Sailor Soldier of Love and Justice

I was industrious yesterday.

I got up early and went to the farmers market in order to obtain fresh peaches for making jam. I survived the very difficult task of tasting each sample offered to find the best peaches in the market. Unfortunately for me, the best tasting ones were also the smallest ones. This would lead to difficulty later.

Before I left the market, I also picked up an apple turnover and a jar of peach butter. I now want to put peach butter on everything. It is ridiculously good.

After that, I ran some errands and picked up essentials for a day of baking/cooking madness.

First I made homemade frosty paws. I used this recipe as a starting point but reduced the amount of yogurt and honey. The dogs tried some later after it had chilled. They absolutely loved them. Yay!

After dinner, I started the long crazy process of making peach jam. I sorta winged the recipe based on a couple recipes online. It gelled properly, so at least I processed it correctly! Now I need to taste test a jar. (But not until I finish my jar of peach butter!)

I had a hard time getting the skin off some of the peaches. To make things even worse, I had to use a ton of peaches because they were so tiny. It took me an hour to peel them all. And I misjudged how many peaches I needed, so I was about a cup short and had to recalculate sugar and pectin amounts. What a bother.

Everything was going fine after that though, until I had to spoon the hot jam into the jars. Now I see why so many people suggest a canning funnel. I can't believe how badly I burned myself. Hot jam is MOLTEN. Next time I make jam, I'm getting a funnel. That was horribly painful. And scarring.

This morning I continue my industrious madness by making biscuits to eat with my peach butter. They are rising right now. Should be ready to pop into the oven very soon. (Which is good because I have to leave at 11:30 for an appointment.)

This afternoon, I intend on making chocolate marshmallow cookies. And for dinner I will make sloppy lentils. I really hope it works. Since ben and I only eat meat 2 times a week at most, we never cook meat at home anymore. Which means we never have sloppy joes.

My dog was bad last night and peed and pooped all over the floor. I was not amused.

But while I was walking my incredibly bad dog after cleaning up, I got an email saying that the bank accepted our offer on the house. Woo! Now we need to wait for the appraiser to tell us how much the house is worth, so we can find out if we'll actually get the full loan amount.. (Why is buying a house so complicated?)

After that, ben and I went to the comic book store. I was pleased that they had host club 14. All the bookstores near me were sold out! I read it while we ate our lunch at panera, embarrassing ben by alternating between loud laughs and screams.

When we got home, I tried to play a little bit of fire emblem, but I was too tired to concentrate. I decided to take a nap, which ended up being a terrible idea. I was so tired, I slept all the way until 9! I probably would have slept even more if ben hadn't come to wake me.

Once I was done being cranky and groggy, ben reminded me that in my sleepiness, I had promised to bake him cookies. So now the apt smells like warm tasty chocolate chip cookies.

Maybe I'll try that fire emblem battle again now that I am rested and more alert.

My weekend culinary ambitions:

- Curry rice
- Curry pan
- Waffles
- Wheat bread

( Rambles )

The edges are a bit dry, but the inside is perfect. Moist, but firm.

Tomorrow I will be making a pound cake. Because the cartoon I watched (yumeiro patissiere) made pound cakes. (With REACTIONS! All good cooking cartoons need reactions.)

I won't make anything fancy like rose cake or peach cake or tea cake. But I hope it will be mighty and tasty.

In other news, my bird tried to shove her head up my nose while I typed this. For the record, it did not fit.

Today I made japanese pudding (purin).

It tasted very sweet, but unfortunately I can't stand the texture. Too slimy! Like eating a very sweet-tasting slug!

It looks cute though. Do I get points for that?

I made No-Knead Bread!

It was really neat when it came out of the oven because you could hear the bread CRACKLING!

King Cake must be baked this weekend.

I fail at photo version of nanowrimo. I take them, but I never get around to posting them.

This was a busy weekend. On saturday, noname woke me bright and early as usual. I used that time to clean and shop and bake cookies. Then I went to pottery lab where I trimmed 3 bowls. Then I added the fins to my "fish bowl."* It's looking pretty neat! Not professional, but still cute.

After that, we went to rob and dani's for roleplaying and make your own pizzas. I was the only one who know how to make a good pizza. Everyone else put terrible things on them like pineapple and peppers.

While everyone games, I played The Dog Island. Dani helped me catch that flounder I was struggling to find by suggesting I try fishing at night. It worked! I got pretty far in the game after that.

I fell asleep sometime around midnight cause I had to drive ben home. He always falls asleep on the ride. If I don't have someone to talk to, I get sleepy, so it's good I took the nap.

Sunday I got to sleep late. It was glorious. Once ben and I got up, we went to target to buy things to organize with. I also bought a curtain rod. I'm going to make curtains for the bedroom!

We accidentally stole from target cause we forgot about the boxes we had under the cart. I feel a little bad but it would have been such a hassle to go back in and pay for it.

I dropped ben off at home to begin cleaning and I took my dog to the pet store. She got her nails cut! They used a dremmel on her cause the clippers were making her spaz out. She was much better behaved with the dremmel. It also made a smoother cut, which was nice. Noname still didn't enjoy it, but they gave her a cookie so I think she'll be ok.

Once her nails were done, we shopped for dog food. While doing that, a big dog scared noname and she peed on the floor. What a traumatizing day for her! The store is smart to have "oops! stations" at the end of every other aisle.

I also bought noname a new collar. Her old one was big and loose and she learned how to slip it off her head. Most of the smaller ones were pink with goofy flowers on them. I preserved what was left of my dog's dignity by finding a green one with bones on it hidden at the bottom of the display.

Then I went home and did pretty much nothing because I was tired and needed at least a little bit of downtime before work again. I went to bed early too cause I was really tired. And yet I'm still tired this morning! I feel like my body wants to hibernate.

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* At the renfaire, I saw a bowl in the shape of a fish at one of the pottery booths.

Let's see. So the day before halloween we carved our pumpkin at work. I was unimpressed by it but the others were happy so that's good. It wasn't much of a challenge for me though.

When I got home I got to play with SCIENCE! by baking window cookies. I needed to experiment in order to find the correct baking time to ensure tasty cookies and clear candy windows. the correct formula was the full baking time minus 3 minutes for the cookies alone, and then add the crushed candy for the final 3 minutes. Yay science!

Halloween day, I wore my grim reaper costume. I think I looked fantastic. However, while on my way to work, I thought I had the wrong day. I didn't see anyone else with a costume! People are so boring. I got lots of compliments on my costume though.

Despite looking great, I only got 2nd place in the costume contest. (And we only got honorable mention in the pumpkin carving contest, but that was to be expected.) Marge Simpson won, which I guess makes sense because people will be more inclined to vote for the funny and familiar over um, death. I'm going to enter the costume in a few online contests, so maybe I'll win something there. (Which reminds me, I need to upload those pictures so I can enter before the deadline.)

( A cut was needed )