Black Bean Salsa

THIS is one of my most requested recipes. I got it from my sister-in-law several years ago and have wowed many potlucks/gatherings since. It is goooooood. You can serve it with chips for dipping, as a relish for meat (think grilled chicken) or eat it as-is as a sidedish! Mmmmm...

Begin by dumping 1 can of black beans, 1 can of corn and 1 medium jar of diced pimientos into a large sieve. Rinse to get some of the black beany juice off of the black beanies.

Next, chop a large bell pepper (any color will do), and a small onion.

Then, whisk together 3/4 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup of vinegar, 1/2 cup of vegetable oil, a couple of dashes of hot sauce, and a dash of salt & pepper.

Combine the marinade ingredients with all the other ingredients. Chill for a couple of hours & enjoy!

Freaky Friday

Monkey Man loves making silly faces for the camera.

It's contagious.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Oh Deer, a Mouse!

I went out to the shed today, looking for nails. Instead, I opened a drawer and found this:

I didn't have my camera with me the first time I saw him. I quietly shut the drawer and ran back into the house to call all the ducklings to come see him. That's when I got the picture.

Here is his nest. It is made of scraps of fabric, paper and even a bandaid.

Mr. C immediately ran inside and grabbed the animal books. He concluded that we had found a deer mouse.

This picture is unrelated. I took it this morning and liked it. Superhero was making a serious effort to play gently, because he felt Bobby the Cat liked it better that way.

Mojo Chops

How often do you come across a delicious recipe that only requires 2 ingredients? Following is my favorite way of cooking and eating pork chops. All you need is pork chops (I used a pork loin, because it was on sale at Food Lion.) and a bottle of Goya Mojo sauce. Mmmm, that stuff is simple and delicious! You can usually find the sauce in the mexican food section of your grocery store.

Slice the pork fairly thin - maybe no thicker than 3/4". Don't trim the fat. I actually went looking for a ruler to measure how thick I was slicing them, but couldn't find one. Imagine that.

Marinate the chops in some of the mojo sauce - for as long as you like. I only let them sit for a few minutes because I wanted to get them done before it got dark. (I had a picture of this step, but for some reason, my camera refused to upload it to the 'puter.) Be sure to shake the sauce well, because it has lots of yummy sediment that you don't want to leave behind. See?

Oh, and if you want to be like me, be sure to pick the coldest and windiest day of the year to make these.

Go ahead and start grilling them. Or better yet, see if your significant other would like to grill them for you. He's much better at it, anyway.

Fight off the salivating 8 year old boy who is about to chew your arm off at the thought of having pork chops for dinner and is repeatedly asking you if you are planning on cooking more of them. He cheers when he finds out you are.

Hurriedly wash and cut up potatoes for mashed potatoes because you just know the chops are out there burning to a crisp.

Go check on them and find that the wind has blown out the grill.

Finally, whenever they're done (sorry I can't be more specific) remove them from the grill and drizzle some more mojo on them. We're having ours with mashed potatoes, green beans and cheddar-garlic biscuits - oh my! You could also slice them and serve them with sauteed onions, peppers and warm tortillas.

Mmmm... I just love the charred fat. Daddy Duck dutifully slices away and discards the fat from his chops. Not Mama Duck. We are a little like Jack Spratt and his wife.

Living with Type 1 Diabetes

It has almost been a year since Sugar Baby was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. The date was February 19th, the same day (14 years earlier) that Daddy Duck proposed to me.

Sugar Baby and all the other ducklings had gotten sick around Christmas time, but Sugar Baby never seemed to fully recover. I took her in to the pediatrician in January because she seemed so weak & not herself. He thought that it might have been a lingering sinus infection, so he prescribed an antibiotic. Sugar Baby still didn't perk up and began losing weight. I thought that perhaps she was just growing taller and taking after Daddy Duck.

Then, she started having to pee very often. Just a few days before I took her back to the pediatrician, she had to go three times while we were in one store (and we weren't there that long). She also became very thirsty. She became frantic for drinks, especially sweet ones. We rarely drank koolaid, but she kept begging me to get some.

Way, way in the back of my mind, I knew these were diabetes symptoms. But it just couldn't be - no one in my family that I knew of had type 1. On Monday, February 18th, I remember telling Daddy Duck that I had made an appointment with the pediatrician for Sugar Baby for the next day. I told him I thought - and even while saying that to him I felt like I was being a hypochondriacal (is that a word?) mother- that she had symptoms of diabetes. But, I told him, it's probably like a urinary tract infection or something.

That next Tuesday morning, Sugar Baby and Bootsie had their sewing class. From there, we ate lunch, stopped at Krispy Kreme(!) and then dropped the other kids off at a friend's house while I took Sugar Baby to the pediatrician.

I told our pediatrician Sugar Baby's symptoms. She listened & seemed very somber. She sent us to the bathroom for a urine sample. We gave it to the nurse and went back to the examining room. The nurse came in & told the ped. the results. Sugar Baby's urine sugar was 2,000.

The pediatrician said, "I'm so sorry. It looks like Sugar Baby has diabetes."

Gulp.

"But how do you know??" I asked. She told me that you weren't supposed to have any sugar in your urine. She also said the good news was that there were no ketones present. Ketones?

She left the room to get some information and phone numbers. I fought back tears. Sugar Baby was very afraid and kept saying, "but there's nothing wrong with me." I told her she would be okay and we would get through this.

She gave us instructions to take Sugar Baby to a local hospital where they have good pediatric endocrinologistst. There, they would begin the education.

The next 24 hours were a whirlwind. Sugar Baby's blood glucose in the ER was so high it wouldn't register on their handheld glucometers. A blood test revealed that it was 740. A miracle that she hadn't gotten ketones or dangerously ill.

We spent hours and hours in the ER before they admitted her to a room. The entire time, Ron Hamilton's song "Rejoice in the Lord, He Makes no Mistakes" cycled over and over in my mind.

Meanwhile, my ravenous Sugar Baby was even hungrier and I had no idea what she could eat. I was given the impression that she couldn't eat anything - that it was all bad!

That night, Daddy Duck went home to care for the other ducklings, and by midnight, Sugar Baby was finally settled in a room. She couldn't fall asleep. She laid there & cried. Oh, how my heart breaks now to remember it! I climbed in the bed with her and rubbed her back until she went to sleep.

I spent the rest of the night in the chair next to her bed, devouring any information I could get my hands on. My head was spinning!

All of our heads were spinning for the next several weeks!

Our emotions have taken such a roller coaster ride through this experience. I still hate it so much. Diabetes really stinks. I sooooo wish my Sugar Baby did not have to deal with this.

Everyday is basically the same:

• wake up


• test blood sugar (this is the finger pricking part)


• receive two shots before breakfast (the amounts of the insulin in the shots depends on what the blood sugar is and how many carbohydrates she will be eating)


• test blood sugar before lunch (another prick)


• receive a shot to cover lunch carbs


• test blood sugar


• receive a shot to cover dinner carbs


• test blood sugar again before bed


• have a snack so that blood sugar doesn't drop while sleeping

everyday. everyday. everyday. there is no vacation or time off from it. it is every day.

Meanwhile, Sugar Baby handles it like a champ. She is truly amazing! I thank God for helping her be so strong to deal with this disease.

What the little people do...

A lot of times when people find out we homeschool, one of their first questions is about what I do with the younger ducklings while the older ducklings are doing schoolwork. This aspect of our schooling has gotten easier this year because of the curricullum we are using and because the younger ducklings are getting bigger themselves. It used be to a lot trickier back in the days when one was nursing, one was potty training, and another was a very active 3-4 year old. (Whew - how did I ever do it?!)

Anyhow... the younger ducklings who are not "schooling" are my slave labor. I work their little fingers to the bone... heh, heh, heh...

They sweep the floor.

They wash the windows.

They peel potatoes.

NOT! Haha! All of those photos were staged. (Though, once we were done, they thought it was fun and did more "cleaning" on their own.) This is what really goes on:

They eat.They play with playdough.
They build mountains with couch cushions and fight off invading big brothers.
They try to feed the fish, but end up spilling the food everywhere.
They leave behind a trail of disaster and mayhem not unlike this:

But they have fun & that's what counts. :)

Convenience foods from scratch: French Toast Sticks

I discovered this wonderful recipe a few days ago. Already, I have made it twice. I had never purchased frozen french toast sticks before. However, Daddy Duck brought some home last week, hoping to provide something easy for me to make for the ducklings' breakfast. They devoured the whole box in about 20 seconds. So I got to thinking... there must be a way to make these myself.

I got online and found a recipe. We have french toast every now and then, but the beauty of these puppies is that they are so sweet that you do not need any syrup to go with them! Do you know what that means? That means Mama Duck doesn't have to spend an extra half an hour after breakfast scrubbing syrupy stickiness from benches, tables, table legs, floors, faces, between fingers, books, hair, high chairs... you get the picture. So, I present to you, my loyal reader(s?)... French Toast Sticks.

Ingredients:
1 loaf bread (The first time, I used homemade whole wheat bread & cut it into thick slices. I thought it was better than the store-bought loaf.)
4 eggs (I used 5 because my chickens are laying small eggs right now.)
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup milk
4 Tbs pancake syrup
2 Tbs brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
butter

Combine everything except the bread & butter. Make a funny face and mix it all up. Like so:
Slice the bread into strips. Don't make them too skinny or your sticks will be floppy. Try to make them look as much like store-bought ones as possible. That way your kids will be more likely to try them. After slicing the bread, build something with it. Like so:

Dip each slice in the egg mixture. Just long enough to get them coated, but not soggy. (I had to use the spotlight effect on this photo so you couldn't see the grease and crumbs in the background. Just being honest here.)Melt your some butter in a skillet and fry each stick until golden brown. Then you will have a nice little platter that looks like this:(I spotlighted this one to make them look even more special. Spotlighting is fun.)

Now, you can eat them as is, or you can place them in a single layer on a cookie sheet and freeze them. Once they are frozen, put them in a plastic bag & stick them back in the freezer to pull out for a quick & yummy breakfast. Just reheat in the oven at 350F for 10 minutes or so.

My ducklings liked these even better than the store-bought ones. I think it was because the store-bought ones have more of a nutmeggy flavor.

Bon appetit!

Bobby the kitten loves Webkinz...

The mouse/cursor drives him crazy!

It's been a long day at the pond for this duckling...

Gorgeous!

Back to School!

Today is our first day back from Christmas break. Here is Bootsie, doing her math. Hanging upside down is particularly helpful when you are working with fractions.

Monkey Man likes to be prepared at all times. You never know when you may need to snorkel or shoot a bad guy while doing your seatwork.

Have a blessed day! :)

These are a few of my favorite things...

Daddy duck had been out of town for several days. He came back bearing gifts. Something sparkly for me!

Then today, he got me this:

It's MINE, ALL MINE! I don't have to share these with anyone! I immediately ran and hid them in the dark recesses of my bathroom closet. Shhh... don't tell anyone, especially Monkey Man, Mr. C, Superhero, or... Daddy Duck.

.................................................................................................................................................................

Sugar Baby made this today on her Knifty Knitter. It's a vest for her doll, Samantha. Isn't it cute?

The boy ducklings have graduated to bunk beds. We found these on craigslist. I love that they have a trundle. They seem very sturdy. Good thing, huh?