You know the song, it was ineluctable, even if you managed to eluct the decade, and I am going to have to play it, as a fitting sound track to the world’s worst otter porn, which I happened to photograph yesterday:
That wasn’t the otter porn, in case you were confused.
I am embarrassed for the whole corniness of it all. Starsky and Hutch … Simon and Garfunkle … What a time of bad hair, and soft insipid sounds. And let me tell you, these otters weren’t just wriggling toes and giggling insipidly.
If you like to take pictures of nature, you know the drill. Don’t take camera with you, a moose does the fandango in front of you. Take camera with you, and all beasts flee, as though you were a tsunami they had pre-sensed. But yesterday a third option was tried. Just get on with your business. Grunting, hissing, a 400 metre swim through and under the icy water … what’s not to enjoy? There was so little light [blame the conditions, that’s the ticket, ed.] as we endured another beautiful spring day, that this is the best I got:
Honestly, we were just hoping to identify them … their species I mean, not their actual individual identities like we were private investigators catching an errant spouse.
So there you have it, spring has sprung officially, because love, or something akin to it is in the air, or under the ice, depending on your preferences. Luckily for one and all today is a syrup day, as the bad weather has worked in our favour and we have enough sap for one nice boil and it looks like the nicest day in weeks has arrived to help us enjoy it, so I will put my camera down and try not to take any photos of nature copulating, as I am also lucky enough to get to go and light the fires, as there are sounds of a chain saw in the woods, which means mightier folk are pre-occupied.
Happy Easter, as well I suppose I should mention, since it seems appropriate to have a nice dinner, maybe hunt for some chocolate, and talk about yellow bunnies, because on Good Friday, 2000 years ago or so, a man was nailed to a cross. Makes you hate to think what happened on Bad Friday. But I do rather like the buns, as long as the symbolism doesn’t make you choke. Yum, an icing representation of an ancient government execution method. Sugar-coated torturous death.
Pass the butter, please!
There is a weird connection between your post and what I was just reading. Muskrat (or otter) love is intensified by muskrat root, a common name for acorus calamus, more often called sweet flag, which, among many other qualities, has an aphrodisiacal property.
It can also be hallucinogenic, don’t know if that is why Walt Whitman wrote 39 poems about it in Leaves of grass.
I planted some by my pond a few years ago, simply because it is a native. Didn’t know about all this other stuff. Think I’ll go see if it survived the winter…………..
http://www.herbalmedicinefromyourgarden.com/sweet-flag-health-benefits/
Any of you guys ever make Aebleskiver?
The subject came up, and it’s a Danish thing that Mrs. O remembers her Danish Grandma making (though the recipe is lost to the mists of time). Now I’m tasked with getting the proper pan, and a recipe.
It’s sort of a Danish donut hole, with fruit fillings, covered with powdered sugar. So, it can’t be bad. 😛
Sugar. That’s the tie in with Love. At least in Mrs. O’s world.
Of course, her blood sugar is running a little high, so there you go…
Paul Ryan, the poster child for all that is wrong with America, is at it again.
Paul Ryan’s New Budget Proposal Is The Same Joke He Told Us Before
What payrolls? The ones that will pop out of the woodwork at $3 an hour (wait…make that $2!!) when we obliterate the minimum wage. It’s for your own good, don’tcha know. You plebes need to learn some work ethic.
Goes with the above
http://www.ebay.com/itm/GRISWOLD-Vintage-Cast-Iron-AEBLESKIVER-Ebelskiver-Apple-Danish-Cake-962-/291117355804?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43c7f2531c
don’t get me going on Paul Ryan. the guy is absolutely hated here in his hometown. why that is it is really quite simple. he comes from old money (2nd richest family in town) earned through big government contracting, and yet he hypocritically pushes a right wing philosophy that demonizes government. furthermore, this town is a post industrial wasteland, and could use a hand up! we are the biggest city in the county that has the worst unemployment in the whole state. fuck you Ryan, take your bullshit somewhere else. i do not know how it is that these hypocrites never get capped. it’s a shame really – from purely a utilitarian point of view.
Yup, I have a couple of choice items on my watch list. Not that one, per se, but similar.
If you look at the recipes, they talk about how you need to take a fork or knitting needle to flip the things over. Mrs. O says Grandma used to pull a hair pin right out of her head to do it, then stick it back in. How cute is that?
https://www.yournw.com/cart/searchlist.php
i have seen those cast iron Æbleskiver pans many times at antique stores. i don’t think most people know what they are for anymore. i didn’t know until today. hey, i did recognize a letter from the old Norse alphabet though.
i quit watching my one grandma cook at an early age. she made an amazing liver dumpling soup, but no one needs to see it being made. picture a calf liver being crammed into the hopper atop the grinder with one hand, while the other hand turns the crank. there was a sound that accompanied the process too, if memory serves.
Trader Dan has a short but sweet assessment of the gold market up. For the record, we closed the week back below the 200 day, so it’s back out and be happy with your whipsaws on my models. But anyway, if you take Dan’s post, if you really want my honest opinion, we could see this 1200-1400, more or less, range, persist for the next 5-10 years. OK, call it 1100-1500, just as a “cover your ass” prognostication.
I’ve been there, done that. Back in the 90’s, before you had every sort of chart at the click of a button, I used to chart gold myself, by hand, on frickin graph paper. So don’t tell me it can’t go nowhere for decades at a time with all the strife and money printing in the world. It already has. It’s more likely than not, purely based on past practice, rather than hopes and dreams (or is it fears and nightmares?).
If you think of sort of a cross between donut, popover, and pancake batter, and then you get this special pan, and put it on the stove top, and put some batter in there, and then flip them with a hair pin, and tuck some fruit filling inside, and then cook the other side, and then pop them out and put some powdered sugar on top, then you’ve got aeblskiver! Mrs. O says she is duty bound by blood to give it a try.
aeble is Danish for apple, btw. Though nowadays apparently people put darn near anything in them, even meat, cheese, etc. Sweet, savory, anything goes.
is Mrs. O going to be the chef? i don’t let my wife use any of my cast iron. i just offer to do that step when it’s called for. it isn’t really an issue though. she doesn’t care enough to master cooking in cast iron, and i prefer to never have to reseason any of my cookware.
hey – i’m making some pasta sauce that called for dry sherry. hey – i’m making some pasta sauce that called for dry sherry.
The Danish connection is important to her, so I’m sure she’ll give it a good try. When I acquire a nice vintage pan, and get it all seasoned super nice, it will be my gift to her.
But then I’m sure it will be my job to maintain the pan, as with all our cast iron. 😯
someday i’m going to have an antique oven and stove that uses wood. especially if we have too many more winters like the last one. i didn’t do much wood cooking on/in the grill this year so far, so my cast iron has been lonely.
here’s what i’m making. i’m going to do some brussel sprouts too. over wood.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chef-Johns-Creamy-Mushroom-Pasta/Detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Recipe&soid=sr_results_p1i3
Maddow Asks: ‘Why Do We Overlook Right-Wing Violence and Refuse to Call it Terrorism?’ Answer: Because They’re White
Brussels Sprouts are high in sulfur, and sulfur is really good for you. And why do I always, always, always want to spell it “sulphur”. Am I wrong? Apparently so, but it’s really starting to piss me off. I’m going with Sulphur from now on, just out of middle age, “get off my lawn” style stubborness. Spellchecks can kiss my ass.
Gonna go take a sauna, and spell it any damn way I please.
sulfur and sulphur both are correct. don’t ever allow spellcheck to shame you into believing otherwise.
some more about “Brussels” sprouts…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruciferous_vegetables
Of course, I overstate my anger for dramatic effect, as usual. But still, I’ve been doing some web research on sulphur’s role in nutrition/metabolism and I’m finding the “ph” spelling to be far in the minority. It’s actually starting to bug me.
http://grammarist.com/spelling/sulfur-sulphur/
++Xty!! Such mocking of the appointed feast of Easter!
You and God just don’t seem to like those man-made religious gatherings… (Isaiah 1:14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.) “Easter”… “Good Friday” etc… lol, it’d be funny if it weren’t so sad.
DP- Mom just sold the old Home Comfort wood cookstove out of the barn. I could have got you quite deal on that thing 20 years ago… if it would have meant I didn’t have to help move the heavy thing from here to there, back to here, then to there..etc.
Your new moons and your appointed feasts … I certainly do agree with god on that one, and his way of expressing himself is also enough to make one jealous, if being jealous of god didn’t sound like just the thing to send you straight into a hell you do not believe in, and so should be avoided. But I do like tradition, so I am conflicted. And roasts. I like roasts.
But perhaps I am simply frozen to the core and the word roast just resonates. We got all the sap in the pans, but had to let it die down over-night … but we had it tame enough. I am still cold, despite the fires. I am going to put up yesterday’s satellite photo as a post. The bay is still very ice covered, and you can barely make out Penetang and Midland … it will be ages before the icebreaker comes through … still all stuck in the Soo, and that was going to be our next great excitement. But we will be missing it as today it is back to home, after I start obsessively boiling, which would require actually going outside, so maybe we never leave. I suppose we could come back in August to see it melt.
Ack – all that talk of sulphur and me mocking hell – at least I would be warm.
Don’t worry about Hell
Kids are comin home, Mama’s in the kitchen, I’m just tryin to stay out of her way and listenin to this. Saw this last night, as a blues fanatic I valued the soundtrack highly and the movie so-so. Hokey but riveting- I mean who keeps a chain that long in a special box? Christina Ricci deserves to be in Guinness Book of Records for most screen time in panties.