White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Ahh, a Monday vacation is like no other. Of course, I have no time to just lay about in bed. The kids get up at 0730 and I need to tend to them. I cant just lay this on the Most Wonderful Mrs MDMHVONPA, she was up till 0200 doing the digital photo-swap thing with her father who will be returning to China soon. So, off to fetch the increasingly irritated twins and let them loll about the bed while the Mrs tries to snuggle with them for that extra few minutes of sleep. Sleep is a commodity in short supply these days, worth more than its 'weight' in gold. Sooner (rather than later), we let loose the kids on the Paw-Paw and Guo-Guo (Cantonese for Grandma and Grandpa on the mother's side) so that we can get some things done. The dishes need attention (AGAIN!) and we periodically clean, rack and refill the dishwasher with them. Most likely, we will generate as many dishes during the day as we manage to clean.

I had to cave in and turn up the heat. I was not too cold. The kids hands were not any more icy than normal (good Minnesota blood in their veins). It was the inlaws wearing parkas and knitted tuques (knitted stocking hat) about the house that made me reconsider. Sigh, what I do for family. So I turned the heat all the way up to 70F and cranked up the fire as much as possible to help the furnace along. It will be significantly more toasty in the upper floors, but the main level needs a bit of heat to keep them from getting frostbite. I should get them all a set of silk longjohns for next Christmas. And perhaps get them used to hot rum too.

I finally got a dehydrator as a gift and spent no time in putting it to work. I had a bunch of brisket, flank and sheet steak already sliced up and marinating in a little mix of spices, soy and honey. I laid out as much as I could and let it go. It should take a day or two. Mmmm, jerky. The humble half brother of bacon. My kids like it and I'll be giving them as much as they want. They'll grow up to be proud meat-eaters just like their daddy and able to consume some of the most bizarre things like their mommy's family. Speaking of bizarre, I went ahead and took what was left of the turkey and started making turkey stock. The stock ingredients pretty much consists of the bones, skin and other assorted scraps tossed in with herbs, celery, onion and carrot bits (if you have any around). I will be making turkey noodle soup with this using alphabet noodles and the remaining white breast meat left over. Nothing tastes better than soup made from scratch. Since we brined the turkey, there will be no need to add additional salt to the soup. The smell of the turkey stock will permeate the house the next morning since I plan on letting it go in the crock pot all night.

In the afternoon, we took advantage of the Wife's parents by leaving the kids with them as we crawled into bed and did some photography work (wink-wink, nudge-nudge, is YOUR wife a sport?). What? NO! Your dirty minds! We were taking photos of our wedding and the kids out of one set of photo albums and putting them in a different one so we could give the first set to the Wife's father. He apparently favors one type over the other and the Mrs likes the new ones better. We spent a good two hours going through the photos while listening to the action going on downstairs over the new wireless phone system that acts as an intercom/paging conduit as well. Sneaky, yeah, but pretty neat. We can hopefully eliminate the monitor we have in the master suite that picks up cb/radio/wireless phone conversations. It's a bit disconcerting to be woken in the early hours of the morning to disembodied voices in the bedroom. Shades of Amityville Horror.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 1:11 PM