Northwoods Woman

But then I stumbled upon the recipe that I was really looking for and decided that I had to make it to relive that childhood memory of my Mom’s cooking and savor in the wonderful flavors from way-back-when.

Because nothing in life is better than that.

Except maybe chocolate.

And “New Baby Smell”.

Pizza Hot Dish

Ingredients:

• 1 lb hamburger
• Onions to taste
• Green Pepper (optional)
• 1/2 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp garlic salt
• 1/2 tsp onion salt
• 2 cans tomato soup
• 6 oz egg noodles (cooked)
• 1 can mushrooms
• 1/4 lb (4 oz) cheddar cheese
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

Brown meat, onions and green pepper.  Add spices and tomato soup, and simmer for 15 minutes.

Grease 9 x 12 pan and place noodles on bottom.

Pour sauce over noodles, cheddar cheese next, and mushrooms on top.  Sprinkle with Parmesan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes (covered) and 10 minutes (uncovered).

* Mom’s note:  You can use Pizza Sauce instead of soup.  Use any kind of cheese you have.

Oh so easy and oh so delicious.  And yes, it tasted exactly as I remember!

It also made the “Rick will eat this” list, which didn’t really surprise me.

After all, where do you think I learned to cook from?

I now have an outdoor light for those late nights of jewelry making, and I took full advantage of it over the weekend.

I just adore the main floor light that we picked out!  It gives off just the right amount of light for the small space with a touch of elegance.

Since the pitch of the roof is kinda wonky due to the loft, we had to find a pretty small fan/light.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so small but it kicks out the jams in the light department and throws a bit of air around.

Just what it’s supposed to do.

Rick also got a start on the siding.  We were lucky to get this nice cedar siding from an online auction at a fraction of what it would have cost to have bought it from the store.

It really should have been a 2 person job, and I helped when he needed me to snap lines and I even got up on the planks despite my fear of heights.

I’m a real trooper I tell ya.

Unfortunately everything came to a standstill Sunday when I heard a gawd awful crash.  I know the sound of ladders being moved, but this sounded more like a crash and I B-lined it out of the house with my heart racing.

As the wife of a semi-retired carpenter, I always worry about accidents, especially when your husband thinks he has the agility of a monkey scampering from tree to tree and he has performed death-defying feats hundreds of times with no incidents what-so-ever.

Yes, I’m married to such a man.

But when I rounded the corner and saw ladders and planks askew and our friend Mainard leaning over my husband sprawled on the ground, well let me just tell you… I was as scared as I’ve ever been in my life.

Rick was conscious and doing his own little assessment of what hurt.  Despite me wanting to call an ambulance, Rick wouldn’t have it.  Mainard helped him up and I toted him to the ER.

That 20 minute trip seemed to take F O R E V E R!

X-rays, welcoming pain meds and 2 hours later we saw the pictures of his left wrist and he had broken it in several places.

Lovely.

Since Doctors like to torture their patients with making them wait several days to actually FIX the problem (because they want the swelling to go down), he has an appointment on Tuesday in Rice Lake with a specialist and hopefully (crossing fingers) have surgery that day to put pins in his wrist.

Bottom line:  Rick is out of commission for quite a while and we will have to find somebody to finish siding the building.

Which frankly, at this moment, I could really care less about.  The guy took a drop of over 8 feet and the worst that happened was a broken wrist.

Good thing I have this week off because I’ll be playing nurse.

Minus the sexy fantasy getup that I’m sure Rick would love to see me in.

His wrist might be broken, but his libido wasn’t hurt a bit.

After 2 years of getting poured on with rain, dumped on with snow and sweltering in the heat of the amazonian summers of the Northwoods, it had started to grow moss and other… things on it’s surface.

But not wanting it to go to waist, we pulled a few pieces out and set them up on sawhorses to dry and then I sprayed the crap out of them with bleach.  Straight up, nothing added.  If that wasn’t going to kill whatever was growing on it, nothing would.

Worked like a charm!  Unfortunately, it also “bleached” it a little, but I didn’t care.  It was perfect for what I wanted it to do, and that was trim the windows and door in the studio.

Now here is why I love it so much.  See all those curves and gouges?  This is what Rick & I have dubbed “Wormwood.”  Little wormies and other creepy crawlies got under the bark of these trees and developed these little pathways to do… well, whatever it is that creepy crawlies do..

Here’s what we haven’t found out about it yet:  what kind of wood it is.  It has to be a type of hard wood because we went through 2 saw blades and countless times of blowing the fuse on the table saw cutting the stuff.

Now tell me that isn’t just downright sexy around those windows!

It adds a whole new layer of design to the building.  I like using lots of different types of wood… everyone gets to jump in the pool!

It also played a roll as trim on the outer walls as well as the ceiling under the loft (pictures of that in a future post).

In addition to the windows we also got the door decked out in this marvelous stuff, put in baseboards, installed the ceiling under the loft and put in the flooring.

Phew!

Now we are going to wait for the electrician to show up and finish the writing and get the lights hooked up, get our HVAC guy over to hook up the stove, and start tackling the outside.

So in the meantime, I’ve begun moving items in so I can use the space for what it was built for:  making my jewelry.

And that will happen as soon as I quit doing my happy dance.