The O-Zone

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.

Not that I’ve ever been to London, but the fog today was a real pea-souper, and below freezing temperatures have coated everything with ice. The front deck is nice and shiny. We are in our own little world, literally today instead of merely figuratively.

You'd never guess there is a mountain behind these trees

A bit farther away the trees become more ghostly

The last snowfall still lingers on the branches. And we had a Robin here today! His momma told him the early bird gets the worm, but she neglected to mention that he needed to wait until AFTER the snow melted. Minor detail.

Mugshot

I love to take pictures of Mishkin. He tries his best to thwart my efforts. We both are entertained

Because the weather is so cool, foggy, and white, it is a good day to make a hearty soup. This is my own recipe that I developed on our first trip to the Alaskan bush in 1977.

Lentil and Rice Soup

Rinse 1/2 cup lentils, put in a pan.

Add one cup of uncooked brown rice, long grain or short grain

black pepper to taste

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon whole celery seeds

Pinch of onion powder

one bay leaf

1 Tablespoon Italian seasoning

2 Tablespoons olive oil

Add 4 or 5 cups of water.

Heat to boiling, reduce heat to low and cover the pan. Cook for an hour, stirring occasionally to make sure it isn’t sticking. Adjust salt after it is all cooked. This makes a thick hearty soup, wonderful with fresh hot bread.

We came home from our little trip down the hill to the mail box, Netflix movie in hand for this evening, and when I walked in the front door, Terry announced in no uncertain terms “Want a bath!!!”  Well, her wish is our command.

I started the shower and popped her in.

Splish, splash, I was taking a bath....

She looks rather like a drowned rat, in short order.  Mishkin was watching this activity closely from the safety of the dry side of the sliding glass doors.  Whenever Terry would spread her wings and squeal, Mishkin would jump back and run into the other room.

Since Terry was having such a grand time, Oro and Opal needed to share in the joy.

Rain drops keep falling on my head....

Oro LOVES a bath, and gets almost delirious with joy when the rain is falling.

Happy, happy, happy

Opal, on the other hand, thinks she’s being ax-murdered.  Run the vacuum cleaner, and she’s ready, willing and tries hard to be able to jump into her water dish for a bath.  She will fling water all over the floor.  But point the squirt bottle at her, and she says in an aggrieved voice, “GOOD birdie?!?!?”

Why's everybody always pickin' on me....

We’ve never been able to convince her that baths are fun.

But, it's not even Saturday???

Mishkin was one very worried kitty.  He wasn’t sure what his birdie siblings had done to deserve such punishment as being drowned, but more importantly, he was worried that he was next!

Safe AND dry

I finished the first sock in my pair of plain wool socks, but I haven’t gotten around to fixing the pattern instructions.  I have, however, figured out how to make the sock, and will get around to fixing the pattern later.  Where have I heard this before?

One down, one to go

I was thinking about decorating this pair with knitted leaves, flowers, maybe some beads.  The good thing is it only takes a few evenings while watching TV to make one of these.