Thanksgiving Prep: My Stuffing 2011

When you look at the list of ingredients, you might think you're going to gag.  But, I was surprised at actually how good my "revised" stuffing recipe worked out this year!

The original recipe was in the November issue of the Sunflower Markets free magazine.  I had to adapt it because it called for mushrooms.  I am not a mushroom fan.  So, I tried subbing butternut squash for the shrooms, and I think it will work.

Dicing the veggies was time intensive, especially because I pretty much quadrupled the original recipe to accommodate using what I had on hand, and because we have almost 20 people coming to our house for dinner tomorrow.  But my Sous Chef Phil was a lot of help.

I used a whole loaf of Ezekiel 4:9 bread (turns out it was about 10-11 cups when it was diced).  Half a butternut squash.  Two onions.  About 10 celery stalks.  And about 3/4 bag of carrot chips (little wavy sliced carrots from the produce section that are really great hummus dippers when not being used as a component of stuffing).  Also half a small bag of baby spinach, chopped fine so that someone here in the house who won't eat spinach won't recognize it.  It kind of looks like parsley in the stuffing.

I poured in about 4-5 cups of turkey broth from cooking the giblets... maybe a little more, as I ended up flavoring the last part of the broth with some Penzey's chicken soup base to give the stuffing a little more depth of flavor.

The hardest part of the recipe was adjusting the spices for the quantity that I made.  It called for fresh thyme and fresh sage.  I used dried.  But that wasn't enough to give the stuffing any kind of distinctive flavor.  I ended up adding some Penzey's Country French Dressing mix, too.  But, really, you could almost use whatever spices you want - Italian with some basil sounded pretty good to me, but somehow not what people might expect for Thanksgiving.  Now that I think of it, probably if the recipe had called for butter or margarine, that might have given it a little more body.  But, I kind of like that it is extremely low fat (just a bit of olive oil for sauteing the veggies), full of good veggies.  And no mushrooms.  Healthy, I think.

So, sometime in the future I'll make the stuffing again with a different flavoring - and in a much smaller quantity!  I found a recipe on the Penzey's website for a stuffing that called for smoked paprika.  That sounds kind of intriguing to me - and I do already have smoked paprika on the shelf.

At any rate, the quantity I made fit perfectly in one of my smaller roasting pans - I think it's a little larger than 9"x13".  That, plus three pans of yams (one candied with cinnamon and pecans, one candied with marshmallows and one plain), three quarts of cranberry sauce (I'm counting on leftovers of that!), seven pies... some veggies that I'll make tomorrow, possibly some Thai yellow curry sauce to go along with some of the veggies (which should be an adventure to make since my food processor bowl is broken and the replacement isn't supposed to arrive until December 2) ... and whatever anyone else brings tomorrow will hopefully feed almost 20 people.

Hard to believe, but we only have 17 chairs in our house for tomorrow... and here I always thought we had way too many.  :-)

Road Trip to Heather's Wedding: Day 1

Hey!  We got an EARLY start today to head east for my grand-niece Heather's wedding to Ben in South Carolina!  Out of the house by 10:30 a.m.!  Usually we leave just before lunch!

However, about 15 miles out of town, I discovered that I left my camera at home.  Rather than go back for it, I decided to try to find an inexpensive (if possible) camera to buy.  Since we had to find a shirt and tie for Phil, we stopped at WalMart.  Found a surprisingly low-priced camera, and shirt and tie, and we headed out again.  I spent several miles trying to figure out how to set up and use the camera without a manual - because the manual was on a CD.

So, this was the first - and accidental - photo that I shot.  I'm keeping it.  It's kind of funny.  I even had the camera upside down when it went off! (see date, time stamp in upper right corner)

Then I discovered the rapid repeating option for shooting pictures.  I saved only one of them.

 I was trying to figure out how to zoom, but didn't get it figured out until we got to the hotel tonight and I could look at the manual on the CD. So, I cropped and edited this photo so that you could see what I had wanted you to see in the photo.

 I think the truck driver is going to get a little surprise, and maybe a laugh, when he goes to the back of the truck to open the doors!

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get photos of the zillions of birds that we saw fluttering around about the trees near the North Platte River at about 6 p.m.  I mean there were multiples of zillions of little black birds swooping around in the trees.  Swarms of Birds.  Billows of Birds.

But, after over 500 miles today, we are finally at the hotel and I'm really tired... but wanted you to see this kind of artsy shot I took of Phil.  Probably couldn't repeat the coloring in it, but I kind of like it.  I will have to play with the lighting adjustments on the camera, I think.  The light here is pretty low...

Tomorrow should be interesting.  We are supposed to try to find a cemetery that has a grave stone shaped like a desk. 

Then try to figure out how we will get to one of our destinations for tomorrow - to a thrift shop to find a few things we need for our responsibilities at the wedding.  Turns out that the highway we need to take was washed out in this year's flooding on the Missouri River.

However, I did figure out how to do videos on the camera... so you never know what tomorrow will bring!

So, TTFN!  (ta-ta-for-now)

Needling the Cat

It's been six weeks since I started having acupuncture to help improve my kidney function.  I know.  Disgusting.  But, we took photos so that I could (1) document results - if there were any, as I had my doubts in the very beginning, and (2) so you could see what it's like.

My ankles were pretty swollen from the edema (I could hardly wear shoes this summer because they were so uncomfortable)... as well as from scar tissue due to ankle surgery on my left ankle when I missed a few stairs in 1996, as well as damage done when I had a severe sprain on my right ankle when I missed a few stairs in 2007.  Keep me away from stairs, I guess!

About the same time that I started the acupuncture, I also started taking some Chinese herbs because dandelion leaf tincture didn't work as well.  I also stopped eating any kind of animal protein (meat, milk, eggs, cheese... you get the picture).  So, it was really kind of crazy for a few weeks until I established a repertoire of new recipe ideas (my favorite website is 101cookbooks.com, and a few others that I don't go to nearly as often) and staples in the kitchen so that I would be prepared when I got hungry.  Or "hangry" as I learned from someone else on the internet - I don't know if it was a typo that she made, but it certainly is appropriate.  Anyway, this new eating plan has been kind of interesting, and fun, but another story.  I'm not bothered at all by not eating animal products - I like what I'm eating these days; but I still have to cook for someone who can eat whatever he wants, and another who is fairly picky.  OK.  Maybe very picky.

Anyway, I think this photo is the one we took to show the "before".  Week 1, Treatment 1.

The first needles were placed in my lower back, along the spine - I think a direct attack for the kidneys.

Then, arms, hands, legs and ankles... from my POV...

And from Phil's POV...

And this is what it looks like as the needles are going in...

Voodoo?  That's what it looks like, huh? 

When the needles are inserted, some of them sting quite a bit.  Some of them send strange nerve kind of sensations to other parts of the body... most of the needles stay in about 15 minutes or so... some of them come out right away because I can't stand it any longer! The needles in the scar on my left ankle hurt the most... and sometimes when the needles come out, there is blood... won't show you the photos - it's not a lot, just a few drops.

The results?

The creatinine levels in my blood test were too high before my first treatment and using the herbs.  But, after four weeks and four treatments, my creatinine levels decreased by 10%.  In another couple of weeks I'll have another blood test to see if there has been any more improvement.

For now, my ankles don't swell as quickly after treatments, which is nice.  In a few more weeks, I'll document progress on my ankles and blood tests again.  Watch for more updates!

The Fox that Turned into a Raccoon

Boy!  What a surprise we had tonight!  Skippy "treed" a raccoon on our deck light!

At first we thought that the "fox" that has been stealing the fruit from the picnic table (that we put out for the house finches - and robins in the summer) was really this raccoon after all.  But, no... Both of us remembered that we HAVE seen the fox out there on the deck getting the fruit from the picnic table.  But this raccoon idea... this is something new.  

Skippy is such a good dog!  We had to bring him inside so that the raccoon might be able to get down and get away... but Skippy is looking at it through the deck door and isn't even barking or scratching at the door.  Gosh, he's such a good dog.  It isn't even 3 o'clock in the morning yet!  :-)

Too bad I didn't get a video of the raccoon getting down... I just missed getting my camera in time.  We were checking to see if he was still there - and he was, but just so you'll know... He somehow maneuvered down, wrapped his legs around the light pole and climbed down, running away down Skippy's handicapped dog ramp.

I wonder if he'll ever come back... there are still some plums on the table that we put out there today...

Strawberry Stuffed Cupcakes

Well, this isn't the first batch of strawberry stuffed cupcakes I've made; but every time I try something new, I always think it's my new favorite.

My first batch was last week - for Marge's 93rd birthday.

White cupcakes.  Strawberry stuffed inside.  Strawberry icing.  Pink melted/molded candy flower on top (which I made, too).

Tonight's batch ( I don't know why I always make cupcakes at 10:00 p.m.)...

Yellow cupcakes.  Strawberry stuffed.  Chocolate Cream Cheese icing.  A sprinkle of mini chocolate chips.

This is how I did it...  I cut out a small "cup" shaped piece from the top of each cupcake.

Then I took a fairly firm strawberry, pushed it into the cut out "cup", and twisted it so that it would go down farther into the cut out.

Some of the strawberries were rather large, so when I stuck them down into the cupcake, the cupcake split; but icing covered that up well.

Here are a bunch of the cupcakes ready to be iced.  

You can see that some of the strawberries went farther into the cupcakes than others; but, really, that is because the strawberries were taller than the cupcakes were deep.

The little "caps" are placed on top of the strawberries so that you don't have to eat them all.  :-)

With the strawberries sticking out a little bit, and with their little caps on, the icing on the cupcakes takes on sort of a "cone" shape.

I used my brand new 1A tip to pipe the icing on these cupcakes.  I LOVE the new tip!

You need to sprinkle your decorations onto the icing as soon as you pipe it so that the decor sticks.

I think the mini chocolate chips kind of detract from the swirled icing, but I needed to try something new for a change.

So, we cut one in half again for you to see the inside.

And then I had to get Phil to eat the evidence.

The Plague of Frogs - and Pigeons

“	This is what the great LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs. The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. The frogs will go up on you and your people and all your officials.	”
	— Exodus 8:1–4   Today when I was doing some housekeeping with my plants, this is what I discovered in one of the drip catchers under my plant pots: It's a little frog!  What is strange is that, last June 2010, Phil found a frog in the house.  A tiny frog.  It's size was less than the first joint on his thumb.  And he said he found three frogs in the house at that time.  So... has this frog been trapped under my houseplant pot all that time?  I know it looks like he's coming up for air... but believe, me he is NOT.   This frog is just SO DISGUSTING! And so is this:   Not sure how well you can see the pigeon print on the window dust on the outside of the window, center of the photo - look really hard, kind of like those 3D images that are just dots until you stare at them just right.    Apparently, the stupid pigeon overate at our bird feeder and was in a food coma when it tried to fly away and aimed for our window instead.  The only thing more disgusting would have been if we'd found the pigeon on the deck.   Maybe the fox came and took it away during the night...

Things I Learned From Pisatachio Pudding

1.  It's probably best to not start making cupcakes after 10 p.m.  Really.  We didn't even have enough milk to make pudding, or shortening to make buttercream frosting.  Phil got a good idea:  

 

Use instant breakfast powder to create "milk" by adding water to it.  But... the only pudding I had left to use for cupcake filling was pistachio pudding mix. Not my first choice for cupcake filling.  I thought it was kind of unusual.  And green.  I made a chocolate frosting using a non-meringue recipe.  A good tasty frosting, but not super for piping on fancy cupcakes.

2.  If you are going to use pistachio pudding mix as a cupcake filling, strain it first.  I didn't.  I thought that maybe the pistachios in the pudding mix (are they REALLY pistachios in pistachio pudding? or do they call it "pistachio" because it's green?) would be small enough to go through my Bismarck pastry tip.  They weren't.  

The first couple of cupcakes filled okay - but then, as I feared, a nut clogged the end of the pastry tip.  Try as I might, squeezing the pastry bag only succeeded in the pudding escaping from the top of the pastry bag, not through the tip.  Simple pressure wasn't going to dislodge the nut from the tip.  So, I got a bamboo skewer and poked the nut back into the pastry bag.  Squeezed again.  Same thing.  No amount of bamboo skewer pushing was going to be enough, but I kept trying.  Until finally - one really good squeeze succeeded in forcing the ENTIRE PASTRY TIP - OUT of the pastry bag, and spraying (does pudding spray?  not really)... no, SPLOPPING green pudding all over the counter top and everything else in its way.

3.  STRAIN THE NUTS OUT OF THE PUDDING!  Then, scrape up what you can off the cupcakes before you decorate them.

My pudding was a little bit runny, so it left the cupcakes pretty messy even without the splopping of pudding from when the pastry tip burst out of the pastry bag.  But, after scraping off the exposed pudding, I covered the cupcakes topped with swirled chocolate frosting, deep chocolate sprinkles and a handmade chocolate candy placed in the middle.  

4.  Take at least one final cupcake photo.  Sorry.  I didn't take any photos because the kitchen was too messy, I had sticky green pudding all over me, and I was tired and needed to clean everything up before going to bed.  But, the cupcakes turned out very nice and were devoured in short order at the ladies' salad supper at church.  No one even suspected they were sealed beneath the icing with smeared pudding. (Of course, now they will!)

5.  Learn from your mistakes.  And then go on to more cupcakes another day.

Yellow Heads Leaving Town

Last week the yellow-headed black birds - and probably the red-winged black birds, too - started leaving town for the winter.  This is one of the lasts ones we saw... sitting in our aspen tree that did manage to get a little taller this  year.  The weight of the birds that sat in it this summer caused the top of it to bend over.

Summer is so very short - mosquitoes were miserable this year after all the rain and flooding we had.  I don't think we planted a thing this summer.

There are leaves on the trees now, but they are beginning to fade, and the grass has been brown for weeks.  Haying has been done in the fields to the west of us.  Things are winding down.  I hope winter isn't too long this year...

Early September Sky View on My Birthday

The morning of my birthday, when I woke up and looked out the window to the west, this is what I saw.

A rainbow!  I quickly grabbed my robe so that I could run outside to take a photo of it without getting the window screen in the picture.  When I turned around to come back into the house, I saw this:

Wow!  What a glorious sunrise!  Usually we see rainbows in the east and sunsets in the west.  And, unfortunately, it only took about an hour before the rain got to Laramie and stayed here for two solid days.  Sometimes we forget that rainbows usually involve some rain along the way...

(And the black trailer is pretty much a landmark in all my sunrise photos...)

Argentina Bound!

So, what do these two creatures have in common?

ANDY

TURKEY VULTURE

Give up?  THEY'RE BOTH GOING TO ARGENTINA!

Tonight we went to the church BBQ.  I looked up and saw a TON of turkey vultures swirling around in the sky.  Something like this:

But, I didn't take this photo.  Nonetheless, there were a LOT of turkey vultures up in the sky tonight.  Someone told me that a university professor had told them the vultures are migrating to Argentina now.

That picture at the top of the post (of the vulture, not of Andy) is what they look like up close.  In flight - if you can see them close enough, this is what they look like:

You can tell it's a turkey vulture if it has the white feathers at the bottom of the wings.  It's pretty difficult most of the time to see their faces.  Once when I was doing field work in Colorado, there were two turkey vultures sitting on a fence post.  That was the first time I'd ever seen how really ugly their faces are.  Personally, I'm kind of glad that we don't get to see their faces all that often.  

It's kind of cool, though, to think that these guys are going all the way to Argentina, though.

Andy had to buy a plane ticket to get there, and will be leaving in about a month.  We're all wondering if they're going to be arriving there at the same time. 

Here are some photos I took tonight - trying to at least capture a whole bird in the camera lens... really hoping maybe to get several in the photo at the same time, maybe one would swoop down a little closer, but they were so busy flying into and out of the sky above us.  Possibly hoping to get something good off the grill.

:

 And here's the dessert that I made - a Red Grape Pie.  I used a recipe for a Ground Cherry Pie; but, since we don't get ground cherries here in Laramie, I tried subbing grapes. 

 
Phil enjoyed it immensely and went back for more.  I think maybe two or three times.  A different kind of vulture.  I think he was taking advantage of the fact that probably most people didn't realize the desserts were all in the house and not outside on the table with the rest of the side dishes.

Right Place - Right Time

This is SO COOL!  I carry my camera around with me just for these moments.  But I can't believe that not only did I have my camera with me, but I was also able to be in a spot where I could see the dial on the camera to turn it to the video position to take the photo!

Do you know what wind turbines look like?  Here's a photo of some in Arlington, Wyoming...

Just about any day that you drive on the interstate or around the truck stop where I was at this time today, you see parts of these wind turbines being hauled to wherever they are going to be hooked up to turn wind energy into electricity.  

Once on the way to church, we saw a truck with a blade making a turn onto the road in front of us getting ready to head back onto the interstate.  It was amazing watching the truck make the turn because the blades on these things are humongous.  I'll have to look up the length.  It is looooooooooooonnnnnnnng.  Here's a link for a place to start in case you want to know more about wind turbines  WIND TURBINE INFO ON WIKIPEDIA

One website I found said the world's largest wind turbine has a "wing span," you might say, of over 400 feet (that is the diameter of all the blades installed on the tower part).  That is pretty huge.  I'm guessing that the ones we see here where we are probably are not quite that BIG; but they're big. 

Anyway,  today I got to be in the right place at the right time to take a photo (quickly because it just happened as I was pulling up to a red traffic light).  

Then while I was sitting there at the light - as if we could go anywhere, anyway, because the truck and blade took up all four lanes of traffic and the shoulders - I was able to video it!  (Maybe I should have turned the radio down - but enjoy the "music" portion of it or turn your volume down or off.  :-) Watch when the truck just completes the turn to get on the on-ramp.  The length of the blade is longer than the width of the road.  This is so cool! 

So, this made my day today and the day isn't even over yet!  The other exciting news is that Phil is finally finishing installation of the remainder of the storm door that he began a few weeks ago. :-)

Road Trip - Part VI: It's ME!!!! I'm WELDING!!!!!

Phil took a lot of pictures of me welding.  Maybe he didn't think I'd do it and I surprised him!

Everything that gets welded has to lie flat - and be clamped in place so it doesn't move.

Mitch and I inserted the rings between the bars of my first stand, made sure everything was square and everything got clamped in place.

I didn't really want to mess up my stand by welding it myself, but I also didn't want to go away from the weekend and not try welding.  So, I took a few practice moves before actually pulling the trigger on the welding torch.

You can't tell, probably, but I was holding my breath while I was welding.  Notice that Mitch wasn't even there while I was welding at one point!

And you probably can't tell from this photo, either, but Mitch was yelling, "Yeah!  You got it!"

I WELDED!!!!!  I DID IT!!!!!  And my welds came out "OK" - at least most of them.

I did have a few bumps and places that were kind of lumpy, so I had to sand them down.  I'm not a huge fan of sparks, but I braved the sanding power tool thing and did it.  Then I asked Phil to help me clean up what I couldn't get.  He's really GOOD at cleaning up blobby welds!  :-))

And then we measured and clamped the two channel pieces that would hold the glass in place on the stand.  I just don't remember if I welded the two pieces in place, or if Mitch did it. 

And... after finding a suitable piece of metal for my stand, and measuring to make sure it fit in all the right places...

Mitch and I got everything lined up and clamped down so it could be welded. 

Mitch did the welding of the stand for me so that it wouldn't get messed up too badly.  If the support gets messed up, I don't think that is a good thing.


The next piece we worked on was my "Asian theme piece" - the black and red glass piece.  This was an interesting experience...

This was the original layout.  Mitch was going to show us how to make a tripod stand for it.

The first piece we needed to weld was the piece that I call "the frame" - the piece that would hold the glass.  The first time we welded it, we got it put together incorrectly and Mitch had to saw it apart. 

Mitch added the clips to the "frame" because tacking thin metal to thick metal is tricky.  Better for him to do it - he has a lot of welding experience!  But I did a lot of the welding on this stand myself.  Yes, I'm pretty proud of it.  :-)

We accidentally put the frame backwards on the stand; but after thinking about it for a minute, I decided it should just be left that way.  After all, whether it's Chinese or Japanese - or whatever language - don't they write from right to left?  Maybe it should be backwards?

So, here it is - it just needs to be painted.

And Phil took this really fun video of me working on it.  :-)

In case you can't understand what I said, or if by chance you don't have sound on your computer (or if it's turned down so no one can hear you watching it at work), at the end I said, "That's a lot of clamping for just two little things."  Yes.  There is a LOT of clamping that has to be done!

Time was running out, though, for our class.  With only 20 minutes left, I begged Mitch to help with welding on the thin little leaves for my Kachina piece.

This is what it's supposed to look like when welded together.  Mitch did weld just the headdress part for me, and I am so eager to get our own welding equipment or ask someone we know who welds to let me finish the rest of my projects!  But we really do want our own welding equipment.  :-)

This is the piece - "The Natives Are Restless" - that, at my pace, would probably take two more days to finish!  I've wanted to have some kind of stand for it for a long time... I made the pieces in 2008!

Here is the group of people working in the class this weekend... It's sort of like the Phil and Cat show with the pieces shown in the photo.  Everyone except Shannon - who is holding the "B" and "S" pieces - is holding something that Phil and I made.  Debbie had already packed hers away in her car.

I'm holding the Kachina headdress.  Phil (in front) is holding his piece with my glass piece in it.  Mitch is holding my red and black piece.  Shannon is holding the "B" and "S" which will one day be installed on her mailbox, I believe.  And Debbie is holding my little V-channel stand with a thick yellow piece I made in it.

Gosh we had a good time!  I can hardly wait to get our own welding equipment!  :-)