How One Thing Leads to Another

When I left you yesterday, I was getting ready to work on my embroidery. It's all finished now except for the name of the shop at the very tippy top. Only...I ran out of embroidery floss on the floss bobbin I was working with. Continuing would mean that I needed to unband a skein of floss and attempt to wind it onto the floss bobbin without tangling it. Which seems to be impossible. I decided to wait until this morning. I was really wanting to get at those flamingos, and I didn't want to spend the rest of the day untangling floss...with the help of cats, no doubt.

Instead, I headed into the kitchen to make the Spicy Dilled Carrot Spears. Along the way, I decided to feed the sourdough starters and give them nice clean jars to live in. They've been living in their old jars since we got home from our trip and the sides were all caked with sourdough boogers. I don't know about you, but I prefer a booger-free life, and I figured the yeasties did too.

But then I had the flour out, and heck, I was going to be in the kitchen canning carrots anyway, so why not get some bread rising? So I mixed up the dough for the Muesli Toasting Bread. When I made this last time, I used muesli from the bulk foods section of the grocery store. It was so good, I vowed to make it again. Now...something like two years on...I finally got around to it. This time, I used Bob's Red Mill Muesli, which happens to have some raisins in it. This dough has both brown and golden raisins, dried apricots, dried cranberries, pistachios, and hazelnuts in it. When I had the dough mixed up, it looked like this.

It was supposed to rise for an hour, but when I checked it, it seemed kind of small and sad, so I gave it an extra hour.

In the meantime, I canned the carrots. Think of these as carrot crack. Once you start eating them, you won't stop until they're all gone. I tamed two weeks worth of CSA carrots with this effort. You can find the recipe for the Spicy Dilled Carrot Spears right here, and don't be put off by the canning. You can just refrigerate them if you don't want to go to the trouble of processing them. Your efforts will be rewarded, I promise.

And, hey, as long as I was standing there in the kitchen, I might as well roast some beets for our dinner salad last night. This salad has roasted beets, goat cheese, toasted pistachios, and a dressing made from four tablespoons olive oil, two tablespoons lemon juice, 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard, two teaspoons of minced green onion, and some salt and pepper. And, let me tell you, that CSA lettuce is so delightfully crispy. It's almost like eating potato chips, but a lot less fattening.

Also in the middle of all this, I started dinner in the crockpot. By the time I was finished with everything, I think every pot, pan, plate, bowl, spoon, fork, and knife in the kitchen was dirty. Toward the end of this kitchen marathon, the bread was ready to come out of the oven. Here, Mike started begging to cut into it like a little kid. I was firm, although I kind of wanted to cut into it right away too. We delayed gratification for about an hour, which could actually be a new world record here at the Three Cats Ranch.

While we waited for the bread to cool, I finished up the last section of the flamingos. Here, I was sewing the last seam of the last section, and what do you suppose happened when I was five inches from the finish line? Hm?

If you guessed that I ran out of bobbin thread, you'd be right. What makes this story even more exasperatingly funny is that I was thinking of y'all at this moment. As I've mentioned before, I'm often walking around talking to you guys and writing blog posts in my head. So in my Blogger talking voice I said to you, "And what do you supposed happened next?" And, BAM! It actually happened. My thoughts are powerful. Don't cross me.

So with all those goings on in the kitchen, I didn't get as far along with the flamingos as I'd hoped. Today, for absolutely sure and certain, this will be a finished quilt top.

Ann encouraged me to give it a black stop border because I didn't use the black anywhere else in the quilt except for the birds' beaks. This is what led to our disagreeing on the background fabric too. Her choice had black in it, but the rest of the design and colors kind of left me cold. Since I refused her first choice of background, she encouraged me to add in the black with a very narrow stop border. As I've been making the quilt, I've been thinking about that black border. I was afraid it would be too harsh, and so I hung up the black and a whimsical black stripe and than consulted with the Retired Resident Engineer. We both agreed that the stripe was a little distracting. I was set to ignore the advice about the black stop border, but Mike agreed with Ann. (Where's a good husband when you need one?) I'll grudgingly admit it looks better. So, okay. Black stop border, coming up.

And then it was time to cut the bread. Look how pretty that is? Think of it as a granola bar baked into bread.

This has just one teaspoon of honey added as a sweetener, and no added fat in the form of butter or oil. The only fat comes from a half cup of whole milk and the nuts. But that didn't stop us...oh no. We toasted those sliced off puppies and slathered on the butter. Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm. You can find the recipe for this right here.

So, okay. It's a new day now. We've had gorgeous weather all week, but it started raining yesterday. It was a good soft and long soaking rain, which gave me a reprieve from watering for a couple of days. Erik and Mae and I were supposed to go to the farmer's market this morning, but with these threatening skies, we bailed on our plans.

In the ongoing saga of the squirrels and the poppies, this happened. We switched out the large scale fencing we had protecting them for some smaller scale chicken wire.

When I checked them yesterday, they were completely buried in dirt. They hadn't been disturbed at all, but they were covered over with soil. What's up with that, you little sh*ts? So, in one of his daily trips to the hardware store, Mike picked up some chicken wire. Hopefully this will keep them and their little digging paws out of the whiskey barrel. Do you think they're intentionally trying to piss me off? Well, beware, you little fuzzy-tailed, marauding f*ckers. I have powerful thoughts. Just sayin'. Don't cross me.