A Day in the Life...

Summer is upon us with mild temperatures.  Soft breezes keep my little corner of the world comfortable without needing air conditioning as yet.  Healing is ever so slowly happening.  Not fast enough to suit me, but slow enough to teach me patience.  The stairs remain my mountain that I can not as yet scale, but I will in due time.  There are other small victories. A kitchen floor that was thoroughly scrubbed yesterday.  I really wonder how two small dogs, one lazy cat and one slow-moving old woman can create such a dirty floor  We must work at it, I guess.  Dust that had accumulated is gone and carpets have been vacuumed.  Not all at once, but done nonetheless.

Yesterday afternoon I stirred up a double batch of chocolate chip cookies.  I chilled the dough overnight and will bake them when I finish this post.  Chocolate chip cookies are my favorite comfort food.  And it is fun to have a cookie jar full of them when kids or grandkids stop by.

Being housebound has its advantages.  I have finished the afghan I was working on for my oldest granddaughter.  All that remains is to have her mother help me lay it out on my bed so I can make sure that all of the colored granny squares are in the correct positions that form the pattern.   It is one large afghan and is much easier to lay out and refold with help.  I have started another to keep my hands busy during the times I need to sit.

I have spent some time looking online for ideas for meals that I can put together, freeze and then thaw and bake later.  And I may make up a few, but I'm not so sure that I want to rely on my freezer.  Winters here can give us heavy, wet snows or blizzards, both of which can knock out local power.  Summers favor us with thunder storms, straight line winds and the occasional tornado that can also knock out power.  I mostly use my freezer for extra bread or cookies and bars when I bake or for meat that is on sale, keeping it frozen until I have enough to can.

Over the last couple of years I have dehydrated a vast amount of vegetables.  I use them when making soups or stews.  But I got to thinking that it might be a good idea to convert some of my soup and casserole recipes to use these dehydrated foods.  By putting the ingredients (dehydrated vegetables, seasonings, pasta, bouillon for flavor, etc.) into quart jars and sealing them with the jar sealer attachment for my Food Saver vacuum sealer, they could sit on a shelf until needed, and all I would need to do is add a pint of canned turkey or beef and water, toss it all into a crock pot or a slow oven, and Shazam.....easy peasy meal.  And, God forbid, should the time come when my family is hungry, it would be a great way to see that they are fed.  So as soon as I am completely mobile again, this is on my to-do list.

So I am off to bake cookies.  I am reminded of a time when four small pairs of hands would sneak a handful or two of raw cookie dough before I could get the cookies into the oven.  I got to the point where I would stir up extra dough so I would have enough for the baked cookies.  Yes, I know.  We will all surely die if we eat anything that contains raw eggs.

Me.....I'll risk it.