Quick Takes: Heavy and Light

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I just didn't have the heart to talk about the election the other day.  I had always expected President Obama to be re-elected, or at least for quite some time now.  I had a good talk with a friend the day after about what it all means.

President Obama has declared war on the Catholic Church with his HHS Mandate.  I know that lots and lots of people, and even a majority of Catholics, just don't see this.  We voted for this state of affairs, and the gloves-off attack on religious freedom that's sure to come is entirely the consequence of our lukewarmness.  The President is trying to force division:  Do we choose the unborn and let Catholic service in the public square disappear, or to serve the poor and the sick at the expense of the lives of our smallest brothers and sisters?  It's an impossible choice.  We can't abandon any of our brothers and sisters and still be Christians.  Do we choose to follow the laws of God, or the unjust laws of Caesar?  There is only one choice. 

But it's going to require even more heroic grace than ever.  We are a weak people.  And there will be many souls lost in the battle.  Lord have mercy.

--- 2 ---

So new political strategy:  Be a saint.

--- 3 ---

While I try to figure out #2, I still have the everyday domestic things to attend to.  (Actually, those are my means to sanctity, as I've talked about a little bit here.)  Oh, yes, happy belated Feast of All Saints!

--- 4 ---

The garden is finished for the year, except for five lonely heads of lettuce in the cold frame.  I'm going to miss our little (?) friend, the praying mantis who lived in our green bean plants and kept away all the bad bugs.  I can't count how many times I've thought, "How did I miss that big one?" only to find I was trying to harvest the praying mantis!  Anthony always had to look for him each time we went out to pick some green beans.  He called him his "pet" and would in fact pet him.  Katie Rose thinks he's funny too.

 

 

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We pulled out all of our carrots, even though we're a ways from a hard freeze.  Most of them would have been respectable radishes, but they probably weren't going to get much bigger at this point.  Some of them were getting eaten by clusters of little grey bugs, so I thought it's probably better to take away their food source.  We'd been pulling them up periodically, so this final haul is probably about 1/4 of the total carrot yield.  I'll definitely grow them again next year, but I'll try harder to space them properly to begin with.  Thinning carrots is a sad job, and I mostly left them too close together to really get to be a decent size.

 



--- 6 ---

14 pounds of green tomatoes.  Most of them went to make green tomato relish.  That project took up half of the day on Tuesday, so I wasn't just fretting about the election.  It's quite good!  This might not make sense, but it tastes old-fashioned.  Green tomato relish is the embodiment of the old-time idea of never letting anything go to waste. It looks really Christmasy, green with bits of red.  The recipe yielded over a GALLON of relish, so I think some of these jars are destined to be Christmas gifts.

--- 7 ---

 

 

There's a runaway train of clean but unfolded laundry behind me as I'm typing this.  I should get Anthony down for his nap and deal with that.

 

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Simple Autumn Food

I love fall.  It is definitely my favorite season.  The leaves, the pumpkin patches and apple orchards, sweater weather, and the FOOD!  I love comfort food.  I just really enjoy the homeyness.  As befits a lady aspiring to a housewifely ideal. :-).  Autumn food is simple in ingredients and preparation, but luxurious in time.   It requires you to just let the food do its thing while you savor the aroma of the meal to come and just being at home together.  Slow food is autumnal.  The harvest is done, and you can relax and partake of the warmth of the kitchen and the fruits of your labor.  Canada got it right by putting Thanksgiving in October.  I feel almost in a Thanksgiving mood, except here we're still getting a steady supply of tomatoes and green beans.  Not a large amount, but more than we had in midsummer when it was just too dry to fruit.

I've almost always done "from scratch" cooking since being married, but this fall I find myself just winging it and going recipeless more often than not.  I really enjoy just seeing what produce looks good at the market or is available at a good price.  Which really means eating locally and seasonally, if you want to get all foodie about it.  I've read a fair amount about our modern agricultural system and how unsustainable it is, etc.  But at the end of the day it's all about delicious food.

And you know what?  It's so easy!  And not expensive at all!  But it sure looks fancy.  Rustic chic.  You know, fancy-looking things like the garnish

 Roasted butternut squash and leek soup.  The rolls are a variant of The Best Bread Ever.  You know, fancy-looking things like the garnish on this soup really take very little effort when you're working with fresh ingredients anyway.  Just toss the seeds in the oven for a few minutes while the squash is roasting and save a few of the thyme sprigs from going in the pot.

Carrots (from the garden!  Yay for clay-tolerant varieties!), red onion, potato, apples, thyme, butter, and brown sugar. I didn't take a picture of it actually roasted.  I would go for maple syrup over brown sugar if you try this.  The brown sugar just kind of burned and slid down in the corner of the pan.  But the butter was a good decision.  Julia Child would back me up; when in doubt put butter on it.  I made this and a roasted chicken on "one of those days," when things were a mess and the children were cranky because we had done a lot of running.  Ryan appreciated what he thought was the special effort to make a"Sunday dinner" despite the busy day.  I didn't tell him then that there's nothing easier than to rub some salt and seasoning on a chicken and cut some veggies into chunks.  I was out of the kitchen in fifteen minutes and able to restore order and read a story while it cooked.  But now the secret's out, so enjoy your autumn cooking!

Bedroom Tour

I. Am. NESTING. Last week I absolutely had to clean all of the windows of the downstairs. Then it was scrubbing all the floors. Today it was our bedroom.   I swapped out our heavy winter duvet for a lighter quilt that actually serves as our curtain during the colder months, washed and cleaned absolutely everthing from bedding to baseboards.  So I am posting photos of our bedroom while it is still all fresh and spring cleaned.  All of you housewives know it won't be long before the dust bunnies start to come back!  It's a tiny bedroom so it won't take long to do a little clockwise tour.



I really like our room.  Some special things:

My dear friend Kristine embroidered this little toss pillow for us.

Our farm pictures.  A Goodwill find, but I love them because they are so detailed and show exactly the sort of rural life we dream about.  They look so still and placid with their large flat buildings and fall landscapes, but if you look closely they are both bursting with activity.  The top picture shows some sort of celebration with dancing and feasting, the other has myriad farm chores going on while men gather to hunt quail.  The style very much reminds me of Ox-Cart Man, but it isn't the same artist.

Plates with images of apparitions of Our Lady on them.  My grandmother had the center one, Our Lady of Lourdes, but we had to get rid of her things so quickly after she died it was inadvertently given away.  I came upon these last spring at a silent auction, and Ryan won them for me.

The photo above the bed is taken from the choir loft at our wedding, but I'm pretty sure it's copyrighted so I won't do a closeup.  Here is the closet, with our stuff in it now.  Not all perfectly neat anymore, but I'll be swapping out winter clothes next time I have a nesting burst. :) 

Those books all are Ryan's books related to business analytics. I can't tell you how much that stack is bothering me right now!  I know it's dumb but I definitely attribute that minor obsession to hormones. But they aren't all bad since they also inspire me to greater heights of housewifery before the baby comes!

A Productive Monday

Just take a look at that to-do list:

I cannot remember the last time I actually got my "Monday cleaning" all done on Monday!  We also walked to the library for story time and stayed to play for a little while afterwards, had lots of outside time, and went to the first hour of Patrick Madrid's talk at St. Cecelia's.  I could do some quilting now, but I'm rather tired out by all that productivity!

Thanks for that two-hour nap today, little guy!  It's amazing what I can get done when I can just do it.   A few years down the line, I may look back and think, "I was proud of that?!?  Hah!"  Even now I see that nothing on this list is really a huge accomplishment, but for today just seeing the evidence that I worked hard and took good care of my home and family makes me happy.

On the Eternal Consequences of a Dirty Floor

Some days, Mondays especially, it really does seem that "A woman's work is never done." We had a really nice weekend, weather-wise and just a nice weekend at home as a family. My husband worked on digging a raised bed (Yes, in January!), Anthony ran around outside a lot, I made pot roast and apple pie for Sunday supper, and we all just relaxed a bit. And the dirt and residue from this not-much-going-on weekend is all over my kitchen floor! My kitchen must have had a wild party while we were busy watching "A Man for All Seasons." I cleaned it just on Friday. I should take photographic evidence that that floor sometimes DOES look like it! For about five minutes. But it's not just the floor. Weekend evidence is everywhere. I'm sure I'm not alone in this on Monday mornings.

My dream kitchen floor. I like the yellow shoes, too!

The world might point to Mondays for a housewife and say, "See, it's pointless. Everything you do is immediately undone." But isn't all work that way, really? My husband finishes with one set of data, and there is another waiting for him. None of us are ever truly finished working until we die. That's nothing to be depressed over; it's just the nature of things. "Ah yes, but at the end of the month, he brings home a paycheck. You're just treading water." In housework, yes absolutely. If I really were just an unpaid maid and nanny as feminism would have me believe, I would be dissatisfied. I would be happier in a job. This study seems to think that's true!

But really, I'm not a maid with no life. My work is raising souls: Anthony's and the new baby's not to mention Ryan's and my own. Housework and cooking and kissing boo-boos are all just the background for this great work of developing human beings. The work of soul-building is really the only work that does last in eternity. Every architectural wonder, every Fortune 500 company, and every Nobel Prize will one day be gone. It simply won't matter. But it will matter if I was there to teach my son not to snatch books from the little girl at the library (Sorry, Elsa!). It will matter if I discipline my spirit to uncomplainingly clean that kitchen floor yet again. I never said it was glamorous! But it is important, because all these little day-to-day things will all help make our souls into who we will be in eternity. And that's the most important thing of all.

Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real: #2

~Pretty~

Progress on the highchair! I really like the bright red! I sanded the most worn parts of it, but Anthony would be in high school by the time I managed to strip the entire thing. So spray paint it is! I was inspired by Rosie on Like Mother Like Daughter. She did the same thing to make a really sweet highchair for her little boy. I'm still in the process of sanding down the tray. I want that to be stained and poly-ed rather than painted so I can scrub it well all the time. Even that little piece is taking me a really long time to sand.

~Happy~

"Mama! I'm going pee-pee in the potty!" That's exactly what is happening in this picture. You'll just have to take my word for it, as that little drape of t-shirt is what makes it legal to post this photo. We've been encouraging Anthony's interest in the potty. He does do very well and he's so proud of himself! I haven't figured out out-and-about pottying yet, as public toilets are just too big and, well, gross. He really does need a potty seat with that tiny behind, but carrying one with us seems rather impractical especially since we walk a lot of places, and, well, gross.

~Funny~

Ryan was reading the paper Sunday morning and not really paying attention to Anthony and me. (You know, "Hun, should I make pancakes or waffles today?... ... Ryan?" "Sure.") So I drew our family on his toes. He didn't really react to this until the coffee you see in his hand was at least half drunk.

~Real~

This is how the housework really gets done around here! I do give Anthony the dustbuster and let him crawl around with that for a few minutes in the afternoon sometimes while I am doing my quick spruce-up before dinner. Yes, I have found yet another way for parents to use technology as a babysitter! But he likes to think he's helping, and soon enough he will be!

Menu planning addendum

Okay, so I left out part of my menu planning process in the previous post. You remember all those post-it notes in my binder? Well I neglected to mention that each day's menu is either lifted directly from the binder or else written on a new post-it. These are then placed in my calendar on their day. If the menu's a keeper, it goes in the binder at the end of the week. Thus expands my cooking repertoire.

How I Menu Plan

A little while ago, Christine suggested I do a post on how I menu plan. I actually have a pretty elaborate system, but it evolved gradually over the two years of our marriage and it still is evolving. I will walk you through this week's menu plan and you will see the method behind my menu madness!

1. Go to kroger.com and look at the weekly ad. Write down anything that is a good deal that we like to eat. Meat and produce deals are the starting point of the menu plan. This week chicken breasts were 99 cents a pound, ground turkey and turkey tenderloins were BOGO. There were other deals but they weren't that great. I find it hard to buy as much beef anymore, because it really has gotten expensive. For produce, strawberries, green beans, watermelon, spinach, and sweet corn are on sale for a good price. We tend not to buy a lot of packaged foods, and my pantry is pretty well stocked, so the only other things I wrote are cottage cheese and Nutri-Grain bars, both for Anthony.

2. Look in the fridge and see if there's anything leftover that needs to be eaten. We'd cleaned out pretty well before our trip to Pittsburgh, so the only stragglers are a half of a ham steak, bacon, carrots, a few stalks of soon-to-be-limp celery, and some lunch meat that's still fine. Write these items down next to the deals.

3. Quickly check the pantry for things running low, and the shopping list notepad on the fridge.

4. Now for the actual menu planning part. I have a binder that I keep in the kitchen that's kind of my housekeeping Bible. The Binder could be an entire post of it's own, but one section is labeled Cooking. In here I have several pages each with a different heading: Freezer Inventory, Quick & Easy, Slow Cooker, Friday, Sunday, Ryan's Favorites, Potlucks, and Desserts. Each page has several Post-It notes, each with a past successful menu and in which of my cookbooks each recipe can be found written on it. Using my binder menus and cookbook collection, I create a menu plan using up all the leftovers and guided by the weekly specials and our schedule for the week. There's a pretty familiar pattern by now. Generally I incorporate one or two new recipes, one from the Ryan's Favorites page, one from the freezer inventory. This sounds complicated, but I'm so familiar with the contents of my binder by now that sometimes I don't even need to look in it to know what I want to make, and not everything happens every week. This week I'm adding to the freezer stash, but not subtracting from it. It's like figuring out a puzzle, but there aren't really any wrong answers.

This is this week's menu:

Monday: Tuscan Soup (throwing in ham and celery), Cheese Batter Bread, Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies
Tuesday: Basil Turkey Burgers, corn on the cob, watermelon salad
Wednesday: Chicken and black bean burritos, chips and salsa
Thursday: Chicken/bacon/strawberry/spinach salad, rolls
Friday: Black bean soup (double for freezer), bread
Saturday: on the road
Sunday: Buca de Beppo for Elizabeth's graduation

Can you find the leftovers and weekly specials?

I don't plan breakfasts or lunches. Breakfast for Ryan is cereal and coffee most mornings and for me something more. Lunch is leftovers or a sandwich.

5. Go through the recipes and write down any ingredients I need to buy. Write down any other perishable staples we need (milk, fruit for lunches, eggs, etc.).

6. Organize the list by categories (produce, meat, etc.). So helpful when shopping with a curious baby!

7. Go shopping!

Coupons are conspicuously absent from this process. I used to clip them all the time and had them all organized and everything, but the amount I saved was so little for the time invested that I've pretty much given up on coupons for groceries. Anything you could use a coupon for I would almost never buy, or if I did the generic version was just as good and still cheaper even with double coupons. Or else I'd be tempted to buy something just because I had the coupon! Ryan tells me coupons are just a way they convince you to try a product in the hopes you'll become a loyal customer. I still go through the paper for them, but only clip ones for toiletries or the foodstuffs we actually buy. This week the only coupon I used was for the Nutri Grain bars. (Plus on sale! Bonus!)

There you have it, but I imagine everyone has their unique method. Having a plan saves me time by not having to scramble for an idea for dinner, and money from not wasting food and taking better advantage of sales. My way seems really long, especially all written out like this, but it really only takes me about half an hour without interruptions! Now, how do you menu plan?

Daily Routine

While doing my Monday dust-through, I pondered today on the need we creatures have for rhythm and routine. Nature has the seasons, night and day, the cycle of life and death. The Church has Matins, Lauds, Vespers, and Compline; Sunday Mass and Friday penance; Lenten fast followed by Easter feast. The home has dishes and laundry, bathrooms and shopping day, spring cleaning and holiday decorating. Day in and day out, year after year, world without end Amen.

This Lent, I have really been working on establishing my set routines. Before I did the necessary tasks, but it was on a catch-as-catch-can basis, and there were times I found myself wondering when exactly I last cleaned the kitchen floor or begging my husband to help dig me out of Mt. Washmore. It has really blessed our family to know that the laundry will be done, the kitchen clean enough to make a meal, and something planned for dinner for which all the necessary groceries are on hand. That alone is enough reason to have a routine, but I've found more time for leisure activities that rejuvenate me and make me a much happier and relaxed woman. When I've successfully done my routines in a day, it really does give me a sense of accomplishment.

Why do we thrive on this sort of order? Beyond the practical benefits of knowing that when you open the drawer you will find clean underwear, I think it is because in my own small way, creating this small ordered universe I call my home is a reflection of He who is perfect order. Not that my home is pefect! Haha, if you came in right now you'd find a still questionable kitchen floor. Of course it doesn't help that it's white. But it's definitely generally improved over past months. Aim for progress, yes? To conform to an outward discipline is generally good for the soul in strengthening humility and charity, two of the most essential virtues. I'm sure you can come up with your own examples as this relates to housework. It of course also applies to one's prayer life.

So here is my weekday routine. Like everything else, it is a work in progress. This is really more of an ideal. It's a rare day indeed that absolutely everything happens in this order, but even having the framework established keeps me focused and on task if you will. Anthony's naptimes are changing now; lately he's been having only one nap at midday.

Morning routine:
-Wake up 6:15
-Morning offering
-Shower, dress, fix hair and face
-Quick clean bathroom (spray down shower, swish toilet bowl, wipe down mirror, sink, toilet, and floor. This takes two minutes and my bathroom is presentable!)
-Head downstairs with hamper of dirty laundry, sort laundry and put a load in the washer (on delay start so Ryan can get his shower)
-Empty dishwasher
-Make breakfast, look over calendar and to-do list while I eat
-I generally hear Ryan in the shower about now, turn on the coffee.
-Make Ryan's lunch, wash dishes
-Anthony wakes up: morning nursing, get him dressed, straighten his crib. (You may have noticed making the bed isn't on this list--my wonderful husband does that!)
-Kiss Ryan goodbye (very important!)
-9:00 Mass (bonus points for walking)

Daytime routine:
-Anthony's morning nap around 10:30- prayer time and cleaning (I have a rotation for this, another post perhaps)
-12:00 Angelus
-Lunch around 12:30

Afternoon/evening routine:
-Put away laundry from earlier
-Afternoon nap around 3:00- Mama's fun time! Sewing, reading, or talk to a friend.
-4:30-ish pick up around the downstairs
-Around 5:00 start thinking about starting dinner; Anthony usually feeds himself finger foods while I cook.
-6:00 Ryan comes home, Angelus, suppertime
-Dishes, playtime
-8:00 bedtime for Bubs
-Rosary, time for Ryan and me
-Make sure kitchen's clean, start dishwasher. I've decided to run it every evening because it's so nice to start the day with all your dishes that you need clean. Luckily, we have a "half load" option to reduce waste.
-Pick out clothes for tomorrow, hang them in the bathroom
-Wash up for bed
-Prayer and bed. Going to bed at a decent time is the hardest part!