Cooped up

Yes, I did take last week off. It was Christmas. We had a quiet dinner at home. I had a really busy semester and am compensating by not doing much of anything during my break. I sleep late and take naps. By Christmas, I the only thing I’d crossed off my list was cleaning my refrigerator. I thought of posting a photo because it was a thing of beauty, but it seemed like too much information, like putting up a picture of what you have for lunch every day.

We are welcoming the New Year with bitter temperatures. It’s still warm by North Dakota standards, a mere -3° in the morning, but the wind cuts right through you. We’ve had two snow events of about an inch each. The good thing about having solar panels on the ground is that you can go out and brush the snow off and continue to generate kWh. The good thing about having solar panels on the roof is that when it is below zero, you can resign yourself to not doing anything about the snow and put your feet up with a cup of hot tea and a lap blanket.

Anyway, I bundled up yesterday morning and went out to clear the panels with the temperature at -2° F and a brisk wind blowing from the northwest. Unlike the first snow, which stuck everywhere, the most recent snow had mostly blown off.

Solar panels before brushing

Our method is to put a soft brush on the end of a telescoping pole. This is as far as I can reach.

The brush on the solar panels up as high as I can get it.

Then I pull the pole toward me to brush the snow to the bottom of the panels (and onto my pants). The last time I did snow removal, it was marginally warmer, and only the snow directly beneath the brush would move, one 12” strip at a time. I was at it 45 minutes. This time, when I got the top started, often the snow on the whole panel would slide down, taking all the snow below with. I was done in 20 minutes. Good thing, too, because even wearing my most serious mittens, my fingertips were numb when I was done.

Solar panels brushed off and ready to generate some kilowatt hours

My most serious mittens

I am worried about the hens. We’ve been leaving them in the coop because even if we open the door, they don’t go out, and the coop stays warmer with the door shut. Literally cooped up, they get bored and start pecking each other. Poor Dorothy has no tail feathers left at all.

Poor tailless Dorothy

I found one of their toys, a Coke bottle with holes in the side, filled it with scratch grain, and hung it from the ceiling.

Chicken toy--a Coke bottle with holes in the side filled with scratch grain

I thought they would eagerly attack it, but instead they took to the roost and stayed there, mortified.

On the roost, afraid of the new toy. Juanita is third from the left; note that she looks less scruffy than her companions.

While I was watching, I saw Juanita pecking at Lupita. This would explain why Juanita is the only chicken who does not look hen-pecked. I reprimanded her severely. Fat lot of good that will do.

When I went out to give them their Sunday carrot peels, the Coke bottle was half-empty (or perhaps half-full), so apparently they have been entertaining themselves. I also ordered some pinless peepers with expedited shipping to help with the pecking problem. Stay tuned on that one. I hope Dorothy still has feathers when the pinless peepers arrive.

That brings us to my last post of 2017. Happy New Year!

Christmas cookie marathon

I didn't do a post last weekend because I didn't do much except clean my refrigerator. I contemplated posting a picture of my clean refrigerator, but I felt that no one would appreciate its beauty quite as much as I did.

Yesterday was our Christmas cookie marathon. I made the sugar cookie, chocolate sugar cookie, and Mexican wedding cake doughs in advance. Jane did the dough for the sour cream pockets and also made Tom Thumbs (coconut bars) and caramels. The caramels came out pretty soft. When I visited her Monday, we chilled them so we could cut them and wrap them in wax paper. Hilda prepped the pecan bars using a new recipe from America’s Test Kitchen.

I was up early making frosting. I made my usual buttercream frosting, debating in my head about single or double batch. I decided on a single batch, but left the butter out at room temperature so I could whip up more if I needed to. I made a new recipe for chocolate frosting using the recipe on the Ghiradelli cocoa package. It turned out rather runny. I put in some extra cocoa and hoped for the best.

At 10:00, Kate arrived with her cat, Gracie. Kate was leaving for Oshkosh that day, and I offered to set up a kennel where Gracie could lounge in relative comfort while we were baking. That would save Kate two hours of driving back to her townhouse to get the cat. Even though I explained the plan to Terry, he still suffered from the misconception that Gracie was going to stay with us until Kate got back after Christmas. Apparently he could not believe we would set up the kennel, complete with food, water, and a litter box for a couple of hours. “Why didn’t she just stay in her carrier?” he asked.

“What if she had to pee?” I answered. (It turned out she didn’t, but she managed to get litter in the water bowl anyway.)

Jane drove in shortly after we had the cat settled in. Hilda passed out aprons and towels to hang on the apron strings. Here is Kate, suited up and ready to go.

Kate with her apron and towel. By the end of the day, she decided she loved aprons. Very handy for hand wiping.

As we got organized, Hilda baked her pecan bars. We were intrigued by this recipe because it did not require making caramel as a separate step. Melting sugar without burning it always gave me anxiety. We had to start over more than once, let me tell you. Also, the base did not need pre-baking. It only went in the oven once, completely assembled. Here is the result. It tasted just like pecan pie.

Pecan bars

I started rolling and cutting the sugar cookies so we could get the frosting on in time to set up before Kate had to leave. Kate brought along her two cookie cutters, a penguin and a horse. I found that the penguin’s flippers and the horse’s tail and legs were points of weakness. After a few unfortunate accidents, I reverted to my tried and true Christmas bison with their stubby legs and thick necks. Much more structurally sound.

Horse/bison comparison. The more structurally sound shape is easy to discern

Kate put the cookies on the trays.

Cookies on the tray (including the "dog cookie" from the end of the chocolate cookies)

Hilda manned the oven.

Hilda takes cookies out of the oven

Jane took the cookies off the trays.

Jane puts cookies on the cooling rack

When the first cookies were cool enough, Jane started putting chocolate frosting on the bison and Kate started with the white frosting on the penguins, snowmen, and boys and girls. Kate was nervous because she was a frosting novice. We assured her that most folks just ate the cookies without criticizing the artwork.

Kate uses a pallet knife for the first time.

Aren't the penguins cute?

When I was done rolling and cutting, I prepared the colored icing in the piping bags. Kate learned to pipe frosting too. It was a day of growth experiences for her.

All frosted!

The Christmas bison get a wreath around their necks to make them festive

When the cookies were all frosted, we took a break for lunch. I made turkey soup with homemade noodles.

Two kinds of cookies were left, the Mexican wedding cakes and the sour cream pockets. We did the wedding cakes first because they were less putzy. When they were in the oven, I started rolling the sour cream pocket dough. Jane dabbed on a tiny bit of apricot or raspberry filling and folded up the corners. And the corners mostly came apart in the oven, but they will still taste good. We convinced Kate to stay just a little longer so she could take some with her. By this time, I had (typically) forgotten all about taking pictures. Trust me, they cookies were beautiful.

After Kate left, we cleaned up, packed our share of the cookies, and had a cup of coffee. It was such a fun day, and we have delicious things to eat. What could be better?

Pullets' first snow

Idalis has always had wanderlust. It may have started when she was a chick and spent the night in the feeder. The chicks are not supposed to spend nights in the feeder, of course, because we take the feeder out of the warm coop every evening so the meat chickens don’t grow faster than their legs can support. The top of the feeder is open, and once the layer chicks start to flutter (the meat chickens are always too bulky to leave the ground), they perch on the rim. We wish they wouldn’t because they tend to poop on the food, but a chick is gonna do what a chick is gonna do. One day, Idalis fell into the feeder and couldn’t escape. Hilda didn’t notice her in there when she took the food out. We were sure she would die of hypothermia when we discovered her in the morning, but she recovered nicely.

Whether this experience gave her a need to roam or whether the need to roam caused her to fall into the feeder in the first place is something that we will never know. As a grown up, she has figured out how to get out of the run and does it frequently. Terry says she is looking for a mate. I think his hypothesis is a projection of a common stereotype about men’s motivations. Usually as hens get bigger, they lose their ability and/or inclination to fly, but not Idalis. We tried clipping her wings to no avail. Hilda had witnessed her climbing up the fence and going through at the top, where the holes are bigger. Terry found a place in the fence where the turkeys chewed through the cord and fixed that. The next day, Hilda saw Idalis pacing in that area as if looking for where the hole had been. We thought the problem was solved, but she got out again, probably by jumping from the windbreak around the door to the roof and beyond. Hilda has also seen her and another chicken on the roof. Idalis never seems very happy outside. Terry has her trained to go back into the run as soon as he opens the gate. We can only hope that she will eventually lose interest in the world outside. You’d think she would have figured out that there isn’t any food out there.

We had half an inch of snow on the ground Saturday morning. It was 16°F with a brisk north wind blowing. I opened the door of the coop, and Idalis burst forth, as she usually does. Another hen looked out the door and went back in the coop. Idalis was taken aback by the snow and huddled in the corner of the windbreak where the ground was bare. She wasn’t sure what to do next. She walked along the boards at the bottom of the windbreak and then dashed back in the coop.

Idalis works her way back toward the coop door, trying not to walk in the snow

The rest of the girls mulled around inside while I did the chores. I figured they would venture out sooner or later. It’s winter. They need to get used to it.

Hell, no! We won't go! It's cold out there and there's white stuff on the ground!

Even though they will not walk in snow, snow on boots is irresistible. Here is a photo of Rose pecking the snow on my boots. What goes on in the tiny little brain of a chicken? They could have all the snow they wanted if they went outside!

But this white stuff on your boot is delicious!

Later in the morning, I saw the girls outside pecking at the scratch grains I’d spread when I was out earlier. I thought that they had trampled the snow, but Hilda told me she had swept for them. That’s right--she swept snow for chickens. She spoils them rotten.

Cutting Christmas trees

We cut Christmas trees Saturday. Jane, Pat, and Nancy came up for trees, dinner, and Mexican train. Jane didn’t get a tree because her cat, Skippy, has an electrical wire fetish. It seemed strange to cut the trees while wearing light jackets, sort of like when Jane and I took a Florida vacation in December years ago. Palm trees and plastic snowmen. The trees looked a little peculiar this year. Due to a bad winter some time ago, the trees had normal growth at the top and bottom, and stunted growth in the middle. “Hourglass” is not normally a desirable shape for Christmas trees, but I find it has a certain charm. They are, after all, free-range trees.

Terry had a small, normally shaped tree picked out for Hilda. It was too young to have been through the bad winter. It was a Fraser fir with short needles. Hilda and Dad do not get on ladders anymore and will only decorate what they can reach while standing on the floor.

Hilda with her tree

Here are Terry and Pat getting ready to cut Pat and Nancy’s tree. This tree and ours are Concolor firs, which have longer needles. This is our first year with Concolors.

Preparing to cut Pat and Nancy's tree

And here they are with it.

Pat and Nancy with their tree

This is our tree during the cutting…

Terry cuts our tree while I pull gently to the side to keep the saw from binding

And after.

Our tree--look at the top on that baby! We had to cut most of it off.

We went inside to play several rounds of Mexican train before it was time to begin dinner preparations. It gets dark so early now that we had to cut the trees at 3:00 to be sure we had time before dark. Geez.

We were all in merry holiday spirits, and the discussion was lively. I interrupted play about 4:15 to calculate when we would need to start the ovens. Jane had brought take-n-bake bread. Nancy was roasting carrots, parsnips, and apples. Of course these two things needed different times and different temperatures. Before it was over, nearly everyone had volunteered to start the ovens. It was hilarious.

“Whose turn is it?”

That was followed by a lively discussion of who had played which domino, and who had been last.

Nancy got her vegetables in the oven. Hilda excused herself to put the finishing touches on the shrimp étouffée. I ran downstairs to put the bread in my oven so that it would have time to cool (according to package directions) before dinner was served.

At 5:30, the buffet was ready.

The dinner buffet

This is my dinner, plated. I haven’t had much experience with parsnips. I found that I liked them roasted.

Plated dinner

We finished the last 5 rounds of Mexican train after supper. Hilda made decaf, and we had very small pieces of Reine de Saba. The last time I made it the serving size had been two almonds. This time we only had one. We were all so full!

Reine de Saba cake--serving size is a wedge with one almond.

We decorated our tree Sunday night. Mom and Dad started decorating Sunday afternoon, but ran out of lights and had to drive to McHenry today to get another string. Our tree looks like this:

Our decorated tree

Pat and Nancy sent a photo of their tree today.

Pat and Nancy's decorated tree

Let the holiday season begin!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving. My favorite holiday. It’s all about the food. I was up early to start the preparation. I wanted to start the pie crust, but I use the food processor, which would have woken Terry for sure. I dug the cranberries out of the freezer and put them in a saucepan with a cup of sugar and a bit of water to keep them from burning. I turned the heat on low and turned my attention to the mise en place for the pie crust.

I cooked the cranberries just until they popped and put them in a serving bowl to chill. Cranberries, check.

Cranberry sauce

Terry was up at 6:15. The pie crust was done and resting in the freezer by 6:45. After mixing the pumpkin (Well, okay, it was really butternut squash. No one was the wiser.) I took a breakfast break until it was time to roll the crust at 7:15. The pie was done by 8:30. Check.

Pumpkin pie

While the pie baked, I got the turkey ready. A week ago, I had started defrosting the third of the three turkeys we raised last year. This was the smallest of the three, weighing in at a mere 20.5 pounds. That should be enough to serve 5. I used the same recipe I used in September, which bakes the bird in a bag. To make a flavorful gravy, I put chopped carrots, celery, and onions in the roasting pan with chicken stock and wine. I put on my coat and went to the herb bed to get three sprigs of thyme. The chickens ran out to greet me, but I had forgotten the carrot peels.

I hung up my coat and put the thyme in the roasting dish. I read the recipe again. I put my coat back on and went to the herb bed to get one sprig of rosemary. I remembered to take the carrot peels for the girls. They were not so excited to see me a second time, but they came a-running when I called and threw their Thanksgiving treats in the run.

I hoped to get the turkey in the oven by 9:00. I was 20 minutes late. I made the stuffing next. Where had the morning gone? I had just enough time to exercise and take a shower before the turkey was done.

I had the same issue I had last time. The breast and legs were done before the thighs. I pulled it out of the oven, covered it with foil, and got to work on the gravy. Will I ever learn to read the recipe all the way through? Probably not. I had skimmed to find out how long the turkey had to cook, which was 3 ¼ hours. Now I noticed that it was supposed to rest for an hour. Lunch was supposed to be at 1:00. I had 15 minutes.

The last of the turkeys we raised

When Jane arrived, I put her to work stirring the gravy so I could carve the breast, wings, and legs. My plan was to put the back and thighs back on the rack in into the roasting pan to finish cooking. I forgot my plan and filled the roasting pan with soapy water. Then I remembered my plan. New plan: I will wash the roaster and then put the back in it to roast. It turned out that Terry offered to help and took on the washing of the roasting pan. I put the turkey in Hilda’s oven upstairs so we could keep an eye on it while we ate.

Lunch was late, but it was worth the wait. Hilda made mashed potatoes and a casserole of finely chopped broccoli and cauliflower with cheese and bread crumbs.

We took a break from eating to play 5 rounds of Mexican Train. Hilda made coffee. We ate the pie with freshly whipped cream. I floated some whipped cream in my coffee too. Hey, it’s Thanksgiving.

Jane left at 4:00 so she would only have to drive halfway in the dark. I picked the rest of the meat off the turkey carcass and put the bones in the slow cooker to simmer overnight. I washed the pans and serving tray and loaded up the dishwasher for the second time.

I am now comfortably in my chair, filled with the satisfaction that comes from taking uncooked food from the refrigerator, making it into delicious things to eat, eating too much, and putting the leftovers back in the refrigerator. A perfect day.

Wild yeasts

Homo naledi ate dirt. A study summarized in Science News (9/16/17) examined the 300,000-year-old (plus or minus 35,000 years) teeth of this South African hominid and found an unusual amount of chipping. The damage, the researchers suggested, was consistent with eating nuts, seeds, and grit-covered roots and tubers.

This was one of those news tidbits that captured my imagination. H. naledi dug food out of the ground and ate it. And why wouldn’t they? In parts of South Africa, they would be hard pressed to find enough water to drink, let alone wash their food. What fascinated me was the thought that somewhere along the line in human evolution, someone said, “Hey! Let’s take these tubers to the river and rinse off the grit!” Someone had to invent food washing.

Someone invented cooking. Much later, there was farming. Grains would have been cooked whole at first, until someone got the idea of crushing them with stones. I imagine there was not a whole lot of intentionality in these developments. Certainly folklore suggests many happy accidents. The milk stored in a calf’s stomach changed to cheese. The cheese forgotten in a cave changed to Roquefort. The food may have been considered spoiled, but it was eaten anyway. There may have been nothing else.

Flour mixed with water and left out started to ferment. It got baked anyway because there was no food to waste. The bread was no longer flat! It could be that the first person to try it said, “Man! This bread tastes just like an old, wet dog!”

I am, of course, building up to my own recent experiment with sourdough. As the recipe promised, the smell did improve. A few days after the old, wet dog smell, the starter underwent the transformation described in the directions. It doubled in volume rapidly and took on a boozy, vinegary odor.

Starter, Wednesday evening

Starter, Thursday evening

Close up of the air pockets in the bubbly starter

 I was not the only one to notice. One morning, there were two fruit flies under the plastic wrap. Fruit flies? In November? Where did they come from? This is the sort of thing that made people believe in spontaneous generation.

The starter seemed ready to go by Sunday. There is nothing fast about sourdough. First, the starter has to be fed and sit at room temperature for 5 hours. Then it has to be refrigerated for 12 hours. The starter is thinned with water and mixed with flour and salt. And it sits for 12 hours longer. Due to a math error, the starter was due to be made into dough at 1:00 Monday morning. Oh well. These days, I’m up anyhow. I measured everything before I went to bed so I could throw it together quickly and get back to sleep.

When I got home from work Monday afternoon, I punched it down and put it in a parchment-lined Dutch oven for the final rise. It smelled unpleasantly sour, and I feared my two weeks of effort was a bust. Still, like my ancient ancestors, I pressed on, not wanting to waste. I often make a similar recipe in which I do the final rise in a linen towel and tip it into a pre-heated Dutch oven. This time, the cold dough and Dutch oven go into the cold oven, and everything heats up together. I was skeptical, but it came out great. It tasted good too! It was only mildly sour, and had a great chewy texture.

The final product--the white spots are flour

 I’m sold! I will keep my wild yeasts and lactobacilli, feeding them every week. Maybe I can find some other things to make with it. 

Here we are at Thanksgiving already. As we gather at the table, we are thankful for good food, good company, and good wine. This year, I’m going to remember to be thankful that I don’t have to eat dirt.

Reine de Saba

What a dreary day it has been. It started with drizzle, which changed to snow about 9:30. The first snowfall is always cool, of course. It even stuck for a while on the garden and the trunk of the fifth oak. The snow stopped and melted. Fog came in under a uniformly gray sky. It feels much like winter. At 5:15, it is pitch dark.

The pullets have FINALLY started to lay. Such cute little pullet eggs! I thought the event was much later than last year, but in the middle of the week, a picture of a pullet egg popped up as a Facebook memory from a year ago. Apparently I thought it would never happen last year either.

The first pullet egg next to a hen egg.

Not only are the pullet eggs cute as a bug’s ear, they are also more intensely colored. I don’t know why the color fades over time. The Black Star eggs are a beautiful chestnut brown.

Three pullet eggs and three hen eggs

I’ve been battling the winter blues as the weather has gotten cold and damp and the days shorten. I needed a project. There are no tadpoles available this time of year, so I thought I’d try my hand raising wild yeast. I saw it on America’s Test Kitchen and downloaded the instructions. Last Saturday, I mixed all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, and water, covered it with plastic wrap and let it sit. The next morning (16 hours), it looked like this.

Wild sourdough starter at 16 hours

Monday morning, it was getting even more bubbly.

At 36 hours

By Monday night, it seemed like it was time to feed it. The black spots on top were a little concerning. I stirred it up, removed 2 ounces to a clean bowl, added 2 ounces of water, and 2.5 ounces of the flour/whole wheat flour mix.

At 48 hours, blubbly and with suspicious blackish patches on top

Every day, I repeat the feeding steps. It looks like this right after the feeding.

Starter right after feeding

And it looks like this the next day.

Starter after 24 hours

Right now it smells exactly like an old, wet dog. I am not certain that this experiment will be successful, but the folks at ATK said that it smells “funky” at first but after two weeks will begin to smell more like normal yeasty bread dough. The idea is that the desirable yeasts and bacteria out compete the stinky ones. We’ll see.
In a more successful experiment, I tried one of Julia Child’s recipes from The French Chef. It was called Reine de Saba (Queen of Sheba) and was subtitled “chocolate, rum, and almond cake.” I found an 8” cake pan, which I buttered and floured. I also put parchment paper on the bottom even though the recipe didn’t say to. Nobody knew about parchment paper in 1968. I wanted to be sure the cake would come out of the pan.

Then I had a problem. One part of the cake involved creaming butter and sugar. Another part was beating egg whites. I have but one hand mixer. One stick of butter would be lost in the bowl of my stand mixer. If you have experience with egg white beating, you know that the bowl and beaters must not have any trace of fat or the eggs will not develop the proper structure. To use the hand mixer for both would require a thorough cleaning of the beaters in between. I hate washing beaters, especially with the pressure of removing every molecule of butter.  Julia said you could cream the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon. I didn’t believe it, but I knew she did her research. I tried it. I soon had balls of sugar-coated butter. I changed tactics, mashing the butter into the sugar with the back of the spoon. That went better. Quite suddenly, as if by magic, it all came together and was easy to stir vigorously. Julia was right!

From there, it was simple to add the melted chocolate, rum, ground almonds, almond extract, egg yolks, and all-purpose flour (It was supposed to be cake flour, but I keep four kinds of flour in stock at all times, and I have to draw the line somewhere. )

The recipe called for adding cream of tartar to the egg whites to stabilize them. To my amazement, I had cream of tartar on hand. I can’t imagine why, but it was a pleasant surprise. I got the egg whites to shiny white peaks and folded them into the rest of the cake. Into the oven.

After letting the cake cool for two hours, I made the glaçage au chocolat (chocolate-butter icing). Really it was more of a ganache, but nobody knew about ganache in 1968. I melted 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips with 1.5 tablespoons dark rum. I beat in 6 tablespoons of softened butter one at a time until it was perfectly smooth. Best. Icing. Ever. The cake was good, too! It reminded me of Europe.

Reine de Saba

10th Green Living Expo

Saturday was the 10^th Green Living Expo at MCC. Pat and I have done vendor check in at the crack of dawn for several years now. We’re a good team because we are not only good buddies but also outdoorsy types who know how to dress for the weather. One time I had to bundle up in coveralls and pack boots. Last year, we were practically in shirt sleeves. At 5:00 Saturday morning, I heard rain on the window well cover. Shoot. The radar looked like we were in for wet conditions at least all morning. The temperature was in the mid-40’s, too cold for my waxed cotton coat. I thought that my winter coat was fairly waterproof. I also put on my new Gander Mountain rain pants, wool socks, and my Big Lady winter boots, which are warmer than my Wellies.

Kim, our Sustainability Director, took this picture of us at 7:50 (the clock was conveniently in the background) when we were still dry but about to take our post.

Pat and me ready to take our post outside

Our job was to stop the vendors, give them a packet that included a map to where their table was, point to the door where they were to unload, and ask them to please move their car as soon as possible to the parking area so others could unload. We set up a tent so we would have some shelter from the rain, there was too much wind to put the tent where it could be seen from the road. I watched the entrance road for potential vendors and left the shelter of the tent to hold the vendor check-in sign where they could see me as they drove in. The rain, blown horizontal by the wind, hit me in the face. I stopped the car (sometimes with vigorous flagging down) and shouted the company name to Pat, who located the packet while I pointed out the doors. Then we cheerfully thanked them for coming and hoped that they had a great day.

My coat was not as waterproof as I thought, but I made it through the two hours of check-ins without it soaking through. The rain pants were definitely a good decision. The only point of weakness was my mittens, which were more absorbent than repellant. When it got too hard to get them on and off as needed, I left them off.

We still had a bunch of envelopes left at 10:00. Leslie, another volunteer, went through them and found several who had slipped by us. We figured anyone who had missed the check-in window would just have to get their packet inside. We’d had enough. I went back to my office to take off my coat, boots, and rain pants and put on my shoes. Pat did the same in a room near the Expo. We joined Nancy, who had been hanging around all morning waiting for Pat to get done, and proceeded to the Expo.

New this year was the Artist Walk. These tables in the hall were less expensive than the vendor tables in the gym to attract people who repurposed materials as hobbies rather than businesses. One of our colleagues signed up for a table to sell pillows made from old quilts. Another co-worker was selling nature photographs. There were also a couple of women who made jewelry from old buttons, golf tees, and other small things. There was also a table of ceramics. I wasn’t sure what the sustainable angle of that was, but the bowls and plates were lovely. I was impressed with the quality and creativity of the objects for sale.

The Artist Walk

We were just getting started in the gym, when here comes Hilda. She was nearly done and headed home. After hugs all around, she went on her way. After we did the circuit, Nancy went back to the soap vendor to pick out three bars at $8.00 each. It was her birthday splurge. I am not much into smelly soaps, but some of these smelled quite good.

Nancy picks out soap

In the course of conversation, I mentioned that I planned to buy lunch at the Expo. Pat immediately invited me to join them for Nancy’s birthday lunch at BBQ King in Woodstock. Pat had a $30 gift card, and a third person would be just about right to spend that much. They were going to go to a kitchen shop in Crystal Lake before lunch. I told them to go ahead. I hadn’t see the tiny house yet, and I can always find things to do in my office. They could text me when they were headed to lunch.

I put my coat back on and went out to the tiny house. It was still raining, but the tiny house was getting a steady stream of visitors. The Green Living Expo had an unfinished tiny house with a loft two years ago. Last year, the tiny house didn’t make it because of a broken trailer hitch. That was a bummer because we’d done a good deal of promotion based on the tiny house, and there were people that came to the Expo for no other reason. This year’s tiny house was completely decorated. I liked all the windows. Tiny houses are so cute. I might be able to live in one by myself. More often, I think I would like one as a writer’s studio/guest house. Probably I will never get one.

Tiny house

This is the tiny bathroom. The toilet has a bag to collect the equivalent of 25 flushes (or thereabout). The bag then needs to go to a high-temperature compost facility. It has a full bath with shower.

The tiny bathroom

This is the tiny kitchen. A fold down table is opposite the sink/stove/refrigerator.

Tiny kitchen

And here is the bed and TV. I would not have a TV in my tiny house.

Tiny bedroom

I went to my office to wait for Pat’s text. I still had some trouble getting my cold hand to work as I fumbled with my key. I checked my email and did a little work before I got the message that they were on their way.

 We had a fun lunch. When I got home, I wanted nothing more than a nice cup of hot tea. That segued nicely to a little nap. Even though I’d been dressed appropriately, I was exhausted from spending that much time being pelted with cold rain.

When I lay down to sleep last night, I stretched out between the flannel sheets under the quilts. I am not always present in the moment, but right then, I could only think, “I am warm. I am dry. I am out of the wind.” It was a great feeling.