Things Fall Apart

I don't remember any of the plot of the book Things Fall Apart from high school English class, but the theme of entropy sure seems applicable to our household this week.

Everything in the bathroom is broken.  The Friday before last, just in time for guests to arrive on Saturday, our washer/dryer stopped drying clothes.  We've had the repair guy out to look at it twice and it's still broken!  He insists that nothing seems to be wrong with it.  Argghh.  This morning I set up the washer drain hose to drain into the bathtub to try to fix the problem.  I get a knock on my door just before lunch from my downstairs neighbor saying he has water leaking down the walls in his bathroom.  The drain hose had fallen out of the tub and there was water all over the bathroom floor.  Now every bath towel in the house is wet and on the floor.  I assured him that it was a one-time flooding event, unlike Thursday last week when he told me that he had had water leaking through his bathroom ceiling for the past few days.  Apparently all the bits of grout that have been chipping off from around the ancient bathroom tiles in our shower were the only things keeping water from seeping into the wall.  Then about two hours later the built-in washcloth holder in the shower came out completely, leaving a big gaping hole.  I guess the grout around it was in worse shape than I thought.  Oh, and one of the bathroom towel racks was broken from Andrew hanging on it, but we've fixed that now.

Another fitting title from literature for the past week could be "water, water everywhere."  Yesterday I was in our bedroom folding laundry and I noticed water dripping down the front of the window air conditioner.  I thought maybe rain was leaking in between the window and the a/c unit, which we just installed last week.  No, the rain was actually leaking in the cracks around the wooden window frame at the very top of the window.  Outside, water was pouring down between the rain gutter and the side of the house.  I looked down, and saw that there was also water literally streaming in from the electrical outlet in the wall.  Who knew you could have flooding in a second story apartment?  I had to laugh because a few months ago the shelves we had mounted on that wall came crashing down in the middle of the night.  Paul felt the plaster in the big holes that were left in the wall and he said he could tell the plaster was wet.  It had been raining hard and the rain gutter was broken but the handyman hadn't come to fix it yet.  When the handyman finally came and I told him that we thought the shelves came down because water soaked through the wall he said that couldn't be the case because if there was enough water in the wall to soften the plaster like that then there would also be water coming in through the electrical outlet box.  Well, now there is.  Thankfully we didn't re-mount those shelves onto that wall.  When the handyman came to look at it yesterday, he said the problem may be caused by a gap that's developed between the chimney and the house.  Oh, I'm so glad I don't own this house!

The cherry on top was when Paul's x-box 360 suddenly got the "red ring of death" (aka broke) Monday night after he had taken a day off work and spent the whole day building a contraption to enable him to play a driving game while sitting in the nintendo chair like it's the driving seat of a car.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Is that enough complaining?  I think I'm done now.      

Last Weekend--Out of Town Guest and Trip to the Cannery

Last weekend was super busy for us.  Paul's CMU grad-school friend, Tobias, stayed with us for the weekend. He is currently working on a PhD in Germany, but he came to New York for a conference and then stayed at our place for a few nights.  He, Paul, and two other CMU friends, Varnali and Kyung-min, Andrew, and I met up at Google in Manhattan Friday evening to check the place out and go out to dinner.  Here we are in front of a mural inside the Google building.

Saturday afternoon I was able to steal away without Andrew to go to the church's cannery with a couple of friends from church, Elyse and Maile.  It was about a 45-minute drive.  We carpooled there, and had a great time talking about food storage, cooking dry beans, making yogurt, baking bread, couponing--basically a lot of the things I love to talk about that Paul was probably happy not to have to talk about.  

I was so, so excited to go to a cannery for the first time!  I didn't get a ton of stuff this time; I'll definitely go back in a few months or so as time and budget allow.  I got all #10 cans of food, which stay good for 30 years, though I'll use them up in way less than one.  I got 5 cans of hard white wheat (it's whole wheat berries, just lighter in color and taste than your typical red wheat), 2 cans each of black beans and pinto beans, and 3 cans of quick oats.  I ran out of flour this week, so I took some of my newly-purchased wheat over to Elyse's on Thursday morning and she ground a whole can for me with her grain mill.  (I need to get me one of those!)  I've also already cracked open a can of pinto beans to make home-made refried beans (my new obsession) and a can of the oats.  Yeah, I'll definitely be going back to the cannery in a few months.  

I insisted on getting photos of us in action.  The machine we're operating is the can sealer.  It attaches the bottom of the #10 can.  This machine is the only part of the process that you can't do at home.  Dry canning was really extremely simple.  You just pour the food into the can, put in an oxygen-absorption packet, put the lid on, and pull the lever on the can sealer machine.  

Maile, with her daughter helping

Elyse

Me

Paul actually ended up having Andrew with him the whole day--what a guy.  He and the other CMUers went into the city in the afternoon/evening to go to a CMU meet-up and then out to dinner, and Paul took Andrew with him.  It was a good thing, too, because I had a photo book deal I bought on Gaggle of Chicks (like Groupon for things women are interested in) that I bought a few months ago that expired on Sunday.  I decided to do a photo book of 2010.  Putting together a photo book of an entire year is a lot of work!  I worked away at it Saturday afternoon/evening, until I remembered that I had agreed to substitute teach a class at church the next day--Yikes!  So I worked feverishly on my lesson plan, and then went back to the photo book.  I was able to finish the book Sunday and ordered it in time.  Then I was surprised to receive it on Friday! Anyone who visits us can see it.  I definitely think that online-ordered photo books are the way for me to go.  I just can't/don't scrapbook.  The best thing is that if you just wait until you hear of an amazing deal on a photo book, you can get them for really great prices.  The first one I did I paid for shipping only.  This last one I got for shipping cost plus $1/page for the additional 12 pages I added, which were totally worth it. 

Book Worm

Andrew's new favorite way to fall asleep:  while reading in bed

My Matching Men

My guys were just so cute yesterday in their matching church outfits!  (Too bad they had to look into the sun during the picture).  P.S. You can tell we were running late because we were getting in the car to drive to church.  We usually walk.

My Papa Jim

While my parents were here visiting in May, Andrew and I took a road trip with them down to Newport News, VA to visit my mom's dad.  I call him "Papa Jim" because he felt like he was too young to be called "Grandpa" when his first grandchild was born.  He is now 85.  He lives in the memory care wing of a really nice nursing home, but the one person he never forgets is his one great-grandson, Andrew.  He adores Andrew.  During our whole visit he kept saying "I like that little boy" and "He's a smart little boy".  

Here's our four-generations photo

Andrew loved playing with Papa Jim's canes

Andrew and Papa Jim had some time to hang out on the back patio and roll a tennis ball around.

When you're in Virginia, you have to do some kind of historical sight-seeing.  We went to Fort Monroe, where Jefferson Davis, the president of the confederacy, was imprisoned for two years after the Civil War. 

Andrew and my dad checking out a big old cannon in the fort

I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to photograph my child sleeping.  We shared a room with my parents, but Andrew was still able to sleep really well on a twin-sized inflatable mattress we brought.  I was so relieved that it worked!  Sleeping child = happy mom.

Andrew takes in the sunset over the water

This was Andrew's first time at the beach since he was a baby.  He wouldn't go into the water, but eventually came up with a game of picking up rocks or handfuls of sand and throwing them into the water, then running away from the waves.  He finally got caught by a wave and got soaked, but was a good sport about it.  Here he is with my mom looking at the water.

My parents put together a world map with pins showing many of the places Papa Jim has been in his life.  As a retired captain in the Navy, he's been to a lot of places!  He and my Grandma Olive also took up traveling as a hobby once he was retired and they were empty-nesters.

Andrew had fun playing with Papa Jim in his room while we worked on the map project.  

Andrew discovered Papa Jim's clip-on tie collection (you can see it draped over the back of his couch in the background).  Despite being 85 and living in a place where all the other old people walk around in sweats all day, my Papa Jim wears trousers, a button-down shirt, and a tie every day.  When he goes outside he always wears a hat (he calls it his "chapeau").  What Not To Wear would be proud.

I couldn't help taking another sleeping-Andrew photo.  This was the last day of our trip, right before we headed home.  He was so tired that he fell asleep without the car even running.  We were parked at the gas station and I was talking on the phone.  One minute he says "hi" to Paul on the phone, the next minute I look back and see this:

The Natural State of My Kitchen

(Yes, our bathroom is directly off the kitchen--lovely, I know)

Here it is:  the natural state of my kitchen.  This is about what the kitchen looked like the last time the missionaries arrived for dinner at our house, only that evening there were several full (reusable) grocery bags on the floor and at least one Andrew sock lying around.  I reached an all-time low that night by not even having dinner started by the time the missionaries got to our house!  Yikes!  The missionaries here are really cool, though, and I think I made it up to them by feeding them some pretty tasting hamburgers and then ice cream cones for dessert.

What to do if you over-cook your dry beans

First, let me write that my parents left Wednesday after visiting for a week and a half, and we had a great and busy time.  I have so many photos to post and blog about that I can't even begin to do it, so instead I'll post about other random stuff.  Sound like a plan?

So, what do you do if you over-cook a whole pound of dry beans because you foolishly follow the directions on the package?  You can make the following recipes.  Both turned out really great.  I used kidney beans for both of them, though one recipe calls for black beans and other for pinto.  I don't think it really matters what kind of beans you use.  I used my food processor (thanks, Bonnie!) to mash the beans for both recipes.

This first recipe can be found at http://www.naturallyknockedup.com/healthy-grain-free-brownies/  Pay no attention to the name of the blog.  I think I found this recipe doing a google search for homemade larabars months ago.

These are not as sweet as your typical brownie, but very moist and delicious.  I added the optional walnuts, but I think I'll leave them out next time because the texture was kind of weird since the brownies are so soft and moist and the walnuts are so hard.

Healthy Grain Free Brownies

2 cups black beans (or 1 can of no salt added)

3 lightly beaten eggs

1/3 cup melted coconut oil (or melted butter)

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup honey (or other equivalent sweetener) 

1/2 cup chopped up bittersweet chocolate (or semi-sweet chips if you don’t mind the added refined sugar in them)

1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts -optional

Making these could NOT be simpler. Preheat oven to 350°. Grease an 8×8 pan. Toss all but the final 2 ingredients (the chopped up chocolate and walnuts) into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Fold in the chopped chocolate and walnuts. Pour into the pan and bake for about 30 minutes.

This recipe is one I acquired years ago at a Relief Society meeting about food storage.  

Andrew devoured this stuff.  

Spiced Bean Cake

¼ cup butter or margarine

2 eggs

2 cups mashed, cooked pinto beans

1 cup flour

¼ tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

½ tsp cloves

2 cups diced apples

¾ cup raisins

¼ cup chopped nuts

1 ½ tsp vanilla

(optional-4 Tbsp cocoa if chocolate cake is desired)

Cream butter or margarine with eggs. Blend in beans. Sift together dry ingredients and add to creamed mixture, blending well. Fold in apples, raisins, nuts, and vanilla. Pour into greased 9x13 inch pan. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes, or until cake tests done.

This recipe is a high-protein snack. You can substitute 1 cup of applesauce for the diced apples and butter.