I'm back. The computer, however, is still not back. It spent a week and a half at the Computer Healer, who threw up his hands and banished it from his shop. We sent it on to the Computer Exorcist to see what he can do. So I snagged Brooks' girlfriend (Just kidding - it's his laptop. We call it his girlfriend because the two of them are inseparable.) to do some posting.

We had a bit of a snowstorm in my neck of the woods. The girls had been dying to make Snow Ice Cream, which they'd heard of but never sampled. For a couple of years, they'd had this recipe in the backs of their minds, but the timing and the catching of clean snow never worked out.

Until this week. The minute Ava heard about the impending snow storm, she put a clean washtub out on the stoop to catch the pristine flakes. (She also put spoons in the freezer and ice cubes in the toilet.... Have you ever heard of those Snow Day Supersticions?)

So Saturday night - the measuring and mixing.

2 cups milk
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon powdered instant coffee
1 gallon clean fresh snow

1. In a bowl, whisk together the milk, confectioners' sugar, vanilla extract, cocoa powder, and instant coffee until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is smooth.
2. Place the snow into a large bowl, and pour the chocolate mixture over the snow. With a large spoon, stir until the snow ice cream is thoroughly combined. Serve immediately.

This was a fun recipe to make and it felt good to check it off of our Recipe Bucket List, but it wasn't delicious or anything. After a couple of bites, the kids realized that it was ice cream without the... you know.... CREAM. In our mouths, it tasted like a sweetish and chocolatey water, really. A bit unsatisfying.

A few bites were enough.

I Write this From My Bed...

On this, the last weekday of Christmas break. We've eaten rich food, we've played, we've relaxed, and we've slept in. Oh, how we've slept in!

And if you're one of my girls, you've also downloaded a few free computer games from a website, inviting in the biggest, baddest computer virus we've ever seen. Mike looked it up online while at work and learned that it could be accessed remotely, summoning all our passwords and such.

Our computer has been sent to a healer.

It's been there a week.

It feels like a year.

All of my Internet activity has to be done on the iPad, which is a nice crutch, but no real substitution. Through it, I cannot put pictures on the blog, so I have posts piling up waiting to be shared.

In food news,Late Vacation Boredom has begun to creep into my Sophia and she went hunting for interesting baking recipes yesterday. The result: Peant Butter Cookie Dough Brownies with a Chocolate Ganauche.

One Big Weekend - Four Small Posts...Part 4

I just learned that my mother-in-law is reading the blog and since part 4 was meant to reveal Christmas secrets, I'm just posting to say.... I'm not posting.

Update later. Like around December 26.

Update 1/16/12: SIL Sarah and I worked together on this. Our Christmas busywork was getting the kids together for photos for my MIL's Christmas. Last year we took some photographs of the kids together and some of each child individually. They've all grown so much over the last year, that we thought updated photos would be appropriate to refill her frames. I'll just share a couple of my kids.

She is growing up!

Had to take Brooks' shot from a group pic. I cropped Sophia out of the print, but couldn't figure it out on the blog. I think Brooks looks handsome here, though.

Ava - my baby. I cannot explain the passage of time.

One Big Weekend - Four Small Posts... Part 3

All the Trimmings

My children are still in school for another week, right up to Christmas eve. It lulls me into a false sense of complacency, believing that it's actually ages until I need to be ready for the holiday.

I did manage to get some Christmas decorations up last weekend. I'll share with you a couple of highlights. A few years ago I went to an estate sale in my neighborhood and bought a box of odds and ends including this handful of vintage Christmas light bulbs. I don't have those kinds of light strings, but I think they are just beautiful, so I threw them in a candy dish and put them in the piano room.



Similarly, I'm displaying some vintage ornaments in a bowl as a centerpiece on my dining room table. I've been collecting the ornaments over the years, imagining I'll have enough to one day decorate a whole tree. But lately, I've been putting the tree in the foyer, which has a tile floor, not known for being kind to dropped glass objects. I fear for their preservation, so I put them in a bowl this year and sort of dig it.

Sophie's choir has a Secret Santa situation as they build up to their mega-Christmas-Concert-Weekend. It's difficult to think of small gifts to give that aren't candy or junk. Sophia's Secret Santa did a good job of gifting small, fun items that were creative and wholesome. This garland was made from a kit they gave her on night three. We made it together and I think it looks pleasant hanging on the mantle in the piano room.

There is still much to be done before I can say I'm anything close to ready, but what is done pleases me.

Festival of Carols

Brooks is thoroughly enjoying the wonderful music department which our high school offers. He is a freshman this year and has successfully infiltrated every corner of it as we add band, choir and orchestra concerts to the calendar this month. I believe the next step is clearly total world domination.

This is a busy weekend for us. Let me give you the run-down, for my organizational benefit as well as your entertainment. (Every time I talk to my devoted mother-in-law this week, she wants to do the run-down, too. "Now what's going on this weekend?" "Have I given you enough money for the tickets?" "Where is that concert located?" We did that conversation today. We did it last week. We'll do it again the next time we speak. She just doesn't want to miss an opportunity to support the kids.) Wed.: Tech rehearsal for Sophia's choir concert. Thurs.: Dress rehearsal for choir concert, middle school orchestra concert. Friday: First of three days of choir concerts. Sat.: All day chess tournament and second of the choir concerts. Sun.: Final choir concert, which conflicts with the high school orchestra concert. Immediately afterwards, we'll go to the church Christmas open house, hosted by the pastors.

These three days of choir concerts have become a meaningful part of my Decembers. Our local college puts on a Festival of Carols which involves all the music groups on campus and the children's choir which my children have been involved in. We first went when Brooks was a part of the choir and now, he's moved on and Sophia has joined the ensemble.

It takes place in the college's state-of-the-art performance facility, which offers gorgeous ambience and acoustics. The choirs and orchestras offer special pieces interspersed with traditional carols in which the audience is invited to participate. A large percentage of the audience is culturally Mennonite, and rich in choral ability, so the carols sound straight from the Herald Angels. I am in my element.

Here's what the Mennonites are not rich in: Sentimental Weepiness. From the third verse of the opening hymn, I am pressing my hankie to my mouth, trying to stifle the sobs and the Mennonites to my right and left look at me out of the corners of their eyes. Sobbing - It's just not a very German thing to do.

This wrecks me every, EVERY time, sung by the children's choir:

"And through all His wondrous childhood, He would honour and obey.
Love and watch the lowly maiden, in whose gentle arms He lay.
Christian children, all must be:
Mild obedient, good as He."

And then, children's and college choirs together (to me symbolizing the in-the-blink-of-an-eye "day by day" growth - whether or not the symbolism was intended):

"For He is our childhood's pattern
Day by day, like us He grew.
He was little, weak and helpless
Tears and smiles, like us He knew.
And He feeleth for our sadness,
And He shareth in our gladness."

I mean, shut up.

I have tried to explain how obviously touching those words are to others, but my sobs always interrupt. And when I manage to convey the message of the text, the listener always just blinks at me. I don't know if they are touching to anyone else.

Anyone?

Maple Syrup

I think it's finally safe to put away the snow pants. The weather can be so strange in late winter/early spring. Just a couple of weeks ago we had our last big snow. We hadn't managed to make a snowman at that point and the girls and I determined that we wouldn't close out winter without sticking a carrot in some kind of face. Sadly, we found the snow to be too fluffy and couldn't make it pack well enough to form any kind of ball. We tried mounding it up and had more success than rolling. But still we succeeded only in making it look like a mound.

Not to be deterred, we thought maybe it would still be a creature made of snow - maybe a giant snowman with just the top of his head sticking out of the ground. We needed a big hat in order to pull it off, so Ava went inside and got a sombrero from one of the Mexican restaurants in town. We set to work with our "carrot" and "coal" and this was the end result.


We named him "Pepe the Snow Head."

And last week already we were out in our shirt sleeves. Ava is finally up on two wheels. Funny story: My 11-year-old, Sophie, never learned to ride. She tried to learn a few times at a younger age and had enough bad spills that she was willing to hang up her self-respect along with her bike and never try again. One nice day this spring I saw her privately and secretly trying to teach herself. This told me two things: That she really wanted to learn, and that she didn't feel good about herself.

I vowed that she would learn, and that we wouldn't put off Ava's learning any longer either. I worked with Ava for awhile and though she gamely tried, it didn't come together for her until I told her to constantly wiggle her handlebars back and forth from right to left and that would keep her from falling over. Well, that's what did it for her and she took off down the road.


We had the family come out to see and to praise her efforts. And then Sophie burst into tears. "Now I'm the only one who can't!" she wailed.

So next I worked with her. She was reluctant, nay, resistant. She can be quite bullheaded at times and she was determined that NOT being able to ride her bike was equal to winning the argument, which was most important at the moment. I didn't care. I yelled, I threatened, I took away privileges, I told her to wiggle the handlebars back and forth and she RODE that stupid bike down the drive, yelling, crying and trailing snot in the breeze behind her. It was exhausting and soul-crushing for me, not at all a shining moment in parenting history. But did you catch it?! She RODE the bike. There was success! A tiny little giggle broke through her snot-encrusted face and a seed of pride took root in her soul. Thank the Lord above. Motherhood is not for the limp.

Weather that alternates between snow head building and bike riding is tough on the sinuses, in my opinion, but it's great for maple syrup production. I heard a discussion on the making of maple syrup on NPR recently. It was said that the sap flows best through the trees when the weather starts to warm. It's best when the days are a bit above freezing and the nights are just below. But as soon as the tree begins to bud, the sap will no longer be sweet.

I thought to myself that this cold, consistent spring was probably really great for collecting maple sap. Later in the week, I came home to find this bottle sitting on my kitchen counter.

That's my daddy's angular handwriting on that scrap of paper. I called him up and found that he had been helping a buddy with the boiling of his maple syrup during this record-breaking season of production. He got a couple of gallons of the stuff as payment.

It is nothing out of the ordinary in this area to drive through the country and see something like this on either one tree in someone's yard, or a whole orchard of trees in a heavily wooded area.


As it warms and the sap begins to move, it is collected in buckets like these, set under a hole drilled low on the trunk. Skinny trees can only have one tap, but older, fatter trees can have two or even three taps bleeding the sap into the collection buckets.

Once you have enough sap acquired, it's time to boil it down into syrup. It has to boil for a long time in order to remove the water from the sap, which thickens to the consistency we recognize, and to concentrate that wonderful flavor. It can be done at home on the stove top, but you should have a fan and a dehumidifier running. Professionals like to use outdoor ranges to avoid the build-up of moisture in their homes.


As the sap boils, the foam must be skimmed off from time to time, removing impurities from the final product. The temperature should be brought to seven degrees above boiling, and remain at that temperature throughout the process.

Once it's boiled to the consistency you like, you can filter your syrup if you choose. Or you can let it cool and let the crud sink to the bottom. You'd fill your bottles with the clean syrup at the top and avoid the impurities in that way.

As with anything homemade, I think a product always seems more wholesome and delicious when one makes it one's self. But be forewarned: It can take 25-75 gallons of raw sap to make one gallon of prepared syrup!

Snap Out of It!

Good grief. I've had a certain post I've been trying to finish for.... well, let's just say it's a recipe for the Little House Snow Candy.

Because I imagine this blog is to actually record my life, not just my meals, let me just say I'm in a bit of a funk. I think I have some strange breed of SAD, and it manifests itself in very late winter and early spring.

I'm not walking around crying or anything... not even really feeling sad most of the time. But my energy is so low and my interest level is, too. And so I associate it as depression because that's what the symptoms are. Every day I tell myself that I'll finish that blog post for sure (among other things) and here it is bedtime and I'm just too tired.

I actually prepared something interesting in the kitchen today (beouf bourguignon) and it didn't occur to me to take pictures of it. My kitchen is kind of a mess anyway.

The good news is: It's happened before and it seems to be seasonal. And I declare it over. Or nearly over anyway. We're taking a trip to The Big City on Friday and I hope to get a great restaurant review out of it. Also friends are coming over on Sunday and that will be a great time. Making plans and feeling hopeful...

Your,
Feeder of the Family

Porcupine Meatballs

Snowlapalooza. Snowmageddon. President Snowbama. Snowtorious B.I.G. Algebraic Snowtation. Justice Snowtomayor. That's what we're dealing with here. To complicate matters for our family, Mike is out of the country and was supposed to fly into Chicago on Wednesday. He's still not home.

But the kids still need to be fed and don't Porcupine Meatballs sound good? I hadn't made these in a while and felt pleased to be selecting from our freezer full of the beef that Grandpa raised and from the pantry full of tomato juice that I canned this past summer.

Named for the porcupine because the rice pokes out from them like quills, it is hearty, warm and tasty on a bitterly cold day.

Porcupine Meatballs
1/2 c. uncooked long grain rice
1/2 c. water
1/3 c. chopped onion
1 t. salt
1/2 t. celery salt
1/8 t. garlic powder
1 lb. ground beef
2 T cooking oil
1 qt. tomato juice
2 T brown sugar
2 t. Worcestershire sauce

In a bowl, combine the beef, rice, water, onion, salts, pepper and garlic powder. Mix well. Shape into 1 - 1/2 inch balls.


In a large skillet, brown meatballs in oil; drain.


Combine tomato juice, brown sugar and Worcestershire sauce. Pour over meatballs. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 1 hour.


What I notice is that the thin tomato juice, between the sugar mixed in and the starch of the rice cooking within, thickens into a wonderful, flavorful, saucey texture that I love. Remove from heat. Serve immediately.

New Year's Eve Appetizers

My friend Erika introduced me to this first nibble. She has a Christmas party and makes them every year. I go and scarf them up and make them for her at my New Year's Eve party two weeks later.

Bacon-Wrapped Water Chestnuts
1 lb. turkey bacon (The Real Recipe calls for real bacon, but I've never had them prepared with such. Erika is always looking for ways to make food more healthful, and by New Year's, I'm so sick of rich food that the thought of bacon makes me nauseous.)
2 cans of whole water chestnuts
1 c. ketchup
3/4 c. brown sugar
2 T soy sauce



Preheat oven to 375. Cut the package of bacon in half so that the strips are half as long.


Drain the water chestnuts and wrap a half-strip of bacon around each water chestnut. If the water chestnuts were very large, I cut them in half before wrapping. Secure the bacon with a toothpick and set aside. Repeat until you've used up all the water chestnuts.


In a medium saucepan, combine ketchup, brown sugar and soy sauce. Cook over medium heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat. Holding the bites from the toothpicks, dip each morsel into the sauce, covering completely. Set aside in a roasting pan and repeat with all water chestnuts.


Bake until bacon is done, about 20 minutes. The recipe says to serve the remaining sauce alongside the appetizes, to use for dipping. I don't usually do this, as I think the flavor is more than adequate and I want to avoid further mess. I love these guys.


My friend Darcey entered this next recipe, for stuffed mushroom caps, in the church cookbook two years ago. It also is a standard at our New Year's Eve fete.

Mushroom Caps Stuffed with Blue Cheese
2 pounds of medium mushrooms
8 oz. cream cheese
1/2 c. blue cheese crumbles
2 T minced onion

Remove stems from mushrooms and chop enough of the stems to measure 1/3 c.


Combine cream cheese and blue cheese, stirring until well-blended. Mix in chopped mushroom stems and onions. Spoon into mushroom caps.


Place caps on broiler pan and broil until golden, about 4-5 minutes.

Candy Making

For the last couple of posts, I just dash off a couple of quick thoughts, imagining that the NEXT time I post, I will really have the time to actually WRITE. But here's the thing: My kids are on Christmas break and I need to play the Wii with them and read to them and bake with them and crush them in Scrabble. I also, realistically, need to address Christmas cards and page through recipe books and dash to the store for the holiday baking supplies and then fly back to the store because I forgot the sour cream. You know how it is.

Holy crap, here is another example: I just now took a break in the middle of this post to make sure the Christmas cards got out in time. I recently got a teasing, but unwanted, comment from someone about not getting theirs until after Christmas, so I felt the burden of getting this done TODAY. Brilliantly, I thought I'd go south to my tiny hometown's post office, where there is never a line, to get my Christmas stamps. If I went north to my current larger town's post office, it would be no closer and I would for sure wait in a sizeable line. Great plan, right? Right, except that, true to the small town post office form, I found that they closed up shop over lunch. When I got there, it was 40 minutes away from the time they would re-open. So I went to the large P.O. and waited in that god-forsaken line. (Why, oh why is there not a bilingual postal worker at a counter at all times?)

Anyway, that's done and now I find myself dashing off another quick post with thoughts and pictures from our family's recent candy making endeavor. Nothing fancy, but these are usual treats from our Christmas kitchen in recent years.

English Toffee

1 c. butter
1 c. sugar
2 t. water
4 chocolate bars

In a heavy saucepot, heat butter, sugar and water, stirring often until sugar is absorbed by butter. I've seen several descriptions to mark the point at which to stop cooking.... until it changes from yellow to amber in color, until it reaches 300 degrees, the hard crack stage. The method I use is to look for that change in color and test the hard crack stage by dropping a bit into a glass of water and checking to see if it turns to hard candy.



Next, pour the hot mixture onto a buttered cookie sheet. (Note: I doubled the above recipe and it didn't quite fill the cookie sheet.)



Immediately place pieces of chocolate bar evenly over the hot mixture.



I found that by the time I had placed the chocolate on the far end of the sheet the chocolate closest to me was already melted and ready to spread. Use a spatula to spread the melted chocolate over the hot toffee.



Put in a cool place and, once hardened, break into irregularly-sized pieces.



Pretzel, Hershey Kiss & M&M Candies (I don't really know what they're called)
Ingredients:
Equal numbers of bite-sized pretzels, Hershey's Kisses and red and green M&M's.
(As a side note, when I was a junior in high school, my beloved English teacher, Mr. Jordan, went down a rabbit trail with us in which we wondered whether the term "M&Ms" only applied to the candy in the plural form. Should a singular candy be referred to as, simply, an "M?" We wrote to the Mars company with our query and they responded, to our delight. Would you like to know the official answer? As it turns out, the name of the candy is actually "M&M's Chocolate Candies." That being the case, the singular form would be "an M&M's Chocolate Candy.")




Preheat your oven to 200 while you use your children as free labor to spread a layer of pretzels on a cookie sheet. Next,unwrap dozens (or hundreds) of the kisses and center each one on a pretzel. When the oven is warm, pop in the cookie sheet.




It doesn't take long to melt the kisses, maybe 4-6 minutes. Remove from the oven and press a festive M&M's Chocolate Candy into the center of each. Allow to cool and serve.

By the way, these candies might seem to fall into the category of candies that look pretty and festive, but which you don't actually like to eat. Not so. I really like the salty and the sweet together, the chocolate and the crunch. Yum.

Cranberry Cordial

I remembered this recipe from last Christmas season on a friend's Facebook page. I never got around to it that winter, but I asked her to post again and I've got a batch brewing as we speak.

Cranberry Cordial
2 lbs. (8 cups) fresh cranberries, coarsely chopped
6 c. sugar
1 liter light rum


In a gallon jar, combine berries, sugar and rum and gently stir or shake to combine.

Store in a cool, dark place for 3-6 weeks, gently shaking every day. (I found it took several shakings to completely dissolve the sugar.)


Strain the berries. Don't throw them away! Serve them over ice cream or use them in other recipes.

Strain again through cheesecloth or coffee filter to remove all the seeds.

Serve. Or pour into decorative corked bottles to give as gifts.

I'm interested to see how this turns out, as I've never made it before. I didn't get it started in time to serve at any Christmas soiree, but I always entertain at New Years, so that's the plan.

I've also been mulling over starting a batch of Kombucha. Have you ever made it? Maybe I'll start it soon, so that I'll have one jug of 'booch and one of hooch!

Grin.

Butternut Soup for the Soul

It's been a rough couple of weeks here at Chez Fed Family. Early in the month I went away for the weekend with some girlfriends. Just before we planned to go on Friday, one of the friends let me know that her first grader's school nurse had called: Hunter had thrown up at school. She picked him up and brought him home, then he threw up again. The good news, she heard, was that it really only lasted 6-8 hours. An hour later, the school bus dropped my kids off at home and Brooks took a hot bath and went to bed, saying his stomach hurt.

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said, overnight bag in hand. "Well, I'm off." And, over my shoulder as I walked away, "The good news is, I hear it only lasts 6-8 hours."

It turns out that he was queasy all weekend, and Ava started throwing up that night.

I'll not share every little Jot and Tittle, but by the end of the next eight days, all three kids had thrown up and missed the toilet. Now this house was once somewhat grand, in a 1970's kind of way, and before our family darkened the door, it had never, ever had children living in it. There is carpet (and, weirdly, chandeliers) in all the bathrooms. Cleaning up this type of mess was complicated, gross and pretty defeating.

(You know... and skip this if you're queasy... I noticed that the kids all had different strategies when reaching the crisis point of their nausea. Sophia left a trail from her bed to the toilet. Brooks tried to keep the mess in one spot and crouched there, heaving for a full five minutes. And Ava... well it looked like someone had cut an air hose going full blast. It was on the walls, the cabinet, the trash can, the door.)

My sainted husband cleaned it all up. Not because it makes me gaggy to do it, but because I seem to be completely ineffective at it. I think I could scrub and scrub all day and wouldn't improve the situation by 50%. I looked at Ava's mess and thought, "Well. Now we have to move." Michael got it looking like new, but in my mind, it will forever be Barf Carpet.

No sooner did the kids get better than Mike and I went down hard, though, gratefully, not with the stomach bug. Sinuses. Bronchial stuff. I'm still coughing.

Anyway, once we started wanting something more than 7-Up and crackers, a creamy, comforting soup sounded good to me. I came up with this recipe last year after visiting a great Bento Box restaurant. I had a lovely butternut squash soup with my lunch that day and I thought about it all winter, wondering what I could do to recreate it.

After looking up some recipes online, I decided on this:

DB's Butternut Squash Soup (And I'll be really sad if you can't try this soup because you now associate with our disease and pestilence.)

1 butternut squash
chicken broth
marjoram
cream cheese

I grew my own butternuts this summer for the sole purpose of making this soup. If you must, go to the market and buy one. Now, I peel and cube the squash. This takes a hearty knife and a fair amount of fortitude. Someone smart told me that I should just stab the squash several times and put it in the microwave until it's soft enough to halve and scoop out of its sturdy skin. I like this idea, but I prefer the process of letting the cubed, peeled squash cook in the flavorful chicken broth. Do whatever your prefer.


I put the squash in a good-sized saucepan and cover with chicken broth. I often don't have chicken stock on hand. Sometimes I use water with chicken bouillon instead, which is good for adding some saltiness. I also add maybe 3/4 t. marjoram. In this, I cook the squash until tender.



Then, quick as you please, I run the whole thing through a blender, adding some chunks of cream cheese as I go, which melts and blends divinely. Experiment as you go. You may not want all the broth if it's getting too runny. You may want more or less cream cheese. You may need to add salt. When it's as you like it, garnish with bacon crumbles, chiles, black olives, chives... whatever pleases you.


On this day, we ate ours with fresh bread.