tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46323417209859964742011-04-21T11:09:00.163-07:00<B>Rantings and Doings of an Urban Mom/Mad Kitchen Scientist Living Amongst the Potatoes in Idaho</B>Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.comBlogger201100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-44124044364070285422008-01-04T17:57:00.000-08:002008-12-11T00:23:48.877-08:00

What a busy month! I finished up the Fall semester well, with an A in all my classes. I also managed to get some more organization done in the house, and moved some projects further along. We also made our first wheel of Farmhouse Cheddar cheese (it's lopsided, but we have high hopes for the flavor!) and are planning our next batches in the coming week. The vinegar was a real success,

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-91454915649720901292007-11-28T21:30:00.000-08:002007-11-28T22:14:31.139-08:00

The first batch of our homemade kraut is finished, and wow, it is good! I love kraut, but even I have never had kraut that tasted this good before! I'm on the web tonight trying to find tasty recipes for it. We all had some plain, and I put the rest of the half gallon jar into the fridge to prevent any deterioration. We're declaring Kraut version 1.0 an official and unqualified success! I'm

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-33948708388730728752007-11-17T12:47:00.000-08:002007-11-17T13:12:03.447-08:00

Two large crocks of home-made vinegars sit on the counter - and the plum is almost finished! We tasted it a bit the other day and it's developing a wonderful flavor - as good as last year's, I think. It should be ready to filter and bottle by the end of this month, or a week or so into December. That means a few of the folks on our Christmas list will be getting a bottle. The apple cider

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-52065998165255580842007-11-16T18:22:00.000-08:002007-11-25T18:20:36.525-08:00

Our two newest canine additions are an interesting set of contradictions at times. Sometimes they behave almost like furry little toddlers - they follow me around, beg for food and want to be picked up and carried all the time. They have decided that civilized animals sleep on beds, so if they both disappear in mid-day, that's where I usually find them napping. They also "talk" - I swear Rugby

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-59639343063981147012007-11-13T11:57:00.000-08:002008-01-08T21:23:40.493-08:00

(Or, how your being a slave to fashion may have people laughing at you behind your back[side].)I see it nearly every day - otherwise attractive looking young women wearing stuff that is either 1) totally unsuited for their body type, or 2) just plain fall-on-your-ass-laughing silly.Case in point, "low rise" or "hiphugger" jeans. Girls, let's face it - even though your fashionista idols on TV may

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-16411443268543384712007-11-12T17:30:00.000-08:002007-11-12T18:07:06.159-08:00

Well, I'm munching on my first home-made batch of tempeh right now! It turned out to be not terribly difficult to make, and the flavor is good - very mild. I cut half of one of the slabs into "fingers" and deep fried it in a bit of canola oil. Half of it was briefly soaked in chicken bullion before frying, the other half was fried without any treatment and lightly salted. I think the soaked

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-81384006151031100752007-11-11T10:17:00.000-08:002007-11-11T10:55:46.290-08:00

Well, it's been a good week, if you're a mad kitchen scientist like me. The apple cider and plum vinegars are souring nicely. I siphoned out a small taste of the plum last night with a sterile straw, and so far it's promising to be as wonderful as the small batch we made last year. The apple cider vinegar was a bit slower to get a good thick coating of "mother" on the top, but it's also moving

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-44659615480807049712007-10-28T16:12:00.000-07:002007-10-28T16:18:49.854-07:00

...messing with future archaeologist's minds this way:"Darth Vader Rises To fulfill the ancient tradition of placing grotesques on cathedrals, an image of Darth Vader from the Star Wars trilogy was sculpted and set high up in the northwest tower of the Washington National Cathedral. See other grotesques there at www.cathedral.org."From the ThisOldHouse.com site.

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-47962883089669208942007-10-28T11:08:00.001-07:002007-10-28T11:48:18.217-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-7030889,00.htmlhttp://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303716,00.htmlThe state of Georgia gets an average of 50 inches of rain a year, has numerous rivers and streams and several federally funded reservoirs to hold their "excess" water for public use. In spite of this embarassment of water riches (well, compared to most western states, anyway) the

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-90503559586857369292007-10-16T19:34:00.000-07:002007-10-17T21:27:24.620-07:00

Last year, I made my very first batch of home-made vinegar.I took about a half gallon of plum juice from our fall harvest of blue italian plums and some vinegar "mother" I found lurking in a grey blobbish mass at the bottom of an old bottle of balsamic vinegar and put them together and let the whole mess sit for about 6 weeks. When the 6 weeks was over, my hubby and I tasted the results and

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-53414351100992644882007-10-07T13:07:00.000-07:002007-10-07T13:48:24.212-07:00

I am apparently becoming all too predictable.A bit of background - we have three small dogs. Because I'm "momma" and was mainly responsible for daily care and training of the two newest additions when we got them earlier this year, I am now the center of their universe. They follow me everywhere I go. And I do mean everywhere. And I do mean follow. Closely. On my heels, as it were. I can't

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-80045737348790467752007-10-06T19:04:00.001-07:002008-12-11T00:23:49.071-08:00

I had a small booth at a local craft show this weekend. Although it was snowing, there were a lot of people out walking and gawking. Maybe they figured the weekend was shot anyway, so why not go shopping? Or perhaps all the white stuff falling from the sky made them think about the upcoming holiday gift season. But whatever the reason, I probably talked to more people this weekend than I

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-65993601670984444532007-10-03T09:01:00.000-07:002007-10-16T19:58:21.124-07:00

No, not this place, THIS PLACE. Turns out there is one just a couple of hours from here. I went with a good friend this weekend, and my oh my. I had to keep reminding myself that my latest goal is to get rid of extra stuff, not come home with a bunch more! Although, they do have a lot of interesting organizational items that I might be able to make use of as I work on paring down and

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-27606997868287333172007-10-01T09:07:00.001-07:002008-12-11T00:23:49.606-08:00

This is our fourth winter here, and this is by far the earliest it's snowed for us. We woke up Saturday morning to this:The furry puppy-kids were, of course, ecstatic over the change in weather. This was their first snow. They kept running in and out and in and out, and in the process got pretty wet and muddy. Here's a picture of the little scruffians after a romp and a wrestle outside in the

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-40848342652110226252007-09-18T10:12:00.000-07:002007-09-18T13:05:53.114-07:00

"The real problem today is people taking other people for granite..." (over-read on an online forum somewhere this past week)My guess is the author of this post meant to say that the problem was people "taking other people for GRANTED" but, hey - maybe people mistaking other people for inanimate igneous rockage is a bigger problem in our country than I thought it was.I personally think the real

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-22805391087451643762007-09-16T10:36:00.001-07:002007-09-16T10:36:28.015-07:00

My kitchen bugs me. The cabinets are overstuffed with "stuff" and some of them are so bad that if you open the door too quickly things fall out onto the ceramic tile floor and break. I can't find a lot of items I use or would like to use more often. We have multiples of some items that we simply don't need multiples of. I bought a really neat modular food storage system for putting away and

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-66636101880582040812007-09-10T22:12:00.001-07:002008-12-11T00:23:49.891-08:00

Here is a pic of some of the potatoes we grew this year in our garden. Mostly gourmet and fingerling types, although there are some "blue" mashers in there, too.Okay, we live in Idaho, so why in the world are we growing potatoes? Well, for flavor, mostly. What they tend to grow here are the big old Russet bakers that you get in the restaurant. And while those are nice (and even nicer when you

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-19681505510468677422007-09-02T09:18:00.001-07:002007-09-03T10:07:45.851-07:00

I wanted to bake Tuscan Dried Tomato and Herb bread today, but I was a bit short on a few of the ingredients I needed, so I took off early this morning to the grocery store to pick those up and a few other items we were short on. As usual these days, going to the grocery store was a bit of a shock.These days I go to the grocery stores as little as I can possibly get away with - sometimes as

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-26441314753014687662007-09-01T19:48:00.000-07:002007-09-01T20:19:45.328-07:00

I confess. I'm one of those really annoying people that babies my pets.I pick them up and snuggle them. I let them sleep on the beds. I even bake them "cookies." Yeah, I'm afraid I'm that annoying. I don't call them dog treats, I call them "cookies." I bake the dog cookies fresh every week or so, flavoring them with whatever we have on hand that the dogs like - like bits of bacon and

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4632341720985996474.post-27244233747462875602007-08-26T13:05:00.000-07:002007-09-01T19:46:34.972-07:00

Hello? Is anybody out there?*crickets chirping*Hmm, I thought not. ;-)But that's okay. This is a simple blog more or less just for me and a small handful of people that maybe care a little about what I am up to. It's a way for me to try to write down fleeting thoughts and keep track of happenings without having to resort to putting things down on paper. (shudder)So, why a blog? I guess the

Panidahohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02614750071090474178noreply@blogger.com0