Darn cold!

 The weather station was sad Wednesday morning. I wasn’t thrilled either.

Yes, that says MINUS 18.7

Terry, weather junky, optimistically pronounced, “This will be the last really cold day this winter.”

“You said that last week,” I replied. I had to wear my coveralls to do the chicken chores. I had a haircut that morning as well. Pat always blows my hair dry, but when it’s that cold, I could still tell it was a little wet near the scalp. Brrr. Froze my itty brain!

A couple weeks ago, I made a recipe for peanut butter stuffed chocolate cookies from Cook’s Country magazine. They were enormous, and I had to cut them in half. On the next page, there was a recipe for “Two Fat Biscuits,” which could easily be confused with “Too Fat Biscuits.” They were made with both butter and lard, and a good amount of each. Well, why not, I thought. I still had lard in the freezer from the time we tried to make tamales longer ago than I care to remember when I’m going to use up some leftover ingredient.

Following the recipe, I patted out the dough and cut it into 9 square biscuits. They were also incredibly light and flaky, but OMG, they were HUGE. Like the cookies, they needed to be cut in half. Unlike the cookies, I only baked what I thought we would eat in a day or so. I froze the rest unbaked.

The second time I baked the biscuits, I cut each of two squares in half. That was a more manageable size. They are beautiful biscuits.

Fluffy, flaky, two-fat biscuits

I noticed a new bird at the feeder this week. I think it is a song sparrow.

Song sparrow

We don’t see blue jays at the feeder much, which is okay with me. They scare all the other birds away.

Blue jay

Cardinals, sparrows, and finches are better at sharing. This cardinal illustrates the problem with wings. Vertebrates only get four limbs. If you have wings, you give up arms. You can’t wipe your beak.

Snow on the beak. So annoying.