Three Plus Two

Snow Days

Tuesday into Wednesday we had our first storm:

 

 

They were predicting something like 6-10 inches for that storm.  I think we ended up with about 12. 

Andy came home early to avoid the next storm, the one the forecasters said was basically going to shut down the entire region. 6- 16 inches, they were saying.

 

Then they started saying, well, maybe 12-24.

Andy stayed home, worked on the computer, tried to dig out the driveway, and had a big snowball fight with the kids.

 

And it snowed...

And snowed...

 

And snowed some more.

 

Today -- guess what?

That's right.  Still snowing.  The winter storm warning has been extended until 7 PM tomorrow (which would be Saturday.)  Swimming lessons have been canceled.  Kind of a weird thing around here, to have activities canceled on account of snow.  Forecasters are now saying that total accumulations in our county could run 2-3 feet, on top of the foot of snow we got Tuesday night.

 

 I'd say that's probably about right.  (This is my deck, by the way.  Those little spiky things sticking out of the snow are the tops of our picket fence.)

And snow in the forecast until Tuesday.  We still have electricity, though, and the winds haven't been too bad.

Oatmeal porridge and muffin bread

I've had a request for my porridge recipe, so I thought I would go ahead and share here.  I'm very new at soaking grains, so I'm really sticking to the Nourishing Traditions cookbook.  So far the breakfast porridge and muffin recipes have turned out well, but the pizza crust?  Not so much.  The hardest thing for me is remembering to allow enough time to soak the grains (7-24 hours usually), and then to actually remember to make whatever it was that I was going to make. 

Anyway, here is the recipe I'm using for oatmeal porridge.  I have to double it (at least) to feed all of us, because as written, it only serves 4:

Breakfast Porridge (Nourishing Traditions)

1 c. oats, rolled or cracked

1 c. warm filtered water plus 2 tbsp. whey, yogurt, kefir, buttermilk, lemon juice, or raw cider vinegar

1/2 tsp sea salt

1 c. filtered water (or milk, which is what I use)

Mix oats with warm water mixture (I've been using water + buttermilk), cover and leave in a warm place for at least seven hours and as long as 24 hours.  When you are ready to make your porridge, bring an additional 1 c. of water (or milk) to boil with sea salt.  Add soaked oats, reduce heat, cover and simmer several minutes.  Remove from heat and let stand for a few minutes.  Serve with plenty of butter or cream and a natural sweetener like Rapadura, date sugar, maple syrup, maple sugar, or raw honey. 

***We usually use maple syrup, because we live in upstate New York.  Note here that I have no idea what the difference is between organic maple syrup and regular, because nobody sprays their trees.  Most maple syrup is made by tapping a bunch of maple trees -- a sugar bush -- in the woods.  If you're buying New York maple syrup, it was most likely produced on a small farm with a good sugar bush.  In season, I would also add a bunch of fresh fruit.

***According to the book, you can also substitute other grains for the oats: kamut, spelt, rye, teff, amaranth, or grits.  But if you use grits -- not the quick-cooking kind -- apparently you should soak them in limewater.

***I just cover the bowl with a clean towel when I let the oaks soak.

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Another recipe the boys have been demanding on a daily basis is "Muffin Bread". Because it can take a long time to fill all the muffin cups from a doubled or tripled recipe (which will only last us 2 days), I usually take the lazy way out and bake all muffin recipes as quick breads in a 13 x 9 pan.  Thus, "Muffin Bread".

Muffin Bread, adapted from Basic Muffins, Nourishing Traditions

4 1/2 c. spelt, kamut, or whole wheat flour (I have been using whole wheat)

3 c. buttermilk, kefir, or yogurt

3 eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/2 tsp sea salt

3/4 c. maple syrup

3 tsp. baking soda

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

4 1/2 tbsp melted butter

3/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/8 - 1/4 tsp ground cloves

Soak flour in buttermilk, kefir, or yogurt in a warm place 12-24 hours.  After soaking, blend in remaining ingredients.  Pour into a buttered 13 x 9 pan and bake at 350 degrees until a knife or toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean... about 40 - 50 minutes in my oven. 

This bread is pretty moist and stays moist for a few days.  What I like most about it is that soaking the wheat flour eliminates the heaviness that can accompany whole grain cooking.  Since my eggs can run on the small side (depending on which chicken laid the egg), I might throw in an extra egg or two.  You could also decrease the maple syrup if you find it too sweet... we have something of a sweet tooth around here.  Also, my bake times are -ishy.  So you might start checking your bread before 40 minutes have passed just to make sure your oven isn't hotter than mine, etc.

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It's a snow day here (3 feet of snow on the ground and still coming down), so time is moving a little slowly and I will be making muffin bread later on. (And a meatless soup for dinner; I haven't decided whether it will be leek and potato or French onion yet.) If your Friday is slowing down like mine, here are a couple of links investigating soaked grains (etc.) a little more:

Sneak-Peak Video: Soaked Muffins (I signed up for her course and made these muffins... as muffin bread, of course.  They turned out really well.)

Organization in the Real Food Kitchen: Ferments Everywhere

Bits and Pieces

What we're up to:

Watching the Olympics -- trying to deduce the rules of curling without looking anything up.  Wondering why it looks like they're using shower scrub brushes, and why brushing the ice in front of the stone makes it go where you want it to.  Realizing that we have lived in upstate New York for 5 years now (almost) and have never been skiing or snowboarding. Wondering when hockey is on??? Working on a 2010 Winter Olympics unit study  (Katydid) and remembering how very, very tall the ski jumps in Lake Placid are.

 

And also swimming and Marian Aides with the Little Sisters of the Poor (Katydid) and Farmerboy listening to The Goblet of Fire on CD over and over again (minus the last three discs, which are being held hostage by Gareth because he says they are too scary) and watching the snow blow out of our yard and into the road and wondering if the sun is ever going to come out again and knowing it will take a few months and building rock forts inside since the rocks outside won't be available until April and anyway, all the little boys have a cold and must stay inside out of the snow and wind.  And building Sculpey creations to go in the rock forts, too.

 

 

And reading Susan Wise Bauer's History of the Medieval World and Sons of Charlemagne and, if you're Gareth, a bunch of old Anglo-Saxon poems, just for fun.  And also if you're Gareth, you are beginning to think about Scout Camp and wonder if you might be able to work on the Sailing merit badge, because like the rest of us, you can't help dreaming of spring.

And me? I'm learning to soak grains and make old-fashioned oatmeal (soaked in buttermilk overnight) and getting in over my head because now the boys want "porridge" every morning, probably so they can pretend to be pioneers, and I do not have enough good glass or ceramic bowls to soak all the flour I need to keep everyone supplied with muffins and bread, and my counter space is really shrinking, but you know what?  Oatmeal tastes better this way.

Reading The Gift of an Ordinary Day

What I'm Reading: The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir by Katrina Kennison.  Katrina Kennison also wrote Mitten Strings for God.  To be honest, I am enjoying The Gift of an Ordinary Day more, although I don't think that this is the opinion of most of the other homeschooling moms I know.  I had a problem reading Mitten Strings.  Her life seemed so... cozy and peaceful, but in a way that was unobtainable for me, a homeschooling mother of 6 kids, mostly small, mostly male, and mostly very, very active.  At the time, we were not enrolled in very many activities, we were home most of the time, we did not do crazy consumptive birthday parties... and yet I could not imagine being able to sit on the couch and knit with ONE child in the QUIET for HOURS (for example).  The whole book seemed to me like a picture from a picture book.  Of course it was a beautiful picture, the kind of picture in which most of us would like to take up residence.  But I felt as if the advice should be taken with a grain of salt, like the sort of well-meaning advice given to parents of willful, hyperactive, sleepless children by parents whose children would never think of telling them "no" and have slept through the night since they were 6 weeks old. 

Or maybe I am just a grump.

Anyway, everyone is older in The Gift of an Ordinary Day, but that's not what set it apart from Mitten Strings for me.  (Of course I'm only about 120 pages into the book, so I'll give you my final analysis when I'm done.)  Kennison and her family pack up their seemingly perfect life and move to New Hampshire about the same time that her oldest starts high school.  At that point everything starts to seem a little more real.  Their younger son does not want to move.  They have to live with her parents for most of three years.  She succumbs to New England "romance" and they end up with a 200 year old "quaint" New England cottage with sloping floors, rotting wallboards, a crumbling foundation, and bats in the attic. 

This probably sounds like I'm being somewhat vindictive, but no -- what I really appreciate are passages like this one:

    "Heading back over the mountain in the late afternoon, on my way to pick up Jack from school, I am     always content, fulfilled by the day.  And what I begin to think about is something that I've surely         known all along but that somehow, in the midst of our small day-to-day crises and preoccupations of     the last few years, has been all too easy to forget.  Real life isn't out there in the future    somewhere.  Real life is not going to begin when we move into our own house at long last, or when I     figure out what to do with myself, or when we're out of debt, or when our possessions finally come     out of storage and we can sit down around our old kitchen table again.  Real life is now.

    It is the thirteen-year-old son who's at odds with his best friend and takes his frustration out on me.      It is the husband bent over the newspaper, glasses sliding down his nose, the dog with a tick in her     ear, the carpenter calling to say the bathtub doesn't fit.  It is the apple picked from the tree and          eaten by the side of the road, the quiet pond, my own stiff shoulders and aching feet.  It is my            mother and me, side by side, chopping vegetables for chicken potpie, our hips bumping in her         narrow kitchen.  My dad chinking ice into his glass and pouring a drink.  The breeze through the     screened door, the early darkness."

This is what I have always thought myself.  I see so many women trying valiantly never to acknowledge (publicly) the messes of life, never even with a fleeting mention.  But the messes are just as much a part of life as the pretty pictures -- the bathtub that won't fit and the apple.  This doesn't mean that I think we ought to dwell on the messes, the mistakes, or the chaos, or that I think that people who are cheerful and completely optimistic by nature should spend time looking for that the dead bugs under their refrigerators so they can show them to the world.  What I do wonder is whether it's healthy to constantly force ourselves to focus on the beautiful, the cozy, and the ideal when life is handing us a mix.  Shouldn't we feel like it is okay to say, "You know, today did not go well.  The kids were cranky and I was cranky and dinner burned and no one would eat it.  I had to take a few minutes at lunchtime just to watch the snow come down.  I took some pictures of it, but I really hope tomorrow is better."  Or, "We are going through a tough time right now.  I am so worried I can't sleep, but on the upside, I am learning a lot about how houses are built.  I never knew there were so many choices to make!" 

Real life is the toddler who spends all night kicking you in his sleep because he has a cold and his nose is stuffy and his throat hurts.  Real life is the snow swirling through the gray sky like tiny white moths, the ice that makes you slip on the steps, the chicken in the van, the thirteen year old who fixes his little brother's light saber with duct tape when it breaks.  It is the stress of relocation and the excitement of a new adventure, all at the same time.

That's why I am liking this book more than Mitten Strings.  Kennison may be the 50 year old mother of two traditionally schooled teenage boys, but this book speaks to my experience so much more. 

Snow and Animal Signs

My editor is loading correctly today, so I figured I had better hurry up and post some pictures while I had the chance.  These pictures are from a nature walk Katydid and Farmerboy took back in January.

Rabbit tracks...

Squirrel nest?  Or an old bird nest? Topped with a dollop of snow like whipped cream.

Old woodpecker holes...

 

New woodpecker holes... created by pilleated woodpeckers.  (We've sighted at least 3.)

Proof that the holes were quite new.

 

Deer damage or porcupine damage?  It looks a bit too serious for deer to me. 

I can't tell if this is a mouse hole in the snow or a place where rabbits have been digging for food.

All photos by Katydid (of course). 

There's a chicken in my van!

So last night I head out to the van to make a quick milk run, just up to the corner convenience store.  I figure it will only take 10 minutes and then I'll be able to make dinner.  I open the driver's side door, and...

There's a chicken sitting there, between the two front seats.

After a few startled moments of staring at each other, I lift the chicken out of the van and send it home to roost in the coop... which I firmly close and lock behind her.  Then I head back inside to retrieve Clorox wipes and a whisk broom, so I can clean up the mess she left.  It takes a little bit of thinking, but I finally manage to conclude that the chicken has been in the van for over 24 hours... surviving on old french fries, apparently.  Katydid must have accidentally trapped her inside when she went out to find a bag of batteries that had been left in the back.    

At this point, even though it is clear that the hen was using Pip's car seat as a roost, I am just grateful that I decided to go out and get milk.  Otherwise, we might not have discovered the chicken until Saturday morning before swimming lessons.  I don't think old french fries would have kept her alive that long in the absence of water.  What we might have found then... I shudder to think.

But I'm wondering... do things like this happen to other people, or is it just me???

Seven Quick Takes, February 5

One

The weirdest thing about this winter has been the way that all the winter storms have hit somebody else.  I'm watching this thing that's supposed to be slamming the Mid-Atlantic today and tomorrow with 1 or 2 feet of snow, and I'm thinking, where the heck is it all going to go before it gets here?  We have flurries in the forecast for Sunday.  Flurries.  What kind of a lame February forecast is that?

Two

I have been working very slowly on answering a few questions from my combox.  I really apologize to anyone who's asked me a question lately.  Right now I'm working on a post about scheduling outside activities, but it's going to take a bit longer because we have so many outside activities this week. 

Three

I'm also still having trouble with Typepad's editor. Internet Explorer crashes every time I try to add a photo, and the editing toolbar only loads properly on Firefox about half the time.  What's a blog without pictures?  I've been thinking of switching to a free service for a while now, and this may be what pushes me over the edge.

Four

I posted a long, rambly, philosophical series of questions about writing over at 4real this morning, and so far there are 25 views and no replies. I'm not sure what this means.  Maybe that I don't make any sense.  Something I have long suspected anyway.

Five

How about 4 Quick Takes?  I guess I've been suffering a bit of blogger's block lately, but then, it is February.  Usually I spend Lent at my mom and dad's house in Tennessee.  I leave my laptop here, and their connection is really crummy.  Andy is usually flying all over the country, and my parents have to work every day.  So our visit often functions as a (sort of) Lenten retreat for me.  I think my brain needs that break every year, especially around February.  This year we won't be going to Tennessee until April (probably), so I am going to have to carve out my own Lenten retreat here.

Six

I cannot think of a single thing for Six, and it sounds as if the war in the living room is getting a bit out of hand.  We're into February behavior here, too -- I think last year I called it "Lord of the Flies".

Seven

I bet I pay for that comment about the flurries pretty soon.