Stephanie says

I subscribed to Bon Appetit back in the late 1990s.  It was a treat each month to leaf through the magazine, (reading about food is almost as fun as eating it.  Almost.)  I tried many, many recipes and learned a lot about cooking in the process. I got thinking about one particular recipe, Cranberry-Orange Scones, and visualized searching my big stack of archived magazines, archived in the sense they're on a bookshelf, spines out, in the laundry room.  The scones were really good but that seemed excessive. So I Googled "Cranberry Orange Scone Bon Appetit" and the exact recipe I wanted was before my eyes in a nano second.  I love computers.  They are as good as I remember.  I baked half the batch and froze the other on a parchment lined cookie sheet, then carefully folded them still in parchment into a freezer bag.  I've baked one since in the toaster oven, same time and temperature, with favorable results.  ...

High winds resulted in outages between here and Elkton.  I had this from a completely unreliable source at the local market who claimed we'd be without power until tomorrow.  I came home and lit all the candles on the mantle and a fire in the fireplace, first time this year and I'm pretty sure I didn't have a single one last year.  It's fairly warm outside so it's more for a light source than heat.  It's getting dark now and I've been reading by flashlight.  I'm already bored.  I go in search of the propane lantern in the camping box but it has vanished.  Too dark now.  Tomorrow. So here I sit, gazing at the fire and listening the the snap and crackle of burning wood.  And also to long sibilant hisses when Moose breaks wind.  

Photo by Nature Mapping A flurry of birds around the bird feeder catch my eye this afternoon.  I've been waiting since July for them to discover this well-stocked feeder. The hawthorn tree is full of ripe, red berries and I actually identify a cedar waxwing, (cute little bandit face) feasting on them.  I'm learning to identify the birds, slowly.  I've got my binoculars and bird book at the breakfast table window with the best view of the feeder.  Amid much dive-bombing and pushing and shoving on the narrow feeder perches I managed to get the binocs in focus and actually identify a black capped chickadee.  Definitely a novice. A house Finch (per my guest expert) at my bird feeder

And you might rightly suspect this is yet another diversion on my long road of inactivity, which pretty much resulted in any and every piece of exercise equipment purchased eventually turned into a clothes hanger.  I am riding my latest stationery bike several times a week though, nothing hanging on it except dust.   I think a fitness tracker would be a great motivator when I am forced to recognize how infinitely little exercise I get on a daily basis.   I love gadgets and I really want one.  It needs to be one that recognizes bike riding.  I found one that does, and it's at the pricey end of the scale.  I tend to fantasize my whatever craze will result in the magic beans.  Yeah, me and Jack.  Sort of like my recent Yoga video purchase that took soooo long to get here.  I whined big time to whoever would listen and then, once it showed up, I did the routine once.  Yep.   Once.  I should emulate Teresa and just do it....

A title that doesn't do a bit of justice to this dish. I had left-over peppered beef tip roast (see, I do have great left-overs!) and just harvested Anaheim Green Chilis so a combination of the two was the order of the day.  I love, love chilis but dread the labor intensive task of charring them on my cruddy electric broiler, then skinning them . New and improved technique!  I trimmed the stem end, cut the pepper in half and deseeded, broiled them, then sweated them in a zip lock bag.  The skin came off in a single sheet on most and I didn't lose any substantial part of the pepper.  Huge improvement in prep time and yield. Today's approach is just adding whatever strikes my fancy to the pot, then measuring it as I go, so the end result is an actual recipe.  A written accounting for me just in case I cook up something incredibly fab!  9 ounces green chili peppers, prepared as above 12 ounces diced yellow onion 3/4 ounce diced garlic oil to saute o...

I've sighted a lone bull elk lately in a particular treed setting on my way to work.  It is only visible on the way.  I fancy myself an attentive observer which is total fiction because I can't recall exactly where that stand of trees is located on my way home, and we're talking a distance of approximately five miles.  Terry and I were out over the weekend, supposedly deer hunting, but neither of us mustered the energy to get out of bed early enough to actually have a remote chance of spotting a stag nibbling on grass in the cool of the morning.  It was hot and dry by the time we got out there and the animals had enough sense to be sleeping and keeping away from our fire power. We decided to reconnoiter potentially good sites and as we're driving along, I spotted that elk again.  I asked Terry if he'd noticed it?  No.  The sighting frequency was bugging me and I made a mental note to take a closer look on the way back. Which we did after a couple...

Annual obligatory hydrangea photo