Homemade Food

To one of my sons, "homemade food" is an epithet.  I made refried beans, using my pressure cooker, and homemade tortilla the other night.  He came up for dinner and said, "Oh, homemade food," and he promptly went to the refrigerator to heat up something else to go into the homemade tortillas.

I haven't made tortillas in probably a decade - the first ones came out continent shaped.  By the end of the batch, they came out a bit rounder.  I didn't like the recipe I tried this time, so I will try a different one next time.  With a package of 10 tortillas running over $5, I will be making my own more often than not these days.

It was the first time I cooked beans in my big pressure cooker.  I couldn't believe  how well they came out.  I am definitely doing that again.  I have a big 25 lb bag of pintos in the pantry. 

My older son got his first paycheck from his new programming job.  He was so proud of it, he posted a picture of himself holding it.  Since I rarely check my Facebook, I heard about it from one of my students. He had a job with the USDA this summer, but the school found that for him as an internship - this job he found, interviewed and got himself. 

He told his younger brother he would buy cereal for the family once he cashed his check (Once the bags got smaller and the price went up - I refused to buy it anymore).  We were in Wal-Mart for dog food yesterday, so we stopped in the cereal aisle.  He took one look at the price of a bag of generic cereal (nearly $9) and said, "I guess you should make waffles for the freezer, because I am not going to buy that either." So after dinner was done, last night, I made waffles.

The night before, my son reminded me that he needed German food for his social studies.  They were studying immigration, and he picked German immigration.  They wrote a "diary" from the point of view of an immigrant, and then he had to bring in food.  I love project based education, but when the project consists of ME buying or making food, you have to wonder....  Anyway, I wanted to make something elaborate in memory of my Grandma and my MomMom, who were fabulous bakers, I ended up just making an egg braid - I didn't even stuff it with cheese or walnut and cinnamon paste.  I looked so yummy in the morning that I decided I was only sending half to the class and keeping half for home.  I figured with 24 kids bringing food, there would be way too much. 

The sad thing is, my ewe Minnie died.  She was still nursing the two - the floppy one who gets stronger every day and the ewe lamb.  The ewe lamb cried all night, but Buddy, the floppy one, knows that as much as he is scared of me, I bring food.  I can't get the ewe lamb to take the formula at all.  I tried making a kind of mash of it with COB, but she ran over to the grown up feeders.  I will just have to keep an eye on her.  Buddy will eat out of my hand or my daughter's - so we can monitor how much he is getting.  It just feels like it is always something - and remember my growing superstition of white sheep = bad luck?  This is another case - Minnie was a white ewe with the Barbados markings.