Shelly’s Journal

I’ve been plunged back into the world of daily cooking in this new schedule. It’s a role I haven’t embraced for 4 years - at least on a regular basis. I’m trying to be organized to make sure I have enough on hand to do what we need to do for the week. So, I’m planning….

This week’s menu:

Monday
Apricot Fish/Baked Potatoes/Steamed Broccoli

Tuesday
Cranberry Chicken in the Crockpot/Rice/Steamed Spinach

Wednesday
Spaghetti Dish from Rachael Ray Cookbook, pg 291/Meatballs/Green Beans

Thursday
Black Bean Chili

Friday
Chicken Enchiladas or Pesto
On hold due to potential NASCAR attendance by Gil and Bump on Friday

We just wing it on the weekends. I’ve also got a black bean and rice dish I’m waiting to try.

Cooking is very exploratory for me, as I never really learned to cook. I picked up things along the way and am only now putting it all together. It’s another adventure!

Also, I do feed my little boys from our dinner, although they usually get some things for just them. Instead of fish tonight, they got ham. Usually they always get bread and fruit. If I can get them to eat anything else, it’s a bonus. Bump cleaned his plate tonight. Clean. Two months ago, he would have never touched the stuff. This is the difference of family meals together.

I’m experimenting some in the cooking field, trying to find a list of 20 or so recipes to keep in my rotation. I’m trying some new things. I like to do that. I found a couple of great dishes on allrecipes today.

Mushroom Porkchops
Ingredients
* 4 pork chops
* salt and pepper to taste
* 1 pinch garlic salt, or to taste
* 1 onion, chopped
* 1/2 pound fresh mushrooms, sliced
* 1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup

Directions
*Season porkchops with salt, pepper and garlic to taste.
*Brown in deep frying pan on medium heat.
*Add mushroom and onions and saute for about a minute with pork chops.
*Add soup. Simmer on med-low for about 30 minutes, until chops are cooked.

Notes
I added a little milk also, trying to make gravy. I didn’t keep a close eye on this one because my potatoes were distracting. The liquid in the pan ended up blackening and thickening. It was the highlight of the meal.

Round 2 -
MashedPotatoes with Fried Mushrooms, Bacon and Onions
Ingredients
* 6 Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and quartered
* 5 slices bacon
* 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
* 6 medium mushrooms, sliced
* 1 medium onion, sliced
* 2 tablespoons butter
* 2 tablespoons ranch dressing

Directions
*Peel, dice and boil potatoes as usual for making mashed.
*Prepare bacon (I baked mine.) Saute onions and mushrooms.
*When potatoes are done, mash as usual except use butter and ranch dressing in mashing.
*Add in bacon, mushrooms and onions.

Notes
This was great. I used canned mushrooms in the absence of fresh.

It was a lovely meal, really.

Directions

When my darling husband was on nightshift, this is where I spent my creative time:

This picture is taken during the day coincidentally instead of the dead of night. You can see the piles of projects on the table. The white chair to the left also has a pile of project wannabes on it. My sewing apron is readily available. The big denim bag on the chair has all of my random rulers and shapes. Behind the sewing machine is my Peanut Butter Jar full of scissors. To the right, are notions and what nots - and my big sewing basket. The small white dresser is jam packed full of fabric and is the bulk of my stash. Inside my closet, I have a shelf of fabric - mostly fleece, a small black drawer set with patterns and some flannels, a pile of interfacing and fleece, along with some bags of battiing, cardboard pieces and other random sewing stuff.

Now, this is where we are at:

The table is in mid use here as I’m piecing the blanket top that was on the far left back corner of the sewing table in picture one. The little black drawer set to the right came out of the closet and holds my active notions and feet, needles, some fabric for current projects. When it’s not in use for sewing, it faces the wall to keep little hands out. During the day, the sewing machine is covered and pushed to the back of the table, along with a few current projects and my extension table. The sewing table becomes a runway for cars - see big bin lower left. I have scissors stored in a filing cabinet not shown in the picture. Our server in the kitchen has my sewing box and other notions along with the project wannabes from the white chair in the previous photo. Our everything closet in the kitchen has my interfacing in it. (Note: Kitchen door is to the right of the black drawers.) Most fabric is still upstairs, but I’ve rearranged things to accommodate my sewing patterns and utilize space in my closet better.

The picture is shot from the computer. I also have my ironing board downstairs behind the door to the kitchen and the iron usually stays on the sewing table when not in use. So far, the kids have mostly left my stuff alone.

This wall previously housed our train table. In truth, we didn’t do too many track layouts there because the floor works out better in most cases.

Before the end of the year, the boys will share a bedroom and I will move back upstairs to the spare room.

I also want to point out my little portable DVD player in action on the corner of my table. In my old sewing room, there was a TV/DVD player just out of sight to the left of the table. That TV does not have a cable hookup.

So far, I have liked being downstairs. It’s a little change, and lots more clean-up and set-up, but it works for me!

I get the Craft of the Day emails from Martha Stewart. Today’s craft I found interesting.

You could make a bag out of a pillow case. It looks very easy. What could you use it for?

I was thinking a great overnight tote for a young girl - kind of like packing your stuff in a pillow case and go. Or, a shopping bag. It might even roll up nice enough to stuff in your purse. It would also be a good starter project for someone learning to sew.

I just checked out the organizing tip of the day on MS, and she has this great terry-cloth caddy made out of a bath towel. It also looks like a very easy and functional sewing project!

I love my little West Bend Slow Cooker. I got it around 1995. Over the years it has cooked up many different dishes from chilis and soups to chicken and ribs. I probably pull it out about once a week to use. It’s small - only 4 quarts - which makes a perfect sized dish for my little family. I also have a 6 qt. crock pot that spends more time in the closet than on the counter.

But my baby is sick. It’s become increasingly harder to clean the residue off the sides of the pot after cooking - even when I pre-spray it. The bases is also starting to peel on the element portion of the pot. Even though it is chugging away in the kitchen today, I’m wondering if its days are nearly over.

By 8 PM, all of my boys were in bed. Only Bump was still waiting to nod off. The other two were out. (Gil and Zach.) This is the first night after the first day of our new schedule. So far, not much has changed for me, except that I cook and dh runs around with the boys some. The day was long, but mostly because it is our second strait day of rains - heavy rains at times and thunder storms. This morning we got out for a quick trip to the grocery store during a lull, but that was it.

I’m tired and sore from a workout yesterday. Good exercise it like that sometimes. I did some Yoga tonight and am feeling very relaxed. Casey joined me on the floor for some doggy Yoga. At least she didn’t stick her nose in my face. It would have really ruined the whole relaxation thing.

I will kick back for a bit and then join my household in its pursuit of sleep.

I’m not one of those crazy, got to keep every little one cm piece of fabric that came off my projects. I’ll keep strips that are 2 inches and scraps that I can make 3 inch blocks from. That still ends up to be a ton of fabric. Over Christmas, I took on this project to whittle away at my scraps.

I also had a bag (and still do) of polyfil left over from pillow projects. So that made these balls easy. The local pet store sells “extra squeakies” and I rounded up a few packs to complete the project. While my big fat Casey dog would have loved jumping into this pile, these went to our local Humane Society. Casey did get a few of her own.

I notice today that there’s a lot of “pink” in these scraps. And I think the majority of the pink balls are made from some flannel leftovers that were used for baby blankets, bibs, etc.

I am also working on a quilt from my scraps.

I was working on some bags today. It’s time for end-of-the year gifts at Mom’s morning out. I grabbed a jelly roll and a charm pack of some sweet Moda fabric a few weeks ago when I had the luxury of visiting the closest quilt shop to my home.

The fabric has browns, greens, blues and some pinks mixed in. I’ve ended up sorting the pinks out to make a primary pink bag, while the others will have a mix of blue, brown and green with a tinge of pink here and there. But I’ve come to realize as I’ve dug through my stash…I don’t have any pink fabric for the lining. I really don’t have much pink at all. There are a few fat quarters and a few baby flannels, but that’s pretty much it. It’s kind of embarrassing. I like a lot of the pink fabrics, but when I look at it on a bolt, it just seems like so much pink. I’m not a pink person.

Tomorrow, I’ll try and find a blue, green or brown suitable for the task.

Tonight, we begin our new schedule. The boys (dh, too) are all tucked in and when I get up tomorrow, my husband will be gone to work. He’ll be home around 4-5 pm and we’ll sit down to dinner together, which will be too weird.

In the meantime, I’m hanging out with the pooch in a thunderstorm. She’s a little anxious with all the noise.

Sleeptight.

Exercise has been a hard discipline this spring. Schedules, motivation, ambitions have all swirled together and left me scattered at times. Exercise is the thing that loses out in the midst of all this shuffling. April has been the best month for me this year, but every day I still fight to squeeze in the time.

Today, I slipped away for a 58 minute run. Most running days, I try and push myself in the 5-6 mile range because I might only run 3 times this week and I want to get the most bang. I take the extra 10 minutes here in case I don’t get that chance to go out the door.

I hit the road about 10 am, which is late in the day for me. I prefer the early morning runs,with a little chill in the air. By the time my rubber met the road, the sun was making short order of shade and the temps had climbed into the low 70s. Definitely, not my favorite weather.

I think that every run is different. I find a variety of ways to push myself, to challenge myself, to get faster and stronger. As I walk out that door, I really never know what the challenge will be until I’m there in the midst of it. This morning, I found the weather to be challenging as I lost my shade on the toughest part of the course. I don’t carry water on these shorter runs, so there is really no relief until I hit one of the few shades patches and then finally get to what we call the “woods” - a part of the trail that has woods on one side and houses on the other. It’s usually shady and in summertime once the leaves are fully on the trees, makes for a cool final mile in a run.

It was in the woods where I found the biggest challenge.

Pace. I stink when it comes to pacing. My Garmin has shown me that. Most days my data has me up and down, back and forth on speed. But it’s on those rare gems where my lines are smooth and steady that I find my best runs. So how do I get there. My last mile in the woods was my attempt at maintaining.

I knew my distance. I knew what I had left. So I tried to keep pace at the highest level possible. No, I was not running full out, but trying to get in rhythm and stay there or crank it up a notch if I could. The heat had faded behind the shade trees. The path was familiar. And so I pushed it.

At one point I decided that I felt like I was running up against a wall, trying to push it forward or maybe running in water. But I didn’t back down. I kept trying to turn it up. Or maybe it just felt that way.

Looking at my stats afterward, I did if for a very short distance, probably almost half a mile. It felt like more. But at least I was out there and working hard, burning calories and moving my muscles.

I’ve been getting it done this week, that’s for sure. Now that we’re all healthy again and spring is truly here, we’ve been running at full steam, my boys leading the charge. I don’t know how they don’t fall into bed completely exhausted every night because they are truly wearing me out.

I took them down to Colonial Williamsburg on Wednesday. We hadn’t been there in ages. When Bump was about Zach’s age, I used to take him down there about 3 times a week. We’d sit in Market Square near College Corner and watch all the cars and trucks go by. Bump loved it. He’s sit in his stroller for a good hour, amused with traffic.

Our trip this week wasn’t so easy. Bump has demands, places he wants to go. Zach just wants to go. It makes for a little bit of juggling. We visited the climbing tree mostly and then went down to the cheese shop for a little picnic outside. I had to take the double joggler with me, which made my life easier, but still has it’s challenges. And we walked back and forth and back and forth trying to avoid school groups and horse droppings.

I’ve had spring fever for a few weeks and having been trying to rearrange and clean things like crazy. Today was the screen porch day. Every year, we get a dusting of pollen in our area. Anything that’s outside gets covered with it and it does leak into the screen porch. So, after the dusting is over I make sure that I clean the porch out. This year, I went so far as to haul everything outside, scrub down the floor and any other pollen crusted areas I could reach, wipe everything else down and then put everything back in. It was a hurried job as well with much of it done during Zach’s nap.

I’ve been trying to do bits and pieces in the yard as much as I can. Gil has not been much for doing yard work of late, but with his new schedule next week, he should be picking it up a bit.

I almost included a photo of the errant bag on the roof. It’s a small plastic bag that I was trying to throw to the garbage can over the fence. I had pushed the can part way up the lawn so that I could push it to the curb in the evening. I tried my granny softball throw and it was a definite shank to the left right onto the garage roof. Gil hasn’t seen it yet. He’ll ask what it is. And I’ll tell him…dog p**p. I daily clean the yard of offensive material to keep little boys’ hands and feet clean. My game was just a little off. How long will I have to look at it? I’m not sure. Fortunately, it’s on the back side of the garage.

As you can see, my life is so exciting!