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A month or so ago, Roy and I decided we wanted to change our eating habits, at least for the rest of the summer, to see if we could accomplish two things.
Number one, I needed help in freeing up more of my time during the day, and secondly, we both wanted to drop some extra pounds that we had acquired over last winter. (You know, the whole bear-going-into-hibernation thingie.)
Other than when we were both working outside the home or when Roy and our daughter were at school at lunch time, I've always cooked three meals a day. When Roy retired from teaching two years ago, it was the two of us sitting down together to breakfast, lunch and dinner every day with rare exceptions. (You've heard the old joke about the wife of the newly retired man saying, "I married him for better or worse but NOT for lunch!")
As those of you who are regular readers of this blog may have noticed (ahem), I've been struggling with rearranging the priorities of what I do each day. I'm so happy my dear husband is now retired from teaching and finally able to pursue some of the things he's had on his wanna-do list for approximately forty years. At the same time, I've come to realize that I will never get to "retire" from my main job of homemaker and household manager. I've been trying to work harder, faster, more efficiently in order to carve out more time in my day for accomplishing some of the things I've been putting off for many, many years. As Dr. Phil would say, "And how's that been working?" Um, . . . not well.
One of the things we decided would/could/should give me more time each day was to somehow decrease the time I spend on meal preparation. Aha, I said, if I stopped cooking, that would provide me more free time and also we'd both lose weight! Great idea . . . but, let's face it, not practical.
But what did seem practical was to cut our meals down from three each day to two. So we've been having our coffee or morning latte or whatever when we arise and then waiting until 10:30 or 11:00 to have a "brunch." And bless my husband's little ever-lovin' heart, he suggested we both be on our own as far as what we prepare and eat for the brunch meal. (Hallelujah! I love it when he cooks for himself!)
I have to inject here that there are those mornings when coffee just doesn't do it and sometimes one or both of us need just that little something extra to get the systems (brain and body) out of first gear. I usually have a small bowl of berries to tide me over and Roy will sometimes have a few slices of cheese. (Can you tell I'm a carbo-type and he's a protein-type?)
This summer our brunch meal quickly evolved into him making a fruit smoothie . . .
. . . and me tossing together a "wrap" made with a whole wheat tortilla and whatever assorted veggies are currently available from the garden along with a little grated cheese.
Then in the evening around 5:30, I make a nice dinner (but nothing as elaborate as I might make in the winter) for both of us. Not having an automatic dishwasher, Roy has volunteered to do dishes every night after dinner. (Hallelujah! I love it when he does dishes!)
So besides giving me some extra time in the last month or so to pick and process fruits and veggies from the garden (hmmm, what's still wrong with this picture?), we've both lost some weight . . . and I know the time angle will continue to get better for me just as soon as the garden harvest is over.
We couldn't be trying out these new diet changes if it weren't just the two of us or if Roy were still working full time. But since we're in a new phase of our lives, it's a good time to try implementing whatever changes might bring about what we're both seeking.
What will winter time bring? Will we want to stay with the two meals a day? I don't know yet. But if we both remain open about what's working and what's not, it will only get better from here.
Tomorrow, August 31st, is our wedding anniversary. How many years, you may ask? Forty-six. Oh. My. Gawd. That simply cannot be, because neither of us is that OLD.
We were married for eight years before our daughter was born so we used to get lots of questions such as "Are you going to have children?" or "When are you going to start your family?" Roy, who was already a grade school teacher, would either reply, "I don't like children," or "We want to make sure the marriage is going to last before bring kids into it."
Well, at this point in time, I think we can be fairly sure the marriage is going to last.
We were married at a candlelit ceremony at 7 o'clock in the evening. August 31st in Illinois corn country? We wanted to insure it be as cool as possible so opted for the early evening time. Was it cool? 'Course not. The church was not air-conditioned; fortunately, the reception hall was.
The groom almost didn't show up in time for the wedding. One of the guests was a Japanese guy Roy had gotten to know when they both lived with Roy's older brother in California a couple of years earlier. Tommy flew in from Canada especially for the wedding. He had heard lots of tales from Roy and his brother about the family acreage Roy grew up on which was an hour's drive from where we got married. True to form, and having absolutely no concept of time (some things never change), Roy decided to take Tommy on a little impromptu ride that afternoon (yes, the afternoon of the wedding) to tour the family property. They were having such a great adventure that neither one of them kept track of the passage of time and there was a question for a while whether the groom would be present for the wedding ceremony.
Turns out he had more time than anyone thought. The florist that provided our flowers had seven weddings that day, and ours was the last. We had to delay the start of the ceremony for twenty minutes until the flowers finally were delivered. Just a little glitch.
We've got no big plans for the celebration of the day tomorrow. Gonna set off early in the morning, take a lovely drive to a funky restaurant we love and treat ourselves to a leisurely, big breakfast. We're taking a couple of folding camp chairs and some reading material and are going to look for a sunny spot by the shore of an inland lake and relax, read and enjoy the water. We may bring the canoe with and go for a paddle if we feel ambitious. Otherwise, it'll be a laid-back, take-it-easy day.
Sounds good to me for two people who've been hitched for gettin' darn close to half a century.
Nah, I'm not really gonna show pictures of me eating a whole pie . . . but if it were this pie, I know I could do it.
It's refreshingly light and yummy and sooo good. If any of you still have access to fresh blueberries from your garden, or wild ones you can pick, or (what the heck) buy in the store, you should give Freshy's Blueberry Pie a try.
I got the recipe from a gal I worked with about (oh, dear!) forty-some years ago. (Ya know, I don't have a problem with my chronological age - I suppose 'cause I don't feel any different than I did in my thirties - but when I mention something that happened thirty-five or forty years ago, and I was already an adult at the time . . . well, that just cannot be. But it is . . . gulp. Sigh.)
Back to the pie.
I asked my co-worker who "Freshy" was. She replied that she had no idea; it was just the name of the recipe when she got it. So there you go.
Let's get to it.
Start with a baked and cooled pie shell.
In a saucepan, combine 3/4 cup sugar, 2-1/2 tablespoons cornstarch and 1/4 teaspoon salt.
Blend in 2/3 cup water and 1 cup fresh blueberries.
Bring to a boil and cook, stirring constantly until very thick.
Remove from heat and stir in 2 tablespoons butter and 1-1/2 tablespoons lemon juice. Put mixture (still in saucepan) in refrigerator for about 20 minutes to cool.
Then add 2 cups fresh blueberries, mix gently to blend well and back into the refrig it goes for about one hour.
Beat one cup whipping cream until it starts to thicken. Add 2 tablespoons powdered sugar and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Continue whipping cream until very stiff.
Spread one-half of whipped cream over bottom of pie shell. Top with berry filling from refrigerator.
Garnish around the edge with the remaining whipped cream and put back in refrig to chill for one to two hours before cutting and serving.
What a small, little slice.
It will disappear in a few seconds flat.
But what's to stop me from having another small slice?
(Too bad nobody's here to chronicle me eating a whole pie.)
We woke to a lovely, steady rain falling this morning. Looks like it may be an all-day-er.
I know you can't see the rain falling but, trust me, it's coming down steadily. Our full-out greenery is starting to look a little blowsy now . . . not very tidy but rather tired. Won't be but a couple more weeks before the leaves start turning color in earnest and slipping from the trees.
This is the second morning in a row that we've made a small fire in the wood stove. Yesterday, it was downright chilly in the house as the temps have been dropping into the 40s at night. Today it didn't feel so cool, but the rain just seemed to call for a bit of snap, crackle and pop cheeriness.
But this is all good. It's been an intense summer, and we've been lacking moisture for quite a while. I tried to pull some weeds in the garden yesterday, and it was as if they were embedded in well set up concrete.
I pushed yesterday afternoon to get beans picked to send home with my daughter and also got a few blueberries from our domestic bushes. Only got about three cups but enough, I think, to make a very special pie. Check back tomorrow as I plan on posting pics along with the recipe.
Now somebody convince me I really shouldn't go out into the rain to do those town errands I was going to do very first thing this morning. What? Did I hear you say I should stay home and bake oatmeal cookies instead? Well, okay. It was a difficult decision on my part, but because you suggested it, I'll do it.
Help! I have reached a point in my life when I want to slow down, stop being so busy.
No, wait, that's not correct. It's not that I want to stop having full days but rather I want to change what it is I spend my time doing with my days. Or perhaps (pant-pant, puff-puff) I'm just ready for summer to be over.
When I have to divide my day's hours between outside time and inside time, I can't get the "necessaries" done and still have time for much of any relaxing. And typically, in the summer even in regard to the necessary things, inside time gets short changed. By a lot.
For instance, my house looks grittier and grimier than I like it to be, and although what we eat may be very healthy, I yearn for something other than a big salad, fresh berries or quick egg meals (I miss puttering in the kitchen concocting a great meal . . . while sipping a glass of wine), and I just can't find more than a few minutes now and then to read or do any handwork. Oh, and also I find it hard to spend time at the computer blogging.
Well, summer is on the way out. As soon as the sun goes down these late afternoons, you can actually feel the nip of fall in the air.
The above are our pair of Shetland geese. The pure white is the male while Mrs. is the gray and white. We've had Shetland and American Buff geese but recently made the decision to let go all of the American Buffs. We've found them to be really big geese that eat a lot of grain (tons!) in the winter time. They're also very clumsy and tend to barrel over and through anything in their path. Unfortunately, we lost two goslings this summer, both by being stepped on by these big honkers. We considered putting the three adult geese we had in the freezer . . . but simply don't have the room. So we offered them (alive, that is) to our daughter and she took them. She now has quite the poultry yard menagerie of geese, chickens, ducks and one very handsome tom turkey. (She really should be called Poultry Mama rather than Chicken Mama.)
I've already started garden clean-up which feels pretty darn good. Partly because some crops did so poorly this year that it's clear there's no hope in waiting for harvest, and partly because some crops have run their natural course. I'm more than ready to start putting the garden to bed for the winter.
Beans, raspberries and blueberries are being harvested and processed regularly right now. The yellow beans came in first and I have all of them I want in the freezer so our daughter is happy to get those still coming in. Even though I might wish for a heartier breakfast, I'm still enjoying the fresh berries in cream or milk each day. I've frozen or preserved just about all the berries we need for our year's supply so much of the harvest now is being given away.
Whine time. (Wine? Did somebody say wine?) Well, here I am again at the end of the day and I want desperately to go spend some time in my quilt studio, or maybe just sit and read for an hour or so (or here's an idea . . . why don't I vacuum? . . . or not), but the hour is too late for that and I still need to take a shower to get the raspberry juice off my arms and the dirt off my knees.
Yup, gotta do some reorganizing of priorities as far as what I do during the day. I have a great solution that would work for me. (Understand it is TOTALLY UNREALISTIC . . . and ain't never gonna happen, but I just know it would work.) If I could have one week of summer alternating with one week of winter year 'round, my life would be much better balanced. And I'd be happy, happy, happy. (Told ya it was totally unrealistic.)
. . . and me tossing together a "wrap" made with a whole wheat tortilla and whatever assorted veggies are currently available from the garden along with a little grated cheese.
