The Paper is here!

My youngest daughter used to say that desirable interiors, or clothes, or anything that needed to be fashionable, were "magazine" and I think that conveyed her intent very well.  Now that my home has been "published" in the paper does that make us "magazine"?  You know we are still unconventional!  It was such fun to see our familiar surroundings pictured in the Saturday paper.  We thought Ms. Krause did an excellent job too.  Lots of new blog readers showed up yesterday as she put the blog address at the end of the story.

However, I have already changed out the quilts on the quilt-rail.  I am late in doing so as I try to rotate them quarterly and I will have new ones for Christmas.

I have blown my monthly grocery budget.  I discovered that the "Butcher's Block" has a bulk rate, that I can get a sizable reduction in the price per pound if I buy a "package".  So I have spent $99.99 for 30 pounds of meat which just fits in our tiny freezer.  5 pounds each of lean ground beef, thick cut bacon, stew beef, pot roast, sweet Italian sausage, and chicken tenders.  The meat is top quality.   The temptation to chow down on high meat dinners is powerful.  I have already considered that maybe I won't be able to make it last 4 months.  But maybe 3 months . . .
That would mean that my monthly grocery budget will be $167.00 for the next 3 months.  But I haven't figured out how to recoup the extra $100 I've now spent for October!  Read here for further news on that!

We have company coming this week, in spades.  So the menus are patch-work:
Today, Meatloaf, cheesy rice and broccoli, sliced tomatoes, canned peaches.
Monday, double-meat chili, french bread with garlic butter and Parmesan, last of the peaches.
Tuesday, company breakfast:  bacon, sausage, hot biscuits, scrambled eggs, orange juice, coffee,
supper:  hamburgers, roasted garlic potatoes, sliced tomatoes, cupcakes.
Wednesday company supper, beef stew, hot biscuits, salad with blue cheese, apple pie.
Thursday, leftovers.
Friday: company dinner:  Kuliaba, (salmon in pie roll), last of the salad, assorted leftover desserts.
Saturday:  company breakfast:  poached eggs on toast, bacon, orange juice, eat out for supper.
Sunday:  company breakfast: biscuits with sausage gravy, hash browns, yellow tomato omelet, coffee and tea, eat out for supper.

"See my beautiful big brown eyes"?

According to my Mother, that was how I introduced myself to people on the street when I was three or four  In those days we did not call them "strangers"  they would have been "passers-by".  We spoke to everyone.
We were asked to bring a childhood picture to Writing Club Tuesday night.  This was the one I chose.  Then we were asked to write about the picture or to write a letter to the picture.  I wished I had brought a teen-aged picture, if I'd had one, like the others did.  There aren't any pictures of me during high school, even though I did all the things other kids did, Prom, graduation, in the school play.  It was just that my family was disintegrating.  Dismayed, I contemplated something to say to this picture.  As often happens during our writing practice, once I put my pencil to the paper, it just poured out:

"Dear little girl with the beautiful big brown eyes:
     You're so little, sitting on that bench-not yet four years old.  What can I say to warn you about the shoals ahead?  You've already noticed that things are done very differently in Owensboro, Kentucky, where you are now, than in Chicago where you live.  Playing in Grandmother's apartment under the watchful eye of the kitchen maid while Mother and Nana are off doing whatever grown-ups do.  When the fighting began, you hid under the white clothed table.  In Owensboro a flurry of adults around you where ever you go, buying clothes like the little pink organdy dress you have on.  New shoes and socks, a pink bow for your hair.  No fighting here, at least where you can hear  You'll remember this moment all your life-see the photographer age and eventually die-like the women who fluttered  in your orbit for these few weeks.  Take all the loving, the spoiling, the flutter, and keep it, but let the fighting die.  Meanness always exists and loving is sometimes in short supply but it's weightier, so you might get less of it but it'll be enough . . . .. . "

The Hot Brown Sandwich listed on last weeks menu. It was pretty good except the sour dough bread was somewhat tough under the rich Mornay sauce.

We went on our monthly shopping trip last Monday.  Tuesday morning I replenished the pantry.  From left to right:  Powdered sugar, whole wheat flour (not much of it). 5 pounds of self-rising flour, 10 pounds of plain flour, 2 pounds of sugar.  Up above, dark brown sugar, rose hips, light brown sugar, and an extra 4 pound package of white sugar, for when I make the rose hips into jelly.  I bought the rose hips at the health food store, in bulk.


On a sunny day we went to a garage sale just a few blocks from our house.  I bought this wall hanging for $3.  You can see that the quilting is very nice

 And the piecing is very nice too.  When I took it off the frame, I found the edges compromised by light, stretching and staples that had rusted.  But the center is fine.  I have only to add surrounding fabric to have a lovely quilt.  The hard work has already been done!  I have coupons for Joanne's fabric store so I will look for some suitable colors for the borders.  Shall I make it big or child size?

When I boil eggs for us, or for Eliyah to have as an after-school snack, I always put onion skins in the water.  It doesn't look all that good.

Then when they are boiled and rinsed, they look like this.  And one can always distinguish the raw eggs from the cooked.  Besides, they look nice.  We always had brown eggs when we lived in the country.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big Day

Today was our big day!!!  The newspaper sent a columnist out to do a story on our home!  I don't know what could be more gratifying.  Or more work!  I swear, we have moved every piece of furniture around, cleaned under each of them, run up and down stairs looking for likely relics and still wound up with an empty bookcase!  We set up the living room in the winter configuration, with a table near the wood stove for  warm dinners.  Tired of decluttering the table all the time, we put a bookcase at the end of the couch to hold all the stuff that we fidget with while watching TV.
 

 At the last minute, yesterday, I made some necessary bread and then some sweet rolls to offer with tea.  We enjoyed her visit very much and it was fun to expound on our philosophy and our stuff for a couple of hours.

We went to great trouble to get in this new-to-the-house barrister bookcase and then didn't fill it.  I am looking forward to seeing some of Bill's miniatures in it soon.  Notice the knock-your-eye-out vintage tablecloth from the forties.  There's a touch of that salmon color in the window shades.

I am afraid I didn't follow my last weekend's menus at all.  Saturday night we were both tired and grumpy after prolonged house cleaning and I attempted a nap at 5:30 in the evening.  I wasn't much interested in fixing supper, I can tell you.  The phone rang.  I didn't answer it.  It rang again and this time I grumpily got up and answered and our friend Janet said "Can you come to a gourmet dinner, right now"?  What?  Where?  Well . . .I guess . . .. .so. . . So we changed out of our dirty clothes and went and what a dinner it was!  I forget how many courses there were, all seafood:  crab cakes, clam chowder, smoked salmon and the main entree, delicous baked fish, with carrot cake for dessert!  Oh yes and somewhere in there was shrimp salad.  We were hours eating that lovely meal.  And then they were bringing out take-away containers, so we brought some home  too.
Sunday night I made some rissoto and got the ingredients wrong and made about a half a gallon of it.  Guess we'll be having it again.  I laid the pieces of fish on the hot rice, vegetables alongside and fresh brown bread, cream cheese and smoked salmon open-faced sandwiches.  It was just as good the second time!
Tonight I'm making hot brown sandwiches, with chicken slices on the bread, hot Mornay sauce, bacon and tomato on top.  Steamed broccoli and applesauce for dessert.
Tuesday:  Baked potatoes with cheese sauced broccoli, sliced tomatoes, home-made bread and butter and applesauce
Wednesday:  Hamburgers, baked beans, sliced tomatoes, applesauce
Thursday:  Pizza
Friday:  Pork tenderloins, rissotto, mixed stirfry vegetables, brownies
Saturday, Cream of potato soup, chicken and cheese sandwiches, brownies.

September is the harvest season

These vegetables cost me $5 at a roadside stand: 4 giant tomatoes (each one weighs about 12 ounces), 3 red peppers, 3 zucchini, and 5 baby pumpkins!  I love this season.  We stopped at the orchard below Bedford and bought a peck of apples too.  I had a new recipe for "Paper Bag Apple Pie".  But it called for boiled cider.  So Eliyah and I stopped at the store and bought some apple juice and I boiled it down to a thick syrup in a crock pot.  We made the pie the next day and Eliyah and his mother took some home. It was very good but rather a lot of trouble.  The topping was streusel rather than strips of pie crust.  The paper bag we baked it in became very browned and smelled of burning paper!          

In this lovely weather, I like to hang out the laundry.  The whites I hang in the sun on my umbrella line which I installed in the back yard myself 10 years ago, using a bag of cement that can be mixed right in the hole to set the pipe in.  In the winter the whole top portion can be brought in, folded and stored in the garage.  A good thing to do because now-a-days a sooty coating appears on the rope that comes off on your whites and has to be scrubbed off very vigorously because it doesn't come out of the clothes at all. I don't remember that from all the clothes lines in my childhood!  The darks I put on a folding rack on the front porch.  They don't need any sunlight to fade them.  I like the smell of outdoors and the faint stiffness in the fabric. Too, sunlight is the best disinfectant of all and completely non-toxic.

Here are the menus for the week:

Sunday:  Boneless pork chops, dressing, sliced tomatoes, corn, the last of the pie

Monday:  Pasta with red sauce, tossed salad, dark chocolate

Tuesday:  Hot dogs, cottage fried potatoes, steamed broccoli, dark chocolate

Wednesday:  French bread pizza, ice cream

Thursday:  Hamburgers, garlicky broiled potato wedges, sliced tomatoes, last of the ice cream

Friday, Chili, cheese sandwiches, tomato slices, if there are any more, canned peaches

Saturday:  Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, Home canned green beans, canned peaches

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Is it Fall yet?

Summertime

      I am really enjoying summer this year, even through the heat, even though I keep putting off the yard work and it's getting pretty shaggy now.  And now that Eliyah comes three days a week, I am sure I'm going to play some every week.  Last week he beat me roundly at checkers!  I am enjoying the garden produce and the flowers too.  Here are some Zinnias in the yard of a friend who has a green thumb.  She has lots of tomatoes too and I took some home and canned Salsa for her and for us.

In my Friend's yard are many flowers.

Some people don't realize how pretty Hydrangeas are in alkaline soil.

 

There were six jars of salsa but we have already eaten one!

     Here is a new cookbook I bought last week when I was Not-buying antiques with a friend.  It's a Russian cookbook from 1969, a Time-Life series. (it cost me a grand $2) It has a number of recipes in it so I was surprised to find that it's not actually the cookbook, but a story-line that goes with a spiral bound cookbook.  Bill has ordered me the other part but in the mean-time, I have begun to use the recipes in the book  This one is Kulebiaka, salmon in pastry.  I try to have fish about once a week but Bill is not very fond of seafood, unless you mean shrimp.  I liked the look of this recipe and the fact that the filler was rice rather than my usual oatmeal when I make salmon patties.  Herbs made the taste memorable and really, I was surprised that canned salmon could taste so good, and ordinarily I like it anyway!

Here is the book

Here is the pie, well, one-half the pie

    

A better view

Here's the picture in the book.  It was not difficult to make.  Recipe follows.

     Here are my menus for the week:
Thursday-  Hot dogs, roasted garlic potatoes, sliced tomatoes, watermelon
Friday-Sandwiches only as we had eaten lunch out and were not very hungry. Later we had popcorn.
Saturday- Kulebiaka, fresh corn on the cob, tomato salad with blue cheese and watermelon
Today- Spinach dip and toast squares, pasta with red sauce, salad, almond cookies
Monday-Anniversary dinner at Scholar's Inn, It's been 11 years since Bill came to stay with his little suitcase!  In October we'll celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary.
Tuesday-left-over Kulebiaka, steamed mixed vegetables, Cherry tomatoes with blue cheese, watermelon
Wednesday-Chef's salad with cheese, egg and meat, baked potatoes, watermelon, if there's any left!
Thursday-Hamburgers with lettuce and tomato, garlic roasted potatoes, cookies, if there are any left!

Kulebiaka, or my version of it.

1 can salmon, 14 ounces
1  1/2 cups cooked rice
2 eggs, beaten
1 small onion, minced finely
1 tablespoon dried parsley
1 teaspoon dried dill weed
1 scant teaspoon salt
some ground pepper
4 large pats butter
1 recipe best piecrust

Piecrust: 2 cups plain flour, 1 stick butter, 1/3 cup cold water, 4 tablespoons cooking oil
Work the butter into the flour, first with a knife, then with your fingers.  Measure the cold water, add the oil to the water and pour into the flour and butter mixture.  Gently mix until barely sticking together.  Divide in half and roll out each half into a long thin oval, one somewhat wider than the other, make it about 10 or 12  inches long and about 6 or 7 inches wide.  Mix the salmon, with its juice but picking out the backbones, the rice, eggs, onion and flavorings well.  Spoon onto the wider piece of pie crust, piling it up high. Dot with butter.   Lay the second piece of crust over the first and the fish pile and press the edges down, then fold the bottom, wider portion over the top edge and crimp.  Cut a steam hole in the middle. Transfer carefully with two spatulas to baking sheet.   Bake at 400 for about 50 minutes, watch the browning at the end.  Makes about 7 or 8 generous servings.

For the tomato salad, I just chop up tomatoes, sprinkle with bits of blue cheese and drizzle with a little salad dressing.  Cherry tomatoes can be cut in half.

     I am always on the look-out for a good recipe.  I don't mind paying for a cook book that has several recipes that become family favorites and end up being used frequently through-out the year.  Of course, the internet has an endless supply of recipes and I do use it and keep a loose leaf notebook full of print-outs, but to do a search you need to have a recipe in mind.  A cook book with a regional theme, or an opinionated author may have something I haven't even thought of.  And yes, you can teach an old dog new tricks!

It's much cooler here now!

     Last month was very hot in this house.  I found I didn't have much energy, not even to blog.  Then we got a new air conditioner.  Though it's not very big, it cools most of the house very efficiently and we are enjoying it very much.  I admit to being somewhat of a baby about being too hot.  Crabby and inefficient!  And only marginally better now because I quite got used to being lazy!  However, it's time to go shopping.  Last month I only spent $100 at the grocery store because of O'bama's threat that there might not be Social Security checks in August.  I know it wouldn't have made any difference but at least I was doing something!  I did buy vegetables at road side stands and some fancy hot dogs and lunch meat at Aldi's when they came unexpectedly on sale.  We're still enjoying those things.  Now it's time to do some serious shopping!  Here are my shopping bags, all 14 of them, ready to be put in the car and hauled out at 3 different stores.

     First we went to the Butcher's Block, on the east side.  I spent about $30 there and got 2# of ground sirloin, 2 # Indiana Platter bacon, 2# of stew beef, 1# of Italian sweet sausage and 2 boneless pork chops to stuff.  Enough for about 18 meals plus many breakfasts.  Remember we have Kosher hot dogs, lunch meat and chicken breasts already, plus canned salmon and tuna and cheese.  28 meals coming up.  I spent almost exactly $200 for the total.  Counting my additional purchases we spent about $125 for last month's.  Monthly shopping takes us about 2 hours.

     The menus for this week are:
Thursday-   Pork Fried Rice, tossed salad with blue cheese, fresh baked bread and butter, Mandarin oranges
Friday-     Tuna noodle casserole with mushrooms, tossed salad, Cantaloup
Saturday-     Birthday party, I went and had a taste of everything and brought home a plate for Hubby
Sunday-     Stewed stew beef, corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes,  mashed potatoes, chocolate bar, almonds
Monday-     Chicken Fajitas, rice and refried beans, salsa and sour cream, Melon
Tuesday-     Tomato soup and hot dogs, Melon
Wednesday-     Fajitas leftovers with oven baked chips of the tortillas to dip in the 7 layer dip
Thursday-     Hamburgers and oven roasted garlic flavored potatoes, Melon

     On the day I went to the grocery, I had in the fridge, as left-overs, about 3/4 of a package of Lite cream cheese and about 4 ounces of extra sharp cheddar cheese.  I combined these with some Worcestershire sauce and some onion powder and made a cheese ball, which we had with crackers when we got back from the store.  My husband asked me why I had made it and I began to reminisce about snack foods and things we used to serve company.  In those days, everyone had company, sometimes several times a week.  For instance, my Not-Grandmother always served Ritz crackers with a dollop of cream cheese in the center of each and sometimes a spot of jelly in the center of that.  It was her stock in trade.  Along with that she might pour small glasses of Coca Cola or my Grandfather would make high balls, drinks with whiskey in them.  As a child, I always got prune juice!  It took me a while to figure that out as it was the same color as Coke.  Bill called to mind the people in his neighborhood too.  Patrica Renee', who always made drop biscuits, served with butter for non-purists, but eaten dry  with coffee by aficionados.  She was a painter of lovely pictures, and she signed them 'Patricia Renee'.  Peg Wentworth made diminutive loaves of white bread, served hot with butter and a small sprinkling of brown sugar, which Bill says were to die for!  Mrs. Eckert baked cakes and pies for her family's dinners but visitors got cookies from her always stocked cookie jar.  His Mother made popcorn in summer and Chex mix in winter and she also served small glasses of soft drinks of various brands and flavors.  Now that Eliyah is going to be visiting three days a week, I am thinking of making melon balls as an afternoon snack.  I am tempted to make some cookies too, but maybe I'll hold off a few days.  We'll just eat them!

     I had out my 1930's binder of A & P menus a couple of days ago and was reading off unlikely-sounding combinations from recipes but Bill responded to one:  noodles and eggs scrambled together.  He said it would be good if it had say shrimp in it and maybe also mushrooms, and how about green onions.  I thought his version sounded much better than the 1930's one and made it for breakfast this morning.  It was nearly 11:30 when we sat down so maybe Brunch would be a more accurate description.  The new recipe did not disapoint, and served with fresh hot biscuits and hot tea was a delightful start to our Sunday.