Have a Holly Jolly Christmas

It’s the best time of the year.

I don’t know if there’ll be snow, but have a cup of cheer.

Oh by golly, have a holly jolly Christmas this year!

The last of the roses

 

 

 

 

Frosty Hydrangea

Yeah, I saw her too.

She was hanging around that group of young guys.

Ratilda, our new… pet?

A couple weeks ago, I was taking pictures of Ollie on the roof of our carriage house. He was more interested than usual in the jasmine bush, which he is sniffing here in this photo. Later that night we realized there was something good to be sniffed in that spot.
See the suet feeder cage hanging from the eaves, just behind and under Ollie?

That evening, when the pooch was let out to go check his pee-mail, that suet feeder was swinging back and forth wildly.
No wind. Huh, that’s odd.

After posting my curiosity on Facebook, my Midwestern friends suggested a raccoon or a nocturnal squirrel.
(I thought it might be a possum. Surely nutria can’t climb, right?)
I grabbed the camera and watched. Here’s the carriage house at night.
What’s that on the suet feeder?

Oh my goodness, it’s a rat!

This is the best I could do with the camera, being nighttime, and I couldn’t get very close.
After our little fiasco with getting a hamster (in 2006) our household is now very familiar with rodent gender identification, and this suet- eating rat is a girl.

We names her Ratilda.

She will not become an indoor pet. I promise.
Sorry, Frank and Rachel, but you cannot change my mind on this one.

Our lease prohibits feeding stray animals, and if we are caught placing food outside, it will be considered a pet and we will have to pay a deposit for it. On the other hand, bird feeders are allowed, and I love having bird feeders outside my kitchen windows. The birds haven’t been too interested in either of the suet feeders this year, and the suet cakes are about a year old, so I really don’t care who eats it at this point. But I suppose since we are feeding a rat, it would be amusing to consider Ratilda our pet.
Just until I can get some D-Con into Ratilda’s suet, anyway.

So what’s the dealio with the swinging suet? I stepped to the the edge of the deck steps to get a better picture and she jumped from the suet to the jasmine.

  

Then she scampered up the trellis into the rain gutter, ran to the downspout, and disappeared.
Aha! She lives in the city storm drains.

Ratilda came back every night and ate the suet until it was down to a thin wafer at the bottom of the cage. Her acrobatics on the suet feeder amused us, but she gave up on hanging upside down, fighting to eat the last little bit, and hasn’t come back.
Time to untangle the feeder from the jasmine and move it to a more bird-friendly spot. With a fresh (and D-Con free) suet cake.

Last Garden Update of the year

Last weekend I started the winter yard cleanup. There are still shrubs to be trimmed, rose bushes to cut back, and more leaves to vacuum up (lawn mower with bagging attachment.)

Last weekend’s project included vacuuming the yard and picking the last of the tomatoes and peppers. I’m not sure if it will work, but we’re saving the seeds from our favorite vegetables and herbs for planting next spring.

So this past spring when we were buying veggie plants, we saw artichoke plants selling for 75c each. They’re a perennial plant, so we gave it a try, not knowing what to expect. All summer long we watched this big leafy plant grow and grow, but no artichoke. Now that it’s fall, the plant is about 30” tall and I have kind of given up on it for this year. Maybe it needs a year to establish and will produce next year.

To my surprise, when I walked around to the north side of the yard to get the last of the tomatoes off the monster sized tomato plant, our long-ignored artichoke was there, ready to be picked.

Can’t wait to see what it produces next year!

Green Pooh?

Eww.

Apples or Oranges

That is the question.

two men walk into a bar...

Marshmallow Pops

I don’t meditate. I try and I just can’t. Meditating usually ends up with me napping the day away.

On the other hand, I have been told that I need to meditate or find some way to make my mind quiet so I can manage my stress.

Aha! This is my excuse to start baking! Over the past week, I have baked cinnamon rolls, loaves of bread, taught the teenager how easy it is to make bread from scratch, and now I’m starting on holiday goodies. Tonight’s project: Marshmallow Pops

 

The idea came to me when I saw these puppies for sale in the grocery store’s fancy-schmancy bakery case. They sell regular sized marshmallow pops for 75c each and 99c for pops made out of the jumbo marshmallows. Outrageous, right? So I stole the idea.

Start with pretzel sticks and chocolate meltys. Oh, and don’t forget the marshmallows. I used up the last of the caramel marshmallows along with some white marshmallows.

No Mom, I don’t eat marshmallows All The Time. I just happened to have a lot left over from summer.

You’ll also need baking decor sprinkles, chopped nuts, mini M&Ms or other tasty things. I grabbed whatever I could find in my box of baking supplies.

Stick two pretzels into the top of each marshmallow. You can see I tried 3 sticks in that white one there, but it was kind of crowded. The jumbos will need 3 sticks to hold the weight of the chocolate.

 

Nuke the chocolate for 30 seconds, check it and nuke it again for another 30 seconds. Repeat until it’s goopy and perfect for dipping.

By the way, chocolate chips are a little too soft for dipping. Use almond bark or, if you can find dipping chocolate use that instead. (Dipping chocolate can be found at a baking and candy supply store or in the candy making area of a craft store – I get it in bulk at Winco here in Oregon.)

Dip and swirl your marshmallow into the chocolate. The pretzels make a great handle.

 

Let the chocolate cool for a few moments, then dip in some baking decor sprinkles. My chocolate kept dropping into the sprinkles until I scraped the extra chocolate off the bottom before dipping into the sprinkles.

Halfway through, I found paper liners for mini muffins. They made these treats look fancy. Like 75c worth of fancy.

I also tried dipping the pretzels into a little chocolate before stabbing them into the marshmallows. Made no difference with getting everything to stick together, but you can’t go wrong with more chocolate, right?

Pretzels are kind of fragile and a few broke during the stabbing process. I dipped the little pretzel stubs in chocolate and stuck them into the marshmallow. I figured the extra chocolate would make up for the broken pretzel. Kind of like a chocolate apology.

I wonder if a chocolate apology would be acceptable in other situations, too?
Sorry I burned your dinner. Here’s some chocolate.
I’m sorry that I didn’t pick you up right away after your appointment. I brought you some chocolate.
Heck, I’d become demanding and impossible to please just so I can have more chocolate.
Oh wait, I already do that.
…It’s proof that it works!

I got bored with sprinkles so I grabbed slivered almonds and what I thought were chopped pecans. Turns out the “pecans” were really Andes minty chocolate bits.
Even better!

I couldn’t help myself. I had to taste one of the almond dipped ones. I love almonds.

Blech. Now I see on the package that these nuts are best before November 2010. They’re rancid. Oh well, two marshmallows for the trash.
They sure looked nice, though.

The rest of these look pretty darned nice, too. This was just a practice run with ingredients I already had on hand. I saw they have pumpkin marshmallows in the store this year. That would be nice with white chocolate and maybe a dip in cinnamon sugar and a dusting of nutmeg.

Meanwhile, I’m going to pack most of these up and give them to the neighbors. Not as a chocolate apology, but as a thank you for being friendly, helpful neighbors. (If a chocolate apology is a good thing, than a chocolate thank you must be a great thing.)