Monthly Archives: November 2006

Rabbits and me and hennies

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We have three New Zealand White rabbits now. One buck, two does.

We got them on Monday of this week. I don’t have all their info as of yet, but should soon, I hope. We have them for breeding/meat purposes.

They are very cute, and pretty big. They are 6 to 7 months old, and probably ready for their first breeding attempt, but I’m trying to wait until hubby contacts the guy we got them from for more info on their actuaI l backgrounds. (All I know is that the guy got them for the same reason we have them, but couldn’t keep them afterall. He had researched what to do, but I do not know the actuality of each of the rabbit’s histories.)

One doe is very active, and forward, has an Extrovert personality for sure. The other doe and the buck both seem very reserved, quite Introverted thus far.

I haven’t taken any photos of them as of yet. I hope to get that accomplished this weekend. I would have done it today, but was stricken with migraine junk in the middle of the night, blah. It’s just plain bothering me to a horrid degree due to the fact that a mild migraine hangs on despite medication, slightly improving, but never quite totally, and it causes all my sensitivities in this first trimester pregnancy to heighten horribly, so I mostly stay in bed if I can, only getting up to go potty, or walk around a few minutes here or there. Also to take a shower if I’m that miserable enough. As long as I lie about I feel alright enough to exist, but get me up and I start burping and having tummy flips galore from smells, thoughts of raw meat cooking, thinking of having to make dinner, and more.

So today I stayed in bed and let the children fend for theirselves, which they are more than capable of doing in our small house, and have gotten up in the very late afternoon to get dinner going. But all I was capable of is making Annie’s White Cheddar Shell pasta dinner. Blech. I can’t even stomach the thought of putting it on a plate for them, let alone me. So this is it. I’ll take a couple of cheese thingies from the fridge and trudge upstairs and be able to eat those soon if I get away from the kitchen and into my bed.

I do so much better on non-migraine days, but still do suffer doing any sort of cooking, having others bring me food works so much better. Hubby is picking up the slack when he’s here, but he’s not always here, like today, he’s in FL and we have to make it on our own.

So anyhow, the rabbits are cool, I love looking at them and can stand to go outside on a day like today was, the weather and my migraine pregnant ickyness. It was like a lovely spring day (which makes me forget my miseries for a time.) Tomorrow will get cooler and temps get back to “Normal” according to the 15-day Outlook via accuweather. The rabbits won’t mind. I just can’t go barefoot and will have to dress warmer, and don’t mind the cool outside dressed alright. It’s just having to go from warm spring/summer like-ness for over a week, and suddenly plunge back into Southern late Autumness, a shock, and it’s so easy to dress less for the warm weather, and that makes getting back into dressing for warmth a big pain.

My hennies, they aren’t laying at all. The Wyandottes did lay some eggs earlier in November, but have quit again, but aren’t loosing feathers. The Australorps are not laying, and some are molting. The other two (hawklady and the bantam) are just not laying either. FWIW Some of them should start up again soon, it’s been long enough, and they are getting light supplementation (in the Australorp pen for awhile already, and now I’ve moved all of them close so they all benefit.)

The Thanksgiving Week

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It’s Monday, whew! Last week was a big one, very long, too full. Hubbie’s Dad arrived on Wednesday, early afternoon. I had a migraine dual-session on Monday to Tuesday, and had a lot of work (cooking) to do and was hoping it would all work out. It did, but was very exhausting for me.

On Tuesday I made bread to use for my thanksgiving stuffing, white spelt and whole grain spelt loaves. I didn’t get anything else done. Hubby brought home the Turkeys that day too.

On Wednesday I made pie crusts and put together my scruptious version of the Nourishing Traditions Pumpkin recipe. I made 2 pies. They turned out wonderfully.

On Thursday I diced all the veggy stuff for my stuffing, and got that into butter in a large pan and cooked it until soft (Celery, Onion, Sage.) I mixed that then with raisins, chopped apple, chopped walnuts, and chicken stock — and then mixed it all into the cubed bread (which I made on Tuesday, cubed on Wednesday, and then dried out.)

I stuffed one turkey and into the oven it went for a few hours. The rest of the stuffing went into a casserole dish and was baked with foil over it for 30 or more minutes.

I also made homemade cranberry sauce. I saw a couple of shows on FoodTV this past month where different recipes were used for making something saucy with cranberries, so I made up my own way: I had about 2 cups of very nice cranberries (organic found at WholeFoods) and I put the juice of one red naval orange (organic) into the pan with the cranberries, and 1/4 cup of Rapadura, one chopped up apple, and zest from the orange. I added some water later. I let it cook and cook until it was the texture I wanted. It was very good. Zippy — tangy and sweet but tartier than sweet, the best sort of taste. (I had never made cranberry anything before, so this was a great success!)

I also made Creamed Peas with onions, I had little onions, not pearl, and ended up slicing them and putting them with the frozen peas in a pan as they cooked. I made a traditional white sauce and seasoned it nicely, put the peas/onions into a casserole and gently stirred in the white sauce, then put it into the oven for 20-30 minutes.

As well I made Glorified Cauliflower (a whole large head, cooked, then topped with cheddar cheese sauce, which is pretty much a traditional white sauce with cheese added); mashed potatoes and gravy.

I made my version of green bean casserole, utilizing a traditional white sauce with chicken flavoring (using chicken base, a paste) and Durkee fried onions with whole green beans, that were frozen then cooked, then added the sauce and onions to them in a casserole and baked, then put more onions on top at the end for 5 more minutes in the oven.

Lastly I had made dough for rolls (white spelt), and had V. help me make 12 cloverleaf rolls, and I twisted the remainder to make 12 more of a strange looking variety.

I think that’s all. It was a load of work. Hubby helped a lot cleaning up as I needed, and tending things when I asked so I could lay down a bit.

I made sweetened whip cream later on to top the pumpkin pie, which was a nice ending for Thanksgiving.

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On Friday Hubby and I went out alone, grandpa stayed with the children at home. We went to see Casino Royale, then got a few things for V’s birthday that we hadn’t gotten beforehand. We also went into a Mother Maternity store, and I found a couple of things, and Hubby paid, but the sales girl kept offering this and that info and packages of samples and signup for this and that … and it took a long time, and then diapers came up as a subject, so hubby started talking about our cloth diapering experiences and I got pulled into the conversation and so it took even longer to get out of there … I rested most of the rest of the day (I was worn out!)

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Saturday was V’s 8th birthday. We picked up the cake we’d ordered from a local bakery and got her a helium balloon (a translucent shaped butterfly, very pretty) and also a small boquet of roses (a very pretty orange colour) which was 10 roses, just right for an 8-year-old girl. I then rested/wrapped V’s presents.

We had decided to have spaghetti for dinner (V. request) so I made fresh Kamut pasta, and made my usual sauce with ground meat, onion, garlic, Cold Pressed Extra Virgin Olive Oil, organic canned tomatoes, and dried basil, oregano, parsley, sea salt. The pasta was a lot of work, but worth it.

I also made two skinny-ish french breads out of white spelt, water, sea salt, yeast.

We had present opening time, then dinner, and a bit later cake time.

I started feeling a migraine come on in the early-mid afternoon. We all went right then to Target so V. could get something with the money she got from grandpa. I took something for the migraine before we left, and that helped. Later though, during dinner, I had the pain come back. I took something again, but it didn’t help. I went to bed after cake time. I struggled with the pain for several hours. I then spent the next day, Sunday, in bed resting from all the exhausting activities and the migraine topping it off. I leisured in bed this morning then as well.

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I’m 10 1/2 weeks along in my pregnancy now. I’m just so tired still, and have hardly any energy. If I do feel some energy, it gets used up so very quickly. It’s just so nice to lay down and read and just lay down. Eventually I won’t be as tired, I sure hope!

It’s tiring to type, hence my seldom posting of late.

Chilling

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Well, I’m 7 1/2+ weeks pregnant now, and consistantly having my “morning sickness” in the way of a “flipping over and over tummy” as in “grossed out” from something at some point in the morning to afternoon, even into the evening. It’s like when one throws up, except for I don’t throw up at all, and I don’t have the “throw up symptoms” that one gets when “normal” throwing up for sick people of any gender or age at sick times. It’s horrible when it comes. I don’t feel super usually, having to be slow and rest a lot, and be careful about smells (food especially) and doing better at eating if someone else makes the food for me out of my presence (therefore I am not eating that much most of the time.)

Putting this in terms of comparison to my other pregnancies, this is probably more like my third, a boy. My first was worse, but similar, also a boy. My second was a girl, and I felt horrid and threw up most anything that I ate up to 3 p.m. (except for bacon, crazyness of that, I couldn’t drink anything but nurse one Coca Cola the whole day.) All of my “morning sicknesses” resolved around 12 weeks.

I’m 8 weeks on Wednesday (“conception date”) … (which is the date I’m going with.)

I got a good nap in this afternoon, and lounged around until 5pm, but around 4:45pm started feeling icky. Coming downstairs to think about dinner then, icky, icky, icky. I’ve had it bad, trying to get things done, only having to sit down and chill with a ginger cookie. I had some that were great, spelt ginger “heart shaped” little things, but they ran out today. I have just opened a box of ginger cookies I got last time we were at IKEA and Bleck!!! I can’t eat them. They are thin and crispy, but taste stoo close to burnt, too much for prego me.

Those little heart spelt ginger cookies were something I did well with, they took the edge off and made me feel better for a bit, were something to aide me to sit down and chill for a bit to get over a tummy flingy time. So now I’m having to figure out something new.

One thing I am having a problem with also is my cast iron pans. They have particular smells when they heat up and I can’t stand it :(

Oh well, this post has helped me to sit down and recover a bit, hopefully I can cook something now. Hopefully, truly meant.

Sunny Day but dull

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It’s a cold morning here. Below 40 degrees in the early AM, like the mid-30′s or a tad lower, but it should get into the upper 50′s as a high today. It’s very sunny, and that helps.

I don’t like it this time of year though at all with the state of our kitchen, it’s just too dark in there, even on a Sunny day. Sunlight streams through the one current window, but that is at the end of the kitchen, the main part has no light from outside (as I’ve detailed in other posts, it’s where the patio doors used to be located.) The space connects to the front of our house, two windows side-by-side are there, but it’s North NW facing, and dim therefore. In summer it’s all not so bad, sort of, but not nearly so much as it is in Autumn/Winter.

I’m really hoping that we’ll get the doors soon, and installed ASAP, and the window we already have installed sooner. Thing is, the window could be installed now, giving me two windows, one on either end of the kitchen, so there’d be a ton of light compared with now. BUT … DH just doesn’t want to tackle installation. He’s busy, going out-of-town a lot, and $ is tight right now, to have to go buy something to aide installation isn’t really doable right now, but I do think we have everything that we need. FWIW.

There is a large header where the window will be (from the patio doors), so it’s simple framing to be done to get the window in.

November 2006 Begins

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It’s November now. Just a few weeks from my daughter’s B-Day. She’ll be Eight on the 25th. I sure hope I can do enough between Thanksgiving and her birthday to make it very special for her. As it is, she does connect Thanksgiving with her birthday, an inescapable connection. She was born the evening before Thanksgiving, and her birthday is just before, on, or just after, relatively, Thanksgiving Day each year.

This year her birthday is on Saturday, two days after Turkey Day. Perhaps a good thing for me. I’m 7 weeks pregnant now, and that week I’ll be 10 weeks. I’m truly hoping all is well with the baby and me, and that all will continue along well. In any case, a day off in-between holiday affairs is a necessary thing, and I hope I will have the wherewithall to do something good enough for each day. I don’t doubt that I will, with DH around to help. I just mostly need to trust the Lord about the baby and that I won’t be worrying about losing the baby these next weeks mostly (historical attachment to pregnancy #4 two-plus years ago.)

If all goes well, I could be in the midst of icky morning sickness then though. I am struggling with it starting now, and it has generally gone for me from around 7 weeks to about 12 weeks then slides down intensity massively somewhere in that 12th week.

I do think I’ll get a cake from a bakery for her, a very pretty floral princessy one. That’ll excite her.

I have to think out Thanksgiving as well, in the past I have made the turkey the day before, or so, and didn’t have the rush to get everything in the oven and time it all to work out, etc. I had the turkey cooled, then sliced, made the gravy ahead, and stored turkey slices in gravy, then warmed that up on Turkey Day.

It’s never a big bird slicing event at our Thankgiving Table. I’m more the slicer than is my DH, though he can do it, but I’m better at thin slices going the right way … and it is frustrating to me to see DH messing up, and me scolding him, ugh. So do-ahead birdie is a good idea any year, in my book.

In our family it’s just us, our immediate family, so however we make the details work out is fine. Expectations on my part are for a beautiful meal layed out, nice table (not overly done, mininimalistically beautiful) and everyone dressed up nicely (pie in the sky when it comes to my DH and his expectations though, Mr. Super Casual.)

Our kitchen is still not finished, it’s just temporary set-up still. The washer deal this past week was a notch against the kitchen for sure. November is the last month on the timeline I’d given my DH, at his request sort of, to get a new window in where the sink will be going, and doors in the other end of the kitchen. We have a window, and are getting sliding doors (a good deal from someone he knows at a window/door company in the SE.) soon as we can pick them up, then need to install them, and also build a landing and stairs outside for the sliding door (we want to move the deck over, it’s pulling away from the house, front piers are sinking, it was built when the house was built, so not by us. They used concrete feet to set the deck on, those little feet things that sit on top of the earth. Worthless, in my estimation. We need to put true footings in, and don’t like the deck where it is, and don’t know if we should save it, or scrap it partially, or scrap it entirely. It’s behind the house where the patio doors used to be, where we are putting the new sink area window. Those doors were removed a long time ago now, boarded up and I want that area finished off very soon –before really cold weather hits. Another winter with that is not my preference.)

I have ideas that I just can’t do anything with right now, being in my first tri-mester. Paint, woodwork, etc. DH is working a lot, out of town a lot lately, so it’s just “let it all slide” time, and I really want to get things going, so it’ll be nicer for the holidays, and easier for us too (the new window in means the plumbing can be done, easy enough, and start to get cabinets to put in at the corner and up to the sink base and then a dishwasher, and get those in, I want a good one, know I can’t get one that I would prefer, but we’ll get something better than the sort we used to have, I hope.)

November begins, countdown for the Holidays, and my own expectations for the kitchen getting done, or at least on the way faster!