Peppermint Clematis

I found another old friend blooming in the garden, my Peppermint Clematis. Every time the flowers start to come out it always surprises me. Not because it is blooming, but because of how unique the flowers are. Watching the flowers transform from tightly wrapped four pointed stars into big greenish-white puffballs is always a fascinating time.

We baked chocolate chip cookies today to celebrate Chocolate Chip Cookie day, which coincidentally is my daughter's favorite cookie. Baking with her is always fun because she spends most of her time tasting and smelling of the ingredients. She likes to feel of the egg yolk and sample the brown sugar, and off course the chocolate chips. We use this recipe from King Arthur Flour: Basic Drop Cookies.

Wood Lily

Every year when my wood lily blooms, it is always a surprise. I forget that it is planted there, because it disappears shortly after it blooms, and doesn't look that different from the phlox that it is next to. It is a vibrant, beautiful splash of color in the otherwise muted pastels that make up my front garden bed.

Confederate Jasmine

I have wanted a jasmine vine for years. The smell of them takes me back to San Diego, where I smelled them everywhere. After the untimely death of my new clematis vine that I planted last fall, I needed a replacement climber. Since I didn't want to rush into a decision, I started thinking of annual vines that I could plant, and then put in a permanent resident this fall. We were at the nursery on Mother's Day, and I followed my nose to find this beautiful jasmine vine. And wondered why in the world I hadn't just bought a plant and replaced it every year. Okay, it goes against my nature of not wanting to spend money on disposable things, but for the price of a lunch out I can smell the lovely jasmine all summer long. And since my back garden is protected, it just might have a chance of overwintering. And if it doesn't I'll get a new one, but I don't want a garden that is empty of jasmine again.

Adventures in Morrowind

I have been having an absolute blast for the last few months, playing through Morrowind with the Morrowind Graphics and Sound Overhaul. It totally overhauls the characters, landscape, water, many of the mechanics, etc in one mod. I have taken fully as many screenshots in Morrowind as I did in Skyrim, which was my most screenshotted game to date.

#59 - Paint the Butterbug

My super talented and creative cousin makes metal sculptures for lawns and gardens. Last summer, he agreed to make one for me. He asked what sort of things I liked and I told him just about anything - animals, bugs, flowers. He needed a challenge, so I said a firefly - that had an area where I could put a candle and light it up at night. He brought the results to my sister's wedding in July. Here it is:

It has a solar cell on it, which lights up a lightbulb on its tail. Since it looks like a cross between a butterfly, dragonfly and lightening bug, I took to calling it my butterbug. Unfortunately, it came home with us in the middle of the heat of summer. I put it out in the back yard garden gravel and it sat there for a while. I noticed it starting to get rusty so I got some paint for it, but hadn't gotten it painted. So I put it on my to-do list for this year so I wouldn't let my beautiful butterbug rust away. Since we have had a nice warm sunny spell for the last few days I broke out the spray paint cans and got it painted.

Sourdough Saturday - Ginger Cookies (Epic Fail)

Perhaps I was pushing my luck too far with my recent successes in sourdough baking. Perhaps it had to do with cooking while sick...who knows. So when Saturday rolled around I really didn't feel like baking, or doing much besides curling up and sleeping. We've all been sick lately, not enough to be bedridden or anything, just dragging around. So I amended my original planned baking to do something that would be easier. In my Alaska Sourdough cookbook by Ruth Allman there was a recipe for Soft Ginger Cookies. Since cookies are my specialty and I can bake them in my sleep, it seemed to be a no-brainer. I mixed up the dough, got it chilled in the refrigerator, GS and I rolled them out, cut them out, and put them in the oven to bake. As I was cleaning up the counters while the cookies were baking, I was reviewing in my mind the reaction between the sourdough starter and the baking soda which makes quickbreads rise, when I was struck by a strange thought - "I don't remember putting baking soda in the dough". I went back to the book and re-read and the baking soda was there at the bottom of the list. I had missed it! Too late now, the cookies were already baking. At the finish line they looked about the same as they did at the start, little dense circles of cookie dough, baked on the outside and like a lump in the middle. So alas, the cookies did not make it and I will have to try them again.

On that note, this is the first recipe I have tried from that book. It is an interesting book, it is in handwriting and not print. It has a lot of stories and history in it. The annoying thing was that the ingredients were not in the order that they were used in the recipe, which accounted for going back and forth, and I believe one of the reasons that I missed the soda. Still, I hope to try this recipe again on a better day and to try other recipes in the book.

Snow!

Today winter weather rolled through Dixie, and we were homebound. I picked GS up from school before it closed and we came home. We watched sleet and rain turn to big puffy flakes of snow. We walked to the mailbox to get the mail and tried to catch snowflakes on our tongues. I worked on my knitting in front of the fire while GS played. It was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon. :)

Chicken Country Captain

Throughout the years, I have read and owned many Southern cookbooks. I have seen the Chicken Country Captain recipes - a dish of curried chicken, usually with raisins in it. I have never been tempted to make it, it was just a bit too odd. Over the years though, my palate has changed. I started making and eating curried dishes - starting with Singapore Noodles and then going on to asian curried coconut dishes and also made curried chicken. I have also grown more interested in using fruit in savory dishes, which I was totally NOT into when I was younger. So when I was looking through the dishes in Sarah Foster's Southern Cooking and saw this one, which used dried apricots instead of raisins, I knew I had to try it. It took quite a bit of prep work to get everything set up, but then went together nicely and baked in the oven. The house smelled wonderful, spicy and exotic. GS ate some of the chicken, and DH loved the whole thing. I think it will definitely become a part of our standard cooking.