Becca Jane St Clair

I don’t get homesick. Honestly. But I do on occasion miss things from the US, and it gives me something to experiment with in the kitchen when what I miss is food.

For ages, a friend of mine kept telling me I could get something similar to Steak-Ums* at Iceland**, but I never spotted them, so I had kind of given up on the idea of trying to make a cheesesteak sandwich. But last week, I really wanted a chicken cheesesteak hoagie (sometimes also called a California chicken cheesesteak). I could practically taste it, I wanted one so badly.

When is a cheesesteak a hoagie? When you add onto it mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato (sometimes also oregano and pickles, depending on the shop). Now, some people will argue that chicken does not belong on a cheesesteak. To them I stick out my tongue. I have never been a fan of beef, being unable to properly digest it most of the time, so I tend to avoid it (I even was vegetarian for many years because of my dislike of meat, too).

Last week, I ordered an item from Tesco called “pork for stir-fry”. It turned out to be small strips of pork, so I thought if I bought chicken for stir-fry, it would hopefully be the same style. I checked the Tesco website, and it isn’t. Chicken for stir-fry comes as cubes, not strips. Back to the drawing board for ideas. My second thought was to order some “mini fillets” – if I pounded them down a bit flatter I thought it just might work. I even went so far as to wonder if sliced chicken lunchmeat would work!

But then, I was at ASDA on Saturday with my MIL and SIL and in the poultry section they had something called “turkey steaks”. I know, I know “steak is supposed to be beef”. But the package looked interesting, and the “steaks” looked the same way regular steak looks, just made of turkey. I thought I’d give it a go and purchased 2 submarine rolls along with lettuce and tomato. Don’t ask me what kind of cheese I used, though. I have a big block I got on offer at Tesco a few weeks ago that I just keep shredding whenever something calls for cheese. Sadly, no Cheeze Whiz (though I understand it is available in some ASDA stores).

Today was the day. I was going to attempt this, and if it didn’t work, Tim and I would be screwed for Lunch.

I decided to grill the steaks on the George Foreman. There wasn’t much fat in them to begin with, but I just like the way things come out on the George. The steaks only took about 8 minutes. I wound up slicing the steaks (though not nearly as chopped up as an authentic cheesesteak) so they would fit easier in the rolls. Topped the steaks with a small bit of shredded cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a small sprinkling of cheese, then put them under the grill*** (the regular oven’s grill) until the cheese was melted and the bread was toasty.

Served them up with some chips (US: fries) and a can of Dr Pepper Zero. While not authentic, they were really good on their own, and I can see myself making it again. Tim liked it too, which is always important when I play around in the kitchen. Next up? Trying to make soft pretzels. Okay, maybe not, but now I’m on this Philly food kick…

Sadly, no photo. I thought about it after I was almost done the sandwich!

*Steak-Ums, for those of you unfamiliar with them are very thin bits of steak you grill or fry and then put in a sandwich to make a homemade steak sandwich.

**No, not the country. There is a shop called Iceland that primarily sells inexpensive frozen items.

***In the US, I would use the broiler.

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One thing I really struggle with as a housewife is being a GOOD housewife. I always worry that I’m not doing enough…or if I get distracted (which, I easily get!) by a webpage or book and haven’t done much with my day, I feel like I’m a failure.

Well. I’m going to try to change that.

See, I already meal plan every week because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to do a Tesco order. I try to meal plan on the Friday before (which is why I don’t participate in Meal Plan Monday that often) so I can place my order for a Monday or Tuesday delivery. It works out pretty well, and sometimes I even get the following week planned at the same time. Meal planning takes up a decent chunk of my day. I like to try one new recipe each week*, so sometimes I spend as much as an hour looking through cookbooks. Sometimes I mark more than one new recipe if I’ve found several interesting ones. Sometimes I’ll pass Tim a cookbook and tell him to pick something. Sometimes, I’ll try to come up with something to do with leftovers other than freezing them for a homemade ready meal. Then, I make a list of ingredients I need, sometimes looking up recipes for our favourites. After I have my full weekly ingredient list, I spend time going through the pantry, freezer, and fridge to see what items are already “in stock” and also to check what I’m running low on. And then, of course, I have to put the order into Tesco’s website. This doesn’t take too long, since I can go in and see my “favourites” and just click on the things we order each week – bread, milk, eggs, chicken (nearly every week. What can I say? My husband loves his roast dinners).

But anyway. This wasn’t going to be a post of me babbling about how I meal plan. This was going to be a post about how I’m getting myself more organized and trying to become a better housewife. Not a Donna Reid (who I had to explain to Tim), but a good housewife. Though, if anyone wants to send me a frilly apron, I promise I’d wear it! (and I need a new one as I’ve had to throw one out for ripping beyond repair)

Last Christmas (2009), my mom put a magnetic notepad in my stocking. It’s about 7 inches wide, 5 inches long and has columns for the days of the week across the top. Monday through Friday have full page columns, and Saturday and Sunday split the 6th column. I used this pad sporadically for meal planning in 2010, but I kept feeling like I wasn’t using it to it’s full potential. Most of the columns only used up a line or two where I wrote in what I was making. Occasionally I’d write an event on it, but usually it was largely left blank and became scrap paper after the week was out.

There are about 30 sheets left on it. I don’t know what I’ll do when I run out of sheets, but for now, here’s what I do –

First, I write at the top of each day what the date will be, followed by what shift Tim is on. Then, I take a coloured pen, and I write in the meal plan. I use other colours to designate other things, too. Tim and I both want to make sure we get on the Wii Fit every day, so I’ve written it on the planner. I write down deliveries and meetings, and I even started scheduling what cleaning tasks I’d like to do each day. I also added (after I scanned it) blogging, so I can keep my promise of weekly blogging…I haven’t been doing so great since the start of the new year, but I think I can pick up the pace.

Will it keep me organized? Who knows. But at least, I have things written down. Sometimes, I don’t always make the meals in the order they appear on the weekly meal plan, so I’ll probably do that with the cleaning, too.

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*So we don’t get stuck in a rut of the same old stand-by meals. I mean, Tim would be happy with a roast chicken every week, and I’d be happy with pasta every week, but I have to mix it up a bit!

I really need some opinions on this matter.

I volunteer at the Cancer Research UK charity shop on Thursday afternoons from 1-5PM. I take the bus into town (£2.50) and then usually meet up with 2 friends to go to chorus, and then another friend would give me a lift home.

My friends I usually meet are no longer available to meet me before chorus to give me a lift, so I’m stuck scrambling for a solution. Another chorus friend lives in one of the villages near me, and she’s offered to give me lifts on “most” Thursdays if I can get to her house via the bus. I’m fine with doing that, but it will mean paying for a return fare into town (£4.50) plus a single to her village (£2) every week. I’d also only have about 45 minutes at home between busses to shove something to eat down my neck. That’s not counting busses running late (they nearly always are) or the walk to the bus stop (about 5 minutes each way). So really, I’m looking at spending maybe if I’m lucky a half hour at home. Which isn’t enough time to cook anything, so I’d either have to have a meal in the crock pot waiting, or just have a sandwich. Even heating up my oven to cook chips takes nearly 20 minutes! The downside to a crock pot meal is that depending on Tim’s schedule, he might not get to eat it, but would have to smell it cooking, which really isn’t fair.

This also means I’d be spending £4.50 each week just to volunteer….over £20/month. In a time when Tim and I are trying to cut back on some of our finances so we can put more into savings…do I really want to spend that extra £20/month? Granted, some weeks I go into town early and do some shopping, but since I’m also trying to cut back on my extracurricular shopping trips, I can’t really use shopping as an excuse. Plus, I always have to take the bus into town on Market days, since Market isn’t on a Thursday.

And let’s talk about the volunteering.

I started volunteering to get myself out of the house, to meet people, and to possibly count towards my eventual citizenship*. I started in March 2010, and I have not met anyone to hang out with outside of the volunteer job. I’d say I’m “friends” with the woman I usually work with, but we don’t even have each other’s mobile numbers and we only talk if we’re both at the volunteer job at the same time…and since September, it’s been hard to find a day when we’re both there since they keep switching her schedule around. I do not get along with anyone else I volunteer with, other than one of the men who helps out with sorting (and he’s not usually on the floor). All of the other women who work on the floor just rub me the wrong way, boss me around, treat me horribly, or are just too quiet to try to make friends with and barely answer my questions if I try to start a conversation. One of them clearly has a problem with immigrants as well, as she makes horrible comments but then covers them up with a “but of course I don’t mean you”**. Another deliberately gives me a hard time any time I use the word “pants” instead of “trousers”. Now, most people know what I mean (and even this person knows) if I say “pants”. Customers recognize that I am American and that in America we call trousers “pants”. Nine times out of ten, I catch myself and correct myself immediately when talking to a customer, but there is one of the co-workers who always sneers at me if I use an American clothing word.

The bosses are nice, but sometimes I think they think we are all uneducated and they seem surprised when I pick things up after being shown/told once….but then if I make one tiny mistake I get called out for it, so really, you can’t quite win with them. The bosses (and other co-workers) seem to be plagued with the same problem some of the chorus members have of “you should just know this because that’s how it’s done”.

I know I’m not happy 100% with the “job”. I think if I was 100% happy there, I wouldn’t bat an eye at spending £20/week to commute to it. But really, it’s more like about 20%. Most Thursdays I really can’t get up the excitement to go, but I do it anyway.

I don’t want to be a quitter. I wanted to stick it out and “just do it”, but I really don’t want to spend that money and rush myself around like that.

Tim didn’t want me to quit the many times I said I wanted to before, because he didn’t want me to be one of those people who never leaves the house and who doesn’t have a life of her own outside of her husband, but I do things. I have friends that I see and do things with. I take the train to visit friends and other places….I’m not going to suddenly become an invalid if I stop volunteering. I also still have (for now) chorus. I think Tim is starting to see point in me leaving it though now that my schedule is changing.

PLUS, our steam-ups are always on Thursdays, and if I’m not volunteering, I’d at least be present for part of the steam-up. I’ve missed so many of them last season, and some of Tim’s friends (my friends now, too) were disappointed when they didn’t see me.

So, how do I graciously get out of this? Do I need to write a formal letter stating that I am leaving? Do I ask if I can leave myself on the roster for possibly going back if my schedule changes again? Do I just call in and say “not doing this any more” or do I need to attend a “last day”?

*The volunteering was part of the Earned Citizenship stuff to reduce wait time from 5 years to 3. Parts of the EC have been thrown out, but no one seems to know if this volunteering thing will still be needed….but they also never released figures stating how much volunteering you needed to do for it to count.

**I don’t think we need to get into this again. Those of us who are (white/English-speaking) immigrants in the UK get treated to comments like that all the time.

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This is a test to make sure the RSS feed has been fixed.

When Tim and I were in Austria, we bought several bags of Mozart Kugel that we wanted to share with our family. I hung onto them until Christmas, and I was planning on using leftover gauze bags from our wedding to put a few pieces in and tie them onto packages as decorations. I was browsing Craftster one day when I stumbled on this post about making your own crackers, and I thought that would be a really fun way of distributing the candy.

Authentic crackers go bang! when you pull on them, and some airlines even consider them explosive. I wanted mine to snap, and I wanted to include the traditional paper hat and silly joke (or “motto” as it gets called). So I hunted online. If you are in the US, you can get your supplies from a site called Old English Cracker. If you’re in the UK, you can do what I did and order your pieces off Amazon or go directly to the seller on Amazon, Fred Aldous. I spent about £7 for 24 snappers, 12 hats, and 48 “mottos” including shipping. Next year, I’ll only need to order snappers and hats!

After you order your inside bits, and know what kind of “prize” you want (If I was in the US, I might look at Oriental Trading Co. for some inexpensive prizes), you need to start collecting your tubes. For each cracker, you will need either 1 empty kitchen roll (US: paper towel) tube or 2 empty toilet paper tubes. Depending on the size of your household and how quickly you use those products, you might have to start collecting early! You will use one tube as the middle, and cut the other tube in half to be the sides. If you are using a kitchen roll tube, cut it in half, and then cut one side in half again. If you are using a combination of TP tubes and kitchen roll tubes, check to make sure they are the same width. If not, make sure you use all 3 pieces of kitchen roll tube on the same cracker.

Other supplies include: curling ribbon, tape, and wrapping paper.

You’ll need a piece of wrapping paper that easily wraps around the three tubes plus leave some extra on either end. Our pieces were just big enough, so when I make them next year, I’m going to add a little extra to the sides.

Lay your wrapping paper print side down, with the large tube in the middle and a small tube on either side. Take your snapper and put it inside the tubes, making sure it’s not sticking out on either end, and secure it with tape to the inside of each small tube. The one pictured has the snapper taped down flat, but I also taped some in diagonally, and those seemed to snap better. At this point, put the hat and motto in the middle section (it’s a lot easier at this stage).

Next, roll the wrapping paper around the tube, securing with tape on the middle piece. You shouldn’t need tape on the side pieces, and I think it works a lot easier to leave those tape free for now.

This next step might take some practise. Cut a length of the curling ribbon and pinch together the wrapping paper between one small roll and the middle roll, being careful not to tear the paper. Wrap the ribbon around the pinched area and tie it as tight as you can (again, without ripping. Told you, it might take some practise)

Now pick up the cracker, with the pinched side down and insert your candy/prize through the other end. If it falls out the other side, you didn’t tie the ribbon tight enough. Repeat pinching and tying on the other side of your cracker.

The very last step is tucking the stray wrapping paper around the ends (if there is any) and curling the ribbon ties. At this point, you might also want to straighten the wrapping paper around the sides and tape it down.

The whole family loved them, and my SIL told me they looked like professional store-bought crackers! Can’t wait to make them next year!

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For Christmas, Tim’s aunt gave me a cast iron dutch oven! I’m over the moon, as I’ve wanted one for ages and could never quite justify the price of one. It’s only a small one, but it’s the perfect size for us.

Tonight, I had planned on making Herbed Chicken Traybake, something we hadn’t had for a while and then I was looking up instructions on how to clean some black spots off my Corningware dish and I stumbled upon some cast iron dutch oven recipes, including one for Braised Herbed Chicken Thighs . I thought it was pretty similar to my traybake recipe, so I decided to combine the two recipes.

You will need:

1 large zipper top bag
dutch oven
1 TBS olive oil
2 TBS Flour
2 tsp Paprika
1 tsp Lemon Pepper (if you don’t have lemon pepper, use 1tsp pepper and the zest of one lemon)
2 tsp Thyme
1 tsp Oregano
Jamie Oliver’s Lemon Thyme, Bay, and Salt grinder OR 1 bay leaf and 1/2 tsp salt
skinned chicken thighs (I used 4, but had to cook them 2 at a time)
about 300g vegetables – I used a combination of Swede, Carrot, and Parsnip
400ml chicken broth (or stock)
250ml wine (great way to use up leftover Christmas wine!)
1 TBS corn flour

First things first – remove the skin from the chicken legs. It’s really not too difficult, even if it is gross! I discovered that as long as you can cut the skin at the bottom of the leg, the rest of the skin peels right off. You could probably also leave the skin on, but since the skin is supposed to be bad for you, I took it off anyway.

Step 2: Put the olive oil in the dutch oven, and heat over medium heat. Next, combine the flour, herbs, salt & pepper in a zipper top bag with a few clicks of the JO grinder. If you don’t have the JO stuff, hang onto the bay leaf for now, but add the salt. Add the chicken to the bag and shake until chicken is well-coated.

Step 3: Put the chicken (and whatever remains of the flour mixture) in the Dutch oven and cook chicken for 3 minutes on each side to lightly brown the chicken. Dissolve the corn flour in the chicken broth, and add to the chicken along with the wine and vegetables (and bay leaf, if you need it at this stage). Bring to a boil (with the lid on) and then simmer 30-40 minutes or until chicken and vegetables are done. Remove the lid the last 10 minutes or so to help the liquid thicken.

If I had been thinking when I started this, I would have tossed some potatoes into the oven to have roast potatoes, but instead, I made baked potatoes in the microwave.

I also received a ceramic Le Creuset from Tim (for oven use only), some mini glass pyrex dishes from Mom (perfect for mini pot pies) and a silicone giant cupcake cake pan from my SIL, who has informed me she wants me to bake her a giant cupcake for her birthday in February. Better start practising! Sadly, no one picked up on my hints for a new apron/pinny.

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Sitting down to do a 2010 review seems so weird….didn’t the year only just start? But then, when I look back on things…wow, January 2010 was so long ago!

We’ll start the year out on December 31, 2009. Tim and I were waiting on my spousal visa to be approved, and I received one of the most important phone calls of my life shortly before midnight GMT. We had been approved and my visa was on it’s way to me! My boxes had already been shipped, so the next three weeks were filled with me trying to pack my remaining suitcases, visit places “one last time”, and see as much of my family as I could. I left the US on January 21, 2010 and entered the UK on January 22. The immigration officer asked me nothing beyond “Where is your husband?” when I went through immigration. He stamped my passport and said “Welcome home, Mrs. Lockley”.

Tim picked me up, and we headed to the hotel he had booked for the previous night. Since my plane was getting in at 6 in the morning, Tim went down the night before, and we had decided he would pick me up and we would go back to the hotel to get more sleep, stay the night again, and begin our trip back home on the 23rd. I remember bits and pieces of the hotel stay. I remember watching an episode of Doctor Who on BBC3 while we sipped champagne and celebrated finally being together.

Tim went back to work and I busied myself unpacking my suitcases and getting things ready for our late Christmas celebration. On the 28th, we had Tim’s parents and sister over to celebrate Christmas…complete with putting up the tree!

My boxes finally arrived in February and it took me a while to get them all emptied….I finally emptied the last book box on our anniversary in November! Tim’s aunt found a local chorus for me to get involved in, and I started volunteering once a week at the Cancer Research UK shop on the high street. I was starting to get myself established!

March was fairly uneventful. Tim had a week of leave and we decided to stay at home and began working on our garden – we were going to try our hand at growing our own vegetables this year. We also began work on extending the garden railway…a project that had a deadline of August 31! I adopted the area under the lilac tree as “mine” and began clearing it of weeds. I soon discovered that there is something wrong with the soil under the tree, as nothing appears to want to grow on the sunny side. 🙁 Oh well, Rock garden for next year!

In April, we held our reception for Tim’s family and our friends in the UK. My mom flew over for it, and he trip was only supposed to be a short one….but due to volcanic ash, we wound up with an extra week!

May brought my first choral competition with Lincoln Sounds…and we came home with a Bronze medal and the highest score the chorus had ever gotten! What a fantastic introduction to the competition.

June and July were both quiet months. Mostly filled with more gardening and garden railway building.

in August, I went with my friend Helen and her son, Mark, to Wales for a week. We spent the week visiting castles and railways, and I had a great time. I loved Wales, and loved being near mountains. The end of August brought my birthday and Tim’s birthday. Tim was hitting a milestone this year, so we decided to have a party and officially open the upper circuit of the garden railway.

September was our big holiday. Honeymoon part 2. Tim had wanted to take me to Germany and Austria for our honeymoon, but it wasn’t going to work out right after we got married, so we decided to take the trip when Tim had his two weeks off. We spent our time camping in Zell am Ziller and Nußdorf, making day trips to castles and railways and Tim took me to see “my castle” – Neuschwanstein. We had a great trip. Blog posts about it are coming, I promise!

in October, I took the train down to Southampton to visit a friend I hadn’t seen since college. We re-connected through Facebook and I found out she had also married a British man and was living in the UK, and she invited me to come for a visit. We had a great time. It was really nice to be around someone who I have known for so long and to catch up with her. We have plans to get together sometime soon.

November marked our one year wedding anniversary and we celebrated it by attending the fireworks at the showgrounds. We also celebrated Thanksgiving and I cooked a full Thanksgiving meal for Tim and my in-laws.

Which brings us to the most recent month past, December. I spent most of the beginning of the month preparing and cleaning because my mom arrived on the 16th! Our plans for Christmas involved going over to Tim’s parents house, so I cooked my Christmas dinner on the 23rd. Unfortunately, my MIL wasn’t feeling well and on the 24th decided to cancel dinner at hers and rescheduled it for the 26th. Tim and I had to brave Tesco on Christmas Eve to get all the fixings for our dinner. I didn’t cook a turkey, but we made do with a nice roast chicken. Mom left on the 30th, and Tim and I watched DVDs last night and flipped to BBC1 about one minute before 12….and went to bed shortly after the fireworks.

Bring on 2011!

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Yesterday, we had plans for taking my mom to Edinburgh via the train. Tim and I planned on using our staff travel passes, and we had my mom apply for a Senior Rail Card (You are eligible at age 60) so we could save money on her ticket. I booked her ticket last week on the East Coast Trains website.

After getting out of the house a bit later than we had wanted, we managed to get to Newark North Gate with time to spare, as our train had been delayed due to engineering works. Tim explained that the engineering works was probably supposed to have ended prior to the first train of the day, but something must have happened to prevent engineering from giving up the possession (sometimes it helps to have a husband “in the know”!). While we were waiting, my husband was outside on the platform and saw a train go past with blue sparks coming out of the overhead – The trains were having problems with the frosty covered overhead wires and he speculated that was why our train might have been running late.

So we sat and read and kept glancing up at the timetable as our delay changed to being over an hour late….and then was simply replaced by the words “delayed” and an announcement that there were wires down. Tim said that wasn’t good, so I took the opportunity to go speak with someone at the ticket counter.

First, let me say that he was amazing, and I wish I remembered his name. He explained to me that it was looking likely that our train would be cancelled OR the delay would be so fierce that by the time we arrived in Edinburgh, we’d have to turn right back around on the train we had booked Mom’s return ticket on. I asked him what we should do about the fact that her tickets claim it is “non-refundable”, and he explained that he would endorse the tickets and I could go to the website to claim a refund since the train was going to be cancelled and we had day return tickets. He couldn’t offer me the refund right there as the tickets were purchased through the website. He then also validated our parking ticket so we wouldn’t have to pay £9 for day parking. He also told me that if we decided to go to Edinburgh tomorrow (er, today), I could just bring the tickets back to him and he would re-issue them.

So..we left. We salvaged the day slightly by going to Newark Castleand the National Space Centre*, but it was still a disappointing day.

East Coast Trains announced they planned on getting trains running again by 18:30, with one train an hour, but according to their website right now, most services are still suspended, so I don’t think we’ll be attempting Edinburgh today.

But imagine my confusion when I go to the website to put in my claim!

According to their website, we are eligible for a refund, as the site clearly states:

With the following instructions:

But then, when I’m looking at the “Your Account” page, the option to request a refund is blanked out:

I completely undestand that technically the ticket is “Non-refundable”, but both the person we spoke with at Newark North Gate and their own website says I am eligible for a refund regardless because the service was cancelled.

So..now what? I guess my only option is to send the request by post…and given that it is TWO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS and most of the UK is shut down the Monday and Tuesday after to cover the holiday, I don’t think I’ll be seeing this refund anytime soon. Which is quite annoying because if we do decide to go anywhere next week, we’ll have to pay for Mom’s tickets instead of applying the refund.

Of course, this is assuming I ever actually GET the refund, too. Tim and I also each wasted one of our passes, as you can’t amend/cross out anything on the pass and we already had the date written in on it. In the long-run, that’s not as big of an issue as being out £50, though. We probably won’t use all 16 passes before next year’s cards are issued anyway.

And to make things even MORE difficult for us – last night we had a power cut for about an hour and despite having the fire going, it’s been impossible to warm the house up again.

*Also, interesting to note. Day admission to the Space Centre gives you an annual pass.

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I meal plan pretty much every week for Tim and I, but it’s not always on Monday, so this is my first time participating in Menu Planning Monday. I also have meal planned the rest of the month, since my Mom arrives for her visit on Thursday and she leaves on the 30th. I didn’t want to take time away from our visit with meal planning, and I had to get my order into Tesco to ensure delivery next week, too!

So, here is it..

Today – Chicken Pot Pie made with the leftovers from Sunday’s roast
Tuesday – Homemade Fish and Chips
Wednesday – Leftover Pot Pie
Thursday – Mom arrives! Crock Pot Indian from A Year of Slow Cooking
Friday – Toad in the Hole
Saturday – Fish Pie – This is an excellent recipe if you’re just learning. I’ve since modified it to fit our needs, but this was a great recipe to learn from.
Sunday – Kitchen Barbecue
Monday – Sweet and Sour Chicken Stir-Fry (with homemade sweet and sour sauce)
Tuesday – Turkey (yes, even though Christmas is Saturday)
Wednesday – Dinner out – Trip to Edinburgh for the day!
Thursday – Turkey Leftovers (leaning towards tetrazinni)
Friday – Vegetable Soup
Saturday – Crock Pot Breakfast Casserole; snacks for Lunch; Christmas dinner at in-laws
Sunday – Ham and Potatoes
Monday – Captain’s Casserole
Tuesday – Fish and Chips (from the chippy)
Wednesday – Chicken Tacos

I usually try one new recipe a week, but I’m not really experimenting while my mom is here. The Toad in the Hole recipe I’m using will be a new to me recipe, but I have made it before (as mini toad in the hole).
I’ve got a couple of recipes I want to post, too. I’ll see if I have time to post them before Thursday, or at least to schedule them for later posting!

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I live in a relatively small village. Our village touches the next village over due to housing/businesses spreading out, and so we share a police “force”. I think there are 4 of them, and their office is a little building next to the neighbouring village’s village hall.

A few days ago, we received our village’s monthly newsletter (late, due to the snow!) and I discovered on the Police’s note that they now had a blog set up for the area where they will be posting local crimes, so I added it to my RSS reader, figuring it might be handy to know what’s happened locally.

Today, they posted a ” Persoanl [sic] Safety Warning”. The warning apparently originally came from the Northants Police, but the top of the blog post says it was emailed to the poster “by a member of my family”. The incident supposedly happened along the M3 at the Fleet Services.

I’m reading this warning, and it talks about a woman stopping for petrol and going in to pay and having the clerk tell her there is a man hiding in the backseat of her car.

It made me pause and think hang on, I’m sure I’ve seen this before. I logged into my old email account from before I was married and ran a search, and sure enough, when I still lived in PA, I had received a very similar “warning” via a forwarded email, so I went to snopes.

And, sure enough, the whole thing is made up, and the story is as old as 1967!

It bothers me that our local police force would send out a rumour like this. People will see that post and panic. Way to go, local police.

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I had a few questions about how to upgrade to the newest (secure) version, so here’s easy directions with screenshots:

1. Log into your dashboard with your admin account

2. Look to the left. If it’s not dropped down, click on the word “dashboard”

3. Click “updates”

4. WordPress will tell you what needs updating (WordPress, plug-ins, etc) and all you have to do is click on the upgrade button and WordPress will do everything automatically.

BTW, if you don’t have a dedicated comment spam blocker, I recommend going into the plugins and searching through the available blockers. I added Askimet last night, and it’s already blocked 75 spam comments. My previous spam blocker, WP-SpamFree, blocked some spam, but would have emailed me those 75 spam comments for me to manually mark as spam.

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I sent an email off to Dreamhost complaining about the lack of help I received from their security team. I received a wonderful email from a member of their tech support who went through my entire site and found the malicious code on more pages (that google had not found, as the pages were on plug-ins not currently in use). I was able to completely remove the code, and I have to say, Dreamhost was much better about it this time around!

It took me an hour and a half to remove every last bit of the malicious code, but it’s gone. And hopefully with the new WordPress upgrade, this won’t happen again. Apparently there was a flaw in the previous version that made it easy to hack into. So, if any of you are using WordPress, go upgrade it to the new version that was released on December 1!

Here’s a full list of my posts for November:

Nov 1 – It’s NaBloPoMo
Nov 2 – A Day on the Welshpool and Llanfair
Nov 3 – A Call to NHS Direct
Nov 4 – Last Day in Wales: Ffestiniog Railway
Nov 5 – Happy Anniversary
Nov 6 – A trio of Vlogs
Nov 7 – Lincolnshire Life
Nov 8 – London Transport and War
Nov 9 – A Visit to the Seaside
Nov 10 –York, not to be Confused with New York or York PA
Nov 11 – Safety First
Nov 12 – Building a Railway
Nov 13 – Swagbucks Update
Nov 14 – Why Are You Here?
Nov 15 – Halfway!
Nov 16 – Wildlife in our House
Nov 17 – When Filters Go Bad
Nov 18 – Lincolnshire Sausage Festival
Nov 19 – Bonfire Night!
Nov 20 – Harry Potter and the Chorus Concert
Nov 21 – Wii Socialization
Nov 22 – Filler Post
Nov 23 – I am an Immigrant
Nov 24 – Tattershall Castle
Nov 25 – Abbey in the Backyard, Part 2
Nov 26 – Recipe: Potato Scramble
Nov 27 – Save your Feet
Nov 28 – Thanksgiving
Nov 29 – Warning
Nov 30 – Still Infected

It was fun. I had to put up a filler post on one day because I was sick and didn’t want to skip out on my commitment, and the last two days of the month were not what I had intended to post at all, thanks to a hacker (I had planned on doing this post on November 30), but I think I did good.

I still have to blog about Austria, and I will do my best to get those done before my mom arrives on December 16th! I will be most likely taking off from the 15th to 31st so I can spend time with my mom, and then start my new goals in the new year!

And I promise, this is my last blog post for today!

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I know I promised not to post twice in one day, but I needed to post this….and I’ll likely be posting a third post with all the NaBloPoMo links later today, too.

So, I generally love my hosting company (Dreamhost), but I have to say, I’m really kind of annoyed with them right now.

When this mess started Monday morning (GMT), they sent my problem to one of their specialists. I didn’t hear back until Tuesday afternoon (GMT), and most of what they told me to do had nothing to do with my problem – For example, I got told to update software on other domains and sub-domains when the ONLY sub having any issue at all was blog.beccajanestclair.com. So, I turned to google (via Swagbucks*) for help.

I tried the Google Webmaster Tools, and Google pinpointed three files as being “infected” – my about this blog page, a photo page from an August blog, and I forget the third. I deleted those three pages and the photos that had been displayed on those pages, and will need to re-write an about this blog page tomorrow. Dreamhost had not mentioned these files, only 2 files that were buried deep within 6 folders of a theme I hadn’t even ever used, which I also deleted. I then decided if the themes really were the problem, I had better go through and remove all the wordpress themes I wasn’t using. Dreamhost suggested re-installing my current theme, but unfortunately download links to it no longer exist. I had decided I would search for a similar looking theme, and take my css sheet from the current theme to make a new theme look like the current theme if I had to.

I had about 10 help sites open by this point, so I can’t tell you which site it was that actually gave me this idea, but I went into the WordPress theme editor and opened all the php files for my current them and really looked at them. My coding skills aren’t super or anything, but I was confident I would notice something off, as I have modified most of the php files marginally to achieve my custom theme. Sure enough, at the top of every single php page was a random string of code. Please note, Dreamhost did not suggest doing this. Dreamhost did not even tell me what string of code to look for, and did NOT detect the string of code in all my php files when they looked. The files they had told me to delete had been css files, but the css file for my current theme was the only part of my theme that was clean! I removed the string of code from all the files, and then went into FileZilla and checked all the other php files on my server. Nothing else was infected. I also took this time to remove lots of old files, and to remove previous incarnations of my website, including the very first version using frames and a version using python. I don’t think I needed to remove these files, but I figured I might as well start to clean up my stuff, since I have now held my domain for nearly 10 years. The me of 10 years ago (age 21!) is very different than the me I am now, and while I had the old pages buried deep in random folders, I really don’t think I want anyone finding them.

And good news from google, too – I just checked the webmaster tools and it says:

Status of the latest badware review for this site: A review for this site has finished. The site was found clean. The badware warnings from web search are being removed. Please note that it can take some time for this change to propagate.

Woot.

So. Rebecca: 1 Dreamhost: 0

*Oh, and when I started googling with Swagbucks yesterday, my points count was 649. As of right now, I have 721 swagbucks, a little over a 100 to go for another £5 Amazon voucher!

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Oh the weather outside is frightful

Saturday:

Sunday:

Monday:
No pic of my house, but here’s one I took in Lincoln

Tuesday:

10AM:

2PM:

9PM:

11PM:

But the fire is so delightful

And since we’ve no place to go…Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

And the most recent, taken at 1AM on Wednesday:

It doesn’t show signs of stopping….:

And just for good measure, the snowperson my sister-in-law and I made this afternoon:

The village shop has run out of the 4 pint size bottle (half gallonish) of milk and no longer has bread, but we’ve got the bread machine for bread, and worst case scenario, we’ll buy smaller milk if we run out (just opened a 4 pt bottle Tuesday afternoon). Worst, worst case scenario, I have a canister of powdered milk in my baking supplies we can raid for tea. We stopped at Morrison’s on Monday and bought a few “basics”, not our weekly shop, but I think I can cobble together some meals for a few days. Tim and I can also always go to the CostCutter or the Co-Op, though those are longer walks (about a mile RT to CostCutter and 2 miles RT to the Co-Op) and today when we went to the Spar shop (literally, 5 houses down from us) I got soaked by a passing car, so I really don’t want to walk near the road right now!

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No signs of the problems with my website being fixed. Dreamhost sent me an email yesterday to tell me they had forwarded my issue to a “specialist” and the email said that because it was being sent to a specialist, they couldn’t guarantee their usual 24 hour turnaround, which is really usually about 5 hours or so. So….I wait. And meanwhile, worry about my site. I had a great end of NaBloPoMo post planned with links back to every entry for the month, but I don’t want anyone clicking on my website until things get fixed.

Even odder is I tried using the google webmaster tools to figure out what was wrong, and it tells me nothing, but still says my site is infected with malware, so I’m really confused. The pages it pointed to as being “infected” were my about this site page (which I’ve now deleted) and a page that displayed a photo from an entry back in August (which I’ve also deleted). Google claims that going to those pages doesn’t direct to those pages but goes to a malware website, but I’ve checked things out and there is nothing there at all. I’ve looked in all the source files, I’ve checked every file in my ftp directory, I’ve reviewed the htaccess file…and I can’t figure it out.

So I’m going to cross my fingers that Dreamhost can fix it soon for me and that it won’t be too hard to get google to stop listing my site as being infected. I don’t get a whole lot of google hits, but I still enjoy seeing the traffic.

Other steps I’ve taken:

-If you’ve commented on my blog in the past week and I did not know who you were, your comment was deleted. I do apologize, but since I couldn’t track the source of the problem anything unknown got canned. If you previously left me comments, I kept it. If you want to leave your comment again, feel free but also let me know who you are. I also deleted comments left by fake email addresses or listing fake URLs. I consider an email address to be fake if it’s just a string of random letters. Again, if I’ve deleted a legitimate comment, I apologize and ask that you re-post it.

-Blocked All IPs of potential spam comments. I have a really good spam filter, but some comments still get through. I blacklisted every IP address that was attached to recent spam comments. Spam comments are comments that don’t make any sense, aren’t relevant to my post, contain links to sites that are not personal webpages. If I have accidentally blacklisted your IP, you will not be able to leave comments. If you want to be taken off the blacklist, just send me an email and let me know your IP and who you are.

-All user accounts at the “subscriber” level have been deleted and the ability to create your own account has been removed.

And that’s about it. I HAVE managed to post every day for the month of November, I just can’t post links to all the entries yet. 🙁

My webpage is popping up as being blocked by both firefox and AVG. I’m looking into it.

If anyone else is getting the same issues, please let me know.

(this will have to be my filler post for today. And I really hope I don’t miss tomorrow’s last post of NaBloPoMo!)

Today is my family’s big Thanksgiving dinner, and only the second one I’ve ever missed. I sent my mom some photos to take along, and I’ve also written a letter to my family. Here is a copy of the letter, which is basically a run-down of 2010:

Dear Family,

Rebecca & Tim

I bought a new pair of HIGH heeled boots a few months back…and when I say high, I mean high.

See?

(pardon the pasty legs, the flash went off and I was wearing nude tights!)

The heel on those is about 3 inches. And these are for a person who never wears heels. I mean, I do on occasion, but my usual heels are only about an inch or so. But I loved these boots!

I wore them a lot to try to break them in, and I moved the insoles out of a different pair of heels to try to make them more comfortable. Tim bought me these thick heel wedges at Pound Stretcher to try to help…but always, after an hour or so, the balls of my feet would be in terrible pain from all the strain/pressure.

It really upset me, because these were NOT cheap boots (though I did score them on a sale!). I figured I would just have to suffer through it until my feet got used to the height of the heel, but then I was in Boots a few days ago and I found these. Ball of Foot cushions. They don’t go in your shoe, it has a loop for your second toe and then you position it under your tights/sock/whatever. And my feet felt so good! The only weird thing is getting used to the toe loop, but honestly, after about 10 minutes I forgot it was there. The pads are washable, too, so if they start to get funky you can just wash them in the sink. I’m so happy. Now I can wear my fantastic boots all day, everyday.

I also like that since it doesn’t stick to a shoe, I can use them in other pairs of shoes. Maybe my chorus shoes won’t be so painful any more!

[Please note: I am not being compensated by Evans, Scholl, or Boots to advertise their products. It’s just a product that works for me!]

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This is an adaptation of a crock pot breakfast recipe my mom and I always make for Christmas morning, only made in a frying pan in about 20 minutes.

Potato Scramble

This recipe can easily be scaled up or down, depending on how many people you are serving

You will need:

3 slices of bacon per person, diced
1 potato per person, diced
1 small tomato per person, diced
25g frozen peas per person (optional, I really only added it for colour!)
handful of shredded cheese per person
2 eggs per person
splash of milk
oil

I used my wok because it was the largest frying pan I had.

heat oil in a large frying pan. When oil is hot, add potatoes and fry for about 5 minutes.
add diced bacon, fry for an additional 5 minutes, longer if you want crispy bacon (or do in reverse order)
add peas, fry for 5 minutes
add tomato
whisk eggs and milk, add to fry pan and continually stir to scramble egg, about 5 minutes
top with cheese, cook until cheese melts.

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