Homebrew blitz week(end)

My father works for Habitat for Humanity. A couple times a year they have "Blitz Week" when they gather up as many volunteers as possible - church groups like to do this - and try to build xteen houses in one area in a week. It's insane!

Well, my parents will arrive this afternoon around 1:00, and we're having our very own crazy blitzy house-project weekend. We have two long lists of things to do... everything from pressure-washing the house, balancing the AC, and repairing torn porch screen, to gardening, rearranging furniture and hanging curtains. They'll be here until Monday morning, so hopefully we'll get a lot done.

They also are bringing their super deluxe carpet (and floor) scrubber machine. In preparation, we started moving furniture around to get the carpet clear. We decided since we had loads of dead space in the bedroom but didn't want to sacrifice having a master bath (turning the large room into a den), we're using the extra space for our library. I'm still torn as to whether I'll sleep worse this way because I'm surrounded by adventures I want to have, or whether I'll sleep a lot better in the security of being surrounded by friends. It took Lanse and me about two hours to move three 6 ft bookcases (and books) from the office to the bedroom, having moved furniture around to fit it and cleaned the hardwoods before moving them in. We have great plans for the rest of the room, but way too much junk that we feel we could feasibly do without, but may need in the future. Extra pieces of furniture we don't need now but will when we talk about furnishing a kid's room and haven't any extra money to start from scratch.

So we will make decisions today and go shopping and get to work and see what our home feels like by Monday afternoon. Hopefully much warmer and more cohesive.

I love looking at floor plans, so here's one I tossed together in Paint of our house. The weird cross-hatchy things are windows, the stairs go up to a loft, but I drew the garage that's on the ground floor under the loft. There's so much work I want to do on this in the future, like adding windows and possibly pushing out the two back bedrooms a couple of feet, but that's all really major in the cost department so probably won't happen. That's okay.

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Meatloaf Cupcakes

All righty! I've made meatloaf, but got a bit jazzy and put them in cupcake shapes! Here's the digs:

Preheat oven to 350.

In a bowl beat up an egg with some milk (probably about 1/4 c., I dunno, I splashed it in). Add a splash of Worcestershire sauce and a few dribblings of ketchup. I also added fresh rosemary from the garden, kosher salt, and a bit of paprika because I realized I haven't any black pepper.

Put three saltine crackers in a zip lock bag and smash the crap out of them.

Finely dice 1/4 of a green bell pepper (unless they're dinky, then add more) and 1/3 a steak tomato.

Mix everything together (veggies, cracker crumbs, beat egg/milk/spice mix) with 1 lb. ground beef. Don't mix it too much or something weird will happen. I don't remember what, but I remember the warning from others.

Put liners in a cupcake tin. This mix made 8 cupcakes in my 12 cupcake tin, so if you do the same, be sure they're spaced evenly so they'll cook evenly. I probably should have checkerboarded them now that I think about it, but I put them in rows down each side with the middle empty.

Scoop mix into cupcake tin. Meat doesn't rise, so if you want a nice round cupcake top, form it now. Slather ("frost"?) the tops of the cupcakes with ketchup.

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

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Guac for two

I'm feeling inspired to do stuff in the kitchen. I just made guacamole!

1 avocado, ripe: chop into chunks
1 small tomato from my garden: chop into chunks

Alton Brown says to use cilantro, cumin, cayenne, garlic, onion, S&P. However, I haven't got cilantro, cumin, garlic or onion. Instead I:

Ground up whole coriander (cumin sub.) in a makeshift mortar & pestle. Added parsley (cilantro sub.) and cayenne. Eliminated salt simply because I added garlic salt and celery salt (cilantro sub.), but it seems to need more salt which I shall add shortly.

Throw it all into a bowl; I like it chunky, so I did just two or three mooshes with a potato masher. Alton says to let it sit out for an hour and then eat it, but I like it cold... so it's in the fridge for dinner. No idea what we'll have with it, but I'm willing to bed that Mojitos will be involved.

Yum!

Next I'm considering meatloaf, quiche, mupcakes, or all three. Quiche might wait though, because we're out of shredded mexican cheese.

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Official Travel Report

I was quite concerned about the trip that we took to Ohio for Kaylee's dedication. Here's how it all played out:

• The drive to Charlotte. No big deal! Sure we got some rain, but the new car has windshield wipers that actually work, and it didn't bother us. We took off from here around 4:00, 4:15 maybe, stopped for KFC half way, and arrived at my folks' house around 7:00. We had quite a lovely evening; mom and I discussed Bible Study resources and she set aside a bunch of books for me to borrow on the return trip. We shared pictures of Kaylee and all was well with the world.
  
• The drive from Charlotte to OH. Strangely enough, the trip seemed to go really quickly and yet a lot longer than expected. My father made a lovely representation for Man by failing to read the directions before beginning the drive, and we took the scenic route both at the beginning and at the end of the trip. 100+ miles on 35-50mph country roads actually turned out to be kind of interesting, if not long. But upon further map reflection, it seemed to be the best way to go. The drive went really well.
  
• Rachel's family. They were fantabulous! We didn't actually see any of them until Sunday morning at the church, but we spent the day with everyone at the lake, having food and games and swimming and things. The lake was actually quite nasty, and we didn't go in it... some of the little cousins did. There was a sailing regatta going on, which was interesting. We ate good food and played cornhole and talked and, above all, passed the baby around all day. Yay! Kaylee has four older cousins on that side, that were present anyway; the family's rather... complex... and I'm still not sure that I'm sure about them all!
  
• Kaylee. My brother and family walked into the hotel, and Kaylee saw me and grinned. *hee!* I held her and played with her a few times, but with so many people there, no one really got enough time. I love my baby girl, and yay! she loves me! I took a lot of pictures, some of which I've put on flickr.
  
• The dedication was... interesting. It was a United Methodist church, though Rachel's mom calls it "Methocostal". It was the pastor's third Sunday preaching there, and he messed up names and prayed for my brother's safe travels to Iraq (surprise trip? CR knew nothing about it!) but he was quite jovial and realized he was screwing up, and we all felt bad for him. Rachel's sister Netta and her fiance stood up there with them as church member sponsors, and I think they're kind of like godparents to Kaylee. Everyone was dressed up nice and pretty, and the service was okay. It reminded me a lot of the service at Grace Covenant where I used to work in N.Y.
• Leaving the cats. Yeah, they were fine. The neighbors stopped in a few times and Fay kept on heading west, and all was right in kittendom; though they were extra needy when we got home, which is normal.
  
• The drive back. It was much more difficult than the drive there; we were all tired and off schedule, irritable and sad from saying goodbye. I took a lot of pictures out the window, very few of which actually turned out but it gave me something to do. Lanse shared his music. I got really on edge with my folks. The drive to Charlotte ended up being 8 hours, and Lanse and I took a pit stop and then hopped in our car and drove the final three home. It was a very, very long day.
  
• Paying for it all. I'm choosing to get over it. Dad said so. *heh*
  

I'm glad we went. I desperately wish my brother lived closer; I want to watch Kaylee growing up! But I guess pictures will have to do until/if/when they get reassigned or are done with their service terms.

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