Into the Groove

In my continuing efforts to class this place up, I spent yesterday afternoon rescreening four of my windows. The day that I moved into this house, Mother of Ken had a fit about how dirty the window screens on the living room windows were and she ripped them off and threw them in the bathtub to try to clean them. Unfortunately, twelve years of the Disgustingtons doesn't come off that easily.

So, four years later, I decided that replacing the window screens was my only option and that it couldn't be that difficult. I also had holes in the bathroom window screen and in one of the bedroom window screens.

Here's my set up with one of the living room screens--screening, splining, splining tool, utility knife, screw driver, and the home repair book that Father of Ken gave me so that I would stop calling him every time I needed to replace a shower head:

Kenna "helping:"

So, after you remove the old splining and screen from the frame, you cut a new piece of screen the same size as the outside of the frame:


The next step is to roll the splining into the groove on the frame. Here, I had to use two pieces of splining side by side because the grooves were wider than my splining and Home Depot is 20 minutes away.




Cut off the excess splining with a utility knife:



Trim excess screen with the utility knife (carefully, people--I learned this from bitter experience) and then you have a finished rescreened window:



The screens for the bathroom window and one of the guest room windows are finished and ready to be replaced:



New screen in place in the bathroom:

New screen in the bedroom:

New screen in the living room--see how clean it is now?

While I had everything taken apart, I decided to experiment with the curtains on the picture window. So, what do you think? I usually just use the valances, but I am trying the longer panels to see how I like them. Thoughts? Obviously, if I go with this, I will tie the longer panels back. I thought that the longer panels might help keep things warmer this winter and then I could go back to the valances alone for warmer weather.

Hungry Heart

As the leaves on the trees in my yard start to turn and the air gets a little more crisp, I begin to feel the need to hoard food like a squirrel. So, last weekend, I began the process of restocking my freezer with the things that I must have when the weather gets cooler.

First, I made red sauce:

In the middle of making red sauce, I was stung by a yellow jacket, so I ended up taking Benadryl. That knocked me out for most of the rest of the day, so the following day, I continued my work. I started with chicken stock, which took most of the day:

While the chicken stock was cooking, I started some French bread:

Next, I made lasagna. Here is a helpful hint for those of you with gassy dogs: if you drop a piece of lasagna meat, do not, under any circumstances, allow your dog to eat even the smallest piece of it. You will regret it for days.


Several hours later, I had two loaves of French bread:



Another day later, I had chicken stock ready to freeze:



Then, I used the chicken that I had roasted previously (the bones, skin, etc. went into the stock) to make individual chicken pot pies in these super cute pie pans that I bought at the grocery store this week:

For the filling, I just used about two cups of shredded chicken along with potatoes, carrots, onions, peas, chives, and parsley. I made one recipe of pie crust and divided it into eight pieces because I like a double crust on my pot pies.

Lids on, vented, brushed with egg wash, and sprinkled with salt and pepper:

I baked one for dinner and then froze the other three (I dropped this one on the way to the baking sheet, so it isn't very pretty):

Finally, I have everything I need. Frozen strawberries and blueberries from this summer, extra pot pie filling, lasagna, chicken stock, red sauce, pot pies, and plenty of bread.

I thought that I would start making baked goods to freeze for October, when I am expecting a lot of visitors who all want to come "before it snows," but I don't know where I would put any of that right now. I guess I'll have to eat some of this first.

You Can Do Magic: Part Four

Finally the staining and painting is done (for now, at least). The back porch with a couple of coats of new paint to touch it up and my newly planted pansies in the hanging baskets:

Pretty mums in the corner:

The stairs, freshly stained:

The front porch:

My next projects include getting a new roof on this place, repainting the front door, and painting my bedroom ceiling.

Next up: restocking my freezer.

The Tide is High

I thought that some of you gentle readers might enjoy seeing some of my daily route to work across one of the gorges. This is the suspension bridge that I walk across:

Here's a photo of the gorge from the bridge:

Looking down into the gorge from the bridge:

The other side of the gorge, looking out onto the city and the lake:




...and back at my house, I had some visitors for the holiday weekend:

I hope that you enjoyed this little taste of central New York in early September.

Reminiscing: The Rival Crock Pot Cookbook

It seems like I never run out of these cookbooks, although I will admit that this one isn't quite as horrible as some of the others have been. Unfortunately, this one doesn't include any pictures, which I think are usually the best parts of these cookbooks. So, without further ado, I give you some of the most disgusting recipes developed by Rival for the Crock Pot:

I have no problem with slow cookers at all. I own one. I use it occasionally. It saved me from many a horrible meal in the dining hall while I was in college. However, I generally believe that the only reasons to use slow cookers are either to keep food warm when you have already cooked it, to serve as a supplement to your stove or oven when you are doing a lot of cooking, or for foods that just need to cook for a long time. I do not believe, for example, that anyone needs to use a slow cooker to make hot dogs.

Why would you do this? Cook your hot dog in a pan on the stove, grill it--hell, microwave it--all of that will take less than 45 minutes. Who wants to wait 45 minutes for a hot dog?

I love the title for this one. I think I'm going to start adding random words like "abracadabra" to my recipe titles. Plus, I love "sauce-ry." This is one of those recipes where you raid your pantry for any kind of canned soup or sauce that you can find and then you throw it all into the slow cooker and hope for the best. Here's the problem: I don't think that mushroom soup, pork chop cooking sauce (what is that?), sweet and sour sauce, cream of chicken soup, chicken and rice soup, and barbecue sauce would taste good together at all. That just seems like one of the worst flavor and texture combinations since the potato chip crusted pieces of avocado from my last "Reminiscing" post.

In case you were wondering if you could cook organs in the slow cooker, here's your answer:

Okay, now I really want to know. Has anyone out there ever eaten tongue? What is it like? Was it good? How about beef heart? All of the recipes that I have found for organs makes it seem like these were very popular dishes in the 1950s and 1960s. Is that true? I am asking honest questions here--don't be afraid to leave a comment if you have experienced eating any of these delicacies.

The following makes me want to cry and confiscate the saffron supply of anyone who would consider making this dish:

You want paella? Come to my house or try this.

Why would you try to make a cake in a Crock Pot? Just use the damn oven! That seems less complicated than putting a coffee can or mold in your Crock Pot, cooking it for 5 hours,and then trying to get the cake out of the mold. You could bake the same cake in less than an hour in the oven. This makes no sense to me.

The few photos from this cookbook are on the back cover:



I am pretty sure that until about ten years ago, Mother of Ken had the fake wood model Crock Pot that you see in two of the photos above. I also feel like I know someone who had the one with the drawings of vegetables in the top left photo.

Well, that's it for now, gentle readers. Coming soon: the completion of the porch staining and painting project (and it only took two weeks!).

You Can Do Magic: Part Three

So you might be wondering what happened with my staining project since I haven't written about it in almost a week. We have had rain, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot, every day since last Tuesday. Finally, today there was some sunshine, so I put one more coat of stain on the porch. I'm starting to like the color more now that it has had some time to cure. It still isn't ideal, but I think that it looks a lot better than it did before.

I also had a chance to stain a few spots on the stairs that I missed before, so here they are, looking a lot better. The one part that isn't stained or painted at the top of the stairs will be painted the same red as the porch floor. I had to wait for the porch floor to dry today, so I plan to paint it tomorrow. Once that is finished, this should all look a lot better.

Wish me luck and no rain for a few days so that I can finish these projects!