Cooking and Baking

There was no sewing yesterday. As expected, I spent most of the day in the kitchen. I made a 7-layer dip and a Texas Potato Salad. Both dishes are pretty spicy. I'll be spending today baking a lemon meringue pie. One of you observed that this sounds like food for a party...a small party, yes. We're breaking quarantine with our little family to celebrate three birthdays this week. There are only the five of us, and nobody is sick. We figure we'll be okay.

Yesterday was Mae's birthday. I got her a gift, but I'm also making a loaf of bread to take when we go to their house. I received a great tutorial from King Arthur flour for this No-Knead Sourdough Bread. It started yesterday morning. I've tried a lot of different bread doughs in my bread-baking adventures. Each time, I think I've found the dough of my dreams. This one actually has some promise. It was moist, but not slack. I mixed it up with a dough whisk, which yielded a shaggy dough.

The tutorial gives some links that explain the "folding" process. This dough sat at room temperature for three hours. At the end of each hour, I stretched and folded. After the third fold, I put it into the refrigerator for the night. You can see the dough is smooth and elastic. At the end of three hours, I could see bubbles under the skin.

While that was proofing, the kitties and I headed out. Each day starts in the greenhouse for the time being, as I wet everything down, awaiting the sprouts. I haven't been out yet today...it's raining...but I'm hoping something will be showing some signs of life. Smitty took up his position at the corner of the deck. I love how kitties curl their tails over their toes to keep warm.

Unless you're Sadie. Then...no tail. That's okay. A good dust bath can warm the soul.

The first rhododendron is covered in blossoms now. I tried like crazy to get a picture of a bumble bee. He was flitting from flower to flower, and making it near impossible to get a good picture. In fact, I never did get anything more than his fuzzy black butt.

The second of the rhodies to bloom is starting to pretty up nicely.

This is the newest of the azaleas to begin blooming. This is a large bush at the corner of the house.

And lookie there! The first cherry!

Here are some happy little daisies. Looks like the squirrels have been after them...the little sh*ts.

And I couldn't resist this picture.

Did you know April 30th was Military Brats Day? And since I are one...I'm celebrating. Being a military brat was the best part of growing up. The dandelion spreading seeds in the wind is our flower.

There was some fun stuff in the mail yesterday. Finally, I received the fabric I ordered from Fabric.com. This is the fabric I chose for the backing of the Chicken Feed quilt.

It was one of the quilts from my "trashy" series.

And you know how it is with Fabric.com, you have to spend $50 to get free shipping. I was about ten bucks away, and so I ordered a couple of things to get me over the top. I'd rather spend that money on fabric than on shipping. So, I picked this pretty stripe. It'll make a nice binding some day.

And this white tone-on-tone. It'll make a good background for an embroidery piece.

Also...what a surprise! This was a little gift from my friend Sue for my Tuesday birthday.

I got a kick out of her card. Sue and I often poke fun at the BMI charts. We're both of German descent with a lot of muscle on our short bodies, and so we'd both need to be emaciated to fit with where the chart tells us we should be. And that's not to deny that we could both shed a few pounds without anyone getting too worried about it.

Okay, so, as I've been writing this, I've been warming up the oven. The bread dough is on its final rise in its proofing basket, and I need to get it into the oven. Just now, the oven beeped at me, and so I'll be off to take care of that. Wish me luck. Final picture in tomorrow's post.

Oh, but one more thing...I saw this downy woodpecker at the suet feeder as I came upstairs. I saw it there yesterday too. The starlings have also arrived, and they'll be eating the suet like there's no tomorrow.

Fortunately, I have a different suet feeder that will allow the little woodpeckers in, but keep the starlings out. There's more than one way to, um, defeather a bird. But don't, okay? No bird defeathering. I tell this to Smitty and Sadie every time I let them outside. Words to live by...especially if you're a bird.