So I was thinking, if I ever won the lotto (if I ever played) I wouldn't use the money to pay off bills, I'd hire a maid. I love a clean house but I HATE to clean. With four dogs and three kids you'd think I'd be an expert at cleaning but I'm not. I can wallow for several days in dirt and dust and gigantic fur balls without blinking an eye. After several days I start to mistake the GIGANTIC fur balls for my dogs and when I call and call and the "dog" doesn't move and I finally realize what I've been calling...well, then it's time to clean the house. The absolute worse thing to happen here is to get an unexpected visit. If I get an unexpected visit I try and head them off at the front door...if possible we "visit" on the front porch or out in the driveway...but occasionally people insist on coming in and of course I am mortified at all the dirt and hair around my house that I suddenly notice! So warning to anyone planning to visit me, give me ample notice so I can whirl around here and clean everything up and give the impression I live that clean all the time!!!! ;-)
When we bought this house one of the "luxury" aspects was the giant walk in refridgerator. It's like a cooler room. VERY cool and TONS of space, but the drawback to this luxury is that food gets lost in there...only to be found days, weeks, and sometimes months later cleverly disguised as green mold. You can tell how long it's been there if the food item is completely transformed into mold and you have trouble remembering what it could have been. Is everyone completely grossed out yet??? hahahaha...don't worry, we don't eat moldy food but I'm just pointing out a hazard with such a large fridge..if we ate the food it wouldn't have gotten time to get moldy!!!
In the beginning of our marriage we had a really difficult economic situation and often I hardly had any food to feed the kids and I when Stig was gone...it was a horrible time and I think it's the reason I hord food now. I am constantly filling the fridge, afraid we might be running out of something while all along we have actually plenty of whatever I thought we were running out of...so the already opened food item gets forgotten in place of the new food item and thus begins it's transformation from decent food item to greeny nasty moldy object. I am trying to get better about my shopping habits by shopping only once a week now. I am finding that if I make a list (pretty nifty idea, lists) and buy everything I'll need for the week I spend less money and we use what we have instead of constantly bringing in new before the old is eaten. Smart huh? Yeah...I'm not a natural blonde!!! ;-) I'm a slow learner, I'll admit that but stupid I IS NOT!!!! How's that for BAD English??? hahahaha...
So to the point of my blog here, the kids and I began cleaning up the house this afternoon (the organizer and cleaning freak of our family is coming home tomorrow- hubby) and we wanted everything to look nice. I decided to clean out the fridge and the end result you can see above. I'm so pleased. Now we will set up a new rule that once a week whoever has kitchen duty gets to check over the fridge for out of date products and food that has gotten lost. Who knows maybe someday we can enter our fridge without running into mystery food/nasty green moldy stuff...
The kids were wonderful to help clean, we are all excited for Stig to come home tomorrow! He and the other guys from the crew were being driven to the airport. Immigration said if anyone set foot on American soil without permission they'd be fined 3300 US dollars! Welcome to America!!!! Stig asked one of the customs guys who came on the boat last night if he couldn't go on land to get his American wife some Tootsie rolls and the guys said no. However, later in the evening he came back on the boat with a bag of Tootsie rolls for Stig to bring back to me!!! hahahaha! Now that's the America I love!!!! Stig was told if he flew to Mexico and then into the states he could enter with a visitors visa but just getting off the boat onto American soil was a big big NO NO! Does anyone see the sense in that??? Norwegians don't need any special visas to get into the states but if they arrive on boat they are treated like illegals...nice huh??? Makes tons of sense...ok...won't go down that road tonight...
I baked three carrot cakes today for this little cafe here on the island and tomorrow I am going to bake chocolate chip cookies for her. She told me that everytime she has made chocolate chip cookies they get incredibly flat. She has tried several recipies but falls on the same problem each time. I was planning on taking Nestle Toll House Recipe with me but using "dronning sjokolade" (a similar chocolate to chocolate chips but comes in a bar, so I'll just chop it into pieces) What would cause the chocolate chip cookies to be flat? Is it the altitude or is it cold eggs? Does anyone have advice for getting chewy, yummy, non-flat, chocolate chip cookies??? Well, I'm going to give it my best tomorrow and see how it goes. She loved my oatmeal raisin cookies I made for her last week. She bagged them and put very cute string around the top of the bag and sold them in her store which is attached to the cafe. I was looking up recipies today while waiting on the cakes to bake...there is just too many good recipies out there and not enough time to try everything. I am going to try and make fudge this weekend. I have made peanut butter fudge with great success but never gotten the chocolate fudge to work, have seen recipies that require condensed milk which I didn't know until today I could get here (Viking melk) and some require marshmallow fluff which I assume I can make by melting marshmallows???? Hmmmm....I'm thinking aloud here...but welcome any ideas to help me make successful fudge here. I tried making peanut brittle a couple weeks back but didn't get the brittle to harden like it was suppose too, it was just gooey...ugh the challenges in life!!!!! hahahaha!!!!
Ok folks...that's it for now, I think I've grossed everyone out with my dirt in house stories and moldy foods and then hopefully changed the feel of this blog to a positive with talk of all those yummy baked goods and fudge ideas...will try and think of something just as interesting to talk about next time we meet....until then....be good, be happy!!!!
2 comments:
first of all.. .I AM COVETING YOUR FRIDGE!!! Ours is soooooo freaking tiny. And I can only shop a few days at a time because there is just not room. It is smaller than an apartment fridge in the states!
but second of all.... now I am craving sweets!! :o) so thanks! LOL
I have had to get creative with all my recipes since, being from Texas, everything we bake seems to call for SHORTENING!! Which of course, my healthy new home, DK, does not sell!! :o) so pass along any yummy recipes you have and I will do the same! I love to experiment!
LOL about the hairballs... We only have one dog and two kids - but boy do they know how to track in tons of gravel and sand from school + daycare, plus there are always lots of hairballs lying around. Here in Sweden they are called dust rats!
I love having unexpected visitors and don't worry about the mess.. if they freak out, then it's their problem and not mine.
MMm.. be careful when melting marshmallows - they stick to everything and then go hard when cold. And if you put them in the micro, they get huge - but beware of exploding ones!
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