Coffee To Chaos

For the past couple of years my hubby has been becoming a gardener.

It's not the type of thing one becomes overnight.

It takes work and lots, and lots, and lots of reading. Not to mention the fact that he's doing organic gardening which takes more time and more reading.

It's worth it in the long run to know that we are not poisoning our kids with pesticides and we are being environmentally responsible with any runoff that might come from our property.

I help when I can but my cake business keeps me pretty much married to the kitchen during the week and I work a part-time job on the weekends.

Given how busy my schedule is I'm rarely able to get out by myself for any length of time. Meeting a friend for coffee is such a treat that I can't really describe the enjoyment I get from it.

Last week I arranged to meet a girlfriend of mine in the evening at Starbucks for a much, much needed break. We were there barely 30 minutes when hubby started blowing up my phone with panicked messages about the corn going bad. I joked about having a big party over the weekend and he informed me that the corn wouldn't last that long.

Evidently, the bugs had gotten to it.

Bugs are an organic gardeners nemesis. We don't use the high powered deadly pesticides that others use and therefore our 'crops' are more susceptible to infestation.

So...there I sat at Starbucks, desperately trying to enjoy my caramel Frappuccino, researching methods for freezing corn while not ignoring a friend that I haven't seen in six weeks.

Fortunately, the information isn't in-depth because the panicked text messages kept coming and it was nearly impossible to hold a conversation or concentrate on what I was trying to read.

We agreed that my assistance was needed at home so I hugged my BFF and headed home to calm the hubby and get to work.

The good news is that it looked pretty simple. There are basically 9 steps and most are not difficult.

1. Pick
2. Husk
3. Clean
4. Blanche
5. Cool
6. Dry
7. Remove from the cob
8. Bag
9. Freeze

Easy? Yes.

Messy? Very.

I returned home to a wheelbarrow full of corn and a totally freaked out hubby desperate to save all of his hard work from this summer.

I showed him what I had found and got him to settle down and relax we got to work on the, more than, 6 dozen ears of corn that needed to be saved.

We make a great team!

He husked, I scrubbed, blanched and cooled the cobs in an ice bath. After they were cool hubby did the drying, cutting and bagging.

After hubby husked the corn I scrubbed that silks from the cobs and put the pots of water on the stove to blanche the corn.

Once the water was ready I put four ears in the pot and removed them after the water returned to a boil.

The ears were then put in an ice bath to stop the cooking process and then inspected for silks that I missed when cleaning and moved to a towel to dry before cutting.

After they were dry hubby hubby cut the corn from the ears and we bagged it for the freezer. We kept the best looking ones to freeze on the cob so we could enjoy a little summer during the winter months.

Once the corn was bagged, it was submerged in water to squeeze all of the air out before the bags were sealed. This will prevent ice crystals from forming around the corn which would give it freezer burn. Contrary to popular belief it is not "protective ice." 

The end result is a freezer full of delicious sweet corn that we can enjoy once the weather gets cold. 

Hopefully this week, I'll be able to go back for coffee with my girlfriend. Maybe this time I'll be able to finish a sentence! 

Rolling with the Punches vs. Panic

About a month ago three of my BFFs flew in from across the country and Canada to spend the weekend, play with the babies and get in some much needed "girl time." They had coordinated their flights to land within a half-hour of each other which made picking them up at the airport insanely easy.

We left the airport and headed to out for Sushi.

I haven't had Sushi since the weekend we closed on this house two years ago November. When I was pregnant nothing looked appetizing except turkey subs and Sushi was an especially nauseating thought never mind the fact that I was not allowed to have it. I have been craving Sushi for months now, so I made sure that everyone was on board with it and found a highly recommended place in Baltimore.

It did not disappoint.

Two of us LOVE Sushi, one likes it and the other, at the end of the meal, declared it good...except for the fish. Ha! It's a good thing that I wasn't drinking anything when that line was uttered or I would have had iced tea shoot out my nose!

Some of the pieces were extremely large. I don't cut my sushi I just dive in and stuff the roll into my mouth. One of the girls figured out how to pull the seaweed apart so that she could divide it in half. One of them tried to copy that technique and used her chopsticks...like a knife and fork...as if she were cutting filet mignon. I tried to not make fun of her but after watching her do this, seemingly endlessly with no visible result, I and the other two girls just burst out laughing. She might as well have been trying to cut down a tree with a herring. (note the Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference).

We laughed hysterically, jumped from topic to topic and left with our bellies full but our wallets not ridiculously light. I even ordered some sushi rolls to take home to hubby who was being daddy extraordinaire with the boys for the afternoon and evening.

The next day hit the Amish Market and got pretzel wrap sandwiches which are AMAZING and just for good measure picked up some pretzel wrapped cheddar wurst and some pretzel cinnamon sticks. As if that wasn't enough we cleaned out the day old table at the bakery and grabbed some pumpkin bars just in case anyone got hungry!

On the way back from the market we went around two cars that were stopped on a back road and three young ladies standing on the side of the road looking beyond confused. As I backed up to their cars to check on them I noticed that one of their cars had a flat tire.

I know my way around a car pretty well so we parked our car and gave the girls a hand. None of them had any idea how to change and flat and the car with the flat didn't even have a jack in it! The rim with the flat tire on it only had three lug nuts holding the wheel in place. There are supposed to be four. She said her mechanic said she didn't need the fourth. Um...yeah...I'm pretty sure the fourth one isn't just there for looks.

I hate mechanics like that.

How would he feel if someone told his daughter some crap like that. She was driving up and down the turnpike on that thing!

While removing the lug nuts, one of them broke in half. Apparently, the know-it-all mechanic put them on too tight and in the process of trying to loosen it, it just snapped off.

And then there were two.

She asked if I thought she could make the 50+ mile trip to Baltimore for the weekend. I'm not 100% sure but I think we all shouted, "NO!"

While all of this was going on my twins were just hanging out in their infant seats on the embankment. They love to be outside and watching all the action was plenty to keep them entertained.

The girls that we helped were really excited to have learned how to change a flat tire and I explained that as single girls traveling alone there are certain things that they should know...that is one of them.

I love these weekends with the girls. We stay up entirely too late, eat horrible foods and laugh...a lot!

The weekend was a weird comedy of errors that had us running in odd directions dealing with things that most people never have to deal with much less all in one weekend. But, it's par for the course when we get together and we always weather whatever comes.

Most of my friends, if not all, can pretty much roll with the punches. We seem to be able to adjust to whatever comes without much fanfare. I can't say as much for my hubby.

My hubby is a wonderful, loving, patient, kind, understanding, good hearted, fun loving guy...until the babies are crying or he is behind the wheel of a car. Those are truly his major weaknesses. Well, that and he is a horrible multi-tasker. Give him a task and he will knock it out of the park. Try to have a conversation with him while he is doing it and he will completely stress out. Throw a crying baby into the mix and...well...all bets are off!

When the girls were planning their trip they not only coordinated their arrivals but they coordinated their departures too. This made pick up and drop off very easy! The one difference was that one of the girls has a friend who lives in Virginia and she had made arrangements to have that friend pick her up at the airport at the same time I was dropping everyone off.

Great idea until the friend was almost an hour late!

I was not really concerned because this gave me some really good one-on-one time with her that I would not have had otherwise.

Hubby was home with the kids who were evidently fussy and my cell phone started blowing up! So much for “quality time” with a friend that I get to see once a year!

Rather than being able to enjoy our extra time together, I was peppered with phone calls from a stressed out hubby who had evidently lost the ability to think on his own and despite my telling him otherwise, and our repeated conversations about the drop off schedule, thought I was going to drop them at the curb and head right back home. 

I sent text messages to both of my mother’s helpers begging assistance and discovered that neither was home and therefore unavailable!

I contacted a friend and told her what was going on and she said she’d go right over. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

For the most part the kids are pretty easy. Their fussiness is usually short-lived and they giggle at the drop of a hat. Unfortunately, my hubby is not all that easy to distract and once the kids start crying his ability to think goes out the window.

I understand that crying or fussy babies can get on your nerves; they get on mine too. What I don’t understand is the panicked response to it.

My mother assures me that this is just a normal male reaction to crying babies.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is a stage that my hubby is going to grow out of!