Unique Aspects of Days – January 2022

This year I am jotting down something unique about each day…encouraging myself to notice those things that are not the same day after day. Sometimes it is related to what I identify as a ‘little celebration’ – but not all the time.

Some of the unique aspects would happen every year – a first snow of the year, a 49th wedding anniversary (Ok – next year will be the 50th),  and a 1st awesome sunrise of the year.

Others will only happen once – perhaps more truly unique: a pet dying, making a new recipe for the first time (this month is was pumpkin peanut powder curry cream (soup)) and a surgery.

Still others I recorded this first month of listing unique events were simply rare: fog in the afternoon and a new garage door.

Overall – this is a good project for 2022…another dimension of awareness into how I am spending my days…making sure I am not ‘in the rut’ all the time!

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 11, 2021

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Top 25 birds of the week: Shorebirds! – Always lots to see looking at birds!

Everglades' Wading Birds Had Mixed Success In 2020 – Overall wading bird nesting in South Florida has increased…but is still a fraction of the target. In 2020, an early arriving rainy season impacted the availably of food for chicks.

De-cluttering may not help people with dementia – People with moderate dementia perform better surrounded by their ‘usual’ clutter!

U.S. Is World’s Top Generator of Plastic Waste – Not surprising. And the US should take the lead in figuring out what to do about it: how to produce less and recycle more.

A Mosaic From Caligula’s ‘Pleasure Boat’ Spent 45 Years as a Coffee Table in NYC – Still a lot of mystery about how the mosaic got from its recovery when Lake Nemi was drained by Mussolini and then becoming the top of a coffee table for 45 years. It was seized in 2017 and returned to the Italian government.

Roadrunner: Meet the Real Bird Behind the Cartoon – I can remember seeing one a little north of where my parents live now (north of Dallas) in the 1980s…but they are probably long gone from that area now. I’ve seen them in west Texas more recently; one was at a rest stop between San Antonio and Laredo. They always seem to thrive in relatively harsh environments.

The bustling hidden world of hedgerows – The closest we come in North America to hedgerows are fencerows or windbreaks….and even those have been reduced over the years. Near where I live the advent of glyphosate/Roundup ready crops has eliminated the herbaceous growth along the edges of fields which in the past included milkweed and other plants that were attractive to butterflies and other small animals.

Master Artisans Fixed Mistakes Made by Apprentices at Ancient Egyptian Temple – I enjoyed the 6 minute video in this post…it’s quiet enough to hear the birds in the ruins.

Managing water resources in a low-to-no-snow future – We need to be thinking of adaptations to this manifestation of climate change now rather than waiting since the solutions will be challenging….take time to design and construct.

Old-fashioned rice custard – I have a container of rice from some Chinese takeout…..and plan to make this rice custard. I am anticipating that it will be yummy (and high protein too).

Little Celebrations, Tangler’s Choice, and a Fledgling Woodpecker

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

10 Little Celebrations in May 2020

Today I am highlight 10 small things I celebrated this month. Half of them involved birds!

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Rose-breasted Grosbeaks were a new bird at our deck this year; my husband both celebrated their appearance. They came for the first half of the month both males and females. Now they are probably raising young in a nest a little too far from our feeder…but maybe they’ll bring their fledglings!

Virtual Cape May Spring (Birding) Festival. It was two days of rewarding sessions….celebrating a place we enjoyed last spring (Cape May, New Jersey) in the best way possible in 2020!

Downy woodpecker fledgling. We had a fledgling downy…bumbling to the deck but not the feeder – yet. Celebrating new life in the forest.

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American Goldfinches. The males are in their summer plumage. It’s always a day brightener to see them.

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Indigo Buntings were another new visitor to our feeder this year. Like the grosbeaks – they were around for the first half of the month. Hopefully, they will return with fledglings…and built their nest far enough away to not have a cowbird nestling.

And there were other things I celebrated…many probably obvious from my previous posts.

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Irises. I celebrated every single one that came up in our garden. The rhizomes appear to be recovering from a collapse a few years ago. I hope that cutting the stalks will make it easier for them to build up even more for next year – anticipating more flowers to celebrate.

Poem sent from my Mother…30 years ago. I found a poem my Mother sent to me as I started my daughter in day care 30 years ago. I must have celebrated it at the time….and did again when I found it again.

Providing a Zentangle session at Howard County Conservancy.  Celebrating sharing something I enjoy.

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Chipmunk on the deck. Celebrating the rodent that has Oreo cookie stripes on each side!

Flower Designs from the 1800s. Celebrating Marcia Bradford’s book of flower designs for watercolor…that worked very well with Ultra-Fine Point Sharpies with Zentangles filling in the background! I completed 2 in May.

A Zentangle Prompt

Instead of trying a new pattern today – pick ones from the last week to make again – in a new combination or as a monotangle. Take your pick from: GINGO, MEER feathers, ANTIDOTS, ELIROB, BATON, PHICOPS, RIBBON ROSE, and SHARD. Or maybe decide to take a break and just admire a mosaic of your tiles made over the past 6 days. Here are mine (including the RIBBON ROSE and SHARD tiles from yesterday.

Unique activities for yesterday:

Fledgling red-bellied woodpecker. The fledgling was on the roof of the covered deck while the mom was at the feeder! It first came about 8 AM and I watched for it all through the day. It wasn’t quite coordinated enough to utilize the bird feeder directly.

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Chicken baked in spicy spaghetti sauce. I’m not sure why I hadn’t tried this before…it’s easy to make and delicious. I simply put boneless chicken breasts in a Pyrex baking dish, poured some spicy spaghetti sauce over them, sprinkled on some garlic and coarse ground pepper….cooked for an hour at 350 degrees (included some potatoes in the same oven). The baking dish has a lid, so the leftover chicken is in the refrigerator in that container (easy cleanup after our meal). My husband – a somewhat picky eater – liked the chicken so much he even volunteered to eat the leftovers!

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Spiced Molasses Cake (Muffins)

I always like to try at least one new recipe during the holidays. This time I started with a very old recipe that I’d found in a cook book on Internet Archive here.  It is a collection of recipes from Williams, Arizona published by their library association in 1911! The recipe is a scant paragraph for Spiced Molasses Cake

One-half cup sugar, one cup shortening (butter or cottolene) ; one cup molasses, one cup boiling water, one teaspoon soda, one teaspoon ginger, cloves and cinnamon, two eggs, two and one-half cups flour. Beat the eggs well and put in last. Mrs. Amos Adams, Williams. Arizona

I modernized the recipe by using olive oil rather than shortening (butter or cottolene). I also made it my own by pureeing a whole orange (cutting off the ends but otherwise including the peeling and pith) to replace part of the hot water, using whole wheat flour, and adding a dash of cayenne pepper.

The batter cooked well in muffin tins…crispy on top, soft and airy underneath. I enjoyed them hot from the oven with butter on my Christmas dinner plate then for breakfast for days after…a lingering flavor of the holidays.

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Christmas dinner: broccoli with garlic butter, spiced molasses muffins, roast, cranberry orange salad, baked potato

Some more thoughts about this old recipe:

The amounts are easy to remember since they are either 1 cup or one teaspoon. Experienced cooks would guess 2 eggs and would have added enough flour to get the batter to the right consistency. This was a recipe the writer probably learned from her mother or developed on her own…not something learned from a cookbook. It reminded me of the way my Grandmother cooked.

The airiness of the finished product is not from baking powder like many modern recipes! The last sentence about adding the beaten eggs last is probably important. Something to remember for future sweet muffin experiments.

Cranberries

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I am enjoying cranberries almost every day this month!

In breakfast smoothies (together with vanilla flax milk, walnuts, and a banana), salads (chopped with nuts, raw sweet potato, celery plus flakes of canned chicken, a dressing of mayo and ginger preserves), stir fry (any time I want a tart fruit flavor with the veggies), baked with an apple, a few pecans and a dab of butter.

Cranberries are easy to freeze so I’ve been stocking up and freezing them…using up almost all the small plastic containers I have. I’ll be enjoying cranberries long after the season is over.

When I want a pretty smoothie – I add some fresh or canned beets to the smoothie along with the cranberries. Very pink/red…a great seasonal start to the day.

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 13, 2019

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Coconut Spice Cake Recipe | Magnolia Days – The cake I made for my husband’s birthday. It tasted great even without icing!

Photographer Captures Stunning Images of Ice Shards Along Lake Michigan | Smart News | Smithsonian – Spectacular ice forms – made during the breaking up on Lake Michigan a few weeks ago.

Ancient Caribbean children helped with grocery shopping in AD 400 -- ScienceDaily – Snail and clam shells (small ones) might be from child, rather than adult, foragers!

Thousands of Invasive Cane Toads Overtake Florida Community | Smart News | Smithsonian – Ugh! Not something people want in their yards and pools and driveways. These toads have a toxin strong enough to kill cats and dogs that munch on toads and can cause burning eyes or skin irritation in humans.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: March – National Geographic Society – Beautiful birds….changing environments and habitats.

Where Have All the House Sparrows Gone? – Cool Green Science – House sparrow numbers have been declining since 1966 – all around the world!

66-million-year-old deathbed linked to dinosaur-killing meteor -- ScienceDaily – Fossils of animals killed and buried within an hour of the meteor impact!

Pairing Geothermal Plus Rooftop Solar For A Truly Renewable Home | CleanTechnica – At what point will the idea of geothermal heating and cooling catch up with rooftop solar for our homes? Will Dandelion – or comparable companies - become nationwide?

Five new frog species from Madagascar -- ScienceDaily – Some tiny new frogs. The smallest is only a little larger than a grain of rice.

These pictures of seed bank samples turn biology into art – The beauty of seeds. The first photograph (of Australian windflower flower heads is my favorite. The x-ray of a red yucca seed head is also interesting….showing the 3D of the pod in the image.

Spaghetti Squash

The Gorman Farms CSA shares in recent weeks have included winter squash; the first one was a spaghetti squash and I have thoroughly enjoyed it.

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I cooked it first – whole, skin pricked with a fork, for an hour at 350 degrees. At the end of the hour I took it out cut off the top and then cut it in half to let it cool a bit. I had decided the first meal from it would be ‘spaghetti’ so I started the sauce: spicy tomato sauce from a jar poured over eggplant cubes that needed to simmer a bit. Back to the squash: I used a spoon to life out the mass of seeds and pulp in the center then teased out the ‘spaghetti’ that I wanted into a small non-stick skillet; I added a little oil and stir fried the squash a little to drive off excess water. I cut up some arugula for the topping while the sauce continued to bubble and I added some shelled edamame for protein. When the squash we ready I poured it into a bowl…the added the sauce and the generous handful of arugula. Yummy!

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I used about 1/4th the squash for the ‘spaghetti’ dinner. The next fourth was used for a dessert! I soaked raisins in apricot brandy for a few hours. I started the dish by sautéing the squash with a little butter in a non-stick skillet, adding cinnamon + maple syrup + raisins with brandy as it cooked. I let the liquid cook down almost completely. It smelled wonderful and tasted yummy – eaten warm. The squash is naturally sweet so no much syrup was needed. This is something I will make again.

I still have more spaghetti squash in the refrigerator…planning to make a frittata since I will be out and about a lot over the next few days and that is easy to make ahead for a quick meal when I get home.

Next up – acorn squash.