easy, healthy soup

I'm known in my family for my salads and soups. In fact, I could live on the two food groups if my kids weren't constantly wrangling for meat, french fries, and cookies.

Here's a very simple soup I made last week for friends:
Three or four whole carrots, peeled and cut in half
one potato, peeled
two parsnips, peeled
thinly sliced onions
tbsp or two of flour
some leftover wine
a packet of chicken or veg boullion

saute onions in a little olive oil, and when transparent add the flour, to thicken. when mixed, add some wine and stir til a thick paste. Then fill the pot three quarters with water, add vegetables, and simmer for 45 minutes or so, until the veg are soft.

Allow to cool, remove veg (reserve liquid in pot), puree in blender, then return veg to pot. Add chicken boullion. before serving, add some heavy cream (or evaporated milk) and you can also add a dash of nutmeg or cinnamon.

So easy.

heaalthy recycling

My very thin six-foot-three-inch son has a secret stash of food. Unbeknownst to me -- even though I've been trying to get him to take more food for lunch -- he only has a sandwich and drink currently. I just found out from his girly friend that he eats that sandwich by first period, then scrounges everyone else's lunch for more food. When I asked him about it, mortified that my kid is scrounging, especially since I've been urging him to take more, he said it's no big deal, he's recycling!

thrifty diversions

Nothing like a little shopping fantasy to take your mind off more troubling things, like errant husbands, and distressed children. Especially when it's done on the cheap!

I've often wondered if thrift is a chromosomal trait -- as in the absent Y -- or if it's a genetic, inherited trait. Frugality ran in my family -- five girls -- but it skipped our brother. On the other hand, it also skipped his wife, who spends scads of dough on matronly clothing that she'll be able to wear til she's 80.

My 10 year old daughter is now asking to go to Valu Village when she's in the mood for a little something new, and I happily oblige. She told me the other day that her friend Megan bought a sweater from lulu Lemon, and she cried in alarm: "Mom, it's ridiculous to spend $185 for a sweater when you get one at VV for $6."

That's my girl. Now if only I could get her brother in there, we'd be all set.

I just happened on two fantastic websites:
http://www.svaerqueen.com/ and http://www.thriftychicks.com/ both of which recommend thrift shopping for birthday and Christmas gifts, as long as the item has been carefully and specifically chosen for a particular person, and it's good value and in very good shape.

Sounds good to me. Maybe I can get Dear Daughter to host a VV party -- for her birthday even and they all get to shop til they drop.

The Fog Lifts

Since Belinda tells me she found it sad that my last post before hiding away for 3 months was darkness falls, I figured I'd post again with a brighter title.

I've been holed up with my computer the last while writing a book on home staging -- more on that later, since I really didn't think bursting onto the book publishing scene would be with a decorating book, but there you have it. During it all, or perhaps because of it all, my mind keeps wandering to home improvement, and especially that kitchen floor.

I have just finished reading Maxine Hancock's Living on Less and Liking it More, and realize that my $80K kitchen floor is yet another example of how "just one thing more" before I'm truly happy consumes and conquers us.

So I will repair the floor (although first I have to reinforce the joists underneath and reinsulate it), but I won't get a new kitchen, or knock out walls, or subject us all to plaster dust, or worse having to move elsewhere for a month while it's done... and I'm really quite happy about it.

The Snowball Effect

For the past two years, I have sat at my desk, in full view of my kitchen floor. A kitchen floor that's always top of mind and the to-do list -- always in need of washing and waxing. When it was installed 11 years ago, the hunter green and white checkerboard effect was stunning, and being linoleum tile, it was less expensive than ceramics, and gentler underfoot.

Now, however, it's cracking in spots, and breaking off at a few corners. It can still look good if stripped and re-waxed -- an arduous hands and knees job.

But it needs to be replaced. And there's the rub. Is it worth replacing the floor now, if I'm going to change the cupboards in a couple of years? They're 11 years old and some of them are getting shabby. And if I replace the cupboards, I might as well knock out the wall between the dining room and kitchen that I've wanted to do for a long time now. And if I do that, I might as well enlarge the opening between the dining room and the little den/TV room that's now my office, in full view of the kitchen floor. But if I do that, I'll need to replace the hardwood flooring throughout the main floor, because there's no way to match 80-year-old flooring with new bits and pieces. So if I'm going to go that far, perhaps it would be best to do an addition on the back of the house, enlarging the kitchen to make it big enough to eat in and entertain in. And while we're at it, we might as well go up and add on to the second floor.

Which is why I'm back to doing nothing with my kitchen floor because it's going to end up costing me $80,000.

Little Decor Tip

Came across this little tip for transforming a regular door into a French door. Not sure if the link I've posted will work.

Add the look of a pretty French door. This is a great way to give a plain interior door an intriguing treatment. Have a mirror cut to the size of the interior door panel and add muntins painted to match the door.

Why Buy the Milk when You Can Have the Cow

As I sat at my desk last night, filling out my son's milk form for school, I remembered the milk cartons when I was a kid (now they come in bags with a straw attached). But my memories of school lunches and milk cartons are only seen from the perspective of an outsider. Because everyone else but me got milk. That's because we had our own lovely cow at home -- Brownie, who was either a Jersey or a Guernsey, I can never remember which.

And Brownie faithfully gave thick yellowy milk with lovely big globules of fat every day of her life. And my dad would sit hunched over the ten-quart sterilizing machine as he poured the milk in and stuck a pitcher under for the cleansed liquid. Not that it was much different from the unclean milk. It still had globs of yellowy fat floating in it. And most of the time it was still lukewarm. I'm not sure if that was because it was so fresh it still had the warmth of the cow on it. Or if our refrigerator was not operating at top speed. Likely the latter.

I never could stand milk, until I was much older and it was much colder.

I do vaguely remember the cow as well. She was large. And brown. I also remember how frustrated my dad would get with her when she would break off her rope (probably in search of greener pastures north of the house, and into Moorelands). She'd go trotting off, and my father would bring her back, usually attached by a rope to the back of the car.

One time, as he told me many years later, he was so mad he chased her until she broke into a run, and jumped over several fences. Apparently she couldn't have calves after that.

One of my first memories was being squirted in the eye by milk from an upturned teat squeezed in my dad's big hand (I used to follow him around the farm all day).