MFA Mama

bad day

   Yesterday wasn't done hurting me after I published my last post, because one of my bedtime pills stuck in my hiatal hernia on the way down.

   I spent the night mostly awake in searing agony. I got up several times, to take TUMS, to take naproxen (yes, I know, horrid for the stomach actually but it was 2:30 a.m. and I was desperate), to eat yogurt...nothing helped. It's not quite as bad as the last time this happened, I think because it wasn't motherfucking Clindamycin in the capsule in question, but it's close. Hopefully the GI bleeding won't be as bad this time, because last time I did have a few dizzy spells.

   I almost didn't go to work this morning. Hotter literally nudged me, moaning, off the bed with his foot, and before you hate all over him (keep reading, he gets his later I promise) it was a good thing I went in because I managed to finagle another temp job out of PseudoCorp that'll keep things afloat for another two months.

   Then comes the part that pushed me over the edge, and I wish I could tell y'all about it, especially since nobody at work was being an asshole (quite the contrary, actually), but I am too paranoid about what Eyeballs Who Dislike Me would try to make of it and who they would try to make it to so I can't. So instead I'll just say that everyone involved in my new position seems positively lovely and I really look forward to showing them my gratitude for the job by rocking it.

   I went home, and Hotter made a fabulous Bambi Stroganoff for dinner, and then the children were acting out because they need more attention, but I was tired and bitter and in an unbelievable amount of pain, and we proceeded to have a horrible evening. EVERYBODY demonstrated the absolute worst facets of their personalities. EVERYONE. And then I sent the grounded children to bed crying with admonitions that I just couldn't. Take. One. More. Thing. and then Hotter accidentally wiped a hunk of raw chicken ALL OVER THE KITCHEN in the process of preparing the dogs' food and I LOST IT. I have issues with raw chicken. It is gross. He knows this, and chose to berate me for using hot soapy water to clean it up when there was hand sanitizer closer to the scene of the crime against my sensibilities, and that, gentle readers, is when I as a grown-ass woman of nearly thirty-three years old beaned my husband with a large, wilted carrot.

   Do I really have to say anything more about my mental state than that? I assaulted the person who loves me most with a wilted root vegetable. Shiiiiit.

   In the midst of my subsequent bawling, Middle Child got out of bed and apologized for his role in the evening and told me not to cry, that he knew I was doing my best, and oh, y'all. My kids deserve a better mother.

   Tomorrow is my birthday. I can't afford to take the day off, even if it's just to go to the doctor, because I don't have the co-pay. Honestly I kinda hope I get lucky and bleed out in my sleep, because it's the happiest ending I can think of right now, but chances are I'll wake up feeling like death itself and a torrent of shit will rain down on me from the sky the moment I walk out the front door.

   And you?

pre-hurricane miscellaney

*   This morning I woke from a bad dream where I was trying to leave the XY all over again (Little Child was a baby on my hip again, and very sick again, and his g-tube, which in the dream was the original pull-PEG, was venting copiously, which it hasn't in ages...also the XY was telling me that I couldn't leave him because I was too stupid to get through life on my own, for example today I had traffic court but would I know that without him to tell me? Nooooo) at dawn and ran to pull up the local court's website. Sure enough, I DID have traffic court this morning and had forgotten all about it! I was awake in plenty of time to get ready though, and got the last of the tickets from the expired registration dismissed. Perhaps my ex-husband is my new spirit animal? Oy.

*   I saw my divorce attorney at court and we exchanged pleasantries. That was kind of weird.

*   My kids are so excited about the hurricane that last night I finally gave them a Mason jar full of heavy whipping cream with a couple of marbles in and set them to making butter by taking turns shaking the jar just to wear their energy out a little. They crapped out when it was still just whipped cream and I had to take over, the little slackers, but seriously this creates the best damn butter you will ever taste and I highly recommend it.

*   Last night I ate too much at dinner but it was soooo good. Hotter made his famous potroast, which is unbelievably delicious, and I made fresh bread rolls that came out of the oven right as we were sitting down, plus we had the fresh butter (which is delightfully spreadable) to put on the rolls and for dessert, homemade strawberry ice cream.

*   Temp Agency #1 called today; they gave me a job on Monday that should take one hour or less, but I get paid for four hours because the contract is a four-hour minimum, plus the job pays 40% more per hour than I usually make. I'm basically going to be someone's stand-in at an important business meeting, like when royalty used to marry from a distance and they'd send a proxy to ceremonially "consummate" the deal by touching thighs with the person they were marrying. This tickles me to no end.

*   At this point, I think the MFA Children are going to be devastated if we don't get to eat shelf-stable foods warmed over Sterno cans for at least one meal. If you're reading this from anywhere along the Eastern seaboard, are YOU prepared for the hurricane? Don't forget a manual can-opener and a lighter for the Sterno cans in your hurricane kit! Honestly I think half the reason the boys are so excited is that we don't generally eat most of the canned and processed foods I bought in order to be prepared for Irene (Chef Boyardee ravioli, Handi Snacks, boxes of shelf-stable chocolate milk, etc.) because I consider them to be junkfood. Someone who shall remain nameless spent a good portion of yesterday evening dancing around the house chanting "CHILI-MAC! CHILI-MAC!"

*   This slays me:

Figure One: Yes, I know, some folks have cracks in their foundations and are NOT AMUSED, and the Washington Monument is damaged, etc. but I don't think Japan and Christchurch feel overly sorry for us right now, is all I'm sayin'.

*   How are all of YOU?

Shebangarang! BBQ sauce

   This is a nice, mouth-warming but not-too-hot vinegar-y BBQ base that I use mostly on chicken, although I've also used it for ground-venison "Sloppy Does" and it was fantastic in those, too. It's not too spicy for MY kids, but if you have picky eaters you might want to omit the banana pepper and maybe halve the black pepper. Or just throw a PBJ at 'em, make this as follows, and possibly eat it with a spoon, because it's THAT GOOD:

MFA Mama's Shebangarang! BBQ Sauce

1 c. ketchup (I buy store-brand when it's on sale if we're poor, Heinz Organic at the local big-box store if we're less-poor, depending)
1/2 large sweet onion, diced up small
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 small banana pepper (like, thumb-sized, or you can use a jalapeno if you want to make it really hot), deseeded and also finely minced 
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp Shebangarang!
2 tsp honey 
1/4 tsp black pepper
3 drops "liquid smoke" flavoring 

Put the EVOO and onions in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the onions begin to clarify. Add the garlic and banana pepper and keep stirring until the garlic begins to brown (don't overdo it or it'll be bitter). As soon as you see the first hint of brown on the garlic, add the rest of the ingredients and simmer until it coats the back of a spoon nicely. This was makes enough to coat an entire picked chicken's worth of meat (if it's a backyard-raised chicken, so probably only the breastmeat of a store-bought roaster), which is dinner and leftovers at my house.

the one where the rapist duck is delicious

   So I owe y'all recipes, but I'm busy being in-the-moment over here, loving all up on my husband and making delicious food (marinara from our garden is bubbling in The Peacemaker and we just turned one rapist duck* into this and this and OMG), and the recipes will have to wait. xox

 

*  Yeah, he was hilarious, and he was briefly a hero, but he left several other birds bleeding today and therefore had to go, and he was delicious. Sorry, Uncle Quacker, but some things just aren't tolerated here.

tell me about your crockpots

   I don't have a whole lot to say, because I am still at the tail-end of the autoimmune "bleh." I woke up, however, to Hotter cupping my cheek and smiling and saying he wasn't pissed, so that was nice. It was also more than a little confusing, given the events of yesterday, but we talked and he explained that it was more the situation that had pissed him off, and I can certainly understand that. If I wasn't a mostly angerless robot I'd probably be pretty pissed off, myself, but it takes a lot for me to get angry, nevermind realize that I've gotten angry. Sometimes I think that's a superior way to be and other times not so much, because I tend to take a lot more shit than the average person. I dunno. I also tend to dish OUT a lot LESS shit than the average person, which I suppose is good, but not particularly fair in that being a nice person and five dollars will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks and not much else in life.

***
   I'm going to do a batch of Shebangarang barbecue sauce tomorrow to get an idea of quantities in order to post the recipe (I'm one of those cooks who does it all by eyeballs and intuition, which works beautifully for ME but isn't much help when someone wants the recipe for something I've made). Don't forget to enter the spice giveaway! If you've already entered you can always get another entry by tweeting about it and leaving a second comment with the link to your tweet.

***
   This isn't much by way of a segue or ending, but I also have to replace our crockpot, which came to grief by Hotter's hand (and yes, if you are keeping score at home this is the SECOND one he's killed since we've been married--perhaps as a chef slow-cookers threaten him?). Do any of you have one you are particularly in love with and would recommend? I was awfully fond of the last one, which was a Hamilton Beach, but since I'm having to buy another one and y'all always have such good input for me I figured I'd see what you thought.

a totally sweet review and giveaway, because it's been a while!

   I've been buying these totally awesome spice blends from the Hippie Food Coop for a while now, and out of the blue I decided to write to the lady who created them and ask about doing a review/giveaway. She responded enthusiastically, and I am just SO tickled to be able to do this, because my family is completely addicted to these products and now I get to share the goodness with one of YOU! I'll be posting recipes throughout the next week and on Friday, August 19th I'll be picking a winner via random.org.

   This is Jen. In addition to helping run a farm (including a CSA program!) and raise a family, Jen makes incredible flavors in the form of spice blends and all-natural lollipops. I've had her lollipops and they are TO DIE FOR, but the spice blends, believe it or not, are even better. Because you can use them any way you want to jazz up a favorite recipe or, in my case, get your kid who has been tube-fed for most of his life to EAT MORE (oh yes, Little Child is a Bangarang addict--he seems to prefer stronger flavors for some reason and likes to spice up his food). Jen herself described her four spice blends to me in an e-mail as "a flavor flight, from sweet to heat," and I really couldn't put it any better myself!

   Shebang, which is Little Child's favorite, is a spiced sugar blend with ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves. I could pretty much eat the stuff out of the jar, but it's also excellent in baked goods, coffee, on hot buttered toast or popcorn...you get the idea. It's a key ingredient in my Zucchini-Carrot Bread, which (here is where I fail modesty) is the best veggie bread I've ever had. It's crazy how good this stuff is! And because I am a giver, I'm going to share the recipe with y'all.  

MFA Mama's Crazy-good Zucchini-Carrot Bread

Ingredients:
three cups all-purpose flour
one teaspoon salt
one teaspoon baking soda
one teaspoon baking powder
two and a half teaspoons cinnamon
one tablespoon Shebang
three duck eggs 
one cup coconut oil
two cups sugar
three teaspoons vanilla extract
one and a half cups finely-grated zucchini
two large carrots, peeled and finely-grated 
one cup chopped pecans (optional)

1. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees and grease two loaf pans.
2. Sift or whisk dry ingredients EXCEPT for nuts (if you're using them), sugar and Shebang together and set aside.
3. Beat eggs, coconut oil, vanilla, sugar, and Shebang in a large mixing bowl. 
4. Add the premixed dry ingredients in several batches, beating as you go.
5. Stir in the zucchini, carrot, and nuts if you're using any.
6. Divide evenly into two loaf pans, sprinkle the tops with Shebang, and bake until a butterknife inserted into the loaves comes out clean (about 50 minutes). 

   This is a pretty forgiving recipe, and if you don't have any Shebang (although you should totally buy some, because it's THAT GOOD) you can use two and a quarter cups of sugar and three teaspoons of cinnamon (I guess you could also try adding tiny amounts of ginger, cardamom, and cloves if you wanted, too) and get a pretty good result. Coconut oil is kind of pricey, and while you won't get quite the same flavor or consistency, canola will work in a pinch. I use duck eggs because their higher protein and fat content produces a denser, richer cake-consistency than chicken eggs, but you can substitute three large chicken eggs if you can't find duck eggs for sale and that'll work, too.

   Next up: Shebangarang barbecue sauce, a.k.a. The Best Way To Dress Up Chicken Maybe EVER!

   To enter the giveaway, go and check out the entire Bangarang line and leave me a comment on this post saying which of the spice blends you'd most like to try. That's it! No facespace-liking, Twitter-following, or other hoops to jump through. Just pick the prize you'd most enjoy if random.org smiles on you on the 19th, and I'll draw a winner at noon on that day. You may garner up to ONE additional entry per day by tweeting this and leaving a SEPARATE COMMENT with a link to your tweet. Here is a sample tweet you can copy and paste if you like:

I just entered to win a kickass Bangarang spice-blend from @MFAMama and you can, too! http://bit.ly/q7SO1Y

 

I received one jar of each of the four Bangarang spices at no charge to review for the purpose of this giveaway. I am not being financially compensated for this or any other post relating to the Bangarang giveaway. All views I express on here are my own and do not represent the official viewpoints of Jennifer Lane or GreenHearts Farm. 

the one where against all odds, it's a good day

*   Hotter isn't any worse, in fact he is faking improvement out of the desperate desire not to see the inside of Local Teaching Hospital again during non-business hours arguably a bit better.

*   I forgot how much I love big industrial kitchens, and the one I worked in today was the biggest I'd ever had the run of. Bliss! 

*   Several people offered me a full-time job today. I said FUCK NO, ARE YOU INSANE? Okay, I said something along the lines of "thank you, but I'd prefer to be your very favorite temp!" Lots of people with Terribly Impressive Staffing would love to be full-time; I would love it too if it paid as well and allowed for a chaotic anyone-might-need-the-hospital sort of life. As it is, temping suits me just fine.

*   I'm totally going to hell; only one specialty in Local Teaching Hospital validates parking and a member of my household is unfortunately a patient of that department so I dropped the MFA Minivan off with the valets and shamelessly stopped in on the way out to save five bucks.

*   My lunchbreak lasted all of fifteen minutes and allowed me just enough time to appreciate that my natural peanut-butter and jam-from-the-Mennonite-butcher's-wife sammich on homebaked bread was by far the healthiest piece of food in the building, and had more care put into it. Hospital food'll kill ya.

*   I got home before the MFA Children and dragged my seedlings, chibi chickens, and ducks outside for a couple of happy hours during which I raised hell with the leaf blower (WHOO!).

*   Check out this video of Paul the Rooster and the rest of the MFA Flock dust-bathing! Haha!

*   How are all of YOU?

chicken updates

   The sickly chick is doing well; she's scurrying around with the others and seems like she may have turned a corner (I'm still syringe-feeding her every hour or so until I see her eat on her own).

   As for the Araucana with the prolapsed vent...this was beyond the help of Preparation H (the extruded mass of organs was nearly the size of my fist) so I found this handy tutorial and with its help the patient is now resting comfortably:

Figure One: Don't look at me like that, it was either this or let her die slowly and painfully. Hotter, the one of us who took actual butchering CLASSES, couldn't even watch. Pussy!

turnips, man

   I went and volunteered at the hippie food coop (where I got to dig in THEIR dirt) today, and they gave me a TON of cosmetically-challenged organic veggies! Like a ginormous stalk of brussels sprouts (seriously, it was as long as my arm) that needed a lot of fiddly peeling and picking but yielded enough for the MFAmily to have brussels sprouts with dinner twice, apples with big wet spots that needed trimming away (but were 2/3 perfectly fine and will make excellent pie), sprouted red potatoes (which are exactly what I need for the garden and I'm so glad I didn't buy any seed spuds!) and such, as well as some extra eggs (when we're flat-broke the dogs eat a lot of eggs), plus all the butternut squash and turnips I could haul off. YAY!

   I have only tried turnips once before in my life (boiled to death in a stew--I thought they were gross), but Hotter mentioned that he liked them mashed with potatoes and since they were free I figured I'd try them again and OMG. Half red potatoes, half turnips, mashed together? Rocks. Seriously, try it.

updates (miscellaneous)

*   That chicken? Was moist, tender, flavorful PERFECTION! We considered brining our Turkey at Thanksgiving, because we'd heard good things, but decided we just couldn't risk effing up a holiday meal. So this was a TEST chicken. And we are SOLD on brining! Thanks, Charlie! Or, rather, Alton Brown (see the comments on Charlie's post--they're classic). Or possibly Ted Nugent?

*   The prescription cough syrup my doctor gave me has knocked me on my arse. Duuuuude.

*   Sadly I am still coughing badly enough that I coughed extra-hard right before dinner and I swear to you I felt something TEAR. Which, given my connective tissue disease, it's entirely possible something DID tear, and there's absolutely nothing to do for even BROKEN ribs (unless they're spearing a lung) so I think this will just have to suck until it stops of its own accord.

*   Last night I went crazy on my hair; took off about eight inches (which still leaves it mid-back length) and added some subtle highlights. It felt really good to do something a little different! My inspiration, quite honestly, was Julia Roberts' hair. No, that THAT Julia Roberts. THIS one. See how it's long and feminine and pretty, but not all the same length and still short enough to let the curls happen? That's what I wanted to try, and I think I did an excellent job, if I do say so myself!

*   Ooof. I feel all stoned and sleepy from the medicine and the sleepless night last night. In fact, I think probably I should go and do something less taxing than typing has become...