Progress on Autumn Moon

 Autumn Moon is a fun stitch! I have a hard time putting it down but, the very dark, almost black roof . . I struggled a bit with it. I kept wanting to jump around and stitch something more fun but I suck with it.

So far, I've been able to keep up with getting in at least 400 stitches each day. That was a goal I started at the beginning of 2025 and probably only met my goal about half the time. I'm hoping to do better in 2026.

After five days of stitching, the app shows that I'm 24.43% done but I'm not quite sure that's going to be accurate.

There are large are several large areas that do not have symbols assigned and I'm pretty sure those are not included in the stitch count.

The chart says "fill in the house around all the bricks and stones . . " It says the same thing for the front lawn, the side lawn, the moon, and the windows. That's probably almost a week's worth of stitching for me. It's fine . . it's really easier because once the areas are outlined, it's mindless stitching but I'm guessing this chart will say I'm 100% done when I'm not really done. 

One more thing - I'm stitching this with NPI silks. Sheri from Colorado Cross Stitcher did a conversion for me. NPI has LOTS of colors but there weren't enough of the peachy colors so I changed up the colors in the basket a bit. Just mentioning that in case any of you may be stitching it and yours looks different from mine.

Hamburger Steak

Hamburger steak is not an exciting meal but I love that dish - hamburger steak, rice, gravy, corn and steamed broccoli. I had taken the ground beef out to add to a pizza and decided since today is Sunday and we don't want pizza today since we had it yesterday; Monday is the last day we'll be out and we have many stops to make. Thankfully none of those stops are at Walmart. We will go to the Mennonite store east (I think it's east) of Carthage for eggs; we'll go to Aldi for the salad things we need for Christmas dinner; we'll pick up the meat for our Christmas dinner and grab Mexican for lunch. Tuesday we'll have leftover pizza, then Wednesday, Chad, Nicole and Addie will be here for Christmas.

As soon as we finished breakfast this morning, I made the hamburger steaks.

Even though I had already canned a lot of onions, I am kinda overstocked with onions so I used fresh ones for the gravy.

I'm so happy with the ground meat from our recent beef purchase. After Browning 1-1/2 pounds of hamburger steak, there was barely enough fat to cook down the onions. 

I got the gravy made, let it all simmer on very low for about an hour, it's all ready for lunch. All I have left to do is get the rice cooked and the broccoli steamed. I'll do both of those in my little divided slow cooker . . I think I'll get LOTS of cross stitching done today.

Speaking of LOTS of stitching, look at how many stitches I've made in the last three days.

My goal is 400 stitches per day and I can't even remember the last time I made 400 stitches in a day. There have been a lot of zero stitch days so I'm really happy with my three day average (579) stitches per day. How many stitches can I get done today?? With dinner already cooked, laundry all done . . this could be a good stitching day!

Pizza

 You all know that I don't like going out to eat. That statement, when taken alone, isn't totally accurate. Here's the "rest of the story". Vince does not like to go to the places I like to go. There's a Greek-ish restaurant in town that I like. There's are a couple of Thai places I like. My feeling is that I cook almost every day. If I'm going out to eat, I want to go somewhere GOOD! I don't want fast food! I don't mind chicken strips every now and then but not often. I want good service - no buffet. I prefer quality over quantity! Let me sit and eat and have someone bring things to me. I'm happy to tip quite generously for that luxury. I want food I don't cook at home -- Greek, Thai - something special. 

That kinda explains why I'd rather eat at home. Whatever I cook, I try to cook enough that we will have leftovers for at least one more meal. More food on the table with less work.

Today I made pizza and I told Vince we're going to start having pizza once a week. He's fine with that. Pizza crust is pretty forgiving. I can make it ahead and freeze it (in a ball to defrost and let rise) or I can go through all the steps, get the crust in the pan, parbake it for about 5 minutes, let it cool, freeze the crust and then all I have to do is take out of the freezer the night before, leave it in the fridge, and make the pizza as usual OR, I can park bake a crust, make the whole pizza and freeze it. Then take it and pop it in the oven while still frozen. 

I'm sure anyone who is used to gourmet pizza may notice the difference but using any of those methods, I think the pizza is pretty good and homemade pizza compared to either pizza delivery or the type you pick up at the pizza place and bring home and bake it yourself - there's a HUGE difference. I think mine is better and definitely costs less . . and I know who's touched the ingredients and I know that person (me) has washed her hands and not coughed or sneezed on the pizza!

I can make three 16" pizzas - one for immediate use and two for the freezer and it probably doesn't cost me $20. Just for the heck of it, I added one bell pepper, 8 oz fresh mushrooms, 1 jalapeno pepper, 1 onion, 6 oz. Canadian bacon, 5 oz. turkey pepperoni,1 pound block of mozzarella and 12.3 oz. Rao's pizza sauce to my Walmart cart and it came to almost $16. I don't use store bought pizza sauce because I either use leftover pasta sauce if that's available or pizza sauce I canned from our tomatoes but assuming you're buying Rao's sauce, that comes to a little over $5/pizza for a 16" pizza. It does NOT include 4 cups of flour, 2 cups of whole milk and a bit of yeast and salt to make the crust but that amount makes FIVE pizza crusts. I usually make three pizza crusts and four calzones (two for the day I make them and two for the freezer).

This was my pizza, thought I don't mind if Vince eats some of it.

That's Vince's pizza with the anchovies.

We had a pizza oven in Texas and I'm sure it's here somewhere - probably in a storage building and we got another one that can be wood fired or use gas but it needs a table and I think I'll just give up on using an outdoor oven and make them in the inside oven. I only had the one pizza pan so Vince's pizza is made in a cast iron 9 x 13 cake pan. I did order two more pizza pans so I can make them for the freezer and not have to make one at a time and wait for it to freeze. Get everything out at once and make them all!

The Husband Trap

 This morning I got everything done to get a pizza in the oven so we could eat between football games. Good wife!  :)

I then went downstairs to start cross stitching. Vince was sitting there watching a game. Our of the blue, this conversation happened. And, yes, I can be very evasive when it comes to answering a question.

V - How much linen does it require to make an average project?
Me - What's an "average" project? Linen comes in specific sizes. I mostly buy a fat quarter. That's a pretty useful size. 

Then I grabbed a couple of frames sitting by my chair and showed him how Away We Ride has an extra 6 or so inches on one side and by the time I leave 2", including room for a border and turning to frame it, there's not really any room for anything else but I will save the scraps just in case I need something really small. I showed him a frame that has several smalls on it and I will probably stitch 6 to 8 smalls on that fat quarter.

I was hoping he was confused enough that the conversation would end. Nope!

V - How much does a fat quarter of linen cost?
Me - That depends on the linen and where I get it. Probably the lowest cost would be about $10 up to about $40.

OK . . I can't say that I've ever seen a $10 fat quarter but they probably do exist . . somewhere.

Think that's all he wanted to know? Nope!

V - What about floss. How much is that.
Me - DMC is inexpensive. I can get that at Hobby Lobby for maybe 85 cents. I haven't bought any in a while and it may have gone up since I last bought it.

OK . . we have to be done with this conversation. He knows how much linen costs; how much linen it takes for projects and how much floss costs. Nope!

V - What about silk? You like to use that right? How much is silk?
Me - I wouldn't pay more than $5/skein. Some is less.

There was a big discussion and examples about the different silks and whether silks are "better" than DMC. I told him . . I love silks but I could stitch the rest of my days with DMC and wouldn't complain. Surely that's more than he wanted to know! Nope!

V - How much are charts?
Me - Some are very large and intricate and probably go up to about $50. I love getting the PDFs off Etsy for less than $10.

That seemed to answer his question. Maybe this conversation is about to end. Nope!

V - How many charts would you say you have?
Me - I have no idea! I could stitch the rest of my days without needing to buy more but new ones come out or I see someone has stitched something I've never seen before and I love it and I get it.
V - Would you say you have at least 30 charts already set up in the stitching program?
Me - I would say that.

The app I use is Markup-XP and it only allows 150 charts to be stored. The one shown has 138 projects on it. I use the very inexpensive ONN tablets from Walmart for my stitching because (1) I take them with me when I go to stitch with Debbie or anywhere else (2) I seem to be hard on tablets (3) I keep NOTHING else on these tablets except the cross stitching charts. For what I use, the very inexpensive tablets work fine.

Hopefully we are done with questions! Nope!

V - How many scroll frames do you have?
Me - How many do I have or how many do I have loaded with active projects?
V - How many do you have?
Me - I don't know but if you'd like, I can go get them all, bring them in here and we can count them.
V - No . . that's ok.
Me - I need to go upstairs and get the pizzas finished if we're going to eat at 2:00.

Anyone think that's the end of that conversation or there's more to come? :)

Cranberry Orange Bread

 At least twice a week, I open a quart of the cranberry juice with about 1-1/2 cups of "spent" cranberries in them. I drain out the cranberries, mash them with a fork in a mesh strainer to get all the juice out, then fill up the quart jar with water. It takes about a cup of water and the juice is pretty strong so diluting it is good. Then I use the cranberries for something.

This morning I added them to a batch of English muffins I needed to roll out and cook.

You can't see the cranberries in my muffin but they're in there. These sourdough English muffins are so easy to make. I love that they're cooked in a skillet and don't have to bake. 

There were still cranberries left because I had a couple of containers in the fridge. I made this Cranberry Orange Bread. I haven't felt great today so I never went back upstairs and tasted the bread. I had left the bread out to cool. Vince was going upstairs and I asked him to put it in a bag. He asked if I cared if he cut it. Of course I didn't care. He came down and said "That is the BEST thing you've ever made!!" That was nice to hear. 

Monday in the Kitchen

 This is why I don't get much stitching done! I'm not complaining - I love spending time in the kitchen.

There were things I knew I had to do this morning and knew most of my morning would be in the kitchen. The first thing I saw was an empty jars in the sink . . a jar that had been used for Vince's sunflower butter. I always use 2 pounds of roasted sunflower seeds, one pound of butter in each of two pint jars. I also knew that the empty jar meant he was totally out of sunflower butter because a couple of weeks ago he told me he had finished one jar and started on the second one. I don't mind making it but I don't like cleaning the blender after making it. 

1. I got the two pounds of sunflower seeds made into butter and got the blender cleaned and put away.

Last night I went up and made the sourdough "sweet stiff starter" so I could make bread today. That was the next thing I did - stirred up the bread, let it rise while I was doing everything else, then when it had risen enough, I got it into the pan, let it rise more and baked it.

2. The bread for the week was made.

I had one bag of ground beef defrosted. It was the first meat to use from our new beef and we were quite pleased with it. I weighed it and it weighed 1 pound, 9 oz. I cut off the 9 oz. and used that to make meatballs. I used the 1 pound to make Philly Cheese Steak casserole.

3. I made the meatballs, added the spaghetti sauce, simmered that for a while, adjusted the seasonings, divided it up into three containers for three meals. Two containers will go into the freezer and Thursday Vince will have spaghetti and meatballs for his meal. I'll have leftover Philly Cheese Steak.

4. I made the Philly Cheese Steak casserole and divided it up into three dishes - two for the freezer and we ate one today. 

The jar of spaghetti sauce is what Vince will have Thursday. The other two containers went into the freezer. The green stuff is freeze dried okra that's soaking in water to rehydrate because that was part of our dinner.

I had been wanting to make Martha Washington Candy but had decided not to do it, then decided I would do it. So . . I did it.

There was a ton of the inside part. I thought I would use about 1/3 of it, which is shown above. Then I talked myself into doing another 1/3 and there's still 1/3 more to be done.

5. Candy is made!

Next, I baked the bread. That didn't take a lot of effort.  <G> I just put the pan in the oven and set the timer.

6. Bread is made!

Then I cleaned the kitchen and was ready to go downstairs and stitch  . . which actually never happens.

There was a little snafu during my cooking. I have an OLD KitchenAid mixer. I got it in 1993 after we had a house fire. I don't even remember what mixer I had that was ruined but after the fire and we found a house to rent, I got a KitchenAid. Many years later, I learned that mine was made by Hobart and it wasn't long after mine that Hobart no longer made KitchenAid mixers. So . . my 32 year old mixer is not doing well. Several years ago, Vince took it apart, changed some bushings, repacked some grease. He watched a video and I'm not sure what happened but it was kinda noisy and squeaky after that. I was in the middle of mixing the center for the candy and the mixer got really loud and really squeaky so I couldn't continue using it.

Back when Vince worked on my mixer, he found a couple of KitchenAids from the Hobart era on eBay and he bought them but they aren't great either.

When I really got into making bread with fresh milled flour, I bought a Bosch mixer. I bought the cookie paddles and the whisk attachment but I always used the KitchenAid for everything else so haven't used the accessories much (probably not at all). Here's the weird thing . . and you know there's always something weird!  A couple of days ago, I watched a video and the lady was talking about wanting to get a stainless steel bowl for her Bosch mixer. When I bought mine, probably in 2012, it came with a plastic bowl. As I was thinking about whether or not I wanted to spend $$ on a new bowl, I thought . . I have not seen the cookie paddles and whisks since we moved here (5 years ago). I told myself if I buy a new bowl, I'll just buy new cookie paddles and whisks and not waste time looking for them.

Then, this morning . . there I was needing the cookie paddles! I pulled the mixer out of the appliance garage so Vince could look at it and guess what was in the appliance garage . . the paddles and whisk for the Bosch. Lucky for me! I was able to finish mixing up the candy with Bosch.

After that was done, I told Vince . . I think I'm going to buy a stainless steel bowl for the Bosch. Shopping . . he was on it. I don't think there's an ER2 Bosch mixing bowl for sale in the whole wide world! They're out of stock EVERYWHERE! Pleasant Hill Grain, my preference for buying things like this, is expecting more in February but they're not taking pre-orders. Apparently these bowls have quite a few people wanting them. No matter how many any retailer gets in, they seem to sell out within 5 minutes. I can live without a stainless steel bowl! But, it does kinda make me nervous that my plastic bowl could break or something and then I'd be in trouble.

Vince decided to start shopping for a new mixer. I said NO and about the 5th time I said NO, I want my old mixer fixed. I don't need a new mixer.  There's so guy Vince found online that sells a "complete kit" for rebuilding the old KitchenAids but that's out of stock too. Vince said "We're probably replacing old parts with new parts that aren't so great either!" Ugh . . I just want my old KitchenAid to work.

Maybe tomorrow I can get some stitching cone.

Ezekiel Bread

 Vince loves Ezekiel Bread. I do not. In the mornings, I like to eat breakfast around 9 or 10. Vince wants to eat something when he first gets up. I try to eat everything I'm going to eat during the day within an 8 hour period so if I eat breakfast at 9, then we have dinner between 2 and 3, I'm good. 

He's happy to have this bread for his first breakfast. He will slice it, toast it, and sunflower butter (which I make from unsalted roasted sunflower seeds). He tops that with guacamole, which he makes fresh every morning, then adds chia seeds and flax seed meal. I think that's all pretty health.

I make three loaves in the cast iron loaf pans. I think they're 8.5" x 4.5" and I make them when he's almost to the end of his last loaf. He will put two in the freezer while he uses the first one. I think each loaf lasts about week so I don't have to make it very often.

When I fix breakfast around 9, one might argue that it isn't always so healthy! Yesterday was biscuits, eggs and ham. I love these layered biscuits. I couldn't find my usual biscuit cutter and had to use the smaller cutter. They aren't so pretty but they tasted good.

Vince still will not agree to getting chickens - probably never will, but I'm thankful for friends in the neighborhood who have chickens and sell us eggs. Love those bright yolks!

Today's breakfast is leftover biscuits, eggs, grits and bacon. It's 9 a.m. . . guess I should get myself upstairs and cook.

When I got up this morning, our weather station showed 7 degrees outside. The dogs were very quick doing what they had to do and getting back inside. They've been sitting on the heated throw ever since they came back inside. I don't think they're going to be happy about having to get up!

Today is Oscar's birthday. He's 4 years old!