While the cat's away...

We freak the heck out.
I accidentally let the cat out last week. I know that this seems like not a big deal. But he is an indoor kitty! We live in the wilderness! Remember this?! That's nothing compared to what else is out there (in my imagination)!
Seriously though, there are 4 types of poisonous venomous snakes in the United States. Of those 4 types, 4 live in Arkansas. Seriously!!
Sometimes raccoons come and get in the trash! They are vicious!
There are real feral cats that live out there!
And big dogs!
Poisonous spiders!
Scorpions!
Killer chipmunks!!
...wait a second.
That's about how my day went. Some tears, some calls to Nate, some comfort from my mom in the form of, "It'll be ok, one time Waldo* ran away and came back after three days! Wait, he won't be gone that long, I mean, I know he'll be back very soon."
The kitty was gone for about 12 hours. We searched all over for him, but he finally wandered back after dark.

He was awfully smug when he finally came back.
But look how dusty!
We immediately found a tick on him and pulled it off, then checked for more.
We decided that he definitely needed a bath.
I took pictures, but they do not come close to capturing the awesomeness of the event.
He was so upset.
I thought that the bath experience would be associated with his romp in the wilderness and therefore discouraging any future frolics or associations with the outdoors.
I was wrong.

*childhood dog

Fruit

We found a berry patch very close to us. It was a really nice morning on Saturday and its blue- and blackberry season, so we took advantage. It is a beautiful property where they grow flowers and berries to sell. Heaven? Maybe, but we were in and out pretty easily. Heaven on Wye Mountain, at least.
I'm sure there was more than I realized, but I saw blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, sunflowers, zinnias, and black-eyed susans. And huge white hollyhocks covering the electric meter! And on top of all that, their personal garden was beautiful!
First we started at the blueberries.Blueberries are so easy to pick. You just kinda shake the branch and gently pull and before you know it:They are so good, and big!

Then we headed over to the blackberries:

These were easier to pick than the last blackberries I picked.


We froze these:

But I have been using these:
For fruit pops! They are so good!



And for smoothies!
And for muffins that I forgot to take pictures of!


For you cat-lovers, this is what kitty does when it is so hot:
Looks all dejected and like he collapsed in front of the a/c unit.

Because sometimes...

...bad decisions should be memorialized.
At the risk of the SPCA or the Humane Society coming after us, I'll go ahead and show you these pictures.
Nate wanted to see if the cat would like the water.

Aquakitty

It was not an altogether satisfying experience for the kitty.
I wrote before about the cat being a barometer for clear and present danger. You can also gauge the kitty's comfort level be how tightly his tail is wrapped around his body. The closer the tail, the more frightened the cat. It was tightly coiled in all these pictures.
Nate's shirt did not survive this excursion. But no kitties were harmed in this experiment, physically at least.
What's that sound? It's my mother in law I hear laughing from all the way north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Kidding around for the weekend

For those of you who have been somewhat disturbed by my move into the domestic realm, this post might be difficult for you.

If you are even more disturbed by the fact that I am a rural housewife at the moment, then you should definitely just skip this post altogether.

Nate came home on Friday with this:
It is about 3/4 of a gallon of goat's milk.
A former volunteer of Nate's keeps goats now and they had a batch of milk ready. So we bought some. We made goat cheese with it yesterday evening. They make goat cheese all the time at the ranch so Nate was somewhat familiar process, at least familiar enough with it to know that we could handle it. It was pretty simple.
I took some process pics.

We started with the milk:

You need an instant read thermometer:

We heated the milk over medium heat to 180 degrees, stirring the whole time:

for those of you not in the biz, this is called pasteurization :)

After it heats to the prescribed temperature, we take it off the heat, and add the juice of two lemons:

After stirring it for 90 seconds, we added some salt, dissolved it, and let it sit for a few minutes:

We layered four sheets of cheese cloth in a colander over a bowl and ladled the curds and whey into the colander.

Kitty, do you want the leftover whey?
Not interested? Ok, moving on.

We put it in the fridge over night and it looked like this.
I scooped it out of the cheese cloth this afternoon and put it into a bowl.
We got 2 cups of cheese out of the deal. I don't know if this is a normal yield for the amount of milk we had, but it seems like plenty of goat cheese.
(I can't remember exactly which method we used for this, but we looked at these websites. Here, here, here, and here.)
People say to let it age for a bit, just a day or two. When we go to use it I think we will mix in some more seasonings and herbs.
I'll let you know how we eat this, but I'm thinking on salads with beets for me, and something else for Nate (he doesn't like beets, sad for him not for me).

Some things I learned:
Miss Muffet must have had quite a stomach, I've seen curds and whey now, and blech.
Cheesecloth catches more than you think it will.
I thought the kitty would like the whey, I was wrong.

New Curtains

Sewing cafe curtains for our front door was my other main project last weekend while Nate was fishing. I was so productive that my father-in-law thinks Nate should take off more often and "see what happens." Ha ha.
I was glad to get these done, though.
The best part? This whole project was mostly free! Save a spool of thread and a magnetic curtain rod. The sewing machine was a hand-me-down from someone at mom's church, mom bought be all the specs for the machine (bobbins, oil, lube, seem-ripper, etc.), and the fabric came from Nate's trip to Africa a few years ago. So it matches, it was free, and it is special to us.
Months ago my friend Carrie helped me figure out how big I wanted the panels and valances to be (I have another valance to sew for our dining area) and cut everything out. I had it all ready to go!
I bought and printed the manual for the machine, figured out how to thread it, and got to work last Friday night.
Although Nate was gone, as you can imagine, I had help.

This (obviously) didn't last very long:

So I put him on my lap:
He was pretty entertained with the fabric on his head. Turns out yarn isn't the only crafty thing he likes. With sewing there are tiny tools to bat around, thread being pulled and disappearing, machines to figure out, not to mention the fabric itself. Everything is a new toy or bed for Loki (present company included).

I got this part done on Friday:

And the rest on Saturday evening:
We are really pleased with it. It really lightens up this window, and this corner of the house. Before we just had a different and darker panel of African fabric hung up there, so this is a little more "finished."

I didn't take any close-up detailed pictures of the curtains, because the details aren't pretty. I had a really hard time with the corners because this fabric was very silky and I couldn't get it to feed through the machine very gracefully. I'm sure most of it was user error, I'll get it figured out.
Regardless, I'm happy with the final product!

well shucks...

I had my lessons today and one of my students brought me this.

Names have been blocked to protect the innocent.

This certainly warmed my heart. And the sun brightened my day, because boy is it rainy here today. I'm not leaving unless I have to.
Her rendering of our lesson is very accurate. My cello is lighter in color than her violin. I put my end-pin on a little mat so I don't scratch the floor. I wear jeans. And I wear these slippers, without fail. She was much kinder to the cat than he deserves. Guests are a traumatic experience for him, and put a stringed instrument in their hand, he's done, we'll see him tomorrow. She even made him smile, that's so sweet. She got the coloring right on him though, even though she can't have seen him for more than 5 seconds, ever.

For my brother

My brother's class thinks our cat is fat, so I wanted to show some of the things he does to stay in shape and alert.

Dear students,


My cat does not just lay around. And he is not that fat.
Sometimes he works really hard for lovin's. He is reckless because sometimes he falls over backwards while trying to get pets and scratches behind the ears.








Sometimes he plays with string. And he makes his claws come out with the ferocity of a wild animal.

















Sometimes he helps me write blogs. Sometimes it hurts when he does that, but its because I'm weak, not because he's fat.










He does, admittedly, spend a lot of time sleeping like a dragon on the couch. But even wild animals need their rest.










Love, Molly (and Loki).

PS. I did check online though, and maybe kitty needs a little diet.
PPS. I am not a "cat" person, just a Loki person.

Supreme meat

I made a vegetarian pasta dish two nights ago.
It was excellent.
It contained: whole wheat pasta, humus, chickpeas, cherry tomatoes, garlic, cilantro, lots of pepper, paprika.

Me: Do you like it? Do you really? Would you choose to eat it again? (I ask this stream of questions at least once every time I make something new. It sounds as insecure out loud as it seems when you read it.)
Nate: This is really good.
And later: It would be really good with pepperoni.
Me: Duh, everything is better with pepperoni.
*Pause*
Nate: Not ice cream.

I think he's correct.
But I bet you could do an awesome ice cream with bacon in it.
And that's why bacon remains the supreme meat.


Unrelated:

This is how the kitty sleeps.