August 15, 2010

SUNSHINE contest II winners

 

Ajlr writes: 

After a truly amazing outpouring of culinary talent and ideas over this last week, the winners – yes, two winners* -  of a signed copy of the new and beautiful golden edition of SUNSHINE is cgbookcat1 for Chocolate Basilisk Balls with Kiss of Life sauce and  DrRo for Berry Crumble Butter Cake.  I can imagine happily eating the products from any cafe run by either of these forum members.**

If the winner(s) will PM me on the forum – soon*** – with the details of where their copy should be posted to, then all will be arranged. Many congratulations to both of them.

Now, where’s my mixing bowl…

Meanwhile . . . I was just explaining in a footnote† that one winner wasn’t enough.  Well, clearly two isn’t either.   So just as this contest is an addendum to the previous one, we are going to have an Addendum to the Addendum, to wit, a third winner of a signed shiny gold SUNSHINE is going to be chosen by popular vote, out of the recipes already posted for this contest.

            I, of course, who can just about call up a new game of Fingerzilla††, have no idea how to run a vote on the blog.  But ajlr seems to think it can be done.  Since I kind of sprang the idea on her about twenty minutes ago she and her fellow mods haven’t quite worked out the details yet.  But they will.  And then I’ll post them here.  So to get yourselves in the mood, here are our first two winners’ recipes.  Then you can go cruise the Playing With Your Food SUNSHINE contest thread and think hard about who you will vote for.  It will not be an easy choice.  And when you go to bed tonight visions of sugar-plums (and chocolate) will dance in your head.  Mmmmmm.

cgbookcat1 

For the previous contest I said I would make “Chocolate Basilisk Balls with Kiss of Life sauce,” so I figured I’d better invent the recipe. These were inspired by the Indian dessert Gulab Jamun, although they are really nothing alike except that both feature spheres in sauces. The Basilisk Balls (basilisk eyes) are dark chocolate truffles, and the Kiss of Life sauce is a Cardamom Creme Anglaise. The truffle recipe is modified from Cooking for Engineers, and the sauce is modified from Epicurious.

The goal is to petrify the guests at the first bite, and slowly bring them back to life with murmurs of intense appreciation.

for the Basilisk Balls,

ingredients:
1 pound dark chocolate, cut into small pieces (not unsweetened — Ghirardelli dark chips are good)
1 cup heavy cream
about 3 Tbsp of a really good cognac (I used Hennessy)
unsweetened cocoa powder to coat

directions:
Heat cream in a saucepan until just boiling. Remove from heat and stir in the chocolate and cognac until your ganache mixture is shiny and smooth. Refrigerate until stiff.

Scoop truffles into small balls using a melon baller or tablespoon measure, and roll until smooth with your hands (this is a messy process). Place in refrigerator to harden for a few minutes. When solid, lightly coat with cocoa powder.* Eat a truffle to check quality control at this point.†††

for the Kiss of Life Sauce,

ingredients:
4 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup sugar, divided into halves
scrapings from 1/2 vanilla bean
1 tsp crushed cardamom seeds

directions:
Lightly whisk egg yolks and half of the sugar in a small bowl and set aside. In a saucepan, combine the cream, milk, vanilla, cardamom, and the rest of the sugar and heat on medium until almost boiling. You should stir almost constantly (and scrape the bottom of the saucepan) for the duration of the heating process. When the cream mixture is hot, reduce heat dramatically and slowly pour the egg mixture into the cream, stirring as you do so. Increase heat again to medium and stir until the mixture becomes a custard. You will know this has occurred when you can run your finger across the back of the spoon and the track will remain. The mixture will also look very slightly grainy. Remove from heat, cool, and put through a fine strainer to remove unwanted bits of egg.

To serve, place two basilisk balls on a small plate and cover with sauce to taste. The sauce also makes an excellent ice cream if there is any left over.

* The cocoa powder will make the sauce run down the sides of the truffle without properly sticking. This can be solved in two ways — leave off the coating and use just the ganache, or keep adding sauce until it looks right. I prefer the second method, because you get to eat more chocolate that way. ‡

DrRo 

Ok, I admit I just joined so that I could enter the competition‡‡… plus Robin said something about needing more forum members who bake [smiley omitted because Wordpress turns them into squiggles] ‡‡‡  Plus I’m rereading Sunshine, AGAIN… and it always makes me want to bake things.

This is an entirely original recipe in that the cake base probably originated from a golden Wattle cook book sometime in the 195/60s… my mum baked a lot of cakes (6 kids can eat a cake like locusts on a pea plant – gone in seconds) so I learnt it from her – using wooden spoon measurements – as in, 2 spoonfuls of butter! I’m trying to convert back to real weights. The rest came from one of those happy accidents of wanting to use something up and not knowing what to do.

Berry Crumble Butter Cake

Heat oven to 180 deg (C)

185g butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 cups self raising flour
~1/4 cup of milk

Berry mixture
Any combination of ~ 3cups of stewed berries. It works really well with stewed apricots or apples as well. The key to this is that the majority of the liquid is removed. Do this by sitting in a fine-ish sieve for several hours, or by sitting a heavy ladle in the mixture, and spooning out the fluid as it fills. The final mixture should be almost thick enough hold its shape when a spoon is drawn through the middle.

Crumble mix

2 eggs
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 cups dessicated coconut

Method:

Cream eggs and sugar, beat in eggs, then flour and finally mix in milk. Should be a nice smooth creamy batter consistency. Put mixture into a buttered and papered 23cm round tin (or about a 20 cm square one). Top with berry mixture.

Mix together crumble ingredients and strew over cake.

Bake for 1 to 1.5 hrs, until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. If the topping starts to over-brown, cover with alfoil

Yum! 

* * *

* Yes.  Well.  There were so many amazing recipes, one winner hardly seemed enough.  Is clearly not enough.  And then Ajlr had the bright idea that since the Basilisk Balls do not, in fact, involve any baking^, maybe there should be a second drawing for something that involves baking.  I’m not sure what we would have done if the second recipe didn’t have any baking in it either.  Kept drawing possibly.  Fortunately the second one did include some actual oven time.

            But, speaking of extra winners . . . well, keep reading.

 ^ Although they are clearly something Sunshine would be all for.  Maybe in the Sequel That Does Not Exist Paulie starts making truffles as a manifestation of his individuality.  In which case he would certainly make not only these but also Magpie’s Cloud 9 white chocolate truffles. 

** Okay, guys, I want to hear that you’re together at the negotiating table having a meaningful dialogue.  Or the start-up counter at the bank.^ 

^ Don’t bother me with geography.  Geography is boring.+ 

+ Except on Google Earth. 

*** Let me put it this way:  Fiona^ comes on Tuesday.  If the books don’t go out Tuesday . . . gods know when they’ll go out. 

               PS:  When you PM ajlr, be sure to include if you want them signed to anyone, or just my generic scrawl.

 ^ Fiona, who is not afraid of the post office and, furthermore, has not desired to murder any of our local postpersons this week.+ 

+ I say nothing about her attitude toward her own local postpersons. 

† You do read the footnotes as they happen, right?  You don’t just read them all in a lump at the end of the post and then have no idea what they refer to? 

†† I have just bought an upgrade.  Yes, to Fingerzilla.  Six more levels.  More stuff to blow up.  Stay tuned. 

††† Absolutely.  Eat it slowly and thoughtfully, right?  I can do this.

‡  Good attitude.  Excellent attitude.   An attitude that manifests the true spirit of this blog. 

‡‡ Yaay!

‡‡‡ Yaaaaay! 

August 15, 2010 | Filed Under contests, food | Leave a Comment 

Frelling ratbag

 

It has been an absolute frelling ratbag sod of a day.   A lot of the most emotionally oppressive garbage is inherently unbloggable.*  But I’ll tell you I’ve had a second friend in I think two months diagnosed with cancer;   they got the news for sure yesterday, it’s just a question of how bad it is and what they do next.    Friend number one has come through surgery with flying colours but . . . who needs to have cancer, you know?   There are so many better things to be doing with your time. 

            And Daisy and Roy are giving up on Mike:  long phonecalls from both of them today.  And I’ve said I’ll find a new home for him.  Yes, I am nuts.  And your point would be—?  I look at my hellhounds—four little shiny eyes immediately staring back at me, hoping I will make an Interesting Gesture:  a toy?  Another piece of chicken?**  A move toward the sofa, a picking-up of the TV remote?  A step toward the door?***–If you’re a critter person, how can you live without your critters?†  But I want to say something utterly naive and puerile here about how can you love a critter and not put in the basic time to train it, if it’s the kind that needs training?††  It doesn’t have to be top in its agility class or able to do canter pirouettes, but it has to know its place and what’s expected of it.  And basic companion-animal training just isn’t that hard.  You just have to do it.  And there’s nothing wrong with Mike but its lack.

            Moan moan moan moan moan.  But I’m pretty depressed.  Oh yes, and Pegasus the Cow has just taken another dive into the ravine†††, although that may be a result of all the other stuff that’s going on.  MOAN.

 

Comfort food.  I need comfort food.  

This is my variation on a recipe from one of my favourite cookbooks, whose name and notoriety have been seen on these virtual pages before:  All-Butter Fresh Cream Sugar-Packed No Holds Barred Baking Book by Judy Rosenberg.  The title says it all.

 Lemon Raisin Pie 

1 pie crust bottom:  there is no top crust to this pie.‡  Having said that, I recommend you make it in a deep pan and build the edge up a bit, so you may need more than a half-recipe of a two-crust pie.  Half-bake it:  about 10 minutes at 400°F, just till it’s beginning to show faint colour.  Cool.

1 ½ c golden raisins, or mixture of any kind of raisins you happen to have on hand.  All golden is very pretty, and probably looks most like you thought ahead and got your ingredients organised, but I rather like the speckled effect of golden with ordinary black, and maybe a few currants thrown in for make weight.  I’ve also made this with part cranberries, but I’m a big cranberry fan.‡‡  The clever boys and girls of the food industry have figured out a way to dry cranberries so they’re sweeter than fresh ones, but you may still need to adjust your sugar.

1 T grated lemon zest (I don’t have to remind you not to grate the white, do I?)

½ c lemon juice

¾ c chopped almonds or hazelnuts or a mixture.  I suggest you toast them first too.

1 stick lightly salted butter at room temp

½ c granulated sugar

¼ c dark brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

3 large eggs at room temp

 Preheat oven to 350°F

Soak raisins and lemon zest in the lemon juice for at least 15 minutes.  If you’re going to make the pie this afternoon, you could put them in in the morning.  Add the nuts at the last minute, just as you’re putting the rest of the pie together.

Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.  It’s easier if you use an electric mixer.  Throw the cinnamon in at some point.  Add the eggs one at a time—remember to scrape the sides of the bowl a lot—mixing thoroughly but no more than that.  Mixture will look curdled.

Stir in the raisin mixture and pour into the crust.‡‡‡

Bake 40-45 minutes.  The centre should be just set, but it’ll be paler than the edges.  It’ll still be soft though.  It’ll set better as it cools.  Let cool THOROUGHLY before you try to cut it.

Warning:  this is seriously rich. 

* * *

* Insert standard rant here about the gob-smackingly indiscreet things people have been known to put in their blogs and then they get all upset when the people they’ve been writing about get upset.  Can you say ‘clueless clodpole’?  You can choose some other phrase of opprobrium as suits you, but I like the euphony, even if no one has said ‘clodpole’ since Mark Twain. 

** I have fallen into the reprehensible habit of giving them a bit of neat chicken each after supper, supposing they eat supper.  This is in theory to inspire them to eat more supper . . . I doubt it does anything of the kind, but they’re bright enough to have figured out that they don’t get the chicken if they haven’t (nearly) finished their proper food, with all that lumpy brown kibble stuff.  I think what it does is give me, for about five seconds about three nights out of four, the illusion of having real dogs, you know, the kind that think food is terrific, the kind you can clicker-train because they respond to treats.  It does my little heart good to see them surge out of the dog bed and slap their butts to the floor to get their scraps of chicken.  And no, since chicken is the only thing that makes them eat at all, I am not going to push it by trying to use it as a training treat.

            Sigh.

 *** It’s the middle of the night.  It’s dark out there.  We are not going for another hurtle.^ 

^ We might run into something.  Trees.  Telephone poles.  Vampires. 

† Dogs, cats, horses, giraffes, poison dart frogs, whatever 

†† I think poison dart frogs generally just hang out in their terrariums.  

††† Speaking of basic training for your critters.  Novels are feral. 

‡ Can’t remember if I’ve posted my pie crust recipe.  One of these days I’ll go check. 

‡‡ I’m from Maine.  I didn’t need any frelling British cooking maven to tell me about cranberries. 

‡‡‡ I always start my pies off with tin foil around the crimped edge, to prevent it browning too soon and being wrecked by the time the filling is cooked through.  Take it off, if you use it, about halfway through.

July 23, 2009 | Filed Under critters, food | Comments Off 

Dei/dea ex machina

 

It’s tipping it down out there.  It’s like the weather gods are saying, right, you really wanted the snow to go away?  Okay.  Try this instead.   I didn’t even get hellhounds walked today–not what we call walked–we went out for about half an hour’s swim this morning, and none of us had a good time.  I dislike being hellgoddess in these circumstances most extremely:  when the weather is frelling awful and I have two beady-eyed acolytes staring holes of accusation through me.  I believe other gods have had similar experiences when natural phenomena exhausted the patience of their worshippers.* 

            It’s also been hanging around about two-thirds of a degree above freezing–just enough to keep the rain rain, I’m trying to be grateful here–so if the sheer weight of the stuff falling doesn’t drive you to your knees you will eventually go numb and fall over because you can’t feel your legs any more.  I brought hellhounds home, dried them off, and started looking for their coats.  I bought coats for them a year ago** after Chaos was so scarily ill in December, and he wore his***, and I bought a second one for Darkness just in case, which has never been out of its packaging.  Until today.  I stuffed them into their coats and tried to take them for another walk . . . which was a dismal failure.  We lasted maybe twenty minutes second time with the hellhounds muttering, Barbados!  Oahu!  Algarve!  Phuket!  Baja!  And I gave up and dragged them home again.  And dried them off again.  Feh.† 

            And I should have gone bell ringing tonight–it’s the once a month practise at the village next door.  And I’m the one did the phoning round this weekend reminding people it was happening in the hopes that they’d come.  And I told myself, as I lay on the sofa covered with damp hellhounds††, that I should have lots of extra energy because of all the walking I hadn’t done today.  It didn’t work.

            So I watched WAITRESS instead.†††  And I decided we needed a pie.  Specifically we need one of those pies that I can’t eat any more–the opening credits of WAITRESS nearly did me in–and I was even thinking of this one when I pulled my Bad for You Recipes notebook out of the cupboard and lo! it fell open to this page.  I believe every American woman of a Certain Age has this recipe, I don’t know how widespread it is in the population at, ahem, large.  But I absolutely adored this in my depraved youth. 

Refrigerator Lemon Pie 

15-oz can or 1 1/3 c sweetened condensed milk

½ c lemon juice

1 tsp grated lemon rind

¼ tsp lemon essence or ½ tsp lemon extract

2 eggs, separated

4 T sugar 

9″ graham cracker crust‡ which you have made long enough ago for it to have solidified in the refrigerator 

Put milk, lemon juice, rind, essence, and yolks into bowl;  stir briskly till it’s a thick homogenous gloop.  Pour whites into separate bowl;  beat till half stiff, then add sugar gradually, beating till fully stiff, and then stop before what the books call ‘dry’ and I would call ‘friable’ but I’m an English major.  Fold whites gently into the lemon mixture.  Pour into chilled crust.  Chill pie at least six hours and overnight is better. 

* * *

* I’m having STAR TREK flashbacks.  Remember The Paradise Syndrome, when Kirk shacks up with a really embarrassing comic book version of a Native American girlie?  You knew she was Marked for Death as soon as she got pregnant, but she gets offed by her own people when Kirk the deus ex machina fails to save them from the return of the–meteor, wasn’t it?  Only the size of a small planet, and the real machina which is supposed to take care of these little galactic mishaps has gone phut.  And Spock is up there on the ENTERPRISE crunching logic not quite fast enough to save Minnehaha from her ersatz Dakotas and their lousy aim. 

** They wore coats when it was cold their first winter, when they were still little puppies.  They hated them.  They hung on the ends of leads and moaned, especially Darkness, who rarely feels the cold anyway, which meant that Chaos was not going to cheer up and lark about and let the side down.  You could see him working up to it and then Darkness would start moaning again and Chaos would instantly sober down:  oh.  Right.  Solidarity.  No larking.  But they wore their coats.  Mike^ got one of those old puppy coats about a month ago.  Toooo cute.  Every now and then Never Throwing Anything Out is a good thing. 

^ Daisy’s Cocker puppy:  see various previous entries 

*** To begin with he was too frail to argue and then he got used to it.  Chaos, in general the waaaaaay more problematic dog, doesn’t really do outrage that much.  Despair, yes.  Outrage, no.  Darkness does outrage. 

† The temperature is now rising steeply.  It’s trying to persuade me to leave the flowering fruit trees, the tender camellia, and the rose hedge outdoors over night, as well as the geranium out front unwrapped.  If I do, no doubt the temperature will plunge again, equally steeply. 

            I should probably go walk hellhounds.  At this time of night?  Are you kidding?  I don’t think it’s even raining.  Whimper.  It’ll be 32.5° and sheeting again tomorrow morning, I guarantee it.  The meteorological guys say it’s going to take our recently insane weather several weeks to settle down again!  Several weeks!  

†† Very practical.  They steam your jeans dry as they steam themselves dry. 

††† About which I have mixed feelings.  It is very sweet and funny and charming and it has real roles for women, I mean, you know, more than one, the heroine has friends, and some great dialogue.  But I write fantasy, and this makes me extremely literal-minded.^  I’m also not very clever about where the lines run in what you might call real-life fantasy.  I’m willing to go with the Andy Griffith character, who is flagged as the deus ex machina from the first scene;  with the particular, uh, quality of our heroine meeting cute with Dr Thingummy, although for myself having an affair with my obs/gyn guy is very, very high on my creepiness scale;  and with our heroine’s Road to Damascus revelation on first holding her baby in her arms.  Oh yes and I’m another of these sad mid-Atlantic types who go all soppy for a Southern USA accent.  The thing that got on my nerves is the leisurely way that restaurant was run.  I’ve never seen anything so laconic as the way our supposed national champion pie queen ran her spoon around her mixing bowl.   Is this irony, and I’m missing it?   And I’m just a little uneasy that the two main guys are both total jerks, although Doc Thingummy is cuter.^^ 

^ I’ve done this rant, haven’t I?  That fantasy has to be even more grounded in reality than reality does to make it work because it’s, you know, fantasy? 

^^Note that I think Nathan Fillion looks like he needs to get more sleep. 

‡ You can’t get graham crackers over here, except in specialist American shops.  Digestive biscuits work fine, however, once you’re over the name.  Only the Brits would name a sweet cookie something that makes it sound like it’s going to taste like Milk of Magnesia.

February 10, 2009 | Filed Under food, unbook media | Comments Off 

Fruit trees, cold and inaugural lunch

 

Supposedly it didn’t get below freezing last night–instead for our entertainment we had rain* and lashing gales.  Therefore I didn’t put the cardboard parka on the geranium.  But the geranium was looking distinctly the worse for wear this morning, as if there might have been an ice-edge to the gale** and there’s not a great deal of it left to wear*** so tonight, while it’s not supposed to freeze again either, it is clear and still, which does not seem to me January weather at all to be trusted.  So I put the box and the airbags back on and brought the hedge†† and the camellia indoors.  

            Meanwhile my mind is still running on inaugural food.  You can make an excellent seafood stew with chicken stock–or, if you’re playing with the presidential expense account, with lobster stock†††–which latter I feel beats mere cream six ways to haute cuisine.  My mind is also running on cold:  I’m worried about my geranium‡ which leads directly‡‡ to the little appreciated fact‡‡‡ that DC can be bitter in January.  An extremely little-known fact is that I once attended a presidential inauguration–because I happened to know someone with a spare ticket:  good seat too–and it was just amazingly cold–this was also back in the days when you could wear fur without being hissed in the street, and I was wearing a somewhat elderly, but extremely warm, thrift shop fur coat.  Over my motorcycle leathers.  Warmest clothes I had.  Ahem.  I got some fairly funny looks from other people in the good seats.

            But I can’t think about more than one thing at a time or they get all muddled up.§  And I find myself thinking Hot Peach Cobbler for the inaugural dessert.§§  Next year this time I could be defrosting my own peaches to make hot cobbler in January:  all one of them, I daresay.  Or possibly one peach and one nectarine.  Supposing my trees aren’t losing all their flower buds to the unexpected 20° drop tonight.

 

1 ¼ c flour

¼ c fine oatmeal (which should look like flour) or smallest porridge oats

1 tsp baking powder

¼ c sugar

¼ c lightly salted butter

1 egg, beaten

¼ c milk, water or apple juice (if apple juice, lower sugar to 2 T)

1 tsp vanilla

4-5 c sliced peaches

Possibly a handful of raisins

¾ c dark brown sugar (a little less if you’re using raisins)

1 tsp cinnamon

2 T butter

2T to ¼ c peach brandy, peach liqueur, or hard apple cider:  if the last you don’t want the super dry kind.  Perry–which is cider using pears instead of apples–is even better, but harder to find

 

If your flour is fresh, you don’t have to bother sifting it.  Mix with oatmeal, baking powder and sugar.  Cut in butter, then stir in the egg mixed with the water and vanilla.  Knead a few times and roll or pat out about ¼ inch thick on a floured surface.  Place peaches in buttered baking dish (probably 9 inch:  I have a pottery dish of a slightly nonstandard size that I like because it looks pretty) and sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon, and dot with butter.  Then, quantity depending on how juicy and/or flavourful your peaches§§§ are, sprinkle the brandy over them.  Cover with the dough;  slash briskly.  400°F 15 minutes, 350° about another 15 minutes, but check on it:  the crust should be nicely brown and the peaches should be tender.  This is good–and probably more manageable because less runny–cold, but I recommend it warm.  And it’s good with cream or ice cream, but I recommend it with hard sauce.  You all know hard sauce, don’t you?  It’s more or less equal parts sugar and butter with flavouring, in this case preferably a fruit liqueur.  I can post the basic range of hard sauce recipes–Peter prefers the slightly gritty with caster sugar, and I prefer the super smooth with icing sugar–if it would amuse you. 

* * *

 * Although I gave myself a rain gauge for Christmas so at least I have the pleasure of looking at it and going ‘wow’ 

** I didn’t sleep all that well last night, and as I lay there listening to the banshees in the eaves I thought, you had better not be freezing banshees.  You be nice to my geranium. 

*** Don’t you dare die!  Don’t you even think about it! 

† I’m also glad to get it out of the kitchen.  It dried out from earlier soggification a slightly peculiar shape and will no longer stand on one end so it takes up even more space.  When the fruit trees and the rose hedge are indoors too–I am keeping the trees away from the grow light also–and there are hellhounds fitting themselves in next to the Aga, I can’t even get at cupboard, counter, sink and kettle to make my tea.  Summer.  I want summer.^ 

^ But not hot summer.  Nice, friendly, temperate–not to say grey and frequently chilly–British summer.  Not this new Mediterranean thing that is all the rage.

††  One of the stems has a tiny green rosebud on it.  I’m putting it out every day in 40-degree weather!  Tell it to STOP! 

††† There was a time, even within my life span, when you could get lobster bodies cheap, because no one bothers^ with anything but the big claws and the tails, and then you go home and boil them and voila, lobster stock.  Which makes the most amazing bouillabaisse you can imagine. 

^ Almost no one.  As previously observed, I like playing with my food.  There are a few of us around. 

‡ I can worry about anything.  Besides, in adversity one becomes attached. 

‡‡ sic 

‡‡‡ Especially by the people who live there.  I was comparing notes in the forum a night or two ago about snow in places like Tokyo and Washington DC, where the roads instantly become impassable, not on account of the twelve snowflakes that have just fallen, but because every car has immediately slid off the road sideways when every driver has panicked. 

§ PEGASUS, hellhounds, bell ringing:  we had six for service ring this morning.  Yaay. 

§§ Does anyone know if he likes chocolate?  

§§§ You can make an excellent peach cobbler out of dry tasteless shop peaches with this recipe:  just be sure to use the full ¼ c of your chosen booze.  I imagine sweet sherry would work too.  Remember the alcohol will cook off:  this is still a teetotal recipe.  And you really won’t get enough flavour out of apple juice.

January 18, 2009 | Filed Under food | Comments Off 

Another miscellaneous

 

Blackbear says: 

Orange horse is fabulous. I am a little bit in love.   

It’s funny that so many of you like him, because these photos are not good.  He really didn’t have any butt when he came, although he’s beginning to grow one now, but he has a perfectly nice neck and a nice clean throat latch, and you’d never know it here.  And of course he’s half asleep.  I keep thinking that I hope that people who know what they’re looking at when they’re looking at a horse can see the potential there and I haven’t totally disguised it. 

Particularly like the one where he’s got one leg delicately back, gives him a rather insouciant look… Is the dog on the left the terrier you’ve mentioned? He’s pretty charming too.

She.  Yes, that’s Clover.  Clover is a fruit loop, as terriers so often are*, although she is a very nice fruit loop**.  I don’t think I’ve told you the Car Story?  She has me pegged as a soft touch, so when she’s been let out of durance vile in the tack room*** she tends to follow me around, flinging herself on her back at intervals so that I can rub her tummy.†  It didn’t take long for her to start following me back to my car.  One day, when I opened the door, she jumped in.  I laughed appreciatively, picked her up, and put her back on the ground.  She immediately jumped back in the car again.  I tried getting in the car before I put her out and she could still get back in before I could close the door:  I swear she turns in midair, like a boomerang.  So I thought okay, fine, started the car, and rolled downhill to the gate:  Clover sat happily in the passenger seat:  Great!  Where are we going?  Is it fun?  Does it involve food?††  I left the door open while I opened the gate.  Clover waved her tail madly when I got back in the car.  I left the door open when I went back to close the gate. . . . Clover was still sitting in the passenger seat waiting for her next adventure.  At this point I fished her out, grasped her firmly, and went in search of Jenny. . . . Clover still follows me out to my car pretty often, and has a nice little ride down to the gate, but she usually then gets out of her own accord.  Usually.  Sometimes I still have to go find Jenny.

            Clover’s mum, Sparkle, has her own variation on a theme of human interaction, hijacking, and tummy rubbing.  She likes to lie down in the road in front of the gate and roll over on her back.  She rolls over on her back for cars, because she has figured out that cars have people in them, and when they get, crossly, out of their cars to move her, chances are they will relent when she waves her paws madly, wags her tail like sixty and flattens her ears at them.  There are days that between the two of them–since chances are I have Clover in the passenger seat while I’m moving her mum–I wonder if I’m going to get home at all.

 

Vikkik says: 

And he looks a lovely horse, but surely he’s chestnut rather than orange? 

Mmrmph.  Er, yes.   I’m afraid I’m having my little joke about his colour because I do not like chestnuts.  I didn’t like Palominos even when I was a little girl.  I think it’s against the law for horse-mad girls not to like Palominos.

(Of course, I have practically zero experience of horses…) Any way, I think he’s a gorgeous colour.

Many people like chestnuts.  There is no accounting for these things.

*pets Roland cautiously* 

He’s a very sweet horse.  He will put his head in your chest so you can rub his ears better.  That is, in fact, what he’s trying to do in those pictures, and why he won’t stand still.  He thinks there’s a perfectly good human on the other end of the lead rope and he doesn’t want to stand over here when she could be making herself useful by petting him.

 

R and B says: 

He’s lovely–looks built uphill even at this age! How old is he–did I miss that? He looks to be about 16h? 

He looks extremely nice going under saddle–there’s enough in the front and enough in the rear to balance.  He’ll be four in March, and he’s 16.3.  That’s another case of the camera lying–Jenny’s quite small, but I must be shooting them at more of an angle than I realise, because if she’s small he must be about 15 hands and I can say, having stood in his shadow, that he’s large. 

But he really is a chestnut, right??

Snork!  No, he’s ORANGE!  Diane in MN says that horse people call her fawn Danes ‘golden chestnut’ which I find peculiar–dog fawn ought to be dun or buckskin in horse terms, which would then say certain things about its breeding.††† 

 

Lucy Coats says: 

But maybe orange only in the way that turning beech leaves in autumn are orange.

Oooh.  Imagine a copper-beech-coloured horse.  (Note to those of you who have never seen a copper beech:  they’re, um, purple.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacqamoe/166343428/ ) 

 I am looking out at a magnificent tree in our field as I type–and it seems like exactly his colour. He looks as if he has what is known up here as ‘a kind eye’.

Yes, he does.  They’re a little small–mind you, I’m spoiled, Connie has those enormous deer eyes that Connemaras are prone to–which is one of the things I didn’t like about him when I went with Jenny to look for a horse, but as soon as he turns it on you you change your mind.  Especially after he’s craned over his stable door to put his head in your chest and say ‘pet me’.  

 

Diane in MN says: 

Am I right in thinking that mares come in season quite frequently until they’re bred? 

Yikes, no.  Well, sort of.  They’re like a lot of other critters in that they tend not to come in season during the winter, and lengthening days bring them back into their fertile cycles–racehorse breeding mares live in barns with sunlamps so they can get them cycling early in the year, for example–and the cycle is usually around three weeks.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_reproduction   And there are certainly people who won’t touch mares because mares can be moody on account of fluctuating hormones.  Well, yes.  And there are certainly mares who are a real pain to have around when they’re fertile–and if you were sensible you would not breed them so as not to produce more mares like that.  I mean, they do come into season if they aren’t bred and pregnant, but most working mares are fairly low key about it, or at worst are only a bit twitchy a day or two per cycle during high summer.  Jenny is extremely cross about Connie because she says she’s never been ‘mare-ish’ before, and she’s had her three years or so–and that furthermore it’s spreading and here it is November when the estrous cycle should be closing down for the winter and there are several mares on the yard who are prancing around and whinnying and peeing.  Roland is a gelding.  Get a grip, girls.

 

Judith says: 

Puppies are adorable — and puppyhood is also hell, and when I’m going through it with one I can’t wait for it to be over! I really don’t understand people who keep puppies until they grow up and then want to give them to the pound; they’ve paid their dues and are about to get their reward, for heaven’s sake! Old dogs just get richer with age.

The people I totally take my hat off to are the ones that raise seeing-eye puppies.  Year after year after year of puppy–as you might say ‘hay fever’ or ‘foot rot’–as soon as it’s old enough to start proper training, it’s gone, and they have another wretched puppy peeing on the floor and eating their shoes.  I repeat:  puppies are darling, but puppyhood is still something you get through to have dogs.  But some of the idiots who take their post-puppies to the pound are in shock from adolescence.  You hear a lot about puppyhood but the facts of adolescence are downplayed.  She says feelingly, her aging adolescents being fast asleep about three feet away.  But people forget that brains take longer to grow up than bodies do and foolishly despair. 

 

Diane in MN says: 

This puppy is obviously very good at looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. It would be interesting to know how long it takes, after he settles in, for the halo to slip. Of course, he may be like MY puppy, whose halo has barely budged.

He arrived halo-free:  don’t let that face mislead you.  Look at those calculating little eyes.  This is not a hearts-and-flowers puppy but a right little bruiser.  I understand that the sock population in that house has already dropped dramatically.  However given that he’s still about three inches square and has been pitched into a family of about fifteen (technically it’s only Daisy and Roy, but in practise it’s also three kids, three spouses/spouse equivalents, eight grandchildren, and the odd in law) this is exactly what he should be.

            You want to encourage your perfect puppy to eat the occasional small noncrucial piece of furniture or when he hits adolescence he’ll suddenly think, yeep, what am I missing, and start staying out all night and coming home drunk and disorderly in the company of girls of dubious virtue. 

 

Southdowner says: 

Some people think that having more than one pet makes you love them all less 

Pet [sic] peeve alert.   This philosophy–and I get it too, although I only have two critters instead of eleven‡–makes me nuts.  What is the matter with these people?  Hearts are infinitely expandable.  There are critters, just like there are people, which are easier and harder to love, but the more people of all ages, sexes, species, etc you have in your life, the more room(s) in your heart you have.  The end of a well-lived life your heart is going to look like Gormenghast Castle, only cheerfuller. 

 - no! it just means there is fur to bawl into when the time comes…

 That too of course.  Sigh. 

 

Mrs Redboots says: 

Having a new puppy is like having a new baby – thankfully, though, the “must-be-aware-of-what-she’s-doing-every-second” phase only lasts about six months, compared with about five years in humans!

Six months!  You have had much mellower, more amenable puppies than I have!  (However, all mine have thrown up in the car on the drive home from the breeder, so obviously I’m doing something wrong!)  The saving grace of puppies over human children, if you’re asking me, who never raised any of the human variety, is that you can lock them up in their crate and run away for a few hours if you have to. 

 

Skating librarian says 

Can anybody tell me enough about the taste [of chestnuts] so that I’d know whether I should give them another try? Thanks!

Susan from Athens says:
Well it’s a very nutty taste. In purree form it is very thick and sticky in mouth – somewhat like peanut butter (the smooth kind, obviously – but I don’t particularly like peanut butter).

Ewwwww!  I love peanut butter and I love chestnuts, glaceed, pureed, or any thing else, but I deny that chestnut puree is anything like peanut butter.  It’s much lighter and airier than any nut butter, smooth, barely sticky, and while chestnuts are nutty, they always taste to me like a near relative of a real nut rather than like a nut themselves.  Chestnut puree tastes to me like something with nuts in it, not like nut puree. 

 

Melissa Mead says: 

I’ve always thought they taste vaguely maple-y. Sort of like a rich smoked maple hazelnut? I didn’t like them as a kid, either, but I’m slowly coming to. Roasted, they have an almost soft texture.

 Soft and a bit crumbly, yes.  And yes . . . almost mapley.  And yes, a bit more hazelnutty than . . . well, than peanuts, or cashews or something.  Mapley hadn’t occurred to me (although crumbled chestnuts are good in waffles. . . . But then since I like chestnuts I’m liable to throw them experimentally into all kinds of things) but I think you’re right.  They aren’t themselves sweet but they taste like they might be somehow.  

 

Rachel says: 

My mother had a version of this recipe , known as Slut’s chocolate chestnut log because it was so quick and easy. She used icing sugar and rum instead of caster and orange juice.  And wrapped the whole thing in silver foil instead of putting it in a tin.

 I don’t myself use tin foil–it’s also implicated in those of us with auto-immune problems–but icing sugar works fine, and rum is excellent.  My original recipe called for orange liqueur rather than orange essence, but I prefer the essence if you’re going for orange. 

 

Southdowner says: 

We ARE a cult! Yaay! Robin has a cult following!!! 

I’m still worrying about this. . . . Following me where . . . . 

* * *

 

 * All right, name me a dog family that doesn’t have serious fruit loop tendencies.  But they do vary.  Terrier fruitloopery is significantly different from hellhound fruitloopery for example. 

** And my Exhibit A when the hellhounds and I have just been jumped by another nasty, aggressive little, or, worse, not-so-little s.o.b. of a terrier and I’m shouting that I hate terriers

 *** Or when she escapes, which also happens.  It is very difficult to get into a tack room carrying a saddle and not let a terrier bent on freedom out.  Then you rack the saddle hastily and go in pursuit.  I’ve chased her into the schooling ring where Jenny is giving a lesson more than once.  Generally speaking it’s very nice using Jenny’s tack room instead of one of the two bigger ones for the boarders, but the terrier situation is problematic. 

† I’m with Jodi about fuzzy tummies.  I’d be an instant ferret slave too. 

†† Clover, unlike other dogs we could mention, has a positive attitude toward food. 

††† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equine_coat_color   This is not really satisfactory and only barely scratches the surface.   But there’s a lot out there about colour types and genetics . . . which I’ve just wasted most of half an hour on and I still have to play the piano tonight. . . .

 ‡ Or is it fifteen now, and you’re just afraid to tell us?

November 14, 2008 | Filed Under comments, critters, food | Comments Off 

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Adventure is just bad planning. -- Roald Amundsen