Friday, December 23, 2011
Dairy free toffee
OK, I have now made 3 batches of dairy free (coconut oil) toffee. My first was using an unfamiliar recipe (something like 1 cup earth balance where I used coconut oil, 1 cup white sugar, and I added almonds) which was a wee bit over cooked cause it wasn't doing what I expected it to. What happened is there was way too much oil, which separated and the bottom had the toffee only I didn't figure it out till almost too late. Soooo...these next two times I used my "tried and true" Tight Wad Gazette recipe - 3/4 cup brown sugar, 1/2 butter which I used coconut oil. First batch of this still had the same thing - way too much oil, which I poured most of off before finishing, and then at 7 minutes it started smoking like it is supposed to! The third one I tried using 1/4 oil, which was too little to start so I poured more back in, and towards end poured back off. It is a little weird cooking with coconut oil, but I am figuring it out! I also put both batches in same 8x8 pan (which I rubbed coconut oil on bottom) added 1/2 cup almond slivers to each, and put chocolate chips on top to melt and spread. Can't wait to taste these! They look at little different, one might be softer than the other, but I think they will both taste good!
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Patrick’s Gate
One spring, I was working in my kitchen, and I happened to look out the window towards the lean-to where the sheep and goats were. They were grazing in the back fields, but could come to the lean-to for shelter and water. When I looked out, I saw the strangest sight. Our two horned ram, Patrick, had a ten foot gate hooked on his horn and he was flailing it around, smashing it against the Russian olive shrub outside their pen, trying to get it off his head. I ran out as fast as I could, and when he saw me coming, he held still. He sensed that I was there to help him, and knew standing still would be the best thing to do. I had to twist the gate which was vertical at that time, to be horizontal so I could slide it off of his horn. He must have been trying to rub between his horn and his face, which is how he ended up getting it caught on his horn and then picked it off of its rods that it sits on. What a sight to remember!
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Bubba
Bubba
One stormy warm spring night, my 19 year old daughter Marie and I went to do a couple errands and then were planning to go to Walmart. We went to the Trumansburg library, and then on to Interlaken to deliver flowers to a member of our church. They didn’t answer their door, so we left the flowers and went to the son’s house nearby to let them know and to ask how to get to Walmart from their house. They gave us directions and said they would call his parents to let them know we left the flowers. We headed down the road, with Marie driving, as I was tired. We turned from one highway to another in the village of Lodi, and Marie started speeding up as we were going out of the village. It was raining a little harder so the roads were wet, and as she speeded up, we started to hydroplane, right towards a pickup truck driving the opposite direction. I hollered “Marie!” and she tried to steer the other direction to avoid the truck, and we went spinning off the side of the road, swiped a fence post and skidded into a corn field about 50 feet. When we came to a stop, we breathed a sigh of relief as we talked about all the possibilities that could of happened and didn’t, such as head on, or rolling, either of which could have resulted in death or a trip to the hospital. The man in the pickup truck came back to check on us, to make sure we were all right. A couple other people stopped also. I got out and tried to push while Marie tried to drive out, but the tires were in such bad shape that there was no traction, part of the reason we were where we were.
I called AAA, and was on hold for almost 15 minutes before getting someone, and told them where we were, approximately. While on that call, one guy creeped Marie out, but I told her she needed to talk to him as I was still on hold, and that if he did anything I would hang up and call 911. AAA told us it would be at the most one and half hours before the tow truck got to us. Marie called home and extracted a promise from each of her two sisters not to tell their father what she told them, and she told them we were in a corn field, waiting to be pulled out. So, as the sky got darker, fewer people noticed us, and we started telling about the books we were reading. Marie had just been reading an Ann Rule book that day. She is a true crime writer and can be scary in a situation like we were in to think about. I tried to get our minds off of her book by telling about the book I was reading, “My Name is Mary Sutter.” At some point we locked the doors, and felt a little bit more secure, but then we were remembering a show we watched the night before where a man hit a metal bat into a guy’s truck window and beat him to death, so we didn’t feel totally secure. Every once in a while, the sky would light up so bright it hurt our eyes, but showed us that no one was around us. It was a little terrifying when that happened, but fortunately neither of us is afraid of lightening.
When it became totally dark, a car started to pass us, and then shone a big spot light on us. It was a Seneca County Sheriff, and it was amazing he noticed us in the dark. He kept that spotlight on us almost the rest of the time, and it was blindly bright. We had to put our visors down to tolerate it. He came to see if we were all right, and we said yes, and that we had called AAA and that we had been there one and half hours already. He said that was unacceptable, and told me to call them back up and cancel the tow truck and he would call a tow truck and AAA would reimburse us. I called AAA back, and was on hold a shorter time, and they contacted the tow truck, which was out of Stanley, around the lake from us! The sheriff then talked to the AAA operator and told them he called us a tow truck and that they were going to pay the bill. So we sat and waited for another half hour or so. Marie realized she needed to go to the bathroom, but there was no way we could figure out how to do that without the spotlight shining on us and/or the sheriff checking on us.
The tow truck finally arrived, from Romulus, and checked on the car, and hooked it up to winch it out. Winching is very slow, especially when you are standing there in flip flops and short shorts like Marie was doing. The guy steering the car was the smaller of the two, and Marie and I about died laughing when the big guy called him Bubba. They got the car onto the side of the road, and looked it over. They pulled off one piece of plastic that protected the windshield washer reservoir that looked like it might be able to be put back on, and said it looked like it would be fine, just be prepared for clunking sounds till the mud was all off. I drove the car to Trumansburg, after making one stop because of a noise. Marie got out and pushed something back under, then we went to the car wash to wash off as much of the mud as we could before going home. I wrote a note for my husband that said “So, Marie and I are ok, the car is almost ok except the bumper, will tell you more later.” He saw it the next morning and didn’t get all upset like he usually does about most things. I told Marie that I didn’t really want to go to Walmart anyway, and she said that is why we were in the corn field!
One stormy warm spring night, my 19 year old daughter Marie and I went to do a couple errands and then were planning to go to Walmart. We went to the Trumansburg library, and then on to Interlaken to deliver flowers to a member of our church. They didn’t answer their door, so we left the flowers and went to the son’s house nearby to let them know and to ask how to get to Walmart from their house. They gave us directions and said they would call his parents to let them know we left the flowers. We headed down the road, with Marie driving, as I was tired. We turned from one highway to another in the village of Lodi, and Marie started speeding up as we were going out of the village. It was raining a little harder so the roads were wet, and as she speeded up, we started to hydroplane, right towards a pickup truck driving the opposite direction. I hollered “Marie!” and she tried to steer the other direction to avoid the truck, and we went spinning off the side of the road, swiped a fence post and skidded into a corn field about 50 feet. When we came to a stop, we breathed a sigh of relief as we talked about all the possibilities that could of happened and didn’t, such as head on, or rolling, either of which could have resulted in death or a trip to the hospital. The man in the pickup truck came back to check on us, to make sure we were all right. A couple other people stopped also. I got out and tried to push while Marie tried to drive out, but the tires were in such bad shape that there was no traction, part of the reason we were where we were.
I called AAA, and was on hold for almost 15 minutes before getting someone, and told them where we were, approximately. While on that call, one guy creeped Marie out, but I told her she needed to talk to him as I was still on hold, and that if he did anything I would hang up and call 911. AAA told us it would be at the most one and half hours before the tow truck got to us. Marie called home and extracted a promise from each of her two sisters not to tell their father what she told them, and she told them we were in a corn field, waiting to be pulled out. So, as the sky got darker, fewer people noticed us, and we started telling about the books we were reading. Marie had just been reading an Ann Rule book that day. She is a true crime writer and can be scary in a situation like we were in to think about. I tried to get our minds off of her book by telling about the book I was reading, “My Name is Mary Sutter.” At some point we locked the doors, and felt a little bit more secure, but then we were remembering a show we watched the night before where a man hit a metal bat into a guy’s truck window and beat him to death, so we didn’t feel totally secure. Every once in a while, the sky would light up so bright it hurt our eyes, but showed us that no one was around us. It was a little terrifying when that happened, but fortunately neither of us is afraid of lightening.
When it became totally dark, a car started to pass us, and then shone a big spot light on us. It was a Seneca County Sheriff, and it was amazing he noticed us in the dark. He kept that spotlight on us almost the rest of the time, and it was blindly bright. We had to put our visors down to tolerate it. He came to see if we were all right, and we said yes, and that we had called AAA and that we had been there one and half hours already. He said that was unacceptable, and told me to call them back up and cancel the tow truck and he would call a tow truck and AAA would reimburse us. I called AAA back, and was on hold a shorter time, and they contacted the tow truck, which was out of Stanley, around the lake from us! The sheriff then talked to the AAA operator and told them he called us a tow truck and that they were going to pay the bill. So we sat and waited for another half hour or so. Marie realized she needed to go to the bathroom, but there was no way we could figure out how to do that without the spotlight shining on us and/or the sheriff checking on us.
The tow truck finally arrived, from Romulus, and checked on the car, and hooked it up to winch it out. Winching is very slow, especially when you are standing there in flip flops and short shorts like Marie was doing. The guy steering the car was the smaller of the two, and Marie and I about died laughing when the big guy called him Bubba. They got the car onto the side of the road, and looked it over. They pulled off one piece of plastic that protected the windshield washer reservoir that looked like it might be able to be put back on, and said it looked like it would be fine, just be prepared for clunking sounds till the mud was all off. I drove the car to Trumansburg, after making one stop because of a noise. Marie got out and pushed something back under, then we went to the car wash to wash off as much of the mud as we could before going home. I wrote a note for my husband that said “So, Marie and I are ok, the car is almost ok except the bumper, will tell you more later.” He saw it the next morning and didn’t get all upset like he usually does about most things. I told Marie that I didn’t really want to go to Walmart anyway, and she said that is why we were in the corn field!
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