Cute, as Long as There Was a Windshield Between Me and Them

Yesterday, I was driving into the village to pick up DD2 from her second session of driver's education (let's not even go into how old this makes me feel--my fourth and final 'baby' on her way to earning a driver's license) when up ahead in the road I saw small black critters.  And they were moving, so I knew I better slow down rather than just shift in the lane to straddle them with the Suburban as I drove.  (Straddling small dead critters in the road is second nature, no need to slow down, LOL.)

When I got closer, I could see it was a mother skunk and her two babies.  Now, say what you will about skunks, but they are cute.  Especially baby skunks.  Especially baby skunks who are dawdling in the road instead of quickly following mommy as she leads the way to safety on the other side.

Since it is a two lane, country road, and it was the middle of the day, there was no other traffic but me.  So I stopped.  Yep, came to a dead stop in the middle of the road.  Where I watched the babies play and mother skunk repeatedly walk a foot ahead only to turn around, go back to her babies wrestling on the tarmac, chastise them (she'd bump them with her head), then turn to face the direction she wanted them to go, and walk another foot ahead.  The babies would follow, for about six inches, before they were again distracted by jumping on each other, or sniffing the yellow line in the center of the road, or watching a bug fly by. . . and mother skunk would again have to halt forward progress, backtrack to her wayward offspring and try again.

I sat there, in the middle of the road, for a good two minutes before they crossed out of my lane and into the next.  While waiting, I decided (maybe foolishly) to roll down my window, stick my cell phone out, and attempt to get a picture of them.  The first picture didn't come out, as they were too far away.  So I slowly rolled the Suburban closer.    Meanwhile, the three skunks continued their journey to the other side, seemingly oblivious to me and the big black behemoth I drive.  I took another picture, as shown below.

Daily dose of cute administered, back to the task at hand.

DIY Potato Salad

I have a confession to make:  I don't care for potato salad.  Tried it numerous times as a child and an adult, but have never found one I liked enough to eat.  That is, until I held DS1's open house in 2007 and made a batch (ok, more like a vat) of it from scratch.  By some stroke of luck, Betty Crocker's potato salad recipe is one I find delicious.  So now I eat my potato salad, but no others!  (Yes, I am rather a food snob that way.)

Giving kudos (and copyrights) to Betty Crocker, this recipe comes from  her 40th Anniversary Edition cookbook, which is probably my all-time favorite cookbook.  Most of my best recipes came from (or started from and then I tweaked) this book.

I quadrupled the recipe for the open house, but here is what Betty gives for a normal sized batch of potato salad:

Potato Salad
2 pounds potatoes (roughly 6 medium, if you don't have a kitchen scale)
1 1/2 cups mayo or salad dressing (I only use real mayo here & think that's what makes the difference between "I like" and "yuck")
1 Tbsp vinegar
1 Tbsp prepared mustard (ya know, the stuff in the yellow bottle)
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 medium stalks celery, chopped (about 1 cup)
1 medium onion, chopped (about 1/2 cup)
4 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

Peel, wash and cut potatoes into 1/2s or 1/4s depending on size.  Boil until just fork-tender, don't let get so soft they fall apart.  Drain, and cool slightly (chop celery and onions while they cool).  Cut potatoes into cubes. 

In a large bowl, mix mayo, vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper.  Add potatoes, celery and onion, stir well.  Add chopped eggs and stir again.  Cover bowl and refrigerate at least 4 hours before serving.  Serves approximately ten 3/4-cup servings. (At open houses though, hardly anyone takes 3/4 cup, so I figure a 4x batch to serve about 70-80 people.)


For the open house, I made the potato salad a day ahead of time so it could chill quite a while (plus, I had a softball tourney to attend early in the day of DD1's party).  The flavor is also better after 24 hours instead of just 4.  I used 8 lb potatoes, 4 1/2 cups mayo, 1/4 cup vinegar, 1/4 cup mustard, 1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, 4 cups celery, 2 cups onion, and 16 eggs.  I also used an enormous bowl to mix it in and then divided into 2-3 smaller 'serving' bowls so that I could have just one on the buffet line at a time, with the others staying cold in the fridge so that the potato salad never warmed up to unhealthy temps during the party.  When it is on the buffet line, I take a bowl that is about 2x larger at the base than my serving bowl, put ice in the bottom of it, then set the serving bowl on the ice.  If I had numerous dishes that required icing, I could use a small inflatable swimming pool to hold the ice and all the chilled dishes at once, but DD1 only had 2 items that needed ice.

DIY BBQ Sauce

So, after the pig is rubbed (yesterday's post "Life Goes On"), roasted (to see our pig roaster, go to my post from June 2011 "The Homemade Pig Roaster"), and shredded, you can add barbecue sauce to it if you wish, to make pulled pork sandwiches.  I'll share my bbq sauce recipe with you.  It is what we've used for at least 8 years now; all the sauces from the store are just too sweet for my tastes anymore, not to mention the preservatives, etc in them.  This sauce is good for anything you want to grill, especially chicken, and mixes well with roasted shredded meats such as beef and pork for sandwiches.  It's easy to whip up, and does not require cooking, so even a child can do it (DD1 has been our official sauce maker since she was 10; she'll turn 18 in a few weeks).

BBQ Sauce

2 cups ketchup
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 Tbsp molasses
2 Tbsp mustard (the prepared kind, not dry mustard)
1 Tbsp tabasco sauce
2 tsp liquid smoke
1/2 tsp paprika
2 Tbsp coarse salt (canning or kosher)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion power
1/2 tsp celery seed
1/8-1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (depending on how hot you want your sauce)

Mix all together and enjoy!  Can be used to marinate meats before grilling, or to baste while cooking/grilling, or to mix into cooked and shredded meats for pulled pork or bbq beef.  Store unused sauce in an airtight container in the fridge.  Should keep for several months, although at this little place here it's never been in the fridge more than 3-4 weeks without getting used up.

For DD1's open house, we quadrupled the batch of sauce and mixed it into an 18 quart roaster-worth of shredded pork.  Sorry I don't know the poundage of the meat, I just know DS1 filled the roaster about 2/3 full of meat, poured in the sauce (slightly less than a gallon), and mixed it together for BBQ pork.  The other pork (about 4 more roaster's worth!) we left 'plain'; it's really good this way too, and we can always add sauce to the leftovers later.

Life Goes On. . .

The party is behind me now.  DD1's graduation open house, that is.  It engulfed a huge part of the past three weeks; sending out announcements that double as invitations, cleaning and shopping and prepping and cooking and setting up and decorating and. . .

PHEW!!  The party was Saturday.  Sunday I spent in "open house lag", which if you've ever thrown a graduation open house, you'll know exactly what I mean.  If you haven't had this particular honor yet, let me explain.

Open house lag is where you are awake, but your body is in slow-mo.  Your brain works, but not quickly.  You move, but not quickly.  It is a state of mental and physical exhaustion coupled with the elation that you have pulled it off, the open house was a success, is now over, and you have clean-up to do.

But now it's Monday and life goes on.  Jobs require attendance today.  DD1 has softball practice today since her team won the regional championship on Saturday (championship game ended just 90 minutes before her open house began!).  Tomorrow she plays in the State Quarter Finals.  DD2 begins driver's education class today (my baby!).  DS1, K2 (his girlfriend, whose name is almost identical to mine) and K3 (their daughter, my grandbaby) had to return to SC.  DS2 has gone back to the U.P., where he is living and working this summer.  The garden needs to be weeded and watered, the laundry needs to be done, my 18 quart roasters need to be put away,  life goes on.

What I'd like to do this week is share with you some of the recipes I used in creating the food for DD1's open house. Unfortunately I won't have pictures to go along with them, but I think--and hope--you will enjoy the posts anyway and find them useful.

So check back tomorrow and the next day and the next. . .  all the way to Friday, and get not just a peek at what we enjoyed at the party, but also ideas and recipes if you ever need to put on an open house in the future.

Today's recipe will be the beginning of the food:  the rub for the pig we roasted.

It was a large pig, about 250 pounds, roughly 100 pounds more than it needed to be.  But, it was free to us since Mother In Law raised it, so who were we to argue with it's size? Besides, roast pork freezes and reheats well, so the extra pork (about 6 gallon-sized baggies of it) will feed us for months to come,each meal of it bringing back memories of DD1's great celebration.

The pig was killed on Tuesday last week, four days before it needed to go in the roaster.  It was split in half down the spine, then hung in a meat locker to cool and age.  On Wednesday and Thursday, the 'inside' of it ('outside' still had hide and hair on to protect the meat while roasting), was rubbed each day with half of the following barbecue rub.

"Pig Rub" (or any other kind of meat you want to put it on; it's great on chicken too).
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup paprika
3/4 cup black pepper
3/4 cup coarse salt (canning salt, kosher salt, etc)
1/4 cup smoked salt (I used coarse salt mixed w/about 1/4 to 1/2 tsp liquid smoke)
2 Tbsp plus 2 tsp garlic powder
2 Tbsp plus 2 tsp onion powder
2 Tbsp plus 2 tsp celery seeds
1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp cayenne pepper

Mix all ingredients thoroughly, using a fork or your hands.  Make sure all the brown sugar is mixed in well and no lumps are present.  Store in an airtight jar (I used a couple of 1 quart canning jars) away from heat or light.  Will keep for at least 6 months this way.

Use roughly 2-3 tsp of rub per pound of meat.  Let the rub sit for at least several hours (in the case of something small like a chicken; or at least a day for something large like a hog) before cooking.

Going Batty

Things have been a bit crazy around here this past week, with DD1's graduation and DS1 coming home on very short (only 5 days!) leave for it.  Not to mention finding out last night that the tables and chairs we reserved for the open house this Saturday have been double booked, so we needed to scramble and find seating for 60 when we thought we'd be picking up just that today. . .

Sigh.  I feel like I need a straight jacket, lol.  Sane is not an accurate description of my life right now.  I'm definitely going batty.

Speaking of which, ironically, this morning I got a phone call from a neighbor.  She had a bat get into her house in the middle of the night, and she was hoping I could come get it out.

With a hand towel and a thick pair of leather gloves, I climbed onto the back of her living room sofa, reached up into the folds of her curtains where the bat had settled to sleep for the day, and gently extricated it. 

Then I carried it outside, and set it on the ledge of the window (apparently if you set them on the ground they can't fly off and are easy prey for cats, etc.).  So, by putting it up on the window, I was giving it the opportunity to live to eat tons of mosquitoes (personally, I like bats for this trait.)

After releasing it, and removing my gloves, I took a few pictures on my cell phone for posterity.

Add bat removal to my list of skills :o)

So, today I truly did go batty. In a good way.

Another Proud Mother Moment

DD1 graduated from high school yesterday.  I cannot express in words, concisely, the pride I feel in her accomplishments thus far in life.  I hope this picture sums it up.

At the beginning of her senior year, she found out her grade point was the second highest in the senior class.  She was pleasantly surprised, since she was number six her junior year.  When she informed me of her ranking, she looked at me and said "I'm going for it.  I want to be Salutatorian."

Of course, I supported her decision and wished her well.  A few months later, I found out that a thousandth of a percent difference in grade point was all that separated the seniors who went into the school year as second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. 

Gulp. She was going to have to maintain straight A's all year.  A single A- would knock her out.

I knew it wasn't going to be easy for her to pull off, especially taking two AP courses, being involved in National Honor Society as well as Student Council, being Vice-President of the senior class, doing both band and drama, not to mention choir, tutoring a third grade student three days a week (that student has improved immensely this year), playing on the varsity softball team, and having a boyfriend.  That was a heavy load.  She was expecting a lot of herself.

And she did it.  That's my girl. Salutatorian 2012.

She was a child who couldn't sit still and concentrate for long.  Her kindergarten teacher said she had ants in her pants. She struggled with reading, her writing was suggestive of dyslexia.  She and I put in many hours after school working on learning to read and to write clearly  She was not truly reading until second grade.  In fifth grade, she again struggled and we had her reading comprehension evalutated.  We put in more one-on-one time outside of school working on academics. School has not been a walk in the park for her.  But she perservered, and she got stronger.  She set goals, and she accomplished them.

Her plan from here is to go to college and get a degree in elementary education.  She is going to  make a great teacher.

Photographs and Memories. . .

I wrapped up a project this past weekend.  It started last year as signing up for a quilting bee on an internet forum I frequent.  I was assigned the month of November; I could choose anything I wanted in terms of fabric and block design.  My task was to mail the fabrics and instructions for 'my' month to the 11 other participants, who would each make a block with what I sent and then mail their block back to me.  I decided, seeing as I had a 'scrap bin'--an 18 gallon Rubbermaid tote--that was overflowing with years worth of extra fabric from various sewing projects, that I wanted everyone to make a 'kaleidoscope' style block (see my post Something New from June '11), using my scrap fabrics rather than going out and purchasing anything new--frugal quilting!   

While emptying my scrap bin for this, I got lost in reverie, remembering where each piece of fabric had originated.  My oldest pieces, a solid red, were from when DS1 was not quite 3 years old and requested I make him a "red wizard" costume for Halloween.  That was 1992!  I didn't even own a sewing machine back then, the entire costume was sewn by hand.  Other scraps were from nightgowns and dresses I had made my daughters through the years, various school play costumes I made (DS2 was a monkey in 1st grade, DD1 a pig in kindergarten. . .), aprons I made the kids long ago when they still had to stand on a stool to help cut out sugar cookies (which was a very long time ago, seeing as they are all taller than I am now), dresses and jumpers and nightgowns I made for myself, and many many scraps of fabrics from about five years of another internet forum quilt block swap I have participated in three to four times a year.  Lots of memories in that box of 'extras'.

I decided, about two months after sending out my fabrics to the quilting bee participants, that I would take the resulting blocks and make a wall hanging for my mudroom with them.  Of course, twelve blocks alone wouldn't make quite the size I had in mind, so I took yet more of my scrap fabrics (some from newer projects in the last 9 months: a quilt and a bib for my niece, a wall hanging for friends of ours who had their first baby last October, the redneck baby quilt for my granddaughter) and made additional blocks to bring the finished project to the size I wanted.

My goal was to have this project finished in time for DD1's graduation open house, which will be held the second Saturday of June.

With DH's help (because I can't hang anything straight to save my  life), this past Saturday I hung what I have come to call the Memory Quilt.  It now graces the formerly empty long wall of our mudroom.  Everyone who enters the house through that room (most people) can see it.  My girls have all ready, in just two days, delighted in finding the fabrics they remember as 'theirs' and pointing them out to friends.  I imagine when my sons arrive at the end of this week, they will do the same.

The next trip down memory lane will begin in a few days (I have some major cleaning to do first!), when I go through the two bins (also 18 gallon Rubbermaid totes) of school days mementos and awards from all four kids to find those pertaining to DD1 so we can display some of them at the open house.  There are also nearly eighteen years of photos to go through in order to construct DD1's life as told through the lens of a camera: baby pictures, cute toddler days, school photos and events, sports--softball since Kindergarten!, confirmation, high school formals and prom, and of course graduation day pictures with her significant other of nearly a year . . .

I am awash in nostalgia!