Month: December 2010

Charming critter homes


Can you see the acorn debris on the ledge above and to the right of the holes?

I love to walk in the woods in the wintertime. Cold weather is great for hiking, plus I don’t have to worry about snakes. Also, with the leaves down, much can be seen that is not visible in summer. While I’m out walking, I’ve started looking for holes in trees that look as though they are (or ought to be) occupied by little animals such as chipmunks. Some of them clearly are occupied, because you can see trails, or debris from a lunch of acorns.

These places are very common. One of these days I’m going to find one with a perfect gothic door.


A drive-through!


So far, this is the closest thing I’ve seen to a door with a gothic arch.

Some winter angles on the abbey

While I was out with the camera today, I took some photos of the abbey from angles from which the abbey is visible only in winter, when the leaves are down.

It’s not an easy job to build a photogenic house, but it sure is fun to live in one.


The pile of debris is left from the pine-clearing almost three years ago. Ken is putting it into piles to make rabbit habitat. We call this area the rabbit patch. If you startle a rabbit eating clover in the yard, the rabbit patch is where it runs to. It’s also near here where we’ve seen baby rabbits in early summer.


Black and white


Antiqued duotone


Darkened and spookified

Beans for breakfast?

What to have for breakfast is a constant problem. The exciting choices always seem to be very sweet (cinnamon rolls, pancakes, etc.) or high in fat and cholesterol (biscuits with gravy and eggs). So I’m experimenting with baked beans for breakfast. It’s easy enough to make a big batch in a slow cooker and then store them in the refrigerator to be reheated.

Beans are certainly a healthy choice for breakfast — low fat, low carb, and a decent amount of protein. Beans also are in keeping with my vow to rely more on legumes and high-protein vegan dishes (such as homemade vegan sausages) while Ken is here. I suspect that, in some cultures, breakfast beans are a staple. I once spent a week in a hotel in New Delhi that always served an “English” style buffet breakfast that included baked beans (from a can). This breakfast buffet was very popular. New Delhi businessmen would come to the hotel for breakfast. I don’t know how English this is, though.

What’s healthy and low-carb and would go well with hot biscuits and breakfast beans? I haven’t figured this out.

Is it spring yet?


The snow slid slowly off the roof of the chicken house and curled up under the north-facing eave.

It was a pretty serious snow here in North Carolina, but as the snowstorm heads north it’s being called a blizzard. I think I’m going to ignore the snow (and the kilowatt hours I’ve consumed so far this month to heat the house) and go into denial by ordering the garden seeds this week.

Hot cinnamon rolls


Serve them hot!

What could be nicer on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning than hot cinnamon rolls. With coffee. I stopped drinking coffee more than a year ago, but this morning I made real coffee to go with the cinnamon rolls.

They’re easy enough to make. Start with a basic yeast dough. I’ve heard of making cinnamon rolls with biscuit dough, but to me that would not be proper. Make an icing of powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla. Here are the steps.


Roll the dough into a rectangular shape.


Spread the icing on the dough, then sprinkle on nutmeg and lots of cinnamon. Dot it with butter.


Roll it into a log.


Slice the log and put the rolls onto a baking sheet to rise.


When they’ve risen, pop them into the oven.

Very homemade vegan hot dogs

Vegan meat analogs are becoming a staple around here. By varying the texture and spices, different analogs are possible: breakfast sausage, meat loaf, chicken nuggets, and, most recently, hot dogs. The texture can be varied by changing the proportion of the three basic ingredients: mashed soybeans, wheat gluten, and ground nuts (I usually use Brazil nuts). For example, brazil nuts are great in vegan meatloaf. But when a chewier texture is desired, I omit or reduce the nuts and increase the gluten. The process is the same as the vegan sausages that I described last month.

The vegan hot dogs were a mixture of mashed soybeans, gluten, and garbanzo flour. I seasoned the mixture with dried onion, dried garlic, paprika, and ketchup. Some Liquid Smoke would have helped. That’s now on my shopping list.

I served the hot dogs with homemade rolls, homemade sauerkraut, chopped onions, and lots of mustard and ketchup.

By the way, I’m aware that gluten is deprecated these days. For the small percentage of the American population that is gluten intolerant (less than 1 percent), I understand that. But for the rest of us, gluten is (and for thousands of years has been) an excellent and important food. I am not among those who demonize wheat.

I made the hot dogs for the day before Christmas Eve. For Christmas Eve dinner, I plan to make something a little more chickeny. But we’ll be eating soybeans and gluten, not Ruth, Chastity, or Patience.

On roasting things

I was in the checkout line at Whole Foods on Saturday, and the woman ahead of me in line noted that I had two bags of brussels sprouts. “Do you ever roast them?” she asked. I replied that I usually did the same old boring thing — steamed them, then seasoned them with olive oil and butter. She declared that, when brussels sprouts are roasted, people who normally wouldn’t dare touch a brussels sprout find that they like them. Ken likes brussels sprouts, but he said that the roasted brussels sprouts were the best he’s ever had.

It’s good to remember that many vegetables like to be roasted. It’s easy to do, and it’s healthy, because it keeps the vegetables out of water.

Brussels sprouts are not a fashionable or well-liked vegetable, but that’s a shame, because they’re delicious. They’re also inexpensive. They ought to be a staple in the winter kitchen. Buy them fresh. Frozen brussels sprouts have been drowned in water.

I enjoy cooking during the winter more than I do during the summer. The summer produce is wonderful, but I love winter produce — root vegetables, cabbage, brussels sprouts, onions, cauliflower, broccoli. Maybe it’s my Irish genes. Given a choice between eating fresh tropical fruit on Maui (fantastic), or winter vegetables in Ireland, I’d choose Ireland.

The other thing that’s nice about cooking and baking during the winter is that the warmth of the kitchen is comforting rather than oppressive. Winter cooking makes me wish that I still lived in a house with a wood-fired cook stove. There’s nothing quite like it.


Quartered, tossed in olive oil with garlic, and ready for the oven

Me? In the choir?


The choir’s final rehearsal in the empty church before the congregation arrives

For years, I had wanted to do choral music. But, before I retired, there wasn’t time. Not only are there rehearsals to attend, but learning the music takes time. A friend of mine who sings in the choir at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Winston-Salem invited me to sing with the choir for their Christmas “Lessons and Carols” service.

I was terrified at my first rehearsal a month ago when I first saw the music. There was about 45 pages of it, some of it quite difficult. A rhythmically complex arrangement of “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day” was particularly daunting. Luckily, computers have made the job of learning choral music much easier. A member of the choir made MIDI files of each of the carols, and one can learn the music by playing the MIDI files on the computer and singing along. That’s much easier than having to play it yourself at the keyboard. I probably spent a total of 40 hours working on the music at home. I sang bass.

The final performance came off great. Maybe I’ll do it again next Christmas. It’s good for the aging brain to take on new challenges.


St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Winston-Salem

Thinning the thicket

Ken Ilgunas has returned to Acorn Abbey. Yesterday the weather was terrible. We were snowed in. But today the sun is out, and the temperature is a balmy 40 degrees. Ken set to work clearing a thicket on the front side of Acorn Abbey. He is taking out the pines and underbrush. Right now the plan is to plant low-growing holly trees in their place, leaving room and light for the hardwood trees in the thicket to grow.