Of kingdoms and coal scuttles.

Queen Anne: so cute, but way too fussy.
Yet how I would love to sit and write in a sunny turret!

I don't know where (or quite when) my husband and I will retire (really, I mean my husband, since I've been a stay-home mom all my life: do you ever retire from that? I guess you morph into Travelling Grandma, and that's wonderful too). Sometimes I dream about building a house where we will spend our golden years. And by "build" I mean "have built:" I'm not a builder and my hubby is tired of doing renovations, which have been occurring regularly for the 20+ years we've lived in our current house.

Back to school

After a very busy summer, our house is a tad quieter. My university age girls have left: one is in Winnipeg studying music at Canadian Mennonite University, and another has begun a Nursing program in Regina. I still have two teenagers at home: one doing online high school courses, and the other in grade 9, which brings me to a rather startling realization-- this is my last year of full-time tutoring. We've had our ups and downs on our homeschool journey--lots of fun and lots of challenges. It's hard to believe that the end is in sight: I'm already having mixed feelings. In the meantime, does anyone need eight years' worth of books and curriculum? If I sold it all, maybe my hubby could retire early. 

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Today is a good day to start blogging again

And not just because it's the first day of a new month, and a new school year, and my sister's birthday (Happy Birthday, D!) But because there is just so much to say, and do and share. But some of it will have to wait, because today we're moving two of our daughters to university. In the meantime, please enjoy the lovely colours of summer at my house. Hollyhocks, some of my favourite garden babies.

Another great low-carb lunch...or breakfast

"What do you eat for breakfast?" a friend asked the other day. I couldn't lie. The answer was, "Coffee and Facebook." Sometimes I'm not hungry in the morning, and sometimes I'm too lazy or befuddled to make something, because I just don't know what to make. Carbs were my breakfast go-to, and now I'm off breads for the time being. So no more English muffins, toast, bagels, waffles, wraps, pancakes, hot (or cold) cereal.

My recent post about the Cheese-crusted Quiche was one solution, but that's not the sort of thing one tends to whip up on a weekday (however, you can save portions and reheat them, which I plan to do at some point with that recipe).

The other day I built myself a cabbage-leaf wrap for lunch. I didn't take any step-by-step pictures (y'all are smart enough to imagine this on your own). Besides, this is not a recipe so much as an idea. You can put virtually anything you like inside.

I removed, washed and trimmed the stem area from a couple of large outer cabbage leaves and laid them on a dinner plate. I lined the leaves with cheddar cheese slices and nuked it all for 1 minute in the microwave. This softened up the cabbage a bit and melted the cheese. Then I added two large slices of turkey breast deli meat, half an avocado (sliced), some alfalfa sprouts, and garnished it with some salsa.

It was really good. So good, I almost don't miss eating actual flour wraps.
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I am not on the Keto diet

But since I'm going low carb for the time being, I've been googling Keto recipes, and found this Cheese Crusted Keto Quiche last Saturday morning. I wanted something really delicious and satisfying. What ho! It was incredibly delicious and satisfying. I tweaked the recipe a little bit (of course) because I had no ham, but it turned out really well.

My life is like a movie!

Unfortunately, the movie is Napoleon Dynamite. This actually happened to me recently.



Yes, Middle Age Brain strikes again (actually, I'm past middle age, since I don't think it's likely I'll live past 100, but that's neither here nor there. I still feel too young to call myself a 'senior'). I was at a small-town grocery store, having dashed inside to buy two (literally two) items. $44 later, I zipped open my purse to see... no wallet. Of course. I had put it in the side pocket of my gym bag the previous morning, and had forgotten to replace it. No cards, no cash, no knowledge of how to use my smartphone to pay for stuff (IS there such an app? I don't even know. Probably, but I'm old.)

Luckily, I had my bulging little change purse, and if there is anything I don't do often enough, it's empty my change purse. I decided to pay with "loonies" and "toonies" ($1 and $2 Canadian coins).

I got as far as $37, and that was that. The kindly clerk said she would ring in the entire amount ($44) and that I could bring the rest back the next day. Did I mention she didn't know me from Adam? Or Eve? However, I must have looked suitably pathetic (and trustworthy) because she let me walk out with $7 of my groceries unpaid for. Fortunately, when I got to the car, I remembered hubby also has a little stash of coins which he uses at the coin-op carwash (sorry, Hon). So I ran back into the store to square my debt.

It restores one's faith in humanity. My memory, not so much. Must go put wallet back into purse now.

Scale: our quarters, nickels and dimes are the same size as U.S. coins of that ilk.
So are the pennies, but we don't use them anymore. 

One more quick post

This blog post was written by my lovely niece Anna, who is a mom, designer and seamstress/crafter. She owns and operates Little Plum Tree from her home: beautiful hand-made toys, using local products and materials. I have a couple of her tote bags, and my pet hen, Henrietta, also came from Little Plum Tree.

Henrietta enjoying a prairie summer sunrise from the comfort of the settee

The article is about making one's home beautiful--something with which I have always struggled mightily. Heck, I can hardly keep the place tidy, but it's all part of the same problem. I liked this quotation:

In the past I’ve been tempted to settle for a solution that is functional only, thinking I need to be content with something I don’t particularly like because we need to finish a project, or because it’s superficial to hold out for something that’s more attractive.

Ain't THAT the truth! Mrs Beazly and I have struggled with this for so long, we even came up with a name for our decor style: "Scrap and Salvage" (and not in a good, trendy, hipster, thrift-store kind of way). For a while at my house, we had an old kitchen cabinet standing backwards (doors to the wall) embellished with some laminate shelving and pine "trim," which functioned as a shoe shelf IN OUR ENTRYWAY: you know, the place in your house where guests get their first impression. Before it went to its rightful home (the dump) I photographed it, but it was so ugly, I can't even bring myself to post it. (Like that Legolas guy said after that Gandalf guy died in that movie, "the grief is still too near.")

And I still can't get my hubby to throw away the boxy, non-functioning, fake wood/fake leather stereo speaker from the 1970s that he uses for an end table next to his reading chair. Good Lord! I'm in my FIFTIES: when can I stop living like a college student, and instead have only real furniture in my house? (Yes, I know: First World Problems.)

Anyway, back to Anna and Little Plum Tree. She also has a great eye and is a marvellous photographer.

I think my next acquisition will be this little owl. I'm in love with him. 

Deadlines and other necessities of life

Today is music lesson day. Not much time for blogging. 

So true. It was true in university; it was true for freelancing, columns and speech-writing. It will likely remain true for future projects (evidently).
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Fitness update

I'm old, but I'm not that old. Going to the gym, circa 1923

OK, I've now completed three workouts, and I have good news: I DIDN'T DIE! And I didn't even throw up (though after my first one last Thursday, I felt pretty nauseated, and my entire body felt like Jello). But I survived! This took place at the local CrossFit gym. I was inspired by a friend and assured that "anyone" can do it: they scale down the exercises and movements to fit your age, fitness level and any injuries or or chronic physical issues that you may have. So far, so good.

And golly, as a Catholic, how can you not be attracted to something with the word "cross" in it? And believe me, after my first three sessions, the emphasis is definitely on the "cross" -- fit, not so much.

I have to do the "On ramp" beginner's class, before I'll be ready to join the regular fitness classes (well, "ready" is a relative word. I may never feel "ready"; the best I might be able to do is "willing"). My first sessions have definitely pushed me to the edge of my strength and abilities. I had not done any research into CrossFit before plunging in; this was so that I would not get intimidated before I even began. But I'm moderately intimidated now. Not only are the workouts hard, but it also looks as though the cost of regular gym membership might be prohibitive, at least for the present. My writing income has been (*cough*) hovering around zero for the last three years. So until I can find a job or two, and earn a few dollars, I don't see how it will be feasible for me to join a second gym. (Our family already frequents another establishment on a semi-regular basis.)
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#selfesteem

Closer to reality

Fantasy--sort of

Today I'm taking the plunge and starting a new fitness adventure. I'm carpooling with a couple of other ladies and going to a gym in a nearby community. Close to the time they were due to arrive, I heard a vehicle pull up outside. "Is this my ride?" I wondered.

No, it wasn't. I hope this isn't an omen.

But with snow. Lots and lots of snow.
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I'm glad wrinkles are in style

Because if there's one thing I am NOT going to do, it's iron tablecloths and sheets. The wrinkles add texture, don't you know! (Makes our faces more interesting, ladies over 40! Remember that.)

This photo is from one of my favourite sites, Nordic Design. There is something so appealing about Nordic design: the coolness, cleanliness, sparseness (this must be my inner neatnick rebelling against my manifest hoarder), the warmth of the wood and other natural elements, and of course THE LIGHT. Read anything on Nordic design and rule Number 1 is proper lighting. That is why (according to the Little Book of Hygge), Scandinavians use more candles per capita than anyone in the world.

I prefer rustic to ultra modern...

...but this couple has managed to blend the two quite nicely (that range and hood/fan!)

More wrinkly bed linens

Happy Saturday. Are you cleaning house today too?
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You'll get no argument from me, buddy.

Chaos & Order 

This is a really great interview, covering a lot of ground, from psychology to economics. But this part made me laugh when I read the first line (bold emphasis added):

People have been criticizing my association of the feminine with chaos, but that’s not my association; that’s an ancient archetypal idea. They’re also laboring under the misapprehension that chaos itself is “bad”, even though I’ve made it clear, and it’s clear in the Jungian corpus, that the chaotic is also the source of everything new and revitalizing. Order tends to degenerate into deadly, paralyzed stasis. Both are so inevitable that talking about them as good or bad is beside the point. They’re both everywhere, and you have to manage them.

He can associate the feminine with chaos all he wants, because in my case, it's 100% dead-on. If the personalities in my marriage can be described as anything in archetypal terms, "Chaos and Order" fits the bill. And that's OK--not just OK, but indeed, excellent. We've worked through it for over 31 years (we're happier than we've ever been, by the way), and we look forward to many more.  One of the reasons I love Dr. Peterson (in a chaste, Catholic, intellectual way), is that he has helped me sort out so many things in the last year or so during which I've been listening to his lectures and interviews.

This one simple psychological finding, for example (once I had properly unpacked it and meditated it on it in regards to my own life) almost totally eradicated restentment and misunderstanding from my relationship with my husband. That really is no small thing.

"... women are more interested in people and men are more interested in things."

Read the whole thing. This guy is smart. It's no wonder that he's an internet superstar.

One last quotation:

I suggest that people concentrate on the development of their character and leave the ideological idiocy alone. By doing that, hopefully they turn themselves into the sorts of people who are capable of formulating problems, and solving them, and if enough people are like that, then we’ll solve them.

AMEN, BROTHER!

(Going to clean my room now...)
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When you walk into IKEA

Should you feel like a junkie diving into a sea of heroin? Probably not. But I can't help it, because I don't get there very often. And when I do, I never seem to have enough time to browse to my satisfaction. That's probably a good thing, because otherwise I would just spend too much money.

But I did get some nice deals earlier this week, including some lovely 100% cotton bed linens. Such as:

I bought this set for my crafty daughter Miss P #7, who immediately designed and crocheted herself a cute little coordinating pillow:

I also bought myself a small plate rack, and I may get another. This is part of the reason I love IKEA. When we renovated our kitchen, I wanted a plate rack in an open cabinet. It would have cost about $200 to have it custom built (so I was told when we were pricing out kitchen cabinets, years ago). On the other hand, this plate rack kit, available at Lee Valley, was about $40-$50 (now it's over $60).

What you get. 

What it ends up looking like. 

On the OTHER hand, here is my IKEA plate rack. Very simple, I know, but it does the job--and it's portable! Cost: $3.99. Total cost for two of them (to fill the entire shelf): $8.

I'm not sure why this photo is weirdly pixillated.
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I also wanted this cute little tray/side table. Very useful for when you have extra chairs out for lots of company, or your spot on the couch is just too far from the coffee table. I'd be using this all over the house, even my bedroom: the way it's currently set up, I don't have room for a night stand on my side of the bed. This would have been handy when I was sick in bed for two weeks. 

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Can cheesecake go bad?

I can't even believe I'm asking that question. I bought this the first week of February in honour of our granddaughter's birthday, and since there are only now four people living in my house and none of them are toddlers (it's SO quiet!) and we've been taking turns being sick with phlegmy coughs, stomach issues and so forth... that here we are, a WEEK LATER, and there are still some slices in the fridge. And, as Miss P#5 lugubriously lamented when she was four, "It'th Lent." So should I keep it till Sunday, or should I freeze it? 
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It didn't bubble, and it didn't squeak

And it was just about the most awful-looking thing I've ever cooked. Bubble and Squeak is a traditional British dish that you can make to use up leftovers. Its principle ingredients are potatoes and cabbage, and this is what it's supposed to look like:

I think my downfall was using purple (red) cabbage. Which is quite lovely when eaten raw in a cole slaw or salad. But cooking, not so much.

Not even a "golden" filter helped:

Oddly enough, it was delicious. But I'm never cooking red cabbage again.
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Facebook is good for something

I "like" a page on FB called Hillbilly Cast Iron Cooking (I also love cast iron), and that is where I got the idea to make chicken pot pie in my cast iron frying pan. (I am so obtuse, it has never occurred to me in my whole life to bake something in my frying pan.) But does it ever work well! I fried up the chicken pieces (you can't say "sautéed" in relation to cast iron; it's too snooty) and onion in the pan while I steamed cubed carrots and potatoes in another pot. I made the gravy in the frying pan, right over top the chicken and onion, dumped in the potatoes and carrots, and threw in a cup of frozen peas. Then I topped it with a purchased pie crust--because I was lazy, and it was music lesson day, thus, I got home late. (They were on clearance sale at the grocery store, which was a bonus.)

I baked it for about 30 min at 375 F, just until the crust browned. My husband loves pie, so of course he was pleased with the meal. And this is funny: I felt a bit guilty about making it a single (top-only) crust pie, since he loves the pie crust. But since you had to scoop it out of the pan with a spoon, it showed up on the plate as a big pile of chicken stew with broken pastry on top. And he actually didn't notice that there was no bottom crust. 

It was very tasty and a fast way to make savoury pie. Thanks, Facebook Hillbillies!

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"Drive forth, O Lord, all darksome things"

Image: St. Peter's Church, Toronto

This is why we need poetry in our lives. Isn't that one of the best lines you've ever read? It comes from the opening hymn from Morning Prayer (Liturgy of the Hours). If you do not pray the LOTH, you should seriously consider it, because it's the next most legit thing to attending daily Mass. (Yes, it's even "better" than the daily rosary, and that is saying a LOT.) If you don't know what it is, or where to begin, read this book. Available in ebook format, so you can start within the next 10 minutes if you want. I can't overstate how important this form of prayer is in my life.

We all have suffering and darkness in our lives, and we want God to take it away. Sometimes, the only prayer we can muster is, "God, help me; I can't deal with this crap."  But if we're going to pray that prayer, we might as well use beautiful language--not because God needs to hear it (he knows all the words, even the bad ones), but because we do.  God is everything that is true, good and beautiful. And good Art is the same thing. True Art leads us to God.

The LOTH is based on the Psalms, which contain some of the most beautiful words in the Bible.

The Bible also has a lot of cool metaphors. This one came from the Reading from Midmorning Prayer today: (1 Peter 1:13-14): "Gird the loins of your understanding..." Ha, I love that! In other words, 'Get it together, man!' Know what you believe; know why you believe it, and be ready to explain/defend it when asked/challenged.

By the way, I don't usually pray so many of the hours, so don't think I'm some kind of saint. In fact I was kind of cheating and listening to the LOTH audio while I tidied my bedroom this morning. It had become rather messy over the holidays. (You know it's bad when you get all the way through the podcasts of Morning Prayer, Office of Readings AND Midmorning Prayer, and you only cleaned half the room.) Disorganization, laziness and clutter: just a few more those darksome things that need to be driven forth from my life. Pray for me; I'll pray for you.
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Waiting for dawn

The houseplants near my kitchen patio door, waiting for sunrise. 

Christmas is almost officially over, as Ordinary Time begins tomorrow.  I hope you had a nice Christmas; our family certainly did. It's always sad at the end of the holidays to see the adult and college-age children going back to their jobs and studies.  This January is more poignant than usual, since Daughter #5 is leaving home, and there are various other changes afoot, some of which I did not anticipate. As they say, "Change is the only Constant" (actually, "they" is the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus, which I just discovered this very moment. Isn't Google useful sometimes?)

Despite the various challenges of life, my spirits are lifted because: 1) God; 2) we are POST-SOLSTICE: more hours of daylight--yay! I have trouble getting up early in the morning at the best of times, but winter is even less fun. When one of our daughters was little, she called everything between midnight and sunrise "Dark Morning," and the label is apropos, literally as well as metaphorically. 

Is it a stretch to suggest St. Irenaeus would approve of vintage Tupperware?

Well, why not?

I read this quite long ago in the Office of Readings (emphasis added):

From the treatise Against Heresies 

by Saint Irenaeus, bishop


From the beginning God created man out of his own generosity. [Here follows a section wherein St. Irenaeus lists some material goods that God gave to his chosen people...] In so many ways he was training the human race to take part in the harmonious song of salvation.
He himself needs none of these things. He is always filled with all that is good. Even before Moses existed he had within himself every fragrance of all that is pleasing. Yet he sought to teach his people, always ready though they were to return to their idols. Through many acts of indulgence he tried to prepare them for perseverance in his service. He kept calling them to what was primary by means of what was secondary, that is, through foreshadowings to the reality, through things of time to the things of eternity, through things of the flesh to the things of the spirit, through earthly things to the heavenly things. As he said to Moses: You will fashion all things according to the pattern that you saw on the mountain.
For forty days Moses was engaged in remembering the words of God, the heavenly patterns, the spiritual images, the foreshadowings of what was to come. Saint Paul says: They drank from the rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. After speaking of the things that are in the law he continues: All these things happened to them as symbols: they were written to instruct us, on whom the end of the ages has come.
Through foreshadowings of the future they were learning reverence for God and perseverance in his service. The law was therefore a school of instruction for them, and a prophecy of what was to come.

So the moral of the story is: enjoy beauty, and make your homes and your lives beautiful, and if vintage Tupperware does that for you, then go for it! But remember where true beauty truly (in our souls and our relationships), and cultivate it first and foremost there. Our wonderful and beautiful stuff should ultimately point to God, not become gods themselves. 

Here is a sad consequence of worshipping false idols (h/t Peter Rosengren, FB)

Let us end with Psalm 84:

How lovely is your dwelling place,
Lord, God of hosts.

My soul is longing and yearning,
is yearning for the courts of the Lord.
My heart and my soul ring out their joy
to God, the living God.

The sparrow herself finds a home
and the swallow a nest for her brood;
she lays her young by your altars,
Lord of hosts, my king and my God.

Happy fifth day of 2018. 
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Drunken Garlic Pot Roast...a No Fail Hit

There's not much here to indicate scale, but the pan above is a large turkey roaster, and those are three four-pound beef blade roasts, immersed in beef stock and beer. Why was I cooking 12 pounds of beef, you may ask? Because a family member on Mr. P's side was celebrating a milestone wedding anniversary, and it was a potluck, and I was asked to bring a meat dish. And this one is great. I've made it three or four times since last summer, and it's always a hit.

The original recipe is here at Genius Kitchen, so I will not need to repeat it. However, I will tell you that I have never followed this recipe to the letter (sorry!). The reason is that I've always made it in large quantities for large crowds, and the original recipe calls for something like 2.5 pounds of beef. Which is not so very remarkable but the 24 cloves of garlic is. You read that correctly.

So, say you wanted to triple the recipe, which I did the first time I made it. I didn't have 72 cloves of garlic on hand, and if I had, I wouldn't have wanted to peel them. But I did have 40, so that's what I used. And it turned out great. I think we did 60 cloves in the above recipe, and those were all hand-peeled too (thanks, Celeste and Adam!). Next time I make a recipe this large, I'll probably use the minced garlic in a jar--although there will always be purists who say it just isn't the same. I know it isn't the same; it can never be the same as fresh. But it takes a long time to peel 60 or more cloves of garlic.

Oh, and I usually brown AND cook my roasts in my 7-quart cast iron pot. (I loooooooove cast iron--our great-grannies knew their stuff! I'm happy to see it regaining popularity year by year.) But as large as my pot is, it would not accommodate 12lb of beef, so I seared each roast in the CI pot, and slow-cooked them in the turkey roaster. This recipe (Genius Kitchen) is for a slow cooker, but I have always cooked mine in the oven at 325 degrees F, and they are usually done in a couple of hours.

The fun part about this recipe is that the taste changes every time, depending on what type of beer or ale you use. So far, I've used everything from non-alcoholic types, to Molson Canadian and Budweiser, to these:

I like that the liquor store sells many of these imported beers by the can, so that if a brew is not to your taste, you don't have a whole case on your hands. I'm looking forward to trying this recipe with Guinness. Bon Appétit!
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