bearing blog

I was in Denver over the weekend; one of my good friends from grad school moved there a few months ago.  She and I used to go for coffee several times a week, to the same coffee shop just up the street, blowing on our coffee and telling each other how much we really needed the caffeine this afternoon because… and venting about, first, coursework and finals, and then, advisors and papers and presentations and annoying instrumentation problems (for her) and bugs (for me), and finally, thesis work and job offers (for her) and the looming prospect of my finishing and not getting a job after all.  Better than therapy. 

So I finally made it to the Minnesota Catholic Home Education Conference — this is the first year I've not been out of town for it — and lo and behold, they had a homeschool bloggers fireside chat!  I met several bloggers new to me and saw a few more.  I stole this picture from Margaret:

From left to right, Mary, Margaret,Tracy, Ana, Jamie, and your hostess.  Aren't we a colorful bunch?

 

Most of the folks there didn't know me.  So first I had to tell everyone I was "bearing blog," and then I had to tell everyone again that it was not "baring blog."  

Though now that I have a built-in web-cam, that does give me an idea for increasing my traffic.

Kidding.

I haven't gone through my pile of stuff from the conference yet, but when I do I can add links to a couple more bloggers I met.  A great time was had by all.

p.s. Wikipedia article on Erma Bombeck. Whom I nominated as candidate for the first pre-blogosphere  Catholic mommyblogger.  And may she rest in peace.

Laptop problem solved!

This is going to take some getting used to.  I never had a Mac before, although I used a G4 to do a fair amount of my work in graduate school.

"A few weeks ago, I didn't beat my children, and it ranked as the major accomplishment of my day."

Ever since I found a convenient source for free-range “organic” humanely raised chickens, I haven’t cooked much chicken.

This sort of makes sense.  You see, although the chickens are very yummy and don’t require an extra trip — they are sold by the same folks who sell me milk and eggs and cheese every week — they only come in the form of “whole frozen bird.”  (OK, they’re plucked and headless and feetless).  The problem is that my meal-planning algorithm classifies dinners by type of dinner, and the only chicken paradigms I have ready-made in my brain are “cook a whole chicken in a fairly complicated recipe, then eat leftover chicken for a couple of days” or “simple, quick dinner made with boneless skinless chicken breasts.”  I don’t want to eat chicken three days in a row very much, even if the last day is soup from luscious homemade stock, and I don’t have much time anymore for complicated recipes. Also I never seem to have time to let the darn thing defrost.  I still want to eat chicken, but now that I have a source for humanely raised chicken, I don’t buy boneless chicken breasts at the store.  Clearly it is time for a new plan.

The solution was obvious when I actually sat down to think of it.  America’s cooking repertoire is full of simple, quick dinners made from boneless skinless chicken breasts, ’tis true.  But! America’s cooking repertoire is also full of simple, quick dinners made from chopped cooked chicken meat.  And if you’ve got a whole frozen chicken, producing chopped cooked chicken meat is hardly any more work than cooking boneless skinless chicken breasts.  So I need to replace one mental set of recipes with another.  That’s all.

A couple of days ago, I got a whole frozen chicken from the dairy.  I stuck it frozen in the slow cooker at 10 pm (here’s the rub — the chicken has to fit in your slow cooker even when frozen, else you have to defrost it so it will squish) and added salt, pepper, about a half a cup of water, and a bay leaf.  It cooked on low until about 8 AM when I pulled it out and transferred it and its liquid to a bowl in the refrigerator.  When I had time, that afternoon, I picked about six and a half cups of chicken meat off the bones, leaving the wings intact.  I divided the meat into thirds.  One third I set aside for enchiladas that evening. Into each of two zip-loc freezer bags I put one third of the meat and one of the chicken wings.  (About eleven ounces of meat per bag, plus the wing).  Those went, labeled, into the freezer.  And of course, the carcass plus most of the liquid went back into the slow-cooker for stock.

Here’s my  thought.  If I process one chicken like this every three weeks, we can have one chicken meal per week plus all the stock we need.  By freezing a wing with each batch of chicken meat, I can better adapt recipes that call for braising bone-in chicken parts — I’ll throw the wing into the braising pot with vegetables, then when it’s all done pull the wing out and put in the cooked chicken meat.  I’m planning to try this method with my paprikash recipe next week.  Since there’s only eleven or twelve ounces of meat per meal, it meshes pretty well with Mark’s cook-less-meat -for-a-better-world plan.

Hannah and Recipezaar.com helped me come up with a list of recipe ideas and classes of meals that would work with cooked chopped chicken.  Here is what we came up with:

• chicken tortilla soup
• chicken fried rice  
• lasagna with velouté sauce instead of traditional béchamel
• chicken wild rice casserole
• jambalaya
• white chili
• chicken pot pie in several variations
• gumbo
• cassoulet
• a skillet dinner I used to make with pork, rice, tomato sauce, provolone cheese, and green beans — chicken should substitute for the pork
• calzones — maybe with artichokes!
• wrap sandwiches of all types — I’m thinking of one I had at a restaurant that was turkey, wild rice, sweet potato, and cranberry sauce…
• chicken mole, maybe this “lasagna” recipe
• something from the bizarre category called “hot chicken salad” — I’ve never heard of this before but the recipes sounded promising
• Middle Eastern curry pilafs with dried fruit in them
• Biriyani
• Cacciatore
• For the kids — sweet and sour chicken
• Chicken sloppy joes

I think these should keep me busy for a while, don’t you?

Last night we gathered up all our camping stuff, including the new big tent, and took it to Hannah and Mark’s house in the suburbs to camp in the backyard, you know, just to make sure everything worked okay.  Thunderstorms threatened, which was perfect for testing out the new tent.  It started to rain while we were setting up, and within a few minutes we were bedraggled and yelling at each other and at our friend who was trying to help.  Just like real camping! 

“Grab the other end of this pole!  No, not THIS one, this OTHER one!” 

“Where’s the door?  Is this the door?  The vestibule has to go OVER THE DOOR.” 

“Don’t put the fly on yet, we still have two poles left.  MARK!  DID YOU HEAR ME?!  Two poles!” 

“Quick!  Unclip everything and rotate it!  What?  Uh, one hundred twenty degrees.  No, one eighty.” 

I came around the corner of their house, mostly soaked, and found the other invited guests waiting on the porch.  They turned to me with big “So glad to meet you!” grins, so I said, “Hi! Um. I don’t live here. I’m just camping in the back yard.”  Then Hannah opened the door.  “She’s the one who lives here,” I explained and then went back to my car to get more tent stakes. 

After the party, during which I learned from one of the other guests (weirdly) that some poor graduate students at the university are still being made to read my thesis, the sky cleared and Mark and Hannah pitched their tent in the backyard too.  Mark built a fire in the fire ring.  We’d also pitched the little three-man tent that Mark and I used before we had children, and the bigger boys clamored to be allowed to sleep in the little tent by themselves.  What better time to see how that would go?  We all guessed that the boys would creep back into their respective families’ tents before too long.  Anyway, we all turned in about ten-thirty.

Around midnight I woke with a start and had that go check on the kids feeling.  But I was really tired, the baby was latched on, Mark was asleep, we were in a fenced suburban backyard… everything had to be fine.  I suppressed the urge and fell asleep. 

Suddenly I was startled awake by the boys’ voices, shouting.  I sat up.  I heard Hannah calling, “Boys! Be quiet!”  They didn’t pay any attention to her. 

I shook Mark awake and told him to go make the boys stop that awful noise before they woke the neighbors.  He sat up, fumbled for his glasses, and slithered out of the tent.  I heard him mutter, “Who left the rainfly open?”  Then I heard his voice, alarmed: “Where arethey?” 

Instantly I was outside standing in the wet grass in the dark.  The boys’ voices lingered a moment and faded rapidly, just evaporated into the night air, like a dream.  Their little tent was open and their sleeping bags were empty.  Hannah was running into the house.  You have to understand that I was so certain I had heard them calling out, just a moment before.  I can’t remember ever being so disoriented, confused, and frightened (and not really certain I was awake) all at the same time. 

Of course everything made some sense in just a moment, when Hannah came out of the house and reported that they were both upstairs in her eight-year-old’s bedroom fast asleep.  We all rolled our eyes and wondered aloud why they didn’t just come into one of our tents, and pointed at the lit windows and laughed, (they’d apparently turned on every light in the house), and swore we’d let them have it in the morning.  Hannah’s Mark went inside to sleep and the rest of us stayed out with the little kids in the tents. 

We never did figure out what the noise was that awakened us.  Probably some cats.  In the morning we found out that they’d tried to get into our tent but hadn’t been able to find the zipper pull in the dark, so — rather than calling for us and “bothering” us — they decided they’d rather just go inside. 

You know your dry run has been a success when after it’s over, you pour yourself a beer and say to each other, “Thank goodness we didn’t try this when we were camping for real.”  After one lecture, and one mental note to buy zipper pulls that light up in the dark, we declared the mission accomplished.