Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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A Short, Happy Story for Ya

Our kitchen freezer has been dying a slow death since early June.
 Late last night it finally hemorrhaged melted vanilla ice cream all over the tile floor, 
forcing our thrifty hands into action.
We had to wait until this morning for either repair or replacement, 
so I emptied the salvageable frozen meats into the deep freezer in our garage.
Then it happened.
I rediscovered in our nearly empty kitchen freezer 
nineteen miniature Butterfinger candy bars, hidden in there, 
cold and perfect and immoral,
waiting for the moment when I would need them most.
Which is now.
The End.
Wishing You Cheap Appliance Repairs 
and a Perfect Chocolate Rediscovery Right When You Need it Most 
xoxoxoxo

New Orleans Style Pecan Pralines

   After any trip to an unusual place, but especially after every trip to New Orleans, I come home full of cravings and ideas and this insatiable desire to adapt those things to my own to my home. Or my home to that town, or whatever. The urge covers everything from recipes to decorating ideas and (of course) gardening. Once in a while I get lucky and discover some foreign treasure that both Handsome and I would like to enjoy again, as is the case with Pecan Pralines.

   Last week in New Orleans, while strolling somewhere between downtown and the French Quarter, we followed our noses past the raw sewage (an unfortunate fact of life in some parts) and into a heavenly cloud of butter and sugar and toasted pecans and other wonderful fragrances. We cruised a glass front case that had been stocked with every imaginable variation of praline possibly known to man. We watched someone making the pralines fresh. And then we sampled tiny little crumbs offered by a temptress in a cotton apron, both of us staidly acting as if we still might not actually buy anything.

L O L

   So anyway, ten minutes and eighteen dollars later we emerged from the store with a box full of various candies, sealed with a pretty little foil sticker. I may or may not have felt panicky over the long walk back to the hotel. Will they melt in the box? What if we get mugged? I feel faint, I think my blood sugar is low. We better stop and eat all of these right now, just in case of all that. I definitely said most of this out loud.


   I am fairly certain my husband took a deeper breath than he actually needed, and he purposefully did not make eye contact with me.


   We each ate one praline as we walked through the skinny, bricked streets lined with book stores and art galleries. None of the other pralines melted. We certainly did not get mugged. And my blood sugar has not been low once since that heavenly day. That is how powerfully sweet these things are.

   I was shocked and delighted that Handsome liked this delicacy enough to want more. So when we got home I suggested he look up some recipes, and within a few minutes we had agreed on the first one to try. You can find it by clicking on this link.  It is perfect. PERFECT. I do not need to try any more.

   

   If you own a candy thermometer; if you can gather six basic pantry supplies; and if you have half an hour to spend in the kitchen then another half an hour to let these firm up, then you too can have New Orleans style Pecan Pralines. I pinky promise you this. I am not really known for my candy making skills, but I must say that this was super easy. It was even easier than making cookies, and much faster. Go figure, since it hails from the Big Easy, right?

   The photo above was taken immediately after I spooned the hot mixture onto waxed paper. The pralines look extra dark, almost like chocolate no-bake cookies, but that changes.

   A couple of hours later they were sturdy, flat bottomed, and that believable golden pecan color that makes me miss my Grandma Stubbs.
   As I write this, the time is 2:46 p.m. I have already eaten two pralines since lunchtime, and my blood sugar levels would probably give a hummingbird the shakes. That weird but wonderful sensation is the only thing ensuring that my husband will have pralines to eat when he gets home from the Commish. It also means I will never be making this recipe while he is out of town, because basically I don’t trust myself.
   More Nawlins stories and inspiration to come, I just had to share this with you guys real quick.

Eat dessert first.
xoxoxo

The Forest Incident: an Epilogue in Photos

   Yesterday I posted a rather lengthy tale about getting lost in the forest with M Half. I chose not to illustrate it partly because neither of us took a camera that day and also because that post was so blessedly long already.  Wowsa! Sharing that much was cathartic and a little exhausting, but it could have been an even longer story, you guys. A lot happened that day. Trust me.
   Now I need to tell you that a couple of weeks after that traumatic life event, M Half was here at the farm again and we took another trip into the forest, this time with a camera. This second trip was only about a third as deep as the first. We came out this time not only emotionally unscathed but also carrying a glorious souvenir! Here’s a shorter, happier tale for you this fine Tuesday evening.
This is the people view of most of the Pine Forest. 
Tall, straight tree trunks thrusting confidently into the open sky.
We enjoy a limited population of child-eating cows in this area.
This is the place we casually dubbed Yoga Meadow. 
It’s a small but private clearing on the north edge of the forest. 
On a a recent trip there by myself I discovered 
lots of new spring flowers and budding trees.
So beautiful…
Okay. This is called the Murder Sheyed.
I feel like I don’t want to explain that. Okay?
***************
What I will tell you guys is that
sometimes when I visit the forest
that creaky looking door is open, like it is in this photo.
Other times, with no interference from us,
it is not only closed but LOCKED.
No one lives on this property, you guys.
No one except, perhaps… Sasquatch.
This tree takes my breath away.
Look at how smoothly it genuflects toward the earth.
Here is the climbing tree we’ve been talking about.
Don’t you agree it is perfectly designed? 
The branches are arranged in a spiral staircase around the trunk.
It’s almost too easy.
Here is a little drop off and deer track tattooed by shadows.
I love that thick carpet of pine needles…
Bouncy, muffled, slightly crunchy…
When I was little I remember wishing I could nap in places like this.
When my girls were little they would ask for bedtime stories
about the Pine Forest of MY childhood, 
a big beautiful one in southeastern Oklahoma.
And here is the rusty blue treasure 
that tempted us back into the forest
despite our recent trauma.
We saw it near a trash heap and wondered at the way
it was perched so uprightly in those trees. 
Like someone had just finished riding it 
and had set it on its kickstand for a while.
The bike was so well buried in the forest and surrounded by thicket
that actually laying hands on it
required some patience and George Bush-style strategerie.
So worth it!
Oh, look. I am a huge dork.
This is how we show things on the farm. 
We pretend to be Vanna.
We call it Vanna-ing.
After wrestling the bike from its forest embrace,
M Half and I spent a little time busting the immovable chain 
and tearing the rotted rubber away from the wheels
in hopes of the whole thing rolling smoothly back to the farm.
Well, it never “rolled” exactly, but we did gain a little mobility.
And we did feel pretty invincible after the demolition.
And we did need hot, soapy showers after the exertion. Gross.
   So there you have it. The forest doesn’t always chew us up and spit us out; sometimes it offers little gifts. Right now the bike sits at our front door with some pansies and metal artwork from New Orleans. I have high hopes of eventually securing it to the brick wall above our kitchen door and using it to grow morning glory vines, like a cool rusted trellis. Again, if we are friends, you will not warn my husband of this plan. He is more worried about vines above doorways than I am about bloodthirsty cows.
Be Brave. 
xoxoxo

Disturbance in the Force

   This morning I was minding my own business, pacing energetically through the normal list of Monday morning jobs, staying effortlessly positive and upbeat about stuff in general, and even whistling. Well, sort of whistling, the best I can at least. I managed to actually pray this morning instead of just worry and hope. The farm was happy and in the sleepy process of hunkering down for the predicted rain. My husband had made it to the office mostly rejuvenated and healthy after a really nice weekend. All was well in Denmark, as they say. Or so it seemed.
   I leaned over to retrieve some clean silverware from the bottom shelf of the dishwasher, caught a whiff of both bleach and vanilla on the way down, then started feeling weird. I was physically uncomfortable, out of the blue, but I had no idea why. My jeans felt strange, my red sweater was definitely getting on my nerves, and my sunglasses which had been perched meaninglessly on my head (it’s super cloudy today, no sun, no need for shades, but gosh I like ’em) crashed down on my nose. Rudely. Everything was suddenly wrong.
   I looked around the kitchen cautiously, wondering what the heck was going on. I had an urgent need to escape something, but I didn’t know what, so I listened in perfect stillness for any animal alerts. Usually if an earthquake is coming or a stranger has pulled through the front gate, the geese and guineas will let me and everyone else on our road know about it. Loudly.
   But there was almost perfect silence. And this elusive feeling of discomfort was changing over into a needling pain in several places all over my body, so I investigated.
   What I discovered was maddening and relieving all at once. I had hay. In my bra. And in my jeans. And in everything. And it was itchy.
   I had raked and distributed hay to the four leggeds like half an hour earlier, and that’s the only time it could have found its way into my not loose clothing and undergarments. Plus I had been wearing a coat. So why I was just then noticing it while tidying up the kitchen is a true mystery. But removing it suddenly became the most important thing in my life.  I became very goal oriented in that moment, working to remove the hay pronto, because no  matter how soft and sticker-free it might seem for eating and carrying, it is just not comfortable as skivvies.
   So the hay got removed, right there in the kitchen, and I silently added sweep the floor again to my Monday list.
   Now the disturbance in the force has been soothed and Denmark is once again a peaceful nation. Woohoo! I am kind of glad the bleach and vanilla fragrances had nothing to do with this.

Hay is for Horses, not Bras, Please
xoxoxo

   

Raised Beds: Foundation Day

   A scientist is in Heaven. He walks up to God and claims to have cracked the code for creating life, that he knows how to manipulate small amounts of common soil to become a living, breathing organism.

   The Lord smiled patiently and said, “Okay.”

   “I’m serious.”

   “I can see that, my child, so let’s go to My Laboratory and you can show me what you can do.” So God leads the scientist to His Laboratory and welcomes him inside.

   “Okay,” says the scientist eagerly, “all I need is some dirt.”

   “Uh-uh, sorry,” the Lord replies laughingly, “get your own dirt.”

********************

   So I’m making my own dirt. Not to blasphemously create life, just to grow some delicious fruits and veggies. Today Mia the Gander helped me fill the first three beds. It was a luscious way to spend another unseasonably warm January afternoon, with photos to prove it this time. I am feeling really optimistic about the garden this year, you guys. 
First, we have some scrap cardboard cut to lay flat on the ground.
This is eventually decompose, but in the mean time 
it should block the worst weeds.
Yay for no plastic!!
The whole cardboard cutting event was highly fascinating to Mia.
Can you blame him?
Then I layered on a few inches of dried leaves.
Just for fun, take note of the X shaped shadow up on the wall.
Over the dried leaves went a lot of manure.
A little manure scooping advice:
Whenever possible, scoop uphill
Let gravity be your friend.
Oh, and speaking of fascinated animals, as I scooped manure
our two geldings could not be more enrapt.
At one point Dusty nosed my very full wheelbarrow
and I had to urge him NOT to eat it.
He asked me why, pointing out the obvious fact 
that his manure is little more than compressed grass, hay, and excess grain.
Which is exactly his daily diet.
He had a legitimate question: at what point does food cease to be food?
That raised questions of cannibalism, etc, for which I had precious few answers.
Things got very philosophical in the middle field today.
The last ingredient was slightly moist, matted together shred.
Hey, did you notice the X shadow move? 
The sun was receding as I worked.
But Mia never left my side.
He nibbled winter greens 
and supervised my activities tirelessly.
He is the world’s most faithful, 
most affectionate, most curious gander.
Amend Your Soil!
Get a Head Start!
xoxoxo