Electronics Ah-Ha Moment!

One thing I do every single day is listen to audio files, whether it is scriptures, religious books, YouTube videos, podcasts of many ilks, or intrigue, medical drama, police drama, some non-fiction or other books.  I always listen.  Mostly I listen on my phone but often on iPad as well.  I used to listen on my computer as well but that stopped when Dear One bought a new Bluetooth headset for me rather than a wired one as I had used for many years until that fabulous headset bit the dust...the ear piece broke and could not be repaired.

Anyway, Dear One gave me a new headset.  I was able to immediately use it on my phone. This was so great. I loved that.  I could not really listen on the iPad very often...only after Dear One connected it.  I could not seem to make the connection.  Somewhat irritating, but since I could not listen with the headset I would go to a different room so as not to disturb him.

Yesterday Dear One wanted to listen to a Sidney Sheldon book that I had found on BARD.  I could not figure out how to connect that so he could listen. I handed the iPad to him and in a few minutes he was happily listening.  Can you believe it?!!  I couldn't.  When he was done I asked him how he did it.  He showed me and I watched carefully.  I was then able to listen to the Faye Kellerman book I had started listening to on the iPad.  This was so wonderful.  With my headset so we could be in the same room listening to our various audio files.

So, now we come to the Ah-Ha moment.  I realized FINALLY that the E7 headset could only be connected to one device at one time.  Duh!!!  I had no idea.  BUT...I found that it worked out when I disconnected from my phone then I could connect to my iPad.

Moving forward to today.  I wanted to use my laptop to listen to Truman Madsen's lectures about the Prophet Joseph Smith.  I had listened on my phone while I was walking my second walk today.  Now I wanted to listen on my computer.  I have NEVER been able to listen with my new headset on my laptop.  The E7 headset never even showed up in the list of bluetooth devices. I read article after article online about how to connect. None of those instructions worked so eventually I gave up listening on the headset and just shut my door when I was on the computer listening so as not to make listening hard for Dear One. 

This is my phone Settings for Bluetooth:

Well, don't you know that perhaps a little light came into my mind?!  I went to the Bluetooth settings on the computer and this time I disconnected from the phone and lo, and behold!!!  There came the E7 device showing up, as unconnected.  In the more than a year (just to show how much a dullard I am...!) I have had the Cowin headset, E7 NEVER ever showed up as a device.  Today, there it was. I had disconnected it from my phone.  I clicked on it, and THERE IT WAS!!!  CONNECTED.  And now I can listen on all my devices.  Isn't that the best!!!  I am so thrilled.  Well, you can tell.

This is my laptop Settings for Bluetooth:

So to reiterate, in case someone else is having the same issue: bluetooth devices (at least my Cowin E7 headset) can ONLY be connected to one bluetooth device at a time, so...disconnect from the current device then connect to the new device.  It works like a charm.  I am in awe of my lack of brilliance when it comes to things like this.

Well, line upon line, I guess.

Munchie Monday: Vegan Double Chocolate Cookies

Dear One has been agitating for sweets. I have been resisting.  Then I saw this recipe and thought I might give it a try.  After all, we are here at home with no big things tearing us away.  The problem with making cookies is that then you want to eat those cookies.  Not good.

Vegan Double Chocolate Cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Line a cookie sheet with Silpat or parchment paper or else grease it if you want. (There is no fat in these cookies so you really do want to do something to keep them from sticking...)

In a medium-sized bowl place:
 3/4 cup almond flour (I used the flour leftover from making almond milk which I had dehydrated then ground in the blender.  Worked great.)
1/3 cup Hershey's cocoa powder (NOT hot chocolate mix.  Use unsweetened cocoa powder.)
3 1/2 Tablespoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4-1/2 cup water
Several tablespoons dark chocolate chips

Stir everything well then add the chocolate chips.

Use a cookie scoop, unless it breaks on you, to spoon out the batter.  This is a pretty heavy dough.  I pressed lightly on the tops then baked them for about 15 minutes.  I started checking at 10 minutes but finally decided to pull them out at 15 minutes.

Next time, if there is a next time, I will add a little more sugar.  (The reason I say this is that Dear One did eat the cookies, just not all in one sitting.  I think it is that they are not very sweet.) The original recipe called for coconut sugar or some such thing.  We did not have any, though I thought we did. I must have left it in Vermont.  I hope so because otherwise I don't know where it is.

Food Friday:Lentil Bread

Still working on not eating anything made from flour for the whole month of March, I found that I really miss eating stuff slapped on slices of bread. After a little bit of research I found a recipe for lentil bread.

This recipe has only a few ingredients which we had so I went ahead and made it.

Lentil Bread 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.  Get out a silicon loaf pan or a regular pan that you line with parchment paper with flaps hanging over the edges to make it easier to lift out the loaf of bread when it is cooked.

1 1/2 cups lentils which need to be soaked in water overnight.

Drain and rinse the lentils then put them in a blender along with:

1/2 cup water

1 Tablespoon olive oil

3/4 teaspoon salt

When the above slurry is very smooth, pour mixture into a bowl then add:

1/2 cup tapioca starch/flour

1 Tablespoon psyllium husks

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Mix well then pour into your bread pan and bake for 50-60 minutes.  

Let cool for about 10 minutes then remove from pan and cool on rack until cool.

You can now slice it and put on it whatever you want to. 

 For this loaf we made some garbanzo bean/sweet relish/chopped onion/chopped celery/mayonnaise filling.  It is sort of like vegan tuna salad.  It worked very well.

Birthday Card

My first plan for this card was to paint a picture of our home in Vermont.  I made a start and failed miserably.  Dear One suggested that I paint the mailbox.  So I did.  Sort of.

Just to explain this painting...there is the green mailbox at the end of our driveway.  There are a few bushes at the foot of the mailbox then some grass beside the dirt driveway with more bushes on the other side of the driveway.  The brownish part behind the mailbox is the rocky under-the-pines area that never looked like much. 

For some reason I got souped up about the Cricut Expression we have.  I remembered the Walk in My Garden cartridge we have so I made the wheelbarrow full of flowers.  It was marginally successful.  Even though nowhere near perfect, I loved making the card.  And sent it off in time to be received by the birthday it was intended to acknowledge.

Cardinals!

Well, this is a pretty state of affairs!  Really pretty!  Today we were sitting at the table having a very late breakfast/barely early lunch (Dear One had a pile of air fried French fries plus a mountain of fresh baking powder biscuits with vegan butter--nasty stuff--and apricot jam which is really good.  I had a big fat green salad with carrots, onions, kalamata olives, and cannellini beans.  Really good with Tajin sprinkled on the top.) when all of a sudden Dear One noticed we had a beautiful cardinal on our front tree.

The news about the cardinal caused me to leap out of my chair with my camera to try to capture a picture of the cardinal. I love cardinals.  Well, I love most birds, especially when they are close enough to really look at.  And even more if they will sing to us.  I love bird song.

One thing I have learned is that if I save the photo as medium size it takes less time to load on a computer and then, when I want to look at the picture, I click on the picture the Extra Large text which enlarges the picture well.  Anyway, I love the fact that I got this bird picture.

The cardinal flew off so I went to the deck door and there he was!  In the tree on the side lawn.  So nice to see him both places.

Hopefully this sight will encourage everyone and bring hope to all.  Spring is here and the circle of life returns.  This is a good time to find the good and hopeful in all things and in all places we find ourselves.  May you all be well and happy in whatever circumstances you find yourselves.  XOX

We Have A Creepy Neighbor!! Really!

Today I was walking by the sliding door to the back porch and saw something pop up out of the pond.  What the heck was that?!!  There it was again.  And again.  And AGAIN!!  I rushed to get my camera and started video-ing the thing.

"It" stuck e up out of the pond about 1-2 feet, seemed to look around, then dropped back down into the pond and moved over a few feet and came up again.  By the time I got out on the deck, our neighbor lady two doors down screeched out, "What IS that thing?!"  "What is it?"  Her husband and the neighbor four doors down were also there looking at it.

It was probably out there for 10 or 15 minutes, moving all around.  I sort of got a video of it.  It is actually very creepy to report that it is some kind of snake.  Just yesterday I put in our square foot garden down near the pond...!!  Not very near but now I am wondering about the brilliance of putting in a garden down there.

No, I don't know what kind of snake. It was dark colored, I think.  I am really creeped out.  I think I would rather have seen the alligator.

Munchie Monday: Quick and Easy "Ann's Breakfast" Oats

Not too long ago I think I mentioned this breakfast but here is a photo.  Probably I told you that I learned of it in Jane and Ann Essetstyn's YouTube channel one day but these oats are not in this particular oat video.  Another one of their oat YouTube videos is fabulous with Essy teaching us the value of oatmeal.  Oats are really important to our health.  I eat them most mornings.  I am thinking of eating them for supper, too, especially on days when I am worn to a frazzle.  So quick and easy.

Quick and Easy Oatmeal

This is 1/4 cup dry old-fashioned rolled oats, 1 Tablespoon ground flax seed, 2-3 Tablespoons Grapenuts, and sliced grapes.  Probably 10-15 grapes.  That was a lot of grapes.  Plus a few blueberries.  Next time I will put in fewer grapes.

After stirring this up in great shape, I took a bite.  It was really good.  Not at all objectionable.  Dear One still likes almond milk on his rolled oats.  He does not eat the rolled oats dry!  It took about two bites to get used to the "dry" oatmeal.  So good.  I bet it would be even better if I added ground cinnamon...!

Food Friday: Air Fryer Roasted Cauliflower (Quick and Easy)

Today I found some cauliflower that was on the "past due date" rack at Piggly Wiggly.  I brought home three packages.  Most of it I put in the Instant Pot (which turned out to be a mistake because I went back to a knitting project and did not quick release the pressure as I needed to. That cauliflower was total mush, so I turned it into mashed cauliflower!  Can't waste.) and the rest I decided to roast in the air fryer.

To air fry cauliflower, break it up into small florets in a large bowl.  Sprinkle a small amount of Braggs Liquid Aminos and about a teaspoon of granulated garlic over the top.  Toss well then put in a pan in the air fryer.  We have the Ninja Foodie Air Fryer Oven so we just used the tray that comes with it.  I set it cooking on the Air Roast at 400 degrees F. for 15 minutes.  It worked great.  Other air fryers need experimentation to figure the timing.

This is what it looked like.  It was so good.  Dear One did not get a chance at it, though!  Using only the Braggs and the garlic was a risk but it panned out wonderfully well.  No oil.  No added salt,  there is naturally occurring sodium in it.  I don't really know that that means but I do know that some plants have sodium in them.  Like celery does not really need salt on it as it seems salty already.

A Flag is Flying

We live in a very patriotic town.  This makes us happy.  There are multiple military families in our neighborhood as well as among our church friends.  At home in Vermont from time to time we had an American flag flying.  Flags tend to wear out in the sunshine but there is something wonderful about having the symbol of our free country always in front of us.

Dear One did a great deal of research about flying flags, etc.  This week everything came together and now we have a flag flying on our house.

This is what we saw when we came home from Family Home Evening the other night.  Dear One had put the solar powered lawn light to "battery up" the day before in the bucket where string bean seeds are hopefully getting ready to break through the dirt on the back porch then again in the morning that day.  He spray painted the cast-iron flag holder and when it was dry attached it to the house.

It was really wonderful to see the flag flying when we came home late that night.  The solar powered light lasts at least as late as 5:30 AM (which is when Dear One got up and checked.  When he got up for real, it was day time so we don't know...but 5:30 is most of the night!)

A Very Thoughtful Gift

The other day Dear One and I made a trip to a big box store to get a few "critical things" in case we need to hunker down for a while.  Things on that list were things like Vitamin B-12 and Vitamin D3. Peanut butter. Vinegar for cleaning surfaces. Also a giant box of nearly fat-free frozen French fries!  Guess who found that item to be "critical"?!!

While we were filling up our car with gasoline afterwards, we received a phone call.  One of the great blessings of being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that we all have the blessing and responsibility to minister to one another.  There are passages of scripture what tell us we should love one another and serve one another.  We take that commandment very seriously. We are assigned to specific people through revelation. We are blessed as we serve and we can bless the lives of those we serve.  Dear One ministers to families and I get to minister to sisters.  In turn we are ministered to by brothers and sisters.

Now back to the phone call.  It was my ministering sisters who wanted us to know that they had been to our house and had left a gift hanging on our door.  I love gifts!  I especially like surprise gifts.  This is the gift we found when we got home an hour later:

This was such a thoughtful gift: toilet paper, tissues, Tylenol, hand soap, and cough drops!  All in a lovely bag.  I am going to leave them together in one place so in case we need them, they will be right there and ready for use.

This gift made my eyes wet to think of their kindness and the thoughtfulness that went into providing it to us.

It made me want to go out and do likewise.

Gelli Printing in Embossing Folder

Tonight my middle-of-the-night work was to experiment with Gelli prints in embossing folders.  Before going to bed I had done quite a bit of Gelli printing for birthday cards. I have so much fun doing that.  Using the brayer in different ways gives such cool effects. Not that I can duplicate them, but...still it is fun.  (The only non-fun part this time was a small splash of paint got into my eye.  I hope it does not turn out to be a bad thing.)

Since I have a Happy Birthday embossing folder I thought I could embellish the Gelli prints.  I tried it and it worked!  So great when things go well.

To do this I pulled out the Big Shot machine and put in the correct shim, placed the Gelli print inside the folder, placed the plastic plate over the top and rolled the folder into and back out of the Big Shot.  This is how it turned out.  I made a big stack of them!

Now to trim them and adhere them to the cards.  And make the envelopes, address and stamp the envelopes, and get the cards into the mail before all the birthdays of the young singles have gone by!

One Note:  I rolled the folders forward and back in the Big Shot.  Some of them embossed so much they almost cut the paper in half.  Next batch I will just run through once.

Second Note:  I am writing this at 4:30 in the morning...after waking up at 1:55.  There is a dog across the pond that has been barking for a very long time.  I hope nothing is amiss.  Now a second dog is answering.  Oh my goodness.  I think I will try to go back to sleep.  Maybe the barking will help!

Munchie Monday: Oatmeal Waffle Reprise

Today I was up early, finished my morning devotions and got caught up in YouTube (Ann and Jane Esselstyn, this time) and found something different for breakfast.

Quick and Easy Oatmeal Waffles, nothing bad-for-you in them

1 ripe banana
1 cup oatmeal
2 Tablespoon ground flax seed meal
1/2 cup water

Put the banana in a food processor and process until pretty smooth.  Add remaining ingredients and blend until the oatmeal is not longer flakes.  Scrape down sides several times.

Cook about 8 minutes in a waffle iron, or until your waffle iron thinks they are cooked.  This made one Belgian waffle maker of waffles.  There was no overflow with this batter.  The waffles were pretty darn good.  Dear One thought they were extra sturdy but that did not stop him from eating three of them!

We will have these again.  Probably tomorrow!

Food Friday: Sweet Corn Sauce on Steamed Kale-Delicious. Really!

A couple of days ago I was on a YouTube binge.  I went from watercolor painting to box making to card making to whole food plant based cooking and finally ended up at Jane and Ann Esselstyn's channel.  They are really fun to watch (mother and daughter in daughter's kitchen) and share some unusual and sometimes pretty good recipes.

The recipe they shared today, or which I watched on that particular day, was Sweet Corn Sauce.

This is the recipe as I made it:

Sweet Corn Sauce

16 ounces frozen sweet corn (or you could use 5 ears of fresh sweet corn)
1 medium or larger sweet onion
1 cup vegetable broth

Put all the ingredients in a food processor and blend, scraping down the sides as necessary, until it is sauce-like.  Move the sauce into a saucepan and cook until hot, slightly reduced, and the onion does not taste raw anymore.  Actually, I could not taste the onion.  It was very sweet and mild.

For the kale,  wash and dry the kale and strip leaves from the stems.  Tear into smallish pieces and put in a steamer.  Steam for about 8 minutes.  Less time might also work.  This is what I did on this occasion.

Put a serving of kale in a bowl and cover with sweet corn sauce.  You are in heaven.  Seriously.  So simple.  So good.  I gave Dear One a bowl of it and he ate it all!  With no comments!  He did not actually take a second serving, but that would be too much to ask.  Just eating that one bowl put me on cloud nine.

This was my bowl, half eaten!  Truly, this is wonderful.  How can you go wrong with vegetables?  I do recommend this if you are trying to get family members to eat more greens.  Perhaps spread the sauce totally over the kale covering it up...?

Anyway, I really loved this stuff.  I will make it again.  In fact, I have just realized that I really really like cooked kale.  Much better than raw kale.  I hope it is healthier to eat it cooked.  I will have to investigate that, though experience shows me that all the smart people have different ideas.  I like it cooked.  I will eat it cooked....

More Garden 2020

This morning I decided to get a little exercise and be productive at the same time.  After all, this garden I want to have in-ground is not going to dig itself magically overnight.  So, I went out with my stroller (in case I needed to sit down all of a sudden) and the round pointed shovel.  This is what I accomplished:

 

You can see how rich and lush our soil in.  Not!!!  You can also see the shadow of the stroller and my finger over the lens.  Good work, Lady!!!  Maybe I will take another better photo some other day....Anyway,  this is about four feet wide and six inches deep.  Enough for one day.

Dear One mentioned to me at lunch time that the tomatoes were getting awfully leggy.  He is right.  SO...I decided to take the leggy-est one and plant it on the deck.  What can we lose?  Planting time down here is said to be around Good Friday.  That is a few weeks off but the full moon has already passed and, after all, this plant is, well, not ideal.  We shall see.

Looking at it, we all see that the plant is pitiful.  I hope it has at least a few happy days outside.

Since I was on a roll,  I thought I would throw in some yellow string bean seeds.  This is their new home:

More or less taking a page out of Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening book (which, by the way, I have not yet read...it comes in the mail tomorrow) I planted the seeds about 4 inches apart which is what the seed packet said though the seed packet also said in rows 21 inches apart.  We shall see.  Dear One loves yellow string beans.  Sadly, he does NOT love green string beans. 

In case you are wondering,  Dear One is still of the opinion that we need not to invest a lot in gardening.  You could have knocked me over with a feather when he said we can be like most other people in the country and buy our vegetables at the store or farmers' market.  Well, not tomatoes.  In my opinion. There is nothing like a juicy flavorful tomato right out of your garden.  Even if it does give you an itchy rash if you eat more than one at every meal...

New Fabulous Tool For Paper Crafting

For months I have been watching the Posh Paper Lady on YouTube.  Her name is Sherry.  I think she lives in North Carolina but that is neither here nor there.  She makes the best paper crafted items:  boxes, books, notepads, etc.  She uses a sort of needle-nosed glue bottle and Reptile glue.  I had never heard of Reptile glue until I watched her videos.  Amazingly, with this bottle and this glue it seems like she uses hardly any glue.  (My most regrettable problem with paper crafting is the mess I make with glue.  Now I don't have such a mess.)

So,  I got an order of those glue bottles and some Reptile glue!  What else could I do?!!

This is the bottle I have used.  I have been using it since the first week in January. I have been using this on most days of the week.  You really do use very little glue AND IT WORKS!!  I thought there would be a problem with the nozzle clogging up, but that has not been the case...except one time when I did not close up the little "cover" for a very long time.  On that occasion I could not squeeze any more glue out so I took a pin and pushed it down through the needle nose and voilá, there came glue again!

As it happens, I have enough glue bottles to last through the Millennium!  I will probably share...

Anyway, I am so happy with this bottle and this glue.
The Reptile glue I got was actually wood glue since the regular glue was out of stock. It seemed to have the same ingredients, if I remember right,  AND IT WORKS GREAT!

Both of these links are so you will know what I got and am happy with. I do not get any Amazon Associate benefit from them.  I am so pleased with these products and so grateful to the Posh Paper Lady!

Book I Just Read

On Saturday I was loaned a book by Joel Fuhrman, MD called "The End of Diabetes".  I found that it was available as an audio book on Libby (Do you know Libby?  It is a cousin of Overdrive.  Both of these are free apps which have both audio and ebooks.  Thousands of books are available both in text versions and audio books.  I like to "read" when doing other things like housework, walking, etc when a book in hand is less than optimal...so I go to Libby a lot. To get Libby or Overdrive just go to your library's website and sign up with your library card number.  If you don't have a library card, well, I can't imagine anyone does not have a library card.  When we go to a new place that is the first thing I do.  Some libraries are kind enough that if you are going to visit a son and his family for several weeks they let you have a card anyway.  Kind librarians.).

Anyway, I went to Libby and found "The End of Diabetes" but only the text copy was available so I checked out "The End of Heart Disease" since I figured it would have much of the same information.  I finished reading it last night while knitting in the middle of the night.

GET THIS BOOK from your library!  The End of Heart Disease is worth listening to and paying attention to.  Dr. Fuhrman says many chronic bad conditions can be reversed if we are willing to follow a "nutritarian" diet, meaning eating lots of green vegetables, other vegetables, some fruits depending on your current health condition, beans, nuts, seeds.  He even gives you a weekly plan and recipes to support it.  The only glitch is you have to avoid consuming animal products and salt, oil, and sugar. That seems a small price to pay for feeling good in a relatively short time.  We just have to get our heads around this, and then be strong.  It is hard to be with family and friends who want to eat "all that good stuff" that we previously ate, but which put us in our bad health situations.  I remember Bill Fixx who was a marathoner who ate the standard American diet and had a fatal heart attack while running.  It turned out on autopsy that even though he seems like he was in the peak of health, his heart arteries were almost totally closed up which only happens because of diet.  It was scary at the time many years ago but even more scary now...to learn that our diet is killing us.

For me, this kind of regimen should not be too difficult as my head already agrees with this kind of eating.  I have been doing a LOT of walking plus recently adding weight machines at the YMCA and my weight is not moving in the right direction as fast as I would like.  It just goes to show that what I am putting in my mouth, even though mostly vegetables, is overcoming any possible weight-losing benefit from the moving.  Sad.  Irritating.  So...I am going to eat like this more rigidly than I have in the past.

Since I believe what Dr. Furhman says (that the standard American diet with frequent trips to fast food and other restaurants will kill us), and since I don't want to lose any family or friends from early death that could have been prevented,  I am sending this out.  I hope you will read the book, ingest the science, and make whatever changes you find necessary to gain good health.  I think you can read either of these books or even his "The End of Dieting" to get the needed information, but the dieting one seems a little more lightweight...

While I am waiting for "The End of Diabetes" to become available on Libby's audio book selections, I am reading "The End of Dieting".  Are you seeing a trend here?!  (BUT whenever I sit down on the couch, I do pick up the physical copy...)

Munchie Monday: Quick and Easy Vegan Mayonnaise

Years ago I tried some vegan mayonnaise at great expense.  I was revolted and threw it away, not something that I have done more than three or four times in my entire life!  I love mayonnaise.  Well, I don't LOVE mayonnaise, I just like the things that are made with mayonnaise.  Mostly.

In thinking back, I first became enamored of mayonnaise when I was in high school and went to babysit the children of one of my heroes. I did not know his wife much BUT before they left she gave me carte blanche with their refrigerator and cupboards.  The kids were already asleep and I had a book ready to dig into.  I happened to find a big bag of luscious salty Wise potato chips.  I had just heard about "dip" (you need to realize we lived in the sticks of Vermont where trendy just did not exist at that time.  I had not yet even had pizza, if you can believe that!) and found a bottle of mayonnaise in the refrigerator which looked more or less like the dips I had seen at a function.  I dipped in.  It was love at first sight.  How very, very sad.  That took me firmly onto the road to poor health that I am trying to get off now.

Having said the above...(and hypocrite that I am) when I saw a recipe for vegan mayonnaise that only used a bowl, six ingredients, and an immersion blender, I really just had to try it. It was SUCCESS!!!

This vegan mayonnaise was very quick...maybe a minute, maybe a little more...and it turned out very good with the one exception I will tell you.

This recipe started at LovingItVegan.com.  I just went there to grab the URL and almost totally got deflected from this blog post!!  The first thing I saw was a recipe for vegan peppermint patties. Next was moist cornbread and chocolate mousse and, and, and...Well, you get the point. I yanked myself away to write this post, but you might want to go see Alison's work!  I know I will go back there.  I mean "Shamrock Shake" and "Vegan Crepes"?  What is not to like?!!

Vegan Mayo the way I made it: (note-ALL ingredients need to be at room temperature!  Don't fail on this warning.)

1 cup vegetable oil

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1/2 cup unsweetened soy milk

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons white wine vinegar

1 teaspoon maple syrup

Put all these ingredients in a medium bowl (I used my Pyrex 4-cup measuring bowl) and blend with your immersion blender until thick and ready to go.  Really, it does only take a minute or so.  All other mayonnaise recipes I have ever used called for dripping in the oil one drop at a time so the mayonnaise would not "break" when added to the egg.

This worked so well.  The original recipe called for 1 Tablespoon maple syrup.  That was WAY too much for my taste even though I do love maple syrup.  After all, I am from Vermont, the home of the best maple syrup!!  At least, my father used to make many gallons of that liquid gold every late winter/early spring which we used liberally on our Sunday morning pancakes my whole growing up years.  Our son now makes maple syrup on a different scale.

May I say that I will probably not use any maple syrup in the mayonnaise the next time I make it.  I do not see the need for sweetness in everything...except in communication with family and friends! 

This recipe is one of those "try it, you will like it" sort of recipes.  The only caveat is that if you were thinking that this mayonnaise was going to be good for you, disappointment will set in almost immediately when you realize that mayonnaise is oil.  Any other white guck you make without oil is not mayonnaise, does not taste like mayonnaise, and is really an abomination.  The only way to make this, or any, mayonnaise healthy is to rarely eat it.  Because I liked this so much, I realize it will not be something I will make again until we are having a function that requires mayonnaise on it.

Having said this last...this is so worth it!

Food Friday: Chickpea Nuggets, Vegan

A recipe that has eluded me so far has been a quick  pick-up-and-eat food.  Krocks in the Kitchen made a special Valentine's Dinner using a recipe from The Jaroudi Family.  I gave it a try and loved it.

Chickpea Nuggets

You will need one can (or about 2 cups cooked if you make them from dry beans) chickpeas, drained, retaining the juice which is called aquafaba.

Put the chickpeas in a food processor along with 6 tablespoons aquafaba, 1 cup oat flour (which you can make by putting old-fashioned oatmeal in a blender and blend until it is flour), 1 Tablespoon Italian seasoning, 1 Tablespoon nutritional yeast, 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder, 1 teaspoon or so of white miso, and a pinch of black pepper.  Process until you have a very pliable dough.

As you can see, I had already made most of the nuggets at this point!

Scoop out (or even roll out) the dough in nugget-sized pieces and shape as you desire.  Don't make them more than 1/4 inch thick.

In a separate bowl place 1/4 to 1/2 cup plant milk and in another bowl put about 1 cup bread crumbs and your favorite seasoning.  I used Italian Seasoning since I still had it out of the cupboard.  Another time I will use granulated garlic, granulated onion, chili powder, and perhaps a little salt and pepper for seasoning the crumbs.

Dip the nugget into the plant milk then dredge in the seasoned bread crumbs and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet or put into an air fryer.

In the oven, let then cook at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes, flip them carefully, then bake another 20 minutes.  If they do not seem crispy enough for you, let them cook a little longer.  We went the air fryer route and air fried for 10 minutes, flipped them, then air fried another 10 minutes.

They are really good with a dipping sauce.  I used some Ranch dressing this time. I will make them again even though Dear One was not totally enamored of them.  He loved the coating.  He just did not like the "filling".  Sort of defeats the purpose, but I am not dismayed!

Tiny Treat Boxes

There are so many fun paper-crafting ideas out there.  I love to make treat boxes.  This time it was a very small box.

This is a pile of cute little treat boxes that are filled with four Andes mints.  Another day I will show you how they are made.

Using the Table!

The other night I was not sleeping. Again.   Because we have a cement slab instead of a foundation and cellar for our house, when I sit in the living room my feet and legs freeze.  I am pretty sure this will change when the summer heat comes to town, but now, since last fall, I have not wanted to spend much time in the living room.

What to do, what to do?  As I was putting books into the bookcase Knit One, Knit All by Elizabeth Zimmermann came into my hands. I had purchased the book years ago because I love all things Elizabeth Zimmermann.  She was such a knitting mentor to me starting with her book Knitting Without Tears.  She is someone I will be looking up when I cross the veil after wonderful reunions with family and other dear ones.

Anyway, there is a pattern for slippers in Knit One, Knit All that kind of appealed to me.  I decided to order yarn from Schoolhouse Press which was Elizabeth's business which is now run by her daughter Meg Swansen and her grandson Cully.  When the yarn came it was bundled in skeins and needed to be turned into balls or cakes before I could use it for knitting.

The night in question I went to the workroom closet and brought out the Stanwood Yarn Winder and the knitting swift and carried them into the bedroom.  I also collected the yarn and placed that on the table as well.  Because by now it was well after 1:00 AM, I was nice enough to leave the project for daylight.

Here is a picture of the yarn winding project on the beautifully repaired table (yet another reason why I love Dear One!).

These yarn cakes are the result of the yarn winding.  If you did not know about yarn cakes, you can see clearly that yarn cakes will not likely roll around on the floor as balls of yarn do because of their flat bottom and top.  At least, when I wound balls of yarn from skeins they ALWAYS rolled around.  Unless, of course, I put the balls of yarn in a clean plastic milk bottle or other flat-bottomed container and threaded the yarn end up through the top.  That got old.

One cool tool I have around here somewhere, but which I used often in Vermont when I was sitting in my knitting rocker next to a table, was a spindle-like thing on a lazy-Susan type apparatus. It was small and just perfect to place a yarn cake on it and just start knitting.  This spool just unwound the yarn as I was knitting.  Love that thing.  My set-up here is not the same but I am sure when that item shows up I will be able to make it work again!  I just love useful tools!!!

Small Disaster Averted

We had an empty wall in our bedroom.  It seemed like a great idea to get a writing desk/study table to put there.  Dear One found a beautiful table that matched the bookcase he got for us last month.  Because the table was pretty heavy (it is rubber wood/parawood which is made from dense trees that have already lived out their life as rubber trees so the wood is then used as lumber rather than being burned up) I placed it on our stair lift and sent it upstairs.  All was well until the chair got to the very top when somehow the table top fell off onto the floor and was damaged.

This made me very very sad.  Almost sick to my stomach.  However!  Dear One thought he could glue and clamp it and make it happy again.  I had some hope that this would work.

Here is the table being clamped.  I thought we should let it set up overnight.  Dear One thought thirty minutes would be fine...but was willing to leave the clamps on for another little while to appease me...!

After taking the clamps off the table Dear One got out some fine grit sandpaper and finished the job.  Now the table looks as good as new.  I am so happy with it.

Dear One is concerned that  being a flat surface, it will almost certainly fill up with stuff.  I am committed to work at the table then put away whatever I was studying or working on.  I hope I can keep that commitment.  In the past my track record has been rather poor...and actually, the present is not much better.  We shall see.

Munchie Monday: Granola, Oil Free and Sugar Free

Sometimes a little crunchy snack is a good thing.  It is especially nice if can also be your breakfast.

Today I made some granola that was quick and easy and had no added sugar and no oil at all.  I found a recipe on All Recipes for this but made it my own with a few changes.

We had several bananas just about at the ends of their ropes.  They were pretty small so I started with those.

3 small very ripe bananas, peeled and chopped
1 1/4 cups pitted dates
1/4 cup hot water
1 Tablespoon vanilla
1-2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Place these ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until entirely smooth.

In a large bowl place
8 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
6 ounces sliced almonds
1 cup chopped walnuts, or more

Mix the oatmeal and nuts together then pour over the top the wet sweet slurry and stir until every bit of the oatmeal has been wettened by the sweet sauce.

Place on two large rimmed baking sheets  and bake in at 250 degrees F. oven for 1 1/2 hours or more.  At the end of every 30 minutes bring the pans out of the oven and carefully stir the granola. It will want to jump out of the pan onto the floor or any surface, so just be careful stirring.  Put back in the oven.  At the end of 90 minutes, I shut off the oven and left the granola in it to cool.

When cool, put the granola in a VERY large bowl and add dried fruit, whatever kind you want.  I used a cup of golden raisins, 3/4 cups Craisins,  1/2 cup dried plums, chopped fine (i.e. prunes), and 1/2 cup dried apricots chopped fine.  Mix well then put in containers to await use.

This is the granola with the dried fruit it in waiting for the containers to be ready.