Good Deals (or Not)

Good morning! It is a lovely sunny day with a few clouds in the blue sky, a couple of inches of snow from yesterday and drips falling from the roof. Yesterday was a busy day around here.

I thought we had sisters for lunch so I made some Buffalo Chicken Soup. Then, because they weren’t arriving, I looked at my texts and discovered they’d sent me one indicating that they weren’t going to make it. Well, bummer! Their loss, I have to say.

Other than that, I made cranberry sauce, cranberry orange bread, cranberry salad, and regular bread. There were a lot of cranberries in the fridge that needed to be used or frozen. I froze lots and used six bags. There were a lot of oranges, too, and I used quite a few of them as well. For dinner we had artichokes with hollandaise sauce because, you can probably guess, we had some artichokes that needed to be used.

Daniel and his baby brother, Cedric.

The problem with buying fresh vegetables and fruits on discount is that they typically have no storage value and must be used as quickly as possible. While this is fine for some things, it is not always practical or the best practice because it often give you too much of something that has to be used and that isn’t always possible. Especially, for example, when the artichokes look like the ones Paul brought home three days ago. They needed to be used. They can’t be used the day he brings them home because everyone is in bed and I’m not about to start cooking at 9:00 at night. The next day I already had plans for meals and artichokes didn’t figure into them. That means that we ate them yesterday in spite of the fact that I wasn’t really in the mood for artichokes mainly because I didn’t want to cut the tips off and I really didn’t want to make hollandaise sauce because it takes so many eggs and so much butter. Still, I needed to or they would go to waste and that really wouldn’t do, either. Especially since he bought about six bags on discount (each bag usually has three or four in it) a few weeks ago and there just wasn’t time and/or I wasn’t in the mood. Some ended up as goat fodder but some went straight to compost because they had gotten buried in the refrigerator.

Other than hot chocolate, that is about what the day looked like. Other than school, of course.

Speaking of school, we were getting caught up with the work that didn’t get done last Friday because we took the day off and the boys were almost there. I am not sure how it happened, but Joseph ended up even more behind in math. Instead of just needing to do one extra lesson, he had one and a half this morning when we started. Currently he has to do one for today and one for yesterday.

Cedric and Seth. This is one of my favorite pictures of them.

This morning I thought I would make some hummus and thereby use some of the limes. That would have worked out better if I’d made sure the garbanzo beans were fully cooked before dumping them in the processor. I’ve got more that I’ll cook when I’m done here and then I’ll make more.

Also this morning, Seth was carrying on about how he is stupid. Why? Because everyone tells him he is. I’m going to have to pay attention to this because I haven’t noticed everyone telling him that he is. And he clearly demonstrated that he isn’t with his spelling test today: he got them all right. And the only reason he doesn’t get all of his math right all the time is because he is in too much of a hurry. So, stupid? Not by a long shot; not my boy.

Speaking of my boys, yesterday while I was washing some of the dishes gotten dirty, I was thinking that Cedric could really use Daniel right now. Cedric has so many questions and he doesn’t have his big brother here to ask. My thoughts were that Daniel should be here for him. Of course, he can’t be, not physically, and, as Paul is fond of saying, “That hurts.” However, Daniel is not here physically because he is not, for some reason, supposed to be. What does this mean? I think it means that although Daniel isn’t here right now, that he carefully weighed the pros and cons of leaving and staying and the pros for leaving outweighed the pros for staying. I think it means that Cedric will be okay. He might have some rough spots that a big brother would be able to help out but ultimately, he’ll be okay.

And that is all for now. Have a fantastic day!