Franken Sunday

So, the girls are off school tomorrow.  My husband's flight to Egypt was c-a-n-c-e-l-l-e-d.  The federal government is closed tomorrow.  All of the East Coast is bracing itself for Hurricane Sandy with the possibility of periodic blizzards and maybe frogs raining down from the heavens.  But I--I could care less.

Because although tomorrow will likely bring power outages and flooding down my street I am just happy that survived today--my own personal Franken-Sunday.

My morning this began slightly earlier than usual, somewhere around 2 am, when I heard the very ominous beep-screech-beep of the power going out.  I look outside.  No rain.  No wind.  No nothing.  I do hear sirens and trucks going by my street for the rest of the night.  It turns out that there was a car accident nearby which knocked over a telephone pole.  Dominion power, to their great credit, had the lines back up and the power back on by 3 am.

But let me back up a little. . . so after the power went out, I couldn't fall back asleep, as I was thinking about the contents of my fridge, and the milk getting warm, and trying to will the power to come back on.  Around 3:30, Miss Cheeks wakes up crying.  And vomiting.  We get her cleaned up and the laundry bundled up and put her in bed with me.  She's sick.  A fever and chills and later she'll also throw up in my bed and all over me.  (I think she might have scored bonus points for the last one.)  But that wasn't until the morning...  I spent the rest of the night fussing over her, smoothing her hair off her hot little forehead.

Right around 6 am I think I actually fell back asleep but awake to a loud and terrible gagging sound.  It's not Cheeks, it's Max.  And he promptly throws up a great big pile of something really disgusting on my bedroom floor.  My dear husband, to his everlasting credit took care of that one.

So, to recap--sick kid, sick dog, no power and oh--Miss Bee's friend birthday party was today.  Poor Cheeks.  She couldn't go to her sister's party and she was so looking forward to spending time with the "big kids."

After getting everything ready, I took Cheeks off to quarantine at my parents' house and stayed with her.  By all accounts, it was a great party. 
 

The spread:  cupcakes, cookie "acorns", grapes, strawberries, cheese & crackers and popcorn.

Pumpkin patch cupcakes.

Cinderella's pumpkin coach.

Pumpkin painting was the main activity--can you guess the theme yet?

Pin the nose on the pumpkin.

Pinata!

A most unusual party favor--loaves of bread, for when we all lose power tomorrow!

But today is coming to an end.  Cheeks is a little bit better.  Both girls are asleep.  And I don't have to go to work tomorrow.  Hurricane or no hurricane things are looking up.

Out of the mouths of babes

So Miss Cheeks is quite articulate for a two year old, thanks to many hours of conversation with her big sister. Sometimes though, she will get a word completely wrong.

Tonight she wandered into my bedroom and picked up a brassiere that hadn't made it into the laundry basket.

Cradling it in her arms, she earnestly turned to me and asked, "Mommy, can I have this hedgehog?  I want to put it on!"

For the rest of my life, whenever I cannot remember the name to something, I am going to call it a hedgehog.

Pick-a-what?

Since the canner makes it down so infrequently from its high shelf in the laundry room, I decided to do a second round of canning on Monday night. 

We neglected our tomato plants this year, and ended up with only about a half a dozen ripe tomatoes.  We picked all the remaining green ones and decided to make picalilli. I had been intrigued ever since one of my favorite bloggers, Dawn, on "By Sun and Candlelight" posted her family's recipe, and included helpful step by step directions. 

Basically, you chop up green tomatoes, onions, and peppers, salt them, and let them sit overnight.  The next day, you cook the mixture with vinegar, picking spice, and sugar for about 45 minutes.  You process the jars in the canner for 15 minutes. 

Never having made picalilly before, I'm not exactly sure how it is supposed to taste, but my husband and I went from putting tentative spoonfuls on the side of our plate at dinner last night to heaping it on top of our mashed potatoes.  Our result is a relish that is alternatively salty, sweet, and sour.


For our recipe we used:

5 pounds green tomatoes
One orange pepper
2 sweet onions
1/2 cup salt
One pint cider vinegar
1/2 jar McCormick's pickling spice
2 cups sugar

I think we could have maybe used a little less salt and a little more sugar.  Something to try for next year!

apples to applesauce

Apple picking has become an annual tradition in our family. 

Miss Bee was a most enthusiastic apple picker.

Cheeks needed a lift from her dad.

We finished off our bags with these delicious specimens.

Ready for peeling!

Put the peeled, quartered, apples in a pot with enough water to prevent sticking. Cook until soft. Sugar to taste.

Fill pre-heated mason jars and process in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes.  Ball "Blue Book" is the canning bible.

Enjoy!  We put up four quart jars and had a lot leftover for the fridge.

Beach weekend

My sister and I rode in those exact same boats at that exact same age some two decades ago.  I don't think they have changed a single thing at Funland in Rehoboth Beach, including the water that those boats are floating in!

Watching my girls walk through Funland, hand in hand, staring at the whirling noisy wonderfulness of it all brought me back to my own childhood.  I think that's one of the best things about becoming a parent...you get to do it all again.

FarMor and FarFar's 60th Anniversary

My first time making kransekake. It tasted just like it was supposed to--a minor baking miracle.

My Mom made a gorgeous fruit salad and farmer potatoes.  Justin made not one but two egg casseroles.  And I made banana bread, because I've inherited my grandmother's fear that there won't be enough food. (There was!)

I also made a vanilla cake with raspberry frosting.

Hostess gifts were snickerdoodle cookies and pieces of the kransekake.

Bread Sundays

I have gotten back into the habit of baking bread once a week.  The recipe I use is similar to the famous Poulaine sourdough, except I don't have a wood burning fire to cook it in, or legions of French kitchen assistance.  What I do have, is a whole wheat sourdough starter that lives in my fridge for most of the week.  I feed it on Saturday night just before bed, adding flour and water to make it active again and leave it out, overnight, in the counter.

By the morning, the starter has nearly doubled in size.  To start the bread, you mix flour with water and allow it to sit for 20 minutes to allow the gluten to develop.  Then you add in the salt and the starter (putting a small amount aside for the next time) and knead it in a mixer.  I think the mixer actually does a better job than mixing by hand, and it's much easier.

After that, you set the bread to rise.  After one hour, you encourage the dough by flipping in over and kneading it briefly. It can rise after that for another 2-4 hours.  Once it has nearly doubled, or at least made some kind of an effort to rise, you shape it into a ball and stick it in a brotform, which is a reed basket.

 Now, for the past few weeks I have had a terrible time getting the dough out of the brotfom when it was ready to bake, so this week I very cleverly lined the basked with plastic wrap that I had oiled and floured.  It didn't have the beautiful design on the crust, but at least it came out in one piece.

The bread rises in the brotform for another two hours or so, and then, finally, it's ready to bake.  The thing I like about whole wheat sourdough is that it lasts for several days in the breadbox and actually improves in flavor for the first few days.

It might seem as though this recipe it takes all day, but it really requires very minimal effort. You just have to be remember to move it from stage to stage.  The end result is (usually) delicious and a way to show my love for my family.