SALTY BISCUITS

Summer has arrived in Central Cal.  It was a too warm 92 degrees yesterday, almost forcing the use of that energy sucking device called air conditioning.  I just can't tell you how thankful I am I finally came to my senses and got solar.  My neighbors bills are up to $800 a month with only two people living there.  They say they keep the temperature at 80 degrees.   Of course we ARE paying for the fire damage from PGE's equipment failure burning down the town of Paradise.  

Anyhoo ... MY morning always starts with Cooper rubbing his face on my arms.  That is followed by this little troublemaker.  There really is nothing wrong at all with her mouth, but the coloring of her fur makes her look like a Halloween character!   She sits quietly waiting for pets, purring up a storm.

That's when THIS starts.  Sorry for the blur ... it's hard to hold your arm still when she is reaching for your face.  Very tenderly I must say, but if you don't participate, she gets a little more aggressive!

And the next thing you know, that little paw snags your nose!!  PET ME ... PET ME PLEASE!!  She wins the game every time!!  Lots of pets, rubs and grooming brush scrubs are provided, hair flying in the air.  From the plethora of purrs, I think she likes it!  

That's when everything went completely off the rails.  What got into me, I've no idea.  I've been looking out these windows for a month now, thinking about who I might con into washing them for me.  I even went so far as to look up Window Washers on the old internet.  $50 per window was a little too much for my bank account.  

I remembered way back maybe four years ago that I actually did wash them myself with an internet recipe that surprisingly worked very well.  Half a gallon of water, 1 tablespoon dish soap and 1-2 tablespoons Finish Jet Dry dishwasher liquid.  

I mixed it up in a dish tub, wet the windows with a hose, and used a vehicle windshield washing brush to clean the dirt and grime, one window at a time.  That's because you want to rinse it off quickly before it dries.  That Finish makes the water just slide right off.  No drying required.  Almost anyway.  I did take a paper towel and wipe down the lower ones.  The uppers are still a bit wet.

I even did the door with all the puppy slobber and nose prints on it.  I probably could have done a tad bit better job of it, but it was FREE LABOR, so I'm good with it.

When lunch came around, I was ready to experiment.  Miss Terry, of Miss Terry's Kitchen fame, has helped me with my sourdough starter, and suggested sourdough discard biscuits.  There can be a lot of waste with sourdough ... you basically feed half to keep it going, and half (called discard) goes in the trash.  There are recipes using discard, but I have never tried them before.

Today was the day!!  Let's make biscuits for lunch!!  It all went pretty well, except for that part where I just dumped the discard into the bowl without actually measuring it.  Oh well ... it will be fine.  It called for 8 tablespoons of butter to be mixed into the flour, making a crumbly mixture.

I had a thought.  That is not always a good thing.  I will grate the butter so I don't have to work so hard at the crumble part.  Here's my tip of the day.  That only works if you FREEZE the butter first.  Next thing I know, I've got butter from one end of me to the other, and all over the counter.  Small pieces of soft butter melt VERY fast.

I was however, rather pleased with myself by the time they went in the oven.  They look good, yes?  Sadly, that didn't last very long.

If these look a little over baked, that's because they are.  They just were not browning up, so I left them an extra minute.  It's okay ... I like my biscuits crunchy on top!!  

Time for the taste test!  You can imagine me putting a big bite, smothered in butter, into my mouth.  What could be better than the lovely taste of SALTY BISCUITS!!  Oh my gosh ... TOO MUCH SALT!  I reread the recipe, to find it called for UNsalted butter.  I checked the butter box.  I had grabbed the SALTED butter and ADDED additional salt.  

Other than that, they STILL didn't taste very good.  I don't know what I expected, but this was not it.  No one ever said I was a good cook.  I'm not sure what I will do with them, but they went in the freezer.  Maybe make some NO-SALT gravy or smear on a huge tablespoon of JAM.  

With that, I skipped dinner altogether.  Those biscuits are still rolling around in my stomach.  

I spent the afternoon hand sewing the binding on this quilt.  It's one I think I started well over a year ago.  I had a hard time finding the border fabric when I ran short.  It's a good feeling to have ONE complete.  In looking for the binding for this one, I discovered THREE more quilts in the room that also require binding.  I guess I have my work cut out for me.

Though I'm not thrilled about it, Bingo is yet again on the schedule.  There have been some happenings that may be the Universe telling me to take a break.  My armor just doesn't seem to be thick enough to deal with the crazy personalities that have been added to the mix.  

The good news ... Mr. Cooper actually RAN to the yard this morning and RAN back to the house.  He seems to be feeling better, and I don't notice as much as far as the leg goes.  We may get to go on a short trip this summer after all.

  

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST!

 Just look at this beautiful moon from last night!!  Not really ... this is so weird.  The moon came up WAY after dark, past my bed time .... and set this morning an hour earlier than they said it would.  I saw nothing ... nothing but streets lights.

This is what it looked like in REAL life on the other side of the earth.  Yup ... that's the moon alright.  Another one bites the dust ... it's a NEW month yet again.  How this goes so fast, I don't know.  

I left Mr. Cooper early in the morning to head out for a run.  You can see the booty I try to keep on his foot now.  It's a pain.  Just big enough to come off quite often, but so tight it's really hard to get ON his foot.  The inside looks like a rats nest and it's hard to get over his claws.  The good news is it works for the most part.  AND he seems to be getting around a tad bit better each day, that is for being almost seventeen.

Apparently summer is here.  This usually green and gorgeous field is now brown and drab.  Hopefully they disc it soon to keep the fire hazard low.  They have been trying to sell this for 15 years to become another subdivision.  Just what we need.  More traffic and noise.

On the other hand, the flowers are in full bloom.  These are the infamous oleander bushes that California planted as barriers in between the freeways.  They worked great and were very pretty, until they upped the speed limit and folks crashed through them.  For the past fifteen years or so they have been taking them out and replacing them with concrete for a more scenic view!  

It was a slow run ... more walking in fact.  If I don't go often enough, I run out of air pretty fast.  When I got back, I was confronted with this guy!  Mr. Cooper wanted his breakfast ASAP.  That's a VERY heavy rug he just threw back underneath himself.  

I'm still trying to get used to the new routine ... do all my outside running around in the early morning while he sleeps, then spend the evenings in the sewing room to lesson the random walking.

This girl ... Miss Kitters ... was waiting on the patio when I returned.  She is spending more time outside these days, lying in the sun.  You would think she would want to be in the cool shade.

HOWEVER ... we all know WHY she's outside, yes??  Big sigh ... I've lost count.  I think this is the one from her morning bedroom run.  Poor things .... I wish she would leave them alone.  They eat lots of nasty critters outside.  

I parked him out front under the bush, and he ran off, though slowly.  I doubt they will survive after being mauled by the great tortie hunter!!

After all that, it was time for breakfast.  So just what do you do with those three cans of crescent rolls you bought to make a loaf of bread?  They have been hanging out in the fridge since I got the sourdough to work.  So I followed an online recipe.  Spread it out, smother it in sugar and cinnamon, roll and cut into ... you got it, cinnamon rolls.  I even made a not-so-delicious frosting from powdered sugar and milk.  

Don't bother my friends ... just throw that can right in the trash.  They were TERRIBLE with a capital T.  I probably should have used BROWN sugar rather than white.  Either that, or something is wrong with my taste buds.  Surely it cannot be that it was TOO SWEET!!  Yes ... yes it was.  It's history in the making.  This is the first time EVER something was too sweet for me to eat.  Another recipe bites the dust!

On the other hand, shake and bake chicken for lunch was MUCH better.  I think air frying would have been even tastier, but I can only fit three pieces at a time in the basket.  Oh yay ... chicken for the next four meals!!

Of course there was dessert!  It's mostly required in this house.  Here's the spice poke cake with caramel sauce.  You're not going to believe this.  It too was just too sweet.  How could this be??  I'm hoping that's just a fluke and tomorrow I will LOVE it!  Mostly because I have an entire pan to eat over the next month!!

That's when I got hooked on this interesting program on TV.  It's all about CIA operations that went both good and bad.  Let me just say we have some BRAVE folks in our midst.  Both men and women have put their lives on the line for this country.  If you get a chance, check it out.  

On the other hand, this is my television ... the cheap $250 one from Walmart that I got for the Arizona house.  This is why I loved my old one so much.  Every night I get this distortion when the sun goes down.  Maybe a nice decorative piece of reflectix in the window will help.

When Mr. Cooper gets to wandering, I head for the sewing room.  Maybe I will actually get some of MY quilts done.  I cut the binding for this one and stitched it on.  The rest will be hand sewing.  I think I started this one over a year ago, so it will be nice to have it finished.

And so ended another wonderful day.  They are all wonderful at my age!!  On the schedule this week ... smog the van, find navy blue material at the quilt store for the embroidered quilts, scan the horizon for lizards and love on my Cooper puppy.  What could be better!!