Foreign Exchange Program

I had a little garden snake. She was brown with a sienna stripe highlighted by two creamy stripes down her back. She was sorta pretty in a snaky kind of way and we got along. Mostly she hung out in the artichokes. Except for those couple of times she surprised me while picking bush beans and strawberries. Sometimes a garden snake can be very unnerving.

Our foreign exchange program began with her.

One day she up and decided she was tired of the coast and wanted to check out the mountains. She hitched a ride in the engine of our truck. She almost changed her mind halfway through (and almost caused a wreck - I told you garden snakes can be unnerving!), but after checking out the hood, decided she'd stick with the original plan and headed back down into the engine.

Life is rougher in the mountains. She now has to deal with snow and rattlers and who knows what-all. But I hear the men are more rugged and I KNOW the bugs are more plentiful. She may think it was a good change of pace. I hope she's ok.

Now we get to the more sinister "exchange" part of this program. A week or so later, a mountain tree squirrel decides to check out the coast. Again in the truck engine. Except he didn't squirrel around during the trip.

There aren't any tree squirrels here in town. No ground squirrels either. Our mountain tree squirrel decided he'd hit the jackpot and took up residence in the chicken feeder.  He resisted efforts to trap him. He'd sit in the feeder or on top of the chicken coop and chatter at us and at the chickens and stuff his face. The chickens hated him.  I didn't care for him much either. I don't speak squirrel, but I used to understand a little. Though he had a strange dialect I think he was saying, "Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, naaaaaaah!" Hubby took that as a challenge and shot him.

And that was the end of the exchange experience. Or was it? A couple of weeks later Hubby is in the mountains and the truck starts running rough. He limps it to town to find that several hundred dollars worth of wiring has been chewed. The prints in the dust on the engine point to the squirrel mafia. I don't think we're ever gonna see our snake again. That's all I have to say about that. I think I've already said too much.

Granny's Toys

Have I ever mentioned that I live in a tiny house? After our youngest moved out, I weeded through our plethora of belongings with a fine-toothed comb. Not meaning to mix my metaphors, just letting you know I cast the stink-eye over our stuff and sold/donated/tossed literal truckloads I didn't think I'd ever need again. I was ruthless. How ruthless? So ruthless that when my little grandchildren visited, they had to draw in the dirt with a stick. So I had to think about how to acquire - and store - some quality toys. The kind of toys that would appeal to babies and older kids alike and take up a minimum of space.

Here's what I came up with.

After Sister used this dresser for several years, Mom used it for fabric storage. It's now my entertainment center.  It holds all our DVDs and VHS tapes. And we plunked our TV, VCR, and DVD players on top. But it has some *gasp* wasted space underneath where these baskets fit perfectly. OK, not perfectly. It's a little tight, but they still fit.

The left-hand basket holds all the Lincoln Logs I could find at yard sales and thrift stores. It also holds a set of plastic pioneers and livestock as well as some cowboys and indians. Babies enjoy chewing and banging themselves in the head with the logs. The older kids spend hours blocking whole areas of my home building forts and homesteads and eventually bombing and destroying said forts and homesteads. Apparently a short log set under a long log can fling another short log quite a ways. It was good to find that pretty much all children from crawlers to 10-year-olds enjoy Lincoln Logs. Then, when the babies are done drooling and mucousing on them and the older kids are done rubbing them around on the floor, they can be dumped right into a sinkfull of soapy dishwater and, after a quick rinse, they're ready for next time.

The middle basket holds two Potato Heads and all the accessories I could find at yard sales and thrift stores. Thank you, Sweetie, for the Ziploc of spud parts! The shoes and hats are popular with the little teethers, the older kids will sometimes "play" with the younger ones (if I put some stuff together and give it to baby he'll leave me alone), but little girls really love Potato Head. There are some old Matchbox cars and some action figures (GI Joe is NOT a doll!) in there also. Again, when the kids are done, dump 'em in the dishwater. Easy peasy.

The basket on the right has paper, coloring books, colored pencils and reading books. Those usually come out after the forts have been bombed to smithereens and tempers are heating up - cousins need a little quiet time. Alone. Separated by at least ten feet.

Then there's board games.

Our couch makes down into a full-sized bed that's not horribly uncomfortable. And it's got bonus storage space under the seat. A THREE-fer! It's just enough room for all the board games. They're enormously popular with everyone from about five years old on up. In fact, #1 Son (a thirty-something), asked us to bring Pig Mania down when we visit next time. The favorites here seem to be Tripoly and Dominos. Tripoly for the game (you get to bet with real poker chips) and Dominos for the effect. You know, setting up amazing, fantastical, exacting, intricate Domino agility courses only to knock them down.  'Cause nothing's so satisfying as the clacking destruction of a Domino set-up!

So, while there's nothing wrong with drawing in the dirt with a stick, Grandma still needs toys. A few toys with broad appeal that clean up easily and can withstand the rigors of drool, teethmarks, cannonades, and all other forms of play.

Of Bears and Elderberries

Our mountain property is home to lots of wild stuff. We pointed the game camera at our outdoor kitchen last July and August to see what was happening either while we were sleeping or while we were in town.

Surprisingly, the bears show up in the afternoon/evening only when we're not around. You can kinda see this guy checking out the bear box (between the two larger middle trees).

The big guy (we call him the 420 bear - see the time stamp):

The little guy:

The deer come out in the middle of the night whether we (and the dog) are there or not:

For some reason, the kitchen is worth checking out every single day. We're fanatics about keeping foodstuffs in the bear box or up out of reach (we have a cargo net in a tree). And NO food, shampoo, soap, or toothpaste where we sleep! I think our smell - probably the dog smell - keeps the bear away when we're there, but you never know what he'll do when an insane toothpaste craving hits. I've seen the Youtube clips! Would you want to wake up to a huge carrion-eater using YOUR purple Reach toothbrush? I think not.

So, the reason I told you all that is to tell you this: there is a battle of good and evil going on at the Spread. Human vs. animal. Wild and not-so-wild. And it's for the elderberries.

Every year I carefully evaluate the wild elderberry bushes. Some of the bushes are more like trees. The lower branches are bent and broken and dead where the bear and deer pulled them down to get at the fruit in years past, but the upper branches are heavy with clusters of tiny blue berries. One more week and they'll be just right. I go back the next week with my picking basket. No berries. The bear got them again! And the thieving gluttons didn't leave me a single berry!

Last September Hubby and I once again walked the razor edge of the elderberry ripeness/bear hunger ratio. And dang if we didn't time it just right. Woohoo! We took the quads out one afternoon and rode around for hours. We went to every single elderberry bush we knew of. And came back to camp with this:

Which made 10 of these:

Which tastes just like summer. Even when your outdoor living room looks like this:

and the footprints in your carpet look like this:

Sorry fellas. Maybe next year.

Fried Tatties and Eggs

Lazy morning fried tatties and eggs. Yum. But, while digging into my potato bin, I noticed several of my potatoes eyeing up. Not a problem!

I took out several that were way into the eyeing process and cut off the growing bits like this:

and fried up the ungrowing parts that were left. MMMmmmm good.

I let these four cut-offs sit for 24 hours. It's called chitting. You let them sit in the air until the cut part is dry and gray like this:

so they don't rot in the ground. Then I poke them in the dirt like this:

and cover 'em up like this:

and at the end of this next summer, they'll have given me 5-10 more potatoes from each chitted piece. And late next winter, I'll make fried tatties and eggs. And cut off the growing bits. And the process will start all over.

The Dreaded Drain Dreadlock

Ladies, do you know where your hair goes when it disappears down the shower drain? Wrong! It doesn't "go away" with the dead skin cells and soap scum and dirty water.

I was recently reminded that the hair that "gets washed away" forms a nasty dreadlock just under the drain workings of your tub and collects soap scum and dead skin cells like nobody's business. Urp. It also causes your tub drain to, well, not drain. Or drain slowly.

So get yourself a good natural-bristle hairbrush and give your hair a few strokes before you jump in the shower. It's good for your hair. It's good for your shower. It's good not to have Hubby come show you a drain-dreadlock so you know it's your fault the shower was draining slowly. Urp. :(

How to Throw a Sale

Do you yard sale? These days I have just about every thing I need, but I've been to a few yard sales in my time. I've thrown a few, too. I say thrown because I think throwing a yard sale should be like throwing a party because . . . (a)  you want your guests to find your place easily;  (b) you want them to have fun while they're there;  (c) you want them to go away happy.

We live at the dead end of a dirt road. People don't just drive by. So if I want to throw a sale, I have to advertise. We used to have a newspaper that allowed free yard sale advertising and they put out a weekly map of sales in the area. No more. So I just put an ad on Craigslist on the Thursday and Friday nights before the sale and make some signs.

Depending upon where you live, the most important part of advertising your sale could be signage. The all important cardboard-tacked-to-the-telephone-pole signage. Please, please think about your signs. I've seen so many like this:

GARAGE 
SALE!!!!
          3364 Mystreet

So frustrating! I've driven by and slowed down and finally had to turn around, stop and park and get out and stand in front of it with my glasses on to get the address. It's one of my peeves. Just know this: if a cardboard sign is tacked to a telephone pole, it usually means there's a sale - or, less often, an animal missing (but there's usually a picture in that case). Don't waste precious sign-space with the huge "GARAGE SALE!!!!!!!!" in ginormous letters. I like to paint "sale" in squatty fat letters on the top of my signs, then put the important stuff LIKE ADDRESS (hint, hint) in larger, easy-to-read letters in dark colors.

It's like navigating a labyrinth getting to our place so I have to get creative:

1. Make arrow signs. Just painted arrows on cardboard in the same colors used for the SALE signs. That way you can tack them up anywhere there's a spot that could be questionable (right, left, straight?) and point to where your potential customer should go.

2. Do it like Burma-Shave! Make up a simple rhyme, one line on each sign, and put them up on several phone poles in a row:  

Don't turn back now
Too much at stake
Treasures to be had
One last turn to make                   I'm sure you can think of a better one!

3. I've also done some attention-grabbing stuff like streamers stapled to the edges of my signs, but I've given up on balloons because they always get popped by the other nails and staples in the phone poles.

4. Take down your signs when the sale is over!!! I've been tricked by left-up signs before and showed up at a sale a week late. If you don't take down your old signs, you're not only littering, you're wasting peoples' time.

OK, so you've advertised. Here's some other stuff that could help you make your sale more successful:

1. Price everything. Just get a roll of masking tape and a Sharpie and put prices on your things. What's the big deal? I hate having to find someone and ask about the price on every little thing.

2. Get your stuff up off the ground. If you don't have tables, do you have sawhorses and boards? A ladder and the top of your fence with some boards between them? Geez, an ironing board with a "not for sale" sign on it that you could put some of your stuff on? The older I get the more I don't enjoy crawling around in someone's yard and poking through their stuff. What I really don't like is the row of boxes along the sidewalk with all the tangled cords and coat-hangers and what-not in them. If I have to dig through those, I'll pass.

3. Have fun with it! Engage your customers. Joke around. Barter. Haggle. Make deals with the kids. At our last yard sale, Hubby made deals with all the kids under about 10 or 11. He told them if they could accurately add up the prices on all the stuff they wanted, they could have it for half price.

4. If someone offers an amount lower than priced, but still reasonable, take it! You're just gonna have to haul it to the thrift store if no-one buys it anyway. And the thrift stores seem to be getting pickier and pickier - at least in our area.

So there you have it. My take on throwing a sale. If your guests customers can find it, have a good time while there, go away happy (and who doesn't love a yard-sale score?) I call it a successful party sale.

Just Puttin' It Out There

I heard somewhere that if you want something, or really need something, you need to tell people. If you're looking for a used washing machine for cheap, tell people. If you need babysitting on Wednesday evenings, tell people. And someone will come along with an idea or who knows someone else who can fill that need.

Well, a while back I had myself a little fit about the scarcity of book matches for my powder room. In fact, I'm afraid I ranted a little bit on this blog.

Then what happens? My beautiful sister-in-law, Hair That Flows, drops by last Monday to give me some homegrown and hand-tied lavender smudges. Then, today, Hubby checks the mail and what's there? A package from my cousin Kandy Girl. It's a WHOLE BOX of matches! 50 books!

Check out the riches! My toilet overfloweth with smell-goods! I'll have the sweetest-smelling powder room west of the Cascades. Thank you HTF and KG  :)

So, the moral of the story is this:  if you have a need, put it out there.  Maybe you're blessed to have a family like mine. Maybe you know someone who knows someone. Somehow or other, hopefully sooner than later, your need will be met.

Ye Olde Hot Water Bottle

Remember these? I love them! Not so much for in town, though I do use them here, but when we're up in the hills. On our off-grid mountain property these suckers are gold.

You know, we went the rice bag route - and the kiln-dried corn bag route, but they only seem to hold heat for about two hours. And a microwave is required. There's no microwave on the mountain. But there is fire. And where there's fire, hot water can be had.

I finally broke down and bought one (because one is all there was on the shelf at Walgreens due to their popularity) to warm my toes at night when we're up in the hills. It gets pretty nippy up there after the sun goes down - even in the summer. Since wool holds heat, I decided to make a wool cover for it out of a thrifted jacket. It's aaahhhhh-mazing! After heating my tootsies all night, it even had a little warmth in the morning.

So I bought two more. One stays in the hills, two stay with us no matter where we go. Hubby has gotten so he uses one almost nightly. I know. We're old. We're so old we even travelled with them when we went to Arizona this last December. But they're just so cozy!

I used some wool yarn to crochet a bag-type cover for hubby's HWB. It's chunkier than the other covers and seems to hold the heat better.

So you can keep your piddling rice bags. We're heatin' it old school!

Canning With BPA

In the last few years I've become aware of the plastic lining in store-bought food cans. Did you know canning companies use plastics (with Bisphenol A - that's BPA - linked to reproductive dysfunction, breast and prostate and blah blah cancers, etc.) to line the cans that hold our food? You did? Huh. I was clueless.

Even more horrifying to me when I think of all the times I put a can of food on the campfire to heat when we're out in the woods, is that I not only ingested some horrible poisons from heating up tin or whatever the cans are made of, but I also ate plastic. Eeeeewwww.

So, for these and some other reasons,  I'm casting around for replacements for my commonly used canned foods. Thanks to some generous people on Pinterest who post their recipes for free, I make my own cream of whatever dry soup mixes. I can my own veggies and tomato products. I can some soups, stocks, spaghetti sauces and other ready-to-eat meals. I recently began canning dry beans and have even come up with a baked bean recipe that uses bits of a couple on-line recipes and that rivals Van Camp's (which is at the pinnacle of baked bean goodness according to this family).

I snapped a photo of the last batch that came out a couple days ago:

Then, right on the heals of my self-righteous canning spree, I found out that BPA is in that rubbery ring on the canning lids you find in the store and have used forever. Wow. Bit of a buzz-kill.

So I look around for a remedy for that and find these:

Tattler REUSABLE canning lids.  AAAAAaaaaaaAAAAAAAHHHHH - angels singing, a spear of light coming down from the heavens! They're BPA free. They're American made. AND they're reusable. It doesn't get any better than that.

I got 'em for myself and Sister two Christmases ago. There's only one problem with them. I have to ask that people give them back when I gift some of my home-canned stuff. Actually, there's one other problem. What do I do with my supply of regular canning lids? Well, BPA leaves our system fairly quickly in urine, but I found out that plastics are so pervasive in our society that people who were FASTING and then tested for BPA were found to have it in their system. So I'm gonna use up my supply of regular canning lids. I just told myself it was ok. 'Cause everybody is exposed to BPA loaded plastics in this day and age. Yeah. That's it.

Sounds and Smells

Isn't it funny where a certain sound or smell will take you?

I spent an enjoyable half-hour this morning as a 16-year-old laying in bed in the dark with the rain drumming on the roof.  Sixteen, you say? Yes. Because sixteen is exactly where that sound takes me.

We; Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Sister, me, were living in Northern California. No, not San Francisco. In my world San Francisco is just a bedroom community for LA. I mean God's country. And there's six hours of driving north of San Francisco before you begin to enter its southern edge.

We'd rented the Brown House on the Corner and I finally had my own room. It was on the second floor. This was one of the very few times I didn't share a room with Sister. It was tiny and purple and I loved it. Mom and Auntie had painted a purple iris on the wall. It had a half a closet stolen from space above the adjoining staircase. I mean a half-closet. It began at waist-height and ended just over my head. Maybe two feet wide. There was a small window overlooking the hip roof of the first floor. And the whole house was roofed in tin.

Sometimes I'd wake up at night to the thundering din of rain hammering down just outside my window. I never minded. I'd lay in my warm bed in the dark and think my 16-year-old thoughts and feel safe and cared-for.

The Brown House on the corner. With a tin roof. Upstairs in a tiny purple room. In a warm double bed. In the soft darkness. Where does the sound of rain take you?

Blue Skies, White Laundry

Now that I have more time to actually do this in the middle of the week, I've been trying to be more diligent with line-drying laundry. Even though the towels get crunchy, it's worth that just-dried-off-with-a-cheese-grater feeling just to smell that green, sunshiney outside smell on my clothes in the middle of winter.  Not to mention the little money-saving aspect. AND that the sun helps whiten the whites. This last week was perfect for line-drying without the worry of a heavy fog coming in and dampin' up my unmentionables.

Just look at that blue sky! No fog here. There's nothing worse than funky, fog-damped socks. Or anything else, for that matter - but socks have got to be the worst.

I love my umbrella-style clothes pole. It's gotten a workout over the years and will be working even harder this year. BUT, something I'm really glad to have with this changeable coastal weather is the foldable accordion-style clothes rack I use in the house. This week it's supposed to rain every day. I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing a lot of the indoor clothes rack. Stay dry, ya'll.

Fried 'Puter

The other day I spilled an entire large cup of heavily creamed and sugared coffee into my laptop. It was on. It was charging. And then it wasn't. I immediately turned it upside-down and sopped up all the coffee I could get at, but I fear my little MacBook will never be the same even if it does miraculously show life in the future.

I must say that it's terribly short-sighted of Apple not to design a drain hole into the bottom of their laptops. Especially since they're shaped like tiny bathtubs and can hold surprisingly large amounts of liquid. Or maybe they're forward-thinking . . . ? Hmmm. That's all I have to say about that.

So, while I was computerless and entirely informationless, I was unable to find out a BUNCH of stuff! Whatever happened with Christopher Dorner? WHY can't dogs have chocolate? Why didn't I write down my recipe for baked beans? I couldn't creep on my grandkids' photos on Facebook. It was horrible.

I went to Simply MacIntosh in Arcata because I like Macs and Apple is an American company. Even though much of the work is outsourced to China, my husband kiddingly assured me it's the 11- to 13-year-old girls and not the 8-year-olds who do most of the computer stuff. Good. That's a load off my mind. I really try to buy American and stay away from Chinese stuff. But it's getting HARD!

I am typing on my new MacBook Pro right now. It's gray and black and sleek and sexy. The keyboard lights up. Since I got the brain of my old one implanted into the new one, it looks and acts just right. Did anyone see that old 80's movie Cherry 2000? Once you break something you love, it's so worth it to purchase its exact replica. Or something like that.

Do You Compost?

Sometimes I marvel at how easy composting is. Years ago I thought it was a complicated balance and couldn't get a handle on the "browns to greens" ratio thing or how often stirring the pile up with a pitchfork was required or what temperature it should heat up to and for how long.

Over the years we've come up with our method. It involves an out-of-the-way spot in the yard where we throw everything: kitchen scraps (even meat), yard trimmings, spent or buggy bits from the garden, weeds, leaves, shells from shellfish, litter from the chicken coop, etc. If it can rot, it goes in there. Then the chickens eat what they want out of it and turn it for us. Hey, if they're free-range and going to scratch incessantly anyway, we might as well put them to work for us!

When I need compost, I rake back the chunky stuff and shovel out rich black soil. It's not rocket science.

The Perennial Workhorse

Jackie Clay-Atkinson wrote an article in this latest Backwoods Home Magazine about perennials in the garden. It got me to thinking about the perennials in mine and all the fruit and veggie goodness I harvest from them every year.

The only reason I have perennials in my garden is because they survived without me having to put in much work. I'm not one to baby an orange tree in my greenhouse, but if I put something in my garden and it makes it with minimal input, I'll go with it. The stars at my house are definitely the artichokes.

That's a crazy big asparagus spear in the foreground, (compare to the bottle of wine) the rest of the asparagus and all the artichokes are normal-sized like you'd see in a grocery store.

These pictures are from last spring. Several years ago I got a couple tiny artichoke starts from Sweetie and a couple from the Brother-in-Law. And they've been puttin' out ever since. All I do with them is three things:

1. Spray a mixture of dishsoap and water on the artichokes themselves from time to time to keep the aphids off
2. Knock down the stalks after they're spent
3. Give 'em a little compost in the fall after the plants are pretty much done flowering

I'm not counting the normal watering and weeding that you'd have to do for any plant. And for that little bit of effort I get LOTS - sometimes too many - of artichokes all spring and summer. I could be doing it all wrong, but it's working.

I do have asparagus - and love it - but it's a little fussier (at least in my world) and I'm still working that out. I let a few ferns grow from each crown, only harvest the spears that're bigger around than a pencil, give 'em compost in the fall, then cut the fern back in the winter. For as young as they are I think we eat quite a bit of asparagus, but they could be doing better and it may be that they need more nutrients than I'm willing to give. I'm not going to run out and buy a bunch of stuff to feed a garden that's supposed to feed me on the cheap. Frugality is one of the reasons I have a garden. If they work out, they work out. If not, I'll use the space for something else.

Then there're my birthday brambles. I got seven marionberry-ish thornless blackberry brambles from Hubby for my birthday many years ago. These suckers are awesome. I have to be absolutely RUTHLESS when cutting them back or they'd be up on the roof. But they just give and give and give.

When I'm done with pies and jam and jelly and brandy and pancake syrup and muffins . . I offer them up as U-pick on Craigslist. The best trade I ever made for some U-pick berries was for some venison backstrap.  :) Grow fruit, eat meat!

Then there's the strawberries. They're the ones in the front - that's potatoes in the middle.

I don't know if they truly qualify as perennials because mine seem to be steadily declining over the last 5 years or so. Maybe I should have replaced them or fed them something beside compost, but the strawberries are smaller, the plants are less healthy-looking, and Hubby has developed an allergy to them so I'm not sure that I care (about the strawberries). We'll probably keep a few plants around for the grandkids who LOVE to run out and check for and eat the ripe berries, but I could sure use this space - maybe expand the annual garden? I've had these plants (or some of their kids) for over 10 years.

Aside from two apple trees, some blueberries and raspberries, this is the sum of my perennial garden plants. Space is an issue here - we're on 1/3 acre - so I really have to think about what we'll really use vs. how much space they take vs. how much work they require. I'm putting in a new raised bed this year and will be planting some perennial herbs there. We'll see how they do.

The Best Peanut Butter Cookies Ever

This recipe is easy, makes a lot, and my boys were raised on it. I got it from a book called More Family Favorites by Miriam B. Loo. In fact, you can tell this is my favorite recipe in the entire book because while the PB Cookie page looks splotched, stained, folded, spindled, and torn like this:

the whole rest of the book looks like this:

I got it a bazillion years ago from a Current catalog and while I LOVE the PB Cookies and use the recipe all the time, I also like the rest of the book for its old-timey penny-pinching recipes that feed a crowd.

So here's the cookie recipe in its entirety - and I follow it religiously (Pssht - just kidding!):

PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES

"A very common cookie, but this recipe is especially good."

1 cup butter or margarine                            1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup granulated sugar                                2 eggs

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar               2 teaspoons baking soda

1 cup chunky peanut butter                        3 cups all-purpose flour

Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Cream butter or margarine with sugars. Add peanut butter and vanilla; blend well. Mix in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift baking soda with flour and stir into creamed mixture. Roll dough into small balls; place on greased cookie sheet and flatten slightly with a dinner fork. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Makes 8 to 9 dozen

But this is how I do it:

I use all the ingredients as listed above except I ALWAYS use butter in cookies 'cause I think margarine is nasty.

For the instruction part, I do it like this:

Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Dump all dry ingredients in large bowl and whisk to mix. Put 1 cup butter into Pyrex measuring cup and microwave 30 seconds or so because I forgot to bring it to room temp. Make a well in the dry ingredients and dump the wet ingredients in there. Mix well with hands. It forms a nice dry-ish, dough that doesn't stick to your hands. Place slightly flattened golf ball-sized bits of dough onto ungreased cookie sheet ('cause it's got enough butter in it so it doesn't stick) and bake 10-12 minutes. I usually don't bother to make fork marks in them and I sometimes add stuff like nuts or chocolate chips. AND it's super easy to double and triple the batches because of the ingredient amounts (ie. 1 cup, 1 cup, 2 eggs, etc.). 

Today is BIL's birthday party so I'm making a nice, big batch for him. He's so hard to get for - but he's got a sweet tooth (or two) and that really helps me out.

BTW, made my way, this recipe makes nowhere near 8-9 dozen. More like 3 dozen. Better double it!

Tasting the Grape

When I imagined going wine tasting, I thought I'd be going to a stone chateau with oaken beams and given a tour. Then I'd be led down to a dank cellar with dusty bottles and casks and vats and given sips of wine in crystal glasses that were filled by a fancy glass turkey baster from the bung of an oak barrel. And NOBODY around me would swallow. So I'd have to spit my wine into one of the lovely receptacles that had been serving that purpose for generations. Then I'd have to murmur inane stuff about the "notes" to the expectant winemaker (who somehow cared what I with my untutored tongue thought about it!).

Well, nothing could be further from the truth. We went to Hopland, California to visit #1 Son and had a fun, relaxing afternoon at four different winery tasting rooms. Yes, some wineries have storefront tasting rooms in town! You don't have to drive out to the chateau!

At the McNab Ridge tasting room, I met Patty and Denise.  It was like hanging out with your favorite next-door-neighbors, in their living room, on their couch, chatting and sipping wines.

At Cesar Toxqui Cellars tasting room, I met Cesar, the actual winemaker. It was so easy to see his love of family and the process of winemaking. We talked about family, and (of course!) wine, and he shared a bottle he'd named for his little daughter. It was so yummy I had to have it.

Then we crossed the street to the McFadden Winery tasting room. I got to meet Dennis McFadden briefly. He seemed a nice man, but I was impressed by John. John spoke of vines and grapes and weather and how their dance helped create all these different wines. It was like listening to someone recite poetry. AND I learned that the 2011 Riesling was created by the cold, wet spring of 2011. It was a problem for vinyards as well as plain ol' veggie gardens like mine. I had to replant green beans twice after the seed rotted in the ground. But, just as my green beans finally came through, so did the grapes - thank goodness! That Riesling is so sweet I fell in love.

My last stop was Wiebel's tasting room. It was easy to see that Margaret enjoys her job. She and #1 Son talked about the business end of their respective businesses and I half-listened to them while I enjoyed some luscious flavored champagnes.

These folks aren't pretentious at all!

I had a great time. No one seemed to care that I make faces at dry wines and go for the high sugar ones. No one expected me to say anything about their wine unless it was whether or not I liked it. I appreciate #1 Son for introducing me to wine tasting and I appreciate Hubby, the self-appointed sober driver.

I'd definitely recommend taking a couple of friends to grape country in the middle of the week in the off-season and hanging out with these winers. It makes for a really good day.

Unrainy Weather

We've had a few days of unrainy weather and a couple of actual sunny days in there, too. "Unrainy" on the coast means there's no actual precipitation, but rain is a constant threat. It's caused my dirt-diggin' disease to act up. I just want to get out into the garden and get my fingernails dirty while poking seeds into the earth. But I know there's at least one more freeze that's out there, just waiting to pounce as soon as I plant something.  So I content myself with some gardening porn.

I like to daydream about long-season hot weather veggies that won't make it in my garden. Like big juicy tomatoes and gourds and such. But then I calm down and put grape tomato and brussels sprout and snap pea seed packets on the order forms. Then I add up the dollars I've dream-spent on those order forms and edit with a chainsaw. Remember that jar full of seed packets in the 'fridge!

Tomorrow we go to visit two of our boys.  They're good for redirecting my mind. AND I get to see babies! I don't need to have my hands in moist black soil. Really! A little family time, that's what I need. And maybe just a little Mendocino wine-tasting.  :)

Yarn Bowl

For the last several months I've been on a crocheting thing. I do leave it for other projects at times, for a short time, but always seem to come right back. Almost all my good crafting ideas have been for crocheted stuff. Right now I'm working on a crochet-embellished gift I'd love to show off, but can't until after it's gifted.  So, instead, I'll show you a gift I got last Christmas.

This bowl is awesome. Not only did it come with bottles of homemade kahlua (long gone) and limoncello (still working on it) inside, but it has REALLY high sides and keeps my balls and skeins of yarn from falling off my lap and rolling across the floor and collecting dog hair. I've yet to figure out how a ball of yarn unerringly goes to THE place to pick up a dog-hair gerbil. Must be some sort of irresistible attraction . . . whatever, I don't have to worry about it any more . . . I have my Christmas yarn bowl. And that makes me one happy hooker.

Thoughts on Kitchen Knives

I've wasted a lot of money on cheap kitchen knives and sharpeners. Let's just start with that. I bought a couple of those sets that come in a wood block over the years. Nice looking, nice idea, but total waste of money, in my opinion. They're cheaply built, don't hold an edge, they rust, I've had handles fall off, and that big ol' block takes up space on the counter. Plus, I really don't use all those different types of knives. I've also gotten those ceramic knives, but I found out they can't be sharpened with the tools I have and they do eventually lose their edge.

Those block-type knife sets also come with sharpeners. And they may have been great sharpeners - but since the knives didn't hold an edge, I really don't know. I've also bought sharpening stones, sharpening bits for my Dremel tool, a couple of those sharpeners you just run your knife through, had an electric can opener with a knife sharpener in the back, etc. Never had much luck with any of them.

I'm pretty happy with the knives I have right now, though. I use a total of four. Actually, I mostly use three, and the other only for bread. I have an American made straight-edged utility knife I use for a paring knife, a santoku chef's knife that's Spanish made I use for almost everything, an American made 6-inch serrated knife, a Spanish-made serrated bread knife I use only for that purpose. You'll notice none are made in China. I try to stay away from Chinese steel.

I've learned I have the best luck buying knives singly. And I don't spend less than $30 per knife. You could probably get some good deals at yard sales or thrift stores, but you'd really have to know your knives and I don't. So, I go to kitchen stores and look for American made, then, if American stuff is not offered, I look for the best knife of the style I need that's not Chinese.

Then there's sharpening. Of all the sharpeners I've ever had, this is the best:

Yep. It's a ceramic coffee cup. Most of the time there's no glaze on the bottom edge of coffee cups. I hold my knife at an 18-20-ish degree angle to the cup and draw the knife toward me several times on each side. The oldest boy was horrified when he saw me do this at his house. He said, "You know, we have sharpeners here". You know I love you son and wouldn't think less of you if you didn't have sharpeners, but I do prefer the cup! It comes with a comfortable handle and serves a dual purpose (love those twofers!). And it works. For straight-edged knives.

The serrated knives are different, though. I've had the all-purpose serrated knife for about 12 years and it's still sharp. If it gets to the point that it must be sharpened because it's almost unusable, I figure I can sharpen it like I do the chainsaw blade. Can't be much different, right? And what will I have to lose?  I'll let you know, if and when.

Book Matches

Does anyone use book matches besides me? Hello? Anyone out there?

I keep book matches on the back of the commode. For the uneducated, they're good for eliminating odors. I no longer keep cans of aerosolized chemicals and fragrance in the bathroom. I'm not a fanatic about it, just prefer chemicals in matches to chemicals in aerosol cans.

We used to buy boxes of book matches from H & L Novelties, at an on-line site called Incensematch.com. Those matches were amazing. You light the match, shake it out, and it continues to smolder for a little while emitting the incense smell you bought. I liked vanilla, sandalwood, and spice. Well, we were about to run out of incense matches sometime in September of last year, so I went to my trusty computer to buy some more. They were out! What the heck? Seems one of the companies supplying them went out of business. They had a "Coming Soon!" sign on their site though, so I decided to wait for a while. Then, at the end of November, I emailed Insencematch.com to find out when they'd have some product available. They did email back to say sometime in the first part of December, but here we are in February and their site still says "Coming Soon!". What's a girl with a shared bathroom to do?

It's time I resign myself to using regular "book" matches and forget those lovely incenses. So I get into my trusty stored supplies and get out the package of book matches I bought about 5+ years ago for emergencies. Now THEY are almost gone.

I went to four stores yesterday while running errands. Winco, Grocery Outlet, Ace Hardware, and our little local Myrtletown Hardware. None of them had book matches for sale. I was told that our restaurant supply store *may* have some, but none of the salespeople I asked knew for sure where I could find them. WHAT???!!! Aren't book matches as common as those multiplying hangers in our closets? Hotels, bars, insurance companies use them as promos, right? They used to just show up everywhere for free and now they can't be had at any price? What are they going to do for clues in detective movies? Or is this just a regional shortage?

I'm guessing that book matches are going the way of the 8-track and soon, the newspaper, the book, the coffee shop (as the go-to place for coffee). I guess I'll spend a little more for stick matches and hope my steamy bathroom doesn't render them useless. Dang. I just get everything worked out and stuff changes on me. It's hell getting old!