The Gift fromPumpkins

My plan for today was to share with you my little corner of Wild Kingdom, and another little gift from Striper, Striper the Wondercat. As was discussed on another blog recently, I am one of those camera crazy bloggers who always wants to capture every possible moment in still frame.

So, I captured the latest "gift" left near my front door by the cat yesterday morning. But today I find that it so grosses me out to look at the photos - I just can't share them with you. Even on Halloween. Mr. Nature agrees. Maybe next year.So, I share with you my recent fresh pumpkin soup instead. MMMMMM, was it yummy!

Last week, I made WONDERFUL pumpkin pie...and pumpkin soup. I boiled the fresh pumpkin first, then had the cooked pumpkin to use for recipes. I roasted the seeds with salt.

Here are the recipes I used:
Soup: http://www.recipezaar.com/Fresh-Pumpkin-Soup-by-Kerry-Simon-248005
Pie: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Creamy-Pumpkin-Pie/Detail.aspx
for the pie, I used my blender to smooth the cooked pumpkin, and followed the recipe.

However, I don't like processed sweetened condensed milk, so I used this recipe to substitute for it: http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,183,151170-244199,00.html

This pie didn't even last 48 hours in our house. I made my own butter crust with this recipe:
http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_pie_crust/

The pie recipe will actually make two standard 9-inch pies, so make two crusts. I am making another batch today.

Have a safe and yummy All Hallow's Eve

Some days are like that

I cannot write a post for today. Because I am under the weather and must retire to my recliner under a warm blanket with tea. Because I have the I have to have a root canal without dental insurance because the nerve has become inflamed blues.

My smidge of temperature and I will be consoling ourselves over

Doubt
Valkyrie
Libertine
Charlie Wilson's War
The Tales of Despereaux
&
Bambi II

until Monday when we will appear for the torture treatment at the office of the regrettably disfavored dentist (nothing personal, of course!). We had a consult today to get us through the weekend.

If I am able to post tomorrow, I have a gory tale to tell...

The Chicken & The Egg

Since we brought Ruby and Cordelia into the fold on Monday, we have been collecting 3 eggs daily (from 5 chickens). Cordelia was coming off a moult, so we do not expect any out of her until at least next week. Ruby has done her duty in the nest box and given us beautiful, creamy tinted eggs.Olive & Daisy, however, seem to be the ones who prefer we hunt for their offerings. Yesterday, we watched Olive find her hiding spot, and Mr. Nature waited around until the egg was produced. Yay! If she goes to the same spot again, it will be so much easier! Daisy is much more secretive, and we have yet to find her outdoor spot. Sometimes she will lay in the box, but it must depend on her mood. Hmmmph.

Considering building them a run in which they will have to stay until the day's eggs are laid...
then free play on the larger range...

Word Wednesday: Brigand

I was reading the writings of a friend of ours recently, and came across a word I knew not. Since the holiday of mischief is upon us, I thought it appropriate to share with you all. The word is:

BRIGAND:

Main Entry: brig·and

Pronunciation: \ˈbri-gənd\

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English brigaunt, from Middle French brigand, from Old Italian brigante,brigare to fight, from briga strife, of Celtic origin; akin to Old Irish bríg strength from

Date: 14th century

: one who lives by plunder usually as a member of a band : bandit

— brig·and·age \-gən-dij\ noun

The way I saw it used was thus: "I commited not brigandage." What a great sentence! I have committed not brigandage as well, so I am in good company.

So, what to do with this word I am sharing today? Well, I am not a pirate or a plunderer, though a friend of mine dipped a toe into piracy and made the cutest lady pirate costume this week. Her adorable infant daughter is her trusty parrot of feather boas...maybe I will have to ask what brigandage they have been about?

Meanwhile, there are some good folks on Etsy whose knowledge of this word predated my own, and they have listings up that you might wish to peruse.

FIORELLA OF THE BANDITS by ECLETTICA

Nancy Bloodheart - pirate sock monkey

of the SockBeastie Brigand series

The Brigand's Maze Treasure Map ...

Original Drawing on Wood (Pirate Cartography)

If you are a brigand, or know one, I wish you a fun-filled mischief holiday and a quick recovery from brigandage.

Aaaarrrrr, matey...

If you are looking for the
Change The World Wednesday challenge,
you can find it here.

Enter Ruby and Cordelia

(Ruby...so named for the red band on her leg)

I have learned that three chickens is not quite enough to keep us in our desired egg supply range. For a while, we were getting three eggs a day. But usually, we only get two. Lately, we sometimes get one or NONE.

In fairness to the girls, I give them the fact that it is season change, moulting time, and in general this means that many hens are off production a bit. However, we stopped getting that third egg about 8 weeks ago, at least. And they only began laying in (latter June, was it?). So, we have suspected for some time that one of them is not laying in the nest box, but somewhere in their fence-free range on the acre of land they roam.

Which makes egg hunts nearly impossible, unless we know their haunts. And we have not been able to find one. at. all. So, what is the solution? ADD MORE CHICKENS!

Now, conventional wisdom will tell you not to mix (mature) birds of different flocks because you might end up with chicken disease. But we have a small healthy trio of birds, and we got two new birds from another small, healthy flock of neighbor birds. So, we are taking our chances.

Moving birds can take them off production for a week or so, and at least one of these birds is coming off a moult. But guess what? We picked them up EARLY this morning and locked them in the coop for almost two hours so they could get their bearings. (We collected today's two eggs from our chickens, kicked them out of the coop into their range, and locked the newbies in.)

(Cordelia, named by Mr. Nature, who will give us green eggs)

And wonder of wonders - one of the newbies laid an egg for us. Must have been Ruby, since Cordelia will lay green. So, chalk up THREE eggs for today. Hip, hip, hoooooray!

Sharing Our Gifts Across America

If you have been keeping up with my sister blog, Sharing Our Gifts, you might know that project 1 ended today, and I will now be needing participants for project #2, which launches today. If you are not participating, would you kindly stumble my post and/or share with others who might be interested? Thanks!

PROJECT #2: ALASKA
Our 50 states tour continues in the beautiful and remote state of Alaska. We will be making hats and mittens for women and children at the Lee Shore Center in Kenai, Alaska. Here is the web site for you: http://www.alaska.net/~leeshore/

The Lee Shore Center provides a safe haven for women and children escaping from domestic abuse and sexual assault. Their mission is to empower and support women and children, educate the public on these issues, and strive to eliminate domestic abuse and sexual assault.

The facility is a 32 bed facility, but due to privacy concerns, the facility does not divulge how many are in residence at any one time. There are adult women, as well as children (both male and female) from birth to 18 years of age. There are often more children in residence than adult women. Over the past year, there have been more infants and toddlers than at other times. This means hats and mittens of all sizes will be appreciated.

These hats and mittens can be knitted, crocheted, or sewn. The key is that they must be handmade. As stated in our first project, if you do not knit, crochet, or sew, you can still donate by purchasing handmade items from someone (Etsy, Artfire, and 1000 Markets offer these), or asking a friend to create the donation for you. We had a participant from our first project ask a friend to crochet a hat, then this participant would pay the shipping cost, and in that way they became tandem participants.

Deadline to have these received by the project coordinator is November 25, so please allow appropriate mail time. These will be delivered to the center on December 1, so they will be there in time for the Christmas holiday.

Our volunteer coordinator for this project is Purplemoose on Ravelry. Donations can be mailed to:

Barbara Waters - 311 Kulila Pl. - Kenai, AK 99611

The LeeShore Center is a non-profit agency - so, if you would like a donation receipt, you will need to provide your name and mailing address along with a dollar figure for the receipt. If no dollar figure is provided only a thank you letter can be sent.

Please let me know if there are any questions, or if I have left out any vital information for this project. Thank you again for your participation!

[1]: http://www.alaska.net/~leeshore/
[2]: http://www.ravelry.com/people/purplemoose

Your task for today...

...is to tell me WHERE OH WHERE on earth can I find pumpkin recipes that do not involve anything from a can!!!

I find recipes that look oh, so appetizing...and click my little mouse button to follow the wafting aroma of fresh pumpkin to a marvelous map of ingredients...

Only to find that it ALWAYS says..."use one can of prepared pumpkin" or "2 cups canned heated pumpkin."

Really? Are we kidding here? Is there NOBODY that uses fresh pumpkin for anything but waste in the compost heap after it gave its life to be your jack-0-lantern??

We have become such a lax, insta-mix, eat out, frozen food, rhetoric fed society that we don't know how to cook anymore. We don't know how to eat. We don't know how to survive.

If I had been paying attention earlier, when my grandmother cooked WITHOUT recipes, I would know how to make many things from fresh pumpkin without needing a recipe. But, sadly, I only just arrived. And I need recipes.

Did your grandma pass any down that you are willing to share?

Falling for fall

The trees are offering up their foliage to the insistence of change

The air is offering up its warmth to the crisp chill of AutumnWe bridge the gap from Equinox to Solstice

By embracing joy and the frailty of childhood

With a romp in the leaves...

Well, hello there! Thursday thoghts...

I have draft posts in queue, waiting to be published. I had a Word Wednesday word at the ready. I have the Change The World Wednesday challenge email in my inbox. And yet, I allowed Wednesday, and much of Thursday, to pass without a post update. Why?Because I have been consumed with knitting and working on my Craft Hope quilt.
And I have winter hibernation laziness. Especially about taking photos and getting them into the computer for upload.
Or, for properly staging said photos for curb appeal.
For this week's Change The World Wednesday challenge, visit
Reduce Footprints.

Monsters need not apply

In case you are one, and were considering applying for permanent residency or a live-in position here at Deer Palace, it is regrettably my task to inform you that there are NO MONSTERS ALLOWED here.
I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you, but perhaps you might try Monsters, Inc. I hear they are very friendly toward the monster type. Or, if you are a friendly sort of cute and fuzzy monster, you might try Sesame Street. Good luck!

No hard feelings?

Hat Pattern by Me

I have written a hat pattern, and I am really pleased with the result.

I knitted this hat for our LYS (local yarn store) hat drive

for donations to local Head Start kids.

I am sure that I am not the first person to knit such a design,
but I think I did a few things that do, at least,
make the pattern itself unique.

I am planning to convert it to a pdf file
so I can share it in the future.

Happy knitting!

Dear people who are ill,

(royalty free clip art image)

Please refrain from taking your sick germs out in public where they may afflict others. This means do not go to church where you will sit behind others and cough and sneeze on them for two hours. Do not take your sick children to church where they will wipe their noses on their hands and then share those germs with everything they touch in the nursery. Just watch a televised sermon if you must.

Do not go to the grocery store where you will pass people who are well and who do not want to ingest your sick germs. Do not go to work where you force other captives of the employ to share your cough and sneeze germ cloud. If you are feeling under the weather, DO take your temperature and make sure it is 98.6 before you leave the house. If it is elevated, please see the above plea.

If you are starving because your cupboards are bare, order online from a supermarket delivery service - or send someone who is well. Preferably someone who is well and is NOT incubating whatever it is you have. If you are out of milk, just drink water. It is better for a phlegm problem anyway.

In short, there are some potentially dangerous sick bugs circulating, and we do not want them. The well people want to stay well. I know I advocate sharing, but in this instance, Resist The Urge.

Get well soon,
Sinclair

the Mailbox Bandits strike again!

Just when you are settling into a feeling of disconnected safety and contentment on your Little House on the Prairie homestead, someone comes along to remind you that barbarians are not as far away as you'd hoped. Having said that, I will also say that I NEVER mail anything from my box. I am not oblivious to identity theft and mail vandalism and the like...I just don't understand it.

I will never understand the mentality that causes some people to do bad things to other people or property. It is low and ugly and base. It contributes nothing to society, and demoralizes innocent people. I don't care what background one comes from; if one has not been locked away in a dungeon or raised under a rock, one knows the difference between right and wrong. Even if one has no spiritual convictions whatsoever, one still knows the difference between legal right and wrong.

Beauty, faith, sharing, loving, trusting, caring, and giving are what life should be all about.
Why do people have to inflict ugliness on others? People are diverse, and have many differing ideas and opinions, but we should be able to share and express these differences in positive ways.

The economy is bad. Vandalism and other crimes appear to be universally on the rise. Increasing drug problems plague many cities and counties. My emotional response to all of this is sadness and anger and indignance. I wish I could just fix it - for everybody. I wish I could explain to people that drugs and violence are not the answer. I wish that troubled people could find contentment and joy, and a calling to help others and spread beauty and caring.

Our box was not one of those knocked off its perch, but Mr. Nature and I were the ones to set all of them back to their rightful positions. I do hope they stay that way.

Wishing you a beautiful Saturday
full of abundance and contentment.

Happy News

I have finally surpassed 100 followers on my Google Follower gadget. I have almost reached 150 via feedburner, but that number moves up and down like a jumping jack, so I shan't hold my breath.

I want to thank Cat at 3 Kids and Us for being my 100th follower!

(cue confetti)

(imagine falling confetti like the end of the night in Times Square on
New Year's Eve)

I want to thank a few select readers (you must know who you are) for letting me know that you do enjoy my tiny piece of the blogosphere, and for the words of encouragement. I do this for fun and to reach out to others in some small way, and it is nice to know my efforts make an enjoyable read.

Also, Sharing Our Gifts Project #1 is drawing to a close, and we have so far received 16 hats and 6 pair of slippers for the Veterans of Southern Oregon. My modest goal for project #1 was 20 items, so I have achieved the goal. There are a few others in the mail that have not yet arrived.
Project #2 will be announced on October 25, so stay tuned!

Lastly, I am happy to inform you that Project #5 has been announced on Craft Hope. The project will be quilt donations to Margaret's Hope Chest to benefit homeless children in Grand Rapids, Michigan this Christmas season. I have never quilted, but it has been on my list of to-do's for some time, so I am wading in on this project. Deadline is November 15. Hop on over to Craft Hope and leave a comment if you are interested in crafting some hope.

Wishing you a fruitful Friday...

Blog Action Day

Here is the thing: I am not qualified to write a scholarly post on climate change. There are so many differing opinions about climate change that I don't know which way is up. I am not a scientist. However, I do have a few thoughts on the matter.

I don't buy "global warming" but I do believe we are experiencing global climate change. I do believe that, to some extent, global climate change would occur with or without us. Ever hear of the Ice Age? Some believe that we are actually headed toward another ice age now. (http://www.iceagenow.com/) I believe that weather patterns and polar ice cap changes will continue to become more severe and dangerous.

I do believe that excessive oil drilling has possibly endangered barrier reefs, so that we have much stronger hurricanes and tsunamis making it to land. (Resource link) Tsunamis and earthquakes can, themselves, damage the barrier reefs, but scientists believe human damage has more impact. (Resource link) In addition, it seems that the changes that are occurring in the climate are also affecting the Great Barrier Reef such that it may lack the ability to fully sustain the required level of sea life. (Resource link)

I do believe that excessive industrialization has damaged our air, our water, and our earth. (Resource link, Resource news article link, Resource science link for groundwater contamination ) I do not believe that cows or woodburning for heat are the cause of the polluted environment in which we now find ourselves. "Burning firewood properly releases no more harmful greenhouse gases than would be produced were the wood to simply rot on the forest floor. " (Resource link)

I believe that the push to call it Global Warming is going to end in a carbon tax levied on individuals, which will be a miscarriage of justice. (Carbon tax resource link) Society and housing are structured in such a way that we must have electricity piped in; but now we will be additionally taxed on receiving that energy? If the government truly wanted to fix the problem, we would be converting everything to solar and wind energy. But that would not bring in any tax dollars.

Your doggie's poop cannot possibly cause a larger carbon footprint than Monsanto's mining of phosphates. (Resource link) Or Monsanto's continuous endeavor to churn out poison. (link) Your dog might cause bacterial water pollution (link), and the plastic bag you use to pick up the waste might carry a carbon footprint trail, but the small burden upon you then lies in biodegradable alternatives to plastic dog waste bags. And in always picking up the waste. And perhaps in composting the waste. Not to be used on your garden, however!

Your cow(s), or even your dairy, (link) cannot possibly outpollute the airplanes that daily travel our skies and leave trails of jet fuel infused condensation. There is considerable debate about whether jet fuel actually poses a large threat, but I believe it does. (Resource link) I am certain that cows are a natural member of our environment, and that they existed here long before cars, industrial plants, or aeroplanes. And yet, only after 100 or so years of advanced industrialization did cows begin to pollute our environment. Hmmm.

As long as greed, deceit, and disagreement reign, we will not solve the pollution of our environment. We may be hastening our collision with the seemingly inevitable outcome of an environment hostile to human life by continuing current industrial practices.

I would bet that even this computer on which I type may in some way be harmful to our environment and natural resources. It contains plastic and various metals which had to be manufactured...and it runs on carbon-fueled electricity. I think the question is not whether the government should tax our puny dog poop or cow emissions, but whether our government is willing to lead the way in stopping the industrial greed that fuels large scale pollution.

But I don't believe suburbia is willing to pull weeds instead of poison them. Nor people willing to live without 3 cars in the garage. Or to forgo rampant consumerism. Or to use a push mower, or cloth napkins, or completely stop air travel. Difficult questions and choices plague us in the information age. The planet will survive, but how long will people be here?