Elisa’s Day

1 pound ground beef ( not lean )

1 large onion cut in rings

cook onions slowly in a small amount of oil until transparent. add ground beef and brown ( *i add here, brown it on med to low temp and really use the spatula to break it up, it takes longer but makes the sauce much better texture wise* ) add spices to mixture while it is cooking. approximately 1-2 tsp. of garlic powder, I sprinkle heavily 3 times over the entire pot. 1 tsp cayenne, 1 tsp salt, and lots of black pepper.

when meat is browned add

1 28 oz. can of tomatoes

1 28 oz. can tomato sauce ( *i can never find 28oz. cans of tomato sauce, the large can seems to be approx. 25 oz or so, i just use that and have added a second can of soup to the recipe to compensate* )

2 cans tomato soup

2 cans tomato paste (small size)

I also add 4 chili peppers whole or broken (*broken ones are harder to fish out later, stick with whole if you want to be able to find them easily*)

simmer for several hours, stirring often.

and that’s it. oh, and you need a big pot, it’s a big batch of sauce. probably enough for a family of seven to eat twice or three times.  for us, since it’s just ryan and i eating it, we had dinner, two lunches and froze 3 medium mason jars.

it’s a cold and rainy day, no better kind of day to have a huge pot of grandma’s spaghetti sauce simmering for the afternoon. grandma’s legendary spaghetti sauce. everyone loves it. it’s always spicy, how spicy depends on the day grandma made it. and be careful you don’t eat a whole pepper by accident, they go in during simmering for flavour ( 5 of them ) and grandma almost always only managed to fish out 3 or 4 before we sat down to eat. everyone would crowd around the sauce when it was still on the stove, to dip in there bread and see…..how hot was it today? when i lived with my grandma when i was a teenager, i would often defrost sauce just to eat piled on bread, who needs the actual spaghetti.

grandma wrote out the “recipe” for me a decade and a half or so ago, and i made it a lot. for a while, it was grandma’s sauce every saturday night, some friends, hockey night in canada, a case of beer and lots of cigarettes. it was never as good as grandma’s, but it was always good. i haven’t made it in years, probably since sidney was a baby. i don’t even really know why. probably partly because we stopped eating beef for a long while, and it needs to be ground beef, specifically NOT LEAN ground beef, which is exactly what my grandma wrote. and partly because it’s so spicy, the kids would never eat it. but they don’t eat our not even close to spicy homemade veggie sauce either so………

i had a craving for grandma’s sauce. so i dug out the handwritten, covered in splatters recipe, and i bought all the stuff i’d need, the fatty ground beef, the cans and cans of stuff. make no mistake, it might be homemade, but i don’t know about “good for you” . it’s a full on, 1960’s feed a family of seven for next to nothing, meal. onions, beef, lots of spices, tomato sauce, canned tomatoes, tomato soup, tomato paste. that’s it.

and i have to say, the batch on the stove right now, looks about as close to grandma’s as any ever has. i don’t know why, i think it’s because we cooked the beef on a really low temp, so it really broke down and cooked slowly. my version has always been off more in texture then taste. it looks so good. it’s been on for a couple of hours, so soon i’ll give it a taste and see if it’s close, and just how spicy it is today.

now if we could just master grandma’s doughnuts. i have the 2 page “recipe” ( it should be noted that all grandma recipes are handwritten,  just come from grandma’s head, are never the same twice and can also contain measurements like “lots of black pepper” ) but i showed ryan the doughnut recipe once recently, he wondered if right after that he should try and launch the shuttle……..grandma says “oh, they’re easy” but i assume anything seems easy if you’ve been doing it for 50 years. so….for now, grandma’s doughnuts are a pipe dream.

but for today i’m just looking forward to grandma’s sauce tonight, with homemade brownies for dessert. which should be needing out of the oven any second now.

another swimming sign up has just passed. that lovely time, when all the parents drag themselves out of bed at a ridiculously early hour to take a number and wait their turn in hopes of getting the spot they really want. a poorly executed system to say the least. but i guess the most fair……maybe.

so this time i made extra effort to be there early. last time we ( a friend and i ) made it just around 7am, when it starts. we were around numbers 24 and 25 ( but remember the winter session is slow, only a crazy person drags their kids out in -30 to go swimming….remember? )  well i didn’t remember that part though you think i would have, given that the fall session, we showed up about 7:10 and were numbers 46 and 47.

so i get to the rec complex at a lovely 6:30 am, and wow, were the stars just lovely when i was leaving my house, seriously, leaving while the stars are still out. and the parking lot is busy. huh. and my friend isn’t here yet. so i go in anyway. i am number 16.  it doesn’t even “start” until 7…..so i sit around waiting, wondering to myself, exactly what time did say, 1 through 10 even get here anyway? just crazy.

but in the end, i got the spots i wanted, sidney and olivia swim at the same time !! that is a beautiful thing believe me, because last time i could only get them in back to back, one trip sure, but having to wait a half hour with nothing to do but watch your sister swim…..not so fun, having to be the adult waiting with said child, even less fun. hannah is in the same class, same spot. until you turn three you can only repeat this class. not exactly my idea of fun, but skipping it and likely ending right back where we started with the nervousness and the screaming by the time summer rolled around……worse then another round of mommy and tot swimming ( but only slightly )

other then that, not much exciting going on. had a doctors appointment yesterday. she has me coming back in 3 weeks…..3 weeks already? but she wanted me in at 30 weeks. so that makes the end seem …….close. not close, but like i can see the light at the end of the tunnel anyway. starting to get excited for nice weather ( although it’s been cold, the snow is gone! even if we get a few freak spring snow storms, it’ll never stay now, the ground is already thawing as demonstrated by the disappearance of our ocean in the backyard ) and to enjoy the end of this pregnancy and birth.

two days left of march break, and we’ve all survived. for kids with no plans, it sure seemed busy, which is a very good thing. between activities with the grandma’s and a trip to the Onatrio Early Years Center for “wear you pjs” day, the week flew by. we also had some great weather, much time was spent playing outside. you can like winter activities all you want, it’s just not the same as being able to spend hours playing outside in the spring/summer.

ryan and i even got away for an awesome dinner child free. our real estate agent surprised us with a gift certificate not too long ago for a thai place in the “city” ( i use the term loosely, the only real city close to here is toronto, but this is the closest thing to us that isn’t a small town, so for the sake of argument we’ll call it a city, and hey, it does have some decent food ) so off we went. dinner was so good and the gift certificate covered everything including the tip…..nice. i heart thai food.  ( and no we’re not selling, but she’s been our agent for a lot of sales and purchases over the years, so i guess she just wanted to give us something….better late then never LOL )

today we have an early lunch planned, then loading into the car and off to my dad’s place. he’s about an hour away. we’ll visit the horses, and then hit the sugar bush down the road for the little tour and some maple syrup on snow. then dinner, throw the kids into their pj’s and back into the car and head home.

tomorrow, try and restore order to the house, and sidney has a play planned at a friends. which is nice. i’m sure she’ll love a break from her sisters. me too. so i’ll probably drop her and then stay in town and run a few errands until it’s time to pick her up. and maybe i’ll try and con the neighbours into inviting us for dinner too, we’ll see.

it’s march break time around here, which means all the kids are home for the week. thankfully ryan’s mom is also here, because they appeared to have big plans to spend the entire week fighting. but with that new distraction, the fighting has mellowed (a little).  also, i am sick again, so having some extra hands around is nice. sickness while pregnant is truly a crime of nature. instead of a weakened immune system, pregnancy should offer a super duper boosted immune system that no germs can penetrate. in fact, it should extend through motherhood. no one gestating or caring for kids should ever have to do so while fighting a flu or cold. but alas, it is not the case, instead my compromised immune system has had me sick, what, four or five times now since i first saw the two pink lines.

on the plus side of the equation, the long term forecast for the next 7 days only has one day in the negative. that is something. i’m sure this hideous time of year isn’t helping my cold and flu status. when it can literally ( and was last week ) be +12 one day and -14 the next day, it’s just no good. so a few days of consistent, above zero weather sure sounds nice. there is nothing better then the kids being able to just throw on their rain boots and go outside. no 10 minute struggle with snow suits and fights over which hats and mittens everyone is wearing. just boots and out. beautiful.

the kids are all very very big. sidney is just barely going to make it through the winter in her current wardrobe. she is all ankles and wrists hanging out in most of it. yet i refuse to buy her new clothes now for a season that will soon be behind us, so we’re just going to have to manage a little while longer. olivia is the same, but of course that mostly means digging through the bins in the basement. not quite as horrific a task as the actual swap out, and storage of seasonal clothes. but not enjoyable whatever the case. our basement is a right mess, my bins are as well. no well organized, well marked collection of clothes and shoes right now.

olivia is going to be five this summer. that seems just crazy. she is stuck right now, between big and little. sometimes acting so big, other times clinging to being “little” ( right now we’re battling a bad bout of baby talk with olivia ). sidney will be seven in the fall. man. she is like a real big kid now. not like “big kid” like you say to kids just leaving toddlerhood behind them to go off and start kindergarten and such. but a real big kid. or just a kid even. sometimes i imagine her as a baby and it seems so very long ago and just yesterday all at the same time. hannah is talking in real sentences now. and saying the funniest things. when she’s not having a huge meltdown over the most minor of things of course. it’s a two year old thing, we wouldn’t understand.

a friend asked me a few months back if i felt that “i’m done” feeling that women claim to, when they decide to not have any more babies. i did not. at the time i was all too aware of the sadness and regret i’d eventually feel at the truth of no more babies. but i feel it now. i’m tired of being pregnant.  i have spent approx. 40 of the last 84 months pregnant. 4 pregnancies, each one less enjoyable then the last.  i will have had four babies in the last 7 years. that is pretty much constant nursing, night waking, and diapering. well over half of our basement is crammed with storage of baby stuff. in the midst of that mess the other day, i said to ryan “well, no more baby stuff is ever coming back into the basement at least. it can go right from baby to the consignment store” and that seemed like a truly great truth. so yeah. i guess i do know it now. i am. so. done. i am still well aware of the future twinges of baby lust that are to come. since most my friends are either done, not having kids, or far away, i’ll stick with hope some of my older cousins will start having babies that i can hold (and smell) to fill that gap. but for now i’m just looking forward to last baby.

it’s pretty bizarre to me that i can surf the web ( well, on dial up, can we call it surfing? more like doggy paddling ) while the power is out ( crazy winds i think ) but the laptop is running on battery and the phone lines are still working, and with no fancy router or dsl box or anything…… here we are, old school.

it’s very dark in here. i really need more candles.

eta: after about 1.5 hours the power is back, yay. i only went online this morning in the dark, to see if my friend hillary had her baby last night, which she did !! so congrats again hillary

well, this week we experimented with a few new recipes. we made crackers ( soda ) and granola. these are both things we go through in quantity ( not soda crackers really, kashi crackers, but soda seemed like the easiest recipe to start with, and that i had all the ingredients for ) so they are both things that i find myself needing from the store before i really need to go shopping again. and yes i could buy multiples when i shop, but i’m working on a budget here, and one of the biggest and easiest ways we cut our grocery expenses was to stop running out for a few things every couple days. shopping every couple weeks and sticking to a list makes a huge difference. and so, if i could just make crackers and granola when ever we were almost out, that sure would be nicer.

i’d say the crackers were a moderate success. they aren’t terrible, but they aren’t great. it was almost impossible to roll the dough out thin enough. i need a marble rolling pin, or one of those things for the kitchen aid you put pasta dough through. i’m going to try the whole wheat ones next and see if they are any better. i’d rate the granola as a success. the kids like it ( well not sidney, but sidney has a very short list of foods she deems acceptable, despite all of our efforts and frustration to the contrary ) and i like it okay. it needs more oats, more honey and more cinnamon. i think. but definitely workable.

and now we’re at sunday, already. if i had remembered the clocks went back i wouldn’t have kept putting off dragging out of bed. now i’ve lost an hour to my morning. sundays are hair washing day for the kids and this week it’s upstairs for cleaning. yes, i only wash the girls hair once a week. appalling i know. ( see me rolling my eyes? ) it just doesn’t need more then that since we switched to natural shampoo. plus if i do it during the week in the evening i have to send them to bed with wet hair….blech. probably in the summer when they are out getting grubby all day, i’ll have to throw a mid week wash into the mix.

ryan’s getting his bread dough started, and while it’s rising we’ll all head upstairs to start the picking up.

i’m hoping to make it into town this afternoon to visit my grandma. my aunts are in town, and i haven’t seen grandma in a while. she’s 84 ( i think ) i really should go more. it’s one of those things i always say and never do. but i am going to really try today, and i want to bring the baby blanket i’m working on to show her. she’s a knitter, she’s made many a sweater for the girls. and i need to hit the bulk barn too. even though we were just there. sigh. always forgetting something. we got the oats for the granola and should have gotten rolled oats as well. should have. didn’t. but i need to make tiny muffins for the girls lunches, and i need rolled oats.

nothing much to say pregnancy wise. really it’s mostly complaining so……well….boring. but i will say that the last two times, i had anterior placenta, which basically meant that almost all fetal movement was “cushioned” by the placenta and i felt almost nothing. it was freaky, even when you knew why. but this time, we’re back in business with the wacky baby movements. so that is nice. and exciting since it’s my last time. it’ll be cool in another month or so when they’re big enough for the girls to feel it too.