You know those nights where to get into bed and suddenly, you’re just awake? Absolutely zero chance of falling asleep?
Well, I had one of those last night. Finally, at around 4am, I got up to find a food. I sat at my computer table to eat and, since I was there and the computer was off, I decided to clean out the crevices on my mouse. It wasn’t as bad as I expected, so I decided to do the same to my keyboard.
I cannot believe how much cat hair I pulled out from between the keys! How does it even get in there??? Today, however, it feels like I’m typing on a brand new keyboard. 😄
I finally tried going back to sleep at about 5am and managed to get a bit of highly interrupted (by cats) sleep before it was time to get up and do the morning routine and feed the outside cats. Then I tried to go back to bed, but found I wasn’t feeling well for some reason. I finally did doze off, only for the phone to ring and wake me up.
I gave up after that.
I still wasn’t feeling well in general. Part of it had me wondering what I might have eaten to trigger problems (nothing out of the ordinary), and part of it was my joints wanting to give out on me. That whole “shoulder wants to dislocate while reaching to flush the toilet” thing is decidedly inconvenient!
I ended up getting one of my daughters to do the evening outside cat feeding.
I was feeling particularly useless today, so I started looking up recipes. At some point, Pinterest started showing me some Pins for liquid dough flat bread, which caught my attention. We aren’t baking bread anywhere near as much as we should be. Our bread machine stopped working properly a while ago, though we could still have it mix up a batch of dough in the evening, ready to bake in the oven in the morning, but we weren’t always in a position to do baking in the morning. Plus, a single loaf doesn’t go very far with four adults in the household.
Meanwhile, with all of us breaking down, one way or another, we were focusing more on no-knead bread recipes, anyhow. Most of these still require rising time, but sometimes I want something faster. Baking powder pan bread works okay, but variety is always nice.
Today, I found a couple of “liquid dough” recipes that looked good and decided to try one of them out. The dough’s texture is thinner than a batter bread, but thicker than a pancake batter, though there seems to be quite a bit of variability between recipes.
This is the basic recipe I settled on to try today.
Liquid Dough Flatbread
Ingredients: 2 cups flour (AP or whole wheat) 2 cups water 1 egg (beaten) 1/4 tsp salt 1/4 tsp sugar 2-3 tsp dried parsley (or slightly less, if using chopped fresh parsley) Oil or butter (melted) for cooking
Instructions: 1. Add all ingredients together in a medium bowl and whisk together until smooth. 2. Heat non-stick skillet over medium high heat. Brush lightly with oil or butter. 3. Pour 1/2 cup of batter into the hot skillet and spread evenly. 4. Cook until the bottom starts to change colour and is solid enough to flip. 5. Flip, then apply a light coating of oil or butter. 6. Press the edges with a spatula (they tend to curl up). Cook for 2-3 minutes, then flip again. 7. Apply another light layer of oil or butter. Continue to cook for another 2-3 minutes, or until both sides are golden brown. Note: a bubble of steam may form in the middle.
For this, I used olive oil in a handy little dispenser and a pastry brush to spread it, which made things easier. I also used a half cup measuring cup as my ladle, with a rubber spatula to scrape the outside to keep it from dripping all over and making a mess. With the half cup measuring cup, I was able to do 7 flatbreads that were about 8″ across this way, then for the last one, I just poured in what was left, which made for a flatbread about 10″ across.
The original recipe said to put all the ingredients (the egg did not need to be beaten first), except the parsley, into a blender, blend it smooth, then transfer to a medium bowl and stir in the parsley. We don’t have a blender, but why would I want to dirty extra things when a wire whisk and one bowl will do the job? I didn’t even bother to beat the egg in a separate bowl, but just made sure to beat it before incorporating everything else in the bowl.
The finished flatbreads had a lightly crispy edge, and a softer, chewier middle.
We taste tested them plain.
My conclusion:
Very easy and quick to mix up, and not too bad when it came to how long they took to cook, for something that could be cooked only one at a time.
Adding the extra oil when flipping them did result in them being slightly oiler than I prefer – and I didn’t oil them as much as the original recipe called for!
For flavour, I think it would have been better if I’d used butter, ghee or even a flavoured olive oil, rather than a plain olive oil. I think butter would be best, as they rather needed the extra salt. Something to experiment with, if I make this recipe again, as it was a bit on the bland side.
I think I would also like to experiment with trying different additions instead of the parsley. Finely chopped garlic, for example, or a dry grated cheese, like Parmesan, or even some powdered, dehydrated tomato or spinach, for savoury options. I think it would also work well with a bit more sugar – maybe substituting brown sugar instead – and the addition of things like ground cinnamon or cloves, for a sweeter option.
While we were taste testing these plain as a snack, I think they would be a nice addition to go along with a hearty soup or stew, though for that, I really prefer our fluffy dumplings. More likely, we would use this as a wrap, like we use tortillas, with some sort of savoury filling. My daughter thought they would be nice dipped in some hummus or sour cream. Interestingly, she found the flavour quite “eggy”, which I didn’t get at all. Her taste buds can pick up a lot more than mine can, though.
I do think this is something that might work well for campfire or firepit cooking, too. Our well seasoned Dutch oven lid has legs and can double as a griddle that would be perfect for something like this.
In the end, I think this is something that would do well to quickly work up when feeling peckish but, as I mentioned before, it’s a bit on the bland side. I can see myself making a half recipe of this as a snack during the night.
A night like last night, were sleep just didn’t want to happen!!
Today’s high was warmer than originally forecast, reaching -1C/30F
Which caused some problems!
This first was something I noticed in the sunroom again. Ice on the corner of one of the litter boxes. Too much for it to be from a cat pissing over the edge. I’d used the ice scraper to clear some up when the litters in there were last changed, but now there was even more.
There was only one other place it could be coming from.
Yes, those are icicles on the ceiling of the sun room.
This is not good. We haven’t had this since the new roof was installed. Great care was taken to make sure this didn’t happen again.
I went outside again to check the sun room roof. The problem was easy to see. While we haven’t had a large amount of snow this year, above that corner is where the roof from the original log part of the house slightly overhangs the slope of the sun room roof. So any snowmelt from the higher roof drains onto the sun room roof.
Now, what it should be doing is draining into the eavestrough on the sun room roof. That trough, however, is now filled with ice. At the opposite end of the down spout, a large ice dam has formed – and there’s nothing we can do about it. There is no way to safely get up there.
The best I could do was get the roof rake and remove as much snow as I could. Which really wasn’t much, but it should at least expose the ice dam to the sun. The eavestrough is a dark brown, which should warm up a bit faster, too. Ideally, we would have heat tape up there, but we’ve already got too many things plugged into the one outlet in the old kitchen. It’s got our freezer plugged into it, as well as extension cords to power the heated water bowl, heat lamps and the outlet in the cat house, which powers another heated water bowl and a heat bulb inside.
Tomorrow is supposed to have a high of -2C/28F, then the day after, we now have a forecast of 3C/37F. Hopefully, I’ve removed enough snow for things to melt at least partially clear.
In the spring/summer, someone is going to have to get up there to see where the moisture is coming through. No one – not even the roofers – figured out exactly where it was coming in before, but since we hadn’t had a leak inside the sun room since, we figured it got patched up while the new roof was installed. I did tell the roofers about the leak, and exactly where it was leaking, so they did look for a source, which they never found, and made sure the flashing was good. Still, here we are!
I had intended to break Spewie out again and continue clearing the driveway, but as I switched out the trail cam cards, I found it was too windy for the job. Plus, I could tell I was paying for the amount I’d done yesterday. I was feeling joints trying to dislocate all over the place!
As soon as I was able, I pain killered up and tried lying down.
Ha! Yeah, that didn’t work too well.
My daughter, meanwhile, headed outside to get the fire pit going, so we could do our wiener roast.
By then, it had started to rain!
She was able to get the fire started, though. It did take longer to get it down to cooking coals. She brought out an energy drink to have while tending the fire, and it actually started to turn into slush before long. When I came out to join her, I had mine in a can cozy, to keep it from freezing. By then, it was ice-raining quite a bit.
This wasn’t going to be a day to roast weinies on sticks! Instead, I brought out a tray meant for doing smaller vegetables and such on the BBQ. Once we had enough coals, I set that up on the round grill with a dozen wieners on it, then covered them with foil to keep the rain off and the heat in. Then my daughter used her fire poker stick to pull the grill around over the coals. That’s what you’re seeing in the second picture of the slide show above.
I had some concern that the grill was too high, but that turned out to not be an issue at all. In fact, when my daughter swung the grill off to turn the wieners, they were almost starting to burn!
So those didn’t take very long at all. It was almost a shame to not have anything else to cook!
Once they were done, we swung the grill away again and let things cool down enough that I could transfer them onto the foil, wrap them up and take them inside to keep warm in the oven.
The paths in the yard were incredibly slippery, with frozen rain!
On the way back out, I grabbed a bag of hot dog buns, so we could toast them over the coals. By then, it had stopped raining, so we didn’t need to cover them with foil. It took three batches to do a dozen buns, but they toasted very quickly, so it took no time at all.
Then I took the buns in and made up some hot dogs for my daughter and I, leaving the rest wrapped up to stay warm in the oven with the rest of the wieners for my husband and other daughter. It was too dangerous for my husband to come out, even with the walker, and my older daughter was working on commissions for most of last night, so she wasn’t going to be up again for a while yet, so they had theirs indoors.
My hot dogs had cheese on them, so I wrapped ours up in two packages of foil, which we set back over the coals to warm up again and melt the cheese, flipping them part way through. Once they were warm again, we could set the grill just a bit to one side, so we could each grab a hot dog to eat, while the rest could stay warm in the foil near the fire.
We had Sir Robin hanging out with us, very interested in the smells. Even Fancy Pants kept coming around. For a cat that won’t let us touch him, he does enjoy being near us!
Once we were done eating, we just stayed out to enjoy the fire. My daughter tended it while, little by little, I put things away. At one point, I decided to check on the outer yard.
The area I cleared yesterday was downright deadly. I did not get far! In the above pictures, you can see the layer of ice, gleaming in the sun. I was going to check on my brother’s trucks with the solar powered trickle chargers, to make sure the panels were clear, but it was just too slippery. Even going back to the inner yard through the areas I’d cleared, I had to walk on sections with slightly deeper snow, so I could stomp through the ice layer and gain traction under it.
By the time the fire pit was burned down enough, my daughter had been out there for about 3 or 4 hours, and I’d been out for maybe half a hour less.
It was absolutely lovely and, in the end, a really nice way to rest and recharge for the day.
With the crust of ice on everything, I definitely won’t be breaking little Spewie out to do the rest of the driveway. We can get through it, at least, if necessary, but I’m glad I got any driving I needed to do over with, yesterday. I really feel for anyone who had to drive in that freezing rain! I think my brother and SIL are driving their grandson back home this weekend, but I don’t think that province got hit with the freezing rain, so they should be okay.
I just double checked and I was correct. We are still under “moderate” freezing rain warnings, but it’s affecting only our province.
So… that was really fun.
Now I’m going over our stock in my mind, thinking what we could do over the fire, next! I wouldn’t mind trying something like a stew in the Dutch oven, next.
We really enjoy the fire pit and I’m wanting to learn how to do more open fire cooking. Unfortunately, the last couple of summers have seen fire bans and, even without fire bans, it has simply been too windy to safely get a fire going.
So it looks like winter is going to be the time we are most likely able to use the fire pit! It’s been pushed back a few times, but today, I finally got it going.
It also gave me a chance to try using the magnesium rod and striker my husband got for me about a year ago, to light the fire. I started off using inner bark as tinder, but it was from bark that had been gathered over the summer and tucked under the fire pit cover. It would start to sometimes smolder, but was juuuust damp enough that it couldn’t catch and stay caught.
Conveniently, though, I had a tissue in my pocket. Once that caught, the inner bark could also catch, and I soon had a roaring fire.
My daughter was very disappointed that I went out ahead of her and started the fire. She wanted to do that! 😄 We’ll have to do this more often.
Once she came out, I left her to tend the fire and build up a coal bed, using the maple and apple firewood I’ve been setting aside for cooking fires. I went in to get the Dutch oven out and get the roast ready.
This time, I tried lining the Dutch oven with parchment paper, first. Last time, I used aluminum foil. It took two sheets of parchment paper, at right angles to each other, to be able to completely cover the bottom and sides. I oiled the bottom with a rosemary infused olive oil from the set we got for Christmas. I stuck whole cloves are garlic into slits on the fat cap side of the pork roast, salted it, placed it fat cap down into the Dutch oven, then added salt and pepper. Then I put whole red potatoes, quarters of onions and carrots cut in half around it. Last of all, I added a cup of reconstituted vegetable bouillon. Another sheet of parchment paper went over the top, the edges were gathered in, and finally the lid was put on.
In the second picture of the slide show above, you can see the fire still needed to burn down to coals a bit more. The handy thing of doing this in the winter is, we don’t have to worry about keeping things refrigerated. Though freezing might be an issue! 😄
We never completely uncovered the fire bricks on one side – I uncovered three, but the fourth was still hiding under the coals. There was a bit of a wind, so we decided to use the middle of the fire pit, instead. Normally, I would have the Dutch oven’s legs on the fire bricks, with an open space between the bricks directly under it for hot coals, set to one side of the fire pit, while a live fire was kept going on the other side to produce more hot coals, as needed. This time, we put it on hot coals in the middle, added some on the lid, then kept the fire going all around it. This way, we didn’t need to refresh the coals over the hour we left it to roast. We just needed to keep the fire going all around. You can see the set up in the next picture of the slide show.
In the last picture in the slide show, you can see how the food looked when we checked it after an hour. We probably could have taken it out earlier. The burned parchment paper tells me that temperatures inside the Dutch oven reached at least 450F. The meat was thoroughly cooked through!
We set the Dutch over aside on the metal sheet I use to cover the fire pit, stoked up the fire and simply enjoyed the flames for the next while. I didn’t want to be carrying the food in while the cast iron was still really hot. Then, after I brought it in, we both stayed outside to enjoy the fire some more!
We were able to make a good dent in the branch pile in the process. Another reason why we want to get the fire pit going more often. We have a branch pile in easy reach for the fire pit, but it’s getting too big!
While we were out there, we had a lot of cats running through the paths around us, but they disappeared as the snow started getting heavier. After a while, I started to bring our camp chairs and tools inside.
Fluffy is such a beauty. I do wish she would allow us to pet her! Once in a while, I can touch her, but she is more likely to run away.
Yes, we have a Fluffy and a Fluffer. Because I’m just sooooo creative when it comes to naming cats. 😄
So that was the highlight of my day today. Making supper. 😄 It turned out really excellent, too. The potatoes really absorbed the flavours of that vegetable bouillon.
Next time we use the Dutch oven like that, though, I’ll line it with aluminum foil. It was hard to get the charred parchment paper out without dropping bits. 😄
My daughter, however, was suggesting that next time, we do a wiener roast, so I’ll be picking up some hot dog buns and wieners, the next time I’m in town.
Which will be tomorrow. I’ll be going to my mother’s apartment, first, then heading to town to visit her with some stuff she asked for.
Ha! I just checked the forecast. Yes, it’s changed again. They are saying 0C/32F as the high on Monday again (today is Friday), but now they’re saying Tuesday will reach a high of 3C/37F!
Today was expected to be chillier, with the forecasted high covering at, or just below, freezing, depending on what app I looked at and when. The next two days are supposed to be much warmer, and likely the last warm days of the year, so I’m planning activities accordingly.
Since moving out here (I forgot all about our 8 year anniversary here, almost a week ago!), our plans tend to very much revolve around the weather and the seasons!
The day started out with my usual routine, which always starts with tending to the yard cats.
Furriosa looks hilariously furious! Pinky is healing well and seems absolutely indifferent to her surgical site. I supposed her shaved belly must feel at least somewhat cold, but being in the heated isolation shelter is probably enough to make up for that. Especially when she has three kittens to cuddle up in the bed and keep her warm!
We’re going to have to do something about the second bed in the lower level. The litter box has been kicked around, and it is being used – somewhat – but they’re also using the lower level cat bed as a litter box, too! The trick will be to open up the ramp door to reach all that, without letting Pinky escape. The kittens have zero interest in leaving, but there’s still a chance she might. I believe she’s been trying to scramble through the roof. The rigid insulation above where the extension cord comes in is now very torn up!
Things that we’ll need to deal with, during the next few warmer days.
The first unexpected part of the day was an early phone call.
From the Home Care coordinator.
She got a report about my mother yesterday.
My mother had called me last night and, at one point, she started going off on how the home care workers, these “educated people”, didn’t know how to use her microwave. It’s so simple! I’d explained to her that her microwave is so old, none of them would have seen one like it before, and to give them time to learn how she wants things done, now that they are doing meal assists on top of her med assists.
Now I know why it was on her mind.
It turns out that when one of the home care workers went to use the microwave, my mother suddenly said NO! very loudly, grabbed her arm and sort of slammed it on the counter (not sure how that would have worked considering how things are laid out in her kitchen), then did the microwaving herself. The worker told my mother not to touch her like that and my mother did apologize.
Still, this is the sort of thing that could get her home care cancelled outright, and between my siblings and I, none of us are in a position to take over if that happens.
We talked about it for a while. One of the things that is part of the issue is how my mother is having more difficulty finding her words and gets very frustrated and angry. She expects everyone around her to just know what she is trying to say, what she wants, what she means. There’s no excuse for taking it out on people – especially not physically! I explained about my mother not understanding why people don’t know how to use her microwave and how, with her, she leaps to thinking people are stupid for not knowing things she finds obvious. This is not a new thing, by any means, but it is getting worse as her ability to communicate declines.
I assured the coordinator that my siblings and I would have a talk with my mother about it, and extended my apologies.
Then I updated my siblings in our group chat about my mother. I just finished doing that when my younger daughter came over and asked me what my plans were for the day. She and her sister had been talking, and were hoping to be able to go hunt for some energy drinks. More specifically, Monster energy drinks. They’re out of stock or of limited stock lately. We’ve tried other brands and have not been impressed by them.
I really miss Beaver Buzz! No one carries those anymore though, according to their website, places like both grocery stores in town still do. Maybe in other provinces, because I’m not even finding them in the city.
We decided to go into town and see what was available at the grocery store and, if that didn’t work out, we could at least try a gas station. They tend to have the individual cans at much better prices. We left early enough that, after checking the budget, we were able to grab a late breakfast, too.
Once at the grocery store, I picked up a few things as well, taking advantage of the trip, while my daughter did a much larger shop. Including energy drinks. She found 4 packs of Monster, on sale, and got the last three.
That done, we were soon on are way home. I considered stopping at the post office to see if any packages came in, but our timing was off. It was still morning, but they close at 11:30 for 2 1/2 hours, and we were just leaving town as they would have closed. When we got home, I checked tracking and found that yes, we did have two “attempted deliveries” (which means, there’s a card in our mail box). A third item is now in the city, though, which means it’ll show up on Monday morning. I decided to wait until then, since one of the items that came in today is the micro SD memory card to go with the security camera I got to monitor the isolation shelter.
I just realized something else this camera could be used for. We will have to trap the more feral cats and, with the females, we’ll have to do this in the winter, before they go into heat in the spring. The problem is, we aren’t able to monitor a trap and don’t want to risk a cat (or raccoon, or skunk…) freezing to death before we can check the trap. If we have this extra outdoor, solar powered security camera, we can set it up and we should be able to get notifications, and check the live feed.
Hhhmmm… that could work.
But first, it needs to be set up to monitor the isolation shelter, so we can tell when the raccoons are trying to tear their way into it again!
Hopefully, we’ll be able to get that done next week.
As soon as I was able to, I called my mother to have a talk with her. When I brought up that the Home Care coordinator had called me this morning and why, my mother immediately said that she realized she’d done the wrong thing and apologized. From how she described it, the home care worker had her hand on the dial of her microwave (which has a dial for the timer and a start button; that’s it) that my mother had pushed away. That actually makes more sense than what the coordinator described to me on the phone. We talked about it for a while and my mother went off again about how they didn’t know how to do things, like use the microwave. I had to keep repeating that her microwave is nothing like modern ones – and even with modern ones, there’s still a learning curve, because they’re all different. To her, not being able to use her “so simple” microwave means they’re all stupid. It took a while to talk her through that.
Then she started going on about her upcoming MRI. She is clearly working herself up about it and was trying to get out of having it done. She doesn’t need it. There’s no reason for it. It’s so late on a Sunday night…
We already went through this last night, but we went through it again. It’s Home Care that needs it, in paneling her for a nursing home. She had some difficulty separating out that this isn’t about her thinking (cognitive decline), but about her physical brain. I finally said that, if they found a tumor or something, they’d be sending her to a hospital, not a nursing home. Not quite accurate. In the end, she fell back on the “it’s a scam”, and starting talking about how they just want people to die. Especially old people.
I had to distract her from that one but I have to admit, she’s not wrong about that last part. Considering the insane rise in MAiD killings, what was done to seniors during the illegal lockdowns resulting in thousands of deaths, on top of the thousands of people in Canada dying every year on waiting lists for tests and treatment, she’s got a point. Some areas – major cities, mostly – are far worse than others. One thing is for sure. Once she does get admitted into a nursing home like she wants, my siblings and I are doing to have to be on top of everything going on with her treatment. If she gets in to the one in town, where she wants to be, I’ll still be the closest and can check on her, but also, that particular nursing home did very well by my dad and my aunt, so I think she’d be okay there. It’s hard to say, the way things are changing these past few years, though. Especially with our current provincial government.
But I digress.
Towards the end of our conversation, I reiterated with my mother on making sure to treat everyone nicely, and she started telling me how much she loves all the girls, how beautiful they all are (it seems some of the new girls are very pretty) and how nice they dress (one of them wore a shirt with flowers my mother really liked). She said some of them stop to chat with her as well, and she really appreciated that. Lately, she says she hasn’t been going to the common room of her building, as it’s getting so hard for her to move around and she doesn’t even get dressed for the day, so having someone to talk to helps her a lot.
She so needs to be in a care home!!
After talking to my mother, I updated my siblings again, then started to send an email to the home care coordinator to update her as well.
Which is when the phone rang.
It was Home Care.
This time, the scheduler.
They are short staffed and don’t have anyone for my mother’s Monday med assist, at 9:15am.
We’re already doing her two Sunday evening assists ourselves, as my brother and I get her to her MRI.
*sigh*
We’ll see how it goes, but we might be able to just leave her morning meds in her little covered bowl for her before we leave her place on Sunday night. Her morning assist is the longest time slot, though, as they also help her with breakfast, empty her commode, apply the Voltaren to her back and hip and help her get dressed, if she needs it. It’s not just about getting her her medications anymore.
We’ll make that decision when the time comes. For now, though, I’ve got it in my calendar and I’ll be ready to do it, if necessary.
I did let her know about the call I got about my mother from the coordinator. She remembered the report and commented that she doesn’t usually see reports about my mother and figured she was just having an off day. !! I made sure to let her know my mother was very apologetic about it, and the lovely things she said about the ladies at the end of our conversation. Home care workers put up with a lot of crap (sometimes literally), so I wanted to make sure to pass on something good!
That done, I sent my email updating the coordinator. I did remember to mention this time, that my mother has been commenting about how her vision is getting worse. Which means her macular degeneration is getting worse. Normally, I’d be getting her to the specialty clinic in the city for treatment, but she physically can’t make that trip any more. Just getting her in to do the MRI is going to be hard enough on her, and that’s about half the distance away!
All that done, the rest of the day was pretty routine.
When doing the evening cat feeding, I changed things up a bit for the isolation shelter cats. I’ve got some ground pumpkin seeds again, so this time their can of wet cat food got made into a cat soup that included the ground pumpkin. If any of them have worms, that would help, but just be good for them in general.
I have got to remember to order more lysine. We’ve been out for a while.
After feeding the cats (I counted 27 this evening) and doing my evening rounds, I had a while crowd following me. A dozen, to be exact.
Fancypants, in the first picture, won’t let me come near him, but does like to follow me around!
In the next picture of the slide show above, you can see the three of them that were trying to trip me up while I walked!
Once back in the inner yard, I spotted that big tom again. I have seen him all of twice before today.
While in and out of the sun room, I was able to pet one of the little tuxedos. There is one confirmed female that lets me pet her, though she is still nervous about it. When the next two are to be brought in for spays, I think this one is big enough to be an alternative if we can’t get two adult females.
Pinky (last photo) not only allowed me to pet her but, while I was walking around, followed me and meowed for attention. She’s still a bundle of nerves and skittish, but she was purring up a storm and allowing full back pets, and even some neck and ear skritches. If we can keep this up, we should be able to get her into a carrier for spay on the 28th. If not… well, we’ll grab whichever ones we can! We’ll just have to make sure not to put food out until after we’ve got two into carriers.
The outside stuff done, today I decided to use up that bone broth I made recently, it a great big pot of pork stew. Normally, I’d use beef broth in a beef stew, and even looked at beef in the grocery store this morning, but it’s just too expensive. So I just cubed one of the pork roasts we had.
When it came time to add the bone broth, I was very impressed with how thoroughly gelled it was. I even gave it a taste while it was still cold, and wow! Talk about concentrated flavour! It worked really well with the pork, too.
Here we have pork stew with fluffy baking powder dumplings, which get cooked right on top of the stew at the end. Those dumplings are one of our favourite things about making a stew! I got the recipe from an old Whole Foods for the Whole Family cookbook, from La Leche League – the 1981 edition – that I hung on to. I got it used and kept it for about 30 years. Then had to throw it out because a cat peed all over it when it was left open on a table. *sigh* I know I wrote the recipe down somewhere in an old blog post, but on an old blog that I can’t even log into anymore (thanks, Google). I think. Still can’t find it, so I went by memory. Seems to be very close! I’ve tried looking online, but all the baking powder dumpling recipes I’m finding seem different.
So I’ll write it down here, so I can find it again, when needed!
Fluffy Dumplings
2 cups flour 2 tsp baking powder about a 1/4 tsp salt (optional: dried parsley flakes) 1 egg, beaten water
Mix the dry ingredients. Once the soup or stew is done and still simmering, add the beaten egg to the dry ingredients with enough water to make a very sticky dough. More like a very thick batter. Drop by spoonful’s onto the top of the soup or stew. Cover and leave to simmer for 10 minutes. No peeking!
One of the things I can’t remember is if the original recipe used one or two eggs. Also, was it 1 tsp or 2 tsp of baking powder? Whatever the original was, this version here cooks and tastes very much the same as I remember. Delicious.
I also remembered to get a picture of the bone broth I made, before tucking it into the fridge.
I started off by roasting the meaty bones, lightly drizzled with avocado oil (it was handy) and sprinkled with salt. Those went into the slow cooker with chunks of onion, celery, carrots and ginger, plus salt and pepper. The slow cooker was set on high for 1 hour, then on low for 8 hours.
Then it sat on “warm” for quite a while, as I wasn’t able to get to it right away. Once that was shut off, I allowed it to cool before trying to take the big pieces out. I have a large slow cooker, so it took quite a long time to cool down to a temperature that wasn’t dangerously hot. I am losing my grip strength as I get older, and I didn’t want to risk burning myself if I dropped something.
I took out as much as I could with tongs, first. The meat had fallen off the bones, and that got separated out (and became a snack, later on). Then I set up a stock pot on the stove and strained the liquid through a fine mesh sieve into the pot. All the strained out solids got tossed.
At this point, I would estimate there was a little over a gallon – maybe 5 litres – of broth. I then started reducing it, which took a few hours.
I considered reducing it to the point where I could set it in the oven for a final dehydration, which would have given me “portable soup”.
In the end, I decided against it, because I had the other ingredients added with the bones. Though, according to the video, the “keep warm” setting on my oven can’t go low enough to dehydrate it properly.
By the time I decided it was reduced enough, what was left fit into two 750ml jars. These were meant to go into the fridge to use right away, rather than being canned, so I just used regular lids, not canning lids, loosely added until they cooled down completely.
I’d say there’s roughly 5 cups of broth and maybe 3/4 cup of fat on the top between the two jars. The fat can be used for any high heat cooking. Since the broth was reduced so much, we now have a concentrated broth where just a little will go a long way.
Now I’m trying to think of what I want to make with it, first!
Usually, her eyes are blood red. I think this is the first time I’ve seen them looking black.
Those are her back feet, of course. That box up by the ceiling is a favourite perch.
I can’t say I got a lot accomplished today. Certainly not outside. I at least got a dump run in. They have a different attendant now. A guy in a high viz vest and a clip board, even. I hope the older woman that needed a cane that used to be the attendant is okay.
After showing him the card that we have to prove we actually live in the municipality, and aren’t coming in from some other one where you have to pay to drop off your garbage and recycling, he asked what was being dropped off. When I told him it was just household garbage and recycling, he told me I might not be able to get the recycling in. The bins were really full, so it would have to go into the pit.
The bin for glass was overflowing, so our glass went into the pit, along with one of our bags of recyclables. I could only get two into a bin.
I’d hoped to get some stuff done outside, as we were supposed to hit 2C/36F today. Which we did, but the wind chill was significantly colder. As I write this, we’ve dropped to -1C/30F, and the wind chill is -12C/10F.
I did get some progress inside, at least. I got home so late from my mother’s yesterday that I didn’t start the beef broth I had meant to. I got that done started today. The meaty bones got roasted first, and then into the slow cooker they went, with onions, garlic, carrot, celery, ginger, apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper. And water, of course. That was left on high for an hour, and now it’s running on low for 8 hours, and there’s still another 4 or 5 hours to go.
While the bones were roasting, I took out the last of our peppers from the garden. The Sweetie Snack Mix peppers that I picked while still green took a while to ripen indoors. Some of them just withered, instead. We ended up with red, yellow, light orange and dark orange peppers. There was just enough to cover a parchment lined baking sheet with strips. After the bones were removed from the oven and into the crock pot, the pepper strips went into the partially cooled oven. They’re now dehydrating on the “warm” setting, at 150F/66C (our oven is the only thing we do at Fahrenheit instead of Celsius). Those will probably just end up as a snack for the girls, still warm from the oven, once they are fully dried.
That’s pretty much it for my accomplishments today. Tomorrow, at least, the winds are supposed to die down, so I might get to the things I hoped to get done today.
Good grief. It’s pitch black out and feels like it should be nearing midnight. Instead, it’s not even 6:30, yet!
I think I’m still in recovery mode from spending so much time with my mother, yesterday. I still feel totally drained!
This morning I collected our largest harvest yet, for this year!
I had some help, too.
When I prepared to transplant the melons, I set up a trellis for them using Dollarama steel fence posts and welded wire mesh salvaged from the old squash tunnel from years ago. When the Spoon tomatoes were planted in the other half of the bed, I use bamboo stakes to make them their own trellis.
Well, with the melons barely growing at all, they’re not going to need the trellis. So, with my daughter’s help, we pulled the posts, with the wire still on them, and moved them over to the corn and Arikara squash bed. It’s loosely set up for now, but the 4′ square bed will get a wire fence around it – the mesh is just long enough! – to hopefully keep the raccoons from getting into the corn, when the cobs are ready. I’ll probably have to put some sort of cover over it, too, or they’ll just climb up and over.
The corn bed has plastic netting around it. Hopefully, they will be dissuaded from the corn rather than tearing their way through.
After moving the melon trellis away, the Spoon tomatoes can now be reached from both sides, so my daughter helped me pick tomatoes on one side, while I did the other.
I’m glad I remembered to bring a separate container for the Spoon tomatoes!
There was also a whole two Royal Burgundy beans to pick, from the three surviving plants. I did pick a small handful of yellow bush beans last night, though, so there was enough to actually use. While checking last night, I noticed some ripening Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes and this morning, one was ready to grab.
After that, I dug up some potatoes, then winter sown carrots from the high raised bed.
In the next image in the slide show above, you can see a very wonky potato!
That was from roots.
These potatoes were picked from about the middle of the bed, so at least twenty feet away from the trees. My garden fork was digging up more roots than potatoes.
Those trees have got to go.
Then I remembered we have herbs and stuff, so I went to the old kitchen garden, where I gathers some lemon thyme, lemon balm and oregano. In the winter sown bed, I grabbed a few Swiss Chard leaves. I even grabbed some bulbils from the walking onions, since we don’t want them to spread any further.
Once inside, the longest time was spent getting all those little green bits of stem off all those Spoon tomatoes! I also set aside some of the ripest looking ones to collect seeds from, later. Their seeds are so tiny, I’ll have to consider how best to do that!
In the last photo – which looked much better and in focus on my phone, I swear! – it what I made with it. There’s still potatoes and Spoon tomatoes left, plus the one Sub Arctic Plenty tomato, but I used up all the carrots, julienned, a handful of bush beans cut small, the onion bulbils and a whole head of garlic. We still have fresh garlic left of the ones that were too far along for curing and winter storage. Then there was the chard and herbs.
When I went into town to get kibble yesterday, I also picked up some chicken legs and thighs that were on sale, which my older daughter prepared last night, so breakfast (brunch?) was the vegetables gathered this morning, plus oven roasted chicken legs.
There’s another one under it that bloomed and was done before I ever saw that it was a female flower.
There were no male flowers open at the time, so I grabbed a couple of older ones and tore off the petals so I could access the pollen and hand pollinate. The first one had water pour out when the petals were torn off, so I used a second one, too, just in case the first one didn’t have any viable pollen. At this point, it’s too early to tell if the one I missed had a chance to be pollinated before it was done blooming.
This afternoon, I decided to use up a whole bunch of odds and ends vegetables in the fridge, along with some fresh stuff, in the slow cooker. I’ve been leaving the potato bed for the past while but decided to dig some up for today’s use.
I had dug some up before under the potato plants that had died back the most, which was at the north end of the bed, closer to that row of self seeded trees my mother left to grow. The entire potato bed died back early, without ever developing flowers, but the north end of the bed had them dying back the fastest.
The potatoes in that basket are from under four potato plants that were at the end of that bed. That mass beside the basket is capillary roots from the elm trees nearby that came up while I was digging around for the potatoes. I was hitting more, larger roots as well. I’ve de-rooted these beds several times, and they come back so fast!!
Those trees have GOT to go! They’re killing our garden!
I dug up more potatoes closer to the middle of the bed, and was still getting a lot of capillary roots like that, but found more potatoes under two plants, than under the four I’d dug up first.
Since I finally had a container on hand, I harvested Spoon tomatoes. It’s been a while since I picked any, so there were plenty to gather. Thankfully, the mesh on this basket is fine enough to hold the tomatoes! Some of them were so small, they would have fallen through if they weren’t being held in place by the larger ones. I had to be careful to keep the potatoes from rolling over and squishing them.
Then I grabbed a few more carrots to add to what we already had inside, and the only ripe bush beans I could find.
In the last photo of the slide show above, it shows all the vegetables I prepared for the slow cooker, seasoned and tossed with avocado oil. All from our garden!
There are the potatoes, carrots and Spoon tomatoes, of course. Plus I finally used that one big turnip that I’d left to get big and go to seed, but the deer ate most of the greens. There’s kohlrabi in there, and more beans that we had in the fridge. It took three “harvests” of bush beans to have enough to make it worth using them in anything! Oh, and there is Swiss Chard and a whole bulb of fresh garlic in there, too.
We have a large Crockpot, and the vegetables almost filled it completely. They will shrink as they cook down, though. After I left for my mother’s, my daughter browned some ground turkey, along with some of the yellow onions we still have left from last year’s garden (they have lasted a really long time!!!) and mixed that in later on.
The slow cooker was set to high for 3 hours. Since I’ve come back from my mother’s, I’ve checked on it a few times and added more time. All those potatoes need extra time to cook through, as I deliberately left them in big chunks. For I still don’t know how it turned out!
The house is smelling amazing, though, and I’m getting hungry! 😄
Today is supposed to be warmer, but it’s still dreary and overcast out there. Which means it’s all I can do to stay awake!
The first order of business, as always, it to feed the yard cats. The adults get distracted with their kibble feeding first, then I set out the canned cat food for the kittens, some in the sun room, some in the cat house. This morning, they got some bonus cat soup from one of the trays for the inside cats that got mostly ignored (we set out 3 trays, plus some in Butterscotch’s cat bowl, every day). This is supplemented with lysine, so that’s extra good for them. After adding it to the kitten bowls, I set the tray with some still in it by the kibble house to lure the adult cats away, and it was licked clean in no time!
Poirot headed out while all this was going on, so I had a chance to say hello to her babies, and look them over. Hastings (the white and grey) is the biggest of them, and most definitely female. Miss Lemon (the mostly white) and Japp (the mostly black) are less developed and harder to tell, still, but I suspect they are also female.
I made sure the sun room was closed up with some of the bigger kittens inside, so they got a chance to fill their bellies before the adult cats gobbled up their wet cat food, then continued my rounds.
I think the winter sowing in the bed is a lost cause now. I don’t know how they managed it, but I found a section of netting completely pushed over the hoops to one side, allowing all sorts of elm seeds in. This was even a section that was pinned down with ground staples on the fence side, but it still got pulled up. About the only benefit the netting provides at this point is to keep those elm seeds off, since the cats are still managing to either get under the netting, or just lie on top of it, and even the seed protection is being sabotaged by the cats! I keep looking for seedlings, and even the onion seedlings and what I thought might be sprouting beans seem to be gone. I do see some seedlings that I know are weeds (mostly creeping bellflower), plus grasses. This is so frustrating!
On a more pleasant note, more trees are blooming. The Saskatoons have been blooming for a while, as have the cherry trees now. The ornamental crab apples are really starting to open up. Then there’s this one.
These are on the tree that get many small but very edible crabapples on it (click through for a second image). The others in the row have flower buds, but they aren’t opening up yet, like this one.
It wasn’t raining this morning (though I did see snow, every now and then) so I headed into the outer yard to check on the walnuts.
In the first photo, you can see the tiniest of leaves on the walnut sapling are emerging.
Click through to the next image, and you can see the little friend I found, hiding out in some of the grass that fell into the collar!
*sigh* Of course, my phone’s camera didn’t focus in the right place. I hate it when I have pictures that look great on my phone, only to discover they actually suck, when I see them on a proper screen!
Our rhubarb is doing really well with all this rain, so I gathered a few stalks before heading inside. Poirot was back with her babies, though, so I did pause to give her her squeeze treat! She is much more pleasant about it than Brussel was (Brussel no longer goes into the sun room, now that the older babies have all moved themselves into the cat house to join Caramel’s babies!). Brussel would always growl at me, then attack my hand, when I gave her the treats!
As for the rhubarb, they got cleaned up and cut up, along with some strawberries, to make a double recipe of Upside Down Strawberry Cast Iron Skillet Cornbread We’ve got two cast iron skillets and can fit both of them in our oven at the same time, so that works out. This, together with a bit of whipped cream, and some Vanilla Chai tea made for a perfect treat for such a dreary day!
I still fell ready to fall sleep on my keyboard, though.
And now, just for fun, here is the newest cooking video from Townsends. This sounds like something that would be perfect for a day like today!
1 large shallot, chopped (I would have used onion, but I didn’t feel like going to the root cellar to get one) 2 stalks of celery, sliced lengthwise and chopped into small pieces 2 medium sized potatoes, peeled and chopped into small cubes 1 ripe avocado, smashed into mush cream cheese; roughly 2 oz (basically, I cut what was left of the piece in the fridge in half) whipping cream; about half a cup 3 cups water and enough bouillon powder to make chicken stock (because that’s what I had available) 1 can chicken (a Costco can, so about a cup of chicken chunks) enough ghee for sauteing (I normally would have used butter, but remembered we had ghee)
After the water has boiled for about 5 minutes, stir in the smashed avocado. Return to boil and simmer for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the chunk of cream cheese. Return to boil and continue to simmer for a few more minutes, stirring continually until the cheese is completely melted.
Add cooked chicken chunks and return to a simmer for a few more minutes, or until the potato chunks are fully cooked, stirring frequently.
Stir in whipping cream and return to a simmer to heat it through.
The Re-Farmer 