Cloth Diapering might want to change its name to non-disposable diapering when it comes to pocket diapers.

No. 1's baby shower is coming up soon after I return from Thanksgiving in Illinois, so I finally got around to ordering some diapers that will be sent straight to the home of the person hosting the shower.

My personal opinion is that every mom (in the world) should be able to use disposable diapers until after the meconium stool with no environmental concerns because there's a fair amount of yuk involved with that one. Kudos to the moms in a position to just let that fall into the garden you're working in, but I don't think No. 1 will be in that position in February, even here in North Texas or even if she were the type to garden.

I got the "sampler" from Nicki's Diaper. Nicki is apparently a mom who decided to make a business of encouraging other moms to cloth diaper. I'll probably be ordering a few of the diapers Casey used (from the Canadians), but right now I needed to order something to have sent to the house where the baby shower will be held because I'll forget all about it while I'm in Illinois.

No. 1 knew I was going to do this; the only surprise might be the colors I chose. Looking at them again, though, I couldn't help but think again about how the entire pocket diaper thing is simply what some European countries have been doing since at least 1980. We are SO backwards as a nation on some things!

Freezing Yams (from the store).

I recently posted about how to freeze sweet potatoes picked from the garden, but today I realized that even if you don't have a garden produce goes on sale seasonally and Thanksgiving in the US is one of those times for yams.

There's a difference between yams and sweet potatoes, and I'll let you discern the differences, but (to us) they both taste good.

The folks at Coupon Mom told me today that yams were on sale at Kroger for $.19/lb. "Holy majoly, we need some at that price!", I said and put it on the short list of things to get from Kroger when Em went to get his hair cut at a place new (to him) next to Kroger. The newspaper ad had them more like $.33/lb, but that's still a bargain if you can use them.

From eight yams (total cost $1.92):


Boiled and sliced the same way I do the sweet potatoes from the garden:

Seven meals worth.



That's less than $.28/meal for us (family of only two).

AFTER I put the 7th in the freezer bag, I realized that this would be good for tonight's dinner with fresh broccoli and frozen tilapia. The bag will be washed and reused.

Fall Gardening in North Texas.

Em's been helping me in the garden lately. I can't describe how much that means to me. Not only is he taking half the stress off my back physically, but it's just a lot more fun to have someone to talk to while working in the garden.

The goal is to spend one hour per day out there getting the summer weeds (grasses) dug out and the winter garden planted, but we don't always feel like it. Today was the first time out there in over a week. Em dug with the spade and I came along behind him fertilizing and planting.

When his back started to complain, Em noticed some peppers that were store-size. He didn't want to pick them, so I did when my back started to complain, breaking off a branch on a salsa pepper plant (accidently).



Lots of chiltepins out there, but I haven't yet found a hot sauce recipe, so I'm leaving them for now. Picked a bunch of kale today, though, which are soaking for tonight's dinner of salsa salmon and kale.



It's delightful afternoon gardening weather, AND fireants seem to only come out in hot weather. There were none when I did the Spring planting and there are none now. Three cheers for that!

Pregnancy of No. 1 ... as the body changes.

I was of the opinion that ALL the "belly shots" should be taken next to a friend's giraffe, but I only got two. They don't get bigger if you click on them, so don't bother.


This one came between the two, but stripes always make us look bigger, don't they?




Jump to this week:



She's due first week of February.

There will be no Halloween here this year. [sigh]

Halloween has been canceled here this year for the first time. I hate that this happened, but I've grown tired of some things.

I've grown tired of buying commercially packaged (in plastic) candies, which cost more every year as they shrink in size, sold in an additional plastic bag to hold the 15-20. I've grown tired of 100 kids coming into my neighborhood on one night/year to get the shrunk-in-size, commercially packaged (in plastic) candy. Only five kids (max) live on my block.

So, I thought to make cookies this year and package them in paper sleeves for trick/treaters. Then, I read that most mothers would throw them away for fear of poisoning, razor blades, or unicorn spittle as a recipe ingredient (They're ALL urban legends!)

I don't want to be the "Get off my lawn!" grinch, but I also don't want to waste 10 eggs making cookies that will get thrown away or support the industries that shrink their candy while increasing plastic packaging each year, or support kids from other neighborhoods taking advantage.

So, that's where it is on Halloween Eve, 2009. Em will be at work tomorrow night, and I'll retire to a room at the rear of the house to watch a movie or two. I, now, feel, officially like an old lady ... in my new loveseat recliner.


Be safe, trick-or-treaters.

Homemade Crispy French Fries and Tortilla Chips.

'twas Em's turn to cook yesterday, so I took out catfish because I love what he does with it. His typical MO, however, is to serve the catfish with mashed potatoes and creamed corn (from a can). We're getting majorly low on canned vegetables because we just haven't seen any sales on them for $.50 or less in like a year and we can get frozen veggies for less than current canned prices.

I was also thinking about how we used to buy catfish takeout when we lived in North Arlington and how that little hole-in-the-wall catfish place got deleted [maybe] due to the new mammoth Cowboy Stadium being built near there. Anyway, I was jonesing for some catfish with french fries and coleslaw like we used to get there. Our car is in the shop, but I noticed we still had some cabbage in the frig and a few russet potatoes in the pantry, so I asked Em if he'd mind me making a few different sides. He thought it a great idea, even asking if I wanted him to deep-fry the catfish. I love his pan-fried catfish and figured I'd use the fry-daddy for the french fries, so I told him to do what he's always done.

We absolutely LOVED the results. It was a meal slurped down in record time, giving me a real understanding of why people enjoy fast food so much. Deep-fried is NOT the healthiest, but, boy it packs a wallop of flavor.

I made the coleslaw early in the day so it could refrigerate for a long time. At that time, I also peeled the potatoes (three small-to-medium) and cut them into fry shapes. Then, so they wouldn't turn brown, I put them in a covered bowl of ice-water in the frig, where they sat until supper time (seven hours later). I also let a bag of frozen store-bought corn tortillas sit on the counter to defrost long enough to pry off maybe 8 tortillas for tortilla chip frying. Em's a major fan of tortilla chips.

Because Em's part of the meal took only 15 minutes and mine longer, I got going in the kitchen about an hour before we wanted to eat. I used this recipe as a base, and set out the cut fries to dry while I made the dipping sauce for them.



Used generic seasoned salt instead of paprika, onion and garlic powder instead of their salted versions, and needed quite a bit more water than the recipe stated for the recipe when cut down to 2 portions. Also, I added beer to the dip because I'd opened a beer to drink while making these things and because one of the reviewers suggested it.

Took the advise of some reviewers and did a double-fry. On my first fry, I put in plain potatoes with torn tortilla pieces for 2 minutes. That's all the time needed for tortilla chips. Laying out the potatoes and tortilla chips on yet more paper towels, I continued to do this until all potatoes had gotten the 2-minute first fry. I didn't notice the plain potatoes trying to stick together. Em was off playing Solitaire on the PC, so I brought him some warm tortilla chips to try as soon as I had some and he gave a thumbs up. I made a few more batches of tortilla chips while dipping the potatoes for their final fry. I also set the convection oven to 200 degrees to keep the french fries warm. Second dipped fry was four minutes and I stirred the fry-daddy a lot to keep the fries from sticking. There were two batches of dipped fries for the fries shown. There were a few more in the bowl in this picture, so we got 3 servings from the 3 smallish potatoes and *I* get to eat the leftovers today.

LUNCH UPDATE: These fries do NOT stay crispy through nuking. Still tasty, though.


Forgot to take a pic of the final meal, but did get one of the tortilla chips.


The fries came out as golden as the chips, were crunchy on the outside and almost liquid on the inside. At first bite I wanted to say, "They're not DONE!", but they started out HARD, NOT liquid, and tasted DIVINE".

I sprinkled salt on both the french fries and chips after cooking and before eating, so not only were these foods unhealthy due to being deep-fried, but unhealthy due to added salt. In addition, the process was pretty messy and used quite a bit of paper toweling to suck up excess oil. /just sayin'. Still, once or twice/year ...

THREE-FIFTY [350]. The time is NOW.

All over the world, people have been making their voices heard fighting climate change.


Their photos are on Flicker.

I'm unable to attend or hold a 350 event today due to other commitments, but I've signed the pledge at 350.org. Check it out; get involved.

Piano Stairs and the lesson of "If it's FUN, people will do it."

Make a Delicious Difference.

Hat tip to my longtime friend, Judy, in Chicago.

Freezing Sweet Potatoes.

Today was the first day in a long time without rain or totally cloudy skies, so I started the day by washing clothes to hang outside.



The two gigantic sweet potatoes that I mentioned on September 3rd have been curing, and it was time to do something with them today. I chose to freeze them because we're going to have a gazillion of others soon. That was a multi-step procedure.

There are several ways, but I chose to boil, slice, freeze. To fit in my largest pot, I had to do some cutting to the elephant man's head. I was able to boil the other one, but chose to freeze it in two separate containers, as my intent was to freeze the equivalent of one sweet potato in each container. After boiling, the skin was removed (to the compost pile) and the sweet potato sliced into what one sweet potato might resemble sliced. THEN, the slices were tossed into a large bowl of water to which lemon juice had been added (think 1/4 c lemon juice to one quart water). This was to preserve color.


I used the same lemony water for every batch. The first time I noticed slices rising to the top, I assumed they were "woody" and tossed them on the compost pile.
Towards the end of the day, MOST rose to the top, so I no longer discarded floaters.

The lemony slices were set on paper towels to drain before freezing.


Made more crockpot granola today also. I took the recipe I'd used to make oven-baked granola (before I learned about the crockpot recipes) and just used the crockpot for it. Six cups of rolled oats plus all the other stuff I added at random just because I thought they'd taste good fit into a 9" high cannister.



The very last batch I put into three-thick paper lunch bags and labeled it "TWO sweet potatoes ... for pie." Em desperately wants me to make sweet potato pie, but I look at our middles and think, "We don't need pie." I'll make it sometime this winter whether we get our middles down or not.

I moan a lot about how the yard's out of control, but some areas are pretty perfect:


Tossing in a picture of Em simply because I can. It's part of a program to get him to smile for pictures.