Saturday Season-ing IX

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Time to spice up our lives a bit.

What is a seasonal food for you?

Lynlee: are you ready for soups and stews yet?

What lighter, springtime foods are there?

Here there isn't much because the ground is still too cold for most things to grow. Asparagus and garlic scapes are our first items. And we don't have the migrant labour here to harvest the asparagus right now (it is a skill, not something just anyone can do well) so the local stalks haven't shown up yet.

[Lynlee]

Good Morning Kathryn

Tonight I bothered myself enough to make dinner, having needed to wash some things up first.
I mostly do one pot cooking. Tonight's offering was (in order of tossing it in a pot) 250mls water, frozen mixed veg(peas carrot corn), 140gm diced kangaroo, 1/3 cup brown rice, s&p, cumin and oregano.
There are variations on a theme with protein type, veg, spice and herb, rice type. Often it turns out 'wet' so I count that as extra fluid.
So that's often the base of my main meal.

Good night all.

[DeeClutter]

Well, there goes Biscuit doing her "howl". It's funny because she only howls when a fire truck is going down the main road. Must be something about that particular tone. She's so funny. She only started that maybe 3 or 4 months ago & we were rather startled when she first began it. Now we just laugh ourselves silly.

DD left about 10 minutes ago to go to B ig L ots to get some large storage bins for her classroom stuff. She has 3 days of appointments to clean her room. She'll bring everything home that she'll need in the fall (that's hers) if she gets hired by the nearby high school. She's hoping -if only for the lesser travel time/gas. Right now it's about 80 miles roundtrip and nearly 2 hours or more. She figures it would be at least a $200/month raise depending on gas costs. It was just make life easier for her. She's really happy where she is but it's the trip more than anything plus having somewhere around 150 students. At the most she would have 50 in the high school -teaching Logistics.

I've been up since 5:30. BS was really low -56. So took my T med, waited my 30 minutes then had a snack to counteract the low. I knew it would be low but forgot. We had shrimp packets for dinner and it's always low after that meal.

Put a large load of laundry in about 7. I've done my morning things and am waiting for dsonil to get up so I can do the dishes (which I didn't do last night).

BTW, can't remember who posted the other day about sending out emails by mistake -just saying I didn't get it either.

[LadyMaverick]

It was me that sent the PM to Kathryn & I also included the "Members" group by mistake. I'm taking a guess the Admin & mods aren't members of that group. >>>shaking head at my blunder<<<<

I'm thankful for the good night's sleep. I slept the whole night without being woke up by kids or storms. It was simply blissful!

I piddled with the sweet potato slips this morning. One of the potatoes I'm using to grow the slips has purple roots. I'm assuming the inside of the potato is also purple. I have about a dozen slips ready to go into the garden as soon as the weather stabilizes. It dropped down to 39F degrees last night.

Harvesting asparagus is something we have the kids do. I tell them to harvest the spears bigger than their finger and leave the rest alone. The spears they harvest are not uniform in size like the store ones are. The spears can grow 6" a day so it is vital to harvest every day. If you miss a couple of days then the spears are too big to harvest so they get to grow into ferns to build up the root system. Oops. I triggered my love of gardening. I can think and talk nonstop about it.

LynLee - I love the ingredients of your one-pot meal. When I spent time in Alabama (Huntsville) I used to eat at an Australian restaurant that served kangaroo. Your meal brought back pleasant memories to me. I made a one-pot meal too yesterday - water, butter, ground beef, cream cheese, crushed red pepper, Bragg liquid aminos, alfredo sauce, tilapia, diced tomatoes & chili, and chopped spinach. No one else in my home will eat it so I ate the whole thing myself while they ate pancakes and pizza.

Dee - I'm intrigued by your tracking of areas deep cleaned and organized. I like the thought of knowing when the last time a particular drawer or shelf was given close scrutiny and consideration. Are you using a spreadsheet to track it?

My plans for the day -
** AM cards
** Healthy tracker updated
** One thing a day done well (imitating Dee)
** Mother day cards and gifts prepared.
** Complete Module 2 lesson 3 in my course.

Decision made to not buy the 1.3mm mechanical pencils for school use for awhile. I'm returning both kids to using the #2 wood encased pencil. I just ordered 150 of them so we should be good to go for a bit. It seems they go through pencils like crazy but I think it is just a normal rate but I'm not used to having 2 kids doing school lessons at home.

[Twins' Mom]

Hard to believe this is nine weeks. They are all beginning to run together. There are no distinguishing characteristics from week to week, except for perhaps this week when I had a massage and lost my earrings.

It's sunny again today, high 63. We are having dizzying weather changes. At least we seem to have sunny weather for the weekend, albeit cooler. I didn't cover my tomatoes and basil last night - I'm sure they weren't happy with 40 degrees but hopefully they'll deal with it. At this rate it will be August before we get tomatoes. All I am planting is tomatoes and basil and flowers. I put out zinnia seeds last weekend but they're not going to germinate until they're warm, I'm afraid.

So I have an outdoor list going for the weekend.

I wanted to put in a plug for this e-cloth window scrubbing pair: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004G ... UTF8&psc=1 I put those nasty skillets in the oven and ran the oven cleaning cycle this week and got it all cleaned, and the pair did an amazing job of polishing up the oven glass window. It's not perfect but it sure does look a whole lot better. I don't think I've ever been able to get it that clean before. (One cleans first with the dampened waffle cloth, then the darker cloth polishes.) I had also cleaned out back door/windows to the patio and they looked good, but then dh pressure washed the patio and got them splashed up with residue - in short, they need cleaning again. I'm glad I hadn't done the bigger picture window yet.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

I'm a bump on a log today. How about you?

I'm just about to push away from the computer for a few minutes. Maybe I'll put on an old, favourite movie and see if that will keep me focused on sorting tax docs or doing data entry.

It is snowing today so outside adventures seem unlikely.

[Twins' Mom]

Snowing huh.

What weird weather. I've never had pansies still happy this late into May before either.

[DeeClutter]

No, I haven't used a spread sheet (but probably should) LadyM.

I simply do a column of dates down the left, then in the next box put the drawer, shelf, cabinet (whatever). When I've completed it I simply turn the line 'green'. I only put one thing per day, but quite often do 2 or 3 or more. I'm way past the time we're leaving now. I'll start a new list when I get north for the RV. (I'm sure it'll need it after dh has batched it for 2 1/2 months. First thing I have to do is find room for the air fryer he bought down here. He uses it frequently so I need it to stay out. But our counters have on them: toaster, microwave, toaster oven, coffee maker & pod drawer, a big crock for kitchen tools, 4 large cannisters. (Has anyone had good luck using a toaster oven in place of a microwave? I need to buy a new one this year & I'm rethinking it.)Think that's it. We do have an extra counter that most RVs don't have -one over a hutch. We also have an island with the sink, etc. We call it our "one butt kitchen". There definitely is no room for a second person in there. Then of course there's the air fryer which dh just has on the island right now. I won't be able to stand that and the crowdedness. Our Instant Pot is outside in an additional cabinet. My plan is to clean that out pretty much the first thing. We also bought an 'indoor grill' from A ldis here before dh left. He's used that a little bit -I'll put that outside as well.

DD's baking banana bread with bananas that are way too ripe. Hopefully they'll be good for that.

Yes it's snowing up home as well. Saw a picture of fire department members handing out masks in the snowy weather. It is May 9th, right? (Though I do remember some snow even later than that. But it seems like the cold has been very consistent this year.)

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

July is the only month I've never experienced at least snow flurries in. Both June and August are very rare, as is September. But May is usually good for at least snow flurries. This is why one doesn't plant one's garden unless you have garden cloches to protect the plants. Frost is the norm right up until after our unofficial start of 'summer', the Victoria Day weekend.

We just had a thick band of snow pellets go through and now there's a lot of white stuff on the balcony. In between these bands, the sun shines.

[Twins' Mom]

While dh was gone to Costco I started with garage sweeping and got the worst corner of it cleaned up and organized. He agreed to give away a big bag of baseballs, softballs, bats and gloves to our neighbor whose kids play. I bet neighbor says "no thank you" but it dh's deal, he's saved these so many years. (Actually I think we put the stuff out at our garage sale when we sold the other house, and it didn't sell.) Dmom's old vacuum, which is a good one is still in the garage. I thought I wanted to clean it up and use it but our Dyson is very good so I never did. Offered it just now to dnephew who asked for it back when we emptied dmom's house and he didn't want it, so going to Goodwill. Dh and I went through a box of books and pulled out some to keep, left a few to ask kids about. So that's books to dust and put away in the house later.

Next up, after this break, is flowers for the front porch. The top of one of the tomato plants looks super wilted so I'll pinch it off. Otherwise, I think they got through last night okay.

So I figure that takes care of "storage zone" for the week.