What a Wonderful World

Just love this.

Subversive plot

My sister sent me this video. I really, really think it’s a good idea.

I wondered

I wondered why I was up so late last night.

And then I figured it out. I didn’t want to go to the graveyard. I don’t need anything to remind me that Dad isn’t here. I miss him every day.

I gritted my teeth and went anyway. Stood at his grave, thinking about him. Feeling the loss all over again.

It was still nice to be with family. And interesting to see how many other people put decorations on the graves. From a pot of poinsettia all the way up to fully decorated trees.

Working on

When Dad died last year we went looking for something for Mom to do. I had thought to make a quilt of Dad’s old shirts and Mom accepted the idea and decided to help me. We’ve worked on them on-and-off for the past 10 months or so. Mom thought to make five of them. Which [...]

Ephemeral art

I turned one of the side tables outside into temporary art this weekend. We had another wind storm and the patio is covered with leaves. I never thought of the lacebark elms as having much in the way of fall color. Apparently I just haven’t been looking closely enough.

Macadamia nuts

A few months before my grandmother died I took a few macadamia nuts from the tree in her backyard and planted them in my front yard. To my great surprise, they grew. At one point someone told me that it would be 11 years before they produced any nuts. Further reading implied that only grafted trees would really produce nuts.

Someone needs to tell that to my tree. It started producing nuts at around 5 years.

And each year it produces a larger quantity.

Macadamia nuts are expensive and I think most people think it’s because they have to be flown in from Hawaii, and I’m sure that contributes to their cost, but another factor is how hard they are to open.

The shells are up to 1/8 of an inch thick. The only way I have to open them is with a vice. When I was a kid I would sometimes open them with a hammer, but that’s really not safe as they will ricochet all over the place. The insides of the shell are actually pretty, dark brown on one half and ivory on the other.

Adventures in baking #2

Today I made an apple pie totally from scratch. These are the things I learned:
1. Don’t wear black when playing with flour.
2. Apple corers are pretty much useless. Cut the apples in half, peel, then cut off slices. Much easier.
3. There’s a reason they tell you to work with ice water. I didn’t last time and it was a mistake.
4. Don’t throw away the pieces of crust. Roll it out, put cinnamon and sugar on it and cook it. Delicious.
5. My cat will happily eat raw pie crust.

I still don’t know how it will turn out. It’s in the oven right now. But it sure smells good.

What was said and what we hear

When I was a kid we went to Canada. It was really beautiful.

That’s me, in the middle.

It was a pretty wild place.

I remember this river. I remember it rushed by so quickly. I remember Dad telling me that if I stepped into the river and got pulled away by the current, he wouldn’t come in after me. What I heard was that he would come in after me, but he probably wouldn’t be able to save me and might die himself.

So I heeded the voice of caution and didn’t go too close. And my memories of Canada are beautiful.

Politics

When does it stop being about who wins the fight and who does a better job?

Adventures in baking

I’ve been experimenting with baking bread for a while now. I started with a couple of boxes of mix and have graduated to actually making it from a recipe. I’ve only made a few, the hardest part being to just follow the recipe. I don’t feel like I have a good enough grasp on the process to start messing with it.

Nothing I’ve made so far has been a disaster; each has been at least edible. My latest attempt was Honey Oatmeal Bread. This is the tastiest bread I’ve made so far. The texture was the only thing that may have lacked a little. Not sure if that’s because of the recipe or if I just didn’t knead it enough. I did it as long as it says, but as I do it by hand and it called for 20 minutes of kneading, I didn’t do any more than called for.

It’s still quite tasty. Definitely my favorite of what I’ve made. It also actually looked like what you see watching a cooking show while I was making it, which was encouraging.

I’ve been using the flour we have on hand. We’ve always had flour on hand, but it was mostly used for breading fish and cookies once a year. I’m anxious to start using the whole wheat flour the Wonderful Spouse got for me. Try a multigrain next time maybe.

On a side note, the WordPress spellchecker does not recognize the word ‘knead.’