Back in a routine

In the two-and-a-half weeks since I last posted, we:

• started the school year (Jimmy in 4th grade, Audrey in Kindergarten)
• hosted our cousin Aidan for five days
• celebrated Audrey's birthday
• wore cowboy boots to the county fair
• kicked off soccer season
• went on a field trip to Thorp Mill
• stayed overnight with friends near Seattle
• returned to regular cub scout meetings

In between all these goings-on, I've been trying to find a new normal--staying on top of housework by having the kids help, carving out time to exercise and take care of myself, baby-proofing everything now that Joseph is walking (and yes, my kitchen is still gated off while I contemplate the daunting prospect of deep cleaning and locking down everything below three feet high)--all while figuring out the trick of homeschooling two kids at once.

Surprisingly, I've been feeling mostly successful at all of this. We've had the requisite amount of griping about piano practice and math worksheets, but overall, school has been fun and Jimmy's self-direction has allowed me to spend the time with Audrey that she needs. I've made a lot of progress on taming my short temper. My house has been cleaner more consistently than I can ever remember it being before. In the afternoons, I've even had a few hours between helping the kids with their chores and putting Joe down for naps to cross off a few extra projects on my to-do list like cleaning out closets and getting rid of baby gear we no longer need. Just yesterday I made up a triple batch of laundry soap and a batch of dishwasher detergent, too.

Today is bread day.

For a while now I've been wanting to stop purchasing store-bought bread, but I haven't been happy enough with how my own bread turned out, so I've been experimenting and tweaking my recipe and methodology. I got my original recipe for three whole wheat loaves from my mother-in-law, but found that my bread always seemed to turn out too dense and low. Through a lot of trial and error I've discovered a few things:

1. My kitchen is drafty, which means it is usually too cold for the yeast to grow, especially during winter and spring. I can mitigate this by turning on the oven and leaving it slightly open while the yeast is proofing to warm up the room.
2. Using exclusively whole-wheat flour (along with any additions like oats or flax) makes for very dense, heavy bread, which means that it won't rise as high and will be more crumbly. So now I use all-purpose flour for half of the flour content, and sometimes add in a bit of ground flax or oats--but a little goes a long way.
3. Recently I figured out that refined sugar, even in small quantities, aggravates my arthritis, so I've switched to using honey, which makes me hurt less and the bread more moist.
4. Our family eats about four loaves of bread a week, so if I wanted to bake only once a week, I would have to readjust my recipe.
5. My friend Carol, who used to have a bread business, told me that adding some baking powder helps get a bit more rise during baking, so I started doing that, too.
6. My kids love my bread. Both Jimmy and Audrey have said, "Mom, your bread is waaaaay better than bread from the store." The fact that Joe eats more of it than he throws on the floor is his own ringing endorsement.


Chicklegirl's Wheat Bread

5-1/3 cups warm water
1/3 cup honey
5 tablespoons active dry yeast (I buy the bags of Red Star brand at Costco, which cost only slightly more than a few packets purchased at the grocery store)
5 cups all-purpose flour
6-7 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup ground flax seeds or rolled oats (optional, exchange for 1/4 cup of the flour)
1/3 cup olive oil
5 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup vinegar
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

Mix yeast, water and honey together in bowl of stand mixer. Proof for 15 minutes, until bubbly. Add other ingredients and mix together with two or three turns of the bread hook. Let rest for 10 minutes. Knead with bread hook for 10 minutes. Turn dough out of stand mixer bowl into larger metal bowl, then cover with a tea towel or cloth to rise until double (about 30 minutes, depending on if your kitchen is drafty--the warmer, the better and faster the dough will rise). Turn dough out onto lightly floured counter top and divide into four equal parts. Form parts into loaves and place in greased loaf pans. Let loaves rise until they round up above (but not overflow) the rims of the pans. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30-35 minutes. Makes 4 loaves.


Tonight, I'm trying a new recipe for peach jam made with honey.

Tightwad tuesday: hard water, clean dishes

I've been using my homemade laundry soap for over a year now and I love it. I love how I'm still on the same box of Borax and the same box of washing soda because the stuff is so darn inexpensive and a little goes a long, long way. Jim was a skeptic at first, but quickly became a convert. Recently he said, "Say, do you think you could find a recipe for dishwasher detergent, too?"

Right around that time I discovered Pinterest (which is a whole other post) and one of the first things I pinned was a recipe for dishwasher detergent. It did a great job getting the dishes clean, but I was less than thrilled that my glasses were left cloudy. In multiple test batches, I tried adding different ratios of Kosher salt, Kool-Aid and Fruit Fresh, as well as adding white vinegar as a rinse agent at various points in the wash cycle, but nothing seemed to make any difference.

So after several months of cloudy glassware (and a brief return to expensive store-bought detergent) I googled "DIY dishwasher detergent hard water". I found this recipe, which is essentially the same as what I had tried before, except it uses Lemi Shine instead of Fruit Fresh or Kool-Aid. Works like a charm--and the glass stays sparkly.


DIY Dishwasher Detergent for Hard Water

1 cup washing soda
1 cup Mule Team Borax
¼ cup Kosher salt
1 cup Lemi Shine

Mix all ingredients in a mixing bowl, then whisk to break up lumps and combine thoroughly. Store in an airtight container with a small silica packet, as even in an arid climate ANY moisture will cause this harden into large clumps (I like to use the little silica packs that come in shoe boxes, and an old peanut butter jar for storage). Use one tablespoon in each soap compartment (1 T for a light load, 2 T for pans and really greasy dishes). Add white vinegar to your rinse agent dispenser as a low-cost alternative to Jet Dry.

Tightwad tuesday: cheap suds for your duds

It's been a long time since I wrote a Tightwad Tuesday post, but I finally have a worthy topic!

Recently I was chatting with my friend Vicki, a fellow frugal mom, and she mentioned she makes her own laundry detergent. I was intrigued, so Vicki sent me a link to The Family Homestead, a homemaking blog, where she had found the recipe. She swears by it; her husband is a fishing boat captain, and she says it gets all his dirty, greasy work clothes sparkling and smelling fresh.

Last Thursday, on my usual grocery day, I purchased the necessary ingredients from the laundry aisle of my local grocery store for a whopping $8.04 (remember, though, that these quantities make multiple batches, so that works out to a lot less per load, as you'll see).

Right after lunch today I decided to whip up a test batch of the homemade detergent. I halved the original recipe and modified it as follows:

1/4 of a 5.5 oz. bar Fels Naptha laundry soap
1/4 cup Arm and Hammer laundry soda
1/4 cup Mule Team Borax
(I also added 1/2 teaspoon of lemon essential oil for fragrance, although the scent of the Fels Naptha overpowered it)

This makes 1 gallon of liquid laundry detergent, so I had a clean container that held at least one gallon--and that had an airtight lid--ready before I began. I grated the soap on the smaller holes of a cheese grater, then dissolved it in 3 cups of water on medium heat, stirring occasionally. When the soap was dissolved, I added the Borax and washing soda and stirred until it had dissolved. Then I turned off the heat and set the soap mixture aside. I poured two cups of hot water in a large bowl or pan (one that held more than a gallon), then stirred in the soap mixture. I added another 10 cups of water and stirred. The last step is to let the soap sit over night to set up into a sort of chunky gel consistency. (I skipped that so I could test it out right away.) Use 1/2 cup per load.

Lately I've been using Costco's Kirkland Signature Clear and Free detergent for the kids' laundry (they both have eczema), which rings up at about $16.50 a bottle, and washes approximately 110 loads (probably less for us because we have hard water and my kids get pretty grungy). That comes out to about 15 cents a load.

The homemade soap works out to about 53 cents for the half-batch I made, because here in the 'burg, a 5.5-oz. bar of Fels Naptha is $1.28, a 76-oz. box of Mule Team Borax is $4.38, and a 55-oz. box of Arm and Hammer washing soda is $2.38. Divide 53 cents by the thirty-two 1/2 cup uses yielded, and the cost per load is an amazing 1.6 cents per load (in case you missed it, that's one-tenth the cost of the Kirkland soap per load).

My first test load came out pretty darn clean--though I admit, it wasn't the kids' laundry, so the true test will come on Friday when I wash all their perma-stained pants, shirts, socks and underwear. I'll keep you posted!

Update (2/7/11): I used this all last week for every load of laundry, and I must say it gets the job done. Gotta love the winning combination of cheap and effective. Oh, and did I mention fast? This takes ten minutes to make. If you double or triple the recipe, you only have to make it every couple months. Wash your clothes on the cheap, and use the savings to buy yourself a new dress or pair of shoes.

Obscurity and competance

A while ago, my friend Kim at pagooey made an observation that resonated deeply inside me:

"If you wake up in the morning, if you're still Here, then there must be something left in this world that you're supposed to do. Originally I attached some pretty noble/vain aspirations to myself, out of this...but at 40, I've allowed that perhaps My True Purpose On This Earth is not necessarily to cure cancer, or attain the Presidency, or even write that blockbuster bestseller that gets me on Oprah. Maybe my purpose is smaller in scope, or meant to be taken a day at a time."

It gelled for me today on some never-before-reached level, as I was I teaching my Primary class of 9, 10 and 11 year-olds at church. Our lesson was about how John the Baptist was foreordained to his calling, and how all of us have our own unique callings we can choose to accept. Or not. Even for those who aren't religious, I believe there's a compelling universal truth in the idea that we each have a purpose to accomplish in life, one we can tap into when we listen to the cosmos--or whatever higher power we recognize--and follow where it leads.

As I was teaching, I had an "aha" moment when I realized I'm actually content--not resigned--but at peace with more modest purposes than I used to dream of: learning the art of being patient with my children, nurturing their minds and bodies, reading books for pleasure as well as knowledge, getting laundry done, working at my marriage, taking care of my body, once or twice a month cleaning the toilet, and slowly (but surely) building up a body of cohesive poems for my first chapbook (probably not the Pulitzer Prize-winner I once fancied, but a start). Those are things I can do, and possibly even do well, one day at a time.

Mark Twain had it when he said, "Obscurity and competance--that is the life that is best worth living."

Too funky

I live in a house full of picky eaters. I've long since resigned myself to the reality that Jim dislikes some of my favorite dinners, like shepherd's pie and chicken divan. Lately, though, I've grown frustrated as our dinner options have dwindled due the smaller finicky parties getting more outspoken about those various ingredients which are out of favor with them.

So the other day, I asked Jim and Jimmy to thumb through a cooking magazine and choose a new recipe to try. They both seemed enthusiastic about a slow-cooked fruity pork roast with cranberries, golden raisins, lemon and apple. I was enthusiastic, too, because we still haven't gotten our new range and I'm depending on my crockpot, microwave and electric griddle to get us through to the delivery date of Wednesday.

Tonight as we sat down to dinner, Jimmy took a bite of the pork and said, "Mom, I don't like this. It tastes funky."

I couldn't help myself; I busted out singing, "Get down tonight, get down tonight."

"No, Mom. Not that kind of funky."

Out with the old...

(And by old, I mean this stove is quite possibly older than I am.)

Learning can be fun?

Last Tuesday we took a field trip with our homeschool group to the Pacific Science Center. Here are a few snaps...

Oh, and did I mention the work study program is an integral part of our homeschool curriculum? I believe in putting my kids to work as young as possible...

Sally bibs: part 2

My house has been languishing in disarray since I got over my nasty cold, and I finally jolted myself into the necessity of cleaning it by inviting friends over for dinner. Sad but true, the thought of company is what always gets me motivated to deal with dirt and clutter. But I'm finally learning to go with what works for me, so I foresee a lot of dinner parties in my future. Probably for the rest of my natural life.

Now that my dining room table is all cleared off, I had room to spread out my unfinished Sally bib project. In part 1, I prepped all the materials, and now it's time to fire up ole Gertie and get down to sewing.

Sewing and Finishing

Step 1: To make a strip of seam binding long enough to go around the outside of the bib, you will need to take two shorter strips and sew them together. Find two strips with slanted edges that fit together. Then line them up, right sides together, as shown above. Note how the points are not matched up but instead overlap and extend about a half inch. This is so that when you sew them together with a 1/2" allowance, the seam will lie exactly where the edges intersect.

Lay the pinned sections of binding on the throat plate of the sewing machine and line up the needle in the point of the "V" where the sections intersect. Set the sewing machine to about seven or eight stitches per inch (this amount of stitches per inch is referred to as "basting"). Baste in a straight line to the point of the inverted "V" on the opposite edge of the binding.

After the sections are basted together, clip the seam allowance down to 1/8", then fold the seam binding back into its creases and press the area where it was joined.

Step 2: Pin the seam binding (wrong side out) to the outside edge of the bib except for the curve around the neck hole. Gently stretch the binding to curve around the curved edges of the bib. Trim the ends of the binding so they are flush with the edges of the neck hole.

Using the first ironed crease in from the edge as a guide (approximately 1/2" seam allowance), baste the seam binding to the bib.

Now, fold the seam binding over the raw edge of the bib and on the unsewn side, tuck the raw edge of the binding under along the fold and match up the edge with the stitches of the seam where the binding was sewn to the bib. Pin in place, stretching to ease the binding around curved edges.

Stitch the binding down as close to the edge as possible, about 1/16" to 1/8".

Step 3: Pin binding to the neck hole of the bib, leaving 9"-long tails at the end on each side, as shown above. Depending on how long your binding is, you may have to sew two more sections together, as shown above in Step 1.

Trim off the ends of the tails so they are square.

Laying open the middle crease in the seam binding, fold over a small allowance (about 1/4"), as shown above on the right. Then pin shut, as shown on the left.

Position the needle in the middle of the tail section, about 1/8" from the edge, as shown above. Reverse stitch to the top (folded) edge. Shift to forward stitching and baste to about 1/8" from the bottom (open) edge.

Making sure that the needle is in the downward position, completely piercing the fabric, lift the presser foot, and rotate the fabric 45 degrees, so that the bottom edge is now lined up to be sewn closed.

Baste the bottom edged closed, and continue basting along the edge of the binding where it is pinned to the bib, approximately 1/8" seam allowance. At the end of the other tail, reverse stitch to reinforce the edge.

Voilà! a finished Sally bib.

And a happy baby, ready to dig into dinner!

Update: The reason this post is dated Wednesday the second but appeared on Monday the seventh is I was having issues with Blogger downloading my pictures sideways. Finally figured it out this morning (whew!)

Tightwad tuesday: vinegar

Vinegar is one of the greatest multi-taskers ever. Not only can you make a savory, low-fat salad dressing with it, but it is also the frugal housekeeper's best friend. Besides being inexpensive and eco-friendly, vinegar has the added bonus of being a natural insect repellant (cleaning your floors with it will deter those pesky sugar ants so prevalent this time of year). Here are a few basic recipes for homemade cleaning solutions using vinegar:

All-purpose cleaner: combine 1/2 cup ammonia, 1/3 cup vinegar, 2 Tablespoons baking soda, 1 gallon water. Glass cleaner: combine 2 Tablespoons cornstarch, 1/2 cup white vinegar, 1 gallon warm water. Toilet bowl cleaner: vinegar will remove most lime deposits without polluting water.

Other inexpensive, easy-to-make cleaning solutions:

Furniture polish: combine 1 part lemon juice and 2 parts olive oil or vegetable oil. Rug and carpet deodorizer: sprinkle liberal amounts of baking soda over a dry carpet then wait 15 minutes before vacuuming.

Learning to crawl

Two things occur to me as I watch you

spine arching twisting rolling
trying to coordinate with
arms pushing pulling pivoting
trying to coordinate with
legs bending flexing kicking

and again

roll twist arch
pull push pivot
kick flex bend

and again

roll pull bend
twist push flex
arch pivot kick

and again

roll push bend
twist pivot kick
arch pull flex

you don’t give up

and

my floor is filthy.

Dishwasher delectation

Left: old, busted and leaking all over my kitchen floor

Right: new potscrubbing hotness

NaPoWriMo #18: saturday

Playing catch-up again...


Weekend Warrior

Saturday morning and I’m trying to
shake the ache from my bones
so I’m up first
creeping downstairs in
faded fuzzy slippers and
flowered pajamas
two slices of wheat bread spread
with peanut butter, a glass of milk
while checking email
then I’m putting away
last night’s dishes, reloading our
decrepit dishwasher
and it’s off to mow grass
wash four loads of laundry
eat leftovers for lunch
sweep, wipe down, wash
another load of dishes
make dinner, put kids to bed
and squeeze in a run
if my bones ache a bit less
than when I woke.

NaPoWriMo #10: mending

I'm playing catch-up because yesterday got away from me. The truth is, the time I should have been writing was spent immersed in reading. What can I say? It wasn't even poetry, but I'm a sucker for a good book. And I'll make up for it by writing two poems tomorrow, okay?

Earlier tonight I was down in the basement in my sewing/computer room mending a housecoat for an older friend of mine. I fixed a couple other things, too, from my big stack of "UFOs" (unfinished objects). This may reveal what a simple creature I really am, but I always feel a tremendous sense of relaxation and accomplishment when I do mending (which is not necessarily true about my other sewing projects). It's about the soothing rhythm of stitching, whether I use a machine or sew by hand, and also about being useful, extending the life of something just a little beyond what it might have otherwise been. Somehow that makes me feel as though I'm extended, too.


Mended

Green white black blue spools
carefully threaded through
hand wheel turned gently forward
catching bobbin thread
fabric laid flat lined up
against ruled throat plate
comforting pressure
of knee lever against my leg
soothing reverse forward reverse
sweet and steady hum
old Singer reverberating
seven stitches per inch
and
fleecy green pajamas
faded floral housecoat
cotton crib sheet worn soft
front pocket tee-shirt
wool skirt with ripped hem
satisfyingly
return to service.

NaPoWriMo #4: refrigerator

Here's that silly poem I was trying to write the other day when all my maternal hang-ups got in the way.


Fridge Raider

My refrigerator boasts a most astounding range
of science experiments both wonderful and strange
so numerous, in fact, I can only list a few
I'll hold the door wide open, so please, enjoy the view
of rancid pork chops, sour milk, fuzzy cottage cheese
a few shriveled small round green things that used to be peas
rubbery yellow Jell-O, limp lettuce, rotten eggs
an old bottle of ketchup emptied down to the dregs
potatoes covered with sprouts that have started to grow
mayonnaise last opened at least a year ago
dried up mustard with no lid, club soda long gone flat
moldy left-over tuna I meant to give my cat
lastly, something way in back I can't identify
better get a move on—I've got groceries to buy!

American sentences

Learn something new every day: this morning as I was checking out Deb's post for Read Write Poem, I read about American Sentences, a poetic form I'd never previously encountered. The gist of American Sentences: they're haiku-length poems (17 syllables) but without the line break constraints of a traditional haiku. Sounds like fun.

Fingers ripple across keyboard; I avoid real life dirty dishes.

What is real?

It’s laundry day
I’ve spent all morning and half an afternoon
carrying baskets of dirty clothes
and baskets of clean clothes
up and down
down and up
three flights of stairs
camping in front of my television
folding while I watch
all those too-pretty people
in their perfectly packaged lives
so much drama, so much sizzle
while I create ordered stacks of
ordinary underwear, towels, socks and shirts
no lace, leopard print or designer labels to be seen
and on commercial breaks
I’m whisking baskets of neatly folded laundry
back upstairs
placing each item with care
in its appointed place
now a load of sheets still warm from my dryer
no need to fold
as I fling soft flannel
across width and length of my bed
stuff pillows in freshly clean cases
and tuck hospital corners
it hits me what is real
is how one edge of the top sheet
is still damp.

Take it or leave it

Last night we tried a new dish: chicken cacciatore. The recipe I used called for dredging the chicken in flour before browning it and Jimmy was not a fan of the breading. He refused to comply with our "try-two-bites-and-then-you-can-have-something-else" rule until Jim scraped it off. Then he took his two obligatory bites and requested cheap mac 'n' cheese (which I had in a Servin' Saver in the fridge, awaiting just such a culinary crisis).

While I enjoy cooking, I find the compulsory nature of having to make dinner every night for a potentially critical audience drains me of most of the creative stimulation or actual enjoyment I might get out of it. I discovered early in my married life that Jim was little help when it came to meal planning. His perennial suggestion if I ask what he'd like to have for dinner is, "Spaghetti. And garlic bread." To save myself from the tedium of spaghetti every night (not to mention major carbo-overload) within the first month of connubial bliss I came up with a weekly meal plan, which I also used to create my grocery list. This provided some much-needed variety in our meals while helping me save money by not impulse-shopping at the supermarket.

Three years ago, in an attempt to change things up and add even more variety (because spaghetti once a week is still a bit much if you ask me), I started to plan my meals a month at a time. I made a list of our favorite meals, created a calendar with my desktop publishing program, and populated it with dinner selections. Then I printed and posted it in the kitchen. From time to time, I add new dishes and get rid of the ones we don't like as much. I also vary it with more salads and grilled foods in the summer.

Lest you think I'm some kind of compulsive organizational freak (which I'm not; just look at the disgusting state of my upstairs bathroom!) I cannot stress enough this isn't a "set in stone" kind of thing. My world and identity as I know them do not implode if the schedule isn't followed with precision. Some nights I don't feel like eating what's planned for that evening, and I switch it around. Some nights I just don't feel like cooking and we eat out. Some nights I ask Jim to cook and we eat whatever he wants to make. But the beauty of the meal calendar is this: just ten well-spent minutes of planning each month saves me from the weekly boredom of spaghetti and the aggravation of aimlessly wandering grocery aisles trying to figure out what's for dinner.

Tonight was home-made pizza. Mmmmm.

Thanksgiving cactus

When it comes to houseplants, I've got the black thumb of death. Over the past two decades I've only managed to keep a half-dozen plants alive for more than six months, but then my cats dig those ones up. Or pee in them. Equally deadly.

Right now my only surviving houseplant older than three months is a Christmas cactus, which I bought when Jimmy was a baby. It lived on a narrow bathroom windowsill in our Bellevue apartment, where it got lots of light and moisture. Since we moved to Ellensburg, the cactus has resided on a sunny windowsill above the kitchen sink, where the precipitous perch has been a sufficient deterrant against feline attack, and the conveniently located faucet helps me remember to water it (most of the time). I think the favorable change in venue has permanently altered its biological clock; the cactus now blooms starting in mid-November.

Serendipitously, this provides me with something lovely to look at while I do dishes, just in time for the holiday season when my kitchen is shell-shocked for weeks on end with dirty pots and pans from big family dinners and Jim's numerous baking projects. And anything that makes doing dishes more pleasant is something to be thankful for!

O, blessed nesting

I love Anne Taintor's edgy vintage-with-a-twist creations. My fridge currently sports several of her magnets, although I don't actually own the design above. Somehow "disabled" seems too harsh a description of my reluctance to ardently pursue domestic prowess. After all, I'm great at laundry and meal management, and I'm a pretty decent cook. No, I prefer to think of myself as domestically disinclined. It's not that I lack skill; it's just that I lack the will.

So thank the heavens for that fabulous, wondrous, blessed phenomenon known as nesting. In the last four weeks I've gotten more housework done than in the previous nine months. Combined. I've sewn curtains for the baby room, cleaned carpets, scrubbed the kitchen floor, hand quilted a baby quilt, and kept ahead of the dishes. And I cleaned the upstairs bathroom. Including scrubbing down the shower.

Maybe I need to get knocked up more often.

You know it's time to do dishes when...