It's soup-tober!

I've been super swamped with stuff lately. It seems there is a dearth of potential volunteers in our church these days. I'm doing what I can to help fill some voids, but it takes it's toll. And I think I'm still finding my groove with my daughters' uni schedules, trying to balance with my own pursuits and studies. But life goes on. . .



October is the shoulder month for us. here in Seattle. It's just chilly enough that we could use a bit of heat, but not so cold that we absolutely need to turn on the furnace. Mid-October, our house hovers around 62 to 63 degrees F.

We must be the very last neighbors on our block to turn on our furnace, full-time, every fall. Each year, we challenge ourselves to wait just a little longer. Last year, we made it to October 22. This year, we're hoping to make it to about the 25th.

How do we keep from freezing ourselves silly? Besides wearing multiple layers of clothing, using lap throws and staying physically active, we eat soup for lunch and dinner almost every day. Soup is a very warming meal. Even if I'm just reheating a bowl of soup or chili in the microwave, I feel warm just holding my bowl.

To supplement both the soup meal and the heat in the kitchen, I also plan some sort of freshly baked or toasted bread product to go with dinner. I time this to come out of the oven minutes before we sit down to eat. The kitchen table is just a few steps away from the oven. We enjoy the bread, and some extra heat. Breads might include: biscuits, Yorkshire pudding, muffins, cornbread, or garlic bread, all quick and easy to put together in the late afternoon/early evening.

I'm thinking of charging rent for that chair at the kitchen table that is closest to the oven.

This week's lunch round-up

Again, following with the idea of doing a small amount of cooking over the weekend, I made some pbj sandwiches, a container of carrot sticks, and a large batch of pumpkin muffins on Sunday, leaving me with less to make on Monday. For the week, this is what we're having for lunch:

• pbj sandwiches
• carrot sticks
• pumpkin muffins with cream cheese
• fresh apples
• turkey-noodle-vegetable soup (made a large pot of soup for dinner on Monday, with enough leftovers for a couple of days of soup this week)
• Greek yogurt parfaits (Greek yogurt, chopped nuts, granola, jam)
• toasted cheese sandwiches (will make later in the week, as we run out of the above list of items)
• tomato-basil soup (made from pureed, canned tomatoes, minced onions, basil, oregano, pepper, salt and thickened with a faux beurre manie (a paste of flour and oil instead of butter, to thicken at the last moment -- also, I'll make this later in the week, to round out the last bits for lunches)

Even when I don't make up all the lunch fixins' on one day, I find that if I plan it out for the week, ahead of time, that I know what to do and when, so that lunch-making is a simple task for all.