Coffee With Elly

My kitchen is almost never clean. But I've discovered something amazing : even when the kitchen looks like a huge disaster, it only takes 30 minutes take it from scary to sparkling! Maybe a really calamitous disaster would take a little more time, but I've tried this twice and both times what I thought couldn't possibly take less than an hour turned out to be a thirty minute proposition. The key is to get an uninterrupted 30 minutes. Aye, there's the rub.  Say that the stars align and I get an uninterrupted 30 minutes?  Then I clean the kitchen in this order: ▪ Throw away anything that can be thrown away.  ▪ Put away anything that can be put away. (This can include unloading the dishwasher) ▪Accumulate the remaining dishes to be washed next to the sink.  ▪Wipe down all the other counters.  ▪Wash the dishes.  ▪Wipe off the last counter.  Presto Change-O!

Thursday night concert at the End of the Oregon Trail Center. Perfect evening to be out!

 For the sake of historicity, I thought I would record that we celebrated my birthday last Sunday with a Family Party. My brother-in-law and I have birthdays this time of year - mine in June, his in July, which are not closely located to the clustered birthdays of the rest of my husband's side of the family - which are mostly around October, February, and May. All the local family came, my sister-in-law made us both desserts, we had dinner, and we had singing, cake and presents in the traditional fashion.  My husband was amazing: he scheduled the party, coordinated the food, shopped for the supplies, marinated chicken, supervised the household clean up, set up the buffet, barbecued the meat, and ran the party. It just illustrates what I've frequently said: when he sets his mind to do something, he does it right! 

There comes a time in every woman's life where she has to try to make her own vinegar, right? No? Well, I've been itching to try it, anyway. Actually, my first attempt, completely untutored, ended in weird fuzzy stuff growing on leftover wine. Pretty sure that was a fail. But this  time, I have instructions from a book , so it'll have to work! (because if you read it in a book, it must be true)  As instructed, I put fresh, organic  strawberries in a jar, poured in half a bottle of leftover wine...  ... then placed a handkerchief over the top (discovered I was out of cheesecloth) and put it in its new home in a cupboard over the oven. In theory, in a couple of months there should be a slimy, gelatinous thing  called a "mother of vinegar" in there amongst the strawberries, along with some fresh red wine vinegar. Then I'm supposed to put half of the mother into another, larger, container and "feed" it some wine which it will turn into...