Category: Life Happens

For some reason, I’m on a homemade kick lately. Today at lunch, I started two whole chickens on the stove.  Once they were boiled, I drained off that broth, stripped the carcasses, and then tossed the bones back in to boil for several hours.  I had enough broth to make homemade chicken & noodles for dinner tonight (with enough leftovers that I can make another double batch of noodles tomorrow and have another dinner!), with a huge Tuperware container of broth in the fridge, and four quart jars in the freezer.  (I’m just praying the jars don’t break. I made sure to use room temperature broth.)

I’ve got a nice headstart on Thanksgiving!  (I used homemade broth last year for the noodles.) But in all honesty, we’ll probably have most of this broth used up — I plan to make homemade rice pilaf again and I’m dying to try a Mexican enchilada “gravy” that uses chicken broth.

Meanwhile, I also started a few kitchen experiments. I have a jar of lentils sprouting, another jar of sourdough starter bubbling on the counter, and the celery root chopped off a fresh bunch from the store that supposedly can be planted.  The kids are all interested in these experiments — hopefully at least one or two will work out!

I also bought some local dairy farmer’s milk in glass jars at the store.  It’s still pasturized, but tastes incredible, but is so darned expensive (by the time I pay the deposit on the glass jar) that I don’t know if I’ll stick with it or not. I do want to get us drinking and eating more local produce and this is a start, but I can’t make butter out of this milk, and I’m really wanting to try homemade butter! Thursday, we’re going to investigate the local farmer’s market for some co-op shares.  Supposedly a different dairy farmer has a raw-milk share and will be at the market.  We’ll see.

So why all this interest in homemade stuff?  I grew up on a farm, for one, and I’ve always loved to cook.  Suzanne McMinn’s blog has been a great influence on me — I get so many recipes from her!  I want chickens and my own Beulah Petunia! However, with both of us having full-time jobs, I don’t know that we’ll ever be “farmers.”  I do like to dream, though, and meanwhile, I can support my local farmers as much as possible.

I also stumbled across two sites tonight and bookmarked a dozen recipes and ideas:  Kitchen Stewardship and Heartland Renaissance. More to come, I’m sure.  I just hope my sourdough starter doesn’t blow up on my counter (I had some bad experiences with the “easy” yeast experiments at school!)

Sorry about the down-time this week.  At last, I’m entirely free of yahoo after they held my blog hostage and the fiasco last year when I thought I’d transferred my domain AND my hosting but had only taken care of the latter.  Since I’d cancelled my account with yahell, they were charging me the low low price of $38 a year (cough) for my domain.  I paid about that for two years with GoDaddy including the privacy stuff.

I owe some guest blog spots, which I’ll work on this weekend.  I’ve been struggling with heat-related headaches, so I’m a bit slow and droopy.  Hopefully I’ll be back up to speed by Monday.

The holiday novella is creeping toward 17K.  Sigh.  I was hopnig to finish by the end of the month to give me two weeks for revisions, but I may not make it.  We’ll see.  I don’t think I’m going to need heavy revision at this point but the more time I have, the better.

My beloved Sis once wrote a short story with this title.  I never thought *we* would be sweltering.

Our 2007-installed Trane AC compressor has never worked right.  When we moved in here last year, the previous tenants had never changed the filters and they had three cats —-> quilts over the air returns.  The unit froze up the first month we were here and we’ve had problems with the stupid thing ever since.  It works fine up to a certain point — so the three technicians we’ve had out couldn’t find anything wrong with it.  But as the daily temps creep higher, the unit runs and run and… runs…while the inside temp creeps higher too. 

My May electric bill was $300.  *dies*  Last week, the unit ran non-stop and the temp still reached 84 degrees in the house.  How much do you think my June bill is going to be?  *dies again*

On the bright side, the problem worsened enough that a tech finally identified the problem:  the compressor.  It’s not out completely, because the unit would still manage to cool the house over night, but by 11 am the next day, it would begin to overheat and shut off.  The unit is a Trane, supposedly one of the best in the biz, right?  Can’t stop a Trane.  *snort*  Well evidently you can’t FIX a Trane, either, because they can’t get a compressor until the week of July 21st.

*dies again*

And of course they told us to turn the unit completely off before the whole thing blew up.  So now we can’t even cool the house off at night.  Did I mention that both That Man and I work out of the house?  At least he’s gone half a day or so gathering information for his job, but I’m stuck here ALL DAY with no air.  Of course the heat index has been over 100 degrees this week with heat advisories.  We rented a window unit and bought another, but that’s only two rooms moderately cooled with three children and two adults needing sleeping and working space.   (Please don’t tell me how bad these two units are going to run up my bill even more.)

Oh, and my office is of course in the attic over the garage, the hottest part of the house. 

So I’m working at the kitchen table right now, dreading that sauna of an office.  I can do a lot of my work away from my desk but I have to have my laptop and I need quiet for my phone-call meetings.  Once That Man is home, we can’t both be in the same room because he’s on the phone a lot and it’s just too loud and distracting.  So I’m going to have to climb those stairs eventually.

And swelter.

I keep reminding myself that pioneers never had air conditioning.  Lynn Viehl wrote a book in a hurricane on a PDA.  Surely I can survive one month in MO with drippy humidity and 90+ degree temps while I write my little holiday novella.  Right?  Just don’t be surprised by all the ice, snow, and cold in the setting — that’s my wishful thinking for cool air!

The monsters don’t go back to school until tomorrow.  That Man and I both took today off from our jobs, because we had planned Thanksgiving/Christmas at my mom’s with my beloved sister, but snow has forced us to reschedule.  Tomorrow is Princess Monster’s 11th birthday, so we’ll probably take everyone to see Princess and the Frog today since she’ll be stuck in school.

Needless to say, I’m having a hard time getting into my goals for the week and month.  It’s too hard to concentrate with cartoons playing endlessly in the background and another load of soggy coats, gloves, and clothes thanks to playing outside in the snow.  Don’t even ask me about the dishes.  Gah.  It’s amazing how many more dishes I have when everybody’s home all day!

So I guess I’ll continue to ruminate about my plans and goals for this month.  It’s too hard to concentrate much, let alone get any real work done.  All of my beta readers have replied back with a few corrections and ideas for things I might need to tweak or fix.  I also need to get cracking on Victor.  I think I’ll start with the dreaded synopsis and get a first draft of that beast out of the way before I go back to revisions.

And to keep my head from imploding in Revision Hell, I’m going to play around with a side project that just came to me this weekend.  I think the “pleasure” writing of a small new project will make all the revisions a little more tolerable!