All Things Supercinski

As I was doing the weekly “deep-cleaning” of the kitchen today and performing some of my favorite cleaning tricks, I thought I’d share them here with you, dear blog reader. Some of these might be habit for you, but perhaps they will assist a young bachelor or two.

Microwave cleaning: Take a lemon and slice it into quarters. Put it into a coffee mug and cover with water. Microwave for 2 minutes. When it’s done, use the steam and lemon-ness to wipe it out. (You can also use the lemons to clean and freshen your garbage disposal.) No lemons? You can do the same with a cup of water. Or, if you use a kitchen sponge for dishes, wet it and wring it out, microwave for 2 minutes (this also disinfects your sponge) and use the steam from the sponge to wipe up your microwave.

Out of cleaning products? Really poor? Regular white vinegar does a great job on the counters, without all the chemicals. Baking soda shaken in your sink also makes a good, mildly abrasive cleaner (again, no chemicals) to use to scrub your sink.

I never realized how many crumbs and junk accumulate under the stove, you know the part where the broom doesn’t quite get? One night, while cooking with Josiah underfoot, I noticed he was quite absorbed with something at the bottom of the stove. He was reaching his little hand under there and pulling out all the crumbs and stuff! Yuck! Thankfully, he didn’t eat any. I tore him away from it and he cried, he was having such a good time. I used the vaccum hose attachment to get ALL of it out from under there.

On deep-cleaning kitchen day, I like for the kitchen and house to smell nice. However, with a baby in the house, I don’t want to use any chemical air fresheners and some candles even seem too strong. Here’s a great trick: get a potpourri-size crockpot or small pot on the stove. Fill it with spices: cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, corriander seeds (we have these in a spice rack we got as a gift) and orange peels. Cover with water and simmer. Your house smells like you just baked something wonderful, and no chemicals!

Josiah got his second tooth this morning. The past few weeks have been full of interesting faces as he’s been teething. He’s been chewing on his lips, feeling his new tooth, making for all kinds of funny faces and sounds.

Sorry for the lack of Josiah-related posts for a while (grandparents). The boy is doing well but is much too preoccupied to smile for the camera or let me video his antics. We are enjoying him so much these days as we see more and more of his personality.

Josiah is an extrovert, no question. While he needs his down and alone time, he really loves being around people. He may be whining in the car, but once we are out and around people, he is all smiles. He laughs often–while he is playing, while we are tickling him, while we are driving and he is alone in the backseat, when he is around other people laughing, whatever. For example, last week, Josiah and I met Thomas for lunch at Souper Salad. There was a table of ladies behind Josiah’s high chair, and everytime they got to laughing, Josiah would lean back in his chair and laugh along with them. They didn’t notice, but we cracked up. Last weekend, we got together with many good friends in town, one with a particularly jovial laugh, who Josiah enjoyed laughing along with all night. It’s hilarious. He’s quite the ham at such a young age.

Josiah is doing some of his signs, but has backed off on milk. He does “all done” often and started waving at people at random. The first person he waved to was our checker at Kroger last week. He is still saying “ma ma” and “da da” and we are more confident that he is saying those titles for us, which is music to our ears. He also loves mimicking us. He has started imitating kissy faces and other actions we do, which is really funny, but also humbling.

Josiah got his first tooth this month and the one beside it is coming through now. It hasn’t been as bad as we had thought it would be. The worst of it has been that the only thing he will eat besides milk is yogurt. He downs Yo Baby yogurt with amazing speed. Josiah also has started eating finger foods this month! There are these little cereal puffs that Gerber makes, and Josiah can pick them up and eat them, however, he mostly enjoys watching them fall to the ground.

He wants to be standing all of the time, but can’t quite pull himself up yet, though he tries and tries. Some babies are walking at nine months, but not Josiah, and we are thankful for this. We’ve had to be consistent in setting boundaries for him, and he has begun to respond well. The only time he goes after objects he knows are off-limits is if we aren’t paying attention to him, like if I go into the kitchen to get something out of the oven. So we are seeing progress and are encouraged. As you can see by this picture, Josiah is crawling all over the place and his sense of wonder is sometimes getting him into predictaments.

Many of you read some blogs. Some of you read many blogs. You’ve probably heard of or seen RSS, but aren’t quite sure what it is. Let me explain what RSS is and one way you can use RSS to make your life easier.

There are a ton of resources on the ‘net regarding RSS, so I won’t go into lengthy detail. I’ll point you to some basic resources to get you started.

What Is RSS
Wikipedia - RSS

The first resource mentions ‘feed readers’, of which there are many. Some popular web-based readers are Google’s Reader, and Bloglines.

Another option is to get a Google account if you don’t already have one and then customize your Google homepage. You can add a plethora of existing news/entertainment/etc feeds quite easily, arranging them on the page/tabs as you wish. You can also enter the feed address of any feed you want (if Google doesn’t already have it listed) and that feed will show up.

A nice non-web-based reader is Sage, which is an extension to the Firefox browser. Once it is installed, you hit ‘Alt-S’ and a sidebar menu opens that you can then add feeds to, with each feed/post showing up as ‘new’ as appropriate.

Also in Firefox is the ‘Live Bookmarks’ feature. If a site has feeds defined for it, you’ll see a little orange ‘transmitter’ icon in the address bar at the right. You can click on that and bookmark the feed(s), then when you open the bookmarks menu in Firefox, they’ll be updated automatically. I don’t think this method is really that great, but some folks really like it.

My personal favorite is using Sage. I use a customized Google homepage to view some non-feed data along with 3-4 key feeds that I want to keep up to date on. The rest of the blogs/feeds I read are in Sage which I typically only look at a couple of times a week to ‘catch up on’.

If you want to add our feed to any one of a number of feed readers, just go to http://www.supercinski.net/feed/ and you’ll see appropriate buttons.

Happy feed reading!

Many of you have been losing sleep wondering about our dear chickens. Those girls have been busy the past few months and have been providing us with a ton of eggs in shades of brown and blue. We lost a Super Chick due to egg impaction (perhaps?), but the rest are laying up a storm. Their eggs are getting bigger and bigger and I have been adapting our menu to include them. We went a full 5 days without any other meat besides eggs a few weeks ago.

I’ll leave you with a recipe for spinach quiche that I concocted and I think you will enjoy, especially if you have eggs you need to use.

Spinach Quiche
1 pie crust (refrigerated or frozen or that you just prepared)
1 cup frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed DRY
6 eggs
1 cup light sour cream
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 bunch of green onions, chopped, white parts only
1 clove garlic, minced
2 cups cheese (I like 1/2 cheddar, 1/2 mozzarella or whatever is on hand–monterrey jack works well too, just mix and match!)

Place pie crust in 9 inch pie pan. On the stove, cook onion and garlic in olive oil or butter a minute or until they begin to soften some and are nice and fragrant. In bowl, combine eggs, spinach, onion and garlic, sour cream and heavy cream. Blend with mixers. Stir in cheese. Pour into pie pan–hopefully it won’t overflow–mine did just a little bit. Place on baking sheet and bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes or until set.