Something for Nothing

I love getting something for nothing! Or at least something for almost nothing. I like coupons (free money!), Picking apples and grapes from my yard (free food), and I LOVE the library (free books!).

It is especially nice when the free stuff is better than the costly equivalent. Compost, for example, is absolutely free to make. You can make it as complicated as you like, measure its temperature and so on, or you can just dump plant-type stuff in a pile on the ground and let it rot. Either way you get “black gold”, which will improve your garden soil immensely, especially if you live here on the Anoka sand plain.

Homemade stock is better than store-bought, too. Store-bought is too salty, and has less body. To make stock, take that turkey carcass and boil it for a while with some vegetables. Maybe you saved the carcass (isn’t that a good word?) from Thanksgiving? To my mind, Christmas is a beef holiday, but I know many people eat turkey for Christmas dinner.

Just like compost, you can make this complicated if you want to, buying high quality carrots, adding leeks, browning the bones just so, but I like simple. I like using the ends of carrots, celery and onions that otherwise go to waste (not really, they go to compost). I throw in herbs if I have any, or vegetables that are wilty, like green onions. I don’t use stuff that is rotten, just a little past its prime. I save it in the freezer until I have enough for a batch of stock. I do the same with the turkey, or chicken part of it. Bones, wings, skin, necks and gizzards, these are all good. The more you save, the stronger your stock will be. When you are done, freeze the stock in the amounts you want. Extra points for re-using sour cream or cool-whip containers (free Tupperware!).

Well, after you boil your turkey and fish out the bones, save the breast bone. It makes a great Santa sleigh! You may think I’m joking, but this was one of my favorite Christmas decorations as a child. It looks better if you spray paint it gold. Those of you who know my mother may now giggle.

Just so you know, my children are still rolling on the floor after seeing this breastbone sleigh.

Turkey Stock

Put turkey and/or chicken bones and skin in a big pot. Add vegetables, cut into chunks. Celery, carrots and onions are required, potato peelings, asparagus bits a little squishy tomato are all good additions. Stinky things like broccoli and turnips are not so great. Add water to cover the bones and boil for at least an hour. Put it in a crock-pot if you have things to do. Cool it, strain it, remove fat from the top, freeze it. If it gels when cool, that is a good sign. Discard the boiled bones and vegys. Not in the compost, it may attract rats! Don't add salt until you are ready to eat whatever you are making with this. It will need salt, but not until then.

The Nerd Demographic

Once again, I find myself firmly in the section of the population that can be labeled "Nerd". I don't even mean to do it, I just embrace something I think is great and then later find out that just about everyone else who likes this same thing identifies themselves as dorky.

Case in point, my whole family has just finished watching the series "Firefly". We loved, loved, loved it! It is a space opera from the early 2000's starring Nathan Fillian and Gina Torres. It only lasted one season, then was cancelled. The outrage of fans resulted in a movie ("Serenity"), but that was the end. Forever. (I didn't just like this show because my soon-to-be-off-to-college son sat next to me as we watched it, that was a bonus).

We googled the show to see a clip of Nathan Fillian on his new show, "Castle" in the costume of his character from "Firefly". We found several Utube clips with Sheldon (head nerd from "The Big Bang Theory") expressing his love for all things Firefly. Hmmmm... Another thing Sheldon and the Ose family have in common.

The geeky incidents continue, even when I am trying my hardest to be cool. Last night I got all dressed up in my nicest flowered dress and went to a garden party with my elegant lady friends. (These are the same friends I brought half-cooked rice pudding to a year ago).

A word about these gardens: a very nice woman named Claire has worked her back yard up into a truly beautiful landscape. She does photography, and rents the space out for weddings, proposals, tea parties and tours. Look at her website, http://godsgardensbyclaire.com to see what I mean. Last night was a gorgeous night, the flowers are blooming, the bees were buzzing, butterflies were flitting. I was in disguise as an elegant matron, sniffing roses and chatting with a graduate of Wellesley College.

Then I felt a tremendous pain in my side! Was it a cattle prod? Was I having some sort of stroke? No, a bumblebee had flown up my flowery dress and was now trapped and very unhappy. By the way, it is a lie that the little beasts can only sting once. It stung me many times before I got rid of it. The geeky part is how goofy I looked trying to decide if it was worse to continue being stung or to take off my clothes in a stranger's back yard with 20 women I am trying desperately to impress! I started pulling the skirt up, but at the sight of my fish-belly white thighs I had to abandon that plan, it was too horrible to contemplate! So I kept jerking and smiling and trying not to swear like a sailor. I finally got hold of the critter through the fabric and squished it. My nice friends were all for trying to help me get the stinger out, but I swore I was fine and finished out the night. This morning I had a welt the size of the palm of my hand on my side pork.

You can dress a dork up, but you can't take her anywhere!

Naturally, I needed painkiller. This would have been poetic justice...

Bee Sting Liqueur
Yield: 1 1/2 pints
4 md Navel oranges
1 md Lemon
3 c Vodka
1 1/8 c Honey
8 dr Yellow food coloring; opt.
1 dr Red food coloring; opt.
1 ts Glycerine; opt.
Rinse and dry the oranges and the lemon. Use the shredding side of a cheese grater to scrape only the orange part off the oranges; be careful not to scrape off the white, bitter part. Scrape the peel off half the lemon the same way. Put the orange and lemon zests in a glass jar; add the vodka. Seal tightly and let steep for 3 days in a cool, shaded place, shaking the jar once a day. Strain the flavored vodka into a clean bowl; whisk in the honey until it dissolves and the mixture clears. Stir in the optional colorings and glycerine. Pour the liquid into a clean glass bottle, or bottles, seal tightly, and allow to mature for at least a week before using. Store at room temperature.

CSI Ramsey

We had a forensic mystery in the house the other day. The boys brought a strange mark on the wall to my attention. It was in the stairway, and it took me a while to figure out what it was.

It was a double drip of blood! Kind of horseshoe shaped, with obvious dripping. I do watch CSI (the LasVegas edition, I can't stand David Caruso and his cheesy "Smell-the-Fart" acting) so the words "cast-off" and "directional spatter" were on my mind. We examined both the pets, and found no damage. I inspected Mr. Ose for damage and he was also fine. He's kind of a tough guy, flesh wounds mean nothing to him.

At this point, I remembered the bleeding walls in various horror movies (Amityville Horror?) and wondered if Lutherans can make Holy Water or if I had to take a Ziplok over to the Catholic church.

That is when I found what I thought was a grape skin on the carpet. Looking at it more closely, I saw that it had legs. Putting our forensic evidence together, I deduced that the dog must have had one of those really big wood ticks, that had become engorged until it was the size of a grape, like this one:


It must have fallen off the dog while she was walking on the stairs, and then somebody stepped on it, squirting the dog's blood onto the wall. All together now, EEEEEWWWWW!

It is good to know that if I get tired of teaching, I can get a job in the police lab. I like giving you recipes that relate to the blog, so here is a recipe for grape salad. Try not to think about big fat wood ticks when you eat it.

Oh, fine, if that is too nasty to contemplate, let's try this: It took a lot of scrubbing to get the dried blood off the wall. So much so that I scrubbed through the paint. Luckily, we are repainting for Nate's graduation party. The color I chose is called "Asparagus". It is REALLY green.

So today's BONUS recipe for the squeamish is for asparagus. I may never eat grapes again.

Bonus forensic fact: Asparagus will make human urine smell different/strange/extra stinky. Studies have shown that it affects all human urine, but only 22% of people have the autosomal genes necessary to smell the difference.

Grape salad

4# of seedless grapes (green or purple)
1 8oz package of cream cheese
1 8 oz container sour cream
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 ounces chopped pecans
2 tbsp brown sugar

Wash and dry grapes. In a large bowl, combine cream cheese, sour cream, vanilla, and white sugar. Add grapes and mix until evenly incorporated. Sprinkle with brown sugar and pecans, mix again and refrigerate until serving.

You can also use fat free cream cheese and low fat sour cream, and 1/2 cup splenda instead of white sugar, and it tastes just as good.

Asparagus with Lemon-Mint Sauce

2 lbs asparagus, trim and steam until tender (I microwave it)

1 Tbls butter

2 Tbls fresh lemon juice

Zest from the lemon

1/4 cup minced fresh mint leaves

Mix butter, juice, zest and mint, heat (a quick zap will do it) until butter melts and pour over cooked asparagus.

Bittersweet

Pinkle Purr

by A. A. Milne

Tattoo was the mother of Pinkle Purr,
A little black nothing of feet and fur;
And by-and-by, when his eyes came through,
He saw his mother, the big Tattoo.
And all that he learned he learned from her.
"I'll ask my mother," says Pinkle Purr.

Tattoo was the mother of Pinkle Purr,
A ridiculous kitten with silky fur.
And little black Pinkle grew and grew
Till he got as big as the big Tattoo.
And all that he did he did with her.
"Two friends together," says Pinkle Purr.

Tattoo was the mother of Pinkle Purr,

An adventurous cat in a coat of fur.
And whenever he thought of a thing to do,
He didn't much bother about Tattoo,
For he knows it's nothing to do with her,
So "See you later," says Pinkle Purr.

Tattoo is the mother of Pinkle Purr,
An enormous leopard with coal-black fur.
A little brown kitten that's nearly new
Is now playing games with its big Tattoo…
And Pink looks lazily down at her:
"Dear little Tat," says Pinkle Purr.

My little Pinkle Purr, Nathan, graduated from high school last week. I was fine until I saw him in his cap and gown and almost didn't recognize him. He looked so grown-up! It's one thing to know that an 18 year old is an adult, it's another thing to see it. To feel it.

When he was first born, a co-worker told me that he would never be as close to me or need me as much as he did that day. That every day, if I was doing my job right, Nate would get farther away from me and need me just a little bit less. It hurt but it was true.

Paul and I did our jobs right. He is going off to Duluth for college in the fall and won't need us to take care of him anymore. But because we did our jobs right, we will always be connected and he will always be ours. (Even if we have to share him)

This is one of those things that"hurt so good". It is right that he grows up, but dang, I'm already feeling the big hole he will leave in the house. Everyone who has ever had a child feels this, it isn't new or unique. Right now I'm concentrating on freaking out about his open house later this summer. I had the first open house nightmare last night. In it, I poisoned everyone with bad tuna salad.

These are Nate's favorite brownies. Use bittersweet chocolate to really feel my pain.


Nate's Brownies

50 caramels (1 pkg)
1/2 cup evaporated milk (not sweetened condensed milk)
1 pkg German chocolate cake mix
1/2 cup evaporated milk
3/4 cup melted margarine
1 cup nuts
1 6 or 8 oz pkg of chocolate chips or chopped bittersweet chocolate

Melt caramels and 1/2 cup milk together. Mix cake mix with other 1/2 cup milk, margarine and nuts. Put half of mixture in buttered 9x13 pan. Bake 6 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove from oven and sprinkle with chocolate. Pour melted caramels over chocolate. Spoon remaining batter over caramel - don't worry about holes- batter will spread. Bake at 350 for 15-18 minutes. It is better to undercook brownies than to overcook them. These must cool before you can cut them.

Makin' Me Nutty

People are making me nutty. It's not even so much the insults as the fact that they believe they have the right to talk to me that way! GRRR.... Keep it up and there will be an unpleasant explosion. Just sayin'.

To relieve stress and restore sanity, I am a big believer in craft therapy. I do a lot of crafts, (as I apparently need a lot of therapy). I scrapbook, knit, cross-stitch, punch-needle and quilt. I make my own soap. I melt glass to make beads and make jewelry. I switch back and forth depending on what project is stuck in my head and won't get out until I do it.

Lately, I've been dyeing fabric in interesting ways. Non-quilters are mystified by this and always ask,"Now what are you going to do with it?", quilters understand that it is process art. The fun is in the doing. Also, we believe that there is no such thing as too much fabric.

I made good use of some snow earlier this spring to do snow-dyeing. You put snow on top of fabric and the put the dye on the snow. As it melts, it dyes the fabric. Very cool!


That was so much fun that I decided to try to dye fabric with an oatmeal resist. You cook up the oatmeal (we had some new kind of instant that the kids hated, so I used that) and spread it on the pretreated fabric.
Here my friend Palmer the visiting lab is very interested in how good the art smells. Maybe a little lick? After it dries, you spread on thickened dye. The directions said to use some special thickener, but I used cornstarch and microwaved it and it was just fine.
The red was beautiful, but reminded me a little of Bella Swan's last birthday party. I also did a nice blue. The hard part was waiting 4 hours for it to set in. Do yourself a favor and wash this off outside, with the hose. You don't want that much oatmeal going down your drain.

Look at how nice that turned out! I am very pleased and I didn't have the urge to smack the annoying people all day. Sadly, today is another day and some of them are busy pushing my buttons already. Great. Maybe I need to try sugar therapy.

Here is Grandma Elly's recipe for Nutty Bars.

Nutty Bars
1 cup (2 sticks) margarine
1 cup brown sugar
Cream margarine and sugar and add:
1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
Pat this mixture into a greased 9x13 pan and bake at 350 15-18 minutes until golden brown. Cool a bit.
Topping:
6 oz butterscotch chips
1/2 cup light corn syrup
2 Tbls Margarine
1 Tbls water
1 (12oz) can salted mixed nuts (the kind with no peanuts)

Mix chips, syrup, margarine and water in saucepan until chips are melted. Stir in nuts and spread over crust. Bake 7-8 minutes at 350. cool before cutting into small squares.

This seems awfully familiar, did I already give you this recipe? Oh, well, I told you I was nutty.

(Up and) Down on the Bayou

That's my Dad and me. Until Thursday he lived in Louisiana. My brother Chris and I went down to fetch him last week. My dad was a brilliant engineer once upon a time. When I was born he worked for Lockheed on the space program. I guess that makes him a rocket scientist!

Unfortunately, he isn't so great with people. He and my mom divorced when I was 5. They remarried and divorced again. He married a woman named Darlene with a son named Charles. It didn't last long.

He next married a nice woman named Barb with 4 sons and a daughter. I was thrilled to have a big sister and 2 big brothers! It was fun to be part of a big family. Chris and I helped our youngest step brothers with their paper routes. The bonding I had hoped for with the 2 oldest never happened, but I had a little crush on one big brother. We all went camping and sailing, it was odd to share our dad, but having more siblings was worth it. In the space of time between weekend visits, Dad and Barb broke up. Chris and I never saw Barb or her family again. Dad moved down south after that.

That is Chris with Dad. We never met wife #5 (if you count our mother as #1 and #2). Our sweet Grandma said Dad should give up on marriage and just get a dog. Wife #6 was named Jerry. They were married nearly twenty years and were separated and planning to divorce when Dad had his first stroke. Jerry took him back and took over his care until her death last month. Dad said he wanted to come home to Minnesota, so Chris found him a room in a beautiful nursing home equidistant from our homes. Thursday was a long travel day that nobody enjoyed, but dad is safe and sound at his new place.

Jerry had 3 children. This is her daughter, Jamie. This is a TERRIBLE photo of her. Jamie is actually very slim and pretty and does not have even a hint of a double chin in real life! Jamie picked us up at the airport, drove us to Dad and Jerry's house and gave us the keys to the house and the car. She packed up dad's clothes and made multiple trips to check on him before and after he went to the care facility there. She told us to take whatever we wanted our Dad to have from the house. She texted several times a day to see if we needed anything. Chris lived with Dad, Jerry and Jamie for 5 years in the 80's and referred to Jamie as our stepsister. Which she is. I just never thought of her that way. Maybe I thought she'd disappear, too. This makes me sad, because I could have had a relationship with her all these years. When we thanked her for her kindness, she said, "Well, ya'll are family!" Family. That's what it's all about, isn't it?

I did have a good time with my brother. He's fun. We went out to eat and tried all the local stuff we could. Alligator is delicious and nutritious. Oysters we can live without. We had a tasty shrimp Etouffee on Tuesday night. I found a recipe for that in a cajun cookbook. You're gonna like dis, chere!

Shrimp Etouffee

2 lbs shrimp (little ones are fine)
1 1/2 cups chopped onions
1/3 cup crushed garlic
2/3 cup chopped green pepper
1/2 cup tomato paste
2 chicken bouillon cubes
2 tsp salt (taste before adding, you may not need it)
1 tsp tabasco sauce (Tabasco is made in Louisiana)
1 cup oil
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup butter
3 cups water
1 can chicken broth
2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp paprika

Cooked rice for serving

In a large skillet, make a roux by stirring oil and flour over medium heat. Stir constantly. When roux reaches peanut butter color, add onions, celery, garlic, and green pepper. Saute 5 minutes. Mix 1/4 cup butter and tomato paste and saute in another pan until smooth and thick, about 5 minutes. Add it to the roux along with the rest of the ingredients except the shrimp. Cook together 5 minutes. Add shrimp and cook 5 minutes. Serve over rice. Crawfish can be substituted for shrimp.

Unnecessary Warnings

The world is a scary place. Sometimes you need help navigating the hazards, which is where friendly warnings come in. "Stay away from the boss today, she's in a bad mood", "Don't drink and drive", "Watch out, the sidewalk is icy", these are useful things to know and so avoid trouble.

Lately I've been getting some ridiculous warnings that make me wonder, "Who needs to be told such obvious things?"

In with new shoes, the little pack of silicone stuff that absorbs moisture is labeled, "Do Not Eat". Because somebody thought it was a snack with purchase? Maybe free LIK-M-Ade?

My new e-reader directions warn against getting it wet (fair enough, not for use in the tub) but continue on to say that if you do get it wet, do not attempt to dry it out by putting it in a microwave oven! I was astounded that anyone would think of this until my niece confessed that she had once tried to dry an ipod in the nuker. (Her mom stopped her in time.)

I have recently had some horrendous dental work done. Ok, it was a cleaning, but it had been 10 years since I had been to the dentist (Yeah, it's a phobia, but can you blame me?) and they had to do the "Deep Cleaning". (Cue ominous music). When I made the appointment I mentioned my dislike of dentistry and asked if they had knock-out gas. (No, I did not ask if they had gas). Yes, indeed, and plenty of it, they said. (Liars)

This deep cleaning can be done in 2 appointments of 2 hours each or 1 appointment lasting 3 hours. Not being a total idiot, I took the 3 hour thing. The hygienist put on the "numbing gel" and got to work. Scraping up under my gums with sharp things and some drill-type machine, it hurt like the dickins! This is when she tells me that she is only allowed to give me enough novacaine for half my mouth! Long story short, at the end of 3 hours, I was a mess. (Please note that I actually have a high pain tolerance. Really.)

Here is where the unnecessary warning comes in. Captain Obvious warns me that this deep cleaning can only be done every 2 years, so don't ask for it again before that! I kinda thought she was joking, but she was serious! I promised through my bloody drool that I would NEVER do such a thing and crawled to my car.

Captain Obvious also gave me a prescription for antibiotic mouthwash. I will describe the taste for you: If a bear ate a tube of toothpaste, his poop would be like this mouthwash. As a bonus, the flavor was long lasting. Another unnecessary warning: NO Refills.

Here is a nice recipe for jalapeno poppers. Two unneeded warnings: Filling is hot, and do not eat the whole batch as a low-carb meal. (A nice person would not ask how I know this).

Jalapeno Poppers

10-15 jalapenos
8 oz cream cheese
1 cup shredded cheddar
6 slices cooked, crumbled bacon

Halve and seed jalapenos. Mix cheeses and bacon in mixer and put into a ziploc bag. Cut off a corner and squeeze goop into jalapenos. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes or grill on foil for 30 minutes, until browned.