Red Beans and Rice

One big bonus to having an Easter ham is the post Easter meals of New Orleans style red beans and rice! Mmm Mmm. It is simmering on my stove right now.

I got it started last night by soaking the kidney beans overnight in water. This morning I added some ham I could cut off the bone, celery, onion, garlic, thyme and bay leaves. Then I put the rest of the ham in a stock pot to simmer and soften so I could remove the meat from the bones. When the kids and I got home from an appointment the whole house smelled so good!

While the kids lunched I let the ham cool, and started chilling the liquid from the stew pot. It will be de-fatted and frozen for soup. Then the rest of the ham went into the beans and vegetable mixture with a little bit of Tabasco sauce.The meat and beans will simmer all afternoon. Just before supper time I'll make some rice. I serve the meal in soup bowls over white rice.

Skillets, Pans and Wooden Spoons

I don't ever remember my mom seasoning her wooden kitchen utensils, our cast iron skillet, or in later years, any teflon-coated saute pans.

How are these to be seasoned?
I recently read the instructions that came with a hand-me-down cast iron wok. They talked about the method but left out the detail of what kind of oil to use. Perhaps it originally came with some oil, the way high-end purses sometimes come with a moisturizer to rub into the leather. (Don't ask about my low-end worn and peeling genuine vinyl purse!)

Last time I got new teflon saute pans the slip of paper inside instructed me to season it occasionally with oil too.

My wooden spoons don't especially need it. I think the business ends of the spoons get enough oils simply from being well used. My kitchen carving knife handles, utility knife handles, and salad serving pieces, on the other hand show lots of wear and I'd like to spruce them up a bit.

The first order of business there is to stop cleaning them in the dishwasher. But what else should I do? For the last couple of years I have taken to rubbing a little olive oil into the salad spoon and fork before I put them away. I suppose I started with those because I never ever put them in the dishwasher.

What do you use to season these various kitchen tools? Should I be using olive oil for all the these seasoning applications?

Another Yankee Stadium?

I listened to the Virginia Tech leaders, the Governor of Virginia, and
President Bush at the Virginia Tech Convocation this afternoon because that was what was on the radio. But I had to turn it off when the civic leaders had finished and I realized this was about to be Yankee Stadium [Debacle] II. I did not want to witness that.

Are people who wish to meet with clergy unable to seek them out of themselves?

Blue & Green

The Artist earned her blue belt at Tae Kwon Do last week. And last night I completed an all-green outfit for Honey. The skirt and hat patterns are free patterns from Knitting On The Net dot com.

For the sweater I began with a free pattern but I don't remember where it was found. That is just as well! It seemed to have errors in the number of stitches it called for in the cast on compared to the number needed to complete the ribbing pattern. I only followed the pattern to get an idea of how many rows to knit on the pieces. I had just enough yarn to complete the set. What is left of the ball of yarn is the size of a large grape.

Pieces

This weekend Rick, the kids and I enjoyed a quiet weekend together. We had a few errands to run on Saturday and Rick planned to take us out to dinner for a surprise.

We shared a wonderful appetizer and we each had a plate of crab legs. It's been a long time since I've enjoyed those! The crab we catch for crab boils in Louisiana don't have much leg meat. I reminisced how my brother once took a crab claw in his lunch box to school! He enjoyed showing all the kids in his class how the tendon operated the claw. Now the Artist is enjoying something similar. So here is the first piece of my weekend:Saturday night Rick got the hankering to do a puzzle. We made the mistake of not beginning until 9 p.m. Somewhere around 12:30 this morning we go the last two pieces in place. It was the other 998 pieces that had us hung up for a while!
And speaking of things being hung up -- it is so nice to be able to hang up a bath towel after using it! Two more pieces of the new bathroom are in place. Yesterday we hung a mirror and a towel bar. We are excited -- two steps closer to being done and the last piece (wall cabinet) should be coming in next week.Finally, when the puzzle was making me cross-eyed I took a break to do some knitting. I'm working piecemeal on the Trellis toddler sweater on the Knitty dot com site. I started with the sleeves, hoping I'd get the hang of it there. When working on the second sleeve I did discover I had misread a note in the pattern (I made the sleeve boarder in seed stitch instead of pearl stitches) but I am not unhappy with the result. So I made the second sleeve to match the first and I think I will keep these sleeves. I'll know for certain when it comes time to attach them to the back and front.

Field Trip Friday

Today the kids and I went on a field trip with some other members of our home school group. We went to the home of a railroad enthusiast. He gave quite a presentation to the children. He showed us his view of a working rail line from his family room picture window, but no trains passed when we were there. Instead we watch videos of historic engines and rail lines.

He spoke about his favorite train, the Nickle Plate Line , his amazing memorabilia collection, and his model trains. He also showed us this controller's station which he purchased when it was decommissioned. Controllers would sit before the panel and monitor the trains, throw switches, and keep everyone on schedule. Our instructor today kindly borrowed a high-impact educational video from Operation Lifesaver, Inc. and gave the kids coloring books to reinforce rail safety rules. After seeing the rail road videos, we went to the basement where an elaborate rail system was set up.


After we learned about the trains we gathered at a friend's home for lunch, playtime and time for the moms to talk. It was a lovely day.

Science Center

Yesterday the Artist, the Engineer and I joined friends on a trip to the Great Lakes Science Center. They very generously used their membership to bring us along on this otherwise unaffordable field trip.

We arrived early and enjoyed the Baseball as America exhibit. It was a wonderful collection of baseball memorabilia and artifacts. I was most interested in reading about the Cleveland Forest City's, the club that organized the area's first team in 1865.

After that we browsed many of the museum's regular exhibits and saw two shows: What's the Matter? about solids, liquids and gasses and Bubblemania (you can guess what that one was about).

Artist and Engineer enjoy a flight simulation.

The Engineer and Friend play with water clocks.

The Artist gets a static charge.

The Engineer feeds balls into a launching tube.

The Artist and Friend set a machine in motion and watch the design they created as it is traced on paper.