Heather Solos's Blog, page 15

Friday the 13th, How About Some Hoorays?

I could really use some. This has been a tough week on quite a few fronts. For starters, one would think that having your air conditioner go out in November wouldn’t be too annoying, right? One would be wrong. It was 89 in my house for two days in a row. Like everything else right now, the process is slowed down—due to the pandemic—and the installation of the new one might take a while. Thankfully, Hurricane Eta is back out to sea and has taken all of her tropical, muggy nonsense with her, and it’s a much more tolerable 82 in here.

Mine? Monday’s news from Pfizer. I know that news by press release isn’t always something to get excited about and that it’s not quite yet statistically significant, but a vaccine that is 90% effective is quite hopeful. If we have one solid vaccine candidate in the pipeline, there are likely more. For every vaccine we have going into production, that’s less pressure on one supplier and a better chance that we will have a good fit for every person. I will take that news and hang onto it.

Normal life is still quite a ways away, but if stick to the guidelines and do our best to flatten that curve as much as possible, more of us will see its return.

On a smaller, more personal note, my boss sent flowers for my eight-year “work-a-versary” at FeedBlitz. They’ve brightened up our dining room and made my two-year-old very happy. I should probably take note and buy fresh flowers more often.

Remember as we head into the coming weeks that it’s ok to turn off the news. It’s ok to put on your blinders when you need to and to focus on the little things. So, in light of that, I’m inviting you to share your Friday hoorays. What good things have happened in your corner of the world?

What have you accomplished?

What have you seen?

What is keeping you going?

The post Friday the 13th, How About Some Hoorays? appeared first on Home Ec 101.

The Microwave Glass is Broken, Can I Still Use It?

Dear Home-Ec 101,

Not Me and I Didn’t Do It struck again. Do they ever visit your house? This time Not Me threw a ball in the kitchen and I Didn’t Do It Either batted it with the broom handle into the microwave or the broom handle itself hit the microwave. I didn’t get the full story, I couldn’t hear over the blood rushing in my ears.

You’ll be proud, I didn’t scream at them. I DID tell them I was disappointed…a few times.

I got all the glass cleaned up. It’s one of those over the stove mounts and I can’t get a new one installed until next week. Are Not Me and I Didn’t Do It relegated to PB&J until the new one is installed or can they continue to heat up their after-school snacks?

Signed,

Shattered in Shelby

Heather says:

Not Me and I Didn’t Do It are frequent guests here at the Solos-Bergman home, we know them quite well. I have heard that they get around, the little freeloaders.

As far as your microwave there’s a chance it’s safe, but would I use it? Nah.

If you look at the door of your microwave, you’ll notice that there is a metal mesh between the panes of glass. It’s actually that mesh that keeps the waves inside the appliance.

But Heather, there are holes in the mesh. How does that actually keep invisible rays inside the microwave? Aren’t they tiny? Yes, they are tiny, but the holes are sized so that the wavelength doesn’t escape. They continue to bounce around inside.

The glass keeps the mesh clean. Please think of how your kids don’t cover their food. If that schmutz got all over the mesh, you wouldn’t be able to see your food. Also, the drips would dribble down into the seal of the door, and eventually, it wouldn’t close all the way, and THEREIN lies part of the problem.

The other part of the problem is if that mesh was damaged. If the mesh shifted, was torn, or now has a gap or gaps, you now have a place where the microwaves can leak. These waves aren’t going to sneak out of the appliance and hunt you and your family down, but they could cause burns if you were close enough to where they were leaking and if a part of your body that wasn’t good at dispersing heat were in their path.

Notice I am talking about heat, the microwaves we talk about are non-ionizing radiation, they are not ionizing radiation. To be clear, ionizing radiation is the scarier stuff that you need to be much more cautious around. What you need to be most cautious around with your microwave is the heat it produces that can lead to burns (usually scalds) and fires (has Not Me ever way overcooked a potato yet?). A lot of people think that the two kinds of radiation are the same and that microwaves destroy all the nutrition in your food. That’s not how it works. You can certainly overcook your food, which doesn’t help its nutritional profile, but that’s not the same as irradiating it, but I digress.

Let Not Me and I Didn’t Do It enjoy their PB&Js as part of the consequences of rough housing in the house. You play, you pay. That’s how the world works.

Send your questions to helpme@home-ec101.com.

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Menu Monday: Week 45

Well, we survived the election. If you’re not in the US, I’m sure you heard that it has been a little tense over here. Some people cope by eating all the things. I, on the other hand, tend to cope with stress by not eating. We’re a little off the dinner plan, but I did make the chili, and half of it went right into the freezer, so we’re set for some busy night next month.

I am always happy when that works out. In fact, several dinners this month will work out that way, so we may have a few nights where things are extra simple, or maybe I’ll be generous and make dessert. (That’s pretty rare around here.)

Now, I am not trying to be an alarmist, but please keep an eye on your area’s case counts. If the numbers are rising and community spread is high in your area, please do what you can to reduce your exposure and contribution. This includes reducing your trips to the store.

How do you do this? Well, menu planning is a good start. is about menu planning and shopping during COVID-19, and what if you’ve done a great job of stocking your freezer and the power goes out. Crap. Don’t worry. All is not lost. Here’s what to do the first 48 hours, and if the power stays out, here’s how to use up everything else.

Use curbside pickup and drive throughs whenever you can—and please use your mask, the drive through employees don’t want extra exposure, either.

Why do I keep harping on this stuff? Well, there are 5000 of you that get these emails, and while some of you read each email, it’s much more normal for people to open about one in five. (I live and breathe email stats at work) So I am sorry if I sound like a broken record; I want all of you to be safe this late fall and winter. I truly hope that it is overstated, but a friend of mine’s mother passed away last night, right now it’s not feeling one bit overstated.

So, about that menu plan. What are you having this week? Would you like a printable? Here you go.

We are having:

Monday – Ground Beef and Cabbage Skillet Tuesday – Brinner! (Or fine, you can call it pancakes for dinner), bacon, fruit

Wednesday – Pork Chops, Green Beans, Rice
https://www.home-ec101.com/pork-chops-fake-n-bake-style/
Thursday – Clean Out Refrigerator NightFriday – Fish Cakes – I think I’m going to go with more of a Thai style, but I’m certain here, I’ve got some tilapia in the freezer to use up. Saturday – Red Curry (chicken), RiceSunday – Spaghetti, Salad, Garlic Bread (I’ll double the sauce and freeze half for lasagna later in the month)

And just like that, we’ll make it through another week.

Onward!

The post Menu Monday: Week 45 appeared first on Home Ec 101.

The Pandemic Countdown to Turkey Day: The Soft Menu Plan

Right now, we are going to look back at 2012 and take a moment and chuckle at how young and naive we were back then. Oh, what sweet summer, children we were. So young, so carefree, and full of hope, and in my case, so few children—there were three and my stepdaughter back then. Oh, and I had just started working for FeedBlitz. Can you believe you’ve been putting up with me for eight years, Phil?

Look at how cute we were, assuming there would be guests and knowing all the ingredients would just be at the store for us to buy at any given time. Oh, by the way, I strongly suggest getting the ingredients you know you will be using as soon as possible. Don’t wait until the last minute to try to get that can of pumpkin. Do not underestimate people’s drive to recreate Grandma’s pumpkin pie. I don’t expect the stores to be bare, but I do know that numbers are climbing and disruptions can happen, plan accordingly.

This year, I’m not going to suggest trying to come up with the perfect, traditional Thanksgiving menu. I want you to think about how you will make this Thanksgiving a special day in its own way. If trying to make a turkey with all the trimmings will feel like too much work or if it will make you too sad, don’t do it. We can pick up the tradition next year or the year after. This year, we are doing what we need to do to be kind to ourselves.

One of my colleagues is looking forward to making herself a pot roast and zooming with friends and family. Another is going to have a more traditional meal, but only their very favorite items and just one guest who is in their pandemic bubble.

As for us, five of our six children will be here and we really do like leftovers, so I will be doing a traditional Thanksgiving meal. My mother, stepfather, and sister, will join us if they can. We’re going to follow all of the precautions that we can and even if I can’t hug them, it’ll be so good to see them.

Just for fun and nostalgia, I’ll link to the old menu planner we used back in 2012; maybe you’ll still find it useful to sketch out an idea of what you wish you could have for Thanksgiving, what’s practical, and the compromise.

Onward!

Countdown to Turkey Day Pandemic Style

We’ve down Countdown to Turkey Days in the past. There have been really fun years and really hard years. It doesn’t take a magic eight ball to predict that this year will be one of the really hard years.

For starters, unless you are extremely blessed to live in circumstances where everyone who would be on your list, is already in your bubble, it’s not likely that you will get to gather with everyone you want.

So let’s take today to take stock of what is happening right now, take a look at what’s going on in our respective areas and try to get a sense of what things might look like in roughly three weeks. (I would expect counts to be higher, if not significantly higher; unless your local authorities are locking things down, right now.)

Suppose you plan to gather with family and want to quarantine to reduce the risk of their exposure. It would be best if you were prepared to stay at home as much as possible, starting two weeks before the 26th. Limit your shopping to curbside pickup or delivery. Do not have anyone over. If you have children leaving the house to go to school, you cannot quarantine, and your family isn’t really a low-risk situation for those at higher risk of complications. This doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to have a lower-risk Thanksgiving meal. It just means lots of planning, care, and precaution needs to be put into place.

If you can’t quarantine prior to Thanksgiving, please be extremely careful with what you choose to do.

As you plan, keep the following in mind:

Eating outside is your safest option.

Even if you do eat outside, try to not pack a picnic table. Give space to allow airflow. Get creative. Take TV trays outside. Spread picnic blankets.

Limit who enters the home. In the best-case scenario, the visit will be short enough that no one needs to use the restroom. If this isn’t possible, windows and doors should be open to encourage airflow, and masks should be worn. No one should ever be congregating in hallways or bathrooms

Only household members should be helping with transferring items from indoors to out.

Use food service gloves.

Use masks while serving food and beverages.

Consider using video conferencing, maybe you have a competition to see who makes the best pumpkin pie or turkey.

It’s not going to look like last year, but maybe, if we do our part, this year, next year will be closer to normal. I’m sorry, but COVID didn’t just go away like some people thought it would the day after the election.

Normally, this year’s Day 1 homework would be to decide when and where and then clear the dining room table.

Today I just want you to take some time and figure out what you can manage this year. That feels like a lot.

Will you be having dinner with your household members? Will you be dining alone, but want to make it special somehow? Are you going to try to involve family outside of your immediate COVID bubble? If so, how will you do so safely?

What are your plans? (And yes, I know they can change.)

Menu Monday Week 44: November Update

October’s month-long menu was a big success. I fell off a little bit toward the end, but there weren’t any extra trips to the grocery store, and there weren’t any trips to the drive-through, it was more a rearrangement/iron chef situation, so I’ll call it a win. The menu is a guide to saving money, and if nothing is going bad, it is doing its job. We will keep on with the plan.

We sat down over the weekend and planned out most of November’s menu. We are waiting for some news to determine our Thanksgiving plans. What news? Mostly the weather.

If the weather is pleasant, we will be hosting a very small, socially-distant Thanksgiving in the driveway. It’ll be the second time I’ll see my mother and stepfather for more than five minutes since March. Last time we set up chairs in the front yard and talked.

With four teenagers attending three schools in co-parenting homes, our bubble isn’t small no matter how careful Ray and I are. The teenagers are all as careful as you can possibly expect teenagers to be, but we know we need to keep our distance from the more vulnerable people in our lives. Right now two of our schools are on a hybrid model, but with our local numbers climbing, I have a sneaking suspicion that will be ending soon. (That sneaking suspicion is the rubric set up by the health department on which the school district is supposed to base the attendance model.)

My oldest son’s football team has made it to the state playoffs with a 6 – 0 record in the region. Go, team, go. I admit I am stunned that the season hasn’t been cut short[er]. In a twist of irony, our first letter of exposure from the school system came not from football, where I’ve been expecting it, but from the marching band. Thankfully, nothing came of that, but I have to say, COVID-19 is the worst game of Among Us ever. (I play with my kids.)

What does all this mean? November is shaping up to be more stressful and just as busy as previous months.

As far as Tuesday? We voted early. With many mail-in ballots to be counted, we’re prepared not to know the results. Since I work a very early shift, we’ve agreed to put the little ones to bed, turn off the news, and turn in like it’s a normal night. Will it work? I don’t know.

This year’s Count Down to Turkey Day will start on Wednesday.

Even though we should not have traditional Thanksgiving celebrations with all of our friends and family, we can have small, intimate moments of thanksgiving. (The lowercase was intentional, thank you very much). Maybe your family of four doesn’t need a whole turkey, maybe you’ll have the best roast chicken you’ve ever made, or maybe instead of roasting a bird, you’ll change things up so the meal is less like Thanksgivings past and is its own celebration.

This Menu Monday warm-up ended up way off in left field; I’m sorry, it happens.

What’s on your menu this week?

Are you making anything special? Do you need a printable planner to make things easier?

Monday – Loaded Baked Potato SoupTuesday – Taco Salads (No Salt Taco Seasoning)Wednesday – Smoked Sausage and Cabbage Skillet – I’ll add some sweet potatoes this timeThursday – Clean Out Refrigerator NightFriday – Chicken, Broccoli, Rice CasseroleSaturday – Chili, Cornbread Sunday – Sausage, peppers, and onions on rolls

Do you need help learning how to menu plan? I’ve got a series just for you.

And as a final aside, I spent some time on Sunday trying out a new-to-me technique on yesterday’s pot roast. It took some extra effort, but the results were so good that I’ll be making it again later this month, photographing it, and writing it up as a tutorial for a company-worthy Sunday Supper pot roast.

I hope we all have a peaceful week.

Why Do I Have Fruit Flies With no Fruit?

This week’s random pest question comes from Twitter:

Calling @HeatherSolos and her @HomeEc101 knowledge: How do you get rid of fruit flies? Note: There’s no fruit in the house.

Twitter

If I had suspected my friend had fruit flies, I would have suggested the following. (I didn’t)

Fruit Flies in the House

Generally, when you find small, flying bugs in your home, there are three suspects. The most common pest was the one suggested in the tweet, the common fruit fly. This small, delicate-bodied insect usually hitches a ride home on some produce and reproduce like crazy.

To make sure you are dealing with fruit flies, look for reddish eyes, transparent wings, and light colored bodies. To trap the adults you can set out a bowl of cider vinegar, with a squirt of dish soap, covered with plastic wrap with a few holes poked in it.

More important than the trap itself though, is a thorough kitchen cleaning. The fruit flies are attracted to anything sticky and sweet. Check the little gap behind your sink, anywhere you store fruit, behind your trashcan, under your fridge. ANYWHERE a child has been or could have been. Clean these areas thoroughly and they will get under control quickly.

They can spread germs, but they are usually not more than a major annoyance.

What I actually expected my friend to be dealing with was:

Fungus Gnats in the House

How do you know if you have fungus gnats? These pesky little bugs have thin legs and a long body. They don’t have the reddish eyes of the fruit flies. These annoying little bugs feed on—wait for it—the fungus that grows in potting soil.

How do you get rid of fungus gnats? You let your potting soil dry out between watering so the fungus cannot grow in the top 2 – 3 inches where the gnats like to hang out. You can also order some handy plant stakes which attract the fungus gnats, and they get stuck. This is often simpler than trying to walk the tightrope of watering a plant enough to keep it happy and not so much that you create the environment that the fungus gnats prefer.

Like

Sewer Gnats or Drain Flies

Sewer gnats are fairly easy to tell apart from both fruit flies and fungus gnats. While all three insects are about the same size, these little guys have dark wings unlike their light-winged counterparts.

Like fungus gnats and fruit flies, drain flies don’t bite. They can spread germs as they travel from surface to surface. Drain flies tend to reproduce in the slime that can develop in the sludge that accumulates in drains often used. Typically unused guest bathrooms or floor drains in basements.

Your first inclination might be to reach for a jug of Draino or to pour boiling water down the drain, but neither of these is actually the best option. Why? Neither will remove the sludge quite as well as a good old fashioned scrubbing. Use a tool like a plumbers snake to really clean out that mess, and you’ll be drain fly free in no time.

When you’ve got little flying pests bugging you, usually it’ll be one of these three. Follow the advice above and you’ll be just fine.

Send your questions to helpme@home-ec101.com.

Menu Monday 2020 Week 43

October is wrapping up? I can’t believe it, which has nothing to do with the timey-wimey wibbly wobbly nonsense of 2020 and everything to do with it being hot and humid and not at all fall-like here in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.

My favorite local weather nerds have promised that cooler temperatures are on the way, and I am going to hold them to it.

How is that month-long menu plan going, you ask? Pretty well. We will do this again in November. I find decision fatigue a big problem in my world, and menu planning seems to go a long way to reduce that. (If decision fatigue sounds like something you want to learn more about, there are a couple of books I recommend The Power of Habit and Your Brain at Work. Reducing the amount of energy you expend on decision making helps increase the energy you have available for other cognitive tasks, even play. Yes, you can be too tired to play).

I also found it much easier to get the family to join in on the idea pitching once rather than several times. That was far less tiresome for me. So let’s chalk that up as a win, too.

So, what’s on your menu this last week in October? Do you need a printable to help with your planning and grocery shopping? Here you go.

Monday – Tortilla Soup (I hope to add this to the site this week)Tuesday – Loaded baked potatoes (I generally steam some broccoli, make a cheese sauce, and cook some bacon. I also set out green onions and sour cream. This week there may be leftover chicken, too. My son that eats lower carb eats his over cauliflower rice and the son that hates potatoes, makes regular rice.)Wednesday – Pesto pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and blackened chicken, saladThursday – Clean Out Refrigerator NightFriday – We met our goal of not cheating this month and I’m treating the family to pizza

That $$^!@ Pantry Door: A Friday Hooray

I work in email; I know better than to use a subject like the one above. If you see this email at all, it will likely be in your spam folder. Oh well, it gets the point across, and I’m in the kind of mood where I just don’t care.

On March 2, 2018, I was induced three weeks early. Then to spice things up, on March 5th, we moved. We certainly know how to have fun in our family.

We found a house with enough bedrooms, and it was worth it. I would try to adjust the timing a bit if I had to do it all over again, but it was what it was.

The people who sold us the house had a dry erase calendar on the pantry door. I think they used some of those 3M hooks on the hollow-core door. They decided to take the calendar and the hooks with them when they moved. Unfortunately, the hooks took great big chunks of the cardboard from the white door with them.

We’ve been busy since March of 2018, and I have tried so hard to ignore those four chunks of missing door bits. But oh, how they have bothered me.

My pandemic project has been to solve this issue. It’s been a piecemeal project, and one of those things where good ole Murphy has been having a field day. First, I had to get a door. We don’t have a truck, so that was something I wasn’t quite sure how to manage. Ray solved that by getting rear-ended on the interstate and totaling my car (everyone is fine, and that was absolutely not his fault). We got a full-size minivan and a door nicely fit between the seats. So even though you didn’t check to see if my husband or children were ok after hitting them, you ended up doing us a favor, lady.

In a fit of productivity in one weekend, I removed the old door, painted the new one, added the doorknob, hung it, and discovered that the hinges made it too wide by 1/4″ to close.

I looked at the old door and saw that the hinges had been set into the door itself, allowing the door just to fit.

For the past several months, our toddler—not the baby we had in 2018, the one we had in 2019—has had a grand time opening the pantry door that will not shut and unloading the lower shelf, usually to test the buoyancy of items in the dogs’ water bowl.

I assumed that fixing this issue would require an expensive tool or skill set I didn’t have, so I ignored it for a few weeks. Because as you know, procrastination fixes all problems.

This week, I finally broke down and turned to Google, where a quick search showed me one cheap tool would solve my problem.

Who knew?

So all of that is to say, two years and seven months later, may I present to you, my Friday hooray:

It took me about about half an hour. Yay.

No, I’m not painting the walls or trim until the baby gates are down.

What is your Friday hooray for this week?

Sausage Gravy: a Home-Ec 101 Basic Recipe

My kids call biscuits and gravy their favorite struggle meal. For me, it’s my favorite I-don’t-have-enough-energy-to-deal-with-anything-meal. All of my teenagers now know how to make the gravy themselves, and I keep a few cans of biscuit dough in the fridge for the nights of no energy or time. One might think during the Great COVID Pandemic of 2020, that Home-Ec101 would be harping on making everything from scratch since we have all this time on our hands. Well, guess what, here I’m all about keeping your sanity intact and if that means reaching for a can of biscuit dough instead of making biscuits from scratch, do it. (We didn’t get the extra time version of the pandemic, we got the holy crap, how are we ever going to manage all of this version.)

Don’t get me wrong, I love homemade biscuits. I just didn’t have the bandwidth for them last night.

Sausage gravy is a great first recipe. If you mess it up, any lumps can be disguised in the biscuits. It’s very forgiving.

Please let me know what questions you have. I tried to add excessive detail to the instructions, but it’s possible that there’s something I find intuitive that you do not. I am happy to add more explanation.

Sausage Gravy

Ingredients:

1 pound ground pork sausage, thawed (Do not use maple flavored and I suggest avoiding the sage version, too, but that might just be my preference)optional 1 TBSP butter or bacon grease1/4 cup flour2 cups milk + a little extra to thin to your preferenceBlack pepper – fresh ground is preferable

Tools required:

straight sided skillet, you can use a traditional frying pan, but you’ll make less of a messwooden spoon, but preferably a wooden spatula with a flat edgemeasuring cup (dry)measuring cup (liquid)

Method

Over medium heat begin browning the sausage. As it browns use your spoon/ spatula to break the meat into small chunks. The size of the chunks will depend on your preference. In our house, we prefer smaller chunks and I prefer very small bits. I take my time and continuously break them down as they cook. Let the sausage cook completely and do NOT drain off the grease. Allow some browning to occur, this will increase the flavor. If you choose, you can add the additional tablespoon of butter or bacon grease at this step. I don’t ever seem to need it.Sprinkle the 1/4 cup of flour evenly and thinly over the fully cooked sausage. The more evenly you spread your flour, the lower your chance of creating lumps. Stir to coat all of the sausage with the flour and allow it to cook just a little longer, using your spoon / spatula to continuously scrape the bottom of the pan to prevent it from scorching. This step gets rid of the raw flour taste. Turn the heat to low.Slowly, approximately 1/4 – 1/2 cup at a time, add the milk to your meat and flour mixture. Stir between additions to incorporate the milk fully before your next addition. Scrape the bottom of the pan to prevent it from sticking and scorching.

WARNING – it is going to look ugly. It is going to look weird! It is going to look like you messed up. It is going to look a right mess. KEEP GOING. You are just fine. (I have included step by step pictures below, so you can see that yes, it is supposed to look weird and clumpy. stir right through that)

Just keep stirring, just keep stirring! Allow to come to a simmer, this means there are bubbles forming, but not breaking the surface. You may need to adjust your heat a little, do NOT let it come to a boilAdd more milk if you want a thinner gravy.Pepper to taste.

Enjoy!

Other great ideas for cooking beginners: