Thanks Be to God

My father's procedure went very well yesterday, and by late afternoon he was at home, with a normal heart rate.

I am so grateful!

I'll be going up to see Dad tomorrow.

I Can't Believe It's Yogurt!

I did it!!!!

Homemade yogurt in my crockpot!

Of course, all did not go perfectly. I made a mess and ended up with less yogurt because of it.  However, the final product came out really well.  What I ended up with after the incubation time had the consistency of  commercial "low-fat" yogurt, and of course I wanted something a bit thicker, so I took a portion of what I made and let it sit on a layer of paper towels in a strainer over a bowl for several more hours in the fridge, and this is what I got:

Sorry about the sloppy mess on the side of the cup. I was so excited about the thick, creamy yogurt I didn't pay much attention to the details of my photo!

Yogurt thick enough to hold up the spoon! And it tastes just the way I wanted it to taste.  It is not too tart, and it has a wonderful creamy texture.  It still isn't quite like a commercial brand as far as thickness, but I think it's great for my first attempt.

I will definitely be making more yogurt.

In the meantime...

While I keep calm and carry on and pray for Daddy, I'm trying my hand at making yogurt this afternoon.

I mentioned before that I really love full-fat, Greek-style yogurt and cannot find it in our local stores. By local, I mean within a 60 mile radius from my home.  Every store I visit carries several brands of plain yogurt, but they are all of the "non-fat" variety.  I did find a couple of 7oz containers of  2% plain yogurt yesterday. (I had to travel to the bigger-than-my-town-but-still-pretty-small town about 45 minutes away for an appointment with the optometrist. He told me that my eyes are healthy, but I'll be needing bifocals probably by next year. Just call me Gramma.)

So, since I'm mad as heck, and I'm not going to take it anymore with the non-fat yogurt, I did a Google search and found this:  You Can Make Yogurt in Your CrockPot! from Stephanie O'Dea.  I found other methods, but this one seemed to be the easiest. I saw plenty of recipes for yogurt which involved complex kitchen equipment like a double boiler and a candy thermometer or strange items like a foam cooler and a heating pad.  Not for me, thank you.  This way all I have to do is pour the milk in the crockpot and not forget it's there.  Well, there are a couple of other steps, as you can see when you click on the link above.

In other news: I found some Darjeeling tea on my shopping trip yesterday! Finding my favorite kinds of tea is almost as difficult as finding my favorite kind of yogurt.  I usually have no trouble finding Earl Grey, which I love, but Darjeeling is harder to find on a regular basis, and I have given up on ever finding jasmine green tea anywhere outside of the Big City.

I also found out recently that drinking black tea actually helps reduce the stress hormone cortisol, unlike coffee which can elevate cortisol levels.  I think it's time for a fresh pot of tea right now.

Prayers Please...

I got a call last night around 9 from my step-mother, who told me that my father is in the hospital with an abnormal heart rhythm. I think the correct term is "atrial flutter."  

His heart rate had been super high all weekend, and she finally convinced him to get to the doctor yesterday. They put him in the hospital yesterday afternoon.

Daddy is having a procedure this afternoon to regulate the heart rhythm and he should be able to go home afterward. 

I'm trying to keep calm and carry on.  

 

Back to School, Back to Blogging

Well, it's that time of year again. The Boy started back to school (8th grade already!) on August 4th, which I thought was waaaayyyy too early. The Boy didn't seem to have any difficulty getting back into the routine and he is happy with his teachers, so that's going well enough.  The Professor starts teaching again on Thursday.  Things have already perked up around here, though. The college kids who live in the dorms on campus moved in over the weekend and they are busy these next few days doing fun college stuff.  I always love this time of year when the college kids move back to campus and our little community bursts with extra excitement and energy.

With The Boy and The Professor back at the academic grind, it's time for me to get some of my own projects going again.

Here are a few things I'm working on:

The Boy and I will be getting back to studying German. We've been very slack all summer and I am ready to finish this program.

I'm working my way through a math curriculum, which will be another post.

I need to rearrange the living room which will involve taking down and rearranging pictures and art. The arrival of The Piano has thrown that room out of kilter. I'm really dreading this job, so it probably will be two or three years before I get to it.

The Afghan I started last fall is languishing half finished in a corner of my bedroom and I really need to get that project done.

I'm going to start doing more cooking "from scratch." Actually, I already do a fair amount of cooking from scratch, but there are a few things that I have been purchasing that I really want to start making myself. For instance, bread, which I don't eat, but The Boy and The Professor eat it every day.  Back in the summer, before we left for our two week trip to Arizona, we had a half a loaf of bread (Nature's Own 100% Whole Wheat) that I meant to put in the freezer.  There's always something that gets forgotten, and I forgot to stick that bread in the freezer.  We were gone for two weeks, the house was pretty warm and humid, and when I got back and found that bread I was shocked to discover that it looked exactly the same. There was no mold. Not even a hint of that "moldy" smell. It was the George Hamilton of bread.  Uh, call me crazy, but that just ain't natural.

The other two things I plan to start making for myself are mayonnaise and yogurt.  Mayo, because I really don't like the use of soybean oil that is the basis for all commercial brands.  Yogurt, because I like full-fat, plain, Greek-style yogurt and I'm sick and tired of only finding no-fat, plain yogurt where I do my grocery shopping.

We finished the last container of  "store-bought" mayo last week, and so I made my first batch of homemade mayonnaise for our BLT salads for lunch today.  I found the recipe in my handy-dandy 1948 edition of The Boston Cooking School Cookbook, by Fannie Merritt Farmer. I made the mayo with my little hand blender while the bacon was cooking in the microwave. It did not take long at all, and although it didn't taste like Hellman's, The Professor gave it a "thumbs-up."  According to my Nourishing Traditions book, my homemade mayo should keep in the fridge for 2 weeks.

Here's a random picture:

Beethoven with Legos
Not even The Piano is spared from the Lego take-over of my home.

Family Game Fest

  Earlier this week, The Boy came up with the idea that for the ten nights before his birthday next week we should play a different game every night.  He drew up a calendar, with randomly selected games to play each night and posted it on the fridge.  We began Monday night with Apples to Apples. Tuesday night it was In a Pickle.  Our family game festival will end next Wednesday, the night before his birthday.  

Last night it was:

We were only able to play for about an hour this time. Usually our SuperScrabble games go on for much, much longer.  I still won, though. Yay me!  I got to actually play the "Q."  Usually I get stuck with it at the end of the game.

Tonight we'll be playing Dutch Blitz, which is another really fun game. It's basically the card game I learned as "Nertz" but with a special deck of cards.  

I can't remember all the games in the line-up, but I know Yahtzee and Liverpool Rummy are on the list somewhere.  Liverpool Rummy is a game one of my cousins taught us all to play many years ago.  I have memories of playing that game around my Aunt Shirley's kitchen table, with my mother and various relations from our extended family.  No holiday would be complete without a game of Liverpool Rummy.  I miss those days.

Oh, I need to end this post now. I've got to get ready for my appointment.  I'm keeping the Ravages of Time away today....

Play Us a Song, Piano Man...

A few weeks ago I walked in to pay a bill at our local gas company, and sitting in the lobby was a lovely little Kimball piano.  We've been looking for a piano for The Boy for a while, and it's been difficult to locate a nice used piano at a price that wouldn't make The Professor cringe and in a location that is not too far away, because moving a piano is no small feat.

So, lo and behold, there was this piano. I wondered why it was in the lobby of the gas company office.  The couple who own the gas company also attend our church, so I told Mrs. Gas Company one Sunday after church that I had noticed the piano in the lobby and asked if she'd be interested in selling it.  She told me that a lady from Memphis had been in our town to clean out her mother's house and had come by to see Mrs. G.C. at the office on her way back home. Memphis Lady had the piano on a trailer behind a truck and when Mrs. G.C. saw it, she offered to buy it from her.  They moved it in to the lobby and there it sat. She didn't really have a place in her house for a piano.  When I asked her about selling it, she quoted me a ridiculously low price and I almost fainted.  It was a price that would not make The Professor have hang-bangs, plus we would only have to move it a few blocks to our house.

The Professor worked out the details for getting the piano moved and he and the helpful piano moving volunteers from the college maintenance staff got it over here this morning.

I am going to have to re-arrange my living room furniture now,

 but I'm so happy The Boy has a real piano to play.   Thanks be to God!

One of these days I'll get around to posting about the second half of our vacation, my latest project around the house, and what I have been reading this summer.