Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Archive for the ‘Everyday stuff’ Category

What can I say? I have no excuse, really, except that I got a Kindle Fire for Christmas (from my lovely daughter Sarah) and that has really kept me busy.

Well, occupied, at any rate. I do like to read, and with the Kindle I’ve gotten quite good at ignoring anything else that needs my attention! Along with books it has apps.. things like Words With Friends and Solitaire. So, if I’m not reading, I’m checking on my ongoing scrabble games or having a hand of klondike. :)

We’ve had some lovely weather here in NWA: it’s been quite mild this winter. A wee bit of cold here and there, and a light dusting of snow this week. We got some much needed rain before the cold and snow came this week… and all the forecasts show just more mild weather coming up! They even said that we might not HAVE a winter this year… but I’m not going to believe that as we don’t usually get all the snow and such until later this month and into next.

The other news since I last posted anything is that I had surgery. Got one of my bad stomach aches at work again and went right to the doctor. He sent me to have a camera down my throat the next day, but the surgeon I saw said “never mind that, looks to me like your gallbladder, lets just take it out”. I was right on board with that and scheduled my surgery for Jan 6. So, last week I went in and they did the laparoscopic thing, where you only get a few holes. I ended up with 5 rather than 3, but that’s perfectly fine… never cared about scars anyhow. Four incision spots and one that looks like they stuck me with a turkey baster: more of a giant needle hole. :) I always have strange things in my head when I wake up from anesthesia and this time was no different as I woke thinking about my Kindle and how it does magic. :)

I’m pretty recovered as of today, don’t really need the pain pills any longer. Those first few days were pretty tough, though. I’m still afraid to sneeze, and my body is, too. I got a sneezing fit two days ago and I =couldn’t= sneeze properly. I was trying, but all I was doing was snargling. No “ah choo!” just sort of “ah flerbt”. It was sort of annoying- I needed to sneeze so the whole sneezing fit would go away. Instead I spent about 5 min doing the AH flerbt thing. Heh.

As usual this year I didn’t make any resolutions. I never do. It’s not that I don’t think I can improve myself, it’s that I don’t think New Years is the time to do it. Ron and I already did a major change when we quit smoking back in September. He is actually still smoking… more on how I found that out later… but he smokes 5 cigs a day at the most. I can’t believe that I can’t smell it on him, but I can’t. Weaning him off those few cigs a day that he’s still smoking… I don’t know how. He’ll have to find some better substitute than the things we’ve tried.

As to how I found out… my daughter told me. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she has smelled cig smoke. So I had to ask Ron, and he didn’t lie to me. Wanted to slap him upside the head… still do… but cutting way back like he’s done is more than I could do. I either smoke or I don’t, there isn’t any halfway thing like only smoke 2 cigs a day or something. Maybe those electronic cigs would work for Ron. I know they wouldn’t work for me, that whole smoking motion is part of what has to be quit.

Anyhow. I hear a cat roaming around the house wanting my attention… evidently Ron let Stubby in for some petting business. :) Gotta go pet the cat for a bit…

hugs,
Vyx

Thanksgiving this year is going to be all about pie.  Some years I do a big dinner and then try to schedule all the family to come to eat it.  This year I decided that I won’t bother trying to get everyone here for dinner… just dessert!

I make a pretty darn good pie.  Heck, even when I use store bought pie crust I make a good pie.

Pie is my favorite.  Favorite dessert to eat, and make.  Fresh fruit is the best, but custard pies are also good.   Even stuff out of a jar, like mincemeat…  pie is good.  Savory pies, too…  I have a recipe for a tomato pie that is just lovely!

It’s time to share my pie crust recipe.  This was handed down to me from my mother… and my mother got it from a neighbor when I was a child.  I’ve known this recipe by heart since I was a child!  I’ve had to write it down a few times for friends… but I never have to look it up for myself.

I don’t remember what the original recipe was named…  I think it was just Diane’s Pie Crust.  I call it Never Fail Pie Crust.  It’s never failed me, not even when I made it with Crisco and Self rising flour!  LOL, that’s a story I’ll have to tell…

The BEST Pie Crust Recipe Ever.

5 1/2 cups flour

1 lb. lard

1 teaspoon salt

1 egg

2 tablespoons vinegar

water

Using a pastry blender, cut the lard into the flour until finely crumbled.

In a one cup measuring cup beat the egg, vinegar and salt.  Add water to make one cup.

Make a well in the flour and lard mixture and pour in the egg and water mixture.

Mix gently until it all holds together.  Turn out onto a floured pastry cloth and give it a couple good turns with kneading and adding a bit more flour until it quits sticking to your hands.  You can over mix this, but you’d have to knead it like bread for 10 min before it would get tough.

This recipe will make at least 5 single crust pies, and maybe more, depending on how thin you roll it.  I’ve gotten 3 single crust and 2 doubles from it.  You can roll out and freeze the crust for later use, which is best… or just smash the extra into a baggie and freeze that.  It thaws pretty quick, but will be sticky… so if you have extra pie pans it’s really just better to go that route.

Now, I know using lard is supposedly not healthy…  but a bit of fat in your diet is actually good for you.  How often do you eat pie anyhow?  Do you want yucky pie crust that everyone scrapes the filling off of and throws away?  Or do you want pie crust that everyone eats every bite of because it’s that good?  Even for a sweet pie, the crust should be crispy, flakey and slightly salty…  and for a savory pie, it’s even more important.   You can substitute vegetable shortening for the lard, but I don’t recommend it… flavor is why we use the lard.

My sister Val, who reads here and comments… she loves pie like I do.  Well, I think she does…. because I remember she wrote a poem about pie when she was age 5 or so.  ”I like pumpkin pie.  1,2,3,4, popeye”.

My daughter Sarah loves pie, too.  Her birthday this year is right on Thanksgiving… and pumpkin pie is her favorite.  I have actually made her a giant 10 inch pumpkin pie and told her it was all for her… lol!  We even put candles in it.  Birthday pie.

I can take or leave pumpkin pie.  Some years I try something different…  but mostly I stick to basic recipes.  Easier and no worries about oh… someone  can’t eat that.  I made a pumpkin cheesecake type pie one year and another year it was a combination pumpkin and pecan pie… with layers that magically worked out… you got pumpkin pie and pecan pie all in one bite…  but hey, simple pie is best.

Make your favorite pie with this crust… and then tell me about it.  Oh, and if you make this crust using lard and everyone hates it… let me know and well, I won’t pay you, but I’ll put your family on the DNPC list.  ”Do Not Pie Crust”  :)  Some people hate pie crust no matter how nice it is, and they won’t eat it just out of habit of avoiding bad pie crust.

As for me… well, I like apple pie, and pumpkin pie…  and I found out when I was 20 something that I LOVE pecan pie… who knew?  I hate walnuts and I thought pecans were the same as walnuts…  and I love cherry pie and tomato pie and blackberry pie if someone takes all the seeds out, lol….  Oh, and I love chocolate pie and banana cream pie and lemon meringue pie.  ANY fruit pie is good….. and those are my favorite even if I have to use canned stuff to make em.  Custard pies… very yummy…  well, I like pie!

hugs,

Vyx

 

 

 

 

This is our grandbaby Aiden in his Halloween costume.  He’s a gnome, like a garden gnome, although without a beard.  :)

On his feet are little pointy toed red felt gnome shoes that I made from the felt we didn’t need for the hat.  I just sort of cobbled those together, but they didn’t need to be walked in anyhow.  :)

I meant to post this photo in the last blog entry and forgot.  Oh well!

:)

hugs,

Vyx

We got a mild frost a little while back.  I was surprised, actually… usually we are totally safe when they say we are going to get a frost.

Not this time, actual visible damage to the tomato plants.   We’d picked the only 2 tomatoes close to being ripe, just in case.  The plants got a little damage, but not a lot, and they’ve since recovered.  They are also covered with green tomatoes.  Dang it.  I doubt any of those will get ripe, but you never know, so we are leaving em out there.  I don’t have anything I want to do with green tomatoes, nothing at all.

Anyhow.  I sold my muscadine grapes.  Crazy, huh?  I offered them on Craigslist and someone snapped up the offer… come pick them for a dollar a pound.  I told them I was considering pulling the plant out… and they said they’d come back next year for grapes, too.  So, I may keep the vine.  We will see.   I know I spent more on water than I got for the grapes.  Wasn’t expecting the dang things to smell like diesel fuel when getting ripe.  Still, a pretty good harvest for a first year vine, altogether about 30 lbs!  Sold 18 lbs for the price of 15, gave away about 12 lbs but said it was 10.  Picked a pound or so and juiced em… gave that container to the folks that came and picked and paid for the ripe grapes.  Heck, maybe I should just dig up the vine and give it to them!

I also sold my citrus tree.  I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about it on the blog, but I grew it from a seed.  Every winter I haul it in the house and try to kill it, and every spring I haul it outside and neglect it some more.  I’d never got it to bloom, and it probably should.  I advertised it on Craigslist a while back, got a couple emails, no follow up.  This time I got someone local super interested… bam, she was at our house ready to take it home.  Funny, I think she lives just across the little valley from me, on the next ridge.  I asked that if she got it to bloom that could I please have a photo?  I was happy my tree was going to a good home… it was like trying to place a puppy almost.

The neighbor guy that likes to hunt has been walking through our yard.  We give him access to the woods.  As far as I know he’s never actually killed anything… hunting is just a hobby that gets him out of his house.  He always starts off with bow season, then switches to guns when he can.  I doubt that gun he’s carrying now is legal, but I doubt he actually shoots anything anyhow.  He’s got 6 kids… he probably just wants some peace and quiet in the evening.  He’ll go all winter, as long as hunting seasons last…  and when I walk my dogs at least one dog will haul off into the woods and find him every once in a while, hah!  Hey, he =knows= I walk the dogs off leash.  BuddyMack has come home with the guys gloves… go way damn dog, have a glove…   and then here comes Buddy so proud and happy with his glove he hunted.  :)

I bought a bunch of  fall  bulbs and planted them…  lots and lots  of pink tulips, some red oxblood lilies and some yellow species tulips and my favorite fall blooming spider lilies.  I still haven’t found the bag of narcissus that my friend Jan gave me a year or so ago…  it’s like it grew legs and walked off.  Wasn’t the right time to plant them right then…  poor bulbs are probably dead now, but I still can’t find the dang bag.  She’ll probably never give me anything like that again… what, you just go and lose it?  One thing about planting this year…  I did the major digging and getting the weeds/grass out…  but when it came time to put the bulbs in, Ron came to lift the dirt out so I could have trenches to plant in.   I have to not just plant stuff everywhere I feel like it…  Ron likes to mow stuff down.  He’s mowed down a bunch of my iris because the grass grew up…  I think I’m going to move those iris so he can keep mowing that bit next year.

Oh, and I bought concrete block edging for some flower beds.  Not like building blocks… decorative.  When they mark down the blocks is the time to buy them… if there are any left.  I found one I could live with at 1/2 price, so eventually I’ll have wider beds in front of the house and they will have concrete footing and edging and maybe I’ll be able to keep more of the bermuda  grass out.  Plus pile in more dirt for the plants to grow.  We have plenty of dirt for raised beds…  and I may just go the way my Mom does, and do building concrete block raised beds.  Plant enough flowers and you can’t see em, so what the heck…  it’s another we will see thing…   I can’t go piling a foot of dirt on some of my other flower beds unless I want to go dig up my pink stargazer lilies…. I doubt they will survive if I pile half a foot of dirt on em.

The trees are really beautiful this year, but of course I’m not posting a photo.  Yeah, they are pretty, but to me that’s a sad thing… going towards winter.  I don’t like winter.  Just get rid of the leaves and be done with it, without giving me pretty colors that won’t help.  Blargh, not looking forward to winter.  Never am.  Changing of seasons is nice, but see… I want to go from spring to summer to fall and back to spring.  Let someone else have winter, thank you very much.  :)

Still not smoking, health still giving me fits here and there.  It’s like, you do something good for your body and your body repays you by breaking down somewhere else.    Eventually it’ll be better…  I hope!

I guess I’m almost caught up now…

hugs,

Vyx

 

 

 

I seem to be about a once a month blogger.

Well, that’s about what it’s come to these days.

The sad thing is that it’s not that I don’t have anything to say… it’s that I’ve been too lazy to sit and write it.  Not really lazy… but I’m not a fast writer.  I can and do spend hours writing about simple stuff.  I just don’t have time most days to sit here at the computer for all those hours.

Anyhow, I’ll try to catch up on some of it…

First a simple recipe.  I was browsing around some of the blogs I sometimes bother to read and came across a meringue recipe.  Well, howdy!  I’ve got a tub of 8 egg whites in the freezer needing to be used.  I looked around at some other cooking sites to make sure I wasn’t heading into a disaster, and then I went for it… with all  of the egg whites!

Easy Chocolate Meringues  (adapted from http://www.bakerella.com/chewy-chocolate-meringues/ )

1 cup egg whites (7 or 8 large)

2 cups sugar

5 heaping tablespoons cocoa powder

4 ounces  finely chopped baking chocolate (or skip this, I will next time)

On very low speed beat the egg whites with the sugar until the sugar is dissolved.  This can take a while… no need to stand there,  I left the mixer running and did chores.   Line your baking sheets with parchment, and get out your cooling racks.

When the sugar is dissolved, switch mixer to high speed and beat the mixture until stiff and glossy.   If you have a good stand mixer with a whip, this will probably go fast.  If you have an ancient Kenmore mixer with just beaters, this is gonna take a while, too, so go do some more chores.  Oh, but you might want to turn the oven on now.  Heat it to 350 degrees F.

Finally, those egg whites are beat into stiff peaks!  Now sift the cocoa powder into the egg and tip in the finely chopped chocolate, too.  Fold that in gently with a spatula or spoon.  Mix it up!  You might even get away with using the mixer, but I didn’t… used a spatula and folded gently.

Now, get out your big cake decorating bag and a big star tip.   Put the tip into the bag, then fill the bag with meringue… that’s the stuff we just mixed up for the last 45 min.  :)   Make pretty little flower shaped poofs about an inch apart on the parchment lined baking sheets… I think I ended up using every baking sheet I own.  Make the poofs a nice size…  say, 1.5 to 2 inches across, and about 1/2 as tall.   Have the bag clog up repeatedly with bits of chopped chocolate that weren’t chopped enough.  Decide to leave that ingredient out next time because you’ve just bent all to hell your brand new tip.

Bake one sheet in the oven at a time for 15 min or until they look like tips are starting to get brown.  You are going to be baking these for hours if you use all the meringue and make them just slightly bigger than bite size.

I didn’t count how many I actually made, but I took a gallon bag bulging with them to work.  Oh, and we still have some left, even Ron is getting tired of them.  1 cup of egg whites makes a LOT of freaking meringues!  So, because I’m nice, I am recommending that normal people use one of the smaller recipes to be found…  like HALF as much.  Seriously, I had to dump some of the meringue out, I wanted to live the rest of my life, not be forever stuck in the kitchen making cookies…  lol!

Sealed up in an airtight container, these seem to keep dang near forever.  They bite really fragile, but they carry pretty tough… and probably if you tried to ship them somewhere the recipient would just get a box of crumbles.  Still, they are mostly air with chocolate flavor, they feel like you are eating nothing much at all.  The big bag I took to work lasted only a couple days… but we have a lot of women where I work.  Some of those gals really liked the cookies.  Some said “ugh, meringues!”   And one said she doesn’t like chocolate…. huh!

Okay… so… on to the next post…

hugs,

Vyx