Morning coffee

I was a bit slow to start drinking coffee, but I must say I'm making up for it now.  What did I drink before?  Probably water -- what I should drink more of now. 

However, I do like my morning coffee.  Afternoon coffee is just fine too. 

But it seems to be difficult to keep a decent coffee maker in this house.

 My first coffee makers were French presses.  When I started drinking coffee at 30 years old, it was the "in" thing to have a French press.  It was fine, but I do remember breaking one, and then I had another one that didn't look good, so I used the nicer lid and press with the uglier glass pot and it didn't really work great.  Plus, I like my coffee really hot and I find it's already cooled by the time it's done stewing in the press.

Then I got a tiny Italian espresso pot.  I was so impressed with this style of pot when we went on a platypus-spotting canoe tour in Australia.  The guide took a tiny gas stove and a tiny perk out of his backpack and made us some coffee by the side of the pond.  I had to buy one for myself.   I think it works okay if you remember that you're only expecting one shot of espesso, not a mug of coffee.  Too much water and it perks and spews coffee out the spout and all over your burner.  And it really is tiny.  I like a mug of coffee. 

My first electric coffee maker was a free one from a garage sale.  I remember arriving at the end of the day and they just gave it to me.  One less box to bring back into the house for them, and one free drip coffee maker for me.  Win win.  It was fine, but drip coffee isn't my favourite.  And it was a tiny one that made maybe two cups and then usually burnt to the glass pot while sitting on the burner.  I was so sure that I wouldn't need this pot again that I Goodwilled it.

Okay, so no more pressing.  No more espesso.  No more dripping.  It was perked coffee I really liked.  The kind that we have when we went camping.  But that's an ugly tin or aluminum thing that I didn't want sitting on my stove all the time.  So I bought this.  My most expensive coffee maker to date. 



It worked great!  And it looked okay sitting on my counter.  I thought it was the perfect coffee solution.  But after about two years, it developed a hole (rust?) in the base of the pot itself and starting to leak all over the counter.  Sigh.  There was no fixing this one, so it went into the garbage.  Shopping again and this time I knew I wanted a perk, and one that would last.

 I was thrilled to see this Pyrex coffee perk at the thrift store.  It was pretty, stood the test of time and was pretty cheap.  What more could you want?

Lots, actually. 

I didn't want all of the grounds IN my coffee cup.  No matter how coarse I had it ground, it was still in my cup.  And, although it said "4 cups" on the side, that means 4 bitty teacups, not mugs.  Hardly works with company.  AND you'll notice it has no insides.  Within a month or two I had managed to break the thin glass stem of the perking mechanism.  It's probably 50 years old and I managed to break it in two months.  Now it's a tea pot.

Today's solution:  Another thrift shop find.  An old General Electric pretty perk.  No more grounds, quite a few cups of coffee in it, it's pretty, and it's fast, and it brews really great coffee.

Hopefully I'm set for a while now.

I think I'll finish my lovely mug of coffee and set off outside to prepare some more garden for seeds.  Enjoy your morning! 

School

When I graduated from university, I wanted to be one of those people who is constantly learning something new.  I admire those people.  Taking upgrading, the odd literature class, learning to paint or try a new instrument.  When you're young, you forget that life can get really busy and it's not (unfortunately) all about you.  You marry, have kids, attend parent council meetings and community league meetings, get jobs, blah, blah, blah.

And you get older too.  And more tired.

Anyway, it's been a very long time since I've dedicated any time to learning something new.  The inner geek in me is very excited about my new job though.  Among other jobs, I will be a notetaker for a deaf student this term. 

I get to attend classes every day until the end of June.  Not subjects of my choice.  For that I'd have to pay.  For this, I get paid.  However, the classes don't sound un-interesting to me and some of it may even be practical or useful. 

Cabinetmaking.  Math.  Blueprint reading. 

Cool!  Math! 

If I take on more of these jobs, I should also start to learn sign language.  That would be a new skill with some practical application.  We'll see. 

In any case, I'd better get ready for school.  I hope I find a friend to spend recess with...

Earth Ball

I have very helpful kids.  They especially like to help if there is something in it for them.

Who doesn't?  A little appreciation is a good thing. 

Yesterday Alice came home with the earth, a reward for helping clean tables at lunchtime at school. 

And because it's been a long time since I studied the composition of the earth, Laura labeled it for me. Maybe that will help others too.    

In the past the rewards were generally candy-related.  Since becoming an Apple School and taking it seriously (as opposed to our junior high which does it rather half-heartedly I find), it's been tougher to find rewards that are less about sugar and more about education or healthy. 

I love this one.  Although it's educational value is limited once you memorize those four parts, it's still squishy and throwable and fun. 

Soyless Taco Seasoning

When Beth first started to articulate her food allergies, she called it her "taco feeling". It was the feeling she got when we ate tacos at home.   It was a feeling on the back of her tongue or in her throat.  I'm not exactly sure, but it made her stop eating.

And that was bad because I used to make tacos to increase protein in the kids' diets every time they'd gone a few days without eating meat (they didn't like steak, any red unground meat, or anything that required chewing).  Tacos were always a hit. 

I used to use one of those seasoning mixes for the taco meat.  I also used to use a mix for chilli, but she didn't get a reaction with that.  The only difference between the two mixes was soy protein.

So, no more taco seasoning around here.

Until, once again, I found a mix recipe in Mary Ostyn's book (Family Feasts for $75 a Week) and I use it for chilli too. 

Taco Seasoning Mix

1/2 cup dried minced onion            2 tablespoons garlic powder
1/4 cup sweet paprika                    1 tablespoons ground cumin
1/4 cup cornstarch                        1 tablespoon dried oregano
3 tablespoons chili powder             1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons salt

Put all in a jar and shake it well.  Use 1/4 cup of mix for every pound of ground beef.  

I'm out of mix right now because I haven't bounht garlic powder for a while, so I can give you no visual.  Happily, we are still eating the garlic from the garden that I harvested last year.  The new batch is starting to poke up through the leaf mulch, so I may just have figured out how much garlic to grow to avoid buying Chinese garlic. 

Maybe I should dry some of it and grind it into powder.  That's probably a good idea before it starts to sprout in the basement. I'm just thinking that as I type.  Hmmm, I'll give you an update if it works well.  It worked great with leek, so I can't think why it wouldn't work with garlic. 

Soyless, Wheatless Soup Mix

I love Cream of Mushroom soup.  And Cream of Chicken soup.  And Cream of Broccolli soup.  And Cream of Celery Soup.


So many Albertan and Edmontonians are familiar with these cookbooks. 

You might find a few in your own stash of cookbooks.  Although dated in some ways, many of the recipes are nice and simple and contain common ingredients, so I keep them around and flip through them once in a while.

But many of the casseroles and vegetable recipes include Cream of ?? soup. That was the easy way to make a casserole in the 80's and 90's. 

These soups almost all contain soy, which the girls can't have.  And they contain wheat, which Yvon can't have.  For the past few years I just didn't buy it and didn't get to eat it.  Occasionally I would buy it, but the girls would make me feel bad when I made it just for myself.

And actually, since making a lot of things from scratch, I've started to find that unexpected things taste really sweet to me.  Why should mushroom soup taste sweet?   That doesn't seem right.

I was really pleased to find a recipe for "Cream of Anything" soup mix in a new recipe book.  It's a simple thing to make, and a revelation to me.  Why did I never think of doing something like this myself?  It's hardly rocket science and I find I use it a lot.  And it's soyfree and wheatfree. 

You can use it for soup, of course, by adding the celery, chicken, broccolli or mushrooms, but you can also use it for creamy sauces or the base of many casseroles.   I used it today for the creamy portion of a turkey pot pie. 

Cream of Anything Soup Mix  (Mary Ostyn's recipe in Family Feasts for $75 a Week)

3 cups powdered milk
1 cup cornstarch
1 cup powdered chick bouillon (I add this later because I haven't found a soy-free powdered bouillon)
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

To make soup, combine 1/2 cup dry mix with 1 1/4 cup water.  Blend well and oil, cooking for 2-3 minutes.  It will thicken as it cools. 

To this, you can add other ingredients like chicken, mushrooms or celery.  Or brocolli and cheese. 

 Yay!  This recipe has brought cream soup back into our lives.  

Eggs

This is so exciting!  Our cute little birds are starting to lay eggs for us. 

Yvon found this in their cage yesterday.

I don't know who's hand that is, so it might be misleading, but it isn't as small as I expected the first egg to be. The chickens start with half-formed or tiny eggs for the first few days and then settle into a standard size.  The standard for each breed we've got varies. 

Here is a normal egg for us (in my hands), compared to the quail egg. 

We're going to fry the tiny thing this afternoon to see how it tastes.  We're too impatient to wait for there to be 5 or 10 of them. 

We've had a bit of drama with the quails, but I think it's settled out to be three hens and one rooster.  The other definite and sex-crazed rooster was first pecked by the hens, isolated to heal and then escaped somehow.  Being a Japanese variety and cold-hardy, there's a chance he might survive in our climate.  I hold on to that hope.  If his behaviour didn't change, his lifespan with the hens was limited anyway.  I cling to the hope that he is flying freely somewhere and finding enough food. 

The chickens have increased production again after a slow winter with little light, so maybe we'll start getting enough eggs to stop buying them.  

The season of growth

Every spring the blogging world goes crazy with flower pictures, lovely picnics and cherry blossoms.

Isn't it lovely?  Look at all the vivid colours.

 

 

Flowers are just bursting out with colour and lovely perfumes.  Ah, spring!

Okay, that's probably enough sarcasm for one morning.  

But there really is some growth there.  There are tulips poking through, and daffodils, daylilies and dandilions.  And onions.

And in the house I'm growing a new batch of aphids.  Fresh and green and ripe for picking.  

Ooops, there's that sarcasm sneaking back in.  I've never had aphids indoors before and it's ticking me off.  Every day I have to run my fingers along the baby leaves of tomatoes and foxgloves to pick the off and try to keep their numbers under control.  

And I've got these growing in the window and they truly are ready to pick today.

Again, not very colourful, but they were fun.  And fast.  This is what they looked like last week on the first day of emergence.   

Teeny, tiny grey mushrooms.  And the next day:

Significantly bigger. And they kept growing and growing.
  

 Until today, when they will be brutally cut up and added to a mushroom sauce for our pork chops.  Hopefully they'll be yummy because there will be more growing on the opposite side of the box next week and there should be a few rounds of growth after that.

I don't know why the box says "Kits for Kids".  I've been having fun with it.