Tag Archives: food

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Valentine Catch-Up

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Hey there! Seems I’ve been away from my computer a bit too long, and neglectful of this space.

We’ve simply been focused on school and routine appointments and Girl Scouts.  It hasn’t helped that I had the cold from the deepest depths of Hell that lasted for days and days and days.

When I emerged, I had to catch up on school work with the kids and deep clean the house (not that you can tell anymore….amazing how quick the clutter and dirt builds back up!).

I’ve been working on my Chimney Fire Sweater pretty diligently; Girl Scout Sundays are great for that. I hang out and knit for the two hours the older girls are in their meeting. I also finally got around to plugging in to season 2 of Serial. Add in a nice latte and it’s a rather enjoyable two hours for me.

This weekend we’ve been prepping for more snow (which started a few hours ago) and trying to manage the cold. In addition, Paul tore open the ceiling in the kitchen to try and fix the upstairs plumbing issues. As soon as he got the hole open where water had been dripping, a whole lot MORE water poured out, despite that bath not having been used for well over a week. We’ve discovered just how poorly this house was put together, and to boot, I now have a hole in my ceiling until we can be sure it’s properly solved.

In dog news, Lucy has been banished outside with the sheep and working dogs. She managed to slip out the gate last week when I was moving it, and came back with a skunk pelt. She refused to relinquish her prize, and spent the better part of a few days chewing and consuming it. Eventually she came back in the house, where we soon discovered that ingested skunk causes diarrhea.

She’s not in any danger of dehydration (it’s not frequent, but it’s once a day, and it’s awful, and she was doing it in the house), and she’s slowly recovering, but she’s not coming back in until I know she’s over it.

As for the kittens, they are getting bigger and cuddlier every day.

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Little Widget is a regular lap cat for me, and Poppet loves to cuddle with Maddie and her boyfriend John. They’ve definitely been our furry little Valentines this weekend.

Speaking of Valentine’s Day, I took the opportunity to try a few recipes from the Joy the Baker cookbooks I’ve got.  I made a Banana Coconut Cream pie Friday night, knowing Paul would love it (the rest of us aren’t big on banana pie, but it was pretty tasty nonetheless).

For brunch Saturday I put together the Breakfast Nachos.

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Let me tell you.

This was HEAVEN.

Oven-crisped potatoes topped with crumbled breakfast sausage, cheddar cheese sauce, and sunny-side up eggs, with pico de gallo, guacamole, and sour cream on the side.

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This was a HUGE hit here. It would also be a weekend regular for us if it wasn’t so decadent! Seriously, it is too delicious to resist overeating by A LOT.  And then going back an hour later to pick at it some more.

Considering we also had our traditional Chinese take-out for dinner tonight, I can’t imagine what the scale is going to say in the morning. And you know what? Totally worth it!

 

 

 

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The Land of Aches and Sneezes

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Greetings from cold virus central!

I had thought we made it through with relative ease, but then either we had a second virus hit right away, or this cold had a nasty one-two punch. This second wind has been much, much worse. With Maddie nannying for a friend’s family, we seem to be passing our germs back and forth between the households (sorry, Lisa!).

Today I’m directing school activities from the couch, under a wool blanket.

Oona has finished most of her reading and is knitting. Emily will draw out her reading assignment for as long as possible while she cuddles various kitties. Neve is handling the home-ec portion by cleaning the kitchen and taking out the garbage (you know she’s desperate to escape another day of schoolwork when she volunteers for dish and garbage duty). They’re all feeling just a bit salty that they didn’t get a buttload of snow days like their public school counterparts did.

Hey, algebra waits for no man.

Also, Happy Groundhog Day!  We’ll be watching the Bill Murray movie after schoolwork has been completed and Oona has made us popcorn.

We’ve also been talking a lot about weather; it’s warmed up quite a bit, and we had rain yesterday. With the smell of fresh, green earth in the air we all felt ready for spring. It’s a cruel joke, of course. There’s still plenty of time left for winter to hit us with more snow or polar air. Still, a couch-bound girl can dream, and spend time looking at seed catalogs and planning out the 2016 gardens, right?

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this year’s gardens, and farm work. We didn’t breed, so there won’t be any lambs or kids this spring, but that’s okay. We wanted to focus on getting our current flock healthy and fat, and repairing fences and outsmarting our escapee dogs and goats.

We ARE expecting a shipment of chicks sometime later in the spring, since our current hen situation is lacking; we have maybe 15 hens, and a few of them are getting on in years.

Not only will we be adding to our chicken flock then, but we will also be ordering more bees. My hive seems to have absconded sometime since Christmas. There’s a complete lack of any bee in there, not even dead ones. There is one potentially erupted queen cell, but it’s hard to tell.  I HAVE noticed honeybees flying around the last few days, however. They are going into the old hive and stealing honey from the stores that were there. I only ever see maybe 8 or 10, but I’m hoping that means that my absconded colony found a good home to overwinter.

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There’s also these lovelies that recently arrived. When I’m feeling better I’ll be in the kitchen whipping up some of her yummy recipes. The challenge is choosing one to start with! (well, actually, the challenge is not eating 10,000 calories worth of baked goods every day).

And, since I’m unable to manage much else, I’ve of course been working on my sweater.  I finally got to the point where I put my sleeve stitches on a holder and I’m working on the lower body. I’m really pleased with how it’s going.

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Now let’s all keep our fingers crossed that today is my last day of feeling like garbage; Emily gets her braces on tomorrow!

 

 

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Snowed In

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After two full days of high winds and heavy snow, the sun woke us this morning, bright and blinding over the deep blanket of snow.  I’d say we got at least two feet; in most places it is knee deep, and the drifts between the cars are at waist-deep (and I had to chase a loose hen through there).  We are all impressed that we never lost power, though who knows when all the schools, etc, will re-open.

Sadly it wasn’t only the sun that woke me this morning, but a terrible cold that’s left me achey and miserable.  Good thing I managed so much work yesterday and could reasonably relax today (though I will admit to having done all of today’s chores and feeding in my pajamas, in a sickly, Cold & Flu Alka-Seltzer – induced haze).

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Yesterday there were points where I did begin to worry about the sheep. Not because they had no shelter to escape the snow, but because they had no interest in availing themselves of it. They simply took turns gorging on hay and laying in the snow to chew their cud, allowing it to build up on their backs.

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Sabine and Orzo weren’t exactly thrilled about being out in it, but they spent enough time running about in it that they kept the area around the hay bale and feeders rather packed down and easy to access.

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Oona braved it for longer than anyone. It was pretty hard to see with the wind blowing the snow directly into our eyes, but she loved it.

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I just couldn’t believe how heavy and for how long it snowed; I haven’t seen winter weather like this since I lived in New York. Not this intensity, anyway. I love this kind of weather, and I know how crazy a lot of people think I am for it. But I will tell you this: if we reliably had snow like this that stuck around, I’d be investing in cross-country skis.  I miss that!

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I’m loving this view from the living room window.

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With the weather outside so…..frightful (ha!)…..I did what any sane person (who loves to eat) would do: I made cinnamon rolls. As always, I used Susan’s recipe, because it’s fool-proof.

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I’m so glad I did, too.  Waking up feeling like the back of a bus this morning was made somewhat better when I simply had to pop a roll in the microwave for 10 seconds and I could console myself with a delicious treat.

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The cats spent the day watching all of the birds out at the feeders.

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And THIS, my friends, is a happy man who worked very hard and fixed his tractor.  He’s currently out plowing. We did discuss wishing we knew for sure who the neighbor is that threatened our dogs (we’re pretty sure, but not 100%), so he could plow everyone else OUT, and him IN.

Oh well.

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He’s out there anyway. Most of the neighbors will be very happy and thank him. Some won’t. That’s life, and people, I guess.

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Either way, I’m grateful it’s him, and not me. I need to sleep off this cold virus.

Right after I enjoy how still, and clean, and fresh everything looks and smells. Breathe it all in, everyone. It’s fleeting.

 

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Blizzard!

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We’ve been waiting all week for impending doom in the form of a blizzard. All of the kids’ (and mine, let’s be real) fevered dreams of epic amounts of snow seem to finally be coming true.  The weather reports have been wildly different in the total amount we should expect; anywhere from 3 inches to 30.  Either way it doesn’t actually matter to us, because our road isn’t going to be plowed. Since the developer is no longer in the picture and our road isn’t state maintained (and our tractor is currently broken), we are officially stuck home for the duration, and potentially a while after.  Generally in our county the power tends to go out during storms like this (last time a storm like this blew through, many people were without power for a week or better, including Susan), so we’ve prepared.

The generator has been checked and we have extra fuel for it. Our kerosene heater has been serviced and we have plenty of kerosene.  The cars are all full of fuel. We have plenty of food and animal feed. We have plenty of books and knitting and board games.

In other words, bring it on!

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The kitties are another source of both warmth and entertainment.

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This guy is pretty happy with the prospect of idle laps this weekend, just waiting for him to fill them.

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I’ve also been baking a lot. This is the batter for Smitten Kitchen’s Banana Bread, and it is THE BEST banana bread I have ever made or eaten, ever. Probably because it contains this:

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I need to buy stock in this bourbon, because seriously, HEAVEN.

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I also made some regular bread to go along with dinner, which was a delightful Kale and Potato Soup.

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I added a sprinkling of sharp cheddar on top and everyone loved it. It was the perfect foil to the cold and blowing snowstorm happening outside, and a great reward after the work to make sure the animals would be okay.

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Just as the snow was starting this morning we got the heated buckets filled with water. We left the gate in the position that allows everyone access to the covered front porch, and I filled the goat shelter with fresh straw and hay. There’s a fresh hay bale out for them to eat. They’re all set to get snowed in, too.

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Basil and Caramel wouldn’t let anyone else in for awhile.

I’m not looking forward to lugging more buckets of water out tomorrow morning first thing, but all things considered, I’ll take it.  With a broken tractor, having to manage buckets out in the back pasture would have been a complete disaster. This winter, it’s just a few steps outside my front door. Absolute heaven compared to last year!

Paul has been in the garage all day working on the tractor, and now that I’ve gotten all of our creatures (and ourselves) fed for the day, I’m going to settle in with knitting and a lap cat. It’s still coming down out there (and the wind is crazy!), so I can’t wait to see how things look in the morning. But for now, it’s cozy time!

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Lighting the Solstice

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I have to admit: I kind of love the winter solstice. Not because it’s the shortest day, or even because it means the days will begin to grow longer. I love it because I see so many of my friends rejoicing it. So many of us lighting candles and trying themselves to be a light in the dark. It’s also a day that’s been recognized and celebrated for a millennia; it’s kind of profound to feel that sort of connection with so many of those that have come before us.

We missed the summer solstice at Stonehenge by a matter of weeks, and though it’s become a bit of a carnival atmosphere, it’s something I truly wish to do one year.

Last night we lit all of our candles, turned the tree lights on, and ate cookies to celebrate. Now that I think of it, I should have had some bourbon and egg nog. (Knob Creek Smoked Maple Bourbon and Homestead Creamery natural eggnog is a killer combo!)

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All of my favorite things at this time of year are those that sparkle and glow.

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Now THESE. These you have to make. Meringue cookies that melt in your mouth and are dead easy to make.  I made the espresso ones and cocoa ones (I added red food color because I was planning on adding peppermint with the cocoa and then forgot. Tonight I’ll make another batch and won’t forget – though I’ll make them green).

The recipe is simple and straightforward. Last year I just used a spoon and plopped small rounds onto baking sheets. This year I used a pastry bag and star tip. I do like to make them a bit small so they are bite-sized.

There’s just a few days left until Christmas. I haven’t quite finished my baking, but I got all of my boxes that I am sending out packed today (they’ll likely be late, but……better than never, right?).

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Baking Christmas

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Every year I draw up an ambitious list of cookies I plan to bake, and every year I begin to falter a few days before the holiday, having worn myself out in the process of producing so many goodies.

This year I have an ace up my sleeve: Neve.

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She’s been a great help with prep work and with getting everything into and out of the oven and onto cooling racks.  She’s also made up several batches of Peanut Butter Blossoms on her own.

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As always, we also made a large batch of Hamantaschen.

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Once again I also attempted Springerle. In the past, these cookies have consistently defeated me. This year I tried a new recipe, using King Arthur Flour’s Speculaas dough. There was a lot of chilling, rolling, chilling, molding, chilling, chilling, and more chilling. The results? Not too terrible. Not perfect, though, and I had a hard time with them. Still, I consider it progress!

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We have many, many more to go, but the doughs for our butter cookies and gingerbread cookies are already chilling and ready to be cut and baked.  I am going to try and get the Meringue cookies whipped up tonight to set in the oven overnight.

I also felt overly ambitious (or stressed?) and decided to make the gingerbread for our gingerbread houses this year. I used the recipe from the America’s Test kitchen cookbook and simply measured out shapes for the houses by hand. Neve wasn’t thrilled with how thick it was (and not perfectly straight-edged), but Oona was ecstatic that she had a house she could actually eat this year.

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Emily and I have been stuffing ourselves with all the extra gumdrops. I am going to need a major sugar-detox after this Christmas!

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Tomorrow I’ll work on getting the cookies ready for the kids to decorate, as well as trying some new recipes. That is, if I have the time. Paul is taking them out to see the new Star Wars movie so I can wrap gifts (and drink gluhwein, of course). For a few glorious hours I’ll have a Christmasy house all the myself (and the kitties).

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Getting Festive Up In Here

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Happy Hanukkah!

We like to celebrate with food every opportunity we can.  So even though we are not Jewish, this time of year there are plenty of latkes and blintzes to be had. If I had other culturally Jewish food in my repertoire, there’d be that as well (I mean, aside from all the cookies and breads and cakes, natch).

Tonight was our blintz night.  We LOVE blintzes. One of the kids usually asks for them for their birthday as well.  Honestly, though there’s a lot of steps, they’re super easy. I whip up some crepes, and fill them with a cream cheese/ricotta/powdered sugar/vanilla mixture, roll them up burrito-style and pan-fry them until they’re browned and hot.

Then I top them with some pre-fab blueberry pie filling and whipped cream. Done! Happy family.

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Then we eat them by candlelight. It’s really the only way to properly enjoy them. 😉

The weather has been working against our holiday spirit – it’s been so warm that we have been sweating while trying to do our schoolwork. In the evening, once it has cooled down again, we’ve been trying to keep the holiday ambience going as much as we can.

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The kitties enjoy it as well; if by “it” we mean chewing on the branches and swatting the candy canes off the tree.

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“Who, us???”

We have had morning frosts, which is a reassuring sign that it really IS winter, even if it doesn’t feel so much like it.

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It would be nice if the cooler weather would hang out long enough for us to wear our nice winter sweaters, though. It’s hard to stay motivated to knit with wool right now and create even more sweaters that will sit unhappy and unused all through the festive season each year.  Not that my Chimney Fire sweater is growing that fast or anything.

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During the week it’s usually evening before I have a chance to pick it up, and I’m pretty tired by then. As for the weekends, well…it IS gluhwein season, and you know wine and cablework don’t mix.

This weekend we’ll be hitting the holiday baking pretty hard; I’m feeling the usual ambition for lots of cookie variety and quantity. Now to figure out how to distill some of Oona’s energy for myself!

 

 

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The Best Weekends Are Fall Weekends

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It’s Monday morning, and boy am I feeling it. I packed a lot into the last few days, and I fear that the cold Paul and the kids have been dealing with may have finally reached me.

For most of Saturday I worked on baking and spinning. That luscious Blue-Faced Leicester roving was calling to me and I couldn’t tear myself away from the wheel!  I’ve got almost two spindles full; when I’ve got three I’ll ply them together. I can’t wait to see how it all blends together!

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I mean, those colors!!!! When Neve and I were wandering around Rhinebeck, I realized we kept grabbing the same colors. The colors of fall!  I had to make a conscious effort to look at other colors as well. There’s just something so homey and comforting about the golds, oranges, and reds of this time of year, though.

To match that coziness, I tried a recipe from King Arthur that I’d been eyeing for awhile: Cranberry-Pumpkin rolls.

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I left out the cranberries this time; Paul isn’t crazy about them, and I wanted to see how they’d do as plain pumpkin rolls.

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The result? Absolute deliciousness! I crammed them all into a 9×13 pan as suggested by the recipe, but I actually had dough leftover as it wouldn’t all fit. Cranberries would have been delightful in them, but in all honesty they do well enough without them as well.

That evening I met my sister out for my birthday gift from her: The Avett Brothers in Charlottesville.

It. Was. WONDERFUL.

They are so good live, I can’t even tell you. Maddie and I had such a good time; I have the best sister!

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October, But No Fest

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Today would have been Oktoberfest at the Frontier Culture Museum, but the weather had other ideas.  I’m pretty sad to be missing out on Bratwurst, beer, and Oompa bands.  They’ve rescheduled it, but it’s on a day I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it. So, to console myself I made pretzels and bratwurst, and I’m going to enjoy a good pumpkin ale brewed locally.

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The recipe is from Sweet Paul, and it’s my favorite soft pretzel recipe (and yes, I’ve tried quite a few).  If you make them, it’s worth it to be sure you have some pretzel salt (or coarse, or flake….just not regular ol’ table salt) on hand.

The rain is still coming down in buckets, and I’m still trying to slog through yarn dyeing.  I can’t use the multi-burner stove we have outside, so I’m down to one pot going at a time, and between the humidity in the house from the steaming dye water all day on the stove and the solid walls of water coming from the sky, the yarn is not drying well. Very. Slow. Going. Still, it IS going.

Paul is out gathering fencing supplies for the front yard. We are having to start very, very slowly, and small, given the expense. Even so, just seeing any amount of progress is comforting. These poor dogs are so OVER this lockdown nonsense. It has been heartening, just how many neighbors and locals I’ve talked to that have been supportive. It’s also kind of frightening just how many of them have been seeing coyotes. Giving the dogs the ability to be outside a bit more is going to be good; even so, we are nowhere near being able to enclose the entire acreage.

I’ve been drowning my sorrows in food, as usual (my baking knows no bounds lately!).  Paul, on the other hand, had a different idea.

A crazy idea.

An idea that I cannot believe is happening.

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Kittens.

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One of his coworkers found a bunch of kittens abandoned in a dumpster. The situation ended up being “we need to find them homes or they are going to the SPCA”.

One coworker took 1, and I found a home for 2 others with my sister.  The remaining 2 evidently are staying with us. All I can say is this: thank heavens I have a fantastic – and affordable – vet.

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The black one appears to be female and the other male. I say “appears” because they are only 3 weeks old, and all of the vets and techs at the office couldn’t agree.  So, we haven’t settled on any names yet.

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I think it’s a crazy idea to take in two more cats.  But then, Paul thought I was nuts to bring home chickens, goats, sheep, and several more dogs, so I guess I really have no footing here, do I?

The kids are over the moon, and i will say this: the little sneezeballs (as my hilarious and allergic friend Lisa calls them) ARE pretty warm and snuggly and a nice way to spend a cold, dreary October weekend.

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Autumn Delights

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It’s officially autumn now, and today it certainly feels it. It’s rainy and chilly, and the trees are showing the faintest hints of changing color. Only one mum plant from last year made it to this year, but it’s my favorite color, so that’s at least something!

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I bought two more in orange and yellow; hopefully I’ll get around to planting them soon!

It’s also time again for me to play with yarn and dyes, and combined with all the baking I’ve been doing, the house smells of wool and cinnamon. It’s heavenly!

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Apple pie is most definitely our favorite treat this time of year.  As always, I use Smitten Kitchen’s All Butter, Really Flaky Pie Dough. 

As for the filling, I sprinkle dry tapioca on the bottom crust, and toss in chopped apples mixed with cinnamon and sugar.  Add some dabs of butter, cover it with a second slab of crust, and voila!

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We’ve been hogging out on the pie and my Butternut Squash and Apple Soup.  Last night I changed it up just slightly by adding a teaspoon of boiled apple cider along with everything else. It added a whole other layer of delicious.  The combination of all these things makes for such a lovely, cozy evening.

But, though it’s not all doom-and-gloom around here, it’s also not all rosy and rainbow unicorns, either.

We are still trying to raise as much as we can to better contain the dogs.  Orzo has an appointment for a neutering, in the hope it will quell some wanderlust (and make him gain enough wait to not be able to clear a 6 foot fence anymore!).  Paul is in talks with a few folks for estimates, and we have made a campaign of aggressive friendliness while out walking the dogs.

Now, let me ask you: have you ever tried walking dogs that have spent their whole lives off leash? It’s getting better, but my first efforts were nothing short of epic disaster.  CIni is 12, after all. They all sort of had this reaction of what fuckery is this???

Cini and Lucy flat out refused to do their “business” while on the leash for the first two days altogether, and there was quite a lot of cleaning up to do in the house from that debacle.

It’s getting better with them, but Lucy is still pretty upset about the whole thing and regularly digs in her paws and refuses to move.

But we’ve been doing our best, and trying to greet as many people as we can with them.  We already know quite a lot of our neighbors who are wonderful, but we’ve seen a few out and about we haven’t met yet. A couple have been unfriendly and refuse to wave back or acknowledge us; but they’ve been few. Oh, humanity. You’re a crazy, messed up, beautiful, awful thing!

Our nearest neighbor told us she misses having Lucy keeping guard over her and her dogs; Lucy, for her part, seems to miss them as well, and keeps pulling me hard to get over there to greet them.

Sabine and Orzo are firmly chained up at the moment. We have no idea how else to keep them close while we await fencing options. They are not happy at all; Orzo has been whining and barking non-stop. Sabine just seems defeated.  It breaks my heart. But, they have shelter and access to food and water, even if they are unable to chase off any threats.

I’m cautiously optimistic; we’ll figure out something. In the meantime, we are hoping to keep some donations coming in so we can be sure we area able do things right!

And, lest you think it’s only the dogs that are tough to contain, I leave you with this hilarity:

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