Front Porch Musings – Page 21

December 5, 2014

Peace

As I was puttering in the kitchen this morning…making my coffee, cooking a pot of beans, making an English muffin from a tiny bit of dough I had…

…sweet Auggie asleep on a chair by the island…

…snow falling outside, a fire crackling in the woodstove, Bear comfortable on my bed…

I thought: “What a perfect morning this is!”

It is so peaceful – so full of peace and quiet and good.

I pray for that same kind of peace for our world which seems so full of anger and hurt.

Peace to all this Friday morning and please pass it on.

December 3, 2014

O Christmas Tree: Part 1

I had two appointments in town and was gone from the house from 10:30 until almost 3:00.

When I got back, the sun was on it’s low southern arc, lighting the tops of the trees…

And the temperature was a balmy 20F!

So I cut the top off the “Auggie-tree”…

And set it to prepare for going inside…

The remnants of the “Auggie-tree”…

O Christmas Tree: Part 1 :) !!

*** another foot or so will be removed before the tree goes inside. This first cut was done to prep the tree before a forecast “wintry-mix” of weather.

****** it is maybe a bit of a “Charlie Brown Christmas tree” – but that is ok with me!

December 2, 2014

Geez…I am still adjusting to being home. I’m in bed about 6:30 and up at 3:30-4:00 a.m. I was a bit out of whack time-wise the last days of the trip, but the additional darkness at home is making it easy to stay that way. However, since it is just me and the boys and I don’t do social stuff, I just go with it.

I’ve had times of being a bit upside-down on time before.

The good news is that I get a LOT done in the morning…the very LONG morning!

If you were “along” on the trip, you may remember that about 10 days ago, in Provo, UT, I found a wonderful natural food market: Sprout’s Farmer’s Market. (see the post: Sometimes it is nice to be in a big city) One of the items I found was Bob’s Red Mill Artisan Bread Flour.

This morning…this very early morning…I went online to see what others might have said about it. I didn’t find anything from other’s experience, but I did read the Bob’s Red Mill info and all of the info on the packaging. In addition to the flour being a high protein bread flour, it had the addition of malt barley flour. Further reading disclosed that the malt barley additive had enzymes that increased rise. The package had a no knead recipe which was very close in proportion of flour/water/salt/yeast to what I’ve been doing so I decided to go with that for my first try with this flour.

Yowza…it looks wonderful! I did do 1/2 the recipe to make a smallish-baguetteish loaf.

I wish I could have recorded the crack of the crust. This is the BEST crust ever. The crumb is great…no big “ciabatta” holes, but it was a perfect texture.

And the main thing – the taste – it was better than anything I’ve made to date.

So…while I’ve had no complaints about my Wheat Montana breads, as I read, it appears that Wheat Montana flours do not have added malt, whereas many commercial/store flours do. I’ve ordered several malt powders (diastatic, non-diastatic, malted powder) from King Arthur and will try those with my Wheat Montana flour and see what happens.

Much experimenting to be done, but meanwhile I have the better part of 2 bags of the Bob’s Red Mill to play with.

That was the morning.

I still got to work before 8:00 a.m.

By lunchtime, I really needed a break.

Bear and I headed to Wayfarer’s Park for a walk by the lake…

Still a low cloud deck, but to the very south the sun was breaking through…

A gorgeous contrast to the gray.

And on the way home, on the road home…more sun break!

At home, real sun.

We are getting there.

December 1, 2014

A slow start

Monday, December 1 … first work day at home after 5 weeks on the road and a long weekend.

It took me awhile to get going.

Aside from coming home and getting back in the home routine, it is suddenly (at 48N latitude) 8:30 a.m. before it is full light and it is getting dusky at 3:30 p.m. And right now we have an inversion (low cloud deck) so it was gray all day.

And cold and snowy.

I wasn’t the only one dragging today…

… a slow start.

November 29, 2014

Settling in

I’ve owned this house since September 2006.

I’ve done a number of RV trips, but tallying up time in the RV vs time at the house…time at the house is FAR greater. And yet…I immediately am at “home” in the RV and on returning to the house…it feels so strange and it takes me awhile to feel at home – at home. I don’t get it, but it is not a new feeling and now I just go with it, knowing that eventually, the house will once again feel like home.

After a relatively balmy first day back, the forecast was correct: it got very cold, very fast and it snowed. But not much snow: less than an inch.

But, cold! 13F was today’s high.

Not enough to deter Bear and Auggie, though!

Last night, it occurred to me that Thanksgiving weekend I usually get out the Christmas decorations. Last night, the thought of moving any more stuff did not appeal at all.

But today, with the cold and the snow …I got to thinking about the Christmas stuff.

And about a Christmas Tree.

I’ve made do with my little silk tree for the last 4-5 years. Every year, I’ve said “Next year, I’m going to get back to having a real tree”.

Hee… That is the tree that Auggie had been using to get on to the garage roof and my neighbor cut it down so that I was not always having to “rescue” Auggie.

It is still green.

The TOP is beautiful.

MY CHRISTMAS TREE!!! – my real Christmas tree.

It is forecast to warm mid-week and then I will whack off the top of the downed tree and next weekend, I will put up my REAL Christmas Tree.

And we all say “YAY!!”

Okey-dokey! Meanwhile, Mel, my across the road neighbor with the chickens and fresh eggs phoned asking if I needed eggs.

YES, I said. Also, Jesse…Mel’s husband…is a tech guy and knows cameras so when I went to get the eggs, I took my lens with the cracked filter. He was able to remove it. Let me say that several men had tried to remove the filter, but he did more than just use muscle…he used brain power. He said that he could feel the point where the glass stuck and he worked with that and GOT THAT filter off! Happy, happy, happy me!!! It saved me a trip to the camera store and $$$ and I put a new UV filter on the lens and am back in normal business photography-wise.

AND, we had a fun time visiting: Mel, Jesse, their sons Hudson and Carter and Brewster their dog.