January Round Up

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As winter hobbies and reading/writing projects begin to take root after holiday activity, I'm going to try to record this as I go, rather than trying to pull it all together at once. 

So let's start with New Year's Eve, we had steak, bread machine onion rolls and this wonderful from scratch, lactose free real cheese macaroni and cheese. I did the least labor intensive onion rolls, and I'm lucky Andrew will put in the research and time to bring some true dairy favorites back into my life.

This was a ton of mac and cheese, and I'm just finishing up the leftovers a week later. 

I also cleaned the chicken coop on New Year's Eve and boy did it need it. The weather was the best of the week, dry, windless and not terribly cold so I could really just focus on the job at hand at a nice pace and let the ladies out so they wouldn't be underfoot.

It really wasn't that cold despite the last snow on the ground. Much better than the day before when I had planned to clean it and it rained all day. 

You would think I would be tired of posting pictures of chickens in wheelbarrows, rummaging around their own used litter like it's the Target dollar section...

and yet I am not. 

I made a new necklace out of these lovely apatite and farm cultured pearl beads.

And I made some moisturizing salve with some things around the house; coconut oil, some essential oils and a chunk of beeswax. It's not the most chic product, but inexpensive. 

I have a vintage enamel double boiler, which is especially important to use with beeswax rather than a single pot/direct heat. 

The coconut oil melts fairly quickly.

After a few minutes of sporadic stirring though the beeswax begins to melt. 

And once it is mostly melted I add the essential oil and stir but I don't keep it on heat very long after than because I don't want to deteriorate the essential oils. 

It's a nice golden yellow thanks to the beeswax. The first night after it had cooled to room temperature it was very much a salve consistency, but later it firmed up a bit, but still melts very quickly when used as coconut oil usually does. 

I have a chicken update since when I posted the previous pictures, this is a running draft blog during the month of January and as I write on the 9th, I made a sad discovery in the pen  When I went down to collect eggs and care for them I immediately noticed the shape of the flock was wrong I did a quick count, and then a slower one. It was late enough in the day to know the tenth and missing hen probably wasn't laying and I noticed that for the past couple days I wasn't getting quite as many eggs as usual. 

I opened the coop and looked at the empty nest boxes and then with a a heavy heart looked around the rest of the coop and laying n between the roost and the wall, was a dark lump One of the new Blue Rock hens, just a chick in April had died Her head was tucked against her wing  Maybe an egg broke inside her. None of the other chickens showed anything amiss 

I got a trash bag to collect her. Dead chickens always feel so heavy and I disposed of her far away to not bring the fox's attention closer to the pen. After chicken care I took Tutu for a long walk in the sunshine in her winter coat and it was quite nice. Tomorrow we will go for another walk this weather can't be beat for January, first 20 degree day is more than 10 days a way so they say.

January 10, 2021

Andrew and I went on a nice 90 minute winter hike at Davey Woods state nature preserve.  It was nice enough weather and we were surprised that the small parking lot was full and we had to park along the side of the road. I took my Canon camera with me with the zoom lens attached thinking I might capture blue jays and squirrels but the trail was very quiet and I didn't see hardly any squirrel nests. The most notable feature was the dozens of huge grapevines growing 70, 80 feet and in the strangest shapes. I have my fist pictured for scale. 

The grape vine to the right actually grew out of the ground and back in again just a foot apart making the loop you see above. It was as tall as me. As you can see, I have not escaped the "pandemic 15."

Check out this grapevine growing through the fork of this tree. 

And this curlicue of three distinct loops of grapevine.  

The zoom lens was not the best choice for this walk as there was lots of interesting macro shots of fungi and tree features but most of the pictures didn't turn out. The raccoon tracks along the bank were the only sign of life aside from a deer trail. 

The stream was pretty, with lots of frost and free slowing water around every bend.

Reading books from the private library continues. This was a quick read about a lady in the 60s and 70s who tended wounded birds from her home in Queens. This was largely before wildlife rehabilitation centers and the gentle tone of the book does not dilute the facts about the different bird species or how to treat them including which birds get what kind of food and shelter. 

Also, the illustrations while photographs, are translated into this interesting almost dot matrix/pixelated style. 

January 15th

I took Tutu for a walk in the late afternoon. It wasn't super warm, just at 40 but there was no wind and we did about 30 minutes of walking. It would switch between bright and overcast and then I realized winter really was coming!

By the time I got Tutu in and changed into chicken care gear, in the span of 10 minutes it went from the scene above to completely gray, and soft nickel sized snow flakes were falling and the temperature had dropped considerably, just like that. I got the chickens done and we were in for a while until we took a short, masked visit to Maw Maw and Paw Paw's where the walk clearly tuckered Tutu out, using her stuffed snowman toy as a neck pillow.

January 24

A nice day of staying inside, reading, writing, and cooking. 

Andrew made apple cider pork roast with apple butter and chives from a recent Cooks' Country.

I flipped through some cookies in the Dorie's Cookies book, but they all sounded like too much work so I made Andrew's favorite, the chocolate chip cookie recipe from the butter flavored Crisco sticks. 

These moist and chewy cookies can last for days if packed air tightly. The secret I think is there is only brown sugar...keeping them from getting brittle.

Sunday, January 31st

It sounds like my friends in Columbus have more rain than snow. Here, while we watch 60 minutes we have 6 inches going on 7 with at least one or two more inches to go. We had a mostly cozy day in, although Andrew worked on clearing the driveway and I took care of the chickens. The wet soft snow was easy to hoe rather than shovel. The hens were confined to one dry area of the pen and had cabin fever so I gave them some extra treats. I had to dig my high top Vasque boots for the snow, that reach mid-calf.  I had to carry Tutu to some of her potty zones as the snow is so deep. 

Yesterday Andrew  and I went to Mad River Mountain for our first lesson of the season but second of our lives. I love skiing and am thrilled to learn I can use the student slope to practice whether I am taking a lesson or not. I hope to go again soon, all those years roller skating and roller blading have carried over quite nicely for the skis. 

I have finished my second John McCormack book of collected stories from his first year as a veterinarian in rural Choctaw county Alabama. I adored it as much as the first one, I read, Friend of the Flock.  I was actually getting depressed about getting to the end of this book. The only copy in the Central Library Consortium was this large print copy and I have the other two collections on inter-library loan. 

See you in February.

Do Nothing

 

Check out this book, recently published. It's really changing how I look at my daily life and my relationship with my smart phone and how much time I spend on it.  This is not a soft self-help kind of book and there are few references to mindfulness which has been almost completely corporatized/capitalized into something almost unrecognizable from traditional Buddhist philosophy. 

Instead, this book is a wholistic view of work both at home and in the world that combines psychology, history (ancient and modern) culture, health, and society. Our daily lives have changed more in the last two hundred years than it has in the last 20,000 years and we have not caught up to the technology we have and the demands it places on our brains.

Celeste Headlee makes a real case through statistics and research as to why we feel busier than ever but get less done, feel more stressed and having less fun. 

Rather than extolling on the virtues of life hacking and habit building, she takes a comprehensive view of how we have evolved to live, work and socialize.  Social Media and "always being on" is only the latest in a long history of layering longer working hours, less productive outcomes, and less leisure time. 

As I listened to this audiobook, all I could think of was "this isn't just me, this is happening to all of us, and here's why and...it's not my fault." 

Frequently I asked myself...is this how I want to live? 

There is more journalism than aphorisms that is very supportive in thinking about the world differently and what I want out of it. I think more and more literature is going to come out like this, and I have already gotten a taste of some of the same sets of facts from another book I have on reserve that I listened to the podcast on NPR...but for now, check out this 7 minute listen with the author herself.

Do Nothing Interview

I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you do end up reading it or listening to it, reach out to me and we can talk about how we are trying to make some changes. I've already implemented a couple. 

Also as I drafted this I remembered a similar podcast interview I came across about new year's resolutions. I posted it on Facebook but I'll repost it here. I listened to a book by Gretchen Rubin, but it was exhausting. I'm a big fan of R. Eric Thomas, and loved his book Here For It. I think he makes some good counterpoints in this interview. 

December Round-Up

 Okay so here s the last post of the year, and it's mostly baking, books, and pets. 

I've made a ton of cookies this past month, with mixed results. In early December, I made a sprawling, epic baking video to play on the library's social media channels and I bit off more than I could chew making three recipes at once. I need to remember to look at the recipe before I start...the demands of chilling two of the three doughs turned what I thought would be a 2 hour activity into an unexpected marathon. I am pretty confident I do not have the right cookies in the right chronological order...I can't remember which cookies I did for the video and which I just did in the course of the month. I do not think an accurate cookie baking timeline is crucial to read this post so let's just roll with it. 

First, I decided to try a new gingerbread cookie recipe featured in the holiday issue of Cook's Illustrated. 

Looks good right? Well, looks can be deceiving. As I did the recipe I idly thought it asked for an awful lot of cloves...I double checked our traditional recipe for ginger bread boys and saw cloves wasn't even listed.  I shrugged and went on my merry kitchen way...and let me tell you if you didn't already guess, that a little bit of cloves goes a long way. 

Andrew and I ended up calling them the "cigar cookie" because Andrew says "I'd rather smoke cloves than eat them."  I would say one would have to strongly be on team savory to enjoy these cookies. I could make them again without the cloves, but honestly there are soooooo many cookie recipes out there, I'm kicking this one to the curb. I did take the cookies to work, warned everyone and there were two co-workers who liked them. When a cookie languishes on the staff treat table, you know it's a dud.

I also tried a recipe from a magazine that I'm really enjoying that we carry at the library called Le Chatelaine...it's Canadian and looks like a Good Housekeeping kind of magazine but it's really quite edgy and modern. This classic peanut butter cookies with added chocolate chips were a hit all around.

 

Then for the third recipe I made was an oatmeal cookie recipe out of this book:

I may be making more stuff out of this book in the future. My Dad loves a good oatmeal cookie and so do I. This may be a recipe I redo. It is VERY oat centric...but demanded being chilled which took more time since I didn't look ahead for that. I really need to remember to pay attention to a little thing called "prep time." Also, I think the eggs I used were maybe too small to add enough moisture. Dad liked them though.  Sadly, I don't have a picture of the oatmeal cookie.

The week before Christmas I made the sesame cookies from PBS cook  Lydia Bastianich in an effort to replicate Andrew's Grandma Scordato's recipe. This is a basic shortbread recipe where you roll out the dough and cut into logs, then roll in sesame seeds.

The definitely spread out quite a bit in the baking. Mom liked them and some friends liked them, especially dipped in melted chocolate but Andrew says they are close but no cigar. This is the second time I've referenced cigar/cigarettes in a baking centric blog post. Shrugs.

Food 52 had two recipes I want to try and as I eyed this one, I suspected that I had made it before and was mildly disappointed in it...but the memory didn't stick so I moved ahead and made it anyway. 

By the time I had put them on the cookie sheet I was convinced I had made them before. They seem much better to me cooled than hot out of the oven and taste more like a brownie. There is another recipe I still want to try that is a more chewy version of this without the peanuts...but if this one didn't blow my oven mitts off, should I try making the other one? These are the questions of my winter baking time.

I also made the traditional gingerbread cookies and butter roll out cookies with lactose free butters, but they have been featured in last year's posts so just get a mention for sheer quantity here.

Moving backwards into November,  Andrew did a lot of baking for Thanksgiving, like this lactose free pumpkin pie, and pecan pie, one of his favorites.

And he made two types of monkey bread to go with our eggs and sausage breakfast. One with an orange icing glaze and another with chopped pecans.

Before we move outside, let's check in with the pets...

This is a regular occurrence at our house, especially on a day Andrew is at the station, and I go into work. I leave in the morning with the bed made and come home to find this I definitely think Tutu can tell the difference between a morning where everyone is at work all day, a day here someone is going to be home part of the day, and a day when her "pack" is all home.  I also think she can tell that when one nightstand lamp is off, Daddy is not coming home until the next day. 

I may have actually posted a similar picture recently of Maxwel peeking through the stair spokes It's a fairly common occurrence and probably happened while Tutu and Andrew were napping in the chair and I was puttering around the kitchen It's a bit of a "is the coast clear?" kind of move 

The journal I started n August..I'm halfway through already.  I got two nice, last-a-lifetime mechanical pencils for Christmas. I am trying to use all the wooden pencils in the house so eventually, the two mechanicals will be all that's left.  It will take a while, and I'm already using the mechanicals for the journal. 

BOOKS:

Usually I just focus on books from my private library for a few reasons, but here is a library title I am working through:

It's a sweet book, each chapter is a different month of the year. If you want a gentle nature read, try it.

I continue to grind through the private library and still decide to toss books in the donation box as I go. I have recently finished this biography of Jane Austen by a direct descendant of one of her friends. I don't think I learned much new in this book and it was a quick read. As I suspected, the author could not resist talking more about the Lefroys then necessary, and even the Austen-Leighs...of course. Into the donation box it goes! 

Published in 1997, and accounting for episodes more than 30 years before, this book is mostly timeless, witty and incredibly funny. Recommended by James Herriot himself,  this is a gentle read with a little bite, lots of humor, and wonderful sketches of a by gone era or rural life that still reflects characters you could more or less meet today. There is a real sense of landscape in the book as well  I enjoyed it so much, I wondered if Dr. McCormack was still alive and found out  he died just last year in December, in his 80s and his obituary was very sweet. I'm very tempted to send a message to the funeral home to see if they can pass it on to his wife and children about how much I enjoyed it. I even reserved one of the two other books he wrote through the library...another title to add to the pile.  This one might stay in the study. 

Are you ready to check on the garden and the chickens?

This Kale plant, given to me by a friend two years ago, is such a trooper and garden companion I found that sautéing fresh kale in a skillet creates too much splatter so I use frozen kale.  This plant has gone to seed three times, has been eaten up by some kind of bug/worm down to it's main stem and just keeps coming back I love it, despite my neglect.  

Calendula, still blooming in the garden, the weekend after Thanksgiving. 

Also, I think this shot of Tutu hunting mice and voles in the lavender is also around Thanksgiving You can see the green plants after their prune. 

Winter starts for me, when the electric waterer (holds three gallons) goes into the chicken pen 

One book, that I want to read is "The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird's Egg by Tim Birkhead.  Such and amazing physical object in shape and scope. On Dad's suggested I've evolved from grass hay to the wood shavings for the nest boxes with great results

As I write this, on January 31st, I cleaned the chicken coop this afternoon before lunch and finishing this blog up. I have to smile that these pictures were taken the last time I cleaned the coop...which may well have been in November It was quite the chore today because I had added fresh grass hay at some point when I couldn't get to it as quickly as I would have liked but this ultimately made it more work to clean today. I captured this and thought t was cute. Looks like she made a perfect 10 landing. 

I never grow tired of being baffled by some basically chicken views of life The contents of their coop, become new again when rediscovered on the compost pile 

And let's end with the almost full moon in Gemini. I think this was taken on November 29th 

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