose, Mission Concepcion, Natural Bridge Caverns, & LBJ State Park. Thanks so much to Amy who carted us around and played tour-guide for us. The kids did well with all the walking and such and did rather well on the flights to & from, too. We all had a great time enjoying a brief respite from the cold of Ohio, some great company with good friends, and checking out so many cool attractions. A big thanks to the Millers for putting us up (and putting up with us) while we were there, and thanks to all of our friends who had us over for meals & such...the best part of our trip was the time we spent catching up with all of you. Also, thanks to the Stemburskis who watched the farm and kept the chickens fed & watered & such while we were gone...we really appreciate all you did for us while we were gone.

Finally...some Winter

After nearly a month of odd spring-like weather, we finally have been feeling some good winter setting in. The temps started falling last week consistently and we awoke Sunday morning to a snow shower that was still in full-swing. It didn't let up, really, until nearly noon. The roads were a total mess by us, so we weren't able to make it to church, but we were able to get Paul outside for a bit to enjoy it. He was real excited to get out in the snow to play, and he and Sarah were out in it a good 30-45 minutes before they finally came in to warm up a little. And yesterday they went out again for a while and made a couple of snow toddlers. It looks like the cold weather's supposed to hang on for at least a few more days, too, and they're calling for a little more snow overnight tonight. Yeah!

Pictures du jour

The kids looked nice this morning, and I was moved to take some photos of them. I took about 19 shots, and this was the best I got. (You'll notice that NONE of them have Paul AND Julia looking good in the same shot. Oh well.) Hope you enjoy.

Updates from the kitchen

It was recently brought to my attention that I have not been serving Christian vegetables at my home. My apologies to anybody who may have dined here and was offended by my heathen vegetables.
"What are Christian vegetables?" you might ask.
.
.
.
You boil the hell out of them.


And I have also, evidently been using pagan rice.
We were making a Texas hash recipe in the crock pot. We have a nice little cookbook that came with the crock pot, which called for, "1 cup of raw rice (converted)" My rice must not have been converted, because halfway through the cooking process it was still pretty crunchy. So we proselytized it (added water).

(I really don't know what the cookbook meant, so any insight would be appreciated.)


I also got around to cleaning my refrigerators this week. Scary, scary, bad, scary, bad. I found it useful to pull out all the shelves and drawers and wash them in the sink. I took a washcloth to do a first wipe of the door and bottom of the fridge. Then I took a little break so that I could burn my first wipe wash cloth and place a call to SETI to let them know that they might have more luck if they directed their antennae at my kitchen. Next I used a second wash cloth and that lovely little plastic scraper that I got with my Pampered Chef baking stone to finish cleaning the fridge.
Later mom called and I told her what I'd been up to, saying, "I think that the kitchen fridge was one of the things we didn't clean out this summer."
Mom: "Yes we did. Remember, I cleaned it when I was down to help with Julia."
Sarah: "But you didn't get that bottom shelf out did you?"
Mom: "Oh yes. I cleaned it all."
Sarah: "You mean it got THAT disgusting in 6 months!?! Eeeeuuuuuh! Bad, bad, scary, bad, scary."

Cooking with Eggs

I made a cheese souffle for dinner last week. I was pleasantly surprised that it turned out pretty well. When I tried sprinkling in the red pepper to get a "dash," the bottle hiccuped and I got more of a "pinch." But Steve and I like strong flavors, so it was right up our alley.

I've heard that souffles (or "freedom eggs" depending on your political bent) are tricky to make, but the recipe was actually pretty simple. You make a basic white sauce at one point, and I've discovered that it is much quicker and simpler to make white sauce if you first microwave the milk to preheat it. I guess the tricky part is that it is pretty easy for the souffle to fall rather than fluff up in the oven. I'm not sure how to control that.

Our souffle did fall pretty soon after it was baked. I called everybody to the table for dinner and Steve asked, as he sometimes does, if he could go close up the chickens for the night before we ate. My answer was something like, "NOOO! YOU MUST COME AND ENJOY THE WONDERFUL FLUFFINESS OF THE EGGS NOW BEFORE THEY SINK." And while we ate, they did slowly sink, and by the end of the meal my souffle was more of a soufflat. But it was quite tasty. And I figured that by the next day I could use any leftovers for crepes.

Chili Beer, etc.

As you may recall from earlier posts, I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking about beer lately. And in several of the books and websites I've been reading, the concept of chili beer keeps popping up. The basic idea is beer (with me so far?)... with chili pepper. Well, also being a lover of spicy things, I've been intrigued by this idea, though I've never noticed any chili brews in a store that I could try. As luck would have it (or divine providence, depending on your theology), a good friend of mine, for Christmas, got me an assorted random beer six-pack that contained a bottle of Chili Beer from Cave Creek Brewery. I finally had an opportunity to sit down and further investigate this chili beer phenomenon this past weekend. Cave Creek delivers their beer in clear bottles, so in color and presentation it looks very much like a Corona. Only, instead of the standard lime additive for a Corono, the chili beer has a jalapeno pepper floating in the bottle. The best metaphor I can use to describe the flavor of this unusual beer is, its like drinking pepper-jack cheese. And its got a good edge on it, too. Like most things hot, the first couple sips reveal a twinge of heat. But by the time your half-way through the bottle your mouth's pretty well on fire. Now, my only mistake with this beer was that I drank it after lunch. Because of the heat and flavor of this beer, it would be a great beverage to enjoy while popping some nachos or munching a big burrito. To drink it by itself without any food quickly became an exercise in sweat and oral fire management. But if you like things with a good edge to 'em and are able to find some, I would definitely recommend this beer. If nothing else, its a good conversation starter and the pepper in the bottom could easily become the source of some good party fun.

In other beer news, my oatmeal stout homebrew was bottled on Saturday (Thanks David!). Initial tastings revealed none of the off-flavors of previous batches, leaving only dark, coffee-chocolaty yumminess (with a 6.5-7% ABV ;-). I'm definitely looking forward to enjoying this one more in a few weeks when its adequately carbonated.

Kiddy Notes

Here are some recent observations on the kids.

Paul has started referring to himself as Paul Jofus. Also Mary and Jofus figure prominently in the nativity story.

Julia has been promoted to using the high chair with tray at mealtimes. Her chin barely clears the tray, so she leans forward and sucks on it, doing her best Kilroy impression.

The other evening Paul and I were playing in the yard, when I pointed the full moon low on the horizon. Paul starting running toward it calling, "Paul chase moon! Paul chase moon!" I answered, "That's fine dear, as long as you stop before you get to the road."

Julia was given baby food green beans last night and ate them as if they were good stuff. There hasn't been any diaper fallout from them yet...

Paul has been doing this for a while, but it's worth mentioning. At dinner he will ask for a condiment by name. (Although the name is typically 'Ranch' whether he actually means ketchup, mustard, or applesauce.) Then he will point to a specific place on his plate and say, "Right there. Right There!" And if the condiment doesn't land right there, he expresses his discontent. Last night he asked for Ranch, and as I got ready to give him some, I asked him where I should put it. (On the tortilla, on the tomatoes, on the plate?) He pointed to the plate at about 12 o'clock, "Right there. No!" Then he moved his tortilla and pointed to 7 o'clock, "Right there." Somewhere in his two-year-old mind, this made perfect sense.

I think Julia is getting closer to crawling. She's certainly more mobile in her crib when we're not looking. It used to be that when we went to get her, she would be in about the same place and position as when we put her down. Now she has frequently flipped from back to belly and has her feet in the far corner of the crib from where they started.

Paper Clutter

It pleased my sister to get me a book on organizing your house as a Christmas present this year. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that we've actually hired her in the past to help us reduce our quantity of stuff and organize what we have.

Our office had gotten pretty bad. Not only did we have stacks of papers flowing into stacks of papers, but Paul had also been helping us sort things. Our file cabinet was crammed to capacity. We knew that we owned a couple of calculators and a digital camera and that they were located somewhere in the strata above the desktop, but we would have been hard pressed to grab them quickly. I was afraid to touch the "bills to be paid" drawer." I certainly didn't keep the bills I was responsible for in there. Some of my portion of the stacks of papers had overflowed to my dresser and the floor in our bedroom. Yikes!

So yesterday morning, we handed the kids off to their grandparents and started digging into the mess. At first we stood in the office sort of slack jawed. We murmured, "Where do we even start?" I started sorting papers from the desktop and our bedroom, while Steve started sorting and thinning our files in the file cabinets.

Steve lined up a big box for Stuff-to-Shred, the trash can, and a big box for Stuff-to-Recycle. And we just ground away at it. For me it helps to sort papers into different categories first. It makes it much easier for me to see what to keep or not then. And perhaps even more importantly, we created places for some of the papers that had been drifting and homeless. Steve cleared a ton of stuff from our files and some desk drawers that had been miscellaneous catch-alls. One drawer had random documents from three years ago tucked in it. When he finished clearing it out he said, "Wow it's all empty. Now we can start tucking new junk in there that we don't want to see for another 3 years."

Other comments heard include:
"If you leave the papers on the desktop long enough, then you can skip filing them and just pitch them!"

"Where does this item get filed?" -------------"Ooh, I'm not sure if that got payed."

"Steve, I'm not sure where to put this document. Don't you DARE put that back on the desk!"

"Hey look! There's Julia's social security card" bad bad bad

"Where should we file our voter registration cards? It seems a little excessive to put them in our fire safe with Julia's social security card. I know! We can create a file for Documents That Are Important, But Not THAT Important."

"Can I get rid of your bank statements from '01?"

"Did you know we had a stapler on this desk?"

We were nearly done and I was getting tired and silly. I think I was asking Steve on a recommendation for how to store the side of beef pricing information I had collected last fall, and on having received a smart-alecky answer, my cheek started twitching. Steve was holding our daughter at that point and said, "Look Julia! If you watch very closely you can pinpoint the exact moment that Mommy's brain melts and starts to dribble out of her ears."

So I have a fairly substantial box of receipts and documents that need to be entered into our budget sofware, but most of the mess is cleared from the desktop. You can see wood grain. It's pretty. The picture above shows our 'get rid of it' boxes with Julia included for scale.