Stove Top Oven

One of the many ways that I had planned on increasing the return on our wood stove investment was to use a stove top oven ($30 on gift card) for baking. Easier said than done apparently. My first few attempts were on the cold side with the oven only reaching the 250 degrees when the stove was @ a full fire.
Woods, believes that the poor quality of the wood we have been burning is to blame.
Neither here nor there as I still need to bake.
And we all know that not using the free heat to bake with was driving me crazy Lucy, crazy.
Red silicone baking mats ($15) paper & butterfly clipped in place increased the oven's heat retention.
And yes it took me a good day to figure out what I could use to hold the mats in place.
Stove top oven holds one pie, one 8" cake pan, or two regular loaf pans. It also holds my cast iron muffin pan - 6 small muffins.

Blueberry pie (grew & canned the filling), took over an hour and half to bake. Not as browned on the top crust as I would have liked but the filling was bubbling out so I pulled it. Not as pretty as I would have liked. Only two hearts are perfect.

Whole house smells like pie.



Stove top oven with an added oven thermometer as the door gauge is about 100 degrees too low. I really only use inside thermometer (borrowed from ice box) when I first place a pan in. After that we gauge the baking time by the given bake time then by the scent.
Not an exact science but then wood stove cooking & baking isn't.

Practice practice practice.


~~ pelenaka ~~

Brass Monkey Cold

Today was the second day of warmer temperatures here on the urban homestead - it was 33 degrees and drab today. Tonight the real cold comes back to torment us.  

NP I'll take it sure beats our all time record setting low of -9 last week.

Snapped this pic of our freak'n Winter wonderland  while I was listening to my Christmas gift from Woodsrunner. It's an eton brand solar/hand cranked/battery powered radio/flash light/cell phone charger. Also will charge ipods. Great to get a quick weather update from NOAA.

Lite weight and very compact. Good since my car is a bicycle with baskets.

All that's left of our wood pile is 2 to 2 1/3 cords of wood. The 1/3 being hard Maple which gives more heat than what we have been calling Bass wood. Don't ask me what Bass wood is. It's a term that husband uses. All I know is that it is wood best burned in early Autumn or late Spring or during warm January days such as today when I'm wearing thermal underwear under my thick sweatpants.
It was free so that has to count for something. And we were by no means freezing.
When it was bitterly sub zero cold we also burned Oak pallets along with the Maple. Still it was diffacult to keep the house any warmer than 56 even with the stove blazing at those low temps. No wonder that this ballon framed built house orginally had 3 coal stoves.
So far to date the furnace has only been on for about 40 hours this heating season. The majority of that was durning those below zero nights to keep the cellar warm enough so the water pipes didn't freeze. As of now our natural gas bill has been $92 but that's without a proper meter read.
Electric bill was impressive in that we only used a bit over $12 worth of current for last month. However we paid out over $34 in service charges, taxes, tariffs, line charges, blah blah blah ...
Having the furnace running for those few nights reminded me that I so much prefer wood heat to forced air. It's true what they say, the flame warms you to the bones.

~~ pelenaka ~~

Pharmacist sells flour

and eggs.
And olive oil.

Good score over the last month @ my neighborhood CVS drugstore - 5 pound bags of all purpose Gold Medal Flour for a $1 each. Bought 24 bags = 120 lbs. Called my bbgf, she scored 30 bags. This was a manager's special a.k.a. unadvertised clean out the back room deal.
Each bag is sitting cold in the freezer until I have O2 absorbers & Mylar bags to prep them for long term storage. I won't be using this flour until my other 8 bags (holiday baking sales) are depleted.
Unfortunately I didn't have any corresponding coupons nor could I find any online but it was a sweet deal never the less.
Eggs were an advertised special cheaper than Aldi.
Filippo Berio Olive Oil Extra Virgin was $8.49 for 16.9 fl. oz. I had two $1 off coupons & a 25% off purchase CVS store coupon. Olive Oil worked out to be $5.62 each or 33 cents per once. Can never have enough olive oil.

I also picked up two knee adjustable braces that were on a bogo 50% off sale. Had a couple of $3 off coupons so the price worked out to $8.24 each. Having spare braces is priceless when we have daughters who play sports. Not to mention Woodsrunner & myself.
I have always kept an extensive medical kit with emergency supplies that covered lacerations & gi issues but have recently in the past few years worked on extending our kit to include other health concerns such as sprains.
Our health insurance doctor office co pays have gone up from $35 to $50. ER visits were $300, now $500 (mortgage payment & a half). So it isn't just a matter of not being able to go to an ER because of a disaster it more of being able to afford that trip to the ER.
Speaking of medical supplies - last Summer I picked up a pair of barely used adjustable metal crutches @ Aunt Sally's (Salvation Army) for $1.99.

Here's a link to the free download in PDF of the book Where There is No Doctor


~~ pelenaka ~~

Solo Gardening

I was giving some serious thought to not putting in a garden this coming Spring. I felt very over whelmed last gardening season with family commitments and the lack of child labor not to mention our strange & wacky Summer weather. Lack of Sunlight ...
Came up with the idea of solo gardening, having just one very well established plant of each vegetable that I could grow into a mega plant. Concentrate my efforts & resources on just one. Unfortunately the tomato plant featured in this post bit the dust. Of the two pictured above only the pepper plant seems to be thriving. It's about 4' tall and has blooms. Named it Seymour. Both are from last year's garden.
BTW since our house has warmth issues these potted veggies are @ my Mom's apt. were she keeps the heat at a luxurious 68 degrees. Mom moves the pots around her living room so they are always in the Sun.
Thank you Mom for chasing the Sun.

~~ pelenaka ~~

Worth Dying For?

Black Friday.
Neither hubby nor I went shopping.
I'm doing a no buy Christmas for the most part & hubby is well - he gets into shopping in a frugally morbid type way. I'll explain later lets just say he torments the gift recipient for weeks.
DD#2 rode her bike out to a strip mall with a coupon for 20% off and bought new sneakers with her own money. Pretty proud of her except for the fact that it was snowing, icy, & bitterly cold. Oh yeah and peeps were out acting like fools and there she was on her bike.
Couldn't wait until I could hook her up with a ride. So from now to the day these 'neakers bite the dust they will be known as to die for.
Speaking of to die for here's a clip from channel WIVB 4 Buffalo on a stampede @ Target. It's funny now because as far as has been reported no one was seriously injured. The one guy who has pain written all over his face managed to drag himself over to electronics to find a relative, then go to the ER where they T&R'd.
Yeah it's all fun & games til some one's crushed in the door way of a national discount chain.
No word on if he scored a t.v.

Cyber Monday - hope to score a deal on long johns for myself & the girls, along with a pair of Winter boots for me. Would also like to score a great deal on a Berkly Water Filter.

On a more important note - we were able to spend a very nice Thanksgiving @ my in laws. Brought my Mom who enjoyed meeting her favorite son in law's parents fro the first time. A nice touch was my MIL bought a few plantain bananas which she asked my mother to cook for us. Mom was more than happy to show off cooking up some platanos.

~~ pelenaka ~~

Multi tasking G.A. Way

Prior to our home having a wood stove we dried cloths just like everyone in the hood who didn't have a clothes drier, that is to say we used a ghetto clothes drier a.k.a. a heating duct vent or a radiator. Now we do it the Amish way.
Yeah I know but before everyone get's their stopenfloppers in a knot I'm sitting a few feet away multitasking so to speak to the power of 5. Besides laundry there's dough raising in the bread bucket under the huge cast iron skillet which has tarragon dehydrating. Cooking on the stove as well as on a high trivet on the right side of the hearth  is dinner. Me blogging is the final task.
Big push to finish routine chores since tomorrow is pie baking. Also need to install one of my last 3 replacement windows. I can not freakin believe that after 10 years and 12 windows later I will be done!
With windows that is. When I'm actually done with the final room of this house word is that family will box me then stick a couple saw horses under the casket and call it a wake. All the while sipping rum and admiring the wonderfully refinished wood work. 
An added bonus is that I should be getting mullah back from National Grid who is sponsoring an energy incentive program. 30 smackeroos in my back pocket err under the bed. Plus there is still the Energy Tax Credit for 2010.

Catch up - on sabbatical again my home care cased ended. Total roof fund was just over 3 grand before the gods realized I had dead presidents up under my bed. DD#2 needed a few hundred for a XC meet in NYC. She fund raised the majority, is a solid B/C student, & volunteers hours @ church so I splurged. Then the car needed work. And on it went until the fund shrunk by a grand & a quarter.
Past 3 weeks been battling a dental infection which has kept me from gutting the final 3 walls of the living room. Really should have purchased the extended warranty years ago before I started breaking down.
Today we went & rented a storage space ($50) to hold a slightly (installed then returned the next day) used carpet that we scored for $35. I foolishly thought that I could wrap it up in plastic & work around it. Well that & the church pew, coffee table bought from scratch & dent for $70 along with a few other odds and ends. Hard to see the paper trail of where that $1500 went huh.
Storage deal is until January 1st.
Time is wasting anyone seen Norm & the gang from TOH ?
I'm making pie!

~~ pelenaka ~~
who has a clean dry and oh so warm stoppenflopper