Slow Down

(It is storming, thundering, lightening, pouring, my Internet connection is barely working, and my lights keep flickering. Let's see if this post can make it).

I REALLY needed to slow down today. I injured my ankle the worse I have ever done on Thursday while out hiking and I took that as a stern warning after almost 2 weeks of confusion and bizarre mistakes.

Case in point:

Last night I sadly let my team know I just didn't have much to contribute to the latest bake sale and I was too tired to continue into the night - only to find out it is NEXT weekend.

Had I not been already in for the night I seriously would have gone out and had a beer. I don't drink all that much, but every so often...

Brain - I miss you. I eat chia seeds for you which I no longer put in water because I think I was giving myself indigestion. Where are you?

This morning it was only threatening rain so I sucked it up and continued a half-load towards yard waste day. I made Nim come out with me and he wasn't thrilled about it. Even he knew a storm was coming.

Nim is just not the yard waste companion that Rusty was. Rusty liked to march around and examine the yard waste piles, marking them repeatedly just in case.

Nim just thinks I should be playing with him and his toys.

The truck had been clogging up the area in front of the fence for about a week. I forgot until this morning when I went to start it that I had left the window down for who knows how many days, ironically to air out the mildew. I would say the mildew battle is officially lost.

I got it fully loaded, and then I went to start it and like the temperamental grouch that it is, it wouldn't start.

This was a two jumping process. With a session of yelling in the middle because I had complete disconnected and  moved the jeep only to have the truck sputter and die again.

I made it to yard waste day with about 30 minutes to spare. Then I took the truck out cruising to build up the battery and to use my rear-end to soak up the water in the front seat. :)

No Sun Spot Today

Even if you grew up in WA like me and you know that it is almost always raining for the 4th of July it still doesn't stop the weather complaining does it?

This has been a LONG week. Even last week I did enough either absent-minded or flaky things that I got concerned.

At least Wednesday and Thursday of this week we had some sun.

Flat Kitty Friday theme with STUFT Mama was supposed to be summer. So I attempted to get Flat Kitty into the sun spot because that is about as summer as it gets around here for now.

Initially Emile checked him out, but this caused him to step into Leela's space and so then they started fighting, Nim came running through, and Emile ended up under the bed again.

Thanks to STUFT Mama I now know who Bob Harper is. I couldn't stand it anymore and looked him up after several of her posts referencing him.

I realize I may be the only one that didn't know who he was. In my defense I don't pay for cable and although very active, I am not exactly a "fitness enthusiast." Although I tell you what body: if you don't tell me exactly what aging path you are on and what you need I am about to become one.

My mom has replaced this Lantern Moon measuring tape. The one I got for Easter may or may not be in the garbage or somewhere else in the house thanks to Leela's relentless hunting of it (naturally she is so afraid of this one I can't get a photo). When I got it for Easter I remember shaking it and thinking it was broken and it went on an upper shelf and then repeatedly having to get it away from Leela.

It needs a "pull me" sticker.

This quilt is finally quilted and just needs to be bound. I may even sew more this week between the summer rain and being a little winged thanks to a "hiking injury" which I attribute to being tired and clumsy.

The only person I know that falls as much as me is my Grammy. And considering how much younger I am it is a bit concerning.

I am actually looking forward to writing a review on Drop Dead Healthy which I finished today. At first it was hard to get into because I decided to start a Stephanie Plum novel at the first time (which I thought I had already read).

By the second half of the book I got a lot more into Drop Dead Healthy. The second half, whether intentionally or not, starts to deal more with the "balance" aspect of healthy living. It was a natural transition as he was wrapping up his experiment and considering his healthy living priorities as well as the death of a couple of family members that were both featured considerably in the book.

I hope everyone is gearing up for a fabulous weekend!

Done Baking

I officially am out of storage space. If I could find a place for those Mega-bones that the cats, dog, or mice wouldn't get at it would help. I ran out of all plastic and resorted to storage in baking tins. The dog treats are in the freezer.

Still this has been a lot of fun.

Bake Sale Recipe Rundown!

Coconut Breakfast Cake

Modifications: omit addition 1/4 cup of sugar and replace with 1/4 of coconut. You could add the coconut in addition to the sugar.



Peanut Butter Cookies with Chocolate Chips
 
Oatmeal Cookies (no raisin and cinnamon this time)

Modifications (peanut butter cookies): obviously Earth Balance + chocolate chips. This is one of my favorite recipes and I think it is time for me to work on it. I don't like using that much earth balance and I think the sugar ratio could be changed a bit. They almost are not substantial enough if that makes sense.  

Modifications (oatmeal cookies): Earth Balance. To their credit they actually changed the sugar ratio a couple of years ago. I actually make the recipe enough that I noticed.



Flourless Chocolate Chip
 
Flourless Oatmeal Raisin

Modifications (flourless chocolate chip): addition of 1 tsp vanilla. Peanut butter in place of the oil. For public I do full sugar, for myself I omit the white and don't miss it. One of my favorites.

Modifications (flourless raisin): addition of 1/2 tsp cinnamon. This cookies never hold together as well for me as the chocolate chip version. I think the peanut butter helps.


Both were made today with the Trader Joe's Gluten-Free oats and are complete gluten free ingredients. Thanks Misha!


 
No-Bake Peanut Butter Pretzel Bars (special Sam banished recipe - sigh)

Modifications: addition of chocolate chips.This time entirely gluten free. I am exceptionally excited about the Mary's Gone Crackers Sea Salt Sticks and Twigs Pretzels. Like a lot of items made vegan, a lot of gluten free items are so unhealthy you might as well give them up. Most of the gluten free pretzels I was finding were pretty junky. Mary's Gone Crackers don't much taste like pretzels although I would argue they are probably better.


This is a triple batch of the recipe. Notice it is not cut up yet. I will not be until Saturday morning or I will have to make another batch for the bake sale.

Peanut Butter Sandwich Bread

 "Modifications": nothing really on this bread. I do go with the full sugar amount and I add some chocolate chips.


Joy of Vegan Baking Zucchini Bread
 

"Modifications" (more like choices): 1/2 white, 1/2 wheat flour. Sometimes when I make for myself I go almost all wheat because I love the flavor. I use Energ Egg Replacer. 1/2 applesauce, 1/2 oil. Such a great recipe.

So many more recipes I would like to try! There are a lot of cookies coming to this bake sale so I went more for baby loaves which I love.

You will notice the scones didn't make the final cut.

My taste is way off this week for some reason but even accounting for that I didn't trust the scones. The overly berry ones weren't great - fair enough, I know what happened there. But then I thought to try the ones that looked better and I just didn't like them either so I omitted them.

Baking Week Almost to an End

Good morning! I have a few more items of baking today and then I am done for this event.

First things first: please do go and enjoy STUFT Mama Flat Kitty Friday - Photo dump edition. Enjoy the kid at the breakfast table. :) Flat Kitty went with me to Rally Obedience on Thursday and it was fun to see the other handlers enjoy the participation.

Hooray! Another day without sun! :)  Grrr...

If these dog treats do well at the bake sale I think I will focus more on dog items next year.

To be honest I am intimidated by a couple of the bakers participating with me - they seem a bit more gourmet. :) However I also felt belonging because I submitted my list - which was embarrassingly long - another gal submitted a super long one too. She is also known to get up at 4am and bake. She also is the head baker for a local soldier baking project so it is great I met her.

I was preparing my treat bags on the ironing board (of course) and finally felt the full weight of Nim's intensity below me. I think he was actually willing the treats to jump off.

Admittedly I haven't been sewing enough, but I am ALMOST done with this project. I actually considered moving my sewing machine down into the main living area (where I am baking) but it would just be too big of a project.

I do need to get this hot-pink thread project off the machine however so I can work on others. :)

I was taught a baking lesson by my scones yesterday. These batches below were made same day, maybe 30 minutes apart and yet the front set looks way "prettier" than the back set. I am about 50/50 on the presentation with them anyway, but yesterday gave me a rare lesson in why.

In my typical "why measure" or "more is better" style the back set got some extra berries - I didn't want to put the bag back in the freezer with about 1/4 or so berries left in it. Made sense at the time.

Basically excessive berries made the dough overall more watery, hard to work with, and because it is packed with berries more likely to fall apart.

Have a great Friday and I leave you with some upcoming dog events:

30 June 2012: Bark for Life of Issaquah. I am still trying to fully understand this event but in addition to the actual cancer walk I believe there will be events such as Rally and Nosework.

14 July 2012:  Rally to Support Military K9 Care Program. I love the idea of care packages for K9s and their handlers.

22 July 2012: Old Dog Haven "Walk for Old Dogs." I love this organization so much that will definitely register and at least stop by at this walk (despite Bellevue Park having quite possibly the worst behaved dog handlers in the area). My guess is it is going to be too clogged (small park) and not enough awareness. If I can't rescue a senior right now at least I can support those that do.

Dog Treats

Wednesday! Half way through a busy week.

We got tricked on Monday. It got sunny and hot (for here) - and pretty much has rained since. Leela and Emile took advantage of the newly cleaned windows.

They are having a rough time between obsessive cleaning on Sunday, my rearrangement of the house, and abnormal bed-time hours.

On the upside, I am with them a lot more right now because of baking projects and actually it has made them noticeably more calm and agreeable. I forget this a lot with the cats and there isn't much I can do about it right now but they can need their people just as much as dogs.

I finishing the dog treat baking blitz very late last night. There is a berry version and a cheese/garlic version.The berry version smells better.

There is also a tuna version however yesterday was brussels sprouts cooking day and even I knew better than to subject my tiny house to that stinky combination.So I stuck to double batches of the less stinky.

These little cutters made for some cute treats.

On Monday was also a No-Bake Oreo Cookie recipe:

I took no-bake lazy one step further and didn't even form cookies. It was a great mix to dump on my ice cream however.

Accidentally Tuesday ended up with two "secret" ingredient experiments...aka...hidden veggies. I don't really need to hide my veggies but they were new recipes. This is Raw "Secret Veggie" Cheesecake only mine isn't really raw - if nothing else I put in a bit of brown sugar and I am sure that is not.

Sweetening it was a real challenge. When you taste it you don't think it needs anything, but actually a touch of sugar really did make a difference once I finally decided to add some.

This gem is the Mighty Chocolate Microwave Muffin.

I am very new to STUFT Mama's site. What are some of the things I am enjoying about her?

First off, she shamelessly dumps concoctions of food together and actually puts them online (truly, I may have found my match) and her concept of a portion is definitely closer to mine. Case in point...the Mighty Muffin...it was MIGHTY. It was huge.

ALSO she does Flat Kitty Friday (I swear I scan her post more for photos of her cats than her lovely twins). Which apparently has an audience participation option. I jumped right on it. Eventually I would love to do something similar with a small quilt - I love this as a way to see the world through the eyes and creativity of other bloggers.

Flat Kitty Friday is her thing and I will be submitting photos for her by Thursday night, but I couldn't resist a couple of photos last night from trying to introduce him to the family:

Leela naturally was curious. Emile thought his life might be ending (after some rapid pacing he hid under the bed). And Nim wanted to know:

1. Why we were still up past 10pm.
2. Why he couldn't have the treats I was making.
3. Why I insist on putting things on him (to him it is bad enough he has two cats constantly climbing on him).

This week is going WAY too fast.

Task #5

It is Monday and it is sunny in the Snoqualmie Valley! 

After a long rainy week, the sun finally came out on Sunday which changed the day from a baking day to a cleaning day (which I would rather do before all the baking anyway).

At first the sun was limited to one small section of the house. Which Leela hogged.

I started on task #5 - Spring Cleaning.

For me spring cleaning at a minimum includes all the windows (inside and out) and all the curtains. Plus the furniture covers...see Emile's fur spot above. I also included the fridge and kitchen scrubbing.

Occasionally Nim would run to the window while I was on the outside and bark at me.

All his sitting around and watching me made him hungry.

This is why his peanut butter is labelled.

I liked this Primal Freeze-dried Formula samples.I don't think it was intended to be a treat but it works really well.

I tried chia seeds for the first time yesterday. I have totally been putting them off mostly because of cost. I was so concerned about ruining my oatmeal that I added them to my water not knowing what else to do with them.

Another reason I put them off is that my fiber and proteins are more than fine, however I am interested in their omega-3 benefits since as a vegan my omega-3/omega-6 ratio is probably not optimal. I also want to play with them as an egg replacer.

They really don't taste like anything to me - although drinking them how would I know? I don't drink bubble tea because of the consistency of the tapioca balls so I am surprised that these didn't bother me in my water.

I hope everyone is ready for a great week! Today should be dog treat baking day and hopefully some more sewing.

The Tova shirt is cut out and I even dealt with shortening the sleeve yesterday. It turned out not to be a big deal (at least not so far - we will see how it sews up). But I always get nervous about modifying clothing patterns.

Break

I think I was waiting for this break before last quarter ever started.

 I am actually going to try out something a little new for me over the week and just have goals/tasks for the break rather than daily checklists.

I tend to take it hard sometimes when my day to day isn't getting accomplished I think trying out goals over a couple of weeks might be good for me (I did have to limit the list however - it quickly got out of hand).

 I am not even a car person, but I had to take photos of these cars at the Outlet Mall this week. (Can you tell it is raining...hard?)

I actually really wanted to photograph the group of drivers but it would have been rude. There was just something about their "group-ness." I was actually drawn to them first and then I noticed the cars.

For your planning information:

Benefits, Saturday, June 16th:

Relay for Life North Bend Bake Sale and Garage Sale. I will be baking for this one and thanks to my sister and mom I have garage sale contributions. You will see more posts on this obviously because of the baking...including dog treats.

Auto Angels Auto Show. An auto show would be a personal nightmare for me. But so many people love them and I think what Auto Angels does is super admirable. If you are in the Bellevue area, consider supporting them.

 Sewing Events:

Dresden Quilting Challenge. Oh, how I wish I had never heard of you. Now I spend even more time per day - hoping quilting blogs - stunned by the ideas and creativity out there. And yes, if I get taken with it, I might do my own project.

Purse Palooza. This is possibly worse than the Dresden Challenge which is funny considering my appalling lack of fashion. However, quilting sorts of people tend to take purses and bags to an entirely different level and once again I actually have a time situation thanks the blog hopping.

Blogs of travel:

Obviously I am a dedicated Vogelstar reader and actually learning so much about Japan that it makes me want to visit which I never would have thought about that country. I can't believe how much I am drawn to the video to get a feeling of Japan.

The other day, off a quilting site (go figure) came this:

Africa Journals. Scroll down to the bottom to start the journal. I had to quickly close the site due to all the sitting I was already doing thanks to the quilting hops. I am not far into this journal.

Should I ever take up traveling you to may be subject to my handwriting because I love this format so much. My day to day journals are sort of already laid out like this including cut-outs and images (although no where near as interesting or pretty). I love the visual.

I finally got this quilt sandwiched for quilting. Since it is apparently never going to stop raining the quilting projects might be the main things that get done on my list.

This quilt is number 2 on my "Break List" (number 1 being the Tova shirt of course). The backing is another panel of that flannel I was given and it just barely, BARLEY large enough. But it will work.