Lullaby, Take One

I love the sleepy day after a day of work.  I got some chores done, but I just cherish snuggling with my little baby after a day apart.  There were a couple days last week when he was really fighting sleep and my mind started thinking in Dr. Seuss rhymes as I tried to get him to sleep.  I shared this with Josh the next day, he put it to music, and I think we have the beginnings of a  lullaby.  Tell me what you think:

O Lord, bless my sweet child,
a night without fears,
And guardian angels,
hovering near,

To keep far at bay,
The woes of the night,
And speckle sweet dreams,
with beauty and joy and light.

Chicken Tikka Masala & More Birthday Shenanigans

I love to celebrate when we can.  So in addition to this fine dinner out with my boys, we had some extras this weekend. 

So for the weekend celebration of Josh’s birthday we went down town to watch the mushers take off for the Yukon Quest (much less known, but more treacherous than the Iditarod.)  And I didn’t bring my camera!  Argh!  What was I thinking!?!?

Okay, I’m done kicking myself, I guess.  Dinner was amazing if I don’t say so myself.  Josh requested our favorite dish about a week in advance: Chicken Tikka Masala.  There are no Indian restaurants for about 350 miles, thus I have been more adventurous in attempting the recipes myself.  Let me tell you though, to get it right, it takes time.  A lot of time.  The previous recipe I tried for this dish took three days to make.  Still worth it!  This one need to start the night before, but just to let the chicken marinade.  Anyway, here’s how it went:

The night before:

Chicken Tikka:

1-2 cups plain yogurt

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 tsp cumin

1/4-1 tsp cayenne (depending on how spicy you like it)

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp pepper

1 tsp salt

4-5 chicken breasts, cubed

Stir all ingredients except chicken into the bottom of a large plastic container. Add the chicken and coat the chicken completely with the marinade, cover and place in the fridge for at least an hour or overnight. 

Okay, then morning of:

Masala:

1 can 16 oz. diced tomatoes

1 can 5.5 oz tomato paste

2 inches fresh ginger or 1 Tbsp ground

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 onion, diced

1 tbsp garam masala

1 tbsp curry powder

1 tbsp of lemon juice)

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp chili powder

1 tsp dried coriander

1 cup cream

Fresh cilantro, chopped (great flavor in the stems, too!)

As needed:

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp garam masala

Salt

Turn your oven to broil. Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil and place a rack over top. Spread the chicken with the marinade on the baking sheet and place on the baking rack under the broiler and broil on each side about 10 minutes. You don't have to worry about cooking the meat all the way through; you are just looking for a nice browned color.

While the chicken is broiling, in a pan over medium high heat, add about a tsp or two of oil. Add the onion and saute for a few minutes to soften. Add the garlic and ginger and saute for a few more minutes until the mixture is nice and fragrant. Place the mixture into your crockpot.

 To that, add the diced tomatoes, tomato paste, garam masala,curry, lemon juice, tikka paste, cumin, chili powder and coriander. Stir together. When the chicken is done broiling, add them straight to the slow cooker. Slow cook on high for 4-6 hours or on low 6-8 hours.

(my little helper:)

Then stir in the 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp chili powder, 1/2 tsp garam masala and salt if it needed to enhance the flavor.  Before serving stir in cream and top with fresh cilantro.  I don't have a picture of my finished product, because I forgot to take one.  I was just so excited to start eating.  But heres what it looked like (from here)

Except here's the way to eat it.  Pit the Tikka Masala in it's own bowl.  I cook up some brown rice on the side. 

But mostly you're going to be scooping up the chunks with garlic naan. Great recipe here. 

We drank orange pineapple juice (the closest thing we hand to a Mango Lassi) and Monkey bread for dessert.  Because monkeys are kinda Indian, right!  Happy birthday again, my dear!

Josh's Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband!  Can I brag him up just a little bit?  Besides being incredibly handsome, he is so good to Fynn and I!  He works so hard so I can take care of our little guy at home!  He is a great provider, yet still makes it clear that his family comes before his work.  And he loves God and we have the blessing of being able to be growing in our faith together.  He's funny and puts up with all my weird quirks!  And he makes a mean chicken taco.  I could go on all day!  He's working up at the mine today, but we're going out to dinner tonight, then I wrote him a note with some of his favorite candies I got at the store yesterday.  Here are a few excerpts:


You are such a handsome

Your love makes me want to do 

or blast off into

In fact, our life really

Even if we hit a






I know we'll be just fine,

You mean more to me than silver or


This was so fun to try to piece together!  I think I'm going to tweak it to use again in the future...

Fireweed Jelly

I love being a hunter and gatherer!  Although hunting has been a little trickier with a baby, I was still able to do a little gathering this year (and had some saved up from last!)  For those who have visited Fairbanks at the right time of summer,you can attest to the areas prosperity of wildflowers (love this!) especially fireweed.  Shortly after moving up here I read about some locals who turned this beautiful flower into jelly and I had to give it a try.  I searched until I found (most of) a recipe, tweaked it ever so slightly and gave it a go.  Days when the temperature does't break 30 below are good for this sort of thing!

Step 1:  When the flowers are in full blossom, pick 8 cups of the flowers only (confession, I had one or two leaves that didn't get plucked out).  I then freezer bagged these and popped them into the freezer until I had a cold day at home to cook in front of the stove with quiet music playing, a fire blazing, and a sweet baby entertaining himself on the rug.  Ah...okay it didn't look exactly like that. But it was cold! =)

Then, for the jelly:






Ingredients:
8 cups frozen fireweed blossoms
1/4 cup lemon juice
4 1/2 cups water
2 packets of Sure Jell or equivalent
5 cups of sugar
4 pint jars or equivalent, clean and lids heated*

Place frozen blossoms in a large pot over which pour the lemon juice and water.  Bring to a boil and continue for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.  I got worried at this point: the flowers all started turning a dingy brown color and smelling very earthy.  Not appetizing.  Hang in there.  It gets better.

Then sift into a large bowl.  Since I wanted a few petals to remain in mine, I just used a colander, but you could use something finer if you wanted.

Return liquid to pot and allow the liquid to cool just a little (near room temp).  Fynn started fussing at this point and I was in a hurry, so I used my accelerated cool method:

Then you're going to add the two packets of Sure Jell and stir until dissolved as you bring the liquid back to a boil.  Boil for 1 minute, then add sugar, and boil robustly for 10 more minutes while stirring.  Pour jelly directly into jars and seal lids.

 
I don't have anything big enough for a water bath for these jars, so I had my  sink half filled with the hotttest water I could, placed the jars in upside down, then poured boiling water from my tea pot over.  I promptly boiled another pot and added it as soon as it was ready.  It worked!  They sealed beautifully!

*Heating the lids:  space is precious in our cabin, so instead  of heating all of the jars, I just placed the lids in a frying pan of water over the lowest heat on the stove top.  Not correct but it worked.

I was so pleased with how it turned out!  It tastes great and has great color.  So fun!  I'm definitely going to have to do this again!

This is truly a small world we live in!  I was doing my grocery shopping in town and ran into a familiar face.  Now we've been here long enough that that is not terribly uncommon, but this face didn't quite belong.  It was a face from the past: Nurse Theresa.  When I was in high school I worked as a CNA at a local assisted living facility specializing in dementia.  One of the nurses there was an inspiration, Theresa put compassion before the schedule and kindness before hastiness.  She was one of the people who really encouraged me to get my nursing degree and believed that I would make a good nurse.  She was a Christian and a poet and I still have one of the poems she wrote as a bookmark in my Bible.
And now, 10 years later, I run into her at the grocery store!  She had moved to southern Alaska and gotten married and was just in Fairbanks for a class her husband had to take!  We talked about our lives in general, but I am kicking myself now that I didn't tell her what an inspiration she had been to me!  So if ever Nurse Theresa happens across this page: thank you!

I have been unsuccessful in finding my favorite tea at the store for months now and came to discover why.  Good Earth changed their packaging!  Now my frustrations have ended! =)  They can't do that to me, I shop by color and design, not actual words, silly people.

Fynn's doing better in the car and pushed another pearly white out today(3rd, bottom right).  He's still not crawling forward, but manages to scoot around quite effectively despite that fact.  I catch myself saying, "how'd you get over there?" frequently these days.  I just got to playing with one of his (sort of goofy) photos today...

Grandma's visit...

I love living in Fairbanks.  But the biggest downside is being so far away from family.  We are blessed with amazing extended family that we love dearly and miss greatly.  Technically, Washington is the closest state (even if it is a 5 day drive and you have to travel out of the country!=), but it is so expensive to get there!  Well, Dad got Mom a plane ticket for her Christmas present and we got to keep her for a week!  Fynn (and Clancey and Keagan and Keira) were in heaven and got spoiled rotten!  It was so much fun!





We didn't do a lot more than just spend time with each other, but that was more than enough.  Lots of peek-a-boo, playing with the critters, practicing crawling and walking, and the regular errands.   Fynn did cut his first teeth this week though too!  He popped out both of his front top teeth on Saturday!

Also, with Gramma babysitting, I was finally able to complete a project that Josh had asked for years ago: a firewood carrier.  I had already got the material, but just had to put it together.  I just eyeballed this one, but thought I'd share it, in case anyone just needed the idea.

Materials:

about 2 yards of duck cloth

2.5 yards heavy ribbon (mine was a hemp weave)

sturdy thread

First trial by error: set your machiene's tension all the way up!  We're dealing with super thick fabric here and it took me many broken threads before I realized what I needed to do.  Okay, so I tucked all the corners like so: 

and sewed the outside of all but one side, flipped it so the seams were inside, then finished the last side.  Again, I just eyeballed this, so the angles can be what ever you want.  You just want the two ends to be about the length of your logs.

Next I pinned the ribbon in place like so: 

Then sew down really good!  It's going to be carrying a lot of weight as you'll only have to make one log fun instead of 5!  Happy snuggles in front of the fire!

From Grandmothers House She Came!

Grandma's here!  And boy did she get a surprise when she arrived.  As I mentioned before, our heater went out, no one would be able to deliver until the next week, and the weather started to dip to 40 below again!  So life was fine in the room with the stove, but the rest of the house was staying pretty chilly!  Here's the whole household in front of the stove: 

And then Fynn stole his Poppa's hat when he got home.  The little laddie's really into hats right now.  He'll start giggling when you put one one!

So it was cold, but clear at our house.  We had to drop into town to get some new work boots for Josh and immediately were engulfed in the ice fog.  Here's some of the sun right about noon time, as high as it gets in the sky these days.

And then just cute little Fynn ready for church.  More of him and Gramma Laine to come!

Chilly days like this are perfect soup days.  Hitch: Josh doesn't eat soup.  Solution: Mom and I call it "chowder" and gang up on him!  Hee hee!  I had experimented with this before and this is more or less what I came up with:

Loaded Cheesy Chowder

• 2 tablespoons butter
  1 cup diced onion
  2 1/2 cups peeled and diced potatoes
  1 1/2 cups cooked sausage
  3 cups chicken broth
  1 cup heavy cream
  1 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
  1 cup velveta cheese or similar
  1/2 teaspoon dried dill weed
  1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
  1/4 teaspoon salt
  1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
  
  
  1. In a large saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Cook onion in butter until softened. Stir in potatoes and broth, bring to a boil, then cover, reduce heat and simmer 15 to 20 minutes, until potatoes are tender.
  2.  Stir in cheese(allow to melt), cream, sausage, dill, pepper, salt and cayenne. Bring to a low boil and cook, stirring, until thickened, 5 minutes
  3. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and enjoy!