chocolate chip muffin cookies and beef and red pepper noodles with black pepper sauce

 I made the chocolate chip cookies today again, and I was a bit distracted.  I was watching our cat and goat interact outside the kitchen window, and I forgot all the way to the very end to add the brown sugar!  So, then, I improvised and still ended up with something very good, but they were more like muffins than cookies.

So what happened instead of the regular recipe was :\

375 degree oven preheated with parchment paper on a (non-preheated) flat baking sheet 

1 stick of softened butter, cut into 1/2 cup of white sugar

1 tsp of vanilla extract mixed with one egg, then cut into the butter mixture quickly

1 cup of flour mixed with 1/2 tsp of baking soda and 1/2 tsp of salt - folded in

then add one half cup more of flour

and one cup of chocolate chips SHOULD have been next but I realised there is usually 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar in the sugar mixture.. and I hadn't done it.  I had been laughing at our goat and cat outside the window and not paying enough attention *sigh*  So now I have a floury mixture and need to add the sugar...

So, I added one more lightly beaten egg, a splash of milk, and the packed brown sugar all at one time, then added a bit more flour until the mixture was back to the right consistency.  I worried that not adding more baking soda might make it not rise right - but I went for it anyway.

 I added the chocolate chips and  scooped it out onto the parchment paper and then baked for 10-15 minutes just until the bottom edges looked like they were beginning to brown.  Whew, they all turned out great!  And the other cookies were thin and a bit crisp after removing - these were soft and very muffin-like, but not gooey.  And they hardened up a bit after being put on a plate and then into the fridge in a ziploc bag with a paper towel in the bottom of it.

 

Last night I used Mark's leftover beef roast cut up into a noodle recipe I have been looking forward to.  We had stir fry noodles I wanted to use up the second half of the package before too long had went by.

I added olive oil to a pan and put white onions, green onions and red bell pepper in to begin to sautee.  Then I added about a cup of water to that, and some soy sauce and some Allegro Black Pepper marinade, which usually I would use some balsamic vinegar, brown sugar, prepared brown mustard and spices to make something similar - but I've been liking the marinade and it has balsamic vinegar in it, which is probably why.  Let that sautee and bubble for a little bit, added the well chopped meat and stirred thoroughly, remaining sort of 'saucey' even with the meat in it add some water if it absorbs too much, turned the heat down a little - broke and rinsed the stir fry noodles in their package (wet pack), and then put them into the mixture and let that steam off the heat and stirred it a few times - then served it up

 

just a few days ago (above), with names

these are some of the big chickens that have names, the other rooster's name is Beau and he has one eye and no tail feathers (but he does chase after opossums)  Amber and Peach and Speck are all olive-eggers, I think - and the other olive-egger we still have I'm not sure entirely if they are a tiny rooster or not, but they seem to get along okay any way you look at it.  They have long scraggly little tail feathers and are tiny compared to the hens, called 'He-He' after Moana, and never was very 'bright' - once walked to the end of a stick several inches off the ground and thought 'the world ends here' and turned around and started walking the other direction instead of hopping off.  We've been advised that our olive-eggers might have been crossed with Crested Cream Legbar, for the way that they have little tufts of feathers on their head by their combs.

 

We also cleaned out the baby chicks' cage and put all new material in for them.  Our dog Charlotte was so upset, she thought we had thrown the chicks out with the bed litter - but she realized after a few moments of utter despair (she was actually laying stretched out next to the empty, drying cage like it was the end of the world) that they were inside the house in a different cage, and then she was so excited I had to tell her to go elsewhere for a little bit and calm down as she was jumping around smelling and scaring them.  As we put them back in the big cage she had another super-excitement and they were all bouncey and fluttering around but at least they were in the big cage then.  Esme and I finished giving them names, but we'll have to see if we can still tell some of them apart for a while after they finish molting their adult feathers.

a perch stick they haven't learned to use yet

Prairie is the silvery-brown one next to the grey (Goose) in the corner  Duck is the dark brown, Pheasant is the one with the yellow face and brown back,   Goose is still smaller than everyone and is probably not Americauna, but some other breed we'll find out as we go, or a sport from Sapphire Gem crossing that some say happens in this type.  Duck we think is definitely just a sport (odd color, brown in this case) Americauna, but she also walks low to the ground and holds her head close to her shoulders and the name is fitting more and more every day.  Esme says one of the yellows has a spot on the side of their face and the other has a stripe across (somewhere?) and so she has called them Spot and Stripe - but I'm telling those two apart basically because Stripe is one and a half times bigger than everyone else, they've been 'the one in charge of figuring this stuff out' since the beginning, first to use the hanging feeder and to check out the water bottles etc.

We are supposed to have a wild storm and maybe even a dusting of snow tomorrow, then cold temperatures for days... the wind is definitely up out there now.
 

Baby chicks and our dog Charlotte

 

Charlotte is still quite happy to have babies - although she whines when we check on them.  They are eating and drinking - the light and heater are keeping it about 80 degrees or a little less during the night and it is warming up during the day.  They are active and seem happy.  We still think we got five Americanas (as ordered) and one of something else.  The Americanas were also supposed to be all hens.  We'll see.

I need to kick myself up and go fix a hose outside and then drag a bag of new dirt to the main garden and put it into the beds there.  There will probably be another frost here before March is out.  I have ordered some seeds from Sandhill Preservation center a week or so ago and they should be getting here sometime... trying to keep my fingers from itching to buy other seeds - I do have some kale and mesclun greens to plant, and have also went and harvested a little bit of dandelion green from that bed I had gotten that started in a few years ago.  None of the italika rossa (italian red-stemmed) dandelions have survived, but the other native ones I put seeds in there from have - and I did that so I would have a clean source to enjoy some of that in the Spring.  I also have two bean plants that I sprouted last week and they need to go out in one of the beds.  They are 'Alice Whiting' green / dry dual-purpose beans I ordered a few years ago and have kept replanting.

 

 

Baby chicks 2026

 

Americana baby chicks, six of them.  Mark got most of the brooder set up with the heat lamp and now they have eaten some food and drank some water.

Plants and Dogs

 

 

Charlotte having a good roll in the grass behind the lespedeza

the thistles opened up even quite a bit more than yesterday.  There is a bug visiting the one already...

pvc loom crochet hamper huge cat

 

I had set up a very simple pvc loom, but a bit more complicated than this, about eight years ago.  Of course, I drew three plans last night thinking about it, and then went and looked in the box of stuff in the garage, and slapped this together without having to cut anything or go to town for parts. Currently, waiting for my brain to kick in what I've forgotten - or throw some simple acrylic yarn on there and see what the in-real-time issues are that show themselves.  I made a purse on this last time and I know it had a cross-bar of some type.. and it was always falling over with JUST ts on the bottom, so I put some extensions on this one to hold behind the brick.  But still - I know this is only 1.0.. maybe even .99, because I didn't even have to cut anything.  

(curiosity / techie : the height is a good 36 inches (plus a few, so finished 36 is possible), by a potential 36, more likely a 30 or 24 inch width.. we'll have to see.  The bars are now glued in such a way that the top 'u' can be removed, and extended with a coupling and more pipe for greater height, but the bottom cross-bar is glued tight to keep that from slipping and the elbow and T are glued at the top corners, as well)

I would like to try a twill or a herringbone type thing again, and that takes some distance to make it look really nice, but it's also 'tetchy'.  I'd like to try multiple coloured warps.

Mark wants to bake today, and make candy. 

He made terrariums for propagating begonias with Esme the other day, planted coleus and tomatoes etc etc.. They've been very busy there.  Esme bought a new bike with the money I had set aside for her, as her other one was not adult sized and she has grown.  She could have bought whatever she wanted I told her - and that is what she wanted.  It was on sale, and we had to replace some parts on it right away, and it was a bit fraught and tense, but between the three of us we did get it operational and she learned how to use the new gears and brakes which were different from her old bike.  Sometimes when Mark and I are arguing about tools (wrench type and sizes) and methods though, Esme feels like she is caught in the middle... but we got through it, even with my dyslexia that always adds to that.

I made a little distance on the orange weaving although I have no immediate use for it at the moment.

 

Mark was watching a horror film last night (well, historical vampire thing) and I had just begun this, so I continued working on it so I could look at it and not the screen most of the time.  Still, images tried to repeat later when I wanted to sleep - such is a half-photographic memory.  But I made a good progress and I love the colours on it - it is almost all black with the red thread on the bottom, and then it will stripe, then be the lighter color on top with the handles - I made a bit larger one a few years ago and use it as a hamper hanging up, but keep forgetting it by the washing machine and then coming upstairs and saying 'oh, the hamper is gone'.  A second one won't help that entirely, but it can't hurt, and I do love the stripes.

 

Loki cat with all his stripes

telling me I can't make the bed because he is so huge and can't move... it's a queen sized bed, and I usually do put all the blankets right in the morning - but with twenty pounds of parked cat, it's a bit difficult.

 

Charlotte and Minion cat

Languages : Czech, Catalan, Spanish, French, 

bit of still very introductory Russian to compare the Cyrillic

 spellings with the Czech

I tested into third section with the Spanish on my phone, only in the first section of Catalan (tiene muy poco!) which is in Spanish (so it's really double-duty and fun because of that), and into the middle of the first section of Czech, which I was quite happy with as I didn't remember how much I remembered.  Doing the (high level grammar) French and Russian alternatively on the other profile to round out the xp there daily.  Sometimes I can do the French all day and that is the best thing - sometimes I only want to do that grammar once and then move onto something simpler.  I really appreciated alternating with the Cyrillic alphabet today - it felt like I was using another part of my brain that needed the exercise.  I've been considering updating and practicing the Greek again for exactly the same reason, but not quite ready to dive back into Japanese - I feel like that needs more time to percolate through layers and then well back up to be interesting again.

Charlotte snoring loudly and having what seems to be an excellent afternoon nap...  We've made four dozen cookies, Esme has put a ring with the hatchet around a tree that we intend to cut down sometime in the coming years, and I've used some pvc glue on half of the joints of the loom and warped up a strap to test it out with.  I remember I had made myself a 'nail apron' pocket thing to tie to the bottom rail to hold bits of yarn bobbins that were in use - going to have to find that again, it's in the gardening things likely.

Peanut Butter Fudge

 Peanut butter fudge candy making

Mark and Esme made peanut butter fudge last night, largest ingredient contained : sugar.  It's a very hot process with stirring so much that it makes your wrists hurt.  I took the pictures, and they did all the work.  It set up well this time, and he says it will be gone within just a few days.

 

Below : Charlotte trying her best to also be on the stove side rug while Esme is stirring fudge.

Snow 2024 : Episode Three

 

 

The crochet floor rug I'm working on, the other one is still a big hit downstairs but there isn't enough of it.

 

Today was Too Much Adventure, as I call it.  I was called in yesterday to do the full city walking postal route, and I did, get it done, and got home with only some fishtailing and 'hold your hat' over the hill, but I did not enjoy it.  And today, they called me and told me that kid was calling out again, and so I came in - delivered the packages, and it was only two and a half hours, but it had begun to rain and then it was due to freeze again.  

 

I tried three times to make it back up the hill to my house (after the highways were clear, but our side road is NOT.. and it was 29 degrees and people were sliding all over town even on clear highways, I saw the reports).. and the truck was smoking, and I decided to call it 'it could be worse - let's not have it worse' and park it in a neighbor's turnaround with a SORRY note sticking out the window with my phone number on it.  It didn't block their drive - but I'm sure it was 'what, why?'... but the other option was keep trying as it kept getting icier and maybe end up upside-down in the ditch.  The second and third time I tried to get up that hill I was sliding on the return towards the ditch also... and it wasn't fun at all.  

 

So, I threw on the emergency gear I had put in my seat each day this week for walking in this weather- big rubber boots (which, I actually wore on the route today as well as my good shoes got soaked yesterday) and an oversized parka over my normal parka jacket - and walked the mile and a half home.  I'm hoping to go out there (also dressed like this) in a few days when it is close to water temperatures again and take my plastic sled and a bin of salt with me and see if that will make the difference to get me the rest of the way home for the melt on Monday (when I'm scheduled again though, before the melt) **sigh**

 

A self-portrait of me walking in my big orange parka and rubber boots today

 

 

 

Melody, our mostly blind goat, enjoying some time inside (tied to the desk, because she singes herself) next to the propane heater

 

The heater is popular, here is Melody (nose showing only), Minion (cat), and Charlotte and Daphne (dogs) before they realized I had a camera and was taking a picture of them.

  

Chickens asking: Where is dinner? 

 

Charlotte going out with me to check on and feed the chickens.