Gray, Green and Orange

 Meet Kiki, a little gray striped cat that came from my office workplace.  There was a fire there, and I took her home with me, even though at first I wasn't going to take her home, because she had recently had kittens.  I was going to feed her for a week as she was very skinny and maybe we would have figured out where her kittens were by that point and been able to do something for all of them. It came down to it, I picked her up and put her in my car, thinking I'd bring her back when they gave the all-clear, but that didn't happen, and at least I know in taking her with me she wasn't in the building or wandering hurt if she had been injured trying to find her babies.  She's looked for them in a few boxes here, we think, or just very curious.  She is spending most of her time standing next to me or sleeping on the towels.

She is maybe a year and a half old, very talkative but so far is very leery of all of our other animals and holed up in our bathroom.  She had an hour or so of me driving her around the day I took her home - and then she saw Charlotte, and freaked out and bit me.  That finger is healing up, but it was a bit of a nasty bite and I felt dumb for 1.) grabbing a cat when everyone else was more worried about the fire* and 2.) showing her to my dog first thing getting out of the car after she had traumatic ride and without her kittens etc etc.  So, the bite wasn't her fault.  I should have been smarter and went in the house and found a little cage or carrier - because she really did let me handle her a lot and walk with her under my arm all the way across the building even though she was worried - she didn't bite me until she saw the dog and I wasn't going to let her get away from it. (*honestly, I was worried about the fire, too - but full grown adults have legs and sense and we were all getting ourselves out of there it looked like - the cat needed someone to take care of her)

So there is the gray, and then after I've been home from the postal route and we did a small amount of necessary shopping - I've been harvesting greens in the garden and cutting up carrots for meals for the next week.  It won't be until tomorrow, Monday, that I'll find out too much.  I have some leave from the post office as well, and can pick up a few hours here and there with routes that need to be covered - and I've been trying hard to keep our budget better the past few months so that we would have emergency savings - I thought for the little car which was still at the mechanic and now I'm afraid to even ask - but I guess for this 'what is happening' time we are going to have - whether I get a new job or still have some things I can do for this one with data and records or don't know...  I have to talk to someone tomorrow about that.

mixed greens, lettuces, kale, dandelions, sorrel, beet greens - it will all be chopped up fine and put into a freezer bag and tossed into rice dishes and soups as needed.  The carrots are prepared three ways - ribboned, chopped up bits (that couldn't be ribboned) and then some of both cooked down and put in a jar with rosemary and other herbs for use over the next two days.  That way, the rest of the fresh bag of carrots can get used up but I still have the frozen carrot to fall back on after it's gone - and sometimes it has taken me so long to use the bag up I wish I had frozen some at the start.

The little cat had an extensive 'conversation' with me about why was I doing things with carrots when she knows I could be doing something with a food that cats like - why don't I do that?  We've also had to talk about countertops and the stove - and her main question is 'why?'  She was probably raised as a kitten in a house - because she understands a lot, is very friendly and talkative - but she was thrown out as a stray at some point, perhaps when she got pregnant, and that is how she ended up near our work coming in the building and asking for food.  I told Mark she speaks 'calico', much like Minion's daughter Callie did, even Salamander and Willowpede spoke 'calico' very loudly and responding back to you when you talk to them.  Minion speaks some of it and was meowing a little and blurting at Kiki when she came closer to her this morning, she sniffed her head and a tiny sniff at her belly (where she had been nursing kittens and still has milk) and then they both hissed at each other and separated back into other rooms.  Loki and Lyffan don't say much at all - hardly a squeak usually unless the goat steps on them or they really need to say something (and Loki is usually a high pitched flat tone when he does that universally means 'I need something' but doesn't say what - we have to guess) but he made a full throated growl at Kiki when he realized this morning that she was not his sister Lyffan, and smelled different.  Yesterday, I think he barely noticed.  We've mentioned before he might be near-sighted *ha* and I told Esme first time I saw this cat it looked like Lyffan but 'not square, with a tail' - they are both small gray things.

A lot of this is busywork in a way, but useful as well.  Doing laundry, preparing vegetables, cleaning some things, taking care of this cat (and my finger) etc.  Oh, and it's also Mother's Day.  I had bought a box of tea last week for myself and called it Mother's Day - and Mark and I got a flat of cinnamon rolls for Irene when we bought the milk and meat etc.

Now it's wait until tomorrow and call and find out what to do next. 

Tonkatsu Ramen soup with boiled eggs

 I told Esme I was going to write this down because it is different than 'just making the package' but unless I do it while paying close attention, it's hard to tell her what exactly is so different about it. 

Tonkatsu ramen soup : (you can make it with different meat or just vegetables, just adjust to your taste) boil four eggs, then place in cold water unpeeled while chopped up 1 cooked pork chop, and gather up frozen green onions. Set pork chop and green onions to boil in one cup more liquid than the package calls for (in this case, 3 cups when the package asks for 2 cups), add a tablespoon of soy sauce and a shake of ginger-garlic-sugar-sage-black pepper pork seasoning, bring that to a boil and let it continue to heat while peeling the eggs. 

Sometimes I would add frozen green peas, bok choy or shredded frozen cabbage at this point.  I will sometimes put in a shake of furikake flaked seaweed into this - I did tonight.   If using shredded carrot, (we didn't have any tonight) let that boil to a tender state before continuing. I don't use canned carrot in this because it becomes mush and is not tasty in the broth, but some softened shredded carrot is really nice.  

 Break up the noodles and place them into the pan and cook for the required amount of time (4 minutes in this case), add the soup packet and oil packet from the package. Break the boiled eggs in the bowls to expose the yolks - and pour one half of the pot over each bowl of eggs.

chopped up porkchop, green onions, tonkatsu pork chop flavored ramen package

 

Bring 3 cups of water (the package calls for two for the noodles and broth packet, this is one extra to be absorbed into the meat, veggies and eventually eggs) to a boil, add the pork chop, 1 tbsp of soy sauce, green onions and a few shakes of a spicy pork ginger based seasoning.  We make our own, but it has garlic, ginger, sage, black pepper and a few other things in it as well as some sugar.  Do not mix the soup packet or oil packet from the package in yet - that goes in later! 

  

Boil 4 eggs - I try to soft-boil them but the key point is to not overboil them.  I boil four for two bowls, and if one cracks and is lost, three is still enough.  Pour out the hot water after they are boiled enough, refill with cold, let sit until the soup mixture is heated up well and the pork has started to flavor the water.  

  

When the broth is just about ready - break up the noodles into four sections and place them in the broth.  Set the timer for the amount of time the package says the noodles need to cook.  Peel the eggs, but do not chop them up yet. 

 When the noodles are entirely done, open the soup packet and the oil packet and mix them into the soup and noodles.  Break up the eggs to expose the yolks.  Pour half of the soup and noodles over each bowl of eggs.  The soup will mix a bit with the egg yolk and make the broth even richer. 

 

And there is your soup - much more than just the packet, but not so much you have to spend all day making it, like REAL tonkatsu soup would be - one of those told me to boil the pork for five hours to make the broth!  

 

more bits

 It's been another week went by and I'm not even sure where it went.  Did some things this week - gardening, shopping, going to work and the feed store, of course.  About to make some classic banana bread that is sort of between what I make for 'well I'll eat it anyway' banana flan stuff and madeleines with banana in them.

 I made 'mac and cheese' last night with gruyere and mini penne pasta.  Esme said it wasn't that different - just pasta and cheese, right?  And I reminded her that one has to make a bechamel sauce first  with butter, flour and some of the pasta sauce, then add the cheese into it.  Mark says if I can make it with white cheddar and American cheese he'll try it.  

I made a pot of lentil soup first thing  this morning.  It was cold, and my stomach hurt from eating a fast food ice cream yesterday - while finishing up our postal route and things were very early etc.  I told Esme that I had to think 'what did I eat that WAS NOT food, yesterday, and then .. oh yes, that'  So I was up at three am even on my day off, but took a bath and drank more coffee, did the dishes and the laundry - and then my stomach felt better after a bit, enough to cook lentil soup, and then get ready to go for shopping in town.

Frozen grated carrots and ginger from a few months ago, frozen onions, 1 cup or so of lentils, some herbs de provence, some black pepper and salt, and some beet greens - all cooked down and then ran through the blender.  I needed that.  There is enough for a few more lunches, too.

 Now to go throw my floor rugs in the dryer and make that banana bread, before I decide not to as dinner will be coming up - but I've already had the butter and eggs waiting on the counter bringing up to room temperature.  I had poked the butter a half hour ago and it was not ready yet.

Chopped up a bunch of yellow summer squash and red bell peppers and onions (all from the store), harvested a few more strawberries and sorrel leaves, checked on other things.  Have been studying French and Czech lately on duolingo, with some Greek and Lithuanian (and Czech and French) vocabulary on baba dum. 

 The banana bread recipe says :

 2 cups mashed banana (ha, you'll get what I've got, which is two small mashed banana)

1 full stick of butter, softened at room temperature

2 large eggs, brought to room temperature

1/2 cup granulated white sugar

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

2 cups flour (that seems a bit excessive, we'll see)

1 tsp of baking powder

1/2 tsp of baking soda

1/2 tsp salt 

2 tsp of vanilla (yea, no, we do one teaspoon, this is strong stuff)

 and it gives no baking time or temperature, so I'll wing it at 375 and watch it for when it turns brown, stick a fork in it and see if it comes out clean 

 

 

 

I've also been playing Mineclonia Minetest, with the Wine Mod and the plant based foods and x farming, 'get comfortable' furniture mod and a few other things - some of the mods clash - Esme says the barrels from the Wine Mod (which also makes cider, beer, rum, coffee liquer etc.) look so out of place.  I like the way the barrels on end make something like cabinets or armoires when stuck on top of the tables.  The get comfortable thing clashes with how I make roofs on my buildings, so I have had to learn a new way to get around it by putting dirt blocks and then placing the stairs on top of the blocks and breaking them back out from underneath.  This has monsters on, and hunger, and the snow biome nearly killed me last night because I fell through the powder snow and didn't know how to get back out with it all falling on me and doing damage -- dig down, and then reach rock, so you can stand on something, and then find a way to get out one direction or the other, always standing on rock and never on snow. Scary though.. like having a whole ceiling of sand and gravel fall on you in original Minecraft.

 One of the other things that has happened is the nearby pillager crew has come out with their bannerman to stare at me.  I put up a two high fence around my area between their huge watchtower and me, and also lined the other side of it with sweetberry bushes, which they will take damage from them.  We'll see if that works. 

 

  

bits

 

 

Mark has been designing this ball track system on his 3D printer.  And I harvested a little bit of sorrel, some kale and more strawberries than I expected tonight.  There is supposed to be a large storm tonight and then another one tomorrow night.  I have been studying French and Czech.

 

Tarragon Cream sauce Pasta

I'm telling Esme about another one of the family recipes that I want to make and show her how to make - and every other recipe I've been finding for it uses white wine in it for reduction in the sauce. And I had to think, ah.. yes, my mother never cooked with that (cooking alcohol) at all, so of course the 'family recipe' that I know doesn't have it, so.. do I try to do it 'correctly' according to the books or do I cook what I know so I don't 'mess it up'? I'm choosing option two, and then maybe we can learn how to make the 'actual French recipe version' later.  Apparently there is a 'boil the onions in white wine' step that I've never done in my life.. and am not sure I want to.  

 This is usually served with chicken breast, but can also be served with eggs.  We didn't have fresh garden tarragon, but I was inspired to make this by the dried tarragon packet I got in our spice sampler.  Tarragon goes bad quickly, much quicker than many spices - and the reason I haven't made it in many years is that it is hard to find it, and then when you do, a little disappointing to throw much of it away later.  I used finely diced zucchini instead of the real chopped tarragon plants that were in a recipe I found - I think maybe it was made with canned green beans at times in our household, my mom canned a lot of green beans every summer.

 We decided to make it with eggs.  It is not an easy dish to make with three burners by yourself - will need to practice again, as one of the burners was an omelette to go with it and that got a bit messy in between - started pasta, then melted butter in a big pan and added finely diced zucchini and sliced sweet onions, cooking them until the onions were translucent, then added a bit more water to make sure there was enough liquid - added a few tablespoons of flour until it began to form a paste with the butter, added some grated cheese (used the last of the gruyere block we had, about 3 by 2 inches) to that to finish making it a full paste (roux), then began to reliquify with half-and-half, then whole milk, until the sauce and melted cheese came to the right consistency, added dried tarragon and lots of black pepper (should have added more salt, I had hoped the butter and cheese was salty enough) and removed from heat as the omelette was getting done to put on the plates and drained the pasta, stirred it into the tarragon cream sauce and added more black pepper and shredded cheese on top of each plate after serving. It's been years, maybe a decade, since I made this dish, but I thought I'd give it a go again to show Esme.

bits

 Madeleine cookies / cakes with ebony carrot powder in them

 

 mullein plant, biennial, first year rosette

 

We are down to 13 chickens, including our two roosters.   We lost another one of our Olive Eggers to old age this morning.  I was confused though, because I was pretty sure we were at 15 with the roosters before losing this one - and Esme and I counted again and again, and only came up with thirteen.  I might have not counted the last one that we lost - although I remember her - or maybe something happened to another one of the Cinnamon queen types and we haven't found any evidence of it yet.  We looked all around in the pen - and didn't see anything.  The one that was gone this morning was just fallen over and right out in the open with no injuries - although she had been getting slower and walking a little hunched for the past few weeks.

 I got some spice samples from a company the other day and I have been trying them out.  Tried some tarragon in our eggs - I always have that go bad before I've used very much of it.  Today, I tried some of the ebony carrot powder, which is a very bright magenta color, in a batch of madeleines - and the purple powder made the dough sort of purplish-grey and the actual cakes a bit of a greenish color. 

 Got the first strawberries today :)  Chopped them up in some sugar and put some in yogurt and a bit on pancakes. 

Studying mostly French with some Portuguese. Been dreaming more in French or pseudo-French, at least.

Been working through the dental plate issues and cooking my own dinners more so I don't have as much problem with things that Mark and Esme can eat but I have trouble with - because when it was already inflamed trying to eat something harder and having it rock was causing more issues... and I am trying hard (very hard) not to sleep on that side for more than an hour or so here and there at night - can't only sleep on the other side, my hips and shoulders won't let me do that, either.