HJ Waxing Moon

Why was menu planning so hard this week? We were struggling to come up with something suitable for Saturday night, but kept coming up with things that were not too difficult but a higher difficulty than we wanted for a late night dinner. Which now that I say that, I'm thinking of making some sort of difficulty level for menu items. Fridays & Saturdays have the potential to be a late night, so we like to have dinner in the crockpot or at least fully prepped so all we have to do is heat it or even just walk in the door and eat. Monday & Tuesday nights we have to work around whatever Mr. Moon's evening schedule is, plus knowing there's an early morning ahead so we don't want to risk dinner being too late. On-Call shifts we basically treat as if he's working, as far as dinner prep goes. So besides just working with a "Weeknight vs. Weekend" kind of difficulty level, it's "I don't want this to take more than ten minutes" and "...

It's been... a minute or two since I last posted. As I was telling my family on vacation, there's a lot going on, but none of it is terribly exciting to talk about and even less exciting to hear about. I got into coloring in like actual legit adult coloring books. It's a lot of fun, and definitely some nice stress relief. After June's failed attempt at the candida cleanse, we left it until after our vacation. And then I decided I needed a few days to recuperate before risking too much shock to my body. So, we're getting back at it tomorrow. In reviewing the rules, I discovered that it's a little less restrictive than I'd previously understood it to be. As in, it's not NO NUTS, it's no peanuts, cashews or pistachios but almonds, pecans, and walnuts are fine. It's not quite NO GRAINS, buckwheat and quinoa are still okay in moderation. That makes it quite a bit easier to manage, all things considered. Though what I did discover is that the r...

After our big food prep day, we just couldn't bring ourselves to set everything back where it had been. SOMETHING needed to be done to get some more functional pantry space and get my huge, honking microwave off the counter! I searched online for some microwave carts to replace one of our pantry shelving units, and didn't like what I saw. Baker's racks, however, might give us the depth I was searching for to get the microwave off the counter, and at a MUCH better price. But sometimes you just get that feeling, and you know what you've got to do. Out the door on a whim to hit the thrift stores. There's one right nearby, but the furniture section is usually a little lackluster. We enjoy going over to a nicer side of town with two major thrift stores, and besides, I just had the feeling that we shouldn't stop nearby first. We found something we thought we could jerry-rig to work, and went to the next one. Still nothing quite right, and we'd managed to tal...

The rule in our house has always been, "Those who don't believe in Santa don't receive gifts for Christmas." So it stands that at 30 & 33, my brother and I have never uttered words that might indicate Mr. Claus might possibly be imaginary, and certainly not in front of our mother. Magic, bringing gifts for parents to wrap (those overworked elves, you know), possibly non-corporeal, maybe even formerly-a-person but currently just an idea. But not real? NEVER. Sometime when I was in middle school and my brother was in high school, my mom had a kind of genius idea. Instead of taking the time to write tags on gifts for us from Santa, she grabbed (what I'm assuming is like 12 rolls) some wrapping paper that clearly related to each of our interests. In our case, it was the Tazmanian Devil & Winnie the Pooh. We each got a couple gifts from our parents and some years even each other, but all Santa gifts to a person were in their own wrapping paper with no tags. I...

I'm proud to announce the birth of my nibling ! Of course for his personal privacy we will not be posting his name, but in honor of his chubby cheeks, let's call him... Gus Gus.  This is my bio-brother's first kid, but the bestie I adopted as a sister about 18 years ago has three already so I'm old hat at the Aunt thing: Arrive at nap time with noisy toys, chat with Mom until the screaming hurts my ears, run away and let the parents pick up the pieces. That's about it, right? I'm unsurprised at how homesick this has made me. One of my biggest fears with moving far away from my hometown has been proven to be valid. It took me so long to do so because I knew it would mean missing major milestones in my families' lives, and every time it's happened so far has felt like a kick in the stomach for me. On the up side, technology has been progressing such that I now have multiple ways of video chatting with my family members back home. I've Skyped...

As I started this blog originally when moving down to live with and care for Mr. Moon's parents, even though I've avoided detailing his struggle with cancer it seems only right that I should post the sad news we received yesterday. Mr. Moon's father has passed on. It certainly wasn't sudden, but there were sudden drastic declines in health along the way, almost like a flight of stairs. His children, wife, friends and family had lots of time with him before the final days were clearly upon us, and then those closest to him were given the chance to stop in and say their goodbyes. For Mr. Moon and I, our friends have been fantastically supportive, and for that we will always be grateful. It is a comfort to know that he was not in much pain until the very end, and that modern medical care was able to ease that pain for the most part so he never suffered. Not all terminally ill patients are afforded such an easy transition, and everyone who loved him is not taking that fac...

After we moved, my health took a sharp downward turn. There were a lot of changes that happened all at once, and so it was difficult to pinpoint any one particular cause. I thought most of it was just pushing myself too hard in the moving process, or maybe the fact that we had been in survival mode for so long and now I was allowed to give myself some more time for self-care. But that wasn't it. Shortly after we moved into our apartment, we noticed that a couple of our food items were freeze burned. We put it down to the old freezer which was not well-maintained, or some abuse during moving, and ignored it. Then we discovered brand-new food items were getting freezer burned. We checked to see if a vent was getting blocked, and checked for excess ice crystals. I checked the seal on the gasket on the door. We adjusted the temperature gauge with no change in temps or results. As time went on, I started noticing a metallic, almost anti-freeze flavor going on in our food. Everything b...

After almost a year of struggling with a sub-par computer, I've finally gotten it replaced (under warranty no less) and have one that actually identifies every letter as I type it instead of sometimes deciding to recognize only half of them. Hopefully this will make blogging a bit less frustrating! We took the week off from menu planning this week. We had a friend in the hospital, and caring for the group was our #1 priority. The friend is home and recovering now, and we're hoping to get over to visit now that she's almost even awake more often than not. It also means we've let the daily checklists go by the wayside, and that's been a bit more of an issue. Evening marathons of Doctor Who are always so much more appealing than catching up on dishes, am I right? Mr. Moon caught up on the dishes today, and tomorrow is a new week. One thing I am proud of is that we kept up on tidying regularly. The pile of dishes next to and in the sink was a bit more than I can rea...

I am going to start off with mom's recipe as-is, so if you don't want to go any further you don't have to. But I do have some tips, tricks, and upgrades I've done to make it a little cheaper, and a little healthier along the way. But we'll get to that. Every year on Halloween, we had chili for dinner. It was a great way to have a nice warm dinner on for whoever wanted to eat it, whenever they were ready. Last minute costume adjustments, homework, etc. before trick or treating, plus that and the candy sorting... it made for a busy evening! So having chili in the crockpot was great, because we could have a bowl before we went out (thus ensuring no cranky, hungry kids being too tempted to dig into too much candy before we got home!) and usually another when we got home to warm up. We also figured out the best way to eliminate the gassiness usually associated with chili: Start this recipe before 10am! By dinner around 5 or 6, most of the complex starches that cause...

Funny garden update: We have a grey squirrel that invaded my sage today, and I scared Mr. Moon by opening the door and yelling, "EXCUSE YOU!" at it (he thought someone was invading the house!). I had seen some digging marks before, but hadn't had the motivation or time to deal with it whenever I noticed on my way in or out the door. I mixed up a little sriracha and garlic and water, dumped that around the plants, and am hoping that will keep the little bugger from digging up my sage again. There is plenty of dirt around here, he doesn't need to go digging in mine! We are so far REALLY enjoying this twice a week menu planning. Much easier to account for perishable foods this way! Wednesday Stuffed Peppers w/ gorgonzola & bacon Sides: Sautéed summer squash, steamed green beans Day off, lots of unpacking today! We kept pushing off the stuffed peppers because when we were thinking about dinner it was too late to take two hours to make it. So we roasted ...

Once upon a time, I decided I wanted to make Gumbo. I'd never had gumbo before, and I wanted to try it. So I looked up about 100 different recipes, and figured out what they all had in common: Roux, especially a peanut butter roux Mirepoix Stock, mostly chicken stock Spice Andouille sausage (in most of them) Shrimp (also in most but not all) Well, I had no idea what half of that was. So I started asking questions.  What is a roux? It's a thickening agent for sauces and soups. It's a mixture of equal parts fat and flour. You melt the fat and mix the flour into it slowly so as to avoid lumps. Works best if you sift the flour directly into the fat. You can use pretty much any fat, but lard, bacon grease and butter are preferred. All purpose flour is best, but gluten-free websites have other suggestions with good results and you can use whole wheat for some things but you may have to adjust your proportions and thickening expectancy. It is great for anything you ...

Mr. Moon and I had a fabulous time on vacation! We got to see four beautiful souls get married, reacquainted with some old friends, met some new ones, exhausted ourselves, ate too much junk food, and all-in-all had a marvelous time. Before moving down here, we spent two months driving back and forth, 3 hours at a trip, multiple times a week. It was a wonderful time to reconnect, discuss our goals and dreams and giggles and hopes and sorrows and concerns about anything that came to mind. It was helpful, because it gave us both time to process and strategize. Even the next two months we had plenty of time in the car together, with his job a half-hour or more commute each way. Lately our car trips have become shorter as have our tempers. Our time with just the two of us for company and no chores to be doing has become less frequent, and less time on each trip. I noticed it slipping away and thought it was a blessing, more time to Be Productive. But productivity is not the end-all, be-...

Pulled together Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, and a little from my emergency fund to replace my dying (dead) computer. Managed to get it working just long enough to migrate the data to the new one, but it keeps randomly shutting down on me and not wanting to restart. Poor laptop, it served me well. It seems there are times of the year that incur extra expenses. Winter holidays are notorious for their gift-giving traditions, the new year has incidentals like new planners and the expenses for starting any new habits and hobbies that come with the new year's resolutions. Sometimes it seems like these expenses should even up throughout the year, but they just never seem to. Like car insurance, I find it much easier to break the larger known expenses into smaller amounts that can be saved for throughout the year. Things like planners, though, are small enough they can come out of the "incidentals" fund for just such an occasion. I like to wait until January to pick up p...

My mom is a list-maker. She doesn't have any special paper that she uses, although more often than not her lists could be found on the backs of used envelopes. She makes lists for everything from a quick trip to the grocery store, to a 3-week cross-country vacation. Clothing to take, food to prepare, things to do before she leaves... These lists don't have any special place they live, either, we'd just find them lying around randomly and have no idea whether they were being used currently or not. But she always knew. So when I say I'm a list-maker, you know I come by it honestly. I have gone through two notebooks that were specifically set aside for packing lists, and countless memo pads, blank sheets out of college notebooks, and yes even the backs of used envelopes. I definitely prefer the method I've perfected, using memo pads for grocery lists and a notebook in my planner for prepping for trips, everything from an overnight out of town to the three-week bender...

This is my first year celebrating Chalica. I'd heard about it in 2008 in its second year, and been "meaning to" "get around to" celebrating since. When I first heard of it, I was so excited that my faith now has a holiday we can call our own! I know a lot of my lackluster commitment has been related to this crisis of faith through which I've been suffering for years. I wasn't even sure if I wanted to include anything about my faith here in this blog, because I don't want to push anyone away. I decided that I'd rather dip into this a little bit occasionally than try to ignore it altogether. My faith is so much a part of why I started down the path of urban homesteading that it feels wrong not to honor that place in the process. But that's a topic for another day. Today I want to celebrate, in all its imperfection, my first year celebrating Chalica.  I'd intended to ease myself into it. I put on some Celtic music, because it's...

I love Pinterest. And unlike what seems to be the internet trope, I do actually create a good number of the things I see on there. I've used it as inspiration for at least 15 of menu items in the last three months, if nothing else, and discovered some awesome cleaning tricks along the way. Even some natural home remedies for illness, which I'll be discussing at a later point. One of the most recent things that I got to use from Pinterest was a low-carb egg-in-a-basket/nest recipe, using a bell pepper ring instead of bread. I showed Mr. Moon, he made it for me for breakfast, and presented me with this: Saying as he did so, "Believe it or not I am NOT the embodiment of Pinterest, and it's not as pretty as the one you showed me." Well it was delicious. But I'm going to share a recipe with a few tweaks of my own to make it even better (and prettier!) than Mr. Moon's first attempt, which I must say was VERY well done from just a picture with no directio...

They say life is all about the little things. The small decisions we make every day that suddenly become a lifestyle. The little looks, kisses, the seemingly meaningless conversations that add up to a relationship. The choices and actions we make every day that define who we are. But then they say "don't sweat the small stuff." They say that your kids will remember you spending time with them, not how messy the house looked. That your partner remembers the big gestures more than the small ones. That where you live, how you live, what you wear doesn't define who you are. These theories are not simply incompatible, they're directly contradictory. Sometimes I get stuck thinking I can strike a balance in the middle. That I can somehow maximize the daily small stuff and balance that with the grand life gestures. Then I think I should choose one or the other as a philosophy and stick to it. It's like trying to balance the lessons from the past, hopes for the fut...

Thursday night I didn't end up eating or even drinking anything for dinner. Nothing much to say about it, really. It was a delicious home-cooked meal of nothing. Friday, however, was a different story. The "dinner" menu had pineapple salmon and pasta roni on it. For all intents and purposes, that was lunch, and I didn't even eat it. I had a little pasta roni with green beans, but wasn't much interested in the pineapple salmon even if I'd had an appetite. Later in the evening, Mr. Moon and I had a friend come over for movie night, and she came bearing tacos! Yum, tacos. There's a delightful tex-mex restaurant in Seattle's University District that is open 24 hours, and Mr. Moon and I would eat there sometimes if he got off work late, since it was on the way home. I have many a fond memory of picking him up from work, stopping by Memo's for take-out, going home, putting the food on plates, and watching an episode of TV to wind down before bed. Whe...

I've always wanted to like omelets. Quiche too, really. Veggies, cheese, eggs, maybe some chunks of meat... what's not to love? I spent two years when I went low-carb trying every omelet, frittata, quiche, and scramble recipe I could find. Nothing helped, nothing was good, even when other people were raving about the best of its kind they'd ever had. Ultimately, I gave up. I looked at my quiche one day and I just told it, I don't like you. I'm sorry, I want to, but this is becoming a waste of good food. I think it's that I'm not a big fan of scrambled eggs, though I love them when they're that liquid pasteurized egg stuff that restaurants use, and cooked gently so they're still just a little runny, but the runny-ness will have settled out in the carry-over cooking before my plate hits the table. I wish I could tell you this entry is some sort of epiphany and now I love these things. It really isn't. The only epiphany I had was that I could or...