Curing Cabin Fever: Tomato Soup

At some point, it happens every winter.  I'm going along just fine and then the day finally comes. 

Last Thursday was the day. 

I opened my door in the morning to let the dog back in and saw, for the 1,436th time this winter, this:

And that was officially It.  I am SICK OF WINTER.

I am sick of having to bundle up and step out into the cold to untangle my dog's leash.
I'm sick of shoveling.  I'm sick of sloshing through slush and slipping on ice.  I am REALLY sick of water leaking into my boots.
I'm sick of walking into work in my nice clothes only to find I've kicked up dirty snow water on the backs of my legs.
I'm sick of eating stews and roasts and squash while I shiver under a blanket on my couch. 
I'm sick of looking out into my backyard and seeing this:

I've got Cabin Fever and I've got it bad.

But there's March, April, and most of May to get through before it's officially spring in Wisconsin.  So, in the meantime, I've got some projects planned to get me through. 

First, is tomato soup.  Which doesn't sound like much.  Unless you have REAL tomatos.

And I don't mean the pink, hard, tasteless Faux-matos that are in the grocery stores now. 

I mean these:

Those are REAL tomatoes picked from my garden last summer.  I grow more than I can eat while they're fresh.  So I toss the ones that are ripe into the freezer for later.  Thursday was officially "later". 

I took them out to defrost over night in a pan. 

Aren't they beautiful in their Real Red goodness?  I love homemade tomato soup but peeling tomatoes is a pain.  I like freezing them because they get gooshy when they defrost and I can just squeeze the meat right out of the peel.  Here's what they looked like in the morning. 

You can really just rip into them wih your fingers a bit and let the meat plop out into a bowl.  I was left with this in skins:

But more importantly, I had a beautiful bowlful of this:

{Steps onto soapbox}:  People open my freezer in the winter and see the big pile of tomatoes and exlaim, "You just throw tomatoes in your freezer?!?"  Yup.  Let me tell you, even after these babies sit in the freezer for months, with no plastic wrap or anything to keep them sealed, the minute I start squeezing out the meat, it smells like I just stepped outside into the hot summer sun to pick them right then.

Does a storebought faux-mato do that? 

THAT is the difference between real, homegrown produce and the plastic crap they sell at the grocery store.
Any food that can maintain it's natural scent - even after months of unprotected freezing - is REAL FOOD.  Why would you settle for plastic? {Steps off soapbox}.

Back to the soup.  To the bowlful of meat, I added about 2 Tbsp sugar, 2 tsp salt, 2 Tbsp basil, 2 tsp oregano.  I stirred it, covered it, and let it sit while I went to work.

After I came home, I sauteed a bit of spring in some olive oil:

Mmm!  Leeks are pricey now, at $2.49/pound (and you only use the bottom part!).  But I didn't care.  I'm sick with cabin fever and food is my medicine.

When those were sauteed, I poured in the tomato mix and also added:
a tsp minced garlic, a cup of canned broth, 3 Tbsp blue cheese, 2 Tbsp srirachi sauce.  (The srirachi adds a wonderful kick and the blue cheese smooths out the heat - fabulous!!)  Once that all cooked, I used my immersion blender to smooth it all out then stirred in 1/2 cup of cream.

To help bring more summer in, I used my indoor Lodge grill to fry up some lamb burgers:

I put out a simple sauce of Greek yogurt mixed with lime juice and dill.

And, while I was defrosting summer, I also took out the last of my bucket of frozen raspberries.  After defrosting I was left with this:

Enough raspberries to mix with apples for a pie and just over a quart of pure raspberry juice which, I gotta say, is like ecstasy in a glass when you drink it straight up.

A Greek salad, some oven roasted potatoe "fries", and some rolls rounded out a delicious REAL summer meal in the dead of winter:

Stay tuned for more Cabin Fever relief! 
As a sidenote, I'm drinking Pepsi with my dinner there...my mom never, ever allowed soda water with dinner.  Even though I'm a grown-up and I can do what I darn well please, I still feel like I'm doing something bad when I'm having a soda with supper.

Bowl Full of Lemons - House Binder

You can see by the button on my sidebar that I'm participating in A Bowl Full of Lemon's newest challenge.  (Click on the button to get to Toni's write up).

Our first task was for me to take all of this:

and turn it into a useful house binder.  I've been meaning to do this for years and Toni's challenge was the kick in the pants I needed. 

I used a small 6 x 8 binder so that it fits in my errand-running purse

Because I take this binder shopping, I put a funny reminder on the inside cover to keep myself in check

The caption reads "Remember:  Today's must haves often become tomorrow's what was I thinkings!"

Toni has a linky party set up so we can see the work of other participants. Lots of others are moms so their binders include pages for keeping track of doctor appointments, extracurriculars, and weekly meal plans.

But I'm single with no kids so I don't need to track those things. My binder will look a little different but I hope the tabs I use inspire moms and non-moms alike:

ROOM TABS - I have a separate tab for each room.  Whenever I'm shopping I inevitably find a cute knick-knack, picture, pillow, etc. that catches my eye but I"m never quite sure if it will fit or match.  These tabs will help me out.  Each has a similar page that works like this:

First, I designed the page layout and printed it on 8x11 paper.  I cut an inch off the right side, and hole punched the left:

Then I folded the right side towards the back.  Cutting off the the far right edge allows each page to be folding back in such a way that the hole punches are exposed.

  The grid is where I colored in the floor layout for each room.  I'll show my kitchen as a sample:

I wrote in the measurements.  The diagram also shows the way each door opens, and where counters and windows are.  Lastly, there are symbols showing where each electrical, phone, and cable outlets are. 

Second, I measured each physical feature of the room - door and window sizes, shelf height and depth, and closet floor space and wrote them next to the appropriate symbol. 

This page is also where I'd note measurements of things I always forget.  For example, my Basement tab would have the measurements of the furnace filters I need. 

Third, You can see how this page looks like it flips open.  Indeed!  On the inside I put the paint chips and fabric swatches for each room.  Now I'll know for sure if what I want to buy will match or not:

Other tabs are:



PRICE LIST

Those familiar with The Tightwad Gazette books will know how much the author stressed taking a price book with you to the store to ensure that you're truly getting the best prices.  Living in a big city, my shopping choices are overwhelming so I wanted to add this tab so I at least have a point of reference in the stores. 

INVENTORIES
When I do find a good price, I buy a lifetime supply. That's food, hobby supplies, hardware, anything.  Here's PART of my pantry

(um...yea...and I'm single with no kids).    I added a tab for a running inventory of these types of things so I can shop at home before I run out to the stores and use up what I've got first.

COLLECTIONS - I added a tab for lists of various items I collect, such as old Nancy Drew books, so when I'm out thrifting, rummaging, or antiquing  I have a ready list of which parts of my collection I have and which I still need.

DIRECTIONS - This tab is for when I'm out and about and can't remember how to get where I want to go

KNOW-HOW - This tab is a catchall tab for such things as measurement conversions, and other shopping helps.  The picture below is a picture list of various nuts, bolts, and screws.  The directions for a project may say "five cartirdge bolts" but heck if I know what they look like.  This tab will show me the way.

And if we ever geet rid of this:

I want to add a tab for my yard and garage as well. 

And while I don't have a typical "mom binder", I did notice that a lot of moms in the party have a section for phone numbers.  I need to add one of those - I'm too reliant on my cell phone for storing numbers.  So thanks to the many moms in the party for that good reminder.

I'm ready to see what the next week's challenge is.  But there's another challenge I have to deal with today.  I live in Wisconsin.  We have a little town here called Green Bay.  And they have a football team playing a game today.  Here's my contribution of Oreos baked inside brownies with green and gold sprinkles on top. 
Go Packers! 



Snow Day!

No time to work on the home binder for the Bowl Full of Lemons Challenge today.  We had a Snow Day of epic proportions here in Milwaukee.  The Interstate was even shut down! 

There's the Conductor getting  his shovel from his car that was buried in the snow on the street.  We woke up to snow drifts as high as five feet in some places. 

Here's me in the backyard.  Look how tall the drifts are!  (Don't look at how goofy I look in my un-matching winter garb).  It took us almost an hour just to clean the back yard walks out. 

Here's the Conductor, waist-deep in the backyard drifts before we got it cleaned out.

In a bit of irony, the sunshine I had hung on the side of my garage was blown down and fell in a snowdrift.

And here's my hero again.  I absolutely couldn't have tunneled my way out of the avalanche without his help. 

Ugh.  But we're still not done.   Half the alley to go, and it's already 3:30!

A Lemony Challenge

With a kitchen that looks like this:

And a closet that looks like this:

And a hobby room that looks like this:

What do you do? 

Join a Challenge, of course! 

Toni at A Bowl Full of Lemons started a Weekly Challenge to get her readers organized.  Lord knows I could use the motivation. 

Click on the button on my sidebar to start the challenge.  Or Click on the link in this post to get to Toni's blog.

This week's challenge is to make a home management binder.  I've kind of started one.  Um....a few years ago...so I know what I want it to do, I just need to get it done.  Stay tuned! 

Clogged Sink

Well, it's been building for some time now.  My bathroom sink drain was sloooowly starting to get plugged up. 

Then I came home from working all day and found this:

Yep.It was no longer a clog.  It was a back up. Which is kind of weird.  Because for some reason at work I got to thinking about how my Dad of All Trades helped me gut and remodel my bathroom.  Plumbing is one of THE most expensive home repair things to do.  I was contemplating the fact that I could have picked up all kinds of useful skills by watching him and I would have come out of the project fully equipped to do all kinds of home plumbing jobs.
But did I pay attention?  Nooooo.  His part of the project took over seven months.  Seven months of knowlege I could have soaked up.  But I didn't.

And then...a clog.

I'm not afraid of clogs.  My sisters and I all have long hair.  I've always been the one to pop open the shower drain from time to time to clean out massive hairballs.  It's gross.  But that's the price you pay for long hair. 

Here's my mop, taken down after my sister Carrie's wedding.

I'm careful in my own house with the shower drain and only have to clean it once every six months or so.  But I'm SUPER careful over the bathroom sink.  And yet, a clog.  And I can't call Dad because then I'll get the Dad Lecture (probably something along the lines of "weren't you paying attention?")    ~Sigh~

Some would be tempted to just pour Drain-o down the sink.  But I don't like that idea.  One, you're dumping chemicals.  Two, Drain-o works by pushing the clog out.  I worry it will push the clog to a point in the plumbing that I can't get at...then leave it stuck there forcing me to pay for a repairman.  Either, way, I'd rather go au naturale.

Normally I could just pop out the stopper, clean around it and be done with it.  But the kind of stopper my sink has is fixed with a loop on the bottom.  A metal piece holds it into the rest of the plumbing from underneath. 

See the horizontal pin in between the pipe and the vertical metal piece behind it?

(I guess that's there in case someone were to break in my house and try to steal the sink stopper?)

In short, there's no way to unclog the sink without undoing the plumbing.  At this point, my dad's voice popped in my head (remember my dad?).  His famous advice is, "Ya gotta ask yourself:  'Am I about to do something stupid?' And if the answer is yes...DON'T DO IT!"

But sometimes doing potentially stupid things - like undoing your plumbing when you don't know the first damn thing about plumbing - is how you learn. 

First, I emptied out as much of the backed up water as I could:

Then I put my dishpan under the sink to catch any possible deluge of water.  (I at least remember Dad doing that).  From there, it was just dumb luck pure genius on my part. 

My awesome Dad-of-All-Trades used PVC which is not your grampa's plumbing.  I figured I'd have to hammer away with a wrench and a hammer.  Turns out, all I had to do was unscrew the U-shaped piece:

- with a mere flick of the wrist, no less - and take it off.   Once I did, I saw a few dangly threads from something:

you can see them dangling from the vertical pipe.  And I thought, "you mean to tell me this whole clog is from a few stupid threads?"  So I stuck my finger up inside there.  Uck.  Big mistake.  I don't know what on earth  was decaying inside there but whatever it was, I stuck my whole finger inside it. 

Suffice it to say, I definately  needed to get the stopper out. 

That, too, just took one bit of unscrewing near the horizontal pin to loosen it right up.  I futzed with the pin on top that raises and lowers the stopper until I loosened it up enough to pull the pin out of the loop that held the stopper in place and I was finally able to see the clog:

 Ew!  You can't even see through the pipe at all!  What on earth died in there?

After pushing the dead elephant...or whatever it was through the drain and down to the dishpan below, the sink was clear.

All I had to do then was repeat my steps- that is, flick my wrist a few more times, just in reverse- and the job was done.

Into the trash went this:

I don't even have any explaination for this at all.

I didn't break a single nail.  I didn't get dirty.  I didn't make a mess.  Best part of all, the whole job, from start to finish, took less than 10 MINUTES and I was off to toot my horn. 

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!  I saw an aol "you've got" feature with Richard Simmons where he said the key phrase for the New Year is - "find heaven in twenty eleven".  I don't typically take advice from Richard Simmons, but my New Year's was heavenly.

In my last post I ranted about my lousy experience shopping for a dress and what to do for a wrap.

I ended up choosing this fabric:

It's way to slippery for a wrap, so I actually used a pattern for a poncho, seen here and it worked out quite well:

It's a SUPER easy pattern and I made the whole thing in 15 minutes.  Even on this slippery organza.

The whole purpose of the wrap wasn't so much to keep me warm, as it was to mask my ucky arms.  But I felt so pretty in the dress, with my hair, and the shoes with the necklace that I made to match, and the Conductor, and the bracelet....

Oh! The bracelet!  One of two things that the Conductor gave me for Christmas, it made its debut for New Year's.  (The other was a humongous box of Godiva chocolates because he knows I know better than to squander them). 

It's hard to tell in the pciture but every other link in the chain, and the heart on the clasp, have little diamonds encrusted around them.  For me, the best feature was actually the clasp so when I wore it on New Year's, I swung the clasp on top of my wrist. 

The Conductor took me to the Fireside Dinner Theater in Fort Atkinson, a town of about 11,000.  We had an amazing dinner of steak and lobster.  I especially loved the salad which had a papaya chutney dressing and delicious sesame seed crouton thingies, both of which I want to try and duplicate at home. 

The show was a feature of different show tunes, older songs, etc.  (They cater to a mostly senior crowd). The costumes, especially on the ladies, were spectacular but unfortunately you can't take pictures of live shows...

...which one very young, sexy looking, gal.....who was clearly the (oh....how can I put this nicely....) companion of an older gentleman didn't quite understand.  Suffice it to say, we had some good people watching, too.

We had champagne at midnight.  I am so not used to staying up that late!  But before that, we had to make it out of the theater to the car -- in FREEZING COLD weather.  And, that's the other reason I was so mad at the mall.  I wanted a formal so my legs would be warmer but all they had were goofy cocktail dresses.  In winter.  In Wisconsin.

I was thankful, though, when returning to our seat during intermission, one old lady remarked to her friend as I passed (in that voice that old people have that they think is a whisper but is actually really loud), "That dress really compliments her figure!" 

Thank you ma'am - and Happy New Year to you, too. 

Off the Rack

It's been a while since I blogged.  And I'm afraid my return post will be in the form of a rant.  I just returned from a three hour trip to the mall.

I HATE the mall.  Moreso, I absolutely ABHOR buying clothing off the rack.  It just makes me puke.  But I'm getting a head of myself...Let me back up.

The Conductor and I have plans to go to a dinner and theater show for New Year's Eve.  I believe one is supposed to dress for dinner and the theater.  Neither one of us has cable but we've been catching up on the popular Mad Men cable series on DVD.  I thought it would be fun to make a vintage inspired dress for the occassion so I picked this one:

It's Voge 1043, a reprint of a 1953 pattern.  (Yes, I know Mad Men takes place in the 60's but that's not the point.  Vintage is the point).

Considering that my final fabric selection was a very nice oriental blue satin, I decided to make a muslin before sewing the final dress.  And of course, I got stuck.

This gusset piece is supposed to fit into

this underside of the arm.  But for the life of me I could not figure out how it went.  Onto the pile of Valient Attempts it went.  With New Year's less than a week away, I needed a Plan B.  Off to the mall I went. 

So here's why I hate the mall and why I abhor off the rack clothing.  I tried on 9 dresses all which claimed to be the same size.  They all fit differently.  I almost drowned in some.  And trying to pull others off almost resulted in my arm being pulled from its socket, they were so tight.  But inconsistent sizing is only aggravation number one.

Here's the dress I settled on (and I do mean settled):

Many (who don't sew) might be thinking, "Why Jill that's a perfectly fine dress for a nice night out".  But let's take a closer look, shall we?  We'll start with the sleeves. 

But wait!  There are none.  In fact, NONE of the nine dresses I tried on had sleeves.  Why is this an aggravation? 

Because it's wintertime!  In Wisconsin!! 

We have freezing temperatures, subzero windchills, and SNOW.  Yet this is what the fashion industry deems an appropriate winter evening gown.  (And do you think the stores featured matching shawls or wraps.  Of course not!!).

Aggravation three is up next.  The stipes are actually strips of fabric sewn around the dress.   I couldn't really get the fine details right with my camera, but if I could have, you'd see that the fabric is a knit.  And the stripes...are NOT...hemmed. 

As a seamstress that just aggravates the tar out of me.  I"m sure non-sewists ae thinking, well Jill, what's the prob?  It's a knit that doesn't unravel so who cares about the lack of a hem?   Well, I do. You should .  Every American consumer should!  Why?

Because the price of this dress is $100!!!  ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS for a dress that, without proper hemming, is not finished being made.    It's like driving a car that has wheels that haven't been bolted on.  It looks good.  You might be pursuaded to pay full price for it.  And you could drive it, sure.  But you won't get far without it coming undone and ticking you off.  Still not getting it? 

Aggravtion #4 - the ethics:  The manufacturer buys a cheapy knit fabric like the one on my dress because it doesn't require hemming.  This means less manual labor.  Which means each factory worker in Mexico..Singapore...Bangladesh, etc. can churn out even more dresses per hour.  And at the $1 or so an hour the laborer gets paid, in raw terms, they get more bang for their buck...but the savings are not passed on to us, nor do I suspect they pay the laborer more for churning out more product. 

Aggravation #5 - the consumerism:  We as the consumer have little choice but to buy crap quality like this but we are lead to believe that $100 for a poorly made dress is a reasonable price.  We're too apathetic about quality in this country with our "cheaper is better" mindset that we don't even realize we should be complaining. 

Aggravtion #6 - the math:    Say you make $12 an hour (what the Government considers a wage you can support a family on).  This means, to buy this crap quality dress, you need to work about nine and half hours (factoring taxes in).  That means more than one full day of your life toiling away, for an inferior product. Now imagine if you only make minimum wage.  You'd be giving up a good 15 hours - two whole work days - for a dress that probably won't last more than a year or two, assuming you only wear it on fancy occassions.  INSANITY!

"But Jill," you're no doubt thinking, "You certainly aren't nuts!"

No.  I'm not.  That's why I only paid $35 for this dress which is about all I'm willing to pay for off the rack clothing.  But don't congratulate me.  The bargain I got came with a price:

There it is!  A broken zipper.  That's right.  They marked this $100 dress down because - before anyone even took it home - the zipper broke.  This is what passes for quality products?  Come on! 

Boy am I glad I sew! 

Anyways, as I mentioned, the dresses are sleeveless and the strore didn have any matching wraps.  So I"m going to need to make one.  (Thank goodness that *some* part of my ensemble will be of quality workmanship). 

But what to make it out of?  After dealing with the garbage at the mall, the fabric store was like an oasis in the dessert.  But I was too tired and aggravated to make a decision there so I bought three pieces and figured I'd decide which one later.  The shoes will be silver to match the lovely bracelet that the Concuctor gave me for Christmas, making its debut on New Year's. (Ahh - more quality!)  So these are my choices:

The first is this maroon fabric.  The upside is that it's a nice metallic whcih I think will look fun on New Year's.  The downside is that it's too thin to keep my shoulders warm

 

This one is also maroon, but a nice medium weight knit which will keep my arms warm.  But the dress is also knit and I worry that, although warm, knit on top of knit will take my dress from fancy to dowdy.

Finally, a navy blue organza. The shade isn't an exact match to the navy of the dress and it won't keep my arms warm.  I'm leaning toward this one though.  I'm worried that the maroons will stand out for not being the same color and, while I like to dress up for the theater, I prefer to be more conservative about it. 




 
The organza will stand out but for a good reason.  

It's got teeny sequiny things on it, which will pair nicely with the sequiny things on my shoes and the diamonds on my bracelet.  I'm willing to have cold arms in exchange for a little New Year's bling on my shoulders.

So...thank you for making it through to the end of my Shopping off the Rack Rant.  As a thank you, please feel free to give me your opinion on which wrap fabric I should go with.