Let me eat cake

In better non-poop-related news, January 27 was National Chocolate Cake Day.  I said something snarky on FB about having to work on what should be a national holiday.  My husband saw the post and baked me a chocolate cake that evening.  Hooray!  Chocolate cake is my favorite food group.  

My favorite - black forest cake.

I told Hubby that Chocolate Cake Day should be everyday for me.  I should be able to eat chocolate cake whenever I want, anytime or anywhere.  I should have exclusive rights to all the chocolate cake in the country.  Immediately after any cake is made, I would have first dibs and could take as much of it as I wanted.  My husband suggested I impose "droit du seigneur" for cake.  Which I think would be "droit du seigneuresse de gateau."  

I'm looking into it.

Poo stories

Cats are a pain.  We love them, but they are a pain.  Though not as big a pain as dogs would be.  However, we have recently discovered that one (or more) of them have been using a corner of our sunroom for a litter box.  The actual litter box is located downstairs in a back storage room, but apparently that's too far for them to travel.  Instead they decided that some cloth that had fallen out of my sewing cabinet was a great place to relieve themselves.  Fortunately it didn't soak through to our hardwood floors.  

So we decided to lock the cats downstairs overnight, to get them to use the actual litter box.  The cats don't like it.  The first night I heard several fights break out between Corey (the evil black cat) and the others.  A week later the brawls have mostly ended, but the resentment remains.  What matters is we've had no more "presents" in the corner.  If this doesn't work we'll have to relocate the litter box to the ground floor.  Which isn't ideal, but better than getting rid of the cats.  Probably.  Maybe.

Our chickens are still laying eggs like mad.  One day last week the coop waterer broke and leaked a large puddle of water onto the coop floor.  Which became a large puddle of chicken poop soup.  Solution?  Buy a new waterer and add more wood shavings.  And be thankful we decided to pour a cement floor when we built the coop.  Cleaning the coop will be extra fun next spring.

Be careful whom you kill

Gah.  Warning -- another rant ahead.  I just finished streaming Season 4 of 'The Magicians' on Netflix.  If you haven't seen it and may want to someday, STOP READING NOW.  Spoilers await ye.

I do not understand the desire of storytellers (books, TV, movies, etc.) to kill off main characters.  If there's a justified story-dependent reason why it NEEDS to happen, then I sorta get it.  But often writers kill off a person for the dramatic impact, aka shock value.  This tactic is cheap and gaudy, and the sign of a bad storyteller.  

Or, as in the case of The Magicians, writers kill off a person because they believe the character has reached the end of their growth.  They can't think of anything else for the character to do or contribute.  This is also bullocks.  Saying a character has no further potential is lazy thinking, another sign of a bad storyteller.  

The absolute worst character to kill is the anchor.  What's an anchor charactor?  The anchor is what I call the first main person that the audience meets and connects to.  It's the character that introduces the audience to the story and the world they live in.  The audience first sees the world through that person's eyes, and develops their perspective from that view.  That person provides the main connection between the reader/viewer and the story. 

When the anchor character is killed, this link is broken.  And this is what The Magicians did by killing off Quentin.  I feel disconnected, adrift.  I feel no real desire to keep watching.  Quentin wasn't even my favorite character, but he was what tethered me to the show.  

I distinctly remember the first time a favorite character of mine was killed off.  It was in 1982, and I was a reclusive eleven-year-old nerd who loved Dr. Who.  I didn't just like the show, I LOVED it.  I watched it religiously, read the books, went to the conventions.  (I still love it, but I'm not best pleased with the current series.)  My favorite character at that time was Adric.  I'm not sure why - he wasn't a particularly pleasant person.  I don't think I had a crush on him or anything.  But for whatever reason, Adric was my favorite.

I was sitting on the plaid couch of my parent's family room watching the episode Earthshock.  Near the end of the episode Adric dies on a spaceship as it crashes into planet Earth.  I remember seeing Adric's death, staring wide-eyed at the credits that rolled after the final scene, numb with disbelief.  I was as devastated as an eleven-year-old could be over a TV show.  I even wrote about it in my diary.  It took days for me to recover.  But I continued to watch Dr. Who -- Adric may have been my favorite but he wasn't the anchor character. 

So, for any aspiring storytellers out there, be careful whom you kill off.  And rest assured, I won't kill off any main characters in this blog.  Maybe a couple of side kicks, but no main ones.

Eggrolls and auctions

Well, the blizzard was a disappointment.  We only got a few inches of snow and the winds were less than impressive.  Do you hear me, snow demons?  I am mocking you!  I bet you couldn't summon a decent blizzard if your red horns depended on it!  There, that should get them riled up.  If we get 24" dumped on us next week, you can thank/blame me.

In other news, O's birthday is Sunday.  He has requested homemade egg rolls and sweet potato fries for supper, with chocolate zucchini cake for dessert.  Egg rolls are one of the recipes all my kids LOVE, and request frequently.  I don't make them as often as they would like, simply because they are rather putzy.  But they are also very tasty.  I use store-bought egg roll wraps instead of making my own.  Actually you could just make the filling and skip the wrap, and it would still taste great.

I use a recipe from a Chinese cookbook I bought at a garage sale many years ago.  25 cents!  Can't beat the price, even if there are no pictures inside.  Egg rolls, fried rice, beef and broccoli, and wonton soup are the only recipes I've ever made from the cookbook.  They are all excellent.  I should try making more.

In other news, Hubby and I have recently spent a bit of time perusing an online auction site.  A nearby rural school district (Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop) voted last year to close its middle school and consolidate those grades into its elementary and high school buildings.  Like all school closures, it was a difficult and hotly contested decision.  After removing the furniture/appliances/fixtures that they wanted to keep, the district is now auctioning off the remaining items.  There's hundreds of things available, including:

A 32'x33' wrestling mat

Bottomless bin of basketballs

The beginnings of a mariachi band

DIY nightmare kit part 1

DIY nightmare kit part 2

DIY brain freeze kit.  AKA an Icee machine.

They also have about a gazillion desks, chairs, tables and books on the site.  And also, sadly, the old front entry welcome board.

I worked with several of the people listed on the board.  Mr. Busse was the golf coach and would take his players to Fort Ridgely when our course was still open.  Mr. Kaukola led a student clean-up day at the park each spring.  And Mrs. Weir was on the Friends of Fort Ridgely Board when it was still active.  It's sad that the school has closed, but kind of inevitable in a dwindling rural town of only 1100 people.  Costs keep rising, but fewer residents means less tax income.  And no one wants to fund a school levy.

Here's the auction website, for anyone interested.  Online auctions can be hit or miss -- last year Hubby and I bought a fairly new refrigerator at a church auction for about a third of the cost.  It's come in mighty useful, especially last summer when we were limiting our grocery store visits because of COVID, but still had four hungry teenagers to feed.  Gotta have a place for all the milk, veges and leftover pizza to get you through the week.

Another blizzard

We're under another blizzard warning for tonight and tomorrow.  Hooray!  Yeah, I know, weird for me to cheer on a winter storm.  But since we're all at home and healthy, we've got a warm house and plenty of food and we don't have to go anywhere, I choose to enjoy the beauty of the blowing snow.  As long as our power stays on.  And even then, we've got backup heat available.  So, we've really got nothing to worry about.  Bring on the storm!

 

December 23rd blizzard

Slow news week

Time is flying by.  B's birthday last weekend, O's birthday this weekend.  B got a cell phone!  We've waited for each of the boys to turn 15 before getting them phones.  They've all told us at various times that they were the only ones in their class without one, even as early as sixth grade.  They weren't complaining, just making an observation.  If some parent wants to give their ten-year-old a $300 phone and pay $30 a month for them to use it, that's their business.  But it sounds kinda crazy to me.

Speaking of finances, last month we decided to refinance our house at a much lower rate.  We ended up saving quite a bit of money by doing this.  So yesterday Hubby and I had an appointment with a lawyer to sign the final papers.  While waiting for the lawyer I spotted a dresser/hutch/bureau that I instantly coveted.  I snapped a photo, and then had to explain to my bemused husband why I was taking photos in the waiting room of a law firm.

Such a pretty mosaic on the doors.

We've also been toying with the idea of purchasing a small house in Mankato for our sons to use if/when they go to college there.  O and E currently pay $770 a month for a teeny tiny one bedroom a few blocks from campus.  That's almost a mortgage payment right there.  It would make even more financial sense if we bought a house and rented another bedroom out to another student.  

O&E's tiny only-one-person-at-a-time kitchen

But Mankato is super duper insane with rentals.  You have to have a rental license to rent out a room, and those licenses are tightly restricted.  No more than 10% of the dwellings on any single family residential block can have a rental.  Which is good for the homeowners that live on the block, I guess, but it really stinks for students who can't find a place to live for a reasonable price. 

In other totally not newsworthy news, we have successfully defrosted another freezer.  And we have successfully finished off the box of After Eight mints that we opened on Christmas.  My Mom would usually have After Eights at various holidays during the year, so it's kinda a family tradition.  There was one mint left in the box for the looooongest time.  It's a Minnesota Nice thing, not taking the last of anything in case someone else wants it.  Which usually means the last thing goes stale and eventually gets thrown out.  

And finally, monsieur – a wafer-thin mint.

So as you can see, it's been a slow news week here.  Especially compared to all of the other news taking place around the country.  What's that famous curse?  "May you live in interesting times."  Well, these times certainly are interesting.  I just hope they don't get even more interesting anytime soon.

Eggcess

The hens are laying in overdrive right now.  We're getting roughly a dozen a day.  Fried eggs for breakfast and egg sandwiches for lunch.  We can't keep up.  Like I've said before, it's a nice problem to have.

Yesterday I contacted some friends and asked them if they wanted eggs.  Hubby played egg fairy in the afternoon, making deliveries and reducing our inventory by five dozen.  The photo above shows how many we have AFTER the reduction.  Tomorrow's cooking plans include omelettes and an angel food cake.

One of my friends who visits Japan regularly gave us some Japanese candy for the eggs.  I was nervous about the yuzu and matcha tea KitKats, but they were very good.  Limited edition unfortunately.

We'll try these candies next.  They look sorta like the breadstick packs that Nutella makes.  Should be tasty.

This morning we had an electrician out to fix the wiring in our chicken coop.  When G went in to feed them yesterday he noticed the lights weren't working, and neither was the outlet for the water heater.  The electrician tested things and said the breaker and outlets were fine, so we suspect mousies chewed through the wiring in the walls.  

The electrician ran a metal conduit between the breaker box and the light switch, and now all is well.  We'll see how much that bill comes to.  Homegrown eggs certainly look and taste better than store-bought, but they're definitely not cheaper.  I'm glad we can afford to keep our happy hens.

Defreezing the freezer

Over time, freezers will build up too much internal ice and need to be defrosted.  It's one of the absolutes in life.  Birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, defrosting the freezer, death.

We have three upright freezers in our unheated, attached garage.  This may seem excessive, but they are almost always filled.  We buy pork and beef in bulk, chicken and butter when on sale, and freeze a lot of goodies from the garden and orchard that take up a lot of space.  I also like to make gallons of stock and soup at a time and then freeze them for later.

Turning frozen tomatoes into sauce.

Yesterday we decided to defrost one of our freezers.  A smart person would have done this when the outdoor temps were above freezing.  Unfortunately, we are not smart.  And we didn't have have enough room in Freezer B and C to hold the stuff from Freezer A while it was defrosting.  But now we do, so now we're doing it. 

Tonight's supper.

This task was also inspired by the fact that we are getting another half a beef (that's half of a butchered cow) next week.  We buy our beef from a local organic farmer, who sends it to a local processor who butchers it to our specifications.  This works out to be much cheaper than buying beef in individual cuts from the store.  The last time I ordered, I priced it out to $5.15 a pound including the processing fees.  That's for everything - ground beef, chuck and arm roasts, sirloin steaks and roasts, T-Bone steaks, rib steaks and roasts.  All organic.  Depending on your farmer, you can buy 1/8s or 1/4s or 1/2s or whole beefs.  If you have the freezer space and think you can eat that much in a year, I highly recommend it.

Tomorrow's supper.

Anyway, we've been trying to eat a lot of freezer food over the past few weeks.  And yesterday we crammed most of the remaining stuff from Freezer A into Freezer B and C.  There were some things that didn't make it in.  Those items are being dealt with in various ways.

9-month old bread, going to the chickens.

The chickens will also get the last bags of 2018 frozen apples.  Our two mature trees are biennial bearers, so we didn't get any in 2019.  Which means our 2020 harvest will need to last until 2022.  USDA freezer storage dates be damned.

After unplugging and emptying the freezer Hubby propped open the door, set up a space heater in front of it, and covered the opening and heater with a tarp.  Sounds unsafe, but it was totally fine.  Unless you work for OSHA, in which case look away.  It took over 12 hours to defrost, but defrost it did, and now we can refill it with fresh beef next week.

I've just realized that in this post I've flaunted USDA food safety laws and OSHA space heater laws.  We're living life on the edge, I tell you.  Who knew I was such a rebel?