Author: Mom

In which I go off on a wild tare

So, we have this bay window right? And its big, and pretty, and has a decent amount of room for a display in it. That decent amount of room is usually covered in all kinds of detritus of the house. It leaks cold air like a sieve. You can feel it flowing over your hand like a liquid if you put your hands on the bottom.

Not today. Not any longer. I did a thing. I took everything out of it. The Terrarium. The random horse statue. The weirdly healthy african violet. All re-homed (some of it needs to be permanently re-homed, but I’ll get there).

Once I had it clear, I cut several pieces of 3/4 inch foam insulation to fit in it and covered the shelf.

 

Then I had to trim it to make it look pretty.

Once it was (almost) completely covered, I hit my stash. A couple years ago I made a quilted circle skirt. I had a fair amount of the cotton batting left over that I should have thrown out years ago. I used that to cover the foam insulation and make it look like snow. Its cotton with no glitter in it so we don’t have to worry about microplastics. I used scraps to fill in the gaps that I couldn’t get into with the foam core.

My ability to throw things out has taken a huge hit, but hey. It looks amazing.

Once it was covered, I broke out the lasercut village display Michele gave us years ago. It is really pretty and I love it. I hung two strings of LED lights around it, and added our window candles. It looks so cheery and light!

I sent pictures to Michele. Hopefully she likes them.

I can’t feel cold air pouring out of the windows anymore, so hopefully that is all set, too. It would be nice to not have to plastic the window this year.

SCIENCE!

I wanted to see what happened if I poured water off the deck in -7° weather. The result wasn’t an instant steaming cloud, but it was pretty fun!

Remember – this was boiling water. It would have done some damage if it splashed back at me, so I chose my location carefully, and didn’t dump the whole thing at once, but did a slow pour.

Still really cool!

SpeedSnail! Where are you?

I got a fish tank a year or so ago. It’s one of those Back to the Roots garden tanks that support a betta and three plant buckets. We had an alge problem, so we added a snail. He gets around a lot, so we call him the SpeedSnail.

(The fish is Fish Stick. It’s what was for dinner the night we brought him home.)

Yesterday, I noticed that the tank walls were getting a little brown. I decided today was the day to clear the counters and do some maintenance on the tank. The first part of that maintenance is to take out the plant pots.

So, I take out the middle pot. The roots are a little long, but not bad. Take out the far left pot. That one is ew and I may need to invest in new growth rocks. Then comes the one with the spider plant in it. This was an experimental plant. I look in the pot and notice one of the rocks looks strangely smooth. And round.

We collect shells. I have several snail shells from various beaches and our yard. So the obvious first thought is, “who put one of the shells in there?”

Then I look at the tank, and all the alge. I look at the tiger-striped shell in my pot. And SpeedSnail took a quick trip back into the tank.

He must have climbed up the feeding tube, gotten across the rocks, and discovered there was no water up there. He sealed himself up, and waited for the water to come back.

I watched him for a while before I left to meet Quinn for lunch, and spotted him sneaking a peak from inside his shell. When I got back to the house, he was busy hoovering up alge as fast as he could.

So, the snail had an adventure. The tank will get nice and clean again. FishStick can make aggressive moves against a tank-mate that can’t care less about what he’s doing.

All is well.

Its been a while

I haven’t been posting much lately. Lets see what I’ve bee up to:

  • I’ve repaired 6 Chromebooks this week. There will be more tomorrow.
  • Apple is replacing a damaged iPad because I am wicked polite and prepared with documentation.
  • I’m not going up the 20′ ladder. Just no.
  • I’ve finished yet another stocking, except for the name. I’m putting it off because I’m not sure about placement. Probably, I should make it easy to remove and change if they want to.
  • Accidentally ruined my favorite hiking boots.
  • Took some pictures.
  • Knit a hat.
  • Bought Christmas cards. I’ll start filling them out as soon as I’m done with the stocking.

All in all, life has been pretty good!

Cup-Eggs, Keto style

Terrible photo including my nasty muffin tin. But they are very yummy.

We can take the long personal story as read, yeah? Straight into the recipe:

Ingredients:

  • 12 eggs
  • 2 or 3 glugs* of heavy cream
  • diced peppers (two colors, at least, for the pretty)
  • Mexi-cheese

What is a glug, you ask?Tip over the jug, and stop pouring when it has made the glug noise the stated number of times. Yes, it is a technical term!

Directions:

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 350.
  2. Mix all 12 eggs and the cream in a bowl using a whisk or a fork. It should get a little frothy, but not too bad.
  3. Pull out a muffin pan, and either spray the cups with cooking spray, or use cupcake papers (which is what I do because my muffin pans are ancient and rusty).
  4. Pour a roughly equal amount of egg/cream mixture into each cup.
  5. Drop some of the peppers into each cup.
  6. Drop a good-sized pinch of Mexi-cheese (or the shredded cheese of your choice) into each cup.
  7. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

Understand – these are all guidelines. You don’t need to use peppers (asparagus is yummy), or Mexi-cheese. If you can’t handle dairy, coconut oil is a great substitute. Try things! Make mistakes! Enjoy!

Super Spicy Gingerbread Cookies

Source:

Genius Kitchen’s Spicy Gingerbread Cookies

Notes:

  • Use metal cookie sheets, not a baking stone. You’re going straight from the fridge to a nice hot oven. The stone will not survive the transfer.
  • Use plenty of flour on your cutting surface.
  • Cut the dough into pieces of about a third of the dough each, and only pull one of them out of the fridge at a time to roll out and cut.
  • You are going to use so much plastic wrap with this recipe.
  • Its totally worth it.
  • To get the different colors of frosting, I usually get the biggest thing of vanilla frosting I can, and food color bits of it in sandwich bags. Cut off the tip of one corner and hey-presto decorating bags!

Ingredients:

  • 6 c flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 c softened butter
  • 1 c brown sugar, packed
  • 4 tsp ground ginger
  • 4 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 1/2 tsp ground cloves
  • 1 tsp black pepper
  • 1 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 lg eggs
  • 1 c unsulphated molasses

Directions:

  1. Sift together the first three ingredients in a side bowl (not the one you plan on mixing everything in, you will regret that if you try)
  2. In a mixer with a big bowl, cream butter and sugar
  3. Add spices & salt, then eggs, then molasses
  4. Slowly add flour mixture (not kidding about the speed – try to do it fast, and the whole thing explodes into a powdery mess)
  5. Combine everything at low speed
  6. Wrap the dough ball in plastic wrap, and chill for an hour
  7. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
  8. Put down parchment paper and flour it really well
  9. Roll to 1/8 inch thickness (WHO ACTUALLY DOES THAT? I usually do 1/4)
  10. Cut with cookie cutters, and place them on the cookie sheet
  11. Chill the sheet with the cookies on it for 15 min
  12. Go straight from the fridge to the oven
  13. Cook for 8-10 min
Cool completely before decorating.