Vultures!

On my way home from the library I was whining to myself about not having brought a camera (there are always photo opportunities when you put a bunch of volunteers in charge of dress-up materials), when I saw some crows circling overhead, gathering in a big cloud to roost like I'd seen so many times on campus.
Except for the fact that these weren't crows, they were vultures.
I'd never seen that many vultures in town before, but from the huge amounts of feathers scattered over three blocks, they gathered there somewhat often.
It was several blocks home still, and 90 unpleasant degrees, but I managed to walk-jog-walk-pause-jog home for the camera, splash cold water all over my face, grab a tangerine from the fridge to eat on the way, and then walk-jog-walk-eat-walk-pause-jog-eat-walk back to the vultures' tree.

Some interesting discoveries:

• Turkey vultures resemble turkeys not only in appearance, but in their aroma when dozens of them are clustered in one place.
• Vultures in droves seem to attract mosquitoes in droves.
• Citrus, at least in the quantities available in a tangerine peel, does not ward off mosquitoes.
• My camera's zoom capabilities are only slightly better than those of Shawn's binoculars in the pilot episode of Psych.

These discoveries made for a somewhat lackluster photo experience, but at least I got a few in flight:






Interestingly, in my hurry to free up a little space for these pictures prior to my mad dash back, I managed to delete *all* the other pictures in my camera instead of one.
Well, now I know what that button does.
Serves me right for not moving them to the computer sooner.

Does anyone know how to build an ark?

Well, it's wet out. There's also a heat index of 105 and I've somehow lost my camera, so unfortunately I don't get to take pictures of this one.

We're in the middle of the worst flood in this area in nearly 20 years. During the last flood I lived smack in the middle of the flood plane, and had the great fun of helping my mother put everything on top of the furniture and watching people canoe past the building. The water didn't make it in that year, but with yesterday's flooding several feet higher in some areas, I'm thankful that I no longer live in the flood-prone part of the city. Good luck to all who do - I've been there, and it isn't fun.

The community is currently under a Boil Water Advisory due to several breaks in the mains. Hopefully everything will be back up and running by week's end, and the storms forecast for Friday won't come to much.

As a bit of reference, here's a picture of the minor flooding we were getting BEFORE it rained on Tuesday:

When you give a girl a cookbook ....

...She will ask for another cookbook. And then she will make a lot of food that doesn't look quite like it was supposed to, and then she will vow never to cook again.

The chocolate-chile cake tasted fine, but there was a bit of a ... layered thing going on. Here's a nice picture where you can't see that.


The coconut meringues were a bit too big, took longer to cook and are still a tad soft. But hey, meringues is meringues. Still good.
Forgot to take a picture of the paella. The shrimp and scallops were wonderfully tender; the whole thing needed a little salt, and the chicken wings didn't cook through, but it took less doctoring than the flan. I don't know who had the bright idea to make caramel with water, but it ... doesn't work splendidly well. At least not when you follow the directions. I now have Flan Topped With Crunchy Sugar Wafer instead of Flan Topped With Caramel, but ah, c'est la vie.

Today: Wash dishes.

Here comes Peter Cottontail....

It's not easy, as it turns out, to fit a whole cut-up fryer rabbit into a smallish Dutch oven, and it's even more difficult to get the thing to cook evenly. It's also a fantastic mess to eat once it's done.
Maybe it's easier when you know what amount is being referred to when the recipe specifies only, "the wine" (it CAN'T be the whole bottle, even though that's implied in the ingredients, as it would take far longer than specified to cook down enough for the cream sauce), and you don't have to fret over balancing enough wine to keep the rabbit in liquid, and not so much you get wine soup.


It turned out alright, I'll likely end up donating most of the sauce to someone who likes Riesling-flavored cream sauce, but it looks pretty enough. No pictures of the finished product, I was getting a bit mad at the sauce and all by then.


In other news, I went all around campus taking pictures of people's staplers. That was interesting enough.

Froggy

Latest design from Zazzle. :)

Happy Birthday to Me

Apparently I needed to try limes, so naturally I decided to ... make a pie.
Fun thing to do on your birthday, right?
Managed to make a graham cracker crust without eating half of it
Got a sufficient amount of lime zest to whisk into the egg yolk without sneezing into the food (lime zest is ... zesty), and whisked and whisked and whisked until "very fluffy."

Whisked in the condensed milk - it was oddly beautiful swirling it into the egg yolk, though I couldn't really get a picture while holding the camera with my neck

PIE.
I was informed that it needed meringue, and the pie left me with three egg whites, so after about three years of beating egg whites (at least I'd realized by then I probably shouldn't use the wire whisk) ... PIE.



Is good.

Clever Title Including the Word "Goat"

So, I was looking for goat meat sold locally.
I found exactly one place, the downtown farmer's market. They didn't have any at the time, but it was a start.
Miraculously, they have a website and keep it updated, so when I finally remembered to check back I learned that they not only had goat back in stock, but they were also having a bit of a craft event where you could make paper flowers, and an old friend would be in charge of it.
So that settled it, off to get my goat.

A bit pricey, more than beef but less than lamb.
I made a forum post asking what to do with it, since about all I ever make with lamb is stew or meatballs.
Most of the suggestions were goat curry, which I'll have to do next time, but I finally decided I didn't have the cash to get all the ingredients I was missing.

I decided I'd try goat tagine, since the meat would need to be cooked a while to soften up. All the recipes had prunes or dates. I do not care for prunes or dates. I wondered if I could substitute dried apricots, which I had on hand.
I searched "lamb tagine" instead of "goat tagine," and to my surprise, there was a recipe using apricots, right near the top of the page. I had all but two ingredients, so I ran off to get them and started cooking.

Browning the meat:

Adding the cilantro (I love cilantro so):

Dried apricots and golden raisins:
The recipe, from foodnetwork.com, had way too little liquid for my taste - a few extra cups of chicken broth fixed that

The finished product, with a hastily-made jumble of couscous and roasted red bell pepper.
So good. I love food.