Recipe for Camping Canned Chicken Pot Pie

Four days camping!

I'm happy camping in anything with hard sides. I want STEEL between me and the bears. And lots of pillows. That's all I ask. I'm quite happy just to be in the woods, and exhale, wander around looking at the pretty leaves and stuff, and when it gets dark I want to close the door and lock it.

The van was pretty full with bedding, pillows and kids.  Ten pillows is a necessity.  An ice chest is a luxury I decided to do without. Anyway I didn't think the ice would last for four days.

My idea of camping food is a quick trip through Costco for non-refrigerated comestibles, like cashews, dried blueberries, jerky, those little round nut-and-seed blobs, so delicious, you know the ones.  Food:  *crosses that item off list*

The only problem was there was going to be potluck! What to bring?

A proper church lady must show up with a casserole in a pretty dish!  And not leave it all to the motorhomes and 5th wheels, ice chest or no!

Solution:  canned goods.

Ingredients:

I wouldn't usually buy Campbells Cream of Soup.  Just this once for a good reason.

Crumbled up saltines are indistinguishable once they're mixed into the soup, and the effect is really quite like bits of flaky, golden Marie Callendar's pot pie crust!

When I tested this at home before going camping, the kids loved it and ate the whole batch almost before I could take a picture. 
A week after we got home, they asked if I could make more of that stuff from the campout. 

Success!  :-D 

Homemade Fish and Chips

Happened to be in Walmart when the need for fish and chips became irresistible.

Walmart is a great store, I am not among those who refuse to shop there, rather I APPROVE of Walmart because I find it easier to find Made in USA items there than in any other large store, because they refuse to sell the worst offensive, violent music, and they promote Christian material and gift items with verses.

That being said, it's not the place to find fish fillets with natural ingredients.
Reading the ingredients on Gorton's fish sticks is rather unappetizing, I must say!
But, I was at Walmart when the urge struck...

Walmart had a bag of tilapia loins pre-skinned and individually wrapped!  And they had taters. 

 

I did those properly, first dipped in flour with salt and pepper, then in egg, then in bread crumbs with seasoning.  

How to make chips?  Well, how hard can it be?  

Best fish 'n' chips EV AR.

And by the way, here's what I bought myself for my birthday this year.

Pears!

The quarry-- a big pear tree on sort-of public property. 

The pears are falling and the homeless are ignoring them. 

Admittedly the pears have been picked to the level that tall people can reach.  Let’s think.

Hangar, plastic bag, mailing tape, yardstick. 

I felt a little silly whipping out this contraption in public, up until the moment that it worked.  Pity I didn’t take a video!  The bag goes up around the pear, the end of the hangar snags the stem, a little yank and the pear drops into the bag. 

Yield: 

Now the pear tree is loaded with pears above the level of tall people and clever redneck chicks. 

For the second trip, a modified apparatus. 

One guy who stopped to watch me expressed doubt because, he said, those pears are HARD. Right. Who cares if they’re a little crunchy? They’re like hard CRUNCHY PEAR SUGAR BLASTERS, never tasted such excellence. I gave him a big fat pear and he went away eating it.

Most people who stopped to watch me at this activity (which with a stick this long harks to fishing) told me I was clever, so I gave them nice pears to eat. 

And still took home: 

Plastic Canvas Outgoing Mail Holder

I made one of these aeons ago and it was a cool, useful thing to have on the wall.  Recently someone admired it so I made a copy.  Here's the information in case you'd like to make one. 

As you can see, there is some lag time between photos and blogging  :-)

Front design

The back is reinforced with double layers of canvas to make it stronger.  
I was running out of that blue cord, so I switched from my usual favorite basketweave to half cross on the back to economize, then left the bottom part unstitched.  It's against the wall, so it doesn't show! 

Dimensions to cut the plastic canvas:

One New Painting

Karen decided it had been long enough since she painted  :-)

I'm Still a Housewife

I just had to write a summary of myself.  I really hate those.  Do they want my categories, my facts and statistics, or a list of my interests, talents, and skills, or a list of everything I've ever done?  

If I must be summed up in a word, housewife is the best one. 
I've had extra pleasure in using it ever since a feminist type saw me writing it into the "Occupation" box on a form and commanded me not to-- "For the sake of your self-respect!"


Since my self-respect is based more on the right to define myself than on my pride in how well I can follow others' instructions, here we are.  A housewife.

I recently looked up the word husband to be sure I could use it as a synonym for steward in the sense that I wanted, and found out something interesting.  Y'know how we joke about a house husband-- well, they're ALL that because "hus" means house!

hus·band late Old English (in the senses ‘male head of a household’ and ‘manager, steward’)
from Old Norse húsbóndi, from hús ‘house’ + bóndi ‘occupier and tiller of the soil.’

The word wife just means a woman who is doing an occupation.  Like the old fishwife, a woman who sells fish, or still-used midwife, a woman who assists (another).
So a housewife is a woman whose primary occupation is the upkeep of a house, and husband is her male counterpart. 

That I haven't a husband is of no matter for my choice of self-descriptive terminology.
Why should a man's wrong choices deprive me of my calling?

Since I live in an apartment, I'll have do some more creative defining.  I'll go with "house" as a private establishment which shelters a family and supports the daily activities of all of its members, the good keeping of which makes it possible to live economically.

Haha, oh, I really came over here just to rejoice! I've been so happy lately! Quietly keeping my little place, peeling my little vegies, sweeping my floors, sewing and selling stuff. These are my favorite, most contented days.

Making CD Sleeves from Calendars

That's the level of craft I can handle these days  :-)

It's SOOO satisfying for a hoarder type to be able to think of a use for those calendar pages that were just too pretty to throw away!

Some time ago I opened up a CD sleeve and copied it onto thin cardboard for tracing. 
 

It took some trial and error (as you can see) to get a square just the right size, but once I have that, I can fold the flaps over it and they come out perfect every time. 

Pretty, yes?

Unlike my larger dreams and plans, a craft on this scale actually ends up being made  :-)