Still Life, With Cats

Since it’s February, I’ve been doing Thingadailies again (although I keep forgetting to blog about it, oops) with the usual goal of using up as much of our crazy amount of citrus fruit as possible.

Because of this, this year I discovered one of my new favorite things: posset. Posset is basically custard, except instead of using a thickening agent like eggs or cornstarch, you heat up heavy cream and sugar, and then add fruit juice at the end, which then thickens due to the reaction between the acid and the cream.

A week or so ago I made lemon posset.

It didn’t set completely, but we didn’t care – it was so delicious I could have happily inhaled the entire recipe in one sitting.

Yesterday I made mandarin orange posset.

This time I had a better idea of what to do, so it actually set up.

This one is also pretty tasty. Both recipes are definitely things I’ll be making again!

After the last couple days of lots of activity, it’s been nice to have a fairly low-key day of doing nothing much except baking some chocolate chip walnut muffins, and snuggling cats.

The cats, meanwhile, did not see anything different, since every day is a day of low key sloth.

Thankfully we’re not like this couple, who were so busy celebrating they didn’t notice the mice running off with the food.

Tis the season for Holidailies.

This morning a group of us met up for an escape room at Escapology. We picked the Scooby Doo themed one, and really enjoyed it – only needing two hints (and one made us feel foolish since none of us realized a specific cabinet actually opened, oops). At the end, they offered a 50% discount if we signed up for another one, and gosh, gee, twist our arms, give us a discount on a thing we all love. So in other words, we’ll all be heading back there in January to try an escape room with a pirate theme. Arr, mateys!

This group has done a number of escape rooms in the past and we really have a blast with them. We’re all good at puzzles and muddling through things, and it’s always a fun way to spend an hour.

Afterwards, we all had an early lunch at a nearby burger place, and then headed home.

The rest of the day has been fairly quiet, unlike the folks in this morning’s puzzle, who are doing kareoke with a reindeer (and apparently the elves are turning evil).

Tis the season for Holidailies.

Tonight a friend and I went to see Kitka – a women’s vocal ensemble specializing in music from Eastern Europe (Balkans, Ukraine, Georgia, etc.). They have an absolutely fantastic sound, and work so well together as a group.

We had dinner first at a Thai place in Davis. We’d been expecting traffic, since it’s a Friday night and there’s pretty much always traffic going over the causeway, but the road was nearly empty, so we had plenty of time to savor the food. I had Thai roti for the first time, and now I need to find a recipe and recreate that because it is so delicious (it reminded me a lot of Mexican sopapillas).

It was definitely a fun evening, and I suspect I’ll be humming some of their music in my head for a while. If you’re in the Bay Area, I highly recommend checking them out – their music is fantastic.

At this point now we just open the Couch Potato Advent Calendar door and have a little laugh. Ah well.

Today’s puzzle includes another mischievous reindeer.

Tis the season for Holidailies.

I am highly amused by the fact that this Couch Potato advent calendar suggests things like squats and burpees. Because, hello, have you ever *met* couch potatoes?

Anyway. In defiance of its attempt to make me do things our bodies aren’t equipped to do, we started watching Gingerbread Land, which is a gingerbread competition where they’re building entire villages over the course of the season, because what better way to burn some calories than watching highly skilled people assemble tiny little dollhouses, complete with furniture and all the extremely tiny accessories, made entirely of edible material. Seriously, these people have some mad skills. I can barely make a pie crust that doesn’t look as if it was ravaged by an angry beaver, and these people are crafting an entire cabinet full of miniature bakery goods.

More chaos from the jigsaw puzzle calendar. Looks like the reindeer and the elves are having far too much fun.

Tis the season for Holidailies.

A month or so ago we agreed to sign up for this program with SMUD (the local electric company) for solar panels – basically they provide the panels, do all the installation and maintenance, plus a power bank, and then in cases of planned outages, they can pull a certain percentage of power from that bank for others to use. It’s a clever way to help address the aging power system in California, in a more environmentally friendly way, and since it’s free to us as homeowners, we couldn’t see any reason to refuse.

Anyway. Today was the day they were supposed to come start the initial electrical updates, to get things ready….except that after the guys got onto the roof they came back down and said, um, your roof is in no condition for this.

This isn’t a huge surprise; we had someone tell us it was going to need to be replaced soon a couple years ago, so it’s not like I’m worried that they’re using this as an excuse to scam us, but ugh, I hadn’t expected it to come so soon. However, I am telling myself that this is actually a blessing in disguise. We can get the roof replaced (hey, guess what this year’s joint Christmas present is going to be, wince.), and we discovered this before there was an actual leak that could have led to all sorts of more expensive damage, so…yay?

So we’re now getting a couple estimates, and the solar panel install is on pause until the roof is dealt with. Hooray for home ownership!

Tis the season for Holidailies.

Hooray, time for another Holidailies, where I dust off this blog and attempt to post every day of the month during December.

Hi everyone who might stumble onto this from the Holidalies portal, or elsewhere. I’m Jennifer and I’ve been blogging at this spot for 25 years now. I think this means my blog can now rent a car without having to have parental permissions. Also I suspect it’s time for my blog to find its own health insurance and get off mine. Whee!

Anyway. Let’s dive right in. As has been the case for the past couple years, Richard and I picked a couple advent calendars, including another jigsaw puzzle for me, and an escape room one for the two of us, and on a whim, we also got the Couch Potato advent calendar, which supposedly has some simple exercises to pick from each day, meant for folks like us who tend toward sloth.

Armed with some coffee, we dove in. Sadly, our brains, weak from 4 days of holiday topor, did not register the need to flip the first page over and look at the back, and so we were completely stymied by the first day of the Escape calendar. Oops. But the Couch Potato calendar suggested putting on a holiday tune and dancing to it, so I took a quick break to rock out to some sweet Christmas jingles during lunch, and the first puzzle of the month indicates there is going to be lots of chaos forthcoming.

Tis the season for Holidailies.

My work-from-home office setup is in the master bedroom, and most of the cats in the house like to congregate on the bed during the day while I’m at my computer, taking turns on coming over to beg for pets. Timmie, however, prefers to simply flop and expose her tummy when she wants attention, which is pretty much any time I come near.

Stop! Go no further.
Belly rub is required
Timmie Tummy Tax

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.

It’s February, which means it’s time once again for Thingadailies. And this year I’m neither baking something, cooking something, or knitting something. Instead, my plan is to post a picture each day, with an accompanying haiku.

Laptop needs more RAM
Oops, battery is puffy!
IT guy in awe.

I admit I was hesitant to do this, considering the fact that the orange shitgibbon and his evil cronies are hellbent on destroying my country, but ultimately I have decided that I will go ahead, because this is my space, and I can still use it to find some small amount of joy.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.