S'more Cups!

So I guess that all I think about is food, or at least, that's all I could think of when I thought to myself, 'self, we should post something on the blog.  What should we talk about?'  Therefore, this will be another one of those food posts.  I hope it makes you hungry.

Remember when I told you about our camping trip?  And how it was more or less a failure except that we got some good pictures out of it as well as the right to brag that we went camping in October with a baby?  Well, there was one more success that I forgot to mention.  These:

The pine cone makes it look rustic and outdoors-y, right?  Not at all like it was photographed in my kitchen or something...

A couple of weeks before our camp out, we ran out of graham crackers, which have gradually become an ever more popular snack at our house.  Always the experimenter, my husband said something like, "I wonder if we could make our own graham crackers?  I'll bet we could..."

I ran with the idea, did a little research, found a recipe and tried it.  After my first batch of oddly shaped, Picasso-looking graham crackers, I got a little crazy and began to experiment.  The result (well, one of them) was a treat that just might become a must-have for camping at my house.

For the graham cracker dough:

I should tell you that I rarely ever follow a recipe just as it is written.  Almost everything gets tweaked, either because I'm missing ingredients or I'm just too lazy to do it the way it's written.  I followed this one almost exactly, though.  The only real difference was that, since I didn't have honey, I used molasses.

Combine:
1 1/2 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt

Add and work into a cornmeal-like consistency:
7/8 stick of margarine or butter, cut into 1 inch cubes and chilled

Whisk together:
1/3 cup molasses
5 tbsp milk
2 tbsp vanilla extract

Add molasses mixture to other ingredients and mix just until combined.  Pat the dough into a 1-inch-thick rectangle on a piece of plastic wrap, sprayed with cooking spray.  Wrap the rest of the plastic around the dough and chill for 2-12 hours in the fridge.

If you're not a molasses fan, I can reassure you that the strong molasses taste in the dough fades significantly after baking.

Remove the chilled dough and, on a well-floured surface, roll it out so that it is about 1/8 inch thick (is it just me, or is it IMPOSSIBLE to get your flour to stay where you want it - under the dough?  On my second attempt, I tried spraying a clean counter top with cooking spray, then flouring it thoroughly.  It worked pretty well, but if anyone knows a trick for this sort of thing, I'd love to hear it).

This is the fun part - you can either cut little 2 inch squares and poke holes in them with a fork to make regular graham crackers, or, if you want to try making s'more cups with them, cut 3-4 inch circles and place them in a sprayed muffin tin.  I found that by making a cut almost to the center of each circle, it was easier to fit them in, cut out the excess dough, and mold them to the cup.

The original recipe says to chill your dough on/in the pan for another 25-35 minutes.  I've tried it with and without the second chilling and gotten similar results, but I definitely don't have very cultured taste buds.  Maybe a more proficient cook could tell the difference.  If you do have time to chill it again, this would be a good time to preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.  The original recipe also says to bake these for 15-25 minutes.  I have found that I like to stick on the 15 end of things.  My resulting crackers and cups tend to be firm enough not to bend or fall apart without getting so hard that I can't bite into them without milk.

Remove from the oven and place a square of chocolate, a small handful of chocolate chips, or whatever sweet, gooey thing you would like melted beneath your marshmallow in the bottom of each cup.  It just so happens that my cute mother-in-law had sent us a Happy Halloween package, complete with Halloween candy, which arrived the day I did this, so I decided to try putting a Mini Milky Way bar in a couple of them.

Return to the oven for 1 minute, remove, and stir the chocolate/gooey stuff with a toothpick. 

Mmm... chocolate...

Let them cool for 5-10 minutes, then use the tip of a knife to lift them out of the muffin tin.  They should pop right out.  I put mine in the fridge for a few minutes to let the chocolate set up and then keep them in the cupboard for a week or two.

Roast marshmallows over a campfire or over your stove, place one in each cup and enjoy!

The downside of doing s'mores this way is that you kind of have to think ahead and take time to do all of the mixing, chilling, rolling, shaping, chilling, melting and chilling.  And that they obviously aren't as compact as regular flat grahams.

The upside is that, once you do have them, s'mores are so much less of a hassle and so much easier to enjoy.  I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm used to getting marshmallow all over my fingers, lips, nose, chin, hair and pants whenever I attempt to eat s'mores.  In fact, I've noticed that most people seem to like making the s'mores more than eating them and for me, this is one of the main reasons.  These make eating s'mores about 1/10th as messy (sticky-wise and crumb-wise).  I would definitely recommend it for kids.  

The second reason I love doing s'more this way is that, usually someone, either my mom or me, ends up sitting next to the campfire, trying to assemble and balance stacks of graham crackers and chocolate while everyone else roasts marshmallows.  How much fun is that?

And last but not least, they're pretty cute. :)

Spiced Autumn Chicken Stew

It seems like in order to blog about food or cooking, you have to be a photographer, and an excellent photographer at that.  I am not.  I think I have mentioned before that I take most of my pictures with my phone, and if the thing I'm looking at isn't my daughter doing something adorable, I usually don't think to take a picture of it.  I love to cook.  I love food, and I love love love autumn.  The pictures will just have to come later.

When I tried describing this successful experiment to my mom, she seemed a little bit aghast that I would put sugar and cinnamon with chicken and potatoes.  Trust me on this one, though.  It tastes like yum.

This is loosely (very loosely) based on this recipe for Autumn Sausage Casserole.  I wanted to make a very Autumnal dish, but lacked pretty much all of the ingredients that make that what it is - raisins, sausage, apples...  I would highly recommend it, though.

What I did have was bone-in chicken that needed to be crock-potted, since I didn't want to go to the trouble of separating meat and bones that didn't want to be separated, basic stew vegetables (you know - carrots, potatoes, celery), spices, and a husband who is always up for an experiment.  I've made this twice now and both times, the results have been lovely.

Here's what I used:

• 1 chicken leg (don't think that because you shop somewhere fancy like Safeway, the chicken you buy won't have odd little quirks like, oh, I don't know, the feet still attached?  If yours does, get rid of those talons first.)  I'm sure a breast would be fine, too.
• 1 medium-sized potato, chopped (If you have a yam or a sweet potato to add instead, it will be especially good, but a regular potato does just fine.)
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1 stalk of celery, chopped

Throw all this in the crock pot (I think mine is 1.5 quarts), then in a small mixing bowl or measuring cup, combine:

• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp chicken boullion
• 1/2-1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1-2 tsp parsley
• 1/2 tsp thyme (OK, I mostly just added this because I have been looking for it for almost two years now.  I found it in one grocery store and it was very expensive so I didn't bother, but the urging struck again a year later, and none of the grocery stores where we were then living even had it, then, the other day, miraculously, I found it at the Family Dollar, of all places, for *drumroll* a dollar!  It did make a nice addition to this stew, though).
• 2 heaping tbsp brown sugar (You're going to trust me, remember?)
• 1/3 cup of warm water

Pour the spices on top of the chicken and veggies and let it cook on high for 3-4 hours, until the chicken is cooked through and the vegetables are soft.  My little crock is a speed demon and does it as quickly as two-and-a-half, sometimes.  Ben and I basically knew it was done when we starting to smell it.  I've never tried it on low, because I've never thought about it long enough in advance.  I'm guessing that 6-8 hours would do the trick, though.  

The second time I made this, I added more water (a cup, I think), so the spices were a little less pronounced and I had more liquid in the final product.  We ended up serving it over white rice and loved it that way.  I can't help but imagine what it would be like over wild rice, but we're not that rich, and I'm totally an advocate for healthy eating on a budget.

*This only makes 2-3 servings, but it would be an easy recipe to double using a bigger crock pot.*

Our Little Cricket

We love the bed-head.

This girl has grown up so quickly.  All the time, we are noticing more and more little landmarks that are suddenly behind us.  For example, this last week, we came in to get the girl up from a nap to find her not laying, sitting or kneeling, but standing in her crib.  On the same day, she got stuck under our bed.  OK, I know that's not exactly a landmark, but it was a first, and I admit that I called her daddy into the room to see before rescuing her.

Teeth already?!

Now, she is pulling herself up on everything.  As of late, these are a few of her favorite things:

• her shadow, 
• kissy lips (especially when accompanied by a crinkled nose and squinty eyes),
  
   
• putting forbidden objects into her mouth, 
• power outlets, 
• anything grown-ups are eating,
  
  and 
• her daddy.  

I can't help wondering whether or she would smile like that for me if I were the one who was gone all day and came home a couple hours before bedtime?  But I keep remembering how lucky I am that I will probably never know.  I get to spend my days at home with this girl and teach her and love her and let her know that she is my life's work.

As I explained in the previous post, my camera has been lost for awhile and I am currently working on standing up to my fears regarding our nicest camera, so most all of these pictures were taken from my phone, which probably explains the lack of quality.  Our girl also has the incredible talent of turning her head or crawling away just as I'm taking the picture.  Still, we've managed to capture a few good ones, I think.

With Uncle Christian, recently returned from Peru

As we rapidly approach her first birthday, I am realizing that we are passing through a lot of 'firsts.'  In fact, we are getting to experience a first just about everything with her.  It's interesting how parenthood both ages you and makes you young again.

Sunshine

I'm generally a rain and snow type of girl.  There's precious little I enjoy quite like a good storm and a window through which to watch it.  I've never been very heat tolerant and my un-tannable skin is just as happy to spend most of its time under cloud cover as well.  But yesterday, I spent a few minutes sitting out on my uncovered front porch, leaning back against the side of the house, and soaking in a clear, blue sky.  The cool of autumn has finally gotten here and had sunken itself into my toes and as I listened to the distant sound of my daughter wailing in her crib, I found myself thinking about the sun and thinking, 'this is perfect.'

Because I have to admit that yesterday was just one of those days.  There were no peaceful naps at the regular times or at any others, for that matter, and subsequently, the bed remained unmade, the laundry was still in haphazard piles all over the floor, (not to mention  a load more wadded up in the dryer, the door of which I didn't even get around to closing until late afternoon or early evening) the clean and dry dishes didn't move from their perch on my counter top, and I could go on.  On top of everything, I had a grouchy girl who insisted that she needed to be held at all times and I was expecting company for dinner that night.

Really, it was one of those days where you almost break down and burst into tears, half because you don't know what to do, and half because you want to, because crying would be a good way of letting off some steam and of convincing yourself that you should cuddle up with a good book and some hot chocolate.  I didn't even realize that I was at that point until about three in the afternoon, right in the midst of another failing nap.

Then began a series of tender mercies - I don't know what else to call them - or at least, then I began to notice them.  The first thing that really shook me out of feel-sorry-for-myself mode was a text I got that read "Hkmhujiiiohjjkkllppp" (I pulled out my phone to make sure that I was quoting it right).  I soon found out that a one-year-old, sixteen miles away, had just sent her first text.

I also got a text from my husband about that time.  Actually, I got a few.  I usually don't get text from him while he's at work, mostly because he's not so big on texting, so it was a special treat to get one from him, telling me that he loved me more than his sandwich.

And finally, there was the package that I remembered in the car, that my mom had sent and which I hadn't gotten a chance to open in the hurry of putting a certain little someone down for a nap.  She had told me that she would be sending us some odds and ends of ours that she had found, as well as a Halloween costume, but it's always fun to open a package, right?  Even if you already know what's in it.  Inside, I found a costume, a Halloween decoration, the aforementioned odds and ends, and then a little bag of candy, a grown-up treat that she must have known I'd be too cheap to buy, and a souvenir she had thought to get for me on a recent trip back east.

It's amazing how little things like that can give me the nudge I need to make or break my day.  As I listened to the continual sound of 'I'm still  not asleep, Mom, and I'm still not happy about it,' began browning hamburger and opening a can of pumpkin, I realized that I was suddenly feeling rather grateful.  It's a heavy feeling sometimes, not heavy like carrying a sack of rocks around, but like the heaviness of a thick wool blanket that makes you feel secure and takes your body heat to feed it back to you.  It's a delicious, heaviness, a be-still heaviness.

During moments like that, I realize that God isn't so far away from us.  It was one of those times when I thought, 'if I were a poet, this would be a good time to write a poem,' one of those times when, if I didn't feel such a heavy stillness, I would have sung all of my favorite songs.  And I thought, 'I'm thankful for little things, like texts.  And candy.  And my mom.  And pumpkin.  And my non-napping daughter.  And families.  And sunshine.'

The Great Outdoors and Something Green!

Many things green, actually.

Since we spent all summer worrying about getting a job and a place to live, we neglected all of our camping gear in the dusty, spider-y cellar.  Now that we no longer have a dusty, spider-y cellar and do have a place to live, we decided to take the camp gear out of the closet in the laundry room and went off in search of something green.

I have to tell you that we picked the coldest day in October to do it.  It was raining for the first time all month as we were gathering the stuff and preparing to leave.  Oh, and the power was out.  I kept asking/telling Ben that we must be crazy.  I'm beginning to think that that's the point of being young and  married, though.  At least, in my case, it's been a time for doing all of those crazy, borderline irresponsible (but only borderline.  There is a child involved here, you know) things that I didn't do in college.

But where was I?  Oh yes - October.  The coldest day in October.  So far.  (I know some of you are rolling your eyes, thinking 'well of course it was the coldest day, Caitlin.  That's what happens in the Fall.  The days get colder.'  Yeah, well, it warmed up again afterward.  This was a special dip in temperature, just for our camping  trip.)  Just to add to the drama of this story, I might add that it was not raining, but snowing as we headed out.  When it stopped, however, and the sun came out, it seemed like everything was going to be honky dory, just like the National Weather Service promised.

Would it be going too far to say that I was completely enamored by our campsite?  OK, not by the site itself.  There was a barbed wire fence just behind it and it was five minutes from a Walmart, which drove Ben just a little crazy.  But there were trees!  Big, tall ones with needles and pine cones.  It was green, I tell you - beautiful, beautiful green!  I raved on and on about it while we started to set up camp.

I tried to help Ben with the tent and such.  I laid a blanket on the ground for Thunder and she seemed content with that, but when I turned around to look at her, she had made her way to the edge of the blanket and had a little hand at her mouth.  I found not one, but three little marble-sized rocks in there.  What the fascination with little rocks is, I don't know, but from everywhere I thought of to put her, she found her way to those little rocks.  So in the end, I took pictures and kept her out of trouble while Ben did all of the work setting up.

We had a marvelous evening together.  It was our first time camping by ourselves since Thunder was born.  Wrapped in two pairs of pajamas, a blanket, and her Peruvian chullo (hat), she seemed pretty comfortable.

  

We did pretty well through the night, with her between us, but we woke up to an icy, frosty world.  We made the mistake of leaving our water out on the picnic table, where it froze solid in the bottle.  The water in the spigot by the bathrooms was also frozen in the pipes.

Since we couldn't very well make breakfast without water, we decided to take a look at the lake.  The all-knowing internet had promised us that there would be a plethora of beautiful hiking trails, but when we had arrived the night before, the ranger informed us that there were none.  At best, he told us, we could walk around the lake, so that's what we did.  In some ways, I think that that was the best part of the whole adventure.

I couldn't get enough of watching that mist rise off the still water as the sun was coming up.

Ben says that this picture looks like an album cover.  I thought it was kind of a neat, dramatic shot.

After we froze our way through breakfast, we decided that one night was enough.  I have decided that October is my favorite month out of the year, but as far as camping goes, I think I prefer June, July and August. 

The Middle of Somewhere

Wow, and it has been awhile.  Coming back to this blog feels like walking into a big, empty warehouse with a layer of dust on the floor, where everything you do and say echoes.  Like this:

Hello!

Hello!

Hello!

Hello!

Hello...

Anyway, enough of that.  I guess I owe you an update.  I guess friends and family all pretty much know that we have moved (finally) and are adjusting to a very unique new home.  We are now living near an Indian Reservation and for the first time in our lives, are learning what it feels like to be in the minority.  Our neighbors and pretty much everyone out here are/is (?) exceedingly friendly, and while we live almost an hour from a grocery store, I've been surprised at how little we feel isolated here.

When we found out that we would be coming here, one of my friends looked the place up on the internet and said something to the effect of 'Wow, now you're really living in the middle of nowhere!'  I half-jokingly called our last home the middle of nowhere and now I feel like such a city kid for even thinking that.  It was a city with a population of ten-thousand and Walmart was within fifteen minutes of our home.  I guess I was noticing the cows practically in our backyard and the miles and miles of farmland all around us.

Now, we are in ranch country.  We have a gas station, a convenience store, and not very much else, but as we were driving up the little mesa that we would soon call home, the words that passed through my mind were 'the middle of somewhere.'  This is a tiny, spread out community, but we have a library, a school district and a church - three churches, actually, and counting.  These crazy dirt roads that wind every which way through miles of sagebrush and creosote lead to homes with people in them.  I know - what a groundbreaking revelation I've stumbled upon, but I'm understanding, finally, what it means, both to be lost in a big city and to be lost in a small town.

Maybe the fact of the matter is that I am just now learning to appreciate the immense value of individuals, while at the same time, I am all the time more amazed by the sheer immensity of the human race.  How can there be so many?  And how can each one be an individual, a child of God with thoughts, feelings, a past, present and future?  I feel like I'm constantly thinking back on Alan Paton's words - "Why fear the one thing in a great city where there are thousands and thousands of people?"

I wish I could say that I have taken pictures, to show you a little bit of where we are and what it's like.  I haven't.  As a matter of fact, my husband found my camera only yesterday.  I thought it had been lost in the move.  We have a nice camcorder that takes beautiful pictures, but I have now admitted to myself that I am, in some deep part of my soul, a little tiny bit afraid of the camcorder.  I'm working on it.  For now, though, I'll just share with you what few pictures I have taken and try to give a little bit of description of the rest:

The view from our front porch.

Most of our windows are east-facing, so we get a nice, sunny kitchen, living room, and master bedroom (yes!  We have a master bedroom!) in the mornings.  The only part of the house that remains cold is the nursery, so we've had to be a little bit innovative there.  I noticed when we first got here, in the beginning of August, that shortly after the light hit our window shades, they turned pink.  My mom, who grew up not far from here, says that the vibrant sunrises and sunsets have to do with the dust in the air.

Another thing that we have learned is that there are lots and lots of thorns.  It's almost impossible to keep them out of the house.  We quickly found that we could mitigate the problem by taking our shoes off at the door, but they still pop up quite often.  I have pulled several from our little Thunder's mouth already.  The thing that I miss most about home so far is, well, the color green.  There is green here.  It's actually been much greener than we expected, thanks to the late summer monsoons which come up this way from Mexico.  There's nothing like a good thunder storm and we've had dozens of those already.  Still, I grew up in the mountains, minutes from beautiful hiking trails and the beauty of this place is something to which I need to adjust.

I mentioned before that we live up on a mesa.  That's a treat all by itself.  I always thought that you had to be rich or at least well established to live in a house on a hill.  I guess not!  There are plenty of hills and the red, orange and yellow rock formations for which the southwest is known around here.  We have a view of the interstate, the railroad, and quite an expanse of land below us during the day, and during the night, we have an amazing view overhead.  Despite the streetlamps throughout our little neighborhood, the lack of surrounding city lights allows us to see the stars more clearly than in either of our previous homes.  Ben and I slept out on our porch a couple of weeks ago to look for constellations and planets.  It was then that I learned that the constellation which I have always thought to be the little dipper is, in fact, not.  As it turns out, north does not really mean 'up.'  Who knew?

I suppose I've rambled on long enough.  For those of you who read this (I think there's actually only one person), the blog is still enduring its identity crisis, as evidenced by its makeover, name change, etc., so if the posts are somewhat all over the place, that's why.  Nevertheless, I've decided to give the whole blogging thing a second try.  I suppose that's all for tonight.  Over and out.

Identity Crisis

Yes, this blog has been having an identity crisis.  I blame my lack of posts on that...mostly.  Finally, since school let out, I've had a spare moment here and there, so long as I scramble at the beginning of the day.  I imagined I'd have more than that, but once again, all of those things people tell you about parenthood, namely the tiredness, the busyness, the all-around-craziness, have proven true.  Thunder is proving to be not one, not two, but three handfulls.

Anyway, the point is that I DO have a spare minute once in awhile, and that I haven't spent many of them blogging.  Why?  Because this blog isn't sure why it was created or what it's supposed to talk about.  Initially, I began posting about what was going on in our lives.  We had just moved to another town, kinda far from either of our families, and I thought that a blog would be a good way to keep everyone updated on our goings on.  That lasted a couple months, and I guess I did OK, but eventually I had to ask myself, 'Self, who really wants to read about you changing the rotors on your car?' (Notice that I did include a link to that post, though, in case anyone really is interested.  It just seemed like the hip thing to do :).

In the last few months especially, it has begun to seem just a little redundant as well.  We began a while ago to plan on relocating and most of the places we've looked at going are within an hour of our parents.  So lately, the reason I haven't found time to tell our families about what we're doing and how and why and etc. is because we have been spending all our time with family, trying to pull this move off.

Sometimes, I've thought about going in a cooking blog direction.  I'm not exactly a phenomenal cook or anything, but I like to play around in my kitchen quite a lot and I must confess that often when I needed a break during those long hours of writing long, dull, perfectly APA formatted papers, I would find somebody else's blog about cooking and read it.  Just for fun.  Is that geeky?  I don't seem to get out enough to know, nowadays.  In all honesty, clueless has always been something I'm good at.

But most of that paragraph is beside the point.  Why did you decide not to make this blog into a cooking blog, Caitlin?

Ah, yes.  Because I'm a rather impatient cook.  I don't usually measure, I'm not good at taking pictures as I go, and I'm certainly not good at making things look appetizing.  I would need to hire a pro.  Besides that, my methods tend to be a little unorthodox, which is only sometimes a good thing.

Another bump in the road has been some of the other blogs I've glimpsed as I've wandered the wide web.  It seems like some of the more consistent bloggers are also the more egotistical ones  As I've thought about that one, I've realized that that is probably just because if you have a certain space in which to post exclusively about yourself, your life and/or things you're doing, of course it will sound like that.  If everyone in the world who keeps a journal were to post it online, I would probably come away thinking that they are all egotistical too.  So you can see that that's something I've already worked out in my mind...sort of.  I guess I'm still a little nervous that I'll come off that way.

And so, to conclude this little ramble, that is more or less why I have been absent from my internet dwelling place these past few months.  The blog will be doing a little soul searching (if blogs have souls.  If not, it can borrow mine for a bit) and we'll be getting back to you soon.

Yours truly,

Caitlin

P.S. Here's a picture of Thunder to make viewing this post worth your while: