My Weblog

Oh no! Not yet!

It's only the second of July and some darn fool is setting off fireworks close by. I'd guess it's happening in the condo area behind my house. And, Ms. Alissa is mighty unhappy about it. She's as close to my chair as it's possible to be and she's shaking. I'm not thinking nice things about the next two days.......I wish people would give up doin' fireworks. 

And that was about 3 hours ago. Quiet ever since. Ms. Alissa is now a good 6 feet away. I guess it coulda been worse. I've had dogs that practically crawled up my nose when the fireworks started. I'm just grateful they let up quickly.

Nom, Nom, Nom

I mentioned in my last post that my canning session yielded one pint jar of pork that didn't seal. I put it into the fridge this morning. I took it back out this evening. I put just a bit of olive oil into a saucepan. Then I pulled the meat from the pint jar with a fork and began browning it in the oil. I added some garlic powder, some onion powder, some paprika and some red pepper flakes. I mixed the spices in and added the diced tomatoes I had left from the burritos i've been enjoying. I also added the broth the meat had generated in the canning process. I broke some angel hair into the pan with the other ingredients and let the pan simmer. Finally I added about 1/4 of a block of cream cheese and let it melt down. 

I wasn't sure how it would turn out but it was really delicious. I have at least another serving left. My taste buds want to take care of the leftovers now but my stomach couldn't possibly handle it. Lunch tomorrow, probably. 

It's hot as blazes

And it's gonna get hotter. I want to run away to the top of a mountain somewhere north of here before July and August get here. And, believe me, the rumors of blackouts coming don't make me feel any better. My plan is to get in the car and drive to the closest store that has power. Then I'll have to pray to find one of those scooters available so I can sit down. If that doesn't work I plan to refugee to a furniture store.

I unloaded my canner in the wee hours of the morning. Happy to have 6 pints of pinto beans and 1 pint of pork that are shelf stable. I also have one pint of pork in the fridge to be used soon in that it didn't seal. I'm not sure why it didn't seal, but it will be good eating anyway. I think maybe the meat rendered so many juices that the jar was over filled and some siphoned out, leaving a fatty deposit on the rim of the jar. 

For two weeks in a row, the local Kroger affiliate has advertised pork butt shoulder roasts on special. They run about 9 pounds. Both last week and this week, they've run out. Last week they substituted a better quality pork cut that only weighed 1.88 pounds. This week, they substituted something even smaller. Their reasoning seems to be I ordered 1 roast so they'll give me 1 something else in that they're out of the roasts. I am not a fan of that reasoning in that I'm hoping for enough meat to can and I don't want to can 1 jar at a time.

Oh, well, I still have meat to can in the freezer which is a priority with the prospect of blackouts hanging over our heads. I'm sure if I don't open the freezer door, the meat will last 2-3 days. At least I hope so. But I hate to risk it. I'm thinking that one week I'll have to get the absolute bare necessities at the grocery store so I can save a little $$ for more jars...........

And, now, for a little while, I'm going to head into the bedroom (on the east end of the house) and try to stay cooler 'til the sun makes it lower in the sky..........

Sometimes I surprise myself

I made myself some delicious dinner last night. It started with a search through the pantry. I found, oddly enough, a can of Rosarita "seasoned black beans". That's odd because I am not a fan of either beans or Mexican food, with a few exceptions. I dug around in the fridge and found some large flour tortillas, some sour cream, and some shredded Mexican blend cheese. I did not have fresh tomatoes or lettuce, but, at least, I had some canned diced tomatoes. I heated the beans and mashed them up somewhat with a potato masher. I put a good serving of those on the tortilla after I added a bit of garlic powder, and because I had no onions, a bit more of onion powder. I added a few pieces of the diced tomato, some cheese, and some sour cream. Then I ate it and I decided it was way better than the "passable" I expected. It was, in fact, delicious. It reminded me of a Burrito Supreme from Taco Bell. (That's one of the few "Mexican" things I like to eat though I am aware it may not resemble in any way a burrito a real Mexican would eat.) 

Anyway, as I figure it, it was not only good eats, but also a cheap dinner. I have a huge plastic bag of these large tortillas, purchased months ago. I'd bought the Mexican blend cheese so long ago I'm always surprised when I open it to get some out that I don't encounter mold. I got the can of diced tomatoes 2 case lot sales ago at my Kroger affiliate. The beans are a complete unknown to me. I have NO RECOLLECTION  of EVER buying those. I got the sour cream about a week ago, on sale. I checked and those beans are now $1.25 a can. I'm sure they must have been significantly cheap0er whenever I bought them. I'm guessing my dinner cost me well under $1.00. I was full when I had eaten and the burrito was high in protein (sourced in the beans and cheese), fiber (beans), carbs (tortilla, tomato bits, beans) and it even contained some fats (cheese and sour cream). And to sweeten the deal, I have enough of everything for at least another meal. Can't beat that! If I can have something that tastes that good so cheaply and with so little effort, you can bet I'll be doing this a lot more often. 

I am resurrecting some muscle. I am actually pretty surprised at that and pretty proud as well. I have continued almost daily to do the lower body exercises the physical therapist prescribed back when I fell. I've also begun some weight stuff for the upper body. After the accident, it was months until I actually got enough to eat. I never got breakfast. Lunch and dinner were teeny tiny and mostly finger foods--a little deli meat, maybe some cheese, some sliced fruit. That fit on one plate and was essentially all I had to eat. I could not get to the kitchen because of my leg injury and I couldn't have cooked anyway because of the huge cast on my right arm. I could not unscrew the lid on a jar of anything. So, I lost a lot of weight very quickly. I've been a mess of hanging skin ever since. However, whenever I stand up straight and put my knees together, there is a space between my legs up to 8 inches above the knees. I used to wonder how models made that happen--trick photography? And I have some pretty well defined musculature in my biceps, triceps, and shoulder muscles. I no longer have that flesh that dangles from the back of a grandma's arms. 

I am hoping these exercises will finally give me the confidence to take a bath. I have always hated showers and that has not improved, even if that is the only way I can get clean now. I am pretty well convinced that I would be able to get out of the bathtub now, if I could convince myself I'd be able to get out and get past the idea of being marooned there for hours--days. 

Anyway that's what's going on here. I hope to can some pork today or tomorrow (depends on when I get the meat chunked up).

 

My Daily Adventure.............

It happens every morning when I wake up. I can pretty well bet I'm going to hurt every day. The question is which part of me will be the culprit. Early in the week, the culprit was my back. All i had to do was try to sit up in bed and I knew.......Big time pain below the waist on the right side. I tried to work through it but finally gave in.  Took muscle relaxers and ibuprofen and laid down. It was better when I got back up about 6 hours later. But, it didn't take long for the pain to come back. So, back to bed I went. And so the whole day went.

Two days ago, it was my right knee. It not only hurt--I was also unsure it was going to support me. It felt like it might buckle under me at any time. It was bad enough I was ready to go for the cane I have since I got hurt about a year and a half ago. Then my right calf decided to join in the fun. It felt as though it was pulled tight and it hurt. When I woke up the next day, I was a bit more confident with the knee but the calf muscle was worse. Today that is pretty much better, but I have pain in the Achilles area when I walk. Both sides............ I figure, since we're running out of territory down low, next will be my neck.........

Canning is hard work..........

I finally got a load of sweet potatoes canned. 

So I HAD 12 jars of sweet potatoes on the counter in the kitchen. I managed to get them out of the pot around midnight or a little later. I'm thrilled to be able to put those on my shelves. If I want to eat a jar a week, I only need 40 more, LOL. I don't know that I have 40 more jars in me........I know I'd have a hard time coming up with 40 empty jars, just for starters. It's quite a process, getting those beauties in the jars. 

I reviewed the written instructions from the USDA. Then I watched a bunch of videos from canners I respect. The first question I ran across was on par-boiling. Some folks do, some don't. I decided for the sake of my wrist, I'd par-boil. It is supposed to make 'em peel like magic. The trick, though, is that you don't want to COOK them. If you do, you'll be eating sweet potato mush when you open the jars. Some folks recommended 3 minutes, others 5 minutes. Sweet potatoes are not uniform in shape or size. If you have a long skinny one, you want it out of the boiling water sooner. The fat ones can par-boil longer. I finally decided to par-boil 6 minutes. I checked them at 5 and those peels weren't even thinking about coming loose. I gave 'em an extra minute and it was not enough. I ended up after going to the trouble of par-boiling, having to peel those suckers, standing over the sink with my paring knife. Bah! That was what I was trying to avoid!

Then I sat down at the table and started chopping them into cubes. Lordy, that was hard and painful. They were definitely not par-boiled too long. They were hard as rocks and cutting through them made my wrist very unhappy. I peeled and chopped for hours and hours. I would have been faster with a different wrist.........

Then, of course, they had to be processed in the canner for 65 minutes. But, the 65 minutes does not count bringing the water in the canner to boiling, 10 minutes of venting steam. It also doesn't count the hour you have to wait for the canner to come down in pressure and temp when the 65 minutes have passed. I refuse to can in this house til sunset. I am just not going to make the house even hotter in the heat of the day........ So, it ends up being a very long day by the time I get those jars out of the canner and can limp off to bed.

I fought the urge to open a jar for days, but finally gave in. Unfortunately, I dropped the contents of a pint jar while getting ready to eat. So, I had to open another jar. They are delicious, but maybe a bit softer than I would like. I am saving my wide mouth jars for meat, and getting the sweet potatoes out of a regular mouth jar pretty much means you are just gonna put a little butter on them and mash them (the rest of the way). 

I just bought more. Another canning session or 20 coming up. I am really working on canning up the meat in my freezer in case we are hit with blackouts. In that my main freezer lives in the garage and we are already in 3 digit temperatures, I am concerned about losing meat. At least meat in jars doesn't need refrigeration.........

Today has not been my best day. My back was hurting a LOT when I went to bed last night. Now, after 2 muscle relaxers, multiple ibuprofen, and many hours flat on my back in bed, I am doing better. But, I've been moving very cautiously and very slowly during the time I've been up and around, trying not to undo the progress I've made.........

You can stop congratulating me.........

So in my last post, I was kinda proud of myself that I had an old keurig-style coffee maker in my garage. This, I thought, had saved me the cost of buying a new Keurig when the old one gave up the ghost. Well, not really. I got 4-5 cups of coffee from the garage-sourced machine and it stopped putting water through. I've done everything I know to do and I can't make it work. The coffee literally emerges at a rate of about 20 drops a minute. And then, long before one has collected a cup full, it stops. So you start it up again and you get a bit more in your cup. But, if you manage eventually to fill up the cup, you're about to drink a nice cold cup of coffee. It takes so long to collect a cup that what's been collected is cold before you can drink it.

So finally last night I ordered a Keurig from Walmart. I am waiting anxiously to see what I get. The last time I ordered from Walmart, I ordered a trash can I could use in my kitchen. It came on time, but I got a square trashcan and a round lid. No way the two pieces would work together.........Hopefully, in that the coffee maker will have been packed and sealed in a box when it arrived at Walmart, they will simply slap a label on the manufacturer's box and deliver it. Or, they will put the manufacturer's box in a Walmart box and deliver it without ever having to open the manufacturers box. This should all work out fine unless Walmart delivers my coffee pot to some other house..........I saved about $15 ordering from Walmart rather than Amazon, but I'm wondering if the worry isn't worth more than $15. 

Okay let's talk about canning. I have stuff to can sitting around. And I own about 30 empty jars. But, I've been stalled, thinking about the process. I would feel better if I had additional empty jars. I will begin to feel insecure when I have no more jars. So the first problem is securing more jars. I've about decided to do a delivery order from a local store and pay the delivery fee just to get some additional jars into the house. I have 4 beef roasts in the freezer. They're all the cheaper cuts and canning them is the perfect solution to my desire for "tender" beef. The meat will essentially be cooked at high temperature in a vacuum (so under pressure) for an hour and a half. Yup, it'll come out tender, no doubt. I also have a pretty good stash of dried beans. It makes good sense to can these. When I want beans, I can open a jar and heat some up--as opposed to soaking them overnight and then cooking them for hours. The final thing i need to can right now is sweet potatoes. But I don't have very many sweet potatoes, certainly not enough for a canner load. And I am too tight with my money to run a canner for an hour half empty--I don't want to waste the gas on my gas stove. I guess the final problem is not knowing exactly how many jars I'll need for either the sweet potatoes or the beef. One can estimate about a pound of meat in a pint jar, but it's only an estimate, and I don't even have an estimate for the sweet potatoes--it's just however many chunks of sweet potato will fit in a jar. 

The next problem is my right wrist. The sweet potatoes will have to be peeled. Both the meat and the sweet potatoes will have to be cut into chunks. I am concerned that my right wrist may really object to all that. Most of the time my wrist doesn't bother me at all, but every now and then it gives me a substantial shot of pain. And one of the times I can count on that happening is when I've been using it a lot. So, I'm none too sure about all this peeling and chopping........

What I've finally worked out in my head is that beans, meat, and sweet potatoes all have to be processed in the canner for the same amount of time. This somewhat eases the "full canner" problem. If I only have enough sweet potatoes for 3 jars, I can fill the canner with jars of meat or beans. 

I think I can parboil the sweet potatoes for 3-5 minutes in the skins and then the skins should slip right off. My fear is that the parboiling as well as the canning time may turn the sweet potatoes to mush........I found one reference that says it can be done so I guess I'll give it a try in the interest of saving my wrist.

I am thinking I can tackle this on a 3-day round robin schedule. I can peel and chop potatoes and keep them under water til time to pack the jars. I can cut up a roast or two and pack in a ziploc bag overnight in the fridge. That would be day 1. On Day 2, I would fill enough jars with whatever to fill the canner and actually do the canning. Day 3 would be clean up, checking seals on the jars, washing the jars, labeling them, putting them away, and restoring the kitchen to sanity. Then, on Day 4, start again. Anytime I end up with less than a canner load, fill in with beans. 

As best I can figure it, that's a workable plan for a little old lady with bad wrists. I DO have a bottle of ibuprofen and I know how to use it if the need arises. I just hate to put my liver to the trouble of processing ibuprofen if I don't have to.......

So, I think tomorrow will be Day 1 in this scheme and we'll see how it goes..............

Sometimes it pays to be a packrat

My beloved Keurig has died. I have determined that cats may well have 9 lives, but Keurigs are limited to 4. It has died 3 previous times. Each time, I've managed to resuscitate it. Not this time. I pulled an old drip pot out of the garage and hated it as much as I've hated it since I first got a Keurig. It makes too much coffee. It doesn't even begin to measure the water til it gets to 4 cups. And that still leaves me wondering how to scale down the grounds for just 4 cups of water. Additionally, if I get it right, the first cup is grand. However, whatever is left in the pot soon becomes grotesque--I hate "burned" coffee. I searched through Amazon, looking for a Keurig like my recently deceased one, only to decide I don't want to spend that kind of money. It's not one of the pricey ones, but even being a stripped down model, I am concerned that money is going to get awfully tight around here and I might wish I hadn't bought a Keurig replacement. This necessitated a thorough search of the garage. I THOUGHT I'd bought another cheaper Keurig-lookalike on the event of a prior Keurig death. I found it and it's working. And I didn't have to give Amazon any money!

I need to apologize. I've been gone a long time. A major part of my excuse is the malfunctioning of my computer and a computer guy I completely trust that works a full time job as well as a part-time job. That means if he can't get here, I wait. The wait just to get the computer picked up was more than a week. Then the fix and return delivery was another 2 days. I read 8 books while I was waiting. But it's all good now. I have, however, been dealing with a dandy case of the shakes. Data entry with shaking hands is a daunting task, but today is a good day. So, here I am.

Can I tell you an Alissa story? She's been here going on 5 months now. And on only 2 occasions has someone come to the door and been admitted. First time, clients. Second time, computer guy. She barked her fool head off when the computer guy came and I regarded that as a good thing. Anyone outside the house would definitely know there's a dog in here. And she doesn't sound like some dainty little ankle biter, also good. Anyway, then the computer guy came, it took me a while to get her to shush. And once she got quiet, I temporarily transferred my attention away from her to pay attention to the computer guy. When next I looked for her, I found her about 8 inches from my left elbow. He was on the far side of my desk. She was between him and me, eyes glued to him. I felt very well and faithfully guarded. It's the only time she's ever sat there. 

Bad timing: I have decided I have to back on my breakfast green smoothies. First, I decided I'd not been taking my potassium supplements as i should. Then I read that potassium actually helps with neuropathy pain which was causing me great consternation, particularly at bed time. So I started back on the potassium supplements and the neuropathy pain is all but gone. But, I was still extremely fatigued. I looked at how I've been eating and realized a nutritionist would be frantic. So, it's back on the breakfast green smoothies. It's only been a couple of days, but already I have more energy. I'm not so sure about the cost, however. Prices on everything have gone up. I can still afford kale, spinach, bananas and oranges. I got lucky and got a 2 # box of strawberries this week. However, the growing season for fresh fruit will be gone soon enough and have you checked the price of frozen fruit? Oh, my Lord, they're outrageous around here. I don't always manage to stick to the smoothies like I should, but suppose I make it through the summer. Then what? Then I will have to rely on frozen fruit and that's a scary concept. I've given up on half and half in my coffee to trade off for fruit in the future.

My parents always used milk in their coffee. As far as I was concerned, that gave the coffee the look of dirty water. Totally unappetizing. I used powdered coffee creamer or that flavored stuff for years. Then I read a bit about hydrogenated fat and swore off. I turned to half and half and have hung onto that for years. However, recently it occurred to me that my parents used SKIM milk. No wonder it was so awful. I have experimented and found that whole milk is not too objectionable in coffee. So, we'll try that for a while.........

That's it for now. I promise "I shall return".

It's been a rough week...........Icebox pie

Monday to Friday, 5 days, 3 days in bed with a muscle spasm in my back, 1 day with a raging headache, 1 day when all systems were set on "go'". Hard to get much done with a week like that.

I have worked outside for 15 minutes for 3 days. Not bad, considering. 

I had planned to can pork Friday, but after consulting my inventory, I decided not to do that after all. I have some pork chops, some country ribs, a pork tenderloin, but only1 small pork roast. I decided it made no sense to fire up the canner for 75 minutes til I have more pork to fill more jars. If I have to pay for the gas, I'd rather run the canner as full as possible. I could always can up some dried beans. Dried beans that have been canned work out to cheaper per ounce than those commercial cans of beans you can buy at the store. I'll have to work on canning some beans. Right now I only have some spicy red kidney beans and some garbanzos on my shelf. I can do better than that!

You probably know that I was raised in the south if you've been around here for long. But I was raised by "yankees" in the south. Maybe that explains it............ Apparently icebox pie is a big thing in the south. I know that somewhere along the way I've heard of it, but I don't think I heard about it and I'm sure I didn't eat it when I was growing up. Nevertheless, I made one during the past week and it was scrumptious. And it was SO easy! No wonder those southern ladies like making this kind of no bake pie! 

I've done some research since I did this. I found out there are MANY different ways to make this. Some ways to do it are way more trouble than I want to mess with, and some require some ingredients I'd never have around. I'll give you the ingredients: 1 8-ounce block of cream cheese, 1 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk, 1 packet of your favorite Kool Aid flavor, and 8 ounces of Cool Whip. 

I happened to have unsweetened Lemon Kool Aid in the house. So My icebox pie was lemon flavored. The lemon flavoring was not overpowering. It was light and all around delightful. First you whip the softened cream cheese. Then you pour in the sweetened condensed milk and whip it with the cream cheese. Then, into the cream cheese-sweetened condensed milk you add the Kool Whip and mix again. Finally add the Cool Whip and thoroughly fold it into the other ingredients. Then add the mixture to a prepared graham cracker crust. Chill about an hour and you can serve it. Prepare to be amazed with how good it tastes, especially considering it took you less than 10 minutes to make it. If you wanted to get fancy, you could decorate the top of the pie by piping some additional Cool Whip around the edge, or a dollop in the center of the pie with a slice of lemon artfully placed in the dollop of Cool Whip, or even by sprinkling some additional graham cracker crumbs over the top.

My mind has been churning on other ways to use the basic mixed ingredients. How about strawberry Kool Aid and either adding some sliced strawberries to the mix, or using sliced strawberries to decorate the top. I think next I am going to try making it with no Kool Aid, but substituting a can of thoroughly drained crushed pineapple. I think that would be good. I've also thought of using lime flavored Kool Aid to make a sort of mock key lime pie. I think the possibilities are only limited by the flavors of Kool Aid and your imagination!  But, no matter what Kool Aid flavor you select, I think it would be pretty hard to mess up the combined flavors of cream cheese, sweetened condensed milk, and Cool Whip! Bon Appetit! 

If you have ideas for other flavorings, please comment. I plan to explore this icebox pie in many renditions in the coming weeks/months.

 

 

Plan to can

I have about 12 pounds of ground beef defrosting right now. All of that will be shelf stable in jars by tonight. Slowly I am relieving my concerns about having so much food in a 44 year old freezer. Particularly now, with prices so high, I do not want to have to try to replace this much food. And, I want more room in the freezer for other things. I don't know about you, but when I bring home a bag of flour from the store, the first place it goes is in the freezer. I have had no problem with flour weevils since I started doing this. I'm working on training myself to do this with all flour/grain products. A while back, I found flour weevils in a jiffy cornbread mix which I'd had in the cupboard for a while. And I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of sifting those little buggers out and eating the product anyway--an old timey depression era "solution" to the problem. So, cake mixes, BisQuik and the like, Jiffy mixes, oatmeal, cereals--yup, they all get a chance to spend time in the freezer. But that means there has to be room for them in the freezer!

I actually went outside yesterday and did some work. If you've been around here for a while, you probably remember that I had some hedges along my front walkway that I was keeping alive by watering them by hand. Unfortunately, when I tried to water them last summer, the hose bib had no water. I don't know what happened. I just knew that I was in no shape to try to carry water to 10 ft of hedges during a desert summer. Honestly, I was barely in shape to walk outside. So, those hedges perished in the heat. I've begun the task of taking them out, a little at a time. They are so dry/dead that they break off easier than I can cut them. Got in another session today. So, right now I have about 2/3 filled a 42 gallon contractor's bag with pieces of hedge. It'll take a long while, I fear, but I will just have to keep after it every day. 

It's evening now. I have 12 pints of ground beef in the canner. Should be ready to come out in about 40 minutes + cooling time. I'm proud to have gotten this done.

I've been wearing my slippers almost all the time. The last little while I worked, I even wore them to work. I found some bits of dead leaves in them tonight so I turned them upside down in the trash to get them cleaned out. And, guess what? The indoor/outdoor soles are cracked all the way across on both of them. I guess I don't have much choice but to spring for new ones.

One of the things on the to do list for today was to run the Roomba. So, first thing this AM I went around making sure the floor was clear. Picked up all the doggy toys, put away a random pair of shoes, and like that. Then I discovered that somehow the Roomba had not charged. So, it's been back on the charger for hours and I'm ready to run it again EXCEPT Miss Alissa has pulled out 7 doggy toys to replace the 4 I put away. She's such a helper, LOL!

Well, I'm gonna go try finding the floor and running the Roomba. I hope it's faster than she is!