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There's been a bit of discussion floating from blog to blog lately about ways to dry laundry in the winter time without using a gas or electric dryer.
Thought I'd share a little piece of hardware (can something made of wood be called hardware?) I have in my house and wouldn't let go of for anything.
This is a little shelf and pull-out rack thingamabob that is mounted on the wall in our bathroom high over the toilet. I paid just under $50 dollars (including shipping) for it about thirteen years ago and at the time wondered if I would get that much use out of it. Well, I have. Many times over. Constantly. All the time.
My hubby wears wool socks because his feet sweat . . . and cotton socks get damp and clammy and ishy on him. He also has BIG feet. Which means the biggest socks we can find for him tend to shrink and not fit his BIG feet after washing and drying. Putting his socks in the automatic dryer is definitely a no-no.
So after washing they get stretched out by my little hands and put on this drying rack where they air dry . . . and don't shrink.
I also use the rack many times during the week for various other wet items. It's so handy being permanently mounted on the wall and folds into a very compact, unobtrusive size when not in use. It won't hold a week's worth of laundry (for sure) but holds a week's number of socks with no problem.
Nary a bit of turkey nor green bean casserole could you find lurking in my refrigerator after Thanksgiving. But, boy howdy, did I ever make too many snicky-snackies for three people to eat. (Or as my husband said when he saw everything I made for us to munch on Thanksgiving Day, "So who are the other ten people you've invited?")
First of all, we didn't have a full day to spend relaxing, eating, visiting, eating, and sitting in front of the fire as we had planned. The unexpectedly high amount of snowfall kept our daughter from arriving at our house until a little after 3 in the afternoon.
Secondly, I just plain made too much. So last Friday with a very large container of cauliflower and broccoli flowerettes left over from the raw veggie tray, I decided to make a Broccoli/Cauliflower Cream Soup.
With the vegetables already prepped, it was an easy soup to throw together.
BROCCOLI/CAULIFLOWER CREAM SOUP
4 cups of mixed broccoli and cauliflower flowerettes
1 cup chopped onion
3 cups chicken broth
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup flour 3/4 teaspoons salt
1/8 teaspoon white pepper
Pinch of nutmeg
2 cups milk
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
In a large covered saucepan, heat the 4 cups veggies, chopped onion and chicken broth until veggies are tender.
Meanwhile, make a roux by melting the butter and mixing in the flour, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Slowly add the 2 cups of milk and cook and stir until thick and bubbly. Then mix in the cheese until it's melted.
Next stir the milk mixture into the saucepan of veggies and broth. Heat to serving temperature being careful not to boil. Even better the second day!
(You'll note by the above picture that I went wild and crazy and threw in some chunked up sweet red pepper that was also left on the veggie tray. The color value really added something to the soup if nothing else.)
Sadly, I still have some broccoli and cauliflower left in the refrig. And pickled herring, smoked fish, onion dip, Dill Pickle Roll-Ups, Smoked Turkey Canapes, and what does one do with about half a gallon (slight exaggeration) of spinach dip? There's an assortment of beer, wine and egg nog. (Oh, never mind, we can take care of that.) I also have a chunk of pricey specialty horseradish and garlic cheese that I'm afraid the chickens are going to get. Why did it taste so good this summer when I first bought some of it, yet nothing much but bitter when purchased for Thanksgiving? Hubby doesn't care for crackers so I don't normally buy many of them. (He doesn't even like my homemade ones! He must have been badly frightened by a cracker when very small.) Now I have three different varieties in boxes that have been opened and will probably go stale. (Crackers, anyone?)
Totally my error in making too much. I like variety so fixed quite an assortment. Just too much for three people. I've made my notes to myself so if we do this again next year, I'll be smarter about it.
At least we got a big pot of really good soup out of the leftovers. Would have been nice to have had a turkey sandwich to go with a bowl of the soup . . . but we won't go there.
We had too many chickens to carry over winter and too many birds that were not earning their keep anymore. Old age had finally caught up with a few of them so they needed to be culled.
Because our daughter, Chicken Mama, lost every last one of her chickens to that marauding fisher wreaking havoc on her homestead in the last few months, she was feeling unhappy being chickenless . . . and eggless, too.
Although she knew our culled birds probably wouldn't be producing great amounts of eggs, they might lay one now and then so she said she would take them if we didn't want them for stewing hens.
Our freezers are stuffed to over flowing right now so we gladly told her she could take them. Her chicken house, also known as the Taj Ma Coop, will be such a culture shock to our hens after their little ramshackled quarters here that they'll think they've died and gone to chicken heaven.
Five hens and one splendid rooster ready to go for a ride.
Comfortably ensconced in the back seat of Chicken Mama's truck and ready for the hour ride to their new home.
Bon Voyage, Chickies (and Big Rooster). Make us proud and lay an egg now and then.
. . . to get a decent night's sleep around here? Last night it was the wind. Again. We keep having these "once in a hundred years" wind storms . . . about every three weeks.
Our house is well-insulated. Almost too much so sound-wise. If we are in side, even in summer with doors and windows open, we can't hear a car pull up into our back yard. So it's very infrequently that we can hear rain or wind or other noisy weather going on outside.
We knew the wind was strong when we could hear it howling last night before bedtime as we were sitting reading by the fire. Good grief, we thought, what kind of a weather front is this blowing in?
I went to bed about 9:30 and zonked right out before hubby got out of the shower and joined me. He said he laid there until 12:30 listening to the wind and wondering what damage it was doing.
Our new, just installed, screen/storm door on the deck had been ripped off its hinges in the last wind storm so he got up to check if that was locked. It was. Then he went out to check the two doors on our someday-maybe-to-be greenhouse. He had neglected to go out to set our tracking solar panels parallel to the ground (the position for the best wind resistance) so he suited up in full outdoor gear and trudged out into the field to do that.
Back in bed, he laid there imagining poultry pens and shelters blown off their foundations again. Poor guy. He had a terrible night's (non)sleep while his uncaring wife was oblivious to it all.
The good news is that after a hike around to check everything this morning, we were glad to see damage was very minimal. No trees down like last time. Only a scattering of branches here, there and everywhere. A snow shovel by the back shed and one by the back door ended up several feet away from their usual spot. All animals safe and accounted for.
Solar panels put back on automatic operating mode to catch the bright sunlight today.
We didn't have loose snow on the ground to blow around but I'm wondering if
Chicken Mama's 4-mile winter driveway, with her copious amounts of snow, got solidly drifted over. However, with our widely differing weather conditions, it's entirely possible she didn't even have the winds.
My sleep-deprived husband is on his third cup of coffee this morning (very unusual for him) trying to become alive and alert enough to function today. Something tells me he'll be in bed early tonight.
The first year we moved up here to Minnesota we met a family that was to become best friends of ours. A couple of years previously, this family had sold their home in a suburb of Minneapolis to build a cabin in the wilderness and live there for one year in near isolation while homeschooling their five-year old twins, a boy and a girl.
When we first met them, their year in the wilderness was over, money had run low and they had moved into town where the dad, D, was working to establish his law practice and the mom, B, was setting up a Montessori School.
Because they all missed their cabin where they had had such a wonderful adventure, they frequently spent weekends at the cabin whenever possible.
That first Thanksgiving after we had made their acquaintance, they invited us to come to their cabin for the holiday. We readily accepted the invitation and looked forward to seeing their land and cabin we had heard so much about.
It was located on an inland lake about 40 miles from town and had no road access. In the summer they canoed across, in the winter they used their cross country skis. Each spring and fall, when the ice was not safe to go across on foot but while there was still too much ice for a boat to get through, they had a long, long walk on a trail they had made around the perimeter of the lake.
It was in the mid-1970s that we made our first trek to their cabin. It was a time in Minnesota weather history when winter came early with lots of snow and very low temperatures. By mid-November that year, we had a substantial amount of snow on the ground and on that Thanksgiving Day, the temperature was well below zero.
Hubby and I had not yet learned how to cross country ski nor did we have any equipment for skiing that first year. So we planned on snowshoeing across the lake pulling our two-year old daughter on a sled.We had made prior arrangements with our friends to meet us at a certain time by the landing where we would leave our truck on Thanksgiving morning. They would meet us there and take us across the lake to their cabin as we had no idea how to find it.
The morning dawned bright and sunny, but cold. Very cold, with no hope of the temperature even reaching up to zero that day. But we didn't want to miss the occasion so off we went.
D and the kids were waiting for us when we arrived. They had skied over but it was so cold that they couldn't stand still for long. They had been chasing each other in circles to stay warm while waiting the short time before we arrived. Even though the twins were only seven years old then, they were both proficient skiers.
We unloaded all of our paraphernalia from our truck and packed it in one of the two sleds. We wrapped our two-year old in extra blankets and propped her up in the other sled. She looked like a big, soft, colorful mound with only two little eyes peeking out.
The wind was blowing across the lake with what seemed like gale force which only made the air feel colder. D was concerned with our daughter staying warm enough on the way across the lake because she wouldn't be moving or creating any body heat with exercise like the rest of us. He suggested he take off with her in the sled and ski as fast as he could hoping she would stay warm. The twins would go slower so we could follow them while plodding along on our snowshoes.
We lost sight of D quickly as he took off at racing speed for the other side of the lake and the cabin. And it wasn't too long before we couldn't see the twins ahead of us either. It was probably hard for them to ski slowly enough for us to keep up with them, and I'm sure they were cold, too. Well, no matter. We had their ski tracks to follow.
We went on following their tracks for what seemed like . . . days! Okay, so it was only about 45 minutes of snowshoeing as fast as we could. The wind was brutal and we were very glad D had had the idea to take our daughter ahead with him.
Finally, we reached the cabin and as soon as we entered the door, the twins pounced on us talking excitedly at the same time. It was clear they had a story to tell and each one wanted to get it out first.
It seems that when they were about three-quarters of the way across the lake they saw something unusual in the snow ahead of them. When they got close enough they saw it was our daughter still completely wrapped tightly in quilts lying on her side to the left of the ski tracks. She had fallen out of the sled but D was so intent on going fast to get her into the warm cabin he hadn't realized he'd lost his cargo. L stayed with our daughter, who miraculously was laughing when she set her upright in the snow and brushed her off, while B took off after his dad yelling and screaming until D heard him and turned around, saw the empty sled and realized what had happened.
You can bet this incident has been fondly remembered by both families over the years, and it sure makes for a great Thanksgiving story.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO YOU ALL! No matter how you choose to spend the day, I hope you enjoy it to the utmost.
This is a little shelf and pull-out rack thingamabob that is mounted on the wall in our bathroom high over the toilet. I paid just under $50 dollars (including shipping) for it about thirteen years ago and at the time wondered if I would get that much use out of it. Well, I have. Many times over. Constantly. All the time.
My hubby wears wool socks because his feet sweat . . . and cotton socks get damp and clammy and ishy on him. He also has BIG feet. Which means the biggest socks we can find for him tend to shrink and not fit his BIG feet after washing and drying. Putting his socks in the automatic dryer is definitely a no-no.
