Musings

I walked along the path near the creek, and tried to hear it burble. I could easily hear a huge flock/murder of crows down by the creek mouth, both in the water and in the overhanging trees, just cawing away (“this is MY branch; get your own” over and over, I imagine). Up the valley, I could hear a bag-piper; was it music from “Outlander,” I wondered. I had to adjust my path to get close enough to the creek to hear the water-noise. Finally, yes! Then, my phone rang.

I wasn’t even sure I had service down in this valley. Turned out the oldest kid was out of school—closed because of a bomb threat. Sigh. Okay; readjust afternoon plans. We can do that.

Youngest nephew is having buddies over for spaghetti, with ice cream cake dessert. Oreo cookie crumb crust, with three flavors of ice cream. All good! I figure a half-dozen boys and a big dose of sugar constitutes another noise source….

Posted at 9:09 PM | Comments Off on Noise of several types

I looked back through the meager collection of today’s photos and first I thought: hey, the flowers in the fungi-stump, that’s the one.

Then I thought: no, the two chocolate hearts.

In the end…(see title).

Posted at 7:59 PM | Comments Off on I couldn’t decide

When he was around The Botanist was my #1 apple dessert fan, especially pie, but he’d take crisp or even sauce. He was also my #1 peeler. I did a crisp today and thought of him through nine apples, Cameo I believe they were called. Came out pretty tasty. Yay for Vietnamese cinnamon.

This is a taste of Randall Munroe’s exemplary “Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words,” in which he marshals exceptional drawings and a vocabulary of only 1000 words to explain complicated things. The 1000 (aka “ten hundred”) words apparently include flies but not ants. We gave away the copy we bought, and I think we’ll buy another copy for ourselves…yay, dead-tree books!

Posted at 10:03 PM | 2 Comments »

Tried a dish I’d never cooked before. Not even remotely. Make a turkey breast sandwich with dressing between. Wrap first in carefully conserved skin, then in butter-soaked cheesecloth. Roast. It’ll take an hour and a quarter.

Hmm. Took much longer. Skin did get crispy. Made the dressing too wet (my error). Should have flattened the breasts a bit so they weren’t so lumpy.

Still, the meat was moist and tasty.

Reminder to self: don’t experiment for a dinner party again. (I knew this….) Second reminder: my guests love my version of pimiento cheese. I made it a day ahead so the pimento could completely rehydrate.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Experiment worked ~80%

Cranberry sauce was one of the good-if-I-got-this-done items on my to-do list. I bought organic berries—from Wisconsin, as it turns out—and one had an insect hole and one was a bit (only a bit) soft…so almost the total 24 ounces of usable cranberries…meaning great quality cranberry sauce for our table tomorrow. Usually I have to toss a dozen or more per 12-oz bag. Great omen!

I successfully worked through my must-do list, and most of my good-if-I-got-this-done list by day’s end. Yay!

Among other things, I made a huge batch of pimiento cheese for tomorrow’s app, which we used some of for our evening meal. Yum.

Posted at 9:29 PM | Comments Off on Chores, with payoff

We wandered off to one of the super-fine markets with international clientele and international foods this morning. To get international foods like carrots, mushrooms, and parsley. We skipped the potato leaf, but did get white potatoes.

And, late in the day, no surprise, I found shadows. I think I got my fifteen minutes of sunshine. Stretch; yawn.

Posted at 7:41 PM | Comments Off on I am a solar cat

Precooked shrimp skewers as floral display….

Also unpurchased: ancho chile liqueur. (Gee, why?)

Very realistic in life, these waterlilies, but somehow the camera captured them as…impressionistic.

There’s a short story or novella in each image in this trio.

Posted at 8:17 PM | Comments Off on Story lines

Turns out the Thai basil survives (whew!), and soon I shall make some Thai curry, which is very yumm-i-fied with fresh Tb.

Posted at 9:26 PM | Comments Off on Garden check

Our big activity today: squeezing apples aka cider-making. Which is far more than that.

The neighbors have a magic hand-operated machine that chips up the apples (circular motion, like a steering wheel), collects the chips in a cylindrical barrel lined with a stout, fabric filter. Then, with another circular motion on a different plane, we cranked down the press, squeezing the juice out through the cracks in the barrel, into the tray, and out the V-cut into the pan below. (I’m not sure why this particular batch was so foamy-bubbly.)

That brings in the next phase: filter and final bottling. We have special fabric filters (old sheeting) stretched across large funnels, and anchored with clothes pins. We pour the fresh juice through, which involves some fussing to get it all through (sediment blocks the filters, sl-o-w-ing the flow), and into a glass gallon jug. We transfer from that through the funnel (without the filter) to the final vessels, plastic jugs suitable for freezing. Long winters you know.

Use the hose outdoors to clean the fabric, wring, and reset on the funnels.

I was on the pouring operation. The Guru ended up on the apple loading and cranking and squeezing part of the operations.

Since it was raining, we did this in the commodious garage. Since it was cool, we didn’t have to watch out for busy and sometimes sated yellow jackets.

We took a break about two-thirds of the way through to have home-made potato soup and pasta (separately), topped off by home-made caramel corn. Living large!

What I didn’t mention was the prep work: collecting the apples, washing them. The apple-loaders picked through them, and selected from the various containers to make the blend.

Now, through the long winter, these households will have some fresh cider as a pick-me-up. We took a quart; it may last a few hundred miles.

Posted at 8:05 PM | Comments Off on No cabernet

The Guru guruized at the neighbors’…they do some tech stuff…but they specialize in hands-on activities. I think these are decorative lures…and the tiniest trap I’ve ever seen…a charm? Forgot to ask. Anyway, the Guru helped decommission an old PC, stripping it of personal info so it can be put on CraigsList.

In the garden, despite a light-heavy frost last night (the year’s hardest frost so far), we found peppers of many kinds, cabbage, cilantro, some barely surviving cakes, and a few flowers. I think this is a decorative sunflower, not a seed-sunflower…. I even found a violet (!!) in a protected spot (not the garden).

I forgot to ask about these leaves…a brilliant red kale? Not sure….

Posted at 5:48 PM | Comments Off on Colors that catch the eye