At Home with the Boys

I'm sick. I'll admit it. Not quite very sick, but sick enough to throw in the towel and stay home. My ex-boss, yesterday, told me in no uncertan terms that it was just silly to stay at work when I'm sick and that I should take the time to stay at home and rest until I'm actually better.

Given that this is the second of these horrible upper-repiratory colds I've had in less than a month, I see some validity to that, now. yeesh.

So I now have Jet's cold, and I stayed home while the boys did their stuff. They went out to go to the post office to mail Marina's gift this morning, and I stayed home, read, and then got the crazy idea of moving my compost barrel into the sunshine. It's nearly 60's here, feels like mid-spring, not mid-winter, and I was hoping to use all the compost in that barrel come March or April. So I went out, rolled it into the sunshine on the gravel beds in the backyard, and then opened it up and stuck a pitchfork into it to make sure that the summer grass BLOB was breaking up. It wasn't.

So I broke it up as much as I could with a three-tined pitchfork. Lots of just shoving it in and wiggling. I filled a watering can with water and watered all the dried leaves and then I emptied the kitchen compost pot into it. That has been sitting in the kitchen for nigh on a month and was getting pretty full, so it seemed a good time to get it into the mix and really mix it in. So I did. Mostly tea bags, coffee grinds, and vegetable ends from when I'm cooking, egg shells, fruit rinds, and such all went in there instead of the garbage and with natural forces at work, the stuff keeps compacting. Ew. :-)

The watering can worked great for cleaning off the pitchfork, and then I set the thing up in the sun. It'll get warm enough quick.

It was fun to have parts of the afternoon with jet as John went out on errands. We watched movies together, colored together, and generally enjoyed each others company. Yum.

I also made chili in the morning. Rough chopped the chuck the way AB said would be in another episode when he was making hamburgers. Then I kind of fudged together a recipe. I threw a can of chopped tomatoes into the slowcooker, on low, then browned a chopped slice of bacon until all the fat was rendered. I threw the bacon into the slow cooker, and nearly all the fat into a small dish. Then I browned all the beef in a little of the fat threw it into the pot, then browned onions and garlic in a little of the fat. I then dumped 2 Tbs of Penzy's medium hot chili powder into the onions along with crushing a teaspoon of Mexican oregano and a half a teaspoon of ground cumin and let the herbs and spices all toast for a bit in the pan. When they smelled good (I can still smell!), I dumped them iinto the slow cooker as well. I added just enough water to cover everything (maybe should have used beer?), and let it cook on low all day and fill the house with the smell.

At 5, I dumped in a can of kidney beans, and let it cook for an hour before we sat down and ate it. It was very, very good. I'll have to do that again. Canned chili is SOOOO salty, I can't eat it, so I guess I'll just have to make my own.

At Home with the Boys

I'm sick. I'll admit it. Not quite very sick, but sick enough to throw in the towel and stay home. My ex-boss, yesterday, told me in no uncertan terms that it was just silly to stay at work when I'm sick and that I should take the time to stay at home and rest until I'm actually better.

Given that this is the second of these horrible upper-repiratory colds I've had in less than a month, I see some validity to that, now. yeesh.

So I now have Jet's cold, and I stayed home while the boys did their stuff. They went out to go to the post office to mail Marina's gift this morning, and I stayed home, read, and then got the crazy idea of moving my compost barrel into the sunshine. It's nearly 60's here, feels like mid-spring, not mid-winter, and I was hoping to use all the compost in that barrel come March or April. So I went out, rolled it into the sunshine on the gravel beds in the backyard, and then opened it up and stuck a pitchfork into it to make sure that the summer grass BLOB was breaking up. It wasn't.

So I broke it up as much as I could with a three-tined pitchfork. Lots of just shoving it in and wiggling. I filled a watering can with water and watered all the dried leaves and then I emptied the kitchen compost pot into it. That has been sitting in the kitchen for nigh on a month and was getting pretty full, so it seemed a good time to get it into the mix and really mix it in. So I did. Mostly tea bags, coffee grinds, and vegetable ends from when I'm cooking, egg shells, fruit rinds, and such all went in there instead of the garbage and with natural forces at work, the stuff keeps compacting. Ew. :-)

The watering can worked great for cleaning off the pitchfork, and then I set the thing up in the sun. It'll get warm enough quick.

It was fun to have parts of the afternoon with jet as John went out on errands. We watched movies together, colored together, and generally enjoyed each others company. Yum.

I also made chili in the morning. Rough chopped the chuck the way AB said would be in another episode when he was making hamburgers. Then I kind of fudged together a recipe. I threw a can of chopped tomatoes into the slowcooker, on low, then browned a chopped slice of bacon until all the fat was rendered. I threw the bacon into the slow cooker, and nearly all the fat into a small dish. Then I browned all the beef in a little of the fat threw it into the pot, then browned onions and garlic in a little of the fat. I then dumped 2 Tbs of Penzy's medium hot chili powder into the onions along with crushing a teaspoon of Mexican oregano and a half a teaspoon of ground cumin and let the herbs and spices all toast for a bit in the pan. When they smelled good (I can still smell!), I dumped them iinto the slow cooker as well. I added just enough water to cover everything (maybe should have used beer?), and let it cook on low all day and fill the house with the smell.

At 5, I dumped in a can of kidney beans, and let it cook for an hour before we sat down and ate it. It was very, very good. I'll have to do that again. Canned chili is SOOOO salty, I can't eat it, so I guess I'll just have to make my own.