February 3, 2012

Outside Temp: 19 F (a little chilly outside, but it's been nice and warm all day, in the 40s.)

What I cooked today:
Grilled Cheese Sandwiches and Tomato Soup: A total classic.  Is there anything better?  Of course, at least one child had only the soup and one child had only the sandwich, but Patrick and I ate enough to make up for it!  Yummmy.

Chicken Soup with Stars: I think my husband was the biggest kid at the table.  "ooooo, stars!  They're soo cool!".  He was so excited about the silly stars.  Of course, he really liked the soup and only added a few pinches of salt.  He is always, always adding salt to food.  I've come to realize I can never salt it enough, so I just salt it enough for me, and let him add all the salt he wants.

More Chicken Stock: I was almost depressed when I saw that whole fryer chickens were on sale for $0.88 / lb at Albertsons this week.  But I picked up two chickens anyway, and waited until today to make my stock.  I'm getting better at it.  I'm really getting better at cutting up the silly chicken.  Legs and Thighs come off in one nice slice, and they go right into a FoodSaver bag and into the freezer for BBQ chicken, someday.  Then I slice off the wings and throw them in the pot (that is already simmering with onions, celery and carrots, and about 8 cups of water).  Then I carefully slice off the breasts.  This is the kind of tricky part, since I like to have them cut off perfectly.  I'm getting pretty good.  Then, of course, the rest of the carcass goes into the pot.  Add some salt and pepper and the lid and just babysit all day, adding extra water as necessary.  I pulled out about 4-5 cups of stock to make my soup, and just added extra water back into the pot.  Since I had another 2-3 hours before I started pressure canning the stock, I knew the water would absorb all that nice flavor. 

I also realized that I only have to pressure can the stock for about 25 minutes, not the 90 minutes I did last time.  Which is good, since I have 2 batches to can.  The first batch is already done, just de-pressurizing. 

Update:
Thank goodness, today was a better day than yesterday.

We were able to finish off some our apologies today (one will have to wait until tomorrow), which prompted my child to say:
"You know, mom, saying sorry does actually make you feel better."

Then came the day of forced manual labor.  My child had to scrub some really nasty windows, inside and out.  Then clean the bedroom.  Then Ryan's room, vacuuming both.  Then the laundry.  Then the dishes.  Then the floor.  Then homework could finally be started.  After dinner consisted of cleaning the family room, which is kind of a mess (all Ryan's fault, I'm sure). 

No computer, no TV.  Not even watching siblings play. 

Oh boy, did the day suck for my child.  But I hope that lessons were learned.  We may continue his forced labor through the weekend, I haven't decided yet.

We also got a call from a Realtor in Great Falls, saying they wanted to show the house to someone on Sunday.  Now, we're not total slobs, but we have a lot of stuff that really has no place.  Since we knew our stay here was not permanent, a lot of things are still in boxes and such. 

So, today and tomorrow have had us going around the house, closing up boxes and putting them in the garage.  We really want the place to look nice for whomever is coming by.  We have been here since September, and this is the first time someone wanted to see the house.  I know the owner really, really wants to sell it, but with all the issues, I can imagine it's going to be pretty hard to sell the place.  If we can make the place look nice, maybe the person coming by will buy it.  And since we're looking for somewhere else to live anyway, there's no hard feelings. 

So, in a "making the best of a bad situation", I'm getting a little extra help cleaning up the house, and my child is getting the chance to make justified reparations.  Talk about killing 2 birds with one stone... which is pretty hard to do, I can imagine.  Not that I've ever tried to kill a bird with a stone... Or tried to kill a bird, period.  Hmmm, I'll have to try that sometime, just to see if it's really that hard!