I Think I'm In Love

Two Leaves and a Bud Mountain High Chai

I went to a birthday party on Saturday with the Little Princess at the home of a neighbor.  We've just met although LP has been playing with them and their dog in the front yard for a little while.

They're an Indian family and the mother of the hostess was there making chai tea.  I'd never had it before and I love Indian food, so I tried it and liked it, and twisted her arm for the recipe because I could see that it was more than just a teabag.

Her method involves boiling a couple of cinnamon sticks, a few cardamom seeds, and cloves together before adding the teabags.  Then she adds milk and brings it to a boil and it's done.  You must add sweetener or it won't taste good, evidently!

I've been looking for a suitable substitute for coffee now that cool weather is here, and I found this tea at the health food store yesterday.  I chose it out of all the others because it already has the 3 spices in it, and when I made it this morning it tasted exactly like hers.

Of course, I used cream in mine, not milk.

Just the thing for a cold, rainy morning and a scratchy throat.

Pumpkin Biscuits

Our new favorite, I guess.  Last night while Dh and Madden were at the far-away football game, we wanted more squash biscuits.

The only squash on hand was a partial can of pumpkin puree.  In it went with a few dashes of pumpkin pie spice.

Fantastic.

7 Quick Takes Friday

~~~1~~~

American Heritage Girls last night.  Big meeting.  Lots of paperwork.  Does the GSA and BSA have this much paperwork?  It's totally foreign to me.

~~~2~~~

My two youngest have been totally croupy all week.  3 days of no school which is unheard of around these parts.  I usually manage to make them work while lying around so we can count it.  If the state of Georgia can shorten their school year by 3 days, can't I?

Actually, I assume I'll be able to next year.  But think about this:  I have to keep attendance records for my kids and turn them in every month.  I have to check off each day that they spend 4.5 hours in school (and doesn't that tell you that your kids in public school are spending a lot of time sitting around, not learning?).  What happens when they're sick?  Did you ever wonder?

If your school-child misses a few days, do they get tacked on to the end of the year?  Why, no, of course not.  They just have to make up the work.  My kids always get the work done, too; we just pick up where we left off, but I think we're supposed to fill in those missed days somewhere.  Somehow, it just doesn't seem fair.

~~~3~~~

Leila had a great post yesterday that inspired me to make biscuits with my leftover acorn squash.

Here's my (edited) comment to her:

I just made THE BEST BISCUITS EVER! The dry half of my recipe is

2c flour

1T baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 c butter

Then I added the acorn squash (1.5 c?  But I had doubled the dry ingredients) and mixed it in. I didn't want to sour my brand-new farm-fresh milk so I used the yogurt I had made the day before and added it just like you said. Again: THE BEST BISCUITS EVER! Light, fluffy, amazing, and that little hint of je ne sais quois!

I just did what Leila said and added a few big spoonfuls of yogurt and mixed it well.  I'm not sure, but I think it's the yogurt that gives that extra-light, fluffy texture as it did with our pancakes.  I don't know if buttermilk gives the same effect because I never have it on hand.  I just add a tablespoon of vinegar to a cup of milk as a substitute.

There is nothing like a good biscuit with butter on it.

Deadly, but yummy.  The biscuit, that is.

~~~4~~~

Playoff football game tonight which I won't be attending.  It's 2.5 hours away from here which is just a leetle bit far with kids who have been sick, and one who is newly sick, and a mom who is getting sick.  Dh is going to support the team and Madden.  He's awesome like that.

~~~5~~~

I read a book the other day that I thoroughly enjoyed:  When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.  It was a children's book that dh brought home from the library when I asked him to pick up the books I had reserved.  I do not remember requesting this book.  Mostly likely I did it because of Melissa's recommendation, something her kids were reading.
Yep.  Just found it on her sidebar in September.

So, I read it, not knowing what it was.  It was a mystery.  Miranda is a 6th grader in New York City who  loses her best friend suddenly as he stops spending time with her and walking home from school with her.  She's helping her single mother prepare for being on the $20,000 Pyramid (with Dick Clark, not Donny Osmond), and she's receiving mysterious notes from a stranger who is coming back to save her friend and himself.  If you are a fan of A Wrinkle in Time, as Miranda is, you'll find this a very interesting book.

Or  your kids will.  I happen to like reading good children's books.  They don't require as much of the old brain.

~~~6~~~

Cake Wrecks is coming to town on Monday for a book signing!  I'm dying to go.  For the past few weeks Cake Wrecks has been an important part of my daily blog reading.  There are the occasional boring days where they post pictures of simply beautiful cakes---like the ones you see on Cake Boss or Ace of Cakes.  But for the most part, Cake Wrecks is good for a serious belly laugh every day.

I'm sure it will be entertaining, and there will be beautiful cakes there for people to eat.  I know I'm weird, but I want to know what it's like to eat one of those perfect cakes.  Are they as good as they look?

~~~7~~~

Pioneer Woman is also going to be at the same bookstore, I think, in December.  I might have to go to that one, too, and see if she'll do her Ethel Merman impression.

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Bone Broth

Since we picked up our side of beef last weekend, I have a freezer full of yummy, grass-fed beef.

I also have about 6 bags of bones!  Ewwww.  Kind of gross, but kind of wonderful.

Since one of my kids got sick last week (I forget which one; they're all in different stages of different illnesses now.  Nice, huh?  We can't just have one virus go through the entire family; we have to have 3 or 4!  But I digress...), I immediately felt the urge to make some healthy beef broth...

...so I went to the freezer, careful not to let a frozen roast fall out and break my toes, and dragged out a big ol' bag of leg bones.  I know, you love it.

The first step is to roast the bones in the oven, which I did for an hour or so at 350, turning them once.  The smell is amazing and makes everyone hungry.  After they're nicely roasted, lots of fat has oozed out, which I strained and saved in a mason jar for future use.

Then I tossed the bones into my big stockpot full of water with some carrots, onions, herbs, salt and a little vinegar to help bring out the nutrients.  I let it simmer all day until I remembered the most important part!

I had forgotten to add the heart!

Yep.  Threw it right in there, barely glancing at it to see what it looked like.  I knew it wasn't a kidney or liver, so it had to be the heart.  blech.  But I was taking a page out of Kelly's book, and using it in a way we wouldn't find offensive.

At the end of the day, I strained the broth and poured it into containers for freezing.  The bones and the heart and the veggies all went in the trash.  No one took me up on my offer to try the heart.

I'm looking forward to making my wintry vegetable soup with this wonderful broth instead of using the ultra-pricey, less nutritious stuff in the store.

~~~~~

Go visit Cheeseslave for more real food ideas!

Soul Cakes

Barbara's yummy, yummy cinnamon doughnuts.

The touch of cinnamon in the dough is heavenly.

I need a doughnut cutter, but TMax did a great job of cutting and shaping.

I didn't think the recipe would make nearly as many as it did, but there were plenty for my doughnut-loving family.  We even had leftovers!

I love how they plumped up from ragged little dough circles into delectable, fat doughnuts!

They're not Alton Brown's but they are, most assuredly, good eats!

All Souls Day

II Machabees 12: 43-46
And making a gathering, [Judas] sent twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection, (For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead,) And because he considered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them. It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen. 


~~~~~
If you don't mind, I would appreciate your prayers for a beautiful soul who is dying of a brain tumor.  Please pray for M's happy, peaceful death.  

Weekend Roundup

It was a busy weekend here, much busier than I expected.  So busy, in fact, that I didn't get to celebrate the Feast of All Saints the way I wanted to.  I'll just hit the highlights for you....

I was happy to have KT and Hitch home for dinner on Thursday.  We were all together except for Madden who was at school half the night preparing the "spooky stage" for the entire school.  They should let kids camp out sometimes when they have to be there so late.

Friday was spent running many errands, shopping for KT and Hitch before we went to the football game together, prepared for a deluge.  While it was cool, it wasn't too cold and the rain was really just a heavy mist all evening until the game was over.  We won't discuss the outcome of the game or the score...

More errands on Saturday with last minute costume details and food for the family and KT.  Her little cupboards were bare, evidently.

My vacuum cleaner salesman who made his own business cards.

Much to my children's dismay, I am not a huge fan of halloween since I converted and discovered the true meaning of the holiday.  I don't mind dressing up and trick-or-treating, but I don't like how some people take it to extremes.  You know those tacky, overlit Christmas displays?  How about that in reverse?  One house in my neighborhood gets creepier every year as they add more stuff.  This year it passed the "scary graveyard" stage and moved into occult territory.  Yuck.  So, I often end up doing a little (very little) shopping on the big day for costume details.  I refuse to buy costumes, and depending on how inspired I am or how creative their ideas, I might do some sewing.

This year's sewing involved taking in old bridesmaids dresses for Little Princess and her BFF so they could go as "Masquerade People".

Pipster was an "Exploded Scientist".   I love the t-shirt he handpainted.

Sometime early Saturday we discovered that Hitch was sick with a high fever and sore throat, so my busy-ness also included a modicum of nursing.

KT and I did Trick-or-Treat duty in the cold, cold rain with 3 of the slowest trick-or-treaters on the planet.  3 little girls in long dresses, with wet feet, who would rather discuss the relative merits of Hannah Montana and Demi Lovato between houses instead of moving quickly.  Though we tried our best to be good sports, a little nagging did ensue to speed them along.

Pipster kept Hitch company Sunday morning while we all went to Mass for All Saints because he's got a bad, croupy cough that I assume he got from LP and her BFF.

We had  a nice dinner and we made Soul Cakes for dessert.  I made the dough in the afternoon so we could fry them after dinner and eat them warm.  Maybe it's because, except for halloween night, I hadn't had any sugar in 2 months, but I think these really are fantastic doughnuts!  They were so easy to make and tasted phenomenal!  You've got to try them.  Oh, and if you like them, maybe you should just subscribe to Barbara's food blog.  Her other blog is good, too, but not quite as yummy.

Just before bedtime we had a little more All Saints fun by having the kids draw a holy card and run find a costume within 5 minutes.  You'd think that we would have lots of those ready-made and lying around, but they must be  mostly packed away.  This is what they came up with....

St. Therese and St. John the Baptist

St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Catherine of Siena

St. Joseph and Our Lady of Lourdes

Sweet KT, regretfully, had to leave after dinner and miss this.  Hitch stayed for my exemplary nursing skills.  We went to the Dr. this a.m. for a diagnosis of tonsilitis and some antibiotics.  I'll be driving him back to college tomorrow, probably.

7 Quick Takes Friday

1.

My college students came home for fall break last night after being at school continuously since Labor Day.  We went up to see them on their birthday weekend for lunch, but that has been IT!  This is the first year that I've seen KT so little.  Now that she has a car and could come home any time she wants, and I don't have to pick her up, she can't come home because she has a job so she can pay for her car.   Hitch works, too; they both work all day Saturdays, so they just never get home.

It was so nice to have them home for dinner.  It would have been perfect if Madden had been here, too, but he had to stay at school until 11:00 for a project.

Maybe it was perfect....KT and Hitch picked him up instead up Dh or I having to do it.

2.

We're psyched for the biggest game of the year tonight.  It's almost like the Georgia-Florida rivalry.

Go Cougars!

3.

Busy weekend with our high school football game, neighborhood halloween event, the GA-FL game, halloween, and All Saints Day on Sunday.  KT and I are going to plan a little All Saints party for the family since we decided not to take the younger ones to the TORCH party and miss out on time with our other kids.

4.

Because of my post on quark the other day, (yogurt cheese, not physics) my blog got Stumbled Upon.  The subject was physics, of course, not probiotics.  I don't even know how Stumble works, but I think it's pretty hysterical that serious geeky-types might end up here because I made some cheese!

Welcome to my humble blog!

5.

Can you believe that it's 8:35 a.m. and my kids are nagging me to get off the computer so they can do their schoolwork?  What's wrong with these people?  Don't they know it's Friday---Easy Day around here---and we can start school later than usual?

It's not just easy day---it's Friday at the chiropractor's and he has Free Bagels on Friday.  Woot!  Woot!

I don't care about the bagels, just the massage and adjustment.  I'll be a happy camper in a couple of hours.

6.

Do your children watch Phineas and Ferb?  I don't know anything about them except that they say it's the best show ever and my children run around the house all day singing their songs.  I must admit they're quite catchy.

7.

Okay, never mind.  Some of them are quite annoying.  Especially when it's just the one line repeated fifty-gazillion times because they don't know the rest of the song.

Maybe we better start school so they'll stop singing now.

~~~~~~~

Have a great day!  Stop by again!

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The Story of My Life

Oh, were you expecting something more philosophical?

Sorry, not today.  This cracked me up!

H/T: Shelly

O Bliss! O Joy!

O, Quark, Quark!

I made my dear husband very happy on Sunday with some quark, which, in case you didn't bother to click the link up there, is basically just yogurt cheese, NOT  "elementary particles and fundamental constituents of matter," as you might think.

Ever since he graduated from college and spent about a year in Munich and touring Europe, he has been a quark lover.  After many years, we found a place to buy it---Harry's Farmer's Market, which is now owned by Whole Foods---but it's rather expensive and Harry's is out of my way, as a rule.

So, a couple of weeks ago I discovered this wonderful method for making yogurt in a crockpot, which I've done twice now.  I love it!  It's so easy and yummy, and let's not forget----cheap!  Dh figured that if I could make yogurt, I could make quark, so he found this Down-to-Earth blog full of great stuff as well as instructions!  I can't believe she posted those instructions just days before dh did his search.

If making yogurt in a crockpot is easy, making quark out of it is super-easy.  Just as she says, you drain the whey out of it using cheesecloth.  We were out of cheesecloth (for about 5 years), so we used the old coffee filter method.  I lined my mesh strainer with a filter, added yogurt, and then put a couple more filters on top with a weight to press the whey out of the yogurt.  We put it in the fridge overnight, and in the morning---voila!

Dh ate it on toast; I ate it on a spoon.  And it was wonderful.  I like it much better than the yogurt, which is pretty amazing.  The quark is smooth and creamy with that tartness that characterizes yogurt, but not quite so much.  I think a lot of the tartness is lost in the whey.  I didn't want to waste all those great pro-biotics so I used the whey in a chocolate smoothie.  It was different, let me tell you, but still tasty.  Next time, I think I'll save it for pancakes.

We haven't taken any pictures, or added any flavorings yet.  We love it just fine plain.   I'll probably make some more for this weekend since our yogurt recipe makes 2 quarts of yogurt and we're hard-pressed to finish it all in a timely fashion.  Making the quark will be a very pleasant way to use the yogurt faster!

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This is my first time participating in Kelly's Real Food Wednesday Blog Carnival.  Click that link if you want to see some more ways to incorporate Real Food into your diet!  I made some more "real food" yesterday, inspired by my sick child, so maybe I'll post about it next week.