Misc Ramblings – Page 29 – a hippie with a minivan

Raclette…

I love meals that are cooked at the table and have the ability to be whatever the person eating wants it to be.

One of those is Fondue, which is either thinly slices of meat and veggies cooked in a hot pot of flavourful broth on the table and served with sauces, bread and whatever else you want, or pieces of bread dipped in melted cheese.

(Eating Chinese Fondue a few weeks ago)

The other is Raclette.

Not only are these meals easy to prepare, but they are meals that bring everyone together at the table for more than a few minutes.

This year for Simon’s 10y anniversary of working at his job, he got a raclette grill. It was on the gift list and we had been wanting one for a while so it worked out very well.

Traditionally, Raclette comes from Europe and is the name of a semi-firm salted cheese. The cheese is warmed next to a fire or by a machine and is then scraped onto the diners plate which has potatoes, cured meats, gherkins among other things.

(colourful potatoes)

The modern way of eating raclette is by using a raclette grill. The top part heats up letting you grill whatever you please… we like having marinated beef, potatoes, shrimp and bread on top of the grill (along with other veggies depending on our moods)

Under the grill you have little wedges called “coupelles” to melt cheese. You can either melt the cheese and then pour it over your other food (this is what the boys do) or you can gather the things you have grilled into the coupelle, top with cheese and then place under the grill to melt the cheese.

Though it is very easy to find Raclette cheese around here, it is also very expensive, so to make this an easy and pretty cheap meal, we use a sharp cheddar that has been thinly sliced.

Of course, because it is cooked at the table, the preparation for this meal is also really easy.

Though the grill we have now is OK, I would really like to get a better one with a stone top that heats up better and is easier to clean up after, but for now, we are happy to have this one and it will provide us with many meals to come…

NaBloPoMo

If you follow my blog, you will notice that I have been blogging every day since the first of November.

It is of course NaBloPoMo, a time when, for a whole month, the goal is to post every day.

I started this blog, my first blog, in May of 2005. I can’t believe that it has been so long!

I did it because I was tired of being places that I was not able to have a voice without it becoming a debate. I was, at that time, Moderator of the AP board on BabyCenter. It seems like a lifetime ago, and because BabyCenter was and is still a very mainstream board, the AP board was much of the same. I needed a place to be able to rant and rage and say what I felt without having to put a moderator hat on and “be nice”…I also needed to be able to finally talk about positive things (like breastfeeding milestones etc) without people taking it as an attack on their choices. (well, at times, since that has happened here too)

I have tried many times in my life to keep a journal and I have always failed. I would start, keep it up for a while and then I just stopped so I never thought when I started this blog that I would still be blogging more than 4 years later. Blogging turned out to be exactly what I needed at the time and soon after I started I stepped down from my position as moderator and never went back.

My Blog has transformed since that time, and I have grown also… going from “Paxye’s Rant” on Blogger, to “a hippie with a minivan” on WordPress here on my own domain name. The change came after I decided that I wanted this blog to be more than about rants, I wanted it to be about all the things that I am passionate about. I don’t blog for money, or to have the most readers, I blog because I want to share about my family, photography, cooking, sewing, unschooling and just being a parent.

But, as my journal experiences showed me, when I slow down it becomes harder to start up again. Last year, I was slowing down considerably and in some ways I was ready to let the blog fizzle when I heard about NaBloPoMo, and thought that it might just help me get in the beat again and it did. Though at times I find it hard to find things to post, I am glad that I have kept it up, if only it is for me to be able to look back and remember what I have been though, what my thoughts have been and see how I evolved in that time.

So, I am again using NaBloPoMo this year to give me another boost, to get back in the habit so that I don’t let the blog fizzle any time soon. 15 days in, half way through, and it hasn’t been that bad to think about what to write… I have a good feeling that I will make it for the second year which will give me another boost for the time ahead..

We will make do…

Well, of course we will, but we will have help…

A while back I had gotten rid of our toaster oven. The door was broken and was not very useful because the heat was escaping and it just looked unsightly… We were happy with just having a toaster but when I saw a higher-end toaster/convection/rotisserie oven half price at Canadian Tire, I just bought it… It is a bit overkill for a toaster, though it does work, but it will be great for reheating food and baking small things even after we get the oven back in working condition… and it will probably save a bit of energy at the same time…

I have a few bananas that need to be used up and I thing that I will even be able to bake a banana bread in it!

As for this week, I am excited at our menu, and the bill was about 130$, which is again staying within the budget I have set… and that makes me happy also 🙂

So, we are having…

Hunan Dumplings
Fried Chicken Sandwiches
Falafel sandwiches
French Onion Soup
Something in the crockpot (not too sure yet)
and Raclette (I’ll write a post tomorrow explaining what this is)

day 2…

It’s Day 2 without an oven and I have no clue when we will have it working again.

The Sears guy was supposed to come today but then called yesterday and was able to figure out the problem over the phone with the Error code. He checked with the pieces and they are on order and he expects them for the 30th. I can’t believe it, I can’t go that long without a working oven!

I asked him if there was anything else that could be done and he did say that he would try. He called this morning saying that he would get back to me with news but then never called. It is so frustrating!!!

There are many things in the house that I wouldn’t have a problem without, but this is not one of them… especially since we no longer have a microwave or a toaster oven. Though I don’t like the results much, I remembered that we still have the breadmaker stashed somewhere down stairs, so I might get that out in the meantime…

The next weeks meal plans are sure going to be interesting to make though…

wow… that's more than an inconvienence…

My oven is broken!

I made some breakfast cookies this morning, pre-heated the oven, put them in and then soo after I started to smell food burning… I ran to kitchen at about the same time as the alarm on the oven went off flashing ERR:F10 over and over… I got the stuff out of the oven noticing that the cookies on the top shelf were burnt completely but the bottom ones were perfect… The broiler element was on and wouldn’t turn off…

The only way that I got it to turn off was to pull the oven out and unplug it.. then I called Sears (it is not even a year old) and they will be coming to repair it soon…

I have no idea what could have happened for it to break so suddenly. Looking around on the net though it looks like this Error code is because the heat was going too high, meaning that the heat sensor is most likely broken so the oven wasn’t cycling off and on like it should.

This really sucks! I use the oven pretty much everyday.

For breakfast we often rotate between Baked oatmeal, apple pancake, breakfast cookies, etc… For lunch we use the oven to reheat food since we don’t have a microwave, I made bread sometimes on a daily basis, muffins or other desserts and of course supper…
Tonight we are having sandwiches, so I’ll have to go out and buy some bread for tonight…

At least the stove top is working but depending on when the oven will be fixed I’ll have to plan meals around using the stove top exclusively which honestly is quite a challenge. Of course since this is taking away many of our breakfast options we will most likely be relying on the toaster a lot more which means that I will have to buy bread since I can’t make it.

This really sucks!