Last weekend we spent some time up at Leoni Meadows, north of Sacramento. After the fog burned off, there were some great opportunities for pictures in the incredibly bright sunshine.
It was a beautiful, if chilly, weekend.
-D
Unsettled weather, cooler nights, random thunderstorms and finally coaxing a few flowers out of the bedraggled looking nasturtiums in the backyard: this is how we know it’s autumn. Oh, and the calendar says so. Otherwise, it’s still bright, warm and sunny as ever. The leaves are coloring up and falling, and we see this as a hopeful sign.
Oh, and the turkeys are still wandering … this isn’t really a sign of autumn so much as a sign of them finding ripe olives, seed pods, and other things they can dig up, scratch out, leap up for, and otherwise desecrate everyone’s yards over. It’s a hard job, but someone has to be the high-pitched barking, early morning wandering, “threatening” car-chasing, feather-ruffling and intimidating neighborhood watch.
We’ve been quiet these last few weeks, but things are rolling along. D’s been THRILLED TO BITS to have secured a contract for Thing 1 at his company. This is a classic example of how we get our friends in Scotland to visit us: we get them contract work here so that they can fly out to their “overseas office” from time to time. (Regardless of the paintings the Cube Dwellers leave on their cubicle walls, they don’t program video games at D’s office. They’re just kind of …addicted to Mario. And Pokémon, apparently. And doodlings with Dry Erase markers when they should be working. This may have been the morning after they got the new espresso machine…) D will be glad with the legal paperwork is all figured out (grrr) and Thing 1 is looking forward to popping in when the weather is at its worst in Glasgow. We’re hoping to have some rain to offer him in California, but …well, it’ll be warmer rain, whatever the case.
As you know T has been trying to beat a deadline all summer (she lost – the baby came early, so her editor went on maternity leave unexpectedly). She’s also been attempting to organize a conference on diversity in children’s literature, and has spent the last month twitching under increasingly rising levels of anxiety. She walks around muttering comments like “how do I get roped into these things?” and “I will NEVER do this again.” She harasses sub-committees and micro-manages, she has accumulated boxes upon boxes of swag from publishers in the entryway, she worries over gift baskets, keynote speakers and generally makes a pest of herself to all involved, but everyone WILL have a good conference, or someone will bleed. Fortunately, for all, the angst ends the second week of October, as T’s desk is metaphorically cleared again. For however long that lasts. (Until the January deadline for the next novel. Eek.)
D., meanwhile, is a third of the way through teaching his class this semester, and he’s fortunately remarkably calm this time around (not team-teaching will do that for you). He coaxed T. out to paint some pottery in the relaxing quiet (once the hen party finished up) of a Benicia art center, and we’re now enjoying our little coffee pot and ginormous mug. Many more will come to join that one – there’s nothing like a full liter of tea all at once! He’s enjoying all the cookbooks and kitchen paraphernalia received for his birthday (and the lovely herb planter full of growing things), and the cooling temperatures are at last tempting us back into the kitchen.
Which leads to one of our most recent purchases (aside from the necessary purchase of The Fridge of Fabulousness which replaces the 1990’s second-hand fridge we had that gave up the ghost in a puddle of sticky oil and water last month): a doughnut pan.
(Point of interest: To us, doughnuts are the proper spelling, and donuts are …some self-stable, powdered sugar abomination on a grocery shelf. No one else says so, and it’s ridiculous, but why else are there two spellings except to allow us to mock one? That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.) The doughnut pan purchase is, like so many things, our friend Jac’s fault. She got a couple of pans last year, and we watched with interest as she tried vegan and non-vegan recipes in them, with varying success. And then, she went mad and pointed out a TON of recipes all over the web. And T. kept saying, “We do NOT need a doughnut pan. If we had one, then we’d eat doughnuts.
This observation seems to have some merit.
Baked Cinnamon Doughnuts
- 1¼ cups almond flour
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 3 eggs
- ¼ cup butter, melted
- 2 tablespoons honey
- ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- ¼ cup butter, melted
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a doughnut pan (6 regular sized donuts) with cooking spray. In a food processor, pulse together almond flour, salt, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, eggs, ¼ cup of melted butter, honey, and vanilla extract. You want all ingredients to be smoothly blended together – and prepare for them to be super, SUPER sticky. Divide batter into prepared doughnut pan (and smooth them out with wet fingers). Bake for 12 minutes. Remove from oven and let doughnuts cool in pan for 10 minutes. Run a knife around edges and then remove gently from pan.
NB: OBVIOUSLY, we diverted from this plan at the last minute because who would we be without totally skiving off and deciding to do our own thing? First, we used Truvia sweetener – and somehow T. only used a couple of tablespoons, thinking that it might be too sweet. It…wasn’t. Also, the recipe calls for honey for a reason. Two sugars help to keep a pastry moist and chewy because science. Next time, perhaps some of us might follow the recipe here. (*cough*)
Next deviation: we sliced a peeled apple into rings, filled each of the doughnut spaces halfway, pressed in an apple ring, and then filled in the rest of the batter. If you’re going to have cinnamon, you may as well have apples, no? Gala, Granny Smith, Fuji, and Pink Lady bake up nicely.
For the topping, pour melted butter butter into a flat bottomed bowl. Combine sugar and cinnamon in another flat-bottomed bowl. Dip your warm donuts in butter then in cinnamon/sugar mixture.
As you can see, we didn’t bother with the cinnamon-sugaring, either. Because we feared the thick batter would make a crumbly, dry doughnut, we whipped up a quick creamed-cheese-cinnamon frosting. The apple actually came to the rescue — adding sweetness, moisture, and overall tastiness to an experimental treat. A lot of baked doughnuts rely on the frosting – and neither T. nor D. are huge frosting people – so this was a gamble that paid off well with a mildly sweet, you-could-eat-it-for-breakfast doughnut. Further Fiddling (veganizing as well) with the basic recipe to follow!
Happy October.
For those of you elsewhere who see the repeated loop of footage of the recent earthquake and wonder, …we’re fine. It was, indeed, a doozy, and nearly threw us out of our beds, and the aftershocks kept us jittery and awake for hours… but, this being California, you learn to hang your pictures well, make sure your bookshelves are bolted to the walls, and do your best to be prepared for the worst. With the exception of the water bottle that fell over and broke its lid, no damage. We’re safe, our power is on, and are keeping a good thought for our neighbors eight miles down the road in Napa.
The U.S. Geological Survey mentions the possibility – a more than 50% chance – of a 5.0 aftershock between now and Friday.
With that thought, let’s look at something pretty…
Don’t look now, but the Big Bird of Unhappiness has taken to hanging around out back.
Y’know, urban turkeys are a lovely… idea when you see them up on hillsides and such, but when they’re DIGGING HOLES in the lawn, making 4 a.m., high-pitched waaaark-ing noises, and flinging dirt out of your potted plants, going out of doors with the push broom and a fierce expression seems quite a good idea.
(…and, if you do that, do let us know how that goes, won’t you? We don’t quite have the courage, as Mr. I’m Not Afraid Of You tends to bat his wings about if anyone goes out into the yard and says “Shoo” and makes abortive gestures in his direction. T. decided that it would be not only rude but stupid to make him annoyed enough to chase her… she has bad memories of geese, thank you. And those vicious swans in Holland… So, the turkey gets to wander where the turkey wishes to wander, we guess.
Alas for the strawberries and the asparagus plants. And all the flowers… Why do we even bother? Between the drought, the squirrels, and the wretched birds…)
Hard — so, so hard — to believe it’s August already, and the light is swinging toward autumn. The backyard is super busy, and full of beeping, peeping and whistling as the birds (those not currently ticking us off) continue to take over. Returning from some summer vacationing are our woodpeckers — collectively called a “descent”, a “drumming”, and a “gatling” of woodpeckers. We’ve got a drumming of Nuttall’s – at least four – and an every growing and ridiculously noisy collection of Lesser Goldfinches.
It’s additionally hard to believe that D. is getting ready to teach his last online course for the summer already. He’s doing a lot of muttering under his breath has he deals with the kludgy web interface the university provides, and mumbling as he roughs out a course outline and selects books… meanwhile, it seems odd to think that T’s brother and sister have been to the college bookstore, too. Youngest sister was bemoaning her strapped and cashless state (“Mom says she owns me now into the next life,”) after buying textbooks… hard to imagine that she is starting her own collegiate experience … on Friday. o_0 Seriously seems possible, since it seems like just the other day, she was this precious round-faced little thing, babbling nonsense and squealing at the drop of a hat. (Oh, wait…she still does that…)
*cough*
ANYWAY! Happy term time to all of our friends who are off to learn a few things, off to teach a few things, and off to leave the rest of us in the shade. Good luck, all.
This is a Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii). Or, a Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus), but we’re pretty sure it’s a Cooper’s. Mostly positive, almost. (How can we tell? Well, the Sharp-shinned’s tail is squared off when he’s at rest. Of course, our wretched bird wouldn’t …rest, but we sort of assumed. On the other hand, a Cooper’s is supposed to have more white on the tip. This is a juvenile, and the juvenile of the species of BOTH hawks are speckled and striped and much more brown than their adult black-and-brown, which completely screws up our reckoning on it either way. We’ll have to wait and see who he turns out to be – and we do think it’s a male, as the gents are much smaller than the ladies.)
This primping, fluttering, shrieking, refusing-to-turn-and-face-the-camera hawk is our newest avian yardmate, and has taken the place of our fascination with the steadily fattening house finches and the swift-as-a-blur goldfinches (who still refuse to be photographed. What is WITH that attitude?). It lives in the pine tree outside of our deck — and we mean right off our deck. As close to the little glass birdbaths in the corner as it can possibly get. It is vastly blasé about our sharing its space, and almost totally unafraid, likely owing to the fact that it dines daily on a diet of hubris and field mice, and thus its overheated little brain convinces it that all things fear it, and it could totally eat us.
Cooper’s hawks are medium sized, agile, and slightly mad (as evinced by the piercing golden eyes). Sharp-shinned Hawks are the smallest hawk in North America (about the size of blue jays), quick and loud, and also quite mad – really, all hawks are. Either are a good sign for urban wildlife and ecologically balanced yards, but this one’s really only here because Accipiters as a species are indeed deeply attracted to yards with… birdfeeders.
Yeah, so make that, “…it dines daily on a diet of hubris, field mice and the odd robin.”
Some homeowners are mightily incensed by that, but then, these area also the people who you see running down the street at six a.m., chasing the thuggish groups of wild turkeys who maraud around here every October. (We saw our first group of juvenile males just yesterday. Oh, it’s going to be a very thuggish and aggressive autumn in this hood.) We, however, are perfectly happy to have rapacious raptors – and we’re okay with them eating songbirds, too. We figure we’ll have fewer ginormous rats and digging squirrels, and if we have to miss the odd dove, seagull, mockingbird or a jay, well… we’ll also be able to sleep in past 4 a.m. as well. Win-win. ?
Okay, we take that last part back.
Mostly.
Behold my mad yellow eye.
(HM. This picture is much more Sharpie than Cooper’s. ::sigh::
Oh, look A HAWK. Maybe we’ll just leave it at that.)
Come in! Sit down! Have a cuppa.
Welcome to midsummer – the middle of this strangely mild season, full of foggy days, overcast skies, and a persistent 10% chance of rain in the forecast that never materializes. Obviously, as SOON AS you buy deck chairs that you quite like, the breeze decides to pick up and the fog roll in. Ah, well. Deck chairs are also perfectly useful with a blanket in the autumn and winter…This summer has also been full of annuals that are coming up for the first time since we’ve moved to this place. We’re LOVING the surprises of flowers blooming where we’d previously thought they never would.
Since we’ve kept our gardening minimal – due to the drought – we’ve gotten our excitement out of planning for a winter garden (purple carrots! kale! kohlrabi! radishes!) and seeing a long-term plan begin. We’re growing asparagus – which is a three-year crop. You can’t really EAT them for the first couple of years, because they have to die back and reseed themselves, but the little ferny, delicate looking bright green stalks are awfully pretty. We have fourteen! T. says they’re nasty enough that the squirrels should leave them alone, too, but D. has decided to ignore the haters in the house. Our blueberry bush is not doing much this year – we didn’t expect it to really put out fruit yet, but we have high hopes for next summer. Sadly, the borage, mint, and even the roses right now have the tell-tale perfectly round bites on the leaves — we may have leafcutter bees. Honestly, we’re sympathetic to bees and are trying to be willing to give up nice-looking foliage for them, but it is a struggle.
You’ll be amused to know that D. has finally solved the issue of the jays swinging happily from the feeder and dumping it. He’s wired a brick to the base of it, and defies their little lightweight, nut-stealing selves to swing on it and dump piles of seed on the patio now. If they manage, we’ll be shocked and figure that they’ve hired a raccoon and a ladder. So far, they’re just glowering at the feeder, and refusing to eat. Typical pouting jays.
It seems impossible that the days have gone by so quickly, but they have — we’re already nearly in August, and D. is still recovered from finishing his first batch of final papers at the beginning of July for the class he taught. One more class is scheduled for August, and then he can safely say that he’ll never teach for this University again. Nothing wrong with them, just that he’s not really a fan of online education, especially the way this is set up, and, after reading a few recent articles, believes that he’s actually part of the problem in education… the huge number of adjuncts who are forced to work without benefits or reasonable pay allow universities and colleges to continue to devalue education. Since things are going well at his other job, he’s willing to give up using his PhD in the classroom for awhile longer. He’s also quite willing to get through life with never having another week of marking student essays, ever again. (Meanwhile, T. had been smugly reminiscing on why teaching the fifth grade was a much better option — until D. said “lunch duty,” and then oddly she found something else to do…)
When we’re not having wars in the backyard, or when D’s not either grading papers or photographing the awesome that is “Cat Shirt Wednesday” at the office (no, seriously. Cat. Shirt. Wednesday. Because… you never have enough cat shirts? Or Wednesdays?), we’re still in the kitchen. D. has perfected a sourdough rye bread that he bakes in an old factory pan from Wonderbread, so it’s easily fifteen inches long. Its high sides and narrow base (around four inches) make all of the slices look “professional.” Our pan was really used in a factory, but we discovered King Arthur Flour sells shorter pans which are equally as narrow for baking gluten-free bread. Apparently even the pan shape/size makes a difference there.
D. has been using our generic (non-Silpat) silicone baking sheets for a tasty new purpose – rolling sushi. We mislaid our traditional bamboo mat, and the silicone makes nice and tight sushi rolls. Now we need to perfect the rice-making technique, and we’ll be golden. Meanwhile, T. has been taking advantage of all of the berries out this season (except for cherries, which she hasn’t seen much of yet. What’s up with that?) and is attempting to use them as part of every meal. Her goal is to make this scrumptious looking strawberry cheesecake two ways – one vegan. That means experimenting with vegetarian/vegan gelling agents – and agar powder works as long as you don’t have to have leftovers. It “weeps” too much for a really stable gelled dessert.
Some people suggest chia and xanthan gum, others cornstarch. There are options – weighing the healthiest and the one that works best is the trick! Part of the fun of these experiments is eating the flops, though. Usually…
Recently we’ve been working on actually hitting some of the “tourist” areas in our neck of the woods. We FINALLY got to Greens Restaurant at the Ft. Mason Center in San Francisco. The restaurant has been open since 1979 (and at Ft. Mason since the 80’s) and somehow T’s family, who even lived in SF — and T., who was born there, never managed to go. We found an excuse – T’s mother’s birthday – and wandered over one misty morning — to find the Avon Breast Cancer Pink Ribbon walk going in full stream around Ft. Mason and the Marina. It was awful timing, awful traffic, and really, kind of typical SF summer weather, in that it was pretty cloudy and foggy – but the food was really lovely, and even the vanilla roiboos tea was rich and dark and smooth. T. has decided she now needs one of the little iron kettles that they serve in – no idea where she’s going to put it, or how she’ll use it with an electric range, but she’s putting it on her mental list.
Our final month of summer is drawing near, and we’ve reconsidered our trip to Scotland. We’ve waffled back and forth, but it really doesn’t seem like a good time to go. Between the cranky cabbies — who will be well cross after dealing with the fares from the Commonwealth Games, the difficulty in finding lodging — and the difficulty in staying with even people we like for three solid weeks, and the Referendum vote, it seems a poor idea. Visiting a country whilst it grapples with its place in the UK is the equivalent of going to visit friends while they’re trying to decide if they want a divorce – and some days they’re feeling acrimonious, while other days, they’re positively nostalgic and maudlin… and all the neighbors and relatives have stopped by to say their piece for or against. Oh, no. No, thank you. Scotland, our best to you as you do your housekeeping; we’ll catch you later in the Spring.
Which leaves us kind of at a loose end for vacationing. We’re thinking of grabbing a map and taking a road trip — a short one. We’ve got friends in the Midwest and on the East Coast whom we need to see – when they’re not having hurricanes – and we also have friends in the Canadian prairies we’d like to see. Decisions, decisions! Have map, will travel, though – and we’re looking forward to something completely new.
Until then, enjoy these summer days. Hope this is the loveliest day yet.
Happy Summer – we ARE still alive, despite the two month lapse that somehow happened. Our roses have bloomed now three times since the season turned – and while this rose is safely in the Portland Rose Garden, we’re getting lovely-smelling ones that look nothing like it (ours are more peach shading to pink edges than white). We’d like to point out that this one is too beautiful to look real anyway.
It’s been now a year and three months since we changed the way we eat. Not a diet, not a “movement” or a “challenge;” not “clean eating” or “Paleo” or anything else with a title and achievable goals except, “maybe we shouldn’t eat ourselves into an early grave, you think?” These things are easier to leap onto when you’re feeling like sick, and easier to become zealous and self-righteous about when you look like runway models. (Looking at you, annoying celebrities writing cookbooks when you clearly don’t eat.) The funny thing is that, now that visible results are achieved — you really can’t lose three or four stone and a few sizes without someone noticing — people are eager to eat with us. We’re receiving a lot of invitations… because apparently, we look good enough to where eating in public is now safe?
Unfortunately, most of what we’re offered, we don’t eat. Not never-ever, because we do enjoy moderate amounts of everything – but generally T., at least, since she’s most apt to keel over genetically, plays it super-super-SUPER safe and says “no, thank you.”
Pub grub? Is mostly out. Pancakes? Not even a stack of super-granola-crunchy-whole-wheat. Mac and cheese cupcakes, even the Gouda ones – definitely out (and let’s take a moment to shake our heads at … mac and cheese cupcakes. Because EVERYTHING can be made into cupcakes and NEEDS TO BE. Not). Balanced atop the stunning pile of things which we don’t, as vegetarians, eat anyway, with our food …weirdness, we’ve become the Unfun People again. Which is fine. T., at least, is generally not fun anyway, she’s cranky, and she likes it like that. But how funny that for a moment, at least, we must have looked more fun than usual. Or else, maybe the invitations correspond with it being summer? Yeah… that sounds reasonable and less paranoid. Summer. *cough* Not suspicious of anyone’s judgment here at all.
Happily, some of the people who don’t live in our heads have become helpful in us achieving our goals in eating differently. COSTCO – generally supremely indifferent to anything but providing massive boxes of Halloween candy months before the stupid holiday and muffins the size of your head – now sells our almond flour. Smaller bags than we used to order from the company in the Midwest (who helpfully opened a California store, too), but still! Even more convenience! And, if you haven’t noticed, Smuckers has jams that are both Low Sugar – 50% less – AND sweetened with Truvia AND sweetened with Splenda. T. is confident that the raspberry one is just copying the flavor of red Kool Aid for fun (how is it that everything raspberry tastes artificial? Even freeze-dried raspberries tastes suspiciously like Kool Aid… which leaves you to wonder more about Kool Aid, really, than raspberries), but wow — suddenly, other people seem to be sharing our delusion that bleached everything/high fructose corn syrup/sugar not be super awesome all the time. Imagine.
So, Summer’s been dancing along delightfully, for the most part – we’re really grateful to live in a fogbank much of the time, and are surprised to waken mornings when we can actually see the street below our house. Despite the moderate heat, T. has killed several pots of greens and poppies so far, which means it was too exposed on the deck when she started, and the idea of winter gardening is looking more and more attractive (although the news continues to warn of the approaching El Niño cycle… ::sigh:: SOME OF US cannot win.) One superior success for this summer so far has been our little worm farm. The disturbingly large, red and burly worms in our little bin have been eating egg shells, tea bags and every vegetable matter but onions and citrus peels (too acidic) and have provided us with a horrible smelling but really nutritious “worm tea.” Our plants (that T. hasn’t yet killed, anyway) are very happy, and we’re really hopeful to continue to enrich this HIDEOUS soil in this area.
Every summer (winter, autumn, spring) day needs treats – little things that you can eat with one hand, while with the other you pull weeds around your blueberry bush which isn’t going to produce this year (unlikely) or water confused and shock transplanted strawberries (and beg the green ones to redden up) or wave away ginormous flying insects and wonder why outdoors is so…full of… things on which to inhale and choke (DAILY). T. has been cheerfully churning out kitchen faves, perfecting her pastries, and altogether enjoying herself because D. is too busy hating the stacks of papers he’s grading to interrupt her in the kitchen/save her from the kitchen. T’s actually a tiny bit reluctant in her baking, because D. has always been the kitchen king, and his love of things with noisy engines and buttons and blades sort of overshadows T’s hesitant forays into the culinary world. But, now that D.’s even been too busy to feed the ravening hordes at his office, he recently swiped a few of her cookies to hand around. She was… okay, more than a little worried.
T: “No, you can’t take those. The recipe is still In Tweak. (An official state, wherein notes are scribbled in the margins of spattered pieces of paper then shoved into random kitchen drawers and utterly lost.)”
D: “It’s just a couple for These Guys From This Trailer And Those Guys There, and one of them is even gluten intolerant. He’s allergic to everything. He’ll be fine.”
T:“…But…”
T. moped about for days, when one of the guys said of her cookies just tasted like… peanut butter.
You may have noticed that we mentioned “pastries” a few lines back. Amusingly, we eat more pies, shortcakes, cookies, pastries, fats, nuts, and eggs and all than we EVER did before – happily. It’s not that we don’t eat treats, but we eat treats WE make, and we really scrutinize ingredients, and there’s a lot of Tweak. Well, over time… our tastes have changed. Without noticing, because we eat so much less sugar, we don’t need things as sweet. Which means that occasionally? Our cookies are … apparently not really sweet to people.
Which T. found bewildering.
T: “But, there’s more than peanut butter in there. There’s sweetener. There’s jam in those. Regular jam, with regular sugar. You gave him the regular ones, not the Truvia ones, right? Just jam. You can’t make blackberries not sweet.”
D: “Well, he only said — “
T: “I mean, it’s fruit. Fruit is automatically sweet. What does he mean, it’s not sweet. They’re COOKIES. Did you tell him they were vegan? Is that it? People are always so hostile to vegans.”
D: “Oh, were these vegan? Huh. Well, anyway, he said — “
T: “It’s YOUR fault. I told you those cookies weren’t ready! Now nobody likes my food.”
Fortunately, D. knew better than to pursue conversation with the irrational. Finding lemon scones on the counter some days later, he ganked a half dozen for the ravening hordes which were cherished and passed around and hoarded and everyone said very sweet things about a professional baking career, and “best scones EVER IN THE WORLD,” so some of our egos are finally somewhat mollified. *cough* Until next time.
Have a cookie. No, HAVE ONE. What, you think I can’t tell you hate it? What? Oh, you’re allergic to peanut butter? …oh. No. I’m not trying to kill you. No, really, it’s fine. We can just sit here and watch the grass grow and have water. Oh, look, a squirrel…”
…well, they were supposed to be raspberry chocolate chips. Somehow, they never got to the “chipped” stage. They were nibbled and tasted and outright hoarded, and then, they disappeared into rich, chocolate cookies – there was no “chip” about them. But, they started out life as a ginormous hunk of baking chocolate.
We’ve always tried to eat seasonally, which for us means not splurging and buying strawberries or tomatoes or whatnot in the middle of winter. When a season is over, it’s over — there’s not much sense buying something which is three times as expensive as usual and tastes horrible anyway. There’s always frozen and canned stuff to fall back on, especially with things like berries. T stocked up on frozen, but decided to see if she could do something with freeze dried. Honeyville claims that their freeze dried fruit, hydrated, tastes fresh. Not to do a commercial, but it’s surprisingly close, and these were on sale. T. decided to experiment. (As usual.)
We used our lovely 1940’s double-boiler – and this thing heats up FAST. As soon as the water boils in the lower pot, be wary. These aluminum double boilers have to be taken off of the heat almost IMMEDIATELY, or your chocolate will seize. Word to the wise there!
After adding a third cup of sweetener and some very hasty stirring, our chocolate forgave us for being too warm, and got glossy and pretty – so we dumped in a load of very dry and crunchy, freeze dried fruit. And it confused the chocolate entirely. T. stirred and stirred the mixture, and then we dumped it out to set.
And, it wouldn’t set.
And, it wouldn’t set.
And, even an hour later, it wasn’t even remotely firming up, and T. threw up her hands and said, “So, you think I could just stir this into cookie dough, and it’d be all right?”
And, then, she wandered off to bed, and forgot she’d set it on the dining room table, until the following morning after breakfast… when she went in to put it away…
And it was solid. Lumpy, and not really as well-tempered and shiny and good-looking as store-bought chocolate, but it was done. The flavor was semi-sweet, and the raspberries added a sharp, tart-sweet and tasty note.
They never ended up being used for their original purpose, but it was a good reminder of how easy it is to make one’s own chocolate bars… you can control everything going in – how sweet it is, if it has peppercorns, nuts, or coconut flakes, if it’s got coconut milk, dairy cream, or no milk at all… sometimes, it’s just a lot easier to do it yourself. Meanwhile, we’ll be looking for what other trouble we can get into…
Spring has sprung, the grass is riz… and now we know where all the flowers iz…volunteering in our front yard! We were a little shocked a few days ago when we discovered that the greenery we thought were perennial Agapanthus that never sent up flowers are, in fact, irises. We oohed and ahhed like… well, like eejits, really. Our neighbors must think we’ve never seen a flower before.
Of course, the neighbors are probably used to the madness by now. The noise level outdoors has risen, as T’s been crowing her victory over Sidney and …Sonia Squirrel. (Oh, yes. The squirrels are multiplying. We now have four, but at least two of them, probably Boris and Natasha, haven’t hung around long enough for their names to be screamed in fury… “Bad squirrel! No! Stop digging!” – As if that helps. They’re as bad as really smart, tree-climbing dogs…). The feeder has been moved now TWICE, because little rodent brains work feverishly, and they’ve managed to outsmart the humans three times, but this time it looks like the opposable digits crew won. We know we’ve won because, at long last, we’ve seen ACTUAL BIRDS visiting the feeder, as opposed to large hanging rodents… We’ve identified Nuttall’s Woodpeckers (or Downy’s — it’s hard to tell, and they won’t sit still for photographic proof just yet) and a pair of Lesser OR American goldfinches — once again, they’re not quite comfortable enough with us not to bolt every time they hear us moving toward a camera. The combination of bird baths and bird feeders has proven to be irresistible — and we really thought the birdbaths would be just something the sparrows enjoyed. Who knew we even had goldfinch in the neighborhood?
(We’ve amused ourselves with the realization that our birdbaths look a great deal like a pair of poppies we admired earlier in the Spring. Weird synchronicity, that.)
Meanwhile, the roses are blooming their hearts out, surprising us with a few blooms from the rootstock, even – fully different colors and sizes that expected. Even a tiny, dry set of twigs in the back that didn’t produce before has sprouted a single, brilliant peach rose. This year, the yard seems to provide a little surprise around every corner… fortunately all nice surprises thus far. (We’re looking at you, Boris and Natasha. What else have you buried in the yard??)
D always jokes that T. has a natural taste for “nuts and twigs,” based on how she was raised (Shout-out to the vegetarian-vegan-wheat-grass-drinking, alfalfa-pill-providing ::shudder:: tofu-touting parenti!), so it’s no wonder that she actually likes rye bread, despite the fact that for many people it’s kind of …on the Bleh And Avoid list. Much to her unbridled glee, she’s now supported in that “like” by a nod from various nutritional reports. The Whole Grain council has rounded up the lot here, but the bottom line is that rye bread can really help support the cellular work in the endocrine system, and if you’re pre-diabetic or suffering from an inflammatory disorder, whole-grain rye can help.
(There are a LOT of people who preach the gospel of “reversing” diabetes, and “curing” yourselves with rye, and we’d like to just duck, so our endocrinologist can give those people a big dose of stink-eye without us in the line of fire. *ducks* Thank you.)
Look: we have no idea about that – and don’t send us argumentative email about it, either. We’re not saying that rye cures anything, nor are we touting any particular Huffington-post-quoted doctors, or Dr. Oz (please not Dr. Oz!). We’re just saying that rye has been shown, over time, to enhance insulin secretion, indicating a possible improvement of β cell function, which is saying that your pancreas is doing more of its job making insulin.
The irony was discovering this AFTER starting a rye sourdough starter. (Which, in its earliest stages, smells …floral. Not sour. Floral. While this is weird, it’s …kind of nice, because sometimes a starter crock can have quite a pungent smell.) Our local bakery has quit carrying the sourdough rye we liked, so we’d decided to do our best to recreate it — so far, we’re working on getting the bread to RISE properly. While our first loaves were not pretty in terms of “traditional” bread, they were beautiful bannocks! A little more work with dough conditioner and gluten, possibly some oat bran, and we’ll see ourselves to rights. Eventually. At least it’s delicious whether it’s pretty or not.
One rainy afternoon, T. decided to start the garden… early. She may yet repent of this notion, as the kitchen sunroom floor is hosting a great many seedlings which may need to be repotted before finally being put outside. We were happy to find a really good use for the plastic “clamshell” packaging on the apples from Costco; they make nice little greenhouses with their plastic lids, and are quite reusable. Now that many groceries are switching to plastic egg cartons, they also make a nicely reusable starter for small seeds.
The gooseberries and Alpine strawberries have miniseeds, which have produced equally teensy seedlings, so staying indoors for awhile longer might be just fine for them. We’ve never grown either, and have a lot of hopes for them — the poha berries, or cape gooseberry, is allegedly a very simple plant to grow, and Alpine strawberries grow wild in Northern Italy — in the cold, in the dry, and in the wet. T. is sure she’s going to kill something so has planted nearly all of her seeds of each plant… which means that we may, in fact, soon have WAY TOO MUCH of everything. Isn’t that the way it goes, though? Ah, well; better too many gooseberries than too many zucchini… although, that’s probably going to happen, too.
The kale and jicama have produced surprisingly hearty, thick-leafed seedlings, and of course, the cucumbers and birdhouse gourds are making a break for freedom already and trying to vine, even with only two leaves… thing just might get interesting, here…
♦
“Every flower must grow through dirt.”
May you ignore the fertilizer, put down roots, and thrive.
Happy Spring!
♦
“So, the steel mesh bit…”
“…is just for me to hold onto.”
“Super convenient restaurant, bro.”
Dear Sidney Squirrel.
IT IS ON.
– The Humans
