Chicks Rock

Since Katie missed out on most of my Daring Baker challenge, I decided to make some cookies with her today.  I dyed some sugar and had the dough all ready to roll out when she got home from school.  Add a bag of Mrs. Carsons cookie cutters and well, fun was had by all.  As you can imagine, there is no such thing as too much sugar.  I had to shake off the cookies and reclaim the sugar after Katie was done “sprinkling” the “sparkly” on the cookies.  We now have a ton of cookies for her to enjoy.  I got the recipe fromAll Recipes-Sugar Cookie Cut Outs I’m pretty sure if left unattended, Katie would eat a whole bag of sugar. As it was, I let her think I was blind/stupid and didn’t bust her for tasting it. She has figured out sneaky, but hasn’t figured out that Mom can be sneaky too.

I made Tom take a couple of photos, not just because we were making cookies, but because we were using Mrs. Carsons cookie cutters. I can’t even imagine how many cookies have been made with these over the years. You can tell she liked them because she had a ton of them. Dogs, hearts, santas, candy canes, stars, turkeys, you name it, there is a cutter for that. I got a few things from her pantry when they were emptying her home, one of the other things I got was an awesome Romertopf clay cooker that is one of my most favorite things to cook with. Mmmm…Balsamic Vinegar and Rosemary Chicken and Vegetables. (I confess, the potatoes never turn out when I make that, but I’m working on it.)

Things I can’t do:
Make any other type of potato other than mashed.
Park
Cook pasta correctly
Remember to give customers their salad plates
Hard boil eggs reliably

Things I can do:
Make awesome bread
Follow about any recipe and it come out ok.
French braid

My lovely Mother in Law gave me my birthday present early, so this website and my email address are brought to you by Linda. I promise, I’m trying to get decent photo album software installed here so I can update it easier.

The Step Saving Kitchen!

http://www.archive.org/details/StepSavi1949

Awesome sauce! I may take a sawzall to my kitchen. Thank you Prelinger Archives. This film was made in 1949, we still don’t use a lot of the great ideas in it.

Hey, there is at least a foot of snow on the ground and it is 7am, what do you want from me?

I have applied to join The Daring Bakers (www.daringkitchen.com). It is a monthly baking challenge. As you may know, I deeply enjoy cooking and I feel this is a great way to expand my horizons.

I finally got a pain de mie and made my first loaf in it. What is a pain de mie? Well, it is a lidded bread pan that allows you to make perfectly square bread. Typically the bread is fairly dense, is great for making sandwiches and french toast with and, if I do say so myself, is perfect for PB&J. The pan was purchased with my King Arthur Flour gift card, courtesy of my lovely Mother-In-Law, Linda.

So anyway, expect more posts about food. Part of the requirements is that I photograph and blog about each challenge. Unfortunately, we can not reveal the monthly challenge ahead of time, however, if you like the kinds of things you see, I can arrange for lodging when I plan to do the challenge. (I’m looking at you Mom)

Since I live 5 miles out from BFE, getting the ingredients may prove tricky, but the challenges I’ve seen so far seem fairly basic. Don’t be surprised if I ask someone to mail me some dried seed pods from a plant that only grows on the leeward side of Mt. Everest during the month of February.

Anyway, wish me luck.

Well, we had a pretty good snow on Friday.  Got stuck in traffic going down the mountain to retrieve my family.  I’m so glad I have four wheel drive.  Ice formed on everything and now that it is melting, we can’t go outside without getting pelted by icicles falling out of the trees.  It seriously looks like there is a giant icemaker above our house that is just dumping ice cubes everywhere.   You can hear it falling in the woods and see exactly how avalanches start.

There is a thin layer of ice on top of about 8 inches of snow, break it off and it is soft, fluffy snow underneath.  Katie is mad she can’t make snow angels, but she has been doing her best to play with as many icicles as possible.

I have to say, it is much, much different than Tampa.

So for a week, my little angel informed me she was going to make it snow. Sure enough, the forecast called for snow. Saturday was to be the day. I was at work early and kept looking outside, waiting for snow. All I could think about was how much Katie would love it if it snowed and how much I hoped she was at home playing in it. Not one flake fell all day for me. I got off work and sadly worked my way up the mountain. Plenty of wet, no frozen. That is, until I took the last turn before our house, then everything was white. For about 100 yards around our house, everything was white. We had a couple inches that stayed around for a few days. Katie loved it, although it turned out, she spiked a fever and could only go outside for a few minutes at a time, she did of course, have her bowls of snow.

I watched an episode of Baking with Julia and saw a lady make the most scrumptious sticky buns made with brioche. Her dough made me yearn for the recipe. Watching her working the dough and seeing it take shape and be formed positively made me ache. I’ve got to track down that recipe! Brioche dough is such velvety, rich, luscious dough.

The weather here has been as low as 11 degrees, yeah folks, that is Fahrenheit. Our thin Florida blood is frozen. I can’t believe it hasn’t snowed more than once, we have had so much rain it is insane. Rumor has it, this is going to be a doozy of a winter. Record colds. Just like the LAST time I lived in Georgia. Do you realize that when I was 16 and moved to Dalton to live with my father, was the coldest winter they have had on record, EVER, to this day?

I’m cursed.

Oh, sorry for the 6 month delay in posting. Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.

We took a hike up to Rabun Bald. It is a two mile hike. For those that do not know, Rabun Bald is the second highest peak in Georgia at 4696 Ft. Our house is at 3652 feet. The path going up is around the corner from us, so we loaded up the goats and headed out. Tom of course, did not want to bring the goats, thought they would end up slowing us down. He realized quickly the goats loved it and Katie was the slow-down. He ended up carrying her most of the way back down. It was a perfectly beautiful day with a cool breeze blowing, sun shining and few clouds. Of course, we did not see any wildlife beyond a few snails. Contrary to Tom’s belief, the goats bleating did not in fact, attract bears.

I’m trying to upload some photos now.

Things to remember:
1. 3 year olds can’t really hike 4 miles up hill.
2. Even if they say they are tired, if something interests them, they have more energy that you.
3. Down hill is much nicer and much faster.
4. The tower at the top is fantastic, however, I will not be carrying my telescope up there any time this century.
5. The decision to make it so you can’t drive up was not a good idea, in my opinion.
6. Trail goats are cool.

So I was reading a few funny blog sites today. Specifically:

http://psychoticlettersfrommen.blogspot.com

and

http://www.whywomenhatemen.blogspot.com/

Where I found this little gem. Really, how do 5 guys get together to plan something like this, film it, then every single one of them decide it is AOK to upload to youtube?

I forced my husband to watch it. His comments? “Wierd.” and “That guy is so stupid, his last name is Cannon and he still feels the need to come up with a name like Pipelaya.”

I have seen the weirdest creatures since spring decided to get sprung. Oh, by the way, we have a new addition to the family. Tom found a box turtle that now has a very nice home. She doesn’t have a name yet, but she looks to be pretty old. Her shell around the edges is pretty beat up, but otherwise, she is a pleasure. Katie likes watching TV with her.

Anyway, on to the mutants. I’m digging out a small pond for the turtle and I find this thumb size freaky peach colored thing. It looked almost like a sand flea. It has pincers, and the body curved around. Unfortunately, It was damaged in the digging. After some googling, evidently it is a pupae of a beetle. A darned big one from the looks of it.

Today, Fathers Day, we had a picnic at the community park. The park has a playground and a great little stream as well as some rockin’ rocks for climbing. Tom was panning for gold while Katie was freezing her butt off but refusing to get out of the water. She likes wood. She likes throwing wood and watching it float downstream. She also likes throwing rocks. We actually went to 3 different waterfalls today. She is a natural climbing around the rocks. She does not like sitting in the waterfall itself though. The fact that it is about 65 degrees and the water is around 50 degrees might have a bit to do with it.

Sorry, freaks of nature. At the Rabun Branch waterfall, I look down in the water and it looks like there is a big flower bud in the water. I grab a stick and the bud swims away! I keep looking and see what has to be a 4-5 inch tadpole. I swear, it had to be almost as big as my hand. I told Tom, he didn’t believe it was that big, then he came over to see it. His words? “Holy Shit!” We couldn’t catch one as I was unprepared. Next time? I’m bringing my water shoes, some nets and my bait bucket baby!

In the little creek that runs along our property line, I saw a nice fat crawdaddy. He hid in the much before I could gather my sanity.

Evidently, I need a camera mounted to my head at all times. We saw zero wildlife for months, and now, every day it seems I see something else/new/huge/freakish.

No snakes yet. No bears yet. No coyotes yet. Excuse me while I feverishly knock on wood.

Well, my chicks arrived 2 weeks early so it has been busy as heck for me trying to keep baby chicks in and persistent goats out.   I took some pics of the coop and run.  It ended up being smaller than I intended.  I gave Ace Hardware 3 tries to order the right wire and they kept getting it wrong and I had to get something up quick!

Unfortunately, the run is pretty much all sun.  So I made a shadecrow.  She isn’t designed to scare, but to provide shade.

Also put up a swing for Katie, which she insists on calling the “Wheee!”  She is once again, a swing addict.  Although thankfully this time, the swing doesn’t require an endless supply of D batteries.

Tom has been job hunting like mad.  Needless to say, the job situation up here sucks.  He has some good leads, one for an actual network administrator, we should be hearing about that one this week.   I’ll start looking next week.

On to the pics!

Doodle Do

Shadecrow- (Yes, that was my prom dress and hey Kim, thanks for the wig!)

The Babies

And to keep you updated: KayKay loves baby chickens, baby goats, Go Diego Go, Max & Ruby and just absolutely adores The Wonderpets. Her summer vacation is filled with dirt, water, critters and lots and lots of outside. I really need to get a picture of her ready to go outside. It consists of shoes. Just shoes. I swear, our neighbors must think we never dress her since every time WE turn around, she has shucked off her clothes and is running wild. I dressed her 3 times before 11 am the other day and our neighbor Nancy STILL saw her naked.

Oh, weed eated the yard the other day. Found nothing but one frog and two hornets nests. Tom trimmed up by the road and found a box turtle! No fair! Turtle is now living in the chicken run. For the time being. I’ll probably let her loose soon.

The weather here has been just wonderful, as you can tell from the pictures. Even the hottest day so far doesn’t compare at all to Florida. We get a nice breeze through the woods and over the mountain so it never gets muggy…yet. Of course, we’ve had about a bazillion severe weather forecasts, mostly it is just rain, rain and more rain, unless it is snow or fog. There are always clouds in the forecast.

I’ll try to get more pics of KayKay. Maybe even some with her clothes on.