Hot Water to Soup in 20 minutes… and other stuff

Sunday morning I got up to a dry (and very cold – brrrrr) house.  (Enough of these single digits - Spring can’t come soon enough.)  The humidifier was in need of cleaning so I unplugged it on Saturday morning as I headed out the door for an all day workshop.  By the time I got home Saturday evening I was too tired to mess with cleaning the humidifier… so late Sunday morning I put a large pot of water on the stove to simmer.  The Engineer had already headed out to his woodshop so he didn’t know I was just using a lazygirls method of boosting the humidity in the house.

Well … he didn’t know until 11 AM when he came in after finishing up his project.  “Are you making soup for lunch?” was his question – which had caught me off guard because I forgot about the simmering pot.  He wanted to know if we were having lunch before or after he got his shower?  LOL  I told him to go get his shower and I’d rustle up some lunch. 

Since I had a pot of hot water all ready… I threw a spoon of chicken soup base and about 3 cups of dehydrated scalloped potatoes in.  I had a ham steak in the freezer – so I pulled that out, cut it up, cooked it in a pan and then deglazed with some of the broth and dumped it all in the pot with some dehydrated onion and some pepper.  Everything simmered for 20 minutes until the potatoes were done.  I chopped at the potatoes with my spoon to break them up some and then added 2 cups of light cream.  At that point - we called it lunch.  We were slurping our soup by 11:30.

After the pot had cooled off I packaged the rest of it up for his lunches… I think I have the freezer pretty well stocked now.  I didn’t take a picture Sunday but here is a picture from a couple weeks ago when I packaged up a bunch of beef vegetable soup in containers for the freezer.  I bought these microwave containers at a restaurant store last year.  I had to buy a case but have shared them with my daughter and son to freeze leftovers for lunches.  My husband use to take the freezer tape label off – but I told him to leave it as the writing washes out in the dishwasher and I just remark it.

The serving size is perfect – he has soup or other leftovers for lunch every day.

Enough of that – here are a couple pictures from my Buggy Barn Hearts Workshop this weekend for a group of Jersey Girls.  There are 3 sisters, one daughter and a friend.  They came out last year for a 4 Patch Stacked Posie workshop.

From left to right the fabric combinations are – vintage fabrics, green-brown-creams, 30’s, blue-brown-cream, and the pink-brown-cream I had used as my sample.  None of the blocks have been trimmed yet – there will be 2 other sets with fabrics all switched around.

There are lots of pieces parts to keep track of as you can see by their tables.  We had a good day – everyone got a complete set of blocks done and started working on the others.  Although it’s bitter cold outside - at least they had clear weather to head home in this year – last year when they headed home we had flurries here and they drove into 6 inches of snow at their homes in southern NJ.

Last but not least… this is where I’m headed with the 4 Patch Stacked Posies.  I’ll get a picture of the fabric and post it when I get back into the shop.  I can’t even tell you who makes it… but it’s a pretty grouping.

Enough sitting around this morning… places to go and things to do!