The sunsets in Wyoming can be spectacular. This was taken in Dubois, Wyoming. It's looked like the sky was on fire. Extraordinarily beautiful.
Can I Have 48 Hours in a Day Please?
Posted by on February 2, 2011 Leave a Comment
Can somebody please add another 24 hours to the daily clock? I simply can’t get it all done in the time allotted in a mere 24 hours.
And I don’t know where you might live when you read this, but if you’re in Connecticut like I am, can somebody please explain to me what the hell happened to the weather pattern this year? We barely recover from a storm when another one hits.
I feel like my children have been on vacation since December 18th with an occasional day of school thrown in here and there. Truly. Even the kids are starting to dread having another snow day! Of course my mood might have something to do with that – another day home with Mom who’s grumpy because school was cancelled (again) and stressed (because I’m not nearly as productive with three of them around than I am without them) and I have so much to do.
This is what I feel like at the end of every day. This photo, however, was taken several years ago when I was on a cattle roundup in New Mexico. Now rounding up cattle is hard work. This particular day we were rounding up horses, which is even harder that cattle because you work cows slowly with occasional dashes to gather one trying to break away from the herd. Horses run full tilt every which way. I don't think I'd ever worked so hard or had as much fun as I did that day, but man, was I tired.
Now my real job is a being a full-time mom. That’s what I consider my ‘primary’ job to be. However, I have a very full and busy life when my kids are in school doing the things that make me happy, which allows me to be a good and happy mom looking forward to being with my children at the end of every day.
The bloom is off the rose on that one for sure right now.
My therapist said a few weeks ago that “creative thoughts explode like popcorn in my head” and I can’t control it. It’s who I am. On any given day I think of at least one new thing I want to try – some idea for something; whether it be to cook or to create. Some days I think of three or four new things. It’s part of my scanner personality I guess.
The one highlight of my day today though was being interviewed by Niman Ranch. They had sent out a survey to people that had bought their products online, and I was chosen to be a part of the survey. I pursued the woman in charge of the scheduling though as I not only am a big fan of Niman Ranch and their philosophy’s and food, but thought I might actually have something to add that may be worthwhile because fair and humane farming is something that I feel so strongly about. Bill Niman is one of the ‘founding father’s’ of the fair and humane farming movement. They were primarily trying to figure out how to best get their food and philosophy “out there” to the general public. I don’t know whether anything I said was worthwhile to them in the least, but we had an interesting and lively discussion and feel every small step we can take to educate consumers about this the closer we’ll be to a healthier life with happier animals.
Hopefully tomorrow will be be a better day. It’s not looking good though. I can hear the rain/sleep pelting the windows as I write this (at 1:50 a.m.) and they’re saying it could be a pretty major ice storm by morning.
Lemons in the Morning Light
Posted by on February 2, 2011 2 Comments
I took this photo at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill in Kentucky two years ago when I went there with India while visiting Amanda at college. We spent the night there and at breakfast in the morning the sun was just right on this beautiful bowl of lemons. I love light.
Mocha Icebox Cake
Posted by on February 1, 2011 Leave a Comment
I grew up with Icebox Cake made with chocolate wafer cookies and whipped cream. It’s what my stepmom made for everybody’s birthdays. She made them in all shapes and sizes. You take chocolate wafer cookies, smear some sweetened whipped cream on each one, sandwich them together and then ice the whole thing with more whipped cream. You let it sit in the fridge overnight so the whipped cream soaks into the cookies and they get soft. It’s delicious. The recipe has been around forever.
My daughter, Amanda, is a huge Ina Garten fan. She’s also a Paula Deen fan. For spring break she and her friend were thinking of going on a Paula Deen cruise! Better that than Mexico or Florida for heavy drinking I suppose. Anyway, the point is she told me that her new book, How Easy Is That?, which I gave her for Christmas, had a revamped recipe for chocolate Icebox Cake. She made it for me for my birthday and it was really delicious.
Now I don’t claim to be a better cook that Ina Garten, but I thought that there was some room for improvement in the cake. Now I will say that since Amanda had to make the cake on the Saturday night before my birthday on Tuesday (as she was leaving the next morning to go back to college), it did sit in the fridge for 3 days before we ate it. I thought it was a little dry. Delicious, but could have used a little more moistness. When I made it I increased the recipe for the icing (although it’s not really a typical icing but we’ll call it that) by 1/4. I also realized that Amanda made it in a 9″ spring-form pan and the recipe called for an 8″ one. I made it with an 8″ one.
Mocha Chocolate Icebox Cake
Original recipe from Ina Garten’s “Barefoot Contessa: How Easy Is That?” cookbook. Adapted by Crafty Farm Girl©, January, 2011
Serving Size: Serves eight
For this recipe you should try to use chocolate chip cookies from Tate’s Bake Shop in Southampton, New York, which are available nationally or at TatesBakeShop.com. If you can’t get them, use another thin, crisp chocolate chip cookie.
Ingredients
2 cups cold heavy cream
12 ounces Italian mascarpone cheese
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup Kahlúa liqueur
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder, such as Pernigotti
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3, 8-ounce packages of Tate’s Bake Shop chocolate chip cookies
Shaved semisweet chocolate, for garnish (I make mine by running a vegetable peeler down a chunk of chocolate)
Remember, if I can teach you only one thing in life, that would be to assemble your ingredients and then “mise en place”, a French term referring to having all the ingredients necessary for a dish prepared and ready to combine up to the point of cooking. Once you learn to do this your cooking life will be much easier.
Preparation
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, combine the heavy cream, mascarpone, sugar, Kahlúa, cocoa powder, espresso powder, and vanilla. Mix on low speed to combine and then slowly raise the speed, until it forms firm peaks.
To assemble the cake, arrange chocolate chip cookies flat in an 8-inch springform pan, covering the bottom as much as possible. (I break some cookies to fill in the spaces.) Spread a fifth of the mocha whipped cream evenly over the cookies.
Now let me just stick a little note in here. It is very hard to spread this cream/icing onto a layer of cookies at the bottom of an 8″ spring-form pan. Amanda finally ended up starting with a cheese slicer, which was working pretty well, but then we finally ended up sticking the icing into a pastry bag and just cut off the tip (or you can use a plain round piping tip) and piped the icing in. It worked MUCH better that way in my opinion. If you don’t have a pastry bag, then use a small off-set spatula or a cheese slicer to spread the icing. I found when I piped it I didn’t even really need to spread it, as when I placed the next layer of cookies down it squished it all down pretty evenly anyway.
Place another layer of cookies on top, lying flat and touching, followed by another fifth of the cream. Continue layering cookies and cream until there are five layers of each, ending with a layer of cream. Smooth the top, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight.
Sprinkle the top with the chocolate. Run a small sharp knife around the outside of the cake and remove the sides of the spring-form pan. Cut in wedges and serve cold.
Delicious!
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Graffiti on an Abandoned House
Posted by on January 31, 2011 Leave a Comment
Graffiti on an Abandoned House
Frosty Sunrise on a North Carolina Barn
Posted by on January 31, 2011 1 Comment
My SIster and I Went Out Early Saturday Morning and Got this Lovely Shot of a Beautiful Barn on a Frosty Morning
Learning to Spin
Posted by on January 29, 2011 Leave a Comment
The first (and only) full day of my Learning to Spin class started early and ended late. In the morning we were still learning how to use a drop spindle with wool roving.
Yarn Spun on a Drop Spindle
By mid-morning we were spinning on wheels. I got a two-treddle wheel that I really felt comfortable with.
By 9:00 tonight I had used all of the brown wool roving that we had received when class started and moved on to some alpaca roving that I had bought at a agricultural fair in Connecticut. Alpaca fiber is supposed to be much more difficult to spin than wool roving so I first tried spinning it on a drop spindle, but felt so comfortable with that that I moved on to the spinning wheel. I finished that whole thing of roving too! Unfortunately I do not have a picture of that to show you (yet) as I forgot to take one.
By the end of the night I had two rolls of brown wool yarn and one of the beautiful pink and yellow alpaca yarn.
Tomorrow we’ll learn to “ply” the yarns together and then there will be an “show” of what all of the students at the school here this weekend have made which should be very fun and inspirational.
My sister has completed 3 bowls in her woodturning course!
My laptop is about to die and I forgot my power cord somehow so I’ll post tomorrow night again.
Skeins of Weaving Yarn
Posted by on January 29, 2011 Leave a Comment
The Beautiful Colors on a Wall Full of Weaving Yarns
My First Day at School
Posted by on January 29, 2011 2 Comments
What a lovely day for my sister and me.
Our fight departed slighly late but we actually arrived on time to Atlanta. Got our rental car with relative ease, and departed for our drive to North Carolina with shining sun, blue skies and temperatures in the high 40’s. There wasn’t a flake of snow to be seen anywhere. The drive was not particularly impressive until we started to get into the boonies of Georgea and into North Carolina. By that time it was about 4:30 and the sun was so perfect in the sky, casting this golden hew on everything. I wanted to stop the car every few hundred yards to take pictures. But, by this time we’d run out of room to spare to get to the school on time so I only got a few opportunities.
Here are a few of the photos I managed to get.
Fence in the Setting Sun
Cool Funky Cabin
We arrived just in time for final check-in, went directly to orientation, and from there directly to dinner, which was family-style and quite delicious. We then had just enough time to throw our bags into our rooms (which were much nicer than we anticipated) and arrive a few minutes late for the evening portion of class tonight.
From 6:45 until 9:00 we both learned something we knew absolutely nothing about. By the end of the night I had learned how to make yarn on a drop spindle. It wasn’t perfect, but I seemed to be picking it up fairly quickly and was happy with the progress I’d made by 9:00.
My sister enjoyed her evening portion of the bowl turning on a lathe class, but seemed a little frustrated by having a little bit too much assistance by the teachers. She may start over with a fresh bowl blank tomorrow.
Tomorrow we plan on getting up at 6:00 a.m. and take a quick drive around the area for to see what’s here and take some photos in the early-morning sunlight. Breakfast is at 8:15 and class starts at 9:00 and pretty much goes all day with a short break for lunch. By the end of the day tomorrow we should all have learned the general basics of spinning on a spinning wheel, which should be quite interesting. Apparently we will not be learning carding and preparing wool, as there is simply not enough time in the short weekend to cover all of the basics. We will learn how to pick a good fleece tomorrow and we’ll wash it as well. It’s all very interesting. There are I think 8 women in the class and none of us have every done spinning of any kind so we’re all total beginners and there was a lot of laughing going on.
At night we’ll have an opportunity to spend more “open studio” time working on projects or visiting the other buildings and see what they are doing there. They teach so many classes in so many different arts it’s mind boggling.
Hopefully I’ll be able to update more tomorrow. There’s lots to learn!
Red Rusty Chair
Posted by on January 28, 2011 Leave a Comment
A Rusty Red Chair in Cherry Log, Georgia