Seeing Red and Blue

It’s been a hell of a day… a hell of a week. But I’m going to shut up about my issues and talk about something fun… like Christmas presents!

Yes, I love the color red, especially in the kitchen. Well, unless it’s blood. That kind of red is no good, but I received a gift for avoiding such mishaps. (By the way, the candle holder is an old light fixture I found in an antique store.)

But back to desirable red… I received this coffee press I’ve been lusting after and a coffee grinder with various settings for degrees of grinds and number of cups. (Thank you Steve…) I’m still perfecting the balance of coffee scoops to grinding moments, but the coffee is so much better than what you get from a drip coffee maker (or at least from my drip coffee maker).

I also received a tripod to replace the old one I had that has a broken leg and is so flimsy, I don’t actually trust it with either my still photo or video cameras.

I received this awesome gift from my friend Cheryle. I’d been looking for a light fixture in various second hand stores to use for a bird bath or feeder but hadn’t found a fixture that I liked. Cheryle decorated this one up with beads and included a cute little bag of birdseed with it. I’ll need to build up the center so it’s not too deep and slippery for the birdies.

As if that wasn’t enough, Cheryle also made a plaque to hang on a barn stall for Luke. I love this!

Luke has been a real stinker lately about eating his food. I bought the wrong feed last month and ended up with something sweeter, different than the usual green pellets I’ve been buying him for the past eight years. So when I tried to switch him back to his usual feed, which is for easy keepers, he decided he wouldn’t eat it. Since he’s kind of a porker right now, no big worries about him starving to death, but still.

So besides doing eye medication for me, Cheryle has been trying to coax my fool horse to eat. The funny part was when I went out to the barn, Luke ate his usual feed without any hesitation at all so we thought maybe he was used to the old stuff again. But this morning, “Uh, uh,” says Luke.

I’m thinking it’s Luke’s way to get me to come out to see him more often and feed him apples and bran and mollasses muffins. Dang, spoiled horse!

I guess he comes by his spoilation honestly. The Brew Babes got a rubber ring toy to play tug with for Christmas, Shy got a new scratching pad to replace the one she annihilated, and on the food and drink front, I received a couple bottles of organic wine, some cookies, butter brickle, and a small loaf of cranberry bread.

Yee haw!

On the cooking front, I recently made a recipe my friend Sue came up with that she calls Spinach/Egg/Quinoa Muffins (way different than Egg McMuffins). They are great for me as I can heat one up in the morning, slice it in half, and eat it open faced on my homemade bread with a slice of avocado on the way to work.

This bread, by the way, is nothing fancy, just whole wheat with flax but I used leftover whey from my last yogurt making adventure instead of the water that was called for.

I made yogurt again last weekend and it turned out better but I’m still having a hard time regulating the temperature and keeping it at around 110-115 degrees Fahrenheit for six hours. I added a bit of honey, banana, and walnuts to this bowl.

And this is the best chili I have ever tasted in my life! I sure hope I can do a repeat performance. I saved my Thanksgiving turkey bones and a one pound turkey breast, which I froze until I was ready to use it. I made turkey broth with the bones to use for my water, used the turkey breast for the meat, and added kidney beans, sliced tomatoes, onion, garlic, red and yellow peppers, chili powder, cumin, and red pepper. I kind of added seasonings until it tasted the way I wanted it so that will be the hard part to repeat, but it was awesome!

So there’s the good stuff of the past week. A new year is coming. I don’t have time for the blues.