The Skill of Doing Quotidian Work

Have you considered that it is a skill to do the same tasks every day, successfully and without complaining? Yes, a skill.

I have tasks that belong to each day, and when these tasks are done, I stop working and count any work beyond that a bonus. As you know, housework is endless and cyclical - it could drive me mad if I took housework on in its entirety every day.



Monday: laundry; work at desk to pay bills and organize calendar; clean bathroom
Tuesday: laundry; market; vacuum obvious dirt
Wednesday: laundry; zone cleaning
Thursday: laundry; sewing or cooking projects
Friday: laundry; sparkle and shine cleaning
Saturday: wash sheets and change bedding; yard work, porch cleaning
(I'm planning to go into detail about these weekly tasks in another post)



Sometimes I sing while I work or listen to music.

Often I talk on the phone and the work just flies.

I tell myself that I am the homemaker and these tasks are making our home.

I was raised to do any work as "unto the Lord," so the mindset is that all work, no matter how humble or repetitious, can be done to the glory of God.

I try to include the children when I have the patience, and then I take satisfaction from preparing them for life.

In general, I am proud of my housework and my home; there is dignity in well-done, purposeful work.

I do feel the satisfaction of a job well-done. Sometimes I stand back and admire the progress or the results.

Sometimes I pretend that the queen is coming to visit and I'm getting the house ready for her (please tell me you have little plays like that in your head too).



How do you get your repetitious work accomplished, whether it's housework or paid work?

Sunday Dinner: What are the Rich People Eating?

You know, when you're eating and someone like your father says pityingly, to compliment the excellent dinner, "I wonder what the rich people are eating today?" We trotted out that joke because we were eating Poor Man's Steak yesterday!

Thursday:
put frozen ground beef in fridge to thaw

Friday:
mix ground beef with crackers, etc. - return to fridge

Saturday:
cut and fry the poor man's steak - place on bed of sliced onions
make 2 c. white sauce with mushrooms - pour over steak - return to fridge



Sunday morning:
wash and chop spinach - wrap in dishtowel and return to fridge
prepare potatoes - set on timed bake
put poor man's steak in oven on timed bake



Sunday noon:
plate the spinach, slice berries over it, drizzle dressing
set table

I used the recipe from More with Less for the poor man's steak, but this one is very close to it. The poor man's steak made enough for a proper, card-deck-sized portion of meat for three meals for my family! Thrifty indeed.

To avoid baking in aluminum foil and still get a soft skinned baked potato, do the following:
Wash potatoes and dry well. Lay them on a baking sheet with sides and drizzle with oil - using your hands, rub the potatoes to ensure they are coated well with oil. I like to sprinkle them with salt and pepper then too (and think of the herbal/spice possibilities here!). Pierce each potato a few times with a fork or knife. Bake as you would normally (350 for an hour).
In the case of this menu, my smallish potatoes baked with the poor man's steak at 300for 1.5 hours and were perfectly soft.



We ate a strawberry spinach salad with a beautifully rosy salad dressing of pureed strawberries with typical vinagrette ingredients, plus I added a clove of garlic. Then Genevieve sprinkled almonds on top of the individual salads, too.



We felt rich, yes. We are richly blessed.

Updated:
Strawberry Vinaigrette (based on the one in Simply in Season)

In blender, blend until smooth:
1 cup strawberries
2 tsp. rice vinegar
4 tsp. lemon juice
1 Tbs. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 garlic clove, chopped
3 Tbs. olive oil

Fresh Ginger, All the Time

Ginger root is one of those irreplaceable ingredients, but I use ginger root infrequently enough that it used to go bad inbetween recipes. I finally started hacking it into pieces and freezing it. If I remember, I set out a chunk an hour or so before I want to use it; otherwise I nuke it in the microwave for a few seconds. Fellow blogger Jennifer Jo pointed out recently that she stores hers chopped up in sherry to cover, refrigerated.

Speaking of sherry, I buy a bottle of the cheapest regular sherry for about $5 (not cream sherry) and keep it indefinitely in the fridge. I must have it to make hot and sour soup, most notably, but I also add it to other soups or rice or beef dishes.

I'm in lazy picnic mode today, so I'll post on Sunday dinner tomorrow.

Gearing Up for 2010 Preserving

Maybe it was when I worked in the professional world that I realized the value of keeping records. I keep a supper notebook. I keep a children's clothing notebook. I also keep a preserving notebook.

A sample entry:

25 August 2009
1 gallon organic beets from Earl - $6
yield: 12 pints pickled beets (SinS)
plus some leftover (I think Earl gave me more than a gallon)


I reference this preserving notebook a lot, especially for prices, suppliers, and quantities. Prior to this notebook, I had to figure out every summer how many freezer boxes I would get from how many dozen of corn (8 dozen ears yields approximately 40 cups cut off corn). I would search through the phone book trying to remember which farmers I went to. I would wonder if $8 for a half bushel of apples was a good price or I should keep looking? (for non-organic, yes, that's a good price around here).

Before I launch into preserving for the year, I take inventory of my freezer and canning shelves. I was very surprised this year by some of the items remaining:
23 c. frozen blueberries
7 boxes freezer strawberry jam
20 quarts whole tomatoes
10 quarts applesauce

Was I subconsciously hoarding? I do recall that I did not make tomato soup often because I didn't want to use up my tomatoes, but Margo, using up the food is the WHOLE POINT. To be fair, I did do several tomato products last year that I used: salsa, tomato chutney, and pizza sauce.



As I counted stuff in my freezer, I noticed with dread that I needed to clean it. I loathe cleaning out freezers, so I do it as little as possible (only the second time for this chest freezer in the eight years we've owned it). It's such a pain to figure out what to do with the stuff and wait for the frost to melt. This year my dear husband schlepped our stuff over to my parents' nearly empty freezer:

Margo: I'm just calling to see if we can use your freezer today - didn't know if you went to Costco and got a bunch of chicken breasts or something.
Mom (laughing merrily): no, no, I wouldn't do that.
Margo: drat.

The frost dropped onto the freezer floor; I scooped it out, broke it up, and set it in my flowerbeds to melt. Using our wet-dry shop vac, I vaccumed up the flour/ice glop left and wiped down the whole thing with dish detergent in hot water.

When it was finally done, I rewarded myself with lots of Ghirardelli.

Keeping Berries Nice

Berries have a short span of perfection after they're picked, but I came across a tip in the newspaper a few years back that really lengthens their keeping power. I use cloth rags in my kitchen most of the time, but I keep a roll of paper towels tucked away for just this season. Although it wonders me if cloth could serve this purpose too. . . .?

For any fresh berries:
Do not wash them.
Layer them in an airtight container with paper towels, removing any soft or spoiled ones as you go.



The goal is to keep the berries very cold and very dry. I've kept berries for over a week with this method!

Refashioned Dressing Gown

Since I became a mother almost five years ago, I've gradually realized I needed a dressing gown. In the morning, I needed a garment to put on out of the shower that would allow me to make breakfast, fetch the paper, change diapers, clean up breakfast, and stay calm and cool because I wasn't dirtying the Real Outfit for the Day.

For some Evening Events I needed to ready the children and house for a babysitter, scrambling together a supper for them, all while mincing around in my party dress; I have actually had to change outfits because of that, swearing under my breath.

Dear reader, NO MORE. I have a dressing gown now!



I found this linen dress (brand name "Possibility"!) for $6.50 at a thrift store in March. It was too tight for me at the hips, but I thought if I took out the generous plackets and resewed the buttons on, it could work. In the event that my remake failed, the fabric was my consolation prize. But the remake worked! I did end up letting out the side seams a smidge too (those hips!) and removing the collar. I finished the raw edge where the collar was with bias binding, something I wouldn't do on a public garment, but which seemed nice and dressy-gowny to me.



I met all my requirements in this gown:
1. breathable and breezy linen
2. buttons down the front (I can do my hair while wearing this and just slip it off when I'm ready for the Real Outfit)
3. inexpensive!
4. Pretty enough, modest enough, that I don't feel embarrassed about answering the door or running out on the porch for the paper

This is my warm weather dressing gown. I started sewing a winter dressing gown, but got distracted by all my spring projects. I'll pick it up again in the fall and show you the completed gown.

The Unsuccessful Mustard Eggs

After good memories of eating mustard eggs on a spinach salad at a local restaurant, I used a recent glut of eggs to make some.

The children helped me peel the eggs, a first for Ben. He's peeling, not kissing, the egg.




My husband stirred up the mustard glop, using this recipe.


Then we had to wait three days.


We ate them for lunch, but they were too vinegary! I wanted them to be mustardy, so I was really disappointed.



Another day, I used the remaining two eggs to make egg salad sandwiches with watercress. I've found that actually mixing the minced greens - spinach, watercress, lettuce, what have you - into a sandwich spread makes it easier for children to manage and eat; we try to avoid The Terrible Drama When the Sandwich Falls Apart at our house.