Saying goodbye to a great friend

After more than a decade with us,  Nibbies has passed on.   We captured her,  literally,  just before Thanksgiving when we saw a hungry stray pit bull darting across Cleveland Avenue and couldn't catch her.    We ended up leaving an entire chicken carcass for her (dinner party,  stock) and the next day I went out into the driveway to see another guy attempting to catch her -- once he did,  he explained that he was on his way to a crucial job and he wasn't sure he could do better than put her in his truck -- could I take her?  We kept her for a few weeks while we tried to find her owners -- and we heard lots of rumors about her possible residence.   Finally we found her previous owner,  and asked if he would like her back.  "Oh no, " he said.  "I didn't actually own her.   She's a little wanderer and she stayed here for a while,  but now she's yours. "  She's been ours for many years now,  and in that time she's done plenty of wandering.   She used to break out of our yard and into other yards,  where she'd teach the other dogs to escape.   Once we moved to Bellefonte,  she made friends with the local police because she would break out and go straight to the station for a ride.    In April of this year,  she decided it was too chilly in the yard,  so she went into the library and then visited the bank.   She loved to dominate small dogs from a distance,  but got along with all manner of animals and humans up close.  In short,  she was wonderful.   We were lucky to have her.  And unfortunately our time has now drawn to a close.  RIP, little wanderer.  I hope wherever you're headed next is a grand adventure.

30 days

Tonight I finished a 30 day pushup , which i did as a group with other women from the roller derby team.    Did it matter?    I think so.   I feel more capable and I have a tighter core and back than I did 30 days ago.

What should I do next?

The End of a Season

Tonight was the last bout of the playing year for SCAR -- not that SCAR ever takes much time off.  We just end the offical public playing season.  Every year we end and start with intraleague bouts, where the league is divided up into home teams that play each other.  These tend to be more intense than bouts that we play against teams from other leagues, believe it or not.

Anyway, tonight I jammed.  I'm reasonably happy with what I did, which was win lead twice and lose it twice, but work with my team to ensure the losses were minimal.  As a blocker and pivot, I think things went better -- we seemed to understand each other tonight, and to play as a cohesive team.  I did, however, end up pulled off the bench at the end due to an asthmatic flareup.

Looking back on 2015 as a season, it's been one of my most challenging.  I've felt all along that I was frustrated at the difference between what I know and how I perform.  To put it summarily, the theory didn't match the actuality.  But I have made progress -- I have learned things I didn't think I could learn and gotten better as an individual player and teammate.  Now as we head into the off season -- the very brief offseason -- I'm going to just keep skating and cross-training, and get treated for my shoulder injury (annoying and painful, but not really limiting my derbying) as well as my asthma.  And here's to 2016!

I love derby

Here's why.    The person in the photos isn't me.  She's not on my intraleague team.    This Saturday I wholeheartedly want to destroy her and her team.    But tonight she finished her 27 in 5.  Tonight we were able to be there for each other,  and help each other excel.  Tonight was wonderful.

Milestone:eggs!

Aren't they gorgeous?   These are our first eggs.

How do we keep the chickens?

Both creatively and flexibly!  

Our coop is made entirely from recycled materials -- mostly wood and screen from other projects. 

We know from experience that chickens love having a place to scratch,  and that we can boost the warmth in the coop by using the deep litter method.   What we didn't know is that building a vertical coop with the scratching and composting pit in the bottom,  through a hatch in the floor,  would go against that somewhat because convection pulls most of the warmth up and out.   Unfortunately,  this means the coop is only about 10 degrees warmer than the outside.  Right now that's fine,  but when it gets seriously frigid it'll be a problem.  

And how do we know the temperature? We use temperature and heat monitors.    We have a very modern chicken monitoring system.  

They also have a run,  devised from a very rough alley that runs to the basement window from their coop.  I often find them watching the cat -- as the cat watches them back out the window.   There's a second compost pile, straw,  and I toss scratch grains and vegetable scraps out daily for their entertainment.

Anyway,  it's a work in progress.    The chickens seem thrilled with a cozy house that gives them everything they need to be happy.  

Meet Alices

Meet Alice.  And Alice and Alice and Alice.   These are our fine feathered friends.   They live in an ugly but functional coop at our house. 

The worst of times

Remember that photo I posted of all the delicious canned tomato sauce?    They all exploded!

Live and learn,  right?  And at least we didn't try to eat them.

The Best of Times...

And also the worst of times.  Not really, but this time of the year, I feel like I'm drowning in produce. And yet I wouldn't have it any other way.

Last week was the last week of my CSA, and as much as we love it and feel it's the right thing to do, we're always a little  relieved when we get the season-ending email.  Part of the issue is that it comes to an end at the end of October, a time that for both Chris and I is insanely busy at work.  Every counter top was full earlier this week with produce we hadn't yet processed.  And then our neighbor brought us a bag of peppers and Chris brought home a tray of very ripe tomatoes.  So over the weekend we cooked and canned and roasted and so on.  It was great, and I know that when it's cold and dark out it will be wonderful eating these delicious foods, picked at peak ripeness.  

One Day at a Time

Returning to roller debry has been tougher than I would have guessed. Day after day, I never know if I'm going to improve as much as I'd like. But each night, I do a self assessment and try to build on whatever happened for the next time I'm on skates. Last night was a good night. I laid one of our better blockers out to make room for my jammer, I flattened a jammer who came in hot, and I finally nailed a spin move that I've been too scared to try in scrimmage. I gotta say it was a good day. Next time I have a bad day, I'll recall it to remind myself of what I can do when things come together.

The Morning Bounty

Every morning,  I send the kids off to school about an hour before I need to be at work.   This leaves me with 15 minutes or so of free time,  which I often use to read email,  drink coffee,  and just get centered for the day.  

However,  this morning I used that 15 minutes to do all of the following:

Start a pot roast in the slow cooker.
Chop roughly 30 jalapeños for canning -- the ones on the left are in a Korean soy recipe,  while the ones on the right are more traditional vinegar pickles. 
Put bbq sauce that I made a few days ago into jars for canning. 

Tonight when I get home,  dinner will be ready and I'll have half a dozen canned items ready to process in cans.   Anyway,  that's the idea. 

"Off The Fruit"

Mr.  X and I took our plum wine -- soon,  hopefully,  to be plum brandy -- "off the fruit"last night.  This just means that we removed the fruit from the mixture and poured off the yeast,  mostly stopping fermentation.

While we stopped to sample each,  we're going to be aging them a bit while we acquire a still and hope to be distilling them into brandy in a matter of weeks. 

Vacation 2015

We're off to the beach!   So far,  so good.

1 for #2

Isn't she beautiful?  Georgia is one year old today.

New Culinary (Mis?)Adventures

Recently I've been on a reading jag of both first person narratives from the American south and my own heritage.   In the process, I discovered that one of my first ancestors on American soil was a maker of whiskey and "a fine peach brandy. " So, I researched both the ancestors and brandy and found that,  at least in theory,  it's not hard to make.  

Here's the process by which I started making brandy.  

Ingredients:
Spring or distilled water
Roughly 4 pounds of fruit per gallon of water (I'm making both peach and plum)
5 pounds of sugar per gallon of water
6 teaspoons of active dry or other yeast  (any kind seems to work for this purpose)

1. Dissolve 6 tsp. yeast in a warmed cup of spring water.
2. Pour a fine bed of sugar on the bottom of your chosen container -- a 5 gallon bucket is ideal.  
3. Slice the fruit and layer it over the sugar.   Alternate layers between sugar and fruit.   (If you have an assistant like mine,  ply them with fresh fruit slices. )
Don't remove the pits!  They're an important part of the flavor.  
4. Pour the activated yeast mixture over the sugar/fruit.
5. Top with spring water.  Leave enough room for fermentation -- generally a few inches. Put the top on loosely-- you do not want to pressurize this mixture. 
6. Wait!   No,  seriously.  Now you wait a lot.   If you've done everything correctly you should have a kind of murky grey concoction that's releasing bubbles occasionally,  but mostly looks like it's doing nothing.   That's the correct look.   For the next month, you'll want to use a long handled spoon to mix the concoction at least once a week.  Recitations of the witches' speech from Macbeth optional.  
7. At the one month mark,  you should have a concoction that is stable enough to bottle,  if you wish.  To get it,  you'll need to filter the fruit from the liquid.    Generally you can do this by pouring first through a colander and then through cheesecloth.   It will improve by aging -- but it's edible now.  So bottle it!  Get creative with containers and enjoy.   The fruit that is discarded can be fed to animals (carefully,  as it's alcoholic -- don't feed too much at a time) or baked into quick breads.

Enjoy!

Ta da!

Welcome Georgia Bijal!