Select Page
My Pies Runneth Over

My Pies Runneth Over

Happy day after Thanksgiving to everyone! How many of you are clutching your stomachs wondering why you ate an extra piece of pie yesterday?

Raise your hands high. I want an accurate count.

My family is still anticipating our day of gluttony as we gather together tomorrow at our house for a day of feasting and fun. Therefore, this morning I baked three pies–mincemeat, cherry, and strawberry-rhubarb–which could be overkill since our crowd will number 15, one of whom does not yet eat solid food. Plus my niece is bringing cupcakes. And my sister’s bringing tapioca fruit salad.

But I digress. Back to the pies.

The strawberry-rhubarb wasn’t on the menu. But when Hiram brought up the apple pie I made and popped in the freezer last spring, it turned out to be strawberry-rhubarb. The mincemeat pie and cherry were on the menu. But the cherry pie ran over and dripped onto the mincemeat.

So it’s not really mincemeat. It’s chincemeat.

Which I hope will be okay with the fam. And it probably will since Mom says a good pie always runs over. So these pies aren’t just gonna be good. They’re gonna be great. And on Sunday, everyone will be holding their stomachs and wondering why they ate that extra piece of pie.

My pie runneth over. And life is good.

Top Ten Hated Kitchen Chores

Top Ten Hated Kitchen Chores

My, it’s good to be home puttering around the kitchen. So how come this week’s top ten lists what I consider to be the worst kitchen chores ever.

10. Organizing and cleaning cupboards. Life is just too short for this.

9.   Defrosting the freezer. Any kitchen chore that involves wearing winter gloves deserves to be on the list.

8.   Cleaning the floor of the cupboard under the sink. This is where our garbage can lives, which could have some bearing on the “ugh” factor associated with this chore.

7.   Fishing foreign objects out of the garbage disposal. Even if I’m the only person in the kitchen and even though the ol switch is out of reach, the disposal could grind spontaneously.

6.   Cleaning the oven. This task is so hated, I’ve only done it once. Ever.

5.   Checking mousetraps.

4.   Finding a mouse in the mousetrap.

3.   Scrubbing dried egg and/or dried rice off anything. Elmer’s glue has nothing on this stuff.

2.   Pitting cherries. Only the prospect of cherry pie keeps this incredibly boring and tedious task out of the number 1 spot.

1.   Deboning chicken breasts. Poor coordination means deboning a thumb or finger is only a knife swipe away.

What’s missing from your top ten list? Leave a comment.

 

Three Food Number Thoughts for Thursday

Three Food Number Thoughts for Thursday

For the past few weeks, I’ve been cooking for family events. The amount of food prepared and consumed led to these three thoughts for Thursday:

  1. At our Labor Day reunion, 17 people ate 3 watermelons, 2 quarts of salsa, and 2 bags of chips in 7 hours. (And those were just the side dishes.) I keep forgetting how much a gathering of Hesses can eat when 8 family members are in their twenties.
  2. However, 1 1/2 bags of marshmallows, 2 boxes of graham crackers, and 12 chocolate bars are more than enough for 2 nights of s’mores around the campfire.
  3. In the past three weeks, I’ve prepared and frozen 11 meals for the parents-to-be. Which makes me wonder if the mother-to-be nesting tendency extends to grandmothers-to-be, also. Have any grandparents out there experienced the same phenomenon? What kind of nesting did you do?

 

Stepping Up to the Plate

Stepping Up to the Plate

The number of people stepping up to the mealtime plate at our house doubled last Wednesday with the arrival of our daughter and son-in-law. Their two week visit is hardly enough time to catch up on their year in Ohio, more than eleven hours away. And, it might not be enough time to get me back into the game of cooking for more than two people, either.

Not just any two people,
but two people a generation younger than us,
with metabolisms much higher than ours,
with one of those metabolisms encased in a 6’4″ frame.

I stocked up on groceries the day they came. When they opened the refrigerator door the first time, they were both taken aback by it’s stuffed-to-the-gills status. But they shook off the shock and put those active metabolisms to good use. By this morning, the refrigerator and the cupboards were looking pretty bare.

No bread,
one peach in the fruit bowl,
three small tomatoes,
one half-gallon of milk,
some scruffy looking veggies,
smoked turkey left over from Hiram’s grill-fest yesterday,
and a dozen eggs.

Almost enough to tide us over until we make a Costco run tomorrow. To fill the gap, I hit the produce aisle at the grocery store down the road and came home with a watermelon, a bag of peaches, and a container of grapes. I did a little cooking, too.

Four dozen honey-oatmeal muffins,
eight pints of turkey broth off yesterday’s carcass,
and four cups of meat picked off the bones,
which is why this post is a little late going up.

But I’m not making more of Abbey’s granola today. We’ve gone through two batches in the last week, kinda like the Japanese beetles on my rose bushes. Considering the gross leavings of those critters, I decided to distance us from that metaphor, so we’re waiting until midweek to make more. Besides, the daughter’s birthday is only a few days off.

So it’s time to gather the ingredients for her birthday menu of
grilled shrimp,
Greek salad,
corn-on-the-cob,
and German chocolate birthday cake
with coconut-pecan frosting.

Uh-huh, I think the old rhythm’s coming back. I’m finding my stride and getting in the cooking game again. It feels good. Though all this thinking about food, cooking, grocery shopping, and menu planning works up a powerful appetite. Which means it must be time for me to step up to the plate again. With the kids here for two weeks after a long year away, every meal’s already a home run.

Top 10 Reasons to Eat Supper as a Family

Top 10 Reasons to Eat Supper as a Family

Have you heard or read the studies about the studies that say family mealtime is the an important factor in the future well-being of children? That eating meals together is an effective deterrent against drugs, smoking, alcohol and the like? Those studies weren’t around when our kids were little, but we had a few reasons of our own for eating together at least once a day. This weekend, when some of our kids were here visiting, a couple more came to mind. So here are my top ten reasons families should eat meals together.

10. The table doesn’t accumulate as much junk if it has to be cleared before supper.

9.   Setting and clearing the table provide opportunities to earn stickers on chore charts.

8.   Someday all that table setting and clearing will lead one of your children to believe parents only have kids because they want slaves to do all their work.

7.   How else are little boys and girls supposed to learn knives can be used for more than stabbing bad guys?

6.   Mealtime provides a captive audience for telling goofy family stories and thus preserving family history.

5.  Mealtime is a perfect venue for creating new family stories – perhaps a story about a daughter who frequently fell off her chair or a son who found giggles in the applesauce.

4.  Kids who eat meals with their parents want to know how to cook what they’re eating.

3.  Kids who eat meals with their parents learn to cook what they like to eat.

2.  Kids who eat meals with their parents eventually cook supper for their parents.

1.  Once the kids are cooking meals, the parents have accomplished the ulterior and secret motive of getting the kids slaves to do all their work.

What do you want to add to the list? Leave a comment!