Well, I got the pumpkin pie baked. The low carb cheesecake looks good...I came close to burning the almond flour crust, though. Totally different ingredients mean relearning all the "it should take this long" basics.
The crescent rolls are "refrigerating" in the back of the car...we didn't trust leaving them and the cheesecake out in the pavilion overnight! The coleslaw hubby made still needs dressing, and I'll have to do that, and bake the rolls in the morning.
Hubby had promised me he'd help with a kitchen declutter and deep clean yesterday. But the weather was good, and DS was replacing the roof on the greenhouse (used as a laying hen and duck barn during the winter). He had a good friend of his helping, but hubby couldn't bear to not be involved...he has never completely overcome his father's voice in his head calling him "lazy" and nastier stuff (which he NEVER was...he is, however, rather slow and deliberate, with some OCD and ADHD that means he doesn't always work as efficiently as he could. But he still gets 10x as much done in a day as men half his age!)
So, I had to do all the cooking among the clutter, which in that tiny kitchen is a gigantic PITA! Hopefully, Saturday, we'll actually get the cleaning and organizing job done! A bunch of stuff isn't needed right now (gallon glass jars we use for milk can go into storage unitil the milk cows calves in April)
There are several bottles of fresh seeds I saved and dried that need to go to the root cellar. I've probably got at least 2 hours of work re-bottling close to a dozen herb tinctures which were in bulk clear glass jars (in closed, dark tubs in storage). I need to bottle them in dark amber glass and store them in the new cabinets we installed in one storage units it for all the herb and medical/hygiene stuff. I've got at least two that need to be run through the herb press first, as they never got strained.
Its one of those jobs I struggle with... ADHD doesn't help when everything you need to do has two steps that MUST be done first! But I'm finally feeling well enough (except for what I think is a sprained hip...or tendonitis in my hip) that I *need* to get the apartment in order. Having the storage units sorted (we've still got to buy a couple pieces of plywood to make shelves on the top of all our custom designed prep shelves..because the units have 9 foot ceilings, it gives us 18" more than we had in our old basement, where we originally designed and built the shelves. So, we can add one more along the top, which gives me 27 feet more shelf space!
It will hold the gallon jars of dry beans, extra canning lids, etc, plus we'll have room for "off season" kitchen items, like the Squeezo strainers, winemaking carboys, the big All American canners ( once I'm done with my major canning projects for the year, soon after harvest, I just keep my smallest (8 pints or quarts) All American canner in the pantry...I use it for canning a few jars of "leftover" (actually, "planned over"...I know darned well the two of us can't eat 3-4 gallons of soup before it spoils, or we're sick of it!... but it honestly takes very little extra time to make 4 gallons rather than one gallon.. and the same amount of electricity.
If hubby will finally sort out the office, I could move the splint baskets that hold various charging cords, charging blocks, etc into there, which would give me another 24" of counter space.
Housekeeping hasn't ever been easy for me...my adopted Mom was an amazing decorator and housekeeper (especially when you look at her deep Great Depression upbringing in a horribly dysfunctional home, including her paranoid/schizophrenic, alcohol abusing father). But she was over the top (probably some OCD there, although she didn't seem to have problems with piling several days worth of cooking dishes in the basement wash tub, when she was cooking for one of her dinner parties. We sometimes washed dishes (no dishwasher in those days) for five hours straight, the day after the party! )
But she could look at her deep brown carpet (a couple hundred square feet, just in her living room) and gasp "oh, this is such a mess!" as she picked up a single white thread from the carpet...
When I was told to clean my room, she expected it cleaned inside and out. I figured if it looked acceptable from the doorway, it was fine!
The final straw for me was after I really had put in the effort to clean it "right"... everything put back where it actually belonged, scrubbed my "in bedroom " sink, made the bed. And she came in, barely commented, then started opening drawers. For once, I wasn't worried... was pretty proud of how they looked.
So, she immediately started bitching that my socks and underwear were out of "color order"!
The funny thing is... she knew nothing about horses. So, from 12 years old, I was completely responsible for the health and welfare of my horse, but also for the condition of the barn.
It was SPOTLESS! Since she was clueless...she couldn't criticize. So I kept it the way I wanted!
I recognized fairly early on that a lot of my difficulty with completely finishing a job was because, no matter what it was, when I showed her a finished project, she'd look at it (and she was genuinely interested...she was a good mom...but we were a BAD fit; being adopted as a 14 month old in an orphanage didn't help) and then just was compelled to say, "wow. That's nice! Now, if you'd done this and this, it would have been even better!
I figured out that if I didn't completely finish a job or project, when she'd start with her "constructive criticism", I would just say, "its not done yet", which effectively stalemated her.
But ya know...at some point, ya gotta grow up...or learn to tell those ingrained voices...enough!
Besides, I no longer have the excuse of 50 cows I'd need to help tend to day or night.
I can tell how much better I'm feeling, though... the clutter is bugging me (even aside from the "I dont have any room to work! factor), and I've got a bit of a vision of how it should/could look.
It's funny...our kids spent a lot of time at Grandma's. They were wonderful grandparents, and they did have a beautiful house (they built their first house themselves, living in the basement and laying brick in the evenings after they were done with their full time jobs!). Their second and last house, they hired a contractor, micromanaged him to near insanity, and then did all the inside finish work over the next several years)
Obviously, for a pack of poor farm kids, living in a partially finished farmhouse, her place was heaven!
There is no genetic connection between her and our kids, but all four keep beautiful homes. My daughter, honestly, could be her clone!
Just rambling on a very windy night!
Summerthyme
