Avoidance

of this...

You would think with the end in sight, I'd be all over this.  I was, for one whole day and evening, then yesterday when I realized I was only halfway through the quilting and my back was killing me from sitting there, I paced around the house looking for any way possible to avoid the last half of the machine quilting!

Temps are insane here for our location.  It was in the 80's last week - this week?  The 30's!  This morning I woke up to a pretty good freeze out there for the 2nd morning in a row, temp was 28º.  I feel badly for my broccoli and peas, but I think they can handle it, my artichokes, not so sure.  They like to be transplanted when it's still cool out, and they were hardened off in upper 40's temps, but I am anxious about checking on them out there.  At least they are in the relatively insulated ground, keeping my fingers crossed until I head out to check.


So what did I do to avoid the quilt yesterday?

After watching my neighbor try and push start his Honda Fit for about 10 minutes all by himself, I woke up hubby to go help him out.  It was kind of amusing, and he probably could have done it easily if there was a hill, but it's level.  If there's any car that would be really easy to push start, this is it.  He would push it up this tiny incline in the business across the street, run to the back, push again and then run alongside and jump in, but it just wouldn't roll fast enough, LOL

After that entertainment, I made Jane's Gr@pe Nuts!  For those that follow her, you are already aware of the awesome kitchen projects and yummies she cranks out of her kitchen all while cooking and baking from her well stocked and healthy pantry, but if you haven't checked her out, head over to Jane's Hard Work Homestead and get your apron on because there will be flour flying!

My personal tweaks were the following:  I don't have fresh ground flour so I tried to get as healthy as I could within the confines of my store bought pantry flour.  I used 2 cups of whole wheat flour, 1 cup soy flour, and 1/2 cup wheat bran to substitute for the 3.5 cups of fresh ground stuff.  I decreased the sugar amount as her and Mama Pea suggested since I too, don't like sugary sweet cereals.  I used 3/4 cup of brown sugar with just a bit of raw sugar sprinkled over the top as the crumbles were finishing their baking.  Once I can get some local honey, I may use that since the kids love honey.

My food processor is all but kaput since I seem hell bent on using it for things like grating soap bars into flakes for detergent (poor machine), so my crumbles are varied in size from tiny to large instead of a nice uniform size, but it makes a good amount, well more than a 'Family Size Box' of the store bought stuff as you can see...

And, for the ultimate endorsement...

The kids and I loved it!  Of course we all love Grape Nuts to begin with, so this was a huge improvement over eating store bought.  Bonus, for those with kids, this is a very kid-friendly recipe, they will love breaking up the chunks as it bakes and stirring and checking on it.

After sewing ONE row on the quilt, I walked away again and started a batch of White Chicken Chili in the crockpot and decided to attempt bread yet again.  This time I turned out 2 loaves of French bread that were actually quite good.

Lots of crockpot meals in our future, I think.  Hubby's new schedule isn't really a schedule at all.  For the past 10 days (funny how that coincides with the Libyan involvement, huh?) he has been working at least 14 hour days, and he is working nights.  The kids haven't seen him in several days, since he is working every day, weekends too.  He gets home at about 3 am, is sleeping when I'm getting them off to school, and then he leaves at 2 pm or so to head back to work, so he's gone when the kids get home from school and it's the middle of the night again when he comes home.  Poor Finn was asking me why daddy didn't tell them he was going on deployment again.  I had to explain that he isn't on deployment, but these are his normal hours now, and he is indeed, still across the street at the hangar working!  This is the stuff that is far worse than deployment, since he's here, we just don't see him.  We get into a "daddy's gone" groove on deployment when everything runs smoothly, but when he's back, the kids expect to be able to do things with him at least on the weekends.  And there's the whole "at least when he's deployed he makes extra money"!  So until further notice, dinner kind of has to be ready for him to take to work by 2 p.m., which means crock pot!  I will have to expand my horizons when it comes to crock pot cooking.

In other local news, here is the view Virginia Beach woke up to yesterday morning...

  

Sadly, this seems to be happening more and more often in past years, I think we had 2 or 3 last year.  Whether it's a ship accident or a migration thrown off course, it's sad and concerning.  We have a Marine Mammal Stranding Team here in our city and they said it looks to be a ship injury, but due to the size of the whale, they had to bury it deeply last night at the beach instead of towing it out to sea, now that's a big hole to dig in the sand.

Okay, no more procrastinating - I'm finishing that quilt today, and hope to have a photo of it actually on the bed by tomorrow evening, wish me luck, I'm goin' in....