(nearly) Wordless Wednesday*

*Or Thursday if you're a procrastinator, like I am.

Hollyhocks. 
That bloomed. 
Which I planted from seed. 
Victory!

Lazy Bones

I hope you know that nearly every day at work I think up Wonderful Blog Posts, working out the wording in my head, deciding whether or not there will be pictures (you know there will be!) and what they would be of, etcetera, etcetera.

Then I get home from work.

It's a mad dash to make and eat dinner with Mr. Wonderful in the one hour we're at home together before he goes to work.

After he leaves my evenings are filled with scooping cat poop, doing dishes, laundry, watering the garden & flower beds, general cleaning up and blah, blah... 

Boring.  Normal.  Grown-up stuff.

And, at the end of the evening when I'm getting ready for bed I mentally check things off and I feel a small sense of accomplishment. 

Wait...
Is that right?
Do others do less than this?
Did I do anything worthy of my self congratulatory pat on the back?
Do others do a lot more?
Am I inherently lazy and so this is why I feel like I did so much after work?
Am I a bat guano crazy freak that should just stop being a loon?

Moving on, back toward the point...........

I never end up posting my Most Excellent Post and then it is no longer relevant.  Which means I wasted brain cells on nicely worded story that only I get to know.

Now I'm a Wasteful Lazy Bones? Great.

Well, I will have you know that this post is right off the cuff.  Not even a single thought in my noggin when I started this.  How'd ya' like that?

And since I am being so Avant Garde here's a irrelevant picture that I took at MommaBean's a few years ago

Good Morning Sunshine!

(nearly) Wordless Wednesday



Day 1
When I first noticed the soon to be flower

Day 3
You can literally see how the pepper is taking shape!

Day 5
A real life, teensy-weensy pepper

Butter, Part 2

Well, I did it!

It was a heck of a lot easier than I ever expected it would be. 

You folks who bought a Shake Weight? Suckers! This is waaaaaay better because you get fresh butter out of the deal!

A few people have said "You can buy that at the grocery store, you know." or "They have that at Kroger."  Well, no shit Sherlock.  I know that but I am practicing my Pioneer Lady Skills.  Or as I more commonly refer to them Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Survival Skill Set or PAZSSS for short. Will there be cows post-apocalypse? I dunno', but I know how to make butter if there are.  And I survive.  And I can figure out how to pasteurize the straight from the cow stuff. 

I didn't do it because it saves money (it doesn't), I didn't do it because I have loads of time to do nothing (I just have evenings when Mr. Wonderful is at work), I did it because I can and can now brag that I've done it.  That and I'm cool.  I think.

1 pint of room temperature cream in a quart jar

So as it turns out all you need is cream - pasteurized not ultra-pasteurized.  And something to shake the bejeezus out of it.

As you can imagine it's sloshing around in there so you shake.  And shake.  And shake.  And shake.  And ...

At about 3 minutes in something weird happens and feels like the jar is packed full of wet stuffing and there is no sloshing.  Imagine my surprise when I realized that it has become whipped cream!  Now, I've made my own whipped cream before but that was with a mixer.

Anyway, I got a second wind because I'd been told that soon after it would soon start to resemble butter if I kept shaking.

Somewhere about a minute later suddenly and miraculously it all changed.  There was a thunking going on in the jar.  It felt like a potato ploping about so I stopped and looked.

Would you look at that! It's butter!

Really, look again!

Mmmm, But-tah!

You then pour off the buttermilk.  Now, people better than me use the buttermilk for biscuits or pancakes or whatever you use buttermilk for but, I just put it in this dish to give over to MommaBean who will use it eons before I will.  Maybe one day I'll use it for something completely awesome.

Next comes the most tedious part - washing the butter.  You pour cold, icy cold, water over the butter to get the most buttermilk you can out of it.  I have read that it keeps longer and tastes better the more you wash it.

After the first washing - notice the milky color of the water?

And you continue to pour water in there and smoosh, smash, stir and scrape until the water turns clear.  Then you keep going, just working the residual water out.

Now to get all the water out

When that was done I stirred in a 1/2 teaspoon of salt --



The results of all my hard work:

Yummy, creamy butter,
Made by me!

The Butter Gods have smiled upon me.

Maybe I'll make "fancy" butter next time, now that I am firmly on my way to Butter Goddess-dom.

Butter

Tonight, I (attempt to) make butter.

I drove 45 miles to a "local" dairy to buy the Cream.

Let's hope the drive was worthwhile.

Updates and pictures (of course) to follow!

(nearly) Wordless Wednesday

My work peeps love me.  They bring me beautiful flowers.

Book List

It's going to be one busy summer!

Other than everything else going on in the next four months, I have books, loads and loads of books that are on my Summer Reading List.
 
Not only to I have books to read but audio books to listen to.  The audio books I get from the library.  That is of course until I figure out whether Audible.com is the thing for me.  Sometimes the library just doesn't have what I am looking for.

I am currently listening to the second book in the Flavia De Luce series - The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag.  I love it!  I positively couldn't stop listening to the first book - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  And I've already downloaded the third - A Red Herring Without Mustard.  But, that wont take me much further than next week or so! Then what's a girl to do?!

A few months ago, when I thought I would be having a lot more time (long story, even longer post, which I still haven't edited it down), I went on this whole Householding/Homemaker/Self-sufficiency kick and I bought:

1. The Radical Homemaker (I have to come back to it when I'm in a different mood - it seems a tad too feminist, or it did when I first started..)
2. The Vegetable Gardeners Container Bible (We live in a condo so this is great, so far love it and it's working out great!)
3. Possum Living (Very interesting but, I don't think I could do it unless we're in a post-apocalyptic world.)
4. The Beginners Guide to Preserving Food at Home (I have to make my garden a success first.)
5. The Backyard Homestead (Mr. Wonderful enjoyed it - I haven't read it yet.)
6. The Householder's Guide to the Universe (It's pretty good - I plowed through the first part and am now meandering my way through it.)

On Friday I was in a book buying mood again and got these three:

Casting Off -- because I love knitting (which I have been blase about lately?).

The Winter Sea -- because I just need a good fiction book to read.

The Hip Girl's Guide to Homemaking -- because I am hip & I am a girl. Plus I like the whole homemaking thing.

And those are just the books in my visual field.

So yeah, getting off the blasted computer now and going to read.

Well, at least one page of this:

So I have this post...

And it is one doozy of a post!

Stupidly long, actually.

Needs massive amounts of editing.

I've been distractedly working on it for an hour and a half.

Doesn't explain my abscence, really. 

I've just been lazy.

Allow me to share a picture that will dazzle you and make you forget how apathetic I've been of late.

My new Salt & Pepper Shakers!

The alien is the salt & the spaceman is the pepper - aren't they're just perfect!?