The O-Zone

Yes, for the first time in YEARS we will be watching. We were trying to remember the last time we watched a game, and since neither one of us can recall, it has been a while. Or we’re getting old which also has taken a while!

This morning I made pancakes for breakfast using Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Pancake Mix. I fixed it with egg replacer, and almond milk, so it is as allergen free as possible. It is also not as good as my own recipe, but it was edible.  The parrots knew I was making something, and there was quite the riot until I divided up one of the small pancakes and shared the fresh hot bread with them.  The riot consisted of Opal squeaking, Oro making a whining baby bird begging noise, and Terry saying “Want some breakfast?  Want some foooooood??”  She goes for the direct approach.

Now it is all quiet and the sound of happy parrots playing with toys and gritching their beaks.

Mishkin followed me around hoping for his share, and complaining a bit about species discrimination when he didn’t get anything.  So now, after that disappointment is forgotten, he’s running around the house doing “halloween cat” postures and trying to entice us into throwing his mouse.  As we are well trained humans, we comply.  His reflexes are simply amazing and continue to improve.  If his mouse reflects off something, like the stair bannister which I am sure I couldn’t hit if I was actually aiming at it, and rebounds into a different direction, he can switch his trajectory and snatch it out of the air while leaping more than his length when he is  standing straight up on his back feet.  It’s quite impressive.  I’ve no doubts that either of the super bowl teams would love it if their receivers had even  half of his abilities.

I’m making pizza for lunch today.  We love pizza.  Last night there was a show on television about the history of pizza and we found it quite fascinating.  This evening while the game is on, I think we’ll just snack on corn chips and a five-layer bean dip.  I’ll make that sometime today; leftovers can be made into burritos for tomorrow’s lunch.

Looks like it is going to snow today, which is bad news for our driveway.  And it means we won’t get any solar gain from our panels.  They are standing there looking up at the sky, and they seem sad with the thick clouds looming over them.  It was above freezing temperatures yesterday, albeit briefly, for the first time in a couple of months.  We heard from Dan’s brother that he has daffodils poking up out of the ground.  Ours might be doing that as well but it is hard to see them under two feet of snow.

Definitely looks like snow in them thar' clouds

This is our picture of domestic bliss for the day.  Hopefully all who read this are enjoying a similar day!  But maybe with sunny skies instead of snow.

A couple of evenings ago, we had a very nice sunset, all pastels.  And I actually went outside to take a picture of it instead of being lazy and sitting on the couch merely admiring the view.

Late January sunset

Other than the usual things around here, splitting firewood, cooking, working on the computer, and vegging out watching television or movies, not much is happening up here.  It’s been very quiet.  A couple of knitting projects are keeping me entertained.  And the kitten would love it if I would let him be entertained by the knitting projects as well.

Keeping a beady eye on the photographer

Terry is never sure what to make of a camera being pointed in her direction.  She would also love to be involved in knitting projects, but she would be even less help than the cat.  Sorry, bird.

The snow on the roof which is above the parrot cages is probably going to fall off this weekend, if the weather gets as warm as promised.  It has really warmed up today, at least 20 degrees warmer than earlier in the week.  When it does fall off, we’ll hear all about how the sky is falling.

A friend sent me a quote that I dearly loved:

“She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.”
– Mark Twain

The super bowl is this weekend, and while we didn’t follow the play during the season, we did watch some of the playoff games, and will watch the game on Sunday.  I’m thinking of cooking something, but right now feeling singularly uninspired.

I wish I liked to exercise more, but I don’t care for that activity very much. Sad, eh? Tragic even? The results will be good if I can continue to make myself do it at least on a periodic basis.

Computer set up for movie watching while walking

It is really bright sunshine today, and I dropped the blinds so that I can see the computer screen while I’m walking on the eliptical walker.  Otherwise, it is so excruciatingly boring I can’t stand it.  Then I use the weight machine a bit, and then some crunches on the floor.  It would sure be more effective if I did this more times a week.  I say that to myself a lot and then I go do something else.  🙂

Queen size futon in the exercise room

I still have no idea what to do to make this room more comfortable and inviting, so that I’ll spend more time in it exercising.  For now it’s more just utilitarian than anything else, and I’m awaiting interior design  inspiration to strike (hope it isn’t painful when it does).

King size bed in the upstairs guest room

Nice view to the west from the guest room upstairs.   We still have things to do to get this room totally comfortable and finished, but it’s getting there.

Looking into the livingroom from the kitchen doorway

That’s the little throw rug in front of the sliding glass doors onto the front deck.  Mishkin runs full speed around the front of the couch and dives under this tiny rug, and he thinks he’s totally hidden.  When he was a lot smaller, he was right.  Now, however, the lump under the rug is a lot bigger and there is a tail sticking out which is a dead giveaway to his location.

Looking down into livingroom from stairs

The heat stove is a very popular spot for standing during this really cold weather we’re having.  Mishkin sits right in front of it and watches the flame.   There is nothing as comfortable as the radiant heat from a wood fire.

Dan is baking sour dough bread and the house smells wonderful.

Winter is hanging on, and the days are getting longer so spring is definitely just around the corner.  Already it is light by 7 am, and the sun doesn’t set until almost 5 pm.  The temperatures are very cold, -8F this morning (-22.2C).

Pastel sunrise

It was cold enough outside that I didn’t hang out on the porch for very long while taking pictures.

Homemade pizza is no big deal, but a good pizza that doesn’t use gluten or lactose, that’s a bigger challenge.    I found a great crust recipe online, and combined it with my favorite sauce.

First thing to do is to make the sauce.  Open a 15 ounce can of a good quality organic tomato sauce, put it in a sauce pan (a pan that has a lid unless you have a burning desire to clean tomato splatters off all over your entire kitchen).  Stir in spices, as follows:

1/8 teaspoon onion powder

1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground oregano

freshly ground black pepper, probably 1/4 teaspoon, but go with your instincts on this one

2 teaspoons dried basil

Now, stir well and heat, reducing the volume of the sauce and intensifying the flavors.  Cover while reducing and stir frequently.  Reduce by about a third.  You’ll notice no salt is added to the sauce.  Canned tomato sauces already have salt in them.

While that is cooking slice up whatever ingredients you want in your pizza, and grate some mozzarella cheese (soy or rice milk are what I use).

Cooked sauce, sliced veggies, grated cheese, and a pan

This is an 8 inch spring form pan, and it is very useful for making a deep dish pizza, Chicago style.  Now we need the crust.  A KitchenAid mixer is pretty much required, I think, for making a gluten free crust.

Place the following dry ingredients in the mixer bowl

2/3 cup brown rice flour

1/2 cup tapioca flour

1 Tablespoon yeast

2 teaspoons xanthan gum

1 teaspoon gelatin

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

2 Tablespoons dry soy milk powder

Turn the mixer on to the lowest speed and let it combine these dry ingredients.

Dry ingredients ready to be stirred

Low speed, stir while organizing wet ingredients

In a small container, combine:
2/3 cup very warm water
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon honey

Stir well and pour slowly into the dry ingredient, increasing the speed to medium when all the wet ingredients have been added.

This is very sticky stuff

Once this dough is all combined, beat it on a fairly high speed for a couple of minutes and add, a teaspoon at a time, brown rice flour until the dough is no long looking super sticky.  It will still be wet, so keep the brown rice flour handy to sprinkle on top of the dough once you have it in the pan.  Otherwise it will stick more to your hands than in the pan.

Finished dough, spread into the greased pan and up the sides

Once the dough has been spread out in the pan as evenly as you can on the bottom and up the sides, pop it into a hot 425F oven and bake for 10 minutes.  MAKE  SURE you place this spring form pan into another dish or on a baking sheet with a rim all the way around, so that spray oil doesn’t leak out in the oven and make a cloud of smoke (yeah, I speak from experience here).

Put cheese in first, and then add other fillings

Because this a Chicago style deep dish pizza, the cheese goes in first, and we’ve noticed the rice milk style cheese work best this way, being melted in the middle of a dish instead of on top like normal cheese.

Finally, cover everything with the reduced sauce

At this point you cover the fillings with the reduced sauce, and I like to add a couple of tablespoons of Parmesean cheese.  Even though I am allergic to milk, a good quality Parmesean once a week,  less than a tablespoon worth as a flavoring doesn’t bother me.

Now put the whole pizza, which in this picture is resting inside of a cake pan large enough to hold the spring form pan, back into the 425F oven and bake for another 25 minutes.

A pretty pizza

Remove the pizza from the oven, let it cool a few minutes and then remove the spring form pan and slide the pizza onto a plate for serving.

Cut the pizza into quarters and dive in.  Depending on what sorts of things you add, each piece of pizza will be 320 calories and up.  This is a very low fat recipe, if you use the rice milk cheese especially.  And it is so delicious.   It reheats very well.  Just reheat it in foil, at 350F until it is warm through.

The snow in front of our deck and down the hill is smooth and deep.  But the really neat thing about it is the layers of ice crystals on top of the snow, laid down by the freezing fog.  Today we have very bright sunshine and it is making little rainbows on the ice crystals.

Sparkles on the snow, rough texture but so fragile

The bright sunshine this time of year does translate directly to cold temperatures.  This morning the low was +5F (-15C), and this weather pattern is going to continue until tomorrow evening when snow is supposed to move into the area.  That means we need to do our grocery shopping early.

Smooth with sparkles and shadows

More snow pictures - makes me smile

This morning while I was working, I had to multi-task with throwing a mouse.  Mishkin has been playing with this freshly caught mouse for five hours straight, so far today.  Right now he’s lounging on the shelf under the end table next to my chair, and waiting patiently for me to stop doing unnecessary things on my computer and get back to the important work of throwing his toy.

"Well.... I'm ready!!!"

Doesn’t he look so expectant?  He totally adores these toy mice and he has stashed them all over the house, under every piece of furniture and appliance.  We gather them up, a mouse round-up as it were, and put them in a drawer.  When he drowns them in his water dish and they get too water logged, that is when we throw them away.  Silly kitty.

Our driveway is challenging to negotiate at the moment, and will no doubt remain challenging for the next couple of months, probably into the first week or so of April.  There simply isn’t anyplace left to push the snow out of the way.   Fortunately, both of our cars can go in and out without too much difficulty.  But, a pickup truck?  Forget it.

Right in front of the garage

Right in front of the garage the driveway climbs up.  A couple of winters ago we parked our cars in the carport which at the top of this rise, on the right side of this picture.    Can’t really make it out through all the snow and frost covered trees, but it’s there.  In mid winter walking up the driveway is no big deal.  But, when the weather starts warming up and the days go above freezing, this becomes an ice rink on a slope.

Through the aspen grove

Even though the aspen trees are bare, there are a lot of them and they cast a lot of shade onto the driveway.  About four inches of snow has fallen since the last time Dan ran the snow plow down towards the county road.  What I really liked about this view is how much the upper branches sparkle in the sunshine.  They are still pretty covered with frost from the freezing fogs we are seeing every morning.

Next to the garage is our woodshed

We had 8 cords of firewood when we started the winter, and at the moment we still have around 6 cords left.  We aren’t sure why we have this much wood left since we have been keeping the house nice and toasty warm.

The sun is strong enough to clear part of the roof

Today we went down to the mailbox to get our movie from Netflix, “The Librarian:  Return to King Solomon’s Mines.”  There are three of these Librarian movies, and they are a hoot.

View from up the hill above our house

The county road bisects our property above our house, probably 100 feet elevation to this view.  If we ever did build a small guest cabin, this would be the view from the deck of said theoretical cabin.  With the hordes  of company we get, there really isn’t that much need for a cabin and it will remain theoretical only.

Not much else is going on up here.  Still doing just the same old things.

This first picture is basically the view from our bedroom windows.   It looks like a fairy land right now and when the leaves are out, only a few months from now which is completely hard to imagine, it is layers and shades of green.  We may add some flowering bushes along the edges of the forest.  Anything to get rid of lawn.

A fruit tree surrounded by evergreens

Down the hill from the house and towards the south-west, the forest of evergreens is all heavily coated with frost now.  Some of the pine trees are so thickly covered with frost they look like they have been dipped in cottonballs.

Mixture of pines and fir trees

The hills all look smooth and shiny white where the sun is finally started to peek through the fog.  By the time the sun set today, all clouds are gone and the stars will sparkle on the landscape.

Behind that cloud bank is a mountain and ski resort

The aspen grove around the house really looks substantial now that the fog has lifted a bit.  With all the frost on the branches, and in fog, they disappear.

Satellite dishes connecting us with the rest of the world

The satellite dishes look substantial in a white and fuzzy world.  I keep shoveling a path to them, and it snows again.  The path is getting very narrow.

After a tough day of mischief making

Mishkin doesn’t care if there is fog outside, or if the trees are frosty, or if an owl is hunting in the yard.  He likes his blankie on the couch, and has been snoozing there for several hours already this afternoon.

Doesn’t he or she look fierce? This Pygmy Owl is smaller than its prey, a female Hairy Woodpecker who obviously wasn’t paying attention this morning. Dan heard a Flicker just having a fit about something, and went outside to look, and discovered this life and death drama being played out.

Too heavy a prey to move

Freezing fog over the past couple of days has transformed the woods into a world made of ice crystals. Every twig and needle is coated with ice crystals. This is such an ephemeral landscape.

Crystals over half an inch long

Ponderosa pine

Plum tree adorned with ice, awaiting spring

Inside the house things are much more down to earth. I am going to play with some new gluten free bread recipes today, and I have planned a batch of apple and cinnamon muffins, and an apple bread with raisins. The house is full of the smell of cooking apples. I soaked these dried apple slices overnight in cold water, and now I’m making the apple sauce which will form the basis for these two breads.

Steam rises from the simmering apple slices

Should be an entertaining afternoon!

Yumm, apples and cinnamon

Terry is admiring my handiwork from afar.  She’d rather be admiring it from a whole lot closer.