Another Wednesday Ramble

Dear Friends,

I apologize for not blogging last week.  It was my week of insomnia, and I barely had energy to get out of bed in the morning, much less write something interesting.

I also apologize for my recent lack of pictures.  We're attempting to locate Caleb's camera (which we've only looked for once and it wasn't where he thought it was, so we have to look again) so I can only use mine which has that stupid annoying spot on it, and I know bad pictures are better than no pictures, but I just haven't done anything with it yet.

Last week, I wanted to post about chicken soup (soup-er exciting, right?) because I found a new chicken soup recipe that I love and doesn't take quite as long as the four-hour-simmer one I made before.  This recipe says to simmer for 45 minutes, but I like stronger soup, so I gave it probably an hour and 15 minutes or so.  (Bonus: this also makes the chicken come off the bones much more easily!)  Then, I made two batches, since if I'm cutting up a chicken, I may as well cut up two.  The second batch was for dinner, but the first batch I poured into muffin tins and froze (idea via Pinterest).  (The purpose of this is so one can grab 1-3 soup "cubes" and heat them up in a bowl without having to reheat the entire batch of soup.) I placed the muffin tin full of soup on a small cookie sheet in my freezer to keep it straight and upright.  While at first it seemed annoying that only one tin fit in my freezer at a time (meaning I had to pour and freeze multiple times), it turned out to be a blessing.  The first time, I was worried about how the "cubes" would pop out, and I read somewhere that you should put little squares of plastic wrap down in each space.  DON'T DO THIS.  In some of the cubes, the soup got under and around the plastic wrap and so it froze around the plastic wrap.  Meaning some of our soup "cubes" have plastic wrap in them.  GROSS.  Next, I tried just pouring the soup into the muffin tins.  This worked much better and they popped out no problem (well, a few of them needed a bit of warmth on the bottom, but then they came out no problem) and it was far less messy than peeling greasy, wet, thawing plastic wrap out of frozen soup.

I've also been thinking ahead to Christmas, believe it or not.  Of course, things I'll buy or food I'll make will wait until much closer to Christmas, but anything crocheted or knitted should be started now!  And I always like to be ahead of the game.  So I've made my list and I'm checking it several times and have lots of ideas.  And keep remembering people to add to the list.  (The real reason I start this early.)  I'm very excited for some of the projects I'm going to try this year.  I get to singe fabric!  Woohoo!

Well, I have dishes to wash and I'm trying to keep my morning routine relaxing, productive, and timely (because I'm anal-retentive), so I better go.

Love and Daisies,
Leah Joy