todays medical news

Neither Grandma nor I went anywhere today, but the vehicles were busy. Polly had to take her dog to the vets early this morning to have the pin removed from her hip which has healed from her adventure with a car this summer. She left the dog off, came home and left again for a meeting in Fort Plain. Jess had to go turn in a final paper, collect her cap and gown and boyfriend, have a riding lesson, and whatever else in Cobleskill. Polly got home and left with Mike to take him to have his knee drained and get a cortizone shot in it. Jess came home by way of picking the dog up from the vet. Vet said Brittany, the dog, is healed well, Doctor said he now thinks maybe Mike's problem is more scar tissue from a high school basketball injury than he thought before. He was not able to drain much out of it. I know from experience that it takes a couple of days to think that those shots were worth getting, there is more pain at first than before getting shot.

Everyone is home and settling in for the night now. I think each went to the correct medical professional too.

My daughter Betty, er Jessie

Grandma and I have always called Jessie "Betty" and for good reason. Jess has many interests and traits that are so much like her Aunt Betty. She loves flowers and nature and crafty things. She is a very intelligent girl but took a while to figure out that it really is better to just do what the teachers want than to argue with them if you do not think that they are correct. She is in her own world, and has a tendency to not know what is happening in the other world that the rest of us live in, even if it is happening under her nose. Her picture is in the dictionary under the term "oblivious".

Why am I saying this? The telephone just rang and it was my darling daughter. She had just gone to pick up her robes for tomorrow's graduation and was quite surprised when they also handed her honors cords. She would not have known what the pretty gold rope was for if the woman had not congratulated her on obtaining honors as she handed her the cords. Now, let's see if she actually remembers to take the cords to wear tomorrow....

Those of you who know Betty better than Jessie does this all sound like someone you know?

Chocolate lovers utopia

I have been busy baking Christmas cookies, fudge, candy, etc. All that good dietary stuff. Polly has been helping and Jess is going to get making fudge as soon as she becomes a college graduate on Friday. Grandma is our chief test-taster. I just took a batch of cookies out of the oven that is soooo rich and good and chocolately. It may be partly due to the fact that our local WalMart did not have any cheap bakers chocolate, only had Ghirardelli. A double batch took 3 bars but is worth it. I will share the recipe if anyone is looking for a true chocolate nirvana.

Chocolate Mint Creams

1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
6 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon water
6 ounces semisweet chocolate (I used bittersweet, any diff?)
1 egg, slightly beaten
Pastel Mint Cream Kisses ( the mints that look like Hershey Kisses, picture showed green ones, I had white ones)

In a small bowl stir together flour and baking soda and set aside. In a medium saucepan combine butter, sugar and water. Stir over low heat until butter is melted, add chocolate and stir over low heat until chocolate is melted. Pour into large bowl, cool for 10 minutes.

With a wooden spoon, stir egg mixture into chocolate mixture, stir in flour mixture until combined. Cover and chill for an hour or so until dough is easy to handle.

Preheat oven to 350F. Shape dough into 1 inch balls and place 2" apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8 minutes, immediately place a mint into center of cookie, pressing down slightly, bake 2 more minutes until edges are firm.

It says that you can then swirl mint with knife, that made a mess for me, but hot mint on knife was tasty. It says that it makes about 4 dozen cookies, but that is what I got from a double batch. I made one major error in baking these without realizing that there was only a swallow of milk in the frig. They are a huge Got Milk ad. Grandma, Jess and I were trying to share one swallow of milk after each having a cookie and we all felt rather gipped.

Bake yourselves some and pretend I sent them to you.

La la la la

"White paper packages tied up with string,
These are a few of my favorite things,
When the pig bites,
When the sow squeals,
When the cold turns me bluuuuue,
I think of a few of my favorite things,
Annnnd Then I don't feel sooooo baddddd"

George, the trucker, arrived at 8:00 AM and Cindy and Oscar walked up the tailgate very nicely. They will return home in a few weeks after they get their haircuts and makeovers. I have been really getting anxious for them to make this trip as my mouth has been watering for a nice fresh pork roast for quite a while, to say nothing of a good bacon sandwich. They also were starting to really get mean and showing a desire to have a bite of human on a regular basis, luckily they never got more than rubber boot. I have my homemade applesauce down cellar just waiting. I am not sure just where they will fit in the freezers but I will make room somehow. If I actually went out and hung up some suet for the birds that would help out, we got alot from the last cow but the birds don't seem to eat it well in the freezer.

Adding them to the beef and poultry, and hopefully soon goat, in the freezers we should not need to have tasteless store bought meat for quite a while. There are still some chickens to be processed, along with Goose and ducks, but goose is being invited into the house for Christmas, we need to do ducks before Jess leaves, as she likes duck, and the chickens need to be squeezed in there too.

Why I will keep buying bread

Every so often I get a thought, usually when I am in the bread aisle of the store, that I could save a lot of money if I baked my own bread. All it takes is a meal like tonights to make me realize that it would not save money in this household, and we would all become much larger people. I do not know if I have baked bread or rolls yet that have ever manage to get cold around here. Tonight I made spagetti and meatballs with homemade garlic rolls. I have found a new roll recipe that is quite tasty and quick and easy for a yeast bread, which I brushed with garlic butter prior to baking. When the vultures flew away I had some nice clean bowls and pans to wash. Then I remember why we got rid of the bread machine, that is the most dangerous threat to a waist line that was ever invented. We got into a very bad spell of poring the ingrediants into that demon contraption and waking up to a fresh hot loaf of bread in the morning, which then caused the vultures to have an early morning feeding frenzy and squabble. At least making it by hand takes a bit more work and is not as tempting to be repeated several times in a day.

Silver Linings

It is too bad that it takes a funeral to see far spread members of the family, but it was great to see both Jason and Josh in one week. After two trips to Altmar in four days Grandma will be sleeping well for the next few days, but it does her good to see other people, she is much sharper during and afterwards. It was nice to go and visit snow. It makes it so nice to come home to our bare ground, green is such a pretty color.

I am glad that Jess will be home tomorrow so that Grandma can stay home while Polly and I go to meet with the other livestock superintendents for the county fair. (I am the beef cattle superintendent, last year we did not take a cow, go figure. We showed goats, pigs, and ducks and a goose.) If Grandma had to go to the meeting we would just get there and she would be saying it was time to leave, before we even had a chance to start doing the work we need to get done before Monday night. Then she would spend the trip home telling us how patient she is. We have not left our book changes to the last minute or anything. Then when we get home Polly will go to bed after having been up working all night and I will get to type up our changes before Monday's meeting. Hopefully Jess will be out of class so that both Polly and I can go to the meeting, as she is assistant superintendent for beef, sheep, swine, goats, and unofficially dairy. That translates to she is young and gets to do our running for us. She was lucky last year in that we had two very nice strong teenage boys who were always looking for us to need some help and jumping right in and doing the heavy work for us, we told those boys they have to show there forever.

Mike is hurting tonight after a goat knocked into his bad knee today and knocked him down. He is not real pleased with my babies, to put it mildly.