Country Coffee

Two weeks ago our coffee carafe broke...right in the middle of a snow storm. Being at the end of a long, long gravel road, we can't expect to simply hop in the car to remedy such things. We must wait for the snow to stop falling, wait for the plow to uncover blanketed roads. Crestfallen and wondering what in the world we were to do, I was rescued by my sweet husband, who encouraged me to try the coffee pot mom brought when she was here this past Thanksgiving.

A gift from a friend and then gifted to us in turn, what a wonderful treat this turned out to be! I was hesitant at first- it is not electric...it is not my coffeemaker.

But oh! How feminine! Coffee is not distinctly feminine, like, say, tea can be. But this coffeemaker defied that notion, and for the entire week we waited for the new carafe to show up, I was thankful for this gift- not for just the mild, wonderful coffee it made, but also for the simplicity of it. I couldn't help but share my delight with you. Who'd have thought? Coffee- feminine!

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And now I come to a very exciting piece of news. (Forgive me, as I spend time being a coffee-lover).

When we moved here, one of the hardest city luxuries to give up was Starbucks. It almost seems silly now, but I remember my favorite part of going to the big city was definitely a trip to Starbucks. Within days of arriving in Iowa, I had them scouted out and was feeling right at home (coffee-wise).

When we moved into our house 2 weeks later (and were hence placed 45 minutes from "town") the daily, or even really, weekly Starbucks run became really extravagant. So I learned to love drip coffee. With the right creamer, I actually prefer the coffee we make at home to the $4.00 treats from sweet Starbucks.

But the creamer? This has been a must. And not just half and half (it was too watery), but true-to-form loaded with (who knows what kind of) ingredients CoffeeMate creamer. Reasons we HAD to go to go to town now looked like this:

-The heat lamp keeping our water pipes from freezing burned out!

-We ran out of diapers!

-We ran out of creamer!

There simply was no getting around it...but it isn't the cheapest splurge, when one consumes it at the pace we do. And I had looked for ways to make it from scratch, as that is almost always less expensive, but the only recipes I found used Non-Dairy creamer as a base. Nothing told me the secret to the basic stuff. So when my mom-in-law sent us a link to this site and told us it had recipes for commonly used items, I thought "Hey, I wonder if they have a creamer recipe."

And you know what! They had it! A wonderfully creamy, easy, inexpensive creamer mix. And if you love drip coffee, and perhaps live 30 minutes away from your closest store, and perhaps don't have $60 every month to feed your coffee cravings- this recipe is for you.

Coffee Creamer

1 1/2 Cups Milk

1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk

(Truly, that's all!)

You can add other spices and flavorings (like a bit of vanilla, pumpkin pie spice, etc). They have the proportions over at the site if you are so inclined. We added 3T of white chocolate syrup, and made 30 ounces of creamer for under $1.50.

And, from the heart of a true coffee-lover, this one cuts the mustard. Takes the cake. Is quite divine.

Oh the Weather Outside is Frightful

...and ironically, also strikingly beautiful. This week has certainly been a chilly one, and we are so thankful to have a warm home and a stocked pantry!










Our mailman called me yesterday morning to explain that he has been unable to get to our house for two days, so there is some mail waiting for me at the post office!

And I promised soup- one of my fastest growing favorites.

Ahh, soup. Inexpensive, easy to stretch, quick to make, and hearty. It warms cold bones after they shake off the knee-deep snow from the wood and corn hauling expeditions. Or so my sweet husband tells me.

Today I want to share two of my favorite recipes. They are nothing extraordinary, rather, they are quite ordinary and easy to make. I have to apologize for my lack of pictures of the chicken and rice soup. For whatever reason, my cameras batteries were staging a coup throughout it's construction.

Chicken and Rice Soup

Carrots (2-4)

Celery (2 stalks)

1 medium onion

Chicken broth (4 cups)

Chicken or turkey (cooked, shredded or cubed)

2 cans of cream soup (like cream of chicken, cream of celery)

Rice (cooked, around 3-4 cups or whatever you have on hand)

This recipe, like the other I will share, is extremely forgiving. If you only have one carrot? That's fine! If you want to use 5? Go ahead! If you have no chicken broth, but can make some with chicken bullion cubes, that works perfectly fine. Trust me, as you make this, you will see how forgiving it is. If it looks too dry when you add the rice, add more water or broth. Play with it until it has the consistency you like. Also! This is an enormous batch- enough for many meals for my family. So, cut it down if you don't have a large pot to throw it in, or better yet, freeze leftovers.

OK, for the instructions:

Dice carrots, onions, celery. Throw in a large pot with a bit of oil or butter. You want to cook them until the celery is soft, and the onions are a pretty brown color. Don't overdo it, keep a good eye on them. Then, toss in your chicken or turkey to warm up and brown a bit. Add your chicken broth, and bring to a boil. Add your two cans of creamed soup, and return to a simmer. When that happens, throw your rice in (this can be cold from the fridge or just-made warm). This will thicken your soup and make it oh-so wonderful. Salt and pepper to taste, and enjoy!

Creamy Potato Chowder

Carrots

Celery (about two stalks)

1 medium onion (I see a trend!)

Cubed ham, or cooked bacon, or cooked sausage

2 cups Corn

4 baking potatoes

4 cups milk (rice milk works well in this recipe, too)

Dice and cube the carrots, celery and onion. Put in a large pot with a bit of butter or oil, to soften onions and celery. Add meat and stir a bit. Then, throw in the corn. I used frozen here, so wanted to just make sure it was warmed up. For this recipe, I also cubed and boiled the potatoes until just barely soft. You could just cook them in the soup, if you would like, just plan on eating later (like 40 minutes or so). Add the potatoes to the rest of the vegetable mixture, and then pour milk in.

Bring to a simmer and let cook about 15 minutes. The potatoes and carrots should be soft enough to easily break with a fork. Salt, pepper, and garlic to taste. Serve with toast...mmm!

Both of these recipes reheat very well from the refrigerator. and we will often eat it for dinner one night, and then lunch for a few days following that.

I love how these are easy to remember and forgiving with the ingredients (I need that, since I can't just run to the store for that extra celery stalk!)

What soup recipes do you love?

A Day for Everything- In My Kitchen, Continued

But isn't it cumbersome? Do you live in the kitchen?
It can seem daunting- this cooking from basics. But let me just encourage you here: with the right rhythms, routines, and plans, providing good, healthy food for your family does not have to enslave you to your kitchen.
Let's take bread, for example.
Some people, when I mention that I make all of our family's bread, look at me cross-eyed. A few years ago, I would have looked at me cross-eyed, too. When we were first married Phil was intent on buying a 5 gallon bin to hold our flour. Mind you, I had never had anything but those storage canisters that sat on the kitchen counter-maybe a bag of 5lbs of flour in the cupboard. And when he mentioned this 5 gallon bin you have to believe I was ...less than thrilled. I would NEVER be baking that much, I assured him. What's wrong with buying flour more than once a year? Not in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that one day I would be so thankful for that flour bin, that I would wish I had more to store oats and rice and wheat flour and sugar. Because as much as I love to cook and bake, we do end up going through a lot of basics. And those basics aren't easily grabbed at the local grocery store when you live Out in the Stalks.

A day for everything: One of the best things I have done (that, by the way, was not my idea) was to start a baking day. Every Wednesday I set out to make the week's bread. This way, I create the big mess only once, I clean it up only once, and I ensure I have the right ingredients on hand. Before I started that, it would feel like I was in the kitchen all the time, because I would make just one batch of bread. And, that fresh bread would be eaten excitedly by myself and my boys...leaving me feeling like I had done a whole day's worth of work just to use it up that night.

This way, we all have something to look forward to (Wednesday baking day!), and when I am tired at the end of the day, I know I have a week before it comes again. I am refreshed and ready once again when that last loaf is sliced.

That bread, then, is used in a number of ways to make or add to simple meals:

Breakfast items: French toast, regular toast, "eggs in a basket", torn in pieces and made into a ham/cheese breakfast casserole (to name a few).

Lunch: Sandwiches, adornments for soups

Dinner: Toast and butter, add garlic and Parmesan to make a side for spaghetti, put with a big chef salad, etc.

Stale bread can be made in to croutons or bread pudding.

So, making four loaves of bread once a week pays off as the bread easily adorns many meals. It can be a quick snack for kids, too. This cuts down on our purchases of crackers, snack bars, granola bars, etc. Not that those things are bad, but my $.50/loaf for whole grain bread is hard to beat at the grocery store.
Practice and Persistence: When you first learned to drive, all of your attention had to be completely on the road. Where is my foot? Are my hands correct? I can't see back there and up here! It was a learned skill, that art of navigating within a vehicle. Now, we hardly think twice about it- it all comes so naturally. We can drive and talk, drive and listen to music, drive and think. Our brains can be involved in other places, too. Cooking is much like that. When I first learned to cook, I had to follow recipes exactly. If a recipe called for coconut and I had none, I would have to stop mid-way through a recipe and head to the store. (By the way, one of the best teachers for substitutions has been my lack of ability to do just that!)

The recipes I use over and over again have become known in my bones, so that throwing together a batch of bread is more physical work than it is mental. This, like driving, just comes with time- with mistakes- with perseverance. It is a skill like any other, and in my opinion, such a blessing to learn.
What tricks have you learned to help feed your family?

Next up: My winter favorite: Soups

On Mothering

To Mother
is to learn the art of self-sacrifice
To give of yourself when you feel it least within you
To deny yourself when those cravings come
And with thanksgiving for the privilege,
serve.
Not for notoriety
Or fame
Or fortune
And often at the cost of such things.
One does not mother with the intent of greatness
But simply because it is what we do.
The fibers of our being start to change,
and we learn the beauty of giving, of sacrifice, of love.
Love, to a child calling when it is night
And sleep calls to your weary body
Love, to a child angry with circumstance
when your patience threatens to cut and run
Love, to those eyes, ready to learn and watch
when your desire is to be alone.
It is the art of sacrifice we get to learn first.
Laying down our most treasured strongholds for something so much greater.
Oh Lord, let me learn to love like You do.
For your ways are not my ways, and my bones ache to do less than justice to this calling.
Give me grace for a new day, for each precious moment I am given here.
Give me eyes to see those hearts, ears to hear those words, wisdom to guide those souls.
And thank you for giving me the blessing of this beautiful name,
Mom.
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Thoughts as I am pulled from that sweet moment between the waking and sleeping world by my wonderful children- thankful that God meets me even here, at midnight, weary though I may be.

In My Kitchen

As I was kneading bread yesterday morning, it occurred to me that it had been awhile since I shared the ins and outs of farm life...country life on this blog. I have been on a continual journey learning how to take care of my family and home as I learn to be a better homemaker. As I walk this journey, I would love to share some of the things I am learning here. Also, I would love to hear your insights and experience.
In My Kitchen
We do most of our cooking from scratch (we shop around the outer ring of the grocery store, if you will). There are a lot of misconceptions about this style of cooking- that it takes forever, its so cumbersome, etc. I want to talk about that, but first, let me explain why we do it:
Health: When I cook from scratch, I know what goes into it. My bread contains only flour, water, sugar, yeast, oil and salt. I know how much salt is in my soup and that the cheese we are eating is actually...a dairy product.
Expense: We don't have a lot of money to throw at the grocery store, and buying basics helps stretch those dollars. We aren't fanatic about it, we just mostly buy staples. I have a wonderful recipe book called "Make A Mix Cookbook" that shows many of the bought mixes and how to create them for much less money. I love it!
Space: We don't have a lot of room to put boxes and boxes of different things- or even cans and cans of things. Our pantry space is small, and the way I need to store things is cumbersome (in plastic containers). I find that piecing meals from scratch helps me to make the best use of that space.
Joy: This isn't done out of hum-drum requirement. Though at first I was overwhelmed with the idea of cooking all of our meals, I have learned to really love providing food for my family. There is a real sense of satisfaction I get when I sit down to a meal purposefully made. Oddly enough, it is something deeper than the satisfaction I ever felt when I stopped by the drive-through on the way home.
Love: We. Really. Like. To. Eat. And the time spent cooking, delving into that skill set has allowed us to make more food, better food, healthier food.
Next...but doesn't it take forever? Do you LIVE in your kitchen?

The Tradition of the Stupid Jello

We love family traditions.

One thing we want to both continue and create for our kids is that sense of family that comes through tradition. This year, with Ryan being old enough to really remember Christmas and Thanksgiving, we felt that we needed to decide on some basics for our home's holidays. We listed out some of the things that had been special to us growing up. This is a process, and I know we will be adding to it as we go along. Some of my favorite family traditions are the accidental ones- unplanned and wonderful, they rank among our most cherished.

The Tradition of the Stupid Jello is one of those in my family. I don't know when it started, but it was by accident. The beautiful jello salad molded into a ring, complete with layers, has adorned our Thanksgiving and Christmas tables for as long as I can remember. But the treat in this salad is how it always goes wrong.

My mother and my aunt are both wonderful cooks- with skill they were always able to create meals that were delicious, comforting, and artistically thoughtful. But there was always something wrong with this jello salad. The top layer would slide from the bottom, or the nuts would appear brown and unappetizing. The fruit layer wouldn't set up properly or it would jiggle and smash upon unmolding. Every year, without fail, it was a delight to watch the unmolding of the Jello Salad, the more folly it contained, the more fun the event. I remember watching with rapt attention the unmolding, and squealing with delight as it slid to one side in it's imperfect glory. From two cooks who were so accurate and precise, it was the one dish that they were not ashamed to have fail.

(Or maybe they were embarrassed, but they never let it show.)

This Jello Salad took on a mind of its own when I was first married to Phil, and we explained the tradition to him over dinner one Christmas. Being a boy, with horrible boy thoughts, he started coming up with ideas for new flavors to try. And of course the other boys, loving the idea of ruining the appetites of their women counterparts, dove in with relish. As a come-uppons, someday I think it would be delightful to actually serve an Anchovy and Sauerkraut jello salad...if I could stomach it's creation.

This year, since my parents were here for Thanksgiving, I had the privilege of learning how to make this molded, layered salad from my mom. I loved the idea that three tables this Thanksgiving were to dawn their own SJS: Iowa, California, and Washington, and it didn't take me long to have thoughts of our kid's and their kid's tables multiplied with their own concoctions and mishaps. Thus the beauty of tradition.

The Thanksgiving Stupid Jello Salad: unmolded on a bare plate. The lettuce? An afterthought. The layers? Half mingled, half separated. Ah, imperfect glory!
For Christmas, I was on my own. To start with, I forgot that I was making this and told Phil to go ahead and use up all of the cream cheese. But! It was supposed to be imperfect- so great! I improvised with orange jello, tiny marshmallows, and pineapple chunks. So far, so good.

But then, upon unmoding- do you see it? I opened the mold the wrong way, leaving the plastic turquoise lid underneath the fragile, wriggly jello. I thought maybe I could slide it off, hence the broken side piece. Instead, I ended up sprinkling coconut over the top...snow? Camouflage.

Can I tell you how I love this? Being quite imperfect myself, it is a delight to make things that are more fun when they go wrong.

And, as David's inability to wait shows, no matter how ugly the salad, it always tastes good!

Big Dreams

We sit curled together on the couch, Ryan and I, reading book after book on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I pause between books and smile at him "You are getting so big, kid. I don't know what I am going to do..." As I trail off, threatening to get lost in thought, Ryan doesn't miss a beat.
"Yeah," he says, bright-eyed, "and I will drive a lawnmower and have an ax and drive a car and have a tractor and a combine!"
From the speed and clarity with which he blurts all this out, I can assume he has been thinking about this.
"Yep," he concludes, 'when I get older, that's what I'm gonna do!'
And thus he leaves me in the dust- I was only thinking about the time when he would curl up on his own to read a book instead of next to myself, and here he is already tilling fields.