No Stroganoff

A couple people asked how my stroganoff turned out last night.

Except, er, it turned out that I made something else.

I made THESE bad boys!

Ground Beef and Bisciuts from Taste of Home.

I didn't have the mushrooms and consumme that you need to make stroganoff, which I didn't realize until 5 minutes before I started cooking. So I typed "ground beef" into the search on Taste of Home and picked the first thing that looked tasty.

It kind of tasted like the Sloppy Joes in a Pan that we used to make off the Bisquick box. The recipe calls for canned biscuits, but I just whipped up a batch of baking powder biscuits. It was delicious. Even the munchkins ate it, which is a change from the norm. :-)

Wednesday chats

Doing Patrice's Farmhouse Chats today!

We're staring into an interminable period of Tule fog. But one of the neighbors is anticipating spring. They're even helping it along with silk flowers in a bush.

I chuckle every time I walk by.

Anyway, onto the meme questions!

Kimberly asks: How long have you blogged?

I started up my art blog in August 2009, and this blog in February of 2010. So 3 years, give or take. My art blog gets me to occasionally draw things, and this blog helps me stay in touch with family.

Lana asks:What is the most difficult part of taking care of chickens?

Keeping their pen cleaned and keeping them entertained. Bored chickens are destructive to themselves and their eggs. Chickens aren't much harder than any other pet, provided you don't have too many of them. And you can play with them and make them into pets just like any cage bird. Except you can banish chickens to the coop when you're tired of them. :-)

Susannah asks: Would you prefer to live where it's hot or cold?

Somewhere hot. Oh wait, I already live there! I can't tolerate the cold. I can't do real extreme heat, like the Sahara, but Southern Cali isn't too bad.

Farm Girl asks: What sort of things are you looking forward to in 2012?

That depends on a lot of things. Holidays and birthdays, hanging out with family, canning time rolling around again. Beyond that, the future is uncertain so I have no plans.

Dreaming asks: What's for dinner?

Beef stroganoff! I only just realized that Hamburger Helper is stroganoff in a box. Except when you make it from scratch it has a sour cream sauce and stuff. So I'll give it a shot tonight and see how folks like it. The munchkins are hugely picky right now. I don't know how health-food people get their kids to eat anything fermented or whatever. If I make food that tastes slightly off, they turn up their noses.

Cold Cali

You know how I just posted last week about how warm it was?

Well, the weather changed. Now it's frigid. And since coldness is relative, I won't tell you the exact temperature because you'll laugh. We actually have rain on the forecast for this weekend. We need rain, because it's only physically possible to have rain here in the winter. You know how Arizona gets monsoons and Texas gets big thunderstorms in the summer? We get nothin'.

The oldest munchkin is almost reading. I've been making him do phonics drills on a game called Phonics Vowels on my ipod, and it's taught him how words fit together. He wants to read in the worst way. He sounds out signs and logos on passing trucks and comes up with words out of his head. I imagine this will lure me into a false sense of how easy it is to teach reading, then my other two won't read until they're 10.

Not much else has been going on. I've been educating myself on how to write for publication. Writing for publication means that you write your heart out and then edit your brains out, in that order. With small children around, I can't feasibly publish anything, but I can sure practice.

And then next year I'll start homeschooling in earnest. I'm sure my oldest munchkin will wind up like Ramses from the Amelia Peabody series. "It's obviouswy the tibia of a winocerwus."

Worried eyebrows

Look at those little worried eyebrows! This is one of those pictures taken by the munchkins as they ran amuck with my camera. I'm always amused to see what they come up with, because their pictures have such fun perspective.

Happy Monday! Martin Luther King has nothing to do with how dirty my house is and meals that must be cooked. Some people just don't get days off. :-)

Warm Cali

It's been about 65-70 degrees here in Cali lately. No rain since November. The ground is hard as rock and twice as powdery. It's disconcerting to be in the middle of winter and have all this spring-like weather that nonetheless still smells like winter.

This is how warm it's been. The door is open. The munchkins running around outside. The baby comfortable in bare feet, playing with a broom.

Chats in the new year

Since I need to blog, and I have no idea what in the world to write about, it's time for a meme! Thanks, Patrice!

What's your favorite kind of tree?

This question is a little ambiguous. If we're talking Christmas trees, then mine is blue spruce, because they have those nice, skinny branches to hang ornaments on.

For other kinds of trees, I like the various ash trees because they're nice to climb in. Oaks look neat, but they take too long to grow. I'm also growing fond of magnolias despite their mess, because of their semi-fuzzy leaves and those ginormous flowers.

How did you celebrate the New Year?

I told the kids they could stay up until midnight, if they could. The baby and 2 year old went to bed at 8. I played games with the 4 year old until 10, when I had to crash. He only made it to about 10:30. Morale drops when Mom's not around.

Do you have any family traditions for the New Year?

Not really. New Year is the no-show holiday after Christmas. Oh, wait, I guess we do have a tradition. No driving anywhere New Year's Even starting about noon. The drunk drivers are frightening.

I'm so glad I____________ in 2011.

Had kid #3!

Did you have a nickname as a child?

Not really. My self-given nickname of NetRaptor was how I went on the internet, though, and I'm still just as comfortable being called "NR" as I am my real name.

Here's a blurry picture of me that the kids snapped. As you can see, this is how I pass my time.