Grocery lists

I promised pictures and copies of these pantry lists and grocery lists on a forum I participate in... so here goes!

Here is the list for the bulk store. The items I purchase there are listed by what aisle its on.

Here is my master pantry list. These are items I buy regularly and want to keep in my pantry or fridge.

Hope this helps someone!

Complaints and agrivations

ARGH!!!!!

A friend pointed me to this garden grant contest: http://www.facebook.com/yestocarrots#!/yestocarrots

I thought, great, my school can use the money, we are working on building a school garden. I got all excited, got others excited, even recruited a few younger students to write a paragraph about they want in a new school garden.

Then, I bother to read the fine print. Its open to PUBLIC schools only. They have this no where on the main pages; no, you have to go to the "rules and regulations" to find this out. Perhaps I should of gone there first, always read fine print first.

Oh, well. Very unhappy and I want to complain. Unfortunately, I can't find a way to leave a comment on their facebook page (hmmm....), so I'll go look for an email method. Do they think that private schools just have all this money floating around? do they think we can grow our own money trees? My students are just as deserving as any other to have a school garden. BA HUMBUG!

I hope all my facebook buddies read this and chose NOT TO BUY ANYTHING from "Say yes to carrots". They don't deserve it.

Chocolate Pudding

I love chocolate pudding. Almost as much as I love chocolate and peanut butter. So, tonight the craving hit, and I remembered this post from Food Renegade.

So, I grabbed the recipe and went at it. I'm not one to skip a recipe just because I don't have some ingredient, not when I have something else that will work. I found that I didn't have any cocoa powder, but I did have unsweetened chocolate squares. I decided to substitute. I poured the milk, mixed in the corn starch (whisk well) and put it in a small sauce pan. I crushed 1- 1/2 chocolate squares into small pieces (plastic baggy + meat pounder) and added them. I added the honey and stirred, stirred, stirred as it heated. After perhaps 5 minutes (or less), it started to thicken and get bubbly. I added some butter and vanilla extract, and poured it into my Christmas gift ramekins. And took my first bite.

Not too bad. I can very distinctly taste the honey, which I'm not crazy about, and a bit more chocolate would be nice. I used non-fat milk and its plenty thick. I don't know that Hubby will like it, not if I'm ma ma hu hu about it (Chinese for horse, horse, tiger, tiger, meaning "meh").

Next time:

1/3 cup sugar

4 TBSP corn starch

2 sq. unsweetened chocolate squares

2 cups milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp butter

Whisk together corn starch and milk in a small sauce pan. Crush chocolate squares and add to milk. Add sugar and stir constantly over medium heat.

When it begins to thicken, remove from heat, and stir in vanilla and butter until evenly distributed. Pour into serving dishes, and serve warm or refrigerate and serve chilled.

So, thanks Food Renegade. I might not use your recipe exactly, but it gave me a good basis to work from.

More Power-outage anecdotes

Hubby reminded me of a few more funny anecdotes about the power-outage.

First, I must praise Hubby's heroics in getting the rain barrel open even as the rain began to fall (it refilled completely!) He was on his way back to bed when the electricity went out. He is so brave!

Then, on Saturday, we had a piece of furniture delivered (a replacement for a defective piece). When the guys got here, and had the piece in the living room, one asked "Do you have lights in this room?" It was hard not to laugh, since there is a decent-sized light fixture in the middle of the ceiling. "Sorry, no electricity." we responded, while stifling giggles. After a bit of discussion that it was the storm from the night before that knocked the electricity out, the guy comments "I wondered why my netflix kept coming in and out. It was very frustrating."

It seems that Tayler-ville behind us is still electricity-less. The big flood lights aren't on. I'm bummed that they are still without power, but we will enjoy a particularly dark night again tonight. We have slept so well the past 2 nights, with it being so dark.

And now.... I am off to that bed!

Loving electricty

Warning: long post!

We experienced a big time storm Friday night, just after midnight (guess that is Saturday morning, isn't it?). By Friday afternoon, the house had warmed up with an extra warm day, and we debated turning on the a/c. We decided instead to open some windows and get a breeze through the house. It was a beautifully clear night, so we went to bed with the windows open. About 1215, I woke to distant thunder. I saw a flash of lightening, counted and realized it was about 5 miles off, so we had time. I laid there another minute, thinking if we should close windows. Finally, I shook hubby awake and said, "you close the office window, and I'll get the dining room window." Off we each went, closed the windows, and met back in the bedroom. "Do think it will rain?" hubby asked. "Well, it was raining gently when I closed the dining room window. Maybe I should close the bedroom windows also." Not seconds after I closed the second of 2 bedroom windows, the wind began to howl and the rain beat down. We went out to the dining room to watch the rain for few minutes, and as we returned to the bedroom, I felt dizzy as the lightning flashed so constantly; it felt like a strob light running in our house! We reached the bed, as we climbed in, all lights, save the lightning, darkened. "I think the electricity just went out" we said to each other. Great, another outage.

When we bought the house, we asked about outages. The previous owners, which we trust, said they hadn't had any problems with outages in the 5 years they had lived there. We, on the other hand, had at least 3 outages last fall, 2 of which were 6+ hours. We are laid back folks (except for internet) and can survive 6 to 8 hours without electricity. We avoid opening the fridge or freezer, and we end up eating out more than normal. At 1230 am Saturday morning, we called the number for Oncore, the electricity provider, to report our outage. "We estimate your electricity should be back on by 2 am" the recording said. Whatever! It was still pouring rain and blowing like a hurricane (though I've never been in a hurricane, so I have no real reference). At about 8 am, when we woke up, we noticed that there still wasn't any electricity. So, we called the Oncore number again, and this time, no estimated time of restored electricity was given. This is suspicious, we thought.

We decided to go to IHOP for breakfast (the whole house is electric, stove and all), and began to see the damage from the storm as we drove. We saw trees broken in half, blown over, pulled up by roots and all, deposited all over yards, in the street, and on one house. Wow, we said, this storm was pretty bad. After breakfast, I dropped Hubby at school, so he could work on papers, and I took a little friend out for hot chocolate and crocheting. We got home again about 1 pm.... and still no electricity. Hmmmm.... so, should we prepare for the worst? Perhaps days without electricity? By this point, the Oncore number was telling us, "there are a large number of outages in the Waco (and other places) area, and crews have been dispatched... " but still no estimated time of getting power back. How concerned should we be?

We pondered and pouted, and pouted and pondered. Finally we had some cold sandwiches, and headed off to acquire camp stove fuel, some dry ice for the freezers and lamp oil for the two lamps we have. We felt a bit more secure about the situation, knowing we can keep the frozen foods frozen and boil water for noodles and coffee. I had a school event so, I took off about 7 pm, but Hubby stayed home and worked by candle light and laptop battery on a paper. When I got home at 1045 pm, still no electricity.

Now, we've been this long with electricity before. But we were camping, we expected to start smelling funny after a day or two, and we had non-electricity-needing activities planned. Here in our own home, it was getting stressful. We have a septic system that uses electricity, and we didn't want to flood it. And by now, the water in the water heater would have cooled off. Hubby took a quick shower Saturday evening, and had only "warm" water. We are computer-internet loving individuals. I love to knit, but can only do so much at once. We love hot meals!

So, Sunday morning, I sponged off with cool water, and reapplied deodorant. We pulled some "tree-weeds" (a non-electricity-needing activity! see note at end for explanation of "tree-weeds") and off to church we headed. There, a good friend invited us to their place for lunch and a chance to do laundry. We did some errands on our way home, and when we got home, YEAH!!!!, the electricity was on!!!

We learned a few things. First, we love electricity. Philosopher Hubby pondered out loud "Aristotle didn't have electricity. Nor did Aquinas. How did they do it?" This afternoon, we have wandered around marveling at the joy of electricity. Second, we are better prepared for next time (assuming there is a next time). Third, we are peeved with Oncore. I'm sure they knew by Saturday morning where all the outages were (or most of them), and they could of have said, in their recording, something like "please plan to not have electricity for 1 (or 2) days. We were at 32 hours when the electricity finally came on. We put off some things we could have done Saturday morning, thinking it wouldn't be that long till we got electricity back. Perhaps it is me expecting too much from a massive bureaucracy.

Alas, now that I have my electricity, and thus my fridge, my stove, my lappy, I'm not so inclined to write a nasty letter to Oncore.

Other thoughts have been spawned. Can we adjust our life style to better accommodate the occassional outage? Or are outages rare enough that its not worth it. We are pretty conservative about our usage of electricity. We only heat the house to 62' in the winter (I demand that kind of warmth, Hubby would be happy at 58', I think). We only cool to 80' in summer (78' at night for better sleeping). I wash only full loads, and will hang stuff to dry when I can. We open windows when its nice out to both warm and cool the house. But we are academics and we love our computers. And hot meals. And the ability to boil water. The camp stove with fuel will solve many of those issues. But the pondering continues....

Hubby did get grilled steak out of it. That is certainly a good thing.

Note: "tree-weeds" are weeds that grow straight up and look like tiny little Christmas trees spaced through out the yard. The clover stays low to the ground, which doesn't look too bad. But the tree-weeds show off our non-grass yard more than we like.

Busy day!

Today was very full, and lots happened.

This morning, I made bread. And I broke my spoon. DRAT! I broke the pitch fork, and now my spoon. At the grocery store, I bought a new spoon with a very thick neck. Lets hope I don't break that one, its now the most expensive kitchen spoon I own.

Then, I discovered a bird's nest in one of my hanging tomato planters.

I haven't the heart to remove it! Is this bad? Will I get attacked by defending sparrow parents? ARGH!!!

After my success with hummus, I decided to give peanut butter a try. I could live on peanut butter, at least, I could live on Jiffy peanut butter. This was, again, an effort to use my new food processor. I put 1.57 lbs of honey roasted peanuts (purchased in bulk at the local grocery store) in the processor, and blended away. It was looking a tad dry, so after a quick internet look up, I decided to add a bit of veggy oil, about 1/2 Tbsp. It was a bit too much, I think, could do with less. Here is the result, about 1.5 cups worth:

Tastes nice, too.

This picture wasn't today, I didn't have time for a nap today. But I thought it was so very cute, Hank and I napping together.

Nice, wasn't as long of a post as I thought it would be!