It Began With Twenty Pounds of Alfredo Noodles

Twenty pounds.  Twenty freaking pounds!  Of 1.5" long noodles.  In plastic bags that had been closed with those sticky tie things and a sticker that said "repack date 12/09/2017".  Short, pre-broken into the size that (I think, because I rarely buy those things) the noodles in the packages of seasoned noodle side dishes come in. With some green--I assume spinach?--noodles randomly mixed throughout the normal colored noodles.

You see, DH was up north last weekend, assisting in the cutting down of a very old, very tall, very leaning over a building oak tree at his mother's place.  And when he left to come home, she sent home a box--a grocery store banana box--of 'stuff I ordered through the food bank'.  Being such a large box, he threw it in the truck without looking at it, assuming it held a variety of edible items.

*For reasons DH and I haven't been able to figure out, and have never found offered around us no matter how we search, up where Mother-in-Law lives, she apparently can order items from the local food bank.  The offerings vary widely month to month, and are typically close dated, but are very very cheap.  Like the time she got a case of Betty Crocker cookie mixes for something like $3.  Now, sometimes she actually gets stuff we are willing to eat and appreciate her generosity in purchasing and sharing with us (she rarely eats any of it herself, but buys it with the intent to give it to her kids and grandkids). But more often than not, its not something we really use often--or at all, like the gallon jug of buffalo wing sauce. . .the institutional sized cans of fruit cocktail. . . the Suddenly Salad packets. . . we did use the restaurant portioned packages of 2 saltines per package--all 200 some--but it was annoying to unwrap enough to put into a soup bowl, not to mention having all those stupid plastic wrappers to throw away. . .*

Anyway, to continue my story here, DS2 and Surprise had also gone up north, meeting DH at a spot along the way that was equidistant from both our houses and riding together the remaining distance to Mother-in-Law's.  When they split up again on the way home, DS2 grabbed four bags of the Alfredo noodles from the opening in the top of the box to take home for him and Surprise to eat.  Upon his arrival at this little place here, DH plopped the box on the island in my kitchen, and said "Mom sent some noodles and stuff".

Oh great.  "Mom sent" is a phrase that anymore sends chills down my spine.  She means well, she really does, but what she sends typically ends up being my problem to store, use up, or find a means of disposing of (ironically, the stuff she buys at such a bargain from her food bank is not acceptable for donation at any food bank I've talked to down here; typically because of the expiration date or method of packaging.)

Trying to mask the heavy sigh that involuntarily escaped my body, I started pulling baggies of noodles out of the box.  And kept pulling baggies of noodles out of the box.  All that was in the box was baggies of noodles.  One pound of noodles in each bag, twenty bags in all.  Of little flippin' noodles!  What in the h@*! am I going to do with all these stupid short noodles?  It's not like we go through a ton of pasta now that it's usually just DH and I eating at home.  And this size and shape of noodle isn't exactly a commonly called for ingredient in recipes. 

Twenty pounds!  How long is it going to take me to use up 20 pounds of these things?  And where am I going to store them?  What bug-proof, mouse-proof container am I going to store them in for the eons (noodles do stay good a number of years) it is going to take to eat them up.  Because DS2 was only willing to take 4 bags, and that was before I counted them.  DS1 politely but firmly declined when I offered to send some home with him (I've been taking the grandkids to school this week, as well as having Toad after school on the mornings he has preschool as well as all day on the days he doesn't have preschool).  It would cost too much to mail some to DD2 at college, plus her semester ends in a little over a month.  And DD1 currently lives here, so I can't foist any off on her.  And, guess what, my local food bank isn't interested in them, thank you!

So, my house is now cluttered with twenty pounds of noodles I have little use for.  That was just the beginning of this week which has increasingly tried to bury me.  Noodles.  Then there was the phone call "Hey, our babysitter is gone on vacation this week; can you take the kids to school in the mornings, pick up Toad from preschool, and keep him with you when he's not in school?".  So I've had extra duties there as well as rearranging my schedule at work to line up with having the grandkids daily all week.  I have given up any hope of riding my horse until April.

Add to that taking DD1 and her wedding gown to a tailor to have the bustle put in her wedding dress (the wedding is seven weeks from this weekend!!).  Because she is teaching full time, the only times she is available for appointments is four o'clock in the afternoon or later.  Wednesday was our appointment with the tailor, and since I needed gas for the suburban, and according to Gas Buddy it was nearly a full 30 cents a gallon cheaper in the town the tailor is located than it is near me, I said "hey, let's just take my suburban," planning to fill it up over by the tailor (because a 27 gallon tank fill at 30 cents less per gallon adds up to a handful of cash saved).  I didn't count on, roughly 1/4 mile before the tailor, getting a puncture in one of my tires that had me pulling into the parking lot with a rapidly (and loudly) deflating tire.  Add one phone call to the insurance company for roadside assistance to my all ready packed schedule.  Then wait for their service truck to come and help me put on the spare (which was pretty much rusted into it's little holding bracket under the suburban. . . )

Oh!  And I almost forgot about getting a few propane tanks refilled so I can keep boiling sap (because it ran really good over the weekend and by Monday night I had 45 gallons of sap piled up in my garage) and apparently one tank got overfilled somehow and had liquid propane getting in the line, which nearly completely froze the regulator and at one point I had two foot high flames shooting out around my boil pot whenever the gas line sputtered.

I am the god of hellfire. . .

I think I need a vacation.  No noodles.  No kids. No driving. No sap boiling.  Alone.  Somewhere warm and sunny.  With a book, or knitting, or hey, what about time to actually ride my horse?!?

Maple Candy

This year's syrup harvest is going well.  In just a week of boiling, I netted a little over a gallon of finished syrup.  (Which means I boiled roughly 40 gallons of sap that week . .)  I'd say that gallon of syrup should easily last us for the coming year.  But, just in case, and because the weather continues to hold off the maple buds from swelling too much, I am continuing to collect sap, and boil it down.  You never know when a little syrup stockpile will come in handy; because of crazy weather I didn't tap trees at all in 2016 or 2017.  So its nice to have extra syrup on hand and I'll keep collecting sap until the buds on the trees get too developed.

Yesterday I boiled for more than twelve hours, with cold sap being added to the pot at regular intervals.  My goal this weekend is to just keep adding and boiling, and see how many gallons of sap I can get through.  Around 5:00 this evening I'll stop adding sap and just boil off what is in the pot at that point.  So far this weekend, I've boiled more than 15 gallons of sap.  I'm thinking that even with not boiling anything between bedtime Saturday and roughly 1:30  this afternoon (Palm Sunday church service with a potluck lunch after took up all morning and part of the early afternoon) I most likely will have boiled enough sap to net about 1/2 gallon more syrup.

From the batch that I finished off on Thursday afternoon, I had roughly a cup of syrup more than would fit into my pint jars--I do not pour partial jars and then top off with the next batch, although I suppose you could if you wanted to.  So I poured it into a dish and set it aside, planning an experiment of sorts.  You see, I've been toying with the idea of making those little maple leaf candies that are so ungodly expensive to buy.  I understand why they are so expensive, as syrup is so time consuming to produce.  But that doesn't mean I'm going to shell out money to buy them.  No, I want to take my virtually free (not counting my labor) syrup and make them myself.  I even bought a mold to do so last time I went to Shipshewana (here).

So, yesterday afternoon, while minding the boiling pot (ie. staying home and checking it about every 15 minutes), I decided I was going to do it.  Make candy, that is.

It is ridiculously easy, although I can see that like many things, it will take practice to perfect the technique.  Mine came out totally edible, if not exactly aesthetically pleasing.

Basically, you pour your syrup into a pot that looks way deeper than necessary--it will bubble up quite a bit during heating (note brown marks on pot in photo below).  Then, with the aide of a candy thermometer, you heat that syrup to 240 degrees.  This actually doesn't take very long at all, so don't walk away!

Once the syrup reaches 240, remove the pot from the burner (and shut the burner off!) and let it sit undisturbed (don't even take out the candy thermometer) for 3 minutes.

Then, using a wooden spoon, stir that sucker the hot syrup vigorously until it thickens and loses it's gloss. This doesn't take more than a few minutes.

Immediately (like literally as fast as you can and I still wasn't fast enough), pour the thickened syrup into the molds and shave off any excess that sticks up above the surface of the mold. Let cool (I think it took 10-15 minutes?) and then turn the mold over and gently tap to dislodge the candies.

leaves, blobs, whatever

I will definitely make more of these.  After all, I'm a perfectionist.  I need to practice, practice, practice until I can make them beautiful as well as edible. I'm pretty sure I can whip (stir) the syrup just a hair less before putting it into the molds next time.  The first couple candies came out the most uniform, and as the whipped syrup got cooler, it got harder to spoon off into the mold. Hence not exactly looking like a maple leaf.  So, next time I  will leave it a little runnier and a little hotter when I mold it.

And the awesome thing I learned about this, is that you can easily make maple sugar this exact way: just pour it out into a sheet (like on a cookie sheet) rather than into molds, and let it cool.  Then pulse it in the blender to break it up.

Mmmmm!

Shut Up And Ride!

That's pretty much what my trainer told me in this week's lesson.  The California Horse was a bit off, due to having a case of scratches on his right hind pastern currently, so she was kind enough to put me up on her own horse.  Then, on this horse that I have ridden exactly four separate times now in the past two years (so, basically a strange horse to me), she proceeded to grill me on inside leg to outside rein, as well as elbows and hands that are communicating with the horse's mouth without either being too fiddly or too rigid and stuck, and all manner of lateral work.

You see, just because I can do it fairly well on one horse (The California Horse, whom I've been riding for about nine months now) doesn't automatically mean I can do it just as easily and just as well on another horse.  And just because something is difficult on The California Horse (who is quite a big lug and not the greatest about having contact with the bit versus just hovering lightly on it in what looks like a connected frame) doesn't mean it is difficult for me on a different horse.

And so, I rode, my trainer calling out orders and corrections.  As her horse and I felt each other out a little bit and began to work together more as a team, the orders (directions) came closer together.

"Ride this corner deep and come out in shoulder in."
"At B (halfway down the wall from that corner we just came out of) change to travers."
"Keep the bend through this coming corner, and ride half-pass back to B"

So many directions!  So many movements strung together!  When she said half-pass I started to say "Uh, okay, if I can" but was cut off by "Don't talk, just ride!!"

And you know what, I rode that sequence, shoulder-in right to travers off left leg to half-pass right pretty darn good.  I was impressed with myself.  Usually we straighten between movements for a few strides so I can think about and prepare for each one.  What she just proved to me with those rapid fire demands is that if I concentrate I can flow from one to the other.  But talking takes away just a big enough piece of that concentration to make it difficult or even impossible to dance the horse across the arena that way.

After I finished the sequence, she apologized for yelling at me to shut up (although honestly, her voice got urgent but not louder, so technically not yelling).  I told her that was okay, I understood why, that it had immediately become apparent why.  When my mouth didn't run, my body instinctively made the little adjustments in seat and leg and rein connection that made it possible to glide beautifully even on an unfamiliar horse.  And, with my mouth not running, my brain for the first time understood the similarity between shoulder-in, travers, and half-pass. They are virtually the same, the only difference is whether my inside seat bone is guiding the inside hind leg to step under here, or the inside foreleg to step diagonally there, and is the inside thigh/knee pushing the horse to move diagonally toward the outside shoulder or just keeping the bend.

We typically both enjoy our lessons together, there is a lot of give and take in discussion during most lessons, especially because I love riding theory.  There have even been a few times when I have expressed an observation I've made and it has impressed my trainer as a true statement that she'd never thought of.

But, sometimes, it's best just to shut up and ride.  Sometimes you have to just instinctively do it, instead of verbally dissecting it first.

Kinda Like Superman

Or, rather, kinda like Clark Kent.

When I get to the dressage barn on weekday mornings, I am dressed in my breeches, planning to ride.  I don my tall boots (I have learned through experience that although you can ride in half-chaps, you ride more effectively in tall boots), put on my gloves and my helmet (I absolutely love my new helmet, I might have mentioned that before).  I groom The California Horse and tack him up. Then I get on and proceed to be someone other than myself. I am a fancy dressage rider, doing half-passes and travers, and leg yields and all kinds of cool things.

When I am done, I untack The California Horse and turn him out in the pasture so he can spend the rest of the day hanging out with his buddies.  Then, I proceed to the barn's bathroom, Superman's phone booth as it were, where I change out of my riding gear and into my stall cleaning clothes.  Clothes that have worn their way out of 'in public' status and through stains and fading become 'barn clothes' that I don't worry about getting dirty.

And just like that, I go from fancy lady, to lowly stall cleaner.  Someone who, on a larger busier dressage farm, would barely get a glance.  Kinda like Superman turning back into mild mannered, easy to not notice, Clark Kent.

If I happen to stop at the gas station, or the grocery store, on my way home, still in my barn cleaning clothes, I get strange looks.  Wrinkled noses.  Sometimes even service that is so much less than on days I go to the same store in my nice church clothes that it's kind of annoyingly funny.  Because you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, yet people do all the time.  Judge others by how they look, that is.

I'm Clark Kent.  But I'm also Superman.  I'm not a woman with tailored clothes or perfectly coiffed hair; often I'm in jeans and sweat shirts (with a well worn Carhartt coat in the cooler months) and a braid that has fly-away hairs sticking out of it..  Yet, in my riding gear and piloting The California Horse through a series of movements, I am a person that others take notice of.  And admire.  The irony is humorous.

Ready For Some Pancakes

That's what Toad says.  I took that sap from those maple trees out in the woods, and I cooked it and cooked it and cooked it until it turned into syrup.  He tasted it in several stages along the way: straight from the tree--like cold cold water with a hint of sugar, boiled about halfway--just turning slightly golden with a hint of maple flavor, and finished syrup licked off the spoon when I was done putting the syrup into canning jars.

No longer sweetened water, no longer a pale amber with the most subtle of syrup flavor, now a robust flavored and thick deep amber colored syrup.  Ready for some pancakes.

collecting sap in buckets

full buckets waiting to be boiled

our rudimentary boiling set up

starting to turn color

nearly done;

moved to final boil pot on kitchen stove

ready for some pancakes!

Chainsaws and Sap-cicles

What guys do while their females are at a "Girl Party" aka bridal shower?

DH, DS1, DS2 and Toad hung out here during DD1's bridal shower on Sunday, although they (mostly) stayed outdoors.  None of them, except Toad, wanted to be in the house while it was full of women, and thankfully the weather cooperated enough that they could comfortably spend several hours outside.

Toad only wanted to be in the house because his sister was at the Girl Party, as K3 called it, where there would be games and snacks. To a 3 year old, games meant Old Maid, Hi-Ho Cherry-O, and Go Fish, which we definitely weren't playing at the shower.  But still, it took a little convincing to get him out of the house.

As soon as his Papa, aka DH, started up the four-wheeler, Toad was convinced that outside was better than inside.  He loves the four-wheeler.  He also loves the woods, which is where all the guys were headed.  Taking the wood hauler trailer, and the chainsaws, they were ready to be gone for hours.

Turned out that Toad much more enjoyed the woods.  He helped to stack wood (the smallest diameter pieces) as well as had fun throwing sticks out of the way.  And of course, with sap sort of running--Sunday was sunny but only in the 30's--DH took him to our little sugar bush area to see where Grandma is collecting sap.  Since it was so cold, and I hadn't had time to get out and empty sap jugs on Saturday or earlier in the day Sunday , there were more than a few icicles hanging from jugs that had overflowed.  DS2 broke some off, and introduced Toad to the joy of sucking on a sap-cicle.  Cold and just slightly sweet from the maple sap.

After returning from the woods, DH brought Toad into the house to use the bathroom, but didn't want him to try to join the Girl Party.  So he told Toad that they were going to sneak in, use the bathroom, and pilfer some of our snacks.  They were so stealthy that I didn't even know they'd been in the house until much later, after the shower was over and the guests went home.

While the shower was wrapping up, DH brought out of the garage a very small (young child sized) four-wheeler we'd been given last fall.  It was in need of minor repairs when it had come into our possession, and DH hadn't had much time to tinker with it.  DS1 and DS2 were more than happy to mess with it that afternoon, cleaning out the carb and checking connections everywhere.  They also drained out the old stale fuel, and put in fresh gas.  By the time the last guests left the shower, that little four-wheeler was running nicely.  Toad and K3 both had a chance to drive it slowly and carefully around the backyard a few times. 

After which Toad asked me if I'd seen him driving it, and then asked me if he could "eat another one of those square things".  Square things meaning the mint squares I'd made for the shower.  And that's how I found out he'd snuck into the Girl Party. :0)

Mint Squares

First Layer, mix together:

1 cup sugar

1 stick butter, softened

2 cups chocolate syrup (recipe here, or use Hershey's syrup)

2 cup flour

4 eggs

Bake in lightlygreased jelly roll pan (10"x15") or large cookie sheet with 1" lip for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.  Refrigerate until cool.

Second Layer, beat together:

4 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp peppermint extract

4 drops green food coloring (or as many drops as needed to get a nice shade of green)

4 Tablespoons milk

1 stick butter, softened

Spread onto first layer.  Refrigerate until set.

Third Layer, melt together:

12 ounces (1 1/2 cups) chocolate chips

1 stick butter

Stir until smooth and well combined, then spread on top of mint layer.  Refrigerate until cool.

Cut into 1.5-2" squares and put in air tight container. Store in fridge until serving time.

Shower Her With Love

Sunday was the little Big Day.  As in, not THE Big Day, Wedding Day, but the smaller Big Day, Bridal Shower Day, for DD1.

The turnout was much larger than expected.  Apparently either DD1 is so special she defies the rule of 1/3 (1/3 of your invited guests won't come), or many of her friends and relatives had nothing more interesting on their calendars for March 11th!  Because we were stuffed to the gills with guests.  Had we known such a high percentage (at least 80%) of invitees would actually attend, we would have looked into having the shower at a hall or other venue.  Having had 20 people for family holidays, we figured 12-15 guests at our house would be no big deal.  Imagine putting 21 people in your living room!

It was loud, it was sometimes crazy, but it was FUN! Despite an unexpected guest (I will never know why??? my eldest sister-in-law thinks its okay to bring uninvited people to family events without first asking if that's okay. . .) there were enough chairs, food, and favors for everyone.  Everyone seemed to have a great time, and many people asked where we had found the ideas for the games that were played.

Honestly, this was just a mish-mash of old traditional shower games, and newer ones, with a few school-style things (like calling on DD1 to use her "teacher voice" and do the attention getting hand-clap when the crowd got a little rowdy) thrown in.

We had prepped everything except for the punch the day before (punch was made about 1/2 hour before the shower so it would still be kind of fizzy at serving time 2/3 of the way through the shower).   As guests arrived, we directed them to the dining room table, which we had set up for cards and gifts, as well as the first 'game':  How Many Kisses for the Mrs? where they wrote down a guess for how many Hershey's kisses were in a quart sized canning jar. The guest who guessed closest without going over the amount actually in the jar received the jar of kisses as their prize. (In case you are wondering, I crammed 129 Hershey's kisses into that jar.) 

Also at this station were envelopes for thank you cards, which we asked each guest to address, as well as slips of paper to write "Advice and Well Wishes For The Soon-To-Be Mrs". and a basket to put those papers in.

start here

Once everyone had arrived and had completed their tasks at the table, the fun began in the living room.  Each guest was given a clip board (rounded up from several sources so we had enough for everyone), an ink pen, and a sheet of paper entitled Find The Guest Who. . . that had a grid of squares with different items.  That was our icebreaker game, and guests mingled getting to know each other for about 15 minutes while they tried to find another guest who

• has the same first name as you or your mother
• drives the same color car as you
• has been on a vacation in the last three months
• speaks a foreign language
• traveled over 50 miles to attend this shower
• is afraid of heights
• doesn't like coffee
• has the same favorite color as you
• can play a musical instrument

. . . among many other things. There were 20 items in all to acquire someone else's name for.  That seemed to loosen up the crowd--ranging in ages from 5 (the flower girl) to 75.

The next game was Jeopardy.  DD2 had come up with six categories, and questions and answers to go with them.  Each category had 5 questions ranging in point value from 200 to 1000, plus one Double Jeopardy question worth 2000.  And once all those had been chosen and answered, there was a Final Jeopardy question to wager on.  

We told the guests to form teams of 3-4 people each, and commenced playing.  This game took about 45 minutes to get through, but it kept rolling with lots of laughter and some surprising competitiveness between teams.  

Our categories were Wedding Traditions, Special Dates, Where are They?/What are They Doing?, Bride or Groom?, Love Songs, and Famous Couples. Wedding Traditions was just that; questions about different wedding traditions. Special Dates was things like the bride's birth date, the date of their first date, their wedding date, date they graduated from high school, etc. Where are They?/What are They Doing?  featured printed photos of DD1 and Honorary Son at different places or events throughout their years of dating, and the guests had to either name the place or the event.  Bride or Groom? was questions like "Who showers more" and "Who is the bigger sports fan" and "Whose brother hit them in the head with a baseball bat when they were five years old" and the guests had to decide if the correct answer was DD1 or Honorary Son.  The Love Songs category was audio, with either DD1 or I singing selected verses of a love song, and the teams had to come up with the title of the song.  Famous Couples had questions whose answers were things like Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Bonnie and Clyde, Tarzan and Jane.

Jeopardy

For Final Jeopardy, the category of Firsts was announced, and then each team got to write down what amount of their points they wanted to wager.  After that, the question "Where did DD1 and Honorary Son go for their first date?" was read, and the teams had one minute to consult and then write down an answer.  To everyone's surprise, the team that had gone into Final Jeopardy with the least points ended up being the only team to correctly answer the question.  The members of the winning team got to each pick a prize from our prize table.

prizes

The next game was a kitchen themed memory game.  I had sewn a new apron for this, and DD1 put it on in another room, where I put things in her hands, or clipped them to the apron or put them into the apron pockets with enough identifiable parts sticking out.  Then she paraded through the living room for about 90 seconds before leaving the room again, after which the guests had three minutes to write down as many items as they could remember.  When the time was up, we had her return to the living room, where one by one the items--including the apron--were named and removed.  There was a tie for who had remembered the most items correctly, and it was broken by correctly stating how many clips had been on the apron (five).  The winner then was given the choice of keeping the apron or choosing something from the prize table (she elected to take a mug from the prize table, much to the delight of Surprise, who later ended up taking the apron home).

How many kitchen items can you spot?

That was followed by two wedding themed Mad-Libs that we had found on the Internet.  To our amazement, the Mad-Libs were kind of a bust.  My family absolutely loves Mad-Libs, we used to do them on road trips to break up the monotony of hours in the car and my kids could tell you what an adverb was compared to an adjective long before they could even read or write the words themselves.  So we never dreamed that other people would have so much trouble coming up with nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numbers, liquids, etc.

After the Mad-Libs (which honestly we cut short, having originally intended to do three, one about How They Met, one about The Proposal, and one about The Wedding), each guest was given a wedding themed word search to do while DD2 and I set out refreshments and DD1 quickly ate a plate of refreshments in the kitchen.  The first three people done with their word searches earned a trip to the prize table.

Then it was time for everyone to get something to eat and to drink, and DD1 sat in the chair of honor.  She opened the cards and gifts while guests imbibed on snacks, punch and lemonade, looking on.

the noshes

the overflowing gift table

When the shower ended (we had scheduled it from 1-4, the clock read 3:53 as DD1 unwrapped the last gift--and DD2 & I stepped into the kitchen where we shared an elated fist bump at our impeccable timing) the guests were instructed to please take home a candle (which I had made last week in 4 ounce mason jars) in either the scent of vanilla, maple, or lilac.