Bird Berries

Gemma and I had a serious chat about how these berries in our back yard are not for eating.  They're only for the birdies!

Now she tries to feed them to the birds.  :)

Funny girl!

And let's not forget about little sister . . . 

 

 Somebody found her fist a week or two ago!  I remember when Gemma did the same thing . . .

Some Comfort Food at its Essence

edited to add:  I just realized that I posted about pot-pie on pi day!  Completely a fun accident, haha!

It's technically still winter, right?  :)  In spite of my focus on simpler cooking lately, I've taken a few diversions.  One Friday recently, we had chicken pot pie!  It doesn't get much simpler in concept or taste, but it is a bit time-consuming to make, at least in comparison with a lot of the other meals we've been having lately.

Chicken pot pie is one of those dishes I grew up on but don't remember my mother using a recipe for, so I consulted my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, tweaked it quite a bit, and think I can truly call the results my own.  And they were very, very yummy!

One thing I did differently was to use evaporated milk for the roux, instead of the cream or half-and-half (which I didn't have on hand) or just plain milk which the recipe presented as options.  I have grown to LOVE evaporated milk!  It's like poor man's cream!  It's only 65 cents a can at our Aldi, tastes marvelous in tea.  It may not be fresh or organic . . . but it's yummy.  :)

Another thing I've grown to love is freshly ground black pepper!  A friend gave me a can of Watkins black pepper for our wedding shower which lasted us until a few months ago, at which point I decided to buy one of those self-peppercorn grinders at Aldi.  Such flavor!  Let's put pepper in everything!

Enough rambling . . . here's the recipe!

Ingredients:
1 large boneless chicken breast, uncooked
1 1/2 stalks sliced celery
2 big fat carrots (or a few smaller ones)
4 small red potatoes (I prefer organic so you don't have to peel them!)
1 cup frozen peas
2 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup evaporated milk
pastry for top crust

1.  In a small/medium saucepan, cover chicken breast with water and simmer on medium-low heat until cooked through.  Remove meat, reserving broth.  Chop meat into bite-size chunks.
2.  Peel carrot.  Chop carrot and potatoes into fine, even slices.  Cook until tender in broth reserved from the chicken breast.  Reserve the broth again to add to the roux later!  (You might be able to save time by cooking the chicken and vegetables together?)
3.  Finely chop celery and cook in a large saucepan (or Dutch oven!) in hot butter over medium heat until tender, about 4-5 minutes.  Stir in the flour, poultry seasoning, salt and black pepper, and cook roux, stirring constantly for 2 minutes or until it's nice and fragrant.  Add 1 1/2 cups of reserved broth and evaporated milk all at once.  Stir and cook until thickened and bubbly.  Stir in meat and vegetables and pour into your favorite earthenware baking dish.  :)
4.  At some point, make your pastry . . . I decided on a very basic crust of 1 cup flour and half a stick of butter, cut in with a pastry cutter.  Stir quickly with a fork, adding ice water in small amounts until the dough forms into a ball around the fork.  Gently roll out on a floured surface, fold it in half, and use it to top the meat mixture.  Flute the edges if you like and cut a few slits into the top with a sharp knife.
5.  Bake, uncovered, at 375F for 30 to 35 minutes, or until filling starts bubbling out the slits.  Let stand for 20 minutes before serving.


Wouldn't it be marvelous with a few other root vegetables added to the mix, like some parsnips or turnips?  Perhaps you're still enjoying this cooler weather for baking, or perhaps you're looking for a traditional dish to make for St. Patrick's Day?  I don't know that it's particularly Irish, but savory pies are certainly an old, old concept!

My naughty little kitten

It's been since November that I've knitted anything!  Gemma needed mittens, so I quickly knitted some up with the rest of the purple wool I had dyed for her hat last year.  She loved them!  Warms my heart!  And thankfully they were done in time to travel to New York for Thanksgiving.

We didn't have any snow then, but they traveled north with us again in January.  Gemma finally got introduced to sledding and snowman-making.  It thrills me that she likes playing in the snow!

Then we came home, and as has been our practice on recent Saturdays, we bundled up and walked part of the way down the nearby bike trail instead of biking.  It's not quite warm enough for biking, and Ruthie is too small for the trailer, anyway.  Well.  Somebody took off her mittens to play with leaves and other findings, and soon they were gone.  My beloved jogged back a little way, looking for them, and we retraced our entire path on the return trip, but they truly were gone.

I hope somebody picked them up who can use them, because now Gemma is wearing heavy socks on her hands in the cold.  ;)

And she did not get any pie that evening!  (But neither did the rest of us . . . lately dessert has been ice cream!)

Two Little Somebodies

One little somebody is two months old!

Our precious, smiling, cooing, congested little girl.  The pediatrician says that hopefully as she continues to grow, the stuffiness will go away.  She weighs 12 pounds, 3 ounces now and is 23.5 inches long!

And another little somebody sleeps in a big girl bed!  (Most of the time . . . )

Naptime is still a struggle, since Gemma realized that she can get up at will... But once John had casually mentioned to her that the new mattress would be her bed one day, and Baby Ruth would sleep in the crib, Gemma had her mind made up!  She always chooses her floor bed and points to the crib and says, "Baby Roof!"

One more photo . . . 

Nursing her baby . . . vertically, of course.  :)  "Eat, eat, eat!"

My Jethros

"Moses' father-in-law said to him, "The thing that you are doing is not good. You will surely wear out, both yourself and these people who are with you, for the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone." Exodus 18:17-18

All the family birth visits are over, and we've been on our own as a little family of four for a few weeks now.  It is tiring, but we are loving it!  We'd stocked up on some disposable newborn diapers for the early days, but I was excited to get my girls into cloth once again--and for the first time, in Ruth's case.  :)

It's a good thing that I enjoy laundry, because there is so much now!  It's funny how just one new little person can make that job so mountainous.  I love it, though--I love hanging the diapers out in the sunshine while Ruth sleeps in the Moby wrap and Gemma runs around the yard.  I love making pancakes on my new cast iron skillet, and having homemade muffins around to snack on.  I love sipping tea and reading to my girlies on the couch.  There are many, many things to treasure about this season.

My Mom and sister are wonderful.  Besides John, they're my best friends and favorite people to talk with on the phone.  Lately, though, they've both been giving me advice like Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, gave to him.  "Are you sure you're ready for cloth diapers?" and "if both babies are sleeping, why aren't you sleeping?"  

It's a little difficult to take Mom's advice very seriously.  She had two in cloth diapers, and didn't have a weekly "Thai night" to give her a break from cooking.  She had a baby with colic!  She had to iron Dad a shirt every day, while my husband stays home with me!  Somehow she kept her cookie jar stocked with homemade cookies.She also wore herself out . . . but not until she had three little ones.  

Surely, they're just saying these things because they love me, and that's what you're supposed to say to a mother of a newborn.

But, as our house got dirtier and our freezer stash of meals started dwindling, I started re-thinking some of my priorities.  I appreciate the financial and environmental aspects of cloth diapering, as well as putting my babies in fewer chemicals, but John has assured me more than once that he's willing to pay for disposable diapers.  And I'm not exactly blessing him by making muffins when they're almost exclusively for me.  Gemma likes them and he'll eat one out of courtesy, but I did not marry a muffin-man.  And, perhaps the time has come for simpler breakfasts while I spend more time cleaning the house, which does bless him.  

For a few weeks, I'm taking a break from social mediia and simplifying home life while endeavoring to get our priorities back in order.  In the grand scheme, it's more important for Gemma to see her mommy reading her Bible than baking, and certainly more important than scrolling through facebook!  



Thanks be to God for my Jethros . . . and for our little ones who make them necessary.  :)

(photos by Madeline Christoph Photography, artismad.com)