Today, we finally started on the bathroom.
I got my darling, somewhat more able bodied daughters to clear out the shelves for me. Among the things they found was a box of prescription medication from 1984.
It seems they didn’t do child safe containers back then.
Then I started on the counter, and an item we’ve been really avoiding until now.
I don’t know the names of these ones. Time to break out the bird books!
If they’re unpacked…
Unlike the jays, the chickadees are quite comfortable grabbing some seeds while these birds are around.
Update: The one with the most red on it is a male pine grosbeak. I thought the one with just a red cap might be the female, but from what I can find online, it is the yellow one that is a female grosbeak.
Still no deer, but plenty of action at the feed this morning.
This was taken using a 70-300mm lens, zoomed in as far as it could go, so we’re not all that close. I know that there’s also lots of reflections of trees on the window – enough to confuse the birds into trying to fly into them (when I was a kid, we once had a prairie chicken fly right through the glass; we installed chicken wire outside the window after that). Yet, it seems as if this Blue Jay is watching me taking pictures of him.
Still keeping an eye out!
The jays are not as skittish as the chickadees, staying at the feed longer, but they still dash in and out, quickly retreating into the branches. It makes getting good shots more challenging. Especially with the zoom lens.
There are always a LOT of chickadees! They quickly dash in, grab a seed, and dash out again. Skittish little guys. They like to hang out in the shrubs outside our dining and living room windows.
The red squirrels, on the other hand, are much bolder and assertive. This guy stayed at the seeds for quite some time, with a Blue Jay in the branches above, watching and waiting for him to leave. He took his time about it!
In the summer, they would come to the house and take dog food to store for the winter (we’d find a stash in the wood pile, every now and then). My late father quite enjoyed them. One fine sunny day, my dad went out on the front steps and sat down in the warm sun. Eventually, he lay back and fell asleep.
He woke up to find a squirrel on his chest, checking him out!
Bold, indeed!
The Re-farmer
We broke out the sourdough starter again today; this time for something sweet!
The following recipe is modified from The Sourdough Cookbook; Soft Oatmeal Cookies. There are some really awesome recipes in this book!
1 cup butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup water
1 cup sourdough starter
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 cup chocolate chips
Grease a baking sheet (or two), set aside, and preheat oven to 400F.
In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugars together.
Beat in egg and vanilla until fluffy.
Stir in water and sourdough starter.
In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda and salt. Stir into the sourdough mix.
Stir in rolled oats.
Stir in chocolate chips.
Drop by spoonfuls until prepared baking sheet(s). Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until golden brown.
Remove from baking sheet and cool on rack. Clean and grease baking sheet between batches.
It is interesting to make sourdough sweets. I find you can’t really identify that distinctive sour taste that you would find in making a bread or pancake. Yet, there is a definite “something” that accents the flavour.
These cookies turned out nice and fluffy on the inside, with a light crispiness to the outside. Great with peppermint tea!
The Re-farmer
I do believe my daughter and I came very close to dying today!
I still can’t believe it.
My older daughter and I did some last errands today before returning my brother’s van. A trip to the dump, the post office, quick trip to the next town, a bit of gas, then dropping it off at my brother’s.
Finished at the dump, we got back on the main highway. There was a truck with a semi trailer coming at some distance, so when I turned, I gunned the van to get to highway speed as quickly as possible, to give the truck plenty of room. It didn’t take me long at all to get to the speed limit.
Unfortunately, the truck was going faster than the speed limit. I could see him catching up to me, so I started increasing my speed slightly, hoping he would back off.
He didn’t.
Even as I increased my speed more, he was soon tailgating me.
This rather concerned me, because I know those trucks need a lot of room in front of them, because of how much more distance they need to come to a full stop in an emergency. I thought he might try and pass me, once the oncoming traffic was clear, but he didn’t. He just stayed on my bumper.
I am not one to speed if I can avoid it, but I wasn’t going to have a truck that size riding my ass. So I increased my speed some more and finally opened the space between us.
I didn’t have far to go, though, before I had to make a left turn off the highway.
Keeping an eye on my rear view mirror, I made a point of beginning to signal my turn well in advance, and before I started slowing down for my turn.
As I started slowing down, I could see him come barreling up to me. He was not slowing down at all! Not only that, but he started to pull over onto the shoulder, to pass me on the right.
I knew there would be no room for him to pass me on the right, so I quickly lane changed into the opposite lane. Before I could even take my turn (at an unsafe speed, since I was never able to slow down as much as I should have), he passed us on the right, so close the entire vehicle was buffeted. My daughter, who was better able to see him at that point, barely had time to realize what was going on when he went by, and she could see how close he came to hitting us.
He never slowed down at all. Not even the slightest.
Thank God there wasn’t any oncoming traffic, which allowed me to change into the opposite lane.
I still can’t believe the guy did this. There was no way he would have cleared us, if I had not driven into the other lane. He would have hit us. No doubt about it.
What was he even thinking??
The Re-farmer
The deer have yet to discover the feed we’ve started leaving out for them.
Other critters, on the other hand, are appreciating it.
So far, we’ve seen some Blue Jays, my daughter spotted a Grey Jay, and of course there have been plenty of chickadees and squirrels.
Here are some photos my husband got through the living room window this morning, with our old Nikon D80.
Blue Jays are one of the few birds we see more often in the winter.
Red Squirrels are pretty much the only type of squirrel we get here. About an hour’s drive away, my sister gets both these little squirrels and the huge grey squirrels in her yard.
Wildlife visits are one of the positive trade offs with this move!
The Re-farmer
Okay. New Year’s is done and while Christmas isn’t over for a few more days, we won’t be able to do anything for Three Kings Day this year, so I have no excuses.
Holiday is over. Time to get back to work unpacking.
We are at that point where the essentials are unpacked, so we can get away with not unpacking more and still be able to function, despite the chaos. So it’s really easy to get distracted with the many other things that crop up. We are also not taking more things to the shed for storage right now, because of the cold. It’s not far from the house, but loading and unloading the vehicle in these temperatures can lead to frostbite. So it will wait.
My goal now is to unpack at least one box a day.
This is not as small a goal as it seems.
In order to unpack a box, that requires a place to unpack its contents into.
To give an example.
My FIL is very generous and, when he got himself a Keurig and began ordering pods online regularly, he would order extra for us as a gift. We were getting cases of Keurig varieties every month. This was faster than we actually consumed them, so they quickly added up until we thanked him but let him know we were good for a long while.
When we started packing up the room they were in, I even found about 6 unopened boxes that had been set aside, then covered by something else and forgotten.
I filled a size large box of unopened boxes of pods, plus another medium box mostly full of opened ones, plus my daughters had more opened boxes on the third floor.
We ended up setting the Keurig machine up in the living room, near my crochet corner. The shelf it’s on has a bunch of open boxes of pods for immediate use stuffed inside, but there was no where near enough room for all the opened boxes, never mind the unopened ones.
I decided that I would store the rest of the boxes in one of the bottom shelves of our large divider shelf between the living and dining rooms.
In order to do that, we had to move the things that were in front of it. This included 4 extra chairs, used when we have enough company to extend the table. My sweet daughters checked out all of the dining chairs that were here and picked out the 4 most stable ones for daily use, then hauled the remaining 4 into the basement. A couple of them are heavy oak, and the design of these chairs is cumbersome, so this was not an easy job.
Then I had to find temporary places for the other stuff in front of the shelves, move the litter box out of the corner (we still haven’t figured out a permanent spot for that), clean the space the litter box was in, and only then could I finally access and open the shelves I was after.
I completely filled the shelves, and still had to find a way to jam a bit more into the shelf I’ve got the Keurig machine sitting on.
I’m going to set up a separate garbage can, just for the pods. When it’s full, I’ll empty the contents into the compost bucket, then keep the cleaned pods for starting seeds. Considering how many pods we’ve got, I’ll likely have plenty to do crafts with, too.
What? Did you think we were just going to throw them all in the garbage? ;-)
End result: I got a size large box, plus half a size medium box, unpacked, meeting my goal of the day, and in the process, cleared out another space that needed to be worked on.
Which is how it’s going to be for the next while, with pretty much every box that is left to be unpacked.
I look forward to when it’s warm enough to move more furniture and boxes to the shed. There are still several areas I haven’t even looked at, yet. Like the dresser tucked into a nook between the bathroom and Old Kitchen doors. I have no idea what’s in it, but on top of it there appears to be a memorial of some kind, for a woman who’s name and face I don’t recognize at all.
Every now and then, I look at it all and it’s so disheartening. It’s going to take months. But if I just do that one box a day, it will much more manageable.
And to think I used to like moving.
The Re-farmer
I read a very interesting post this morning (Joe Average Buys Groceries) that I’ve found myself thinking about, off and on, throughout the day. The first part talked about how much people spend per month, per person, for food. The other part was personal experiences involving buying food on a limited budget.
Reading it got me thinking about the many things can affect our food purchases. As someone who has had a lifelong interest in food history – I believe one of the best ways to learn about a culture is through their food – I’ve noticed the many factors that influence what becomes a “cultural” food. Geology. Climate. Trade. Levels of individual freedom. Government. So many things are involved outside of just, who grows what and what does it cost people to acquire it.
There is a lot of discussion these days about affordability and accessibility of food. Continue reading
While I was writing my last post about using our new sourdough starter for the first time, I was really excited to find a particular sourdough cookbook available.
This is the cookbook that started me on making sourdough. I had found it in the library in Victoria, BC. I took many notes from it, and I’m glad I did, because I never saw it again. Until tonight!
I’ve ordered myself a copy and can’t wait until it comes in. I collect cookbooks, with a preference for older ones and historical cookery, and I love cookbooks that you can read for the information and stories that are included. This is one of those. It’s just chock full of interesting things.
This will not be a review of the book, however. I’m just going to flat out recommend getting it, if you have an interest in sourdough cooking.
What I’m going to do, instead, it tell you the tragic tale of our first sourdough starter.
I still miss that starter.
Continue readingThis morning was our first use of the sourdough starter, to make some basic pancakes.
They were awesome.
I topped mine with just a bit of butter and a sprinkling of brown sugar.
The sourdough flavour was mild, but definitely there. They were also light and fluffy.
Before I go on to the recipe, here are a few tips.
It’s very helpful to pre-measure all your ingredients first. It’s also a good idea to use a bigger mixing bowl that you might normally use. Once the wet and dry ingredients combine, there is a chemical reaction between the baking soda and the sourdough, causing it to bubble up and expand a fair bit, very quickly. I’ve made a flapjack hotcakes recipe using an Alaskan Sourdough where the batter would quickly triple in size! You’ll want to be able to start cooking them right away, to keep them all light and full of air. I started preheating my pan after pre-measuring the ingredients, and just before I starting combining them.
Again, you’ll want to avoid using metal bowls or utensils. Metal will affect the flavour of your sourdough, so stick with wood, plastic, glass or ceramic.
It now has a name! Meet Sir Sour Alot!
This is what the sourdough starter looked like this morning, before I stirred it. With my doubled recipe, I used 2 cups of starter, which left behind maybe 1/8th of a cup. More than adequate. I fed the remains with equal parts flour and warm water, plus a bit of sugar, right away. I will feed it again tonight, so there will be a decent quantity for anything we’d like to use it for tomorrow.
Here is the recipe I used this morning, except that I made a double batch.
Quick Sourdough Pancakes
(from The Sourdough Cookbook)
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp sugar
1 egg (beaten)
1 cup sourdough starter
1 cup milk
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
In a large bowl, stir together the dry ingredients and set aside.
In a medium bowl, stir together the wet ingredients.
Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just moistened.
Cook on pre-heated griddle or frying pan for about 1-2 minutes each side, or until golden brown.
I like to finish off cooking with one giant pancake. Just because.
These can be modified by adding chopped pecans, frozen berries, diced bananas or even crumbled bacon. Just fold 3/4-1 cup into the batter after it’s mixed.
If you give these a try, do feel free to leave a comment and let me know how you like it!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 