Easter

Easter Gathering

Busy schedules of

Family and friends

Made Easter Eve

 The time to spend

With brothers and cousins

And neighbors and cats

Eating ham and potatoes

While we sat

Playing chess and guitars

And enjoying the sun

Talking and laughing

Until the day was done.

Happy Feet at our Easter Gathering

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Food Waste Friday--April 6, 2012

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money. 

Here it goes for this week.

Food Waste Friday, again. How did it sneak up so quickly on me? Despite this lack of awareness, we had no waste this week. Yea! I think that means that the no waste effort is becoming somewhat of a habit. My older son and husband now look in the refrigerator to see what needs to be eaten and my younger son plans menus based on the ingredients we already have. A good team effort.

Now next week if I have a lot of waste, don't remind me of how well I thought I was doing. I will just ignore you and pretend all is right in the waste world.

__________________________________________________________

Note:

One of the things we did this week to help with the waste was use up some potatoes and celery in a delicious potato ham soup. Link to Wally Makes Soup if you want to see the details.

Wally making soup to use up potatoes and celery that didn't have much life left in them.

A Second Look-April 4, 2012

See what I found during a Second Look this week.

A bumble bee that had just been on the bleeding hearts.

 

New growth on the pierus japonica.

Our ground hog has come out of hibernation. The dried leaves in the hole during the winter have been replaced by active digging.

The garlic mustard is starting to bloom. This is an invasive plant so if you see it in your yard, pull it as soon as you can. And especially don't let it bloom and go to seed. It may be too late for me, but try to save yourself from this plant if you can. (And an even bigger problem is the honeysuckle in the background.)

It took two weeks, but a blue bird has finished a nest in our nesting box. However, there are no eggs yet.

 

The grass is starting to green up.

School Days--Aunt Martha

I hope that School Days will be a reoccurring feature in which I ask people about their early memories of school. Everyone has a story to tell about this and I hope to give them a voice here. 

Here is Today's Story

 

Aunt Martha started school in first grade in 1960. She went to a school that had grades 1-8 in a small town in West Virginia. The class size was big compared to today with about 40+ kids in her first grade class.

Tell me about starting school or an early memory of school.

I remember the desks were in long rows and Shelley sat in front of me in first grade. One day Shelley was turned around talking to me and our teacher, Miss Stemple, put her hands on Shelley's shoulders and turned her around. Shelley has been my best friend ever since we met in first grade.

I was in Miss Stemple's room, but I wanted to be in Miss Dawson's room. Miss Dawson always had lots of animals in her room. One day she sent home praying mantises with her kids in milk cartons. The praying mantises had been born in her classroom.

We had a star chart in the front of the classroom that we got stars for doing our work. In the back of the classroom were hooks behind a petition where we hung our coats and put our lunches.

I liked recess best. I liked the merry-go-round that you had to push to get going and then jump on. I'm surprised that I liked it because I am so prone to motion sickness. We also had hand walkers and I would get blisters on my hands if I used it a lot. We had a jungle gym and another piece of equipment that was three bars of different heights. They both had blacktop under them. We had a teeter-totter and we played games of bouncing people up in the air and sometimes jumping off. Also, we would weigh down one end with several kids and saw how far the kid on the other end had to move up to balance us. I guess we were doing early physics lessons.

After recess in first and second grade, our teachers read to us. We could put our head down on the desk if we wanted. They read the Box Car Children and Old Mother West Wind Stories to us. I liked the animal stories of Old Mother West Wind.

Wally Makes Soup

Wally likes to eat. No, let me correct that. Wally loves to eat. However, he doesn't like to cook. But today, he did just that. I asked him to help me with some potato soup by peeling the potatoes. One thing led to another and in less than an hour he had created a delicious potato ham soup.

True to the family tradition, he didn't follow a recipe. He looked at couple of recipes, took inventory of ingredients on hand and started cooking. For better nutrition he added carrots and used low-fat cream cheese. He didn't use onions as a favor to Ward and he added his own special optional ingredient at the end--Stubb's Spicy BBQ Sauce. The result was a very delicious soup that reminded me of scalloped potatoes with ham. I hope this successful cooking adventure is the beginning of a new trend.

Below are basic instructions for making the soup. Detailed recipe at the end.

Chop potatoes, celery, carrots and ham.

Saute celery, carrots, and garlic before adding potatoes and water. Cook until veggies are tender. Add cream cheese and ham.                                     

Garnish with cheddar cheese and/or Stubb's Spicy BBQ sauce. Serve and enjoy!

Wally's Potato Ham Soup

Ingredients:

Oil, 1 T

Celery, 2 stalks chopped

Carrots, 3 large chopped

Garlic, 3 cloves minced

Potatoes, 7 medium--5-6 cups chopped

Water, 4 ½ cups

Chicken bouillon cubes, 2

Low fat cream cheese, 8 oz, softened and cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes

Ham, 2 cups chopped (¾ lb)

For garnish:

Shredded cheddar cheese

Stubb's BBQ Sauce, 1 teaspoon/bowl

Saute celery, carrots, and garlic in oil until celery is starting soften.

Add potatoes, water, and bouillon cubes. Bring to boil and boil until vegetables are tender. Approximately 10- 15 minutes.

Lower heat or turn off heat on electric range and add cream cheese. Stir until melted.

Stir in ham.

Note: I added a little of Stubb's spicy BBQ sauce into my bowl. It gave the soup just a hint of spicy hotness without overwhelming the other flavors.

My mom and dad just put a little shredded cheese on theirs.

Everyone was happy. I hope you like it too.

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