Cooking Like Crazy!

To get ready for the school year with one child in fourth grade (public school) and three children homeschooling, one in kindergarten and two in preschool, I cooked like crazy. I wanted to have meals ready for convenience that were healthy. I followed recipes from Heavenly Homemakers because she grinds her own wheat like I do and her recipes are simple and cheap and nutritious. She follows the nourishing traditions style of cooking. The first thing I made was graham crackers. While they were in the oven I looked over at the bag of Sucanat (natural sugar) and realized I didn’t add any in, Oops! The kids still like them though, thank goodness. Next on the list Honey whole wheat bagels. I made a dozen to freeze for lunches or breakfast because it is the favorite food of the Prince. Next was Breakfast burritos for the freezer for a nutritious, quick breakfast. First though I had to make the whole wheat tortillas 24 to be exact. Then came the eggs and sausage and some cheese had to be grated. Then 20 burritos were assembled and frozen. Brad did the math and figured that the burritos cost about 45 cents each. Pretty good! I began soaking beans yesterday and will finish those today and also for today the granola just finished baking. The granola is very hearty and we can put it in milk like cereal, it is much cheaper and the kids love it!! I have been ignoring the laundry so that is also on today’s list. That is definitely the dreaded part of the day!

Memorial Service and The Old Mill

The Memorial service was beautiful. My sister and cousin played “Let it be” on the guitar, and a family friend sang. Aunt Kim did a reading and my youngest brother Alex did a reading. Then Brad did the eulogy and it was amazing. He portrayed dad so well and he brought up some things about dad that a lot of people did not know about him. Adrienne and I went up at the end to read some letters we found that Dad had written to her and the boys. They were so funny! After the church service we went to the grave site where the urn will be buried and did a small service there. Everyone went back to Grammy and Pop Pop’s for food. The kids were picking berries in the backyard. It was so fun!

After everyone left we went to the old mill that is in my grandparents little town. It was so beautiful! It was built in the late 1700’s. It was interesting for me and the kids to see a grain mill this size. The grain mill I have fits on my fridge and it was pretty impressive to walk inside and see the inner working of one. They still do grain grinding demonstrations however, we did not get to see one. Right behind the mill is the Susquehanna river. We stayed around there for a while before going back to Aunt Kim’s. It was a very nice and calm day despite the sadness we felt.

My Problem is Solved!!

My dear wonderful friend Kelly told me about Windows live writer. You download the program for free and then write your entire post in “writer”  drag and drop your pictures right onto your post from the file on your computer and viola! You publish the post and never have to deal with blogger’s photo uploader shenanigans again! I think I may be in heaven! I was seriously going to stop adding photos to my posts and let all my many, many readers just use their imaginations :) Now, I am off to start writing some posts and schedule them for the next few days. Happy photo uploading to all of us, Thanks to Kelly!

Having some serious trouble

During our vacation we took 1,400 pictures. That is a lot of stinkin' pictures. It was two weeks of travel and we apparantly didn't want to miss anything! The trouble comes in because blogger is making it very difficult for me to upload, organize and find the pictures for each post. I am not sure how I am going to fix this problem or if I will just have to skip over all vacation pics and continue with posts about regular life. I really want my vacation pics on here so if anyone has suggestions it would be greatly appreciated!

Baltimore

After Fort Mchenry we went to Edgar Allen Poe's house and then to the cemetary where he is buried. It was a very interesting cemetary because a church was built on top of it. It was strange. We walked around there for a bit and then went into the Inner Harbor which was really important to me and my sister. Dad used to take us there and he loved the Inner Harbor. We then drove by dad's old house. It is the house I live in in my dreams. It used to be so beautiful-and still is, not much had changed. When dad was still alive and in hospice we brought up the "woodside house" and he said " I refinished 13 doors in that house!!" Everything else we talked about that day he was kind of soft-spoken about but not when it came to all the work he put into that house!! Anyway, that was our sightseeing for that day. I had a terrible time uploading these photos. I cannot get them to arrange in order. I am very frustrated and have given up on that task for now so they are unorganized and wacky-sorry. I feel it is better to have my computer in tact and wacky pictures than a computer that has been thrown across the room because I continued trying to fix the pictures. Also, I am getting frustrated because blogger has some sort of delay when I am trying to go back and delete words and letters. Ahhh I am done for the evening, hopefully I can find a way around these problems tomorrow.

We interrupt these regularly scheduled vacation pictures...

...to discuss our dinner tonight. I had some boneless skinless chicken thighs that I got on sale at Henry's. I never buy thighs I always buy breasts so I had no idea what to do with them. I had some coconut milk in my pantry that I didn't know what to do with either. Sooo, I went on an internet search for recipes and I found a few but I didn't have most of the ingredients. Well I found one where I was only missing one main ingredient (rice vinegar-which I sent Brad to the store for) and I had similar substitutions for other things I was missing. The Chicken is Sticky coconut chicken with chili glaze and then to accompany I made sesame noodles. Holy cow!! dinner was so good, and the amazing part... my kids devoured it! They were begging for more chicken WITH sauce. I thought for sure it was going to be too spicy for them. I did not have the chili oil for the noodles or the chili flakes for the chicken so I just used tabasco and chili powder and kind of added stuff just to give it a little kick. They all loved it! After dinner they wanted some cheese and did some sort of goofy butt cheese dance, and you are lucky enough to see a video of it!

Sooo, make these recipes for dinner it was easy and delicious. I especially loved the noodles, Yum!

Pig Roast

The pig roast was awesome! At first I wasn't so sure how I would feel about the whole pig roast situation but being there I was so happy I almost started crying. There was family that I hadn't seen in 10 years or longer and bluegrass music playing and a giant 95 pound pig being BBQ'd and cornhole going on in the background. This is family, this is what a get together should look like. 50 people all hanging out- some related, some not, all enjoying their time together. It was fantastic. It made me realize all that I have been missing out here in California. The only real, related family I had was my mom and dad. And now that they are both gone it is just me and my family. Brad has his mom and grandma out here and some other family a few hours away. I want to move, we want to move but we can't figure out how.There is a whole ex-husband situation for me and someone would have to give up summers and someone would have to give up the school year. We are trying to figure it out. Anyway, there were ladies there that were making homemade peach ice cream-it was soooo delicious!!! Pop was so excited about the ice cream and the pig roast.  By the way Pop was driving around my daughter on his ATV and I should mention that he is almost completely blind and I was terrified wondering why in the world he was riding around on that thing. I also should explain cornhole... in Brad's words it is redneck horseshoes. Bags of corn, like bean bags thrown into a piece of wood with a hole in it. Simple but very fun.

She was hot and tired and found a chair to have her dinner

Enjoying the bluegrass music

Being helped out of a hole he fell in

My cousin Jessica and her husband Clark. They were playing cornhole

Cornhole!

This kid has candy hooked to his shorts!

The munchkin playing cornhole


I forgot to post about going into Baltimore and visiting Dad's old house. That will be tommorow.