Kettle Corn, part 2

Here we go, "kettle corn, the sequel." The first batch I made, while tasty, was more like caramel corn than kettle corn so I was forced try out another recipe. Which is a not entirely unpleasant way to spend the evening, and I found the perfect recipe. This one has a light coating of sugar and a hint of saltiness to make an awesome batch of kettle corn. As is my custom, here is the recipe, followed by my comments on it.

Kettle corn part 2

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup yellow popcorn kernels
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Pour the oil into a large pot with a lid, and add three kernels of popcorn. Heat the oil over medium heat and once the kernels have popped, the oil is hot enough. Pour in the rest of the popcorn and the sugar. Put the lid on the pot and shake frequently until the kernels have stopped popping. Pour the popcorn out into a large bowl and sprinkle on the salt. Toss to coat with a wooden spoon. Let cool and enjoy.

The recipe is pretty good as it is, but I had a bit better luck with it when I stirred in the sugar instead of just shaking the pot to mix it. It's also a good idea to use a really big bowl to mix the popcorn with the salt, so you don't have popcorn falling all over the counter. In addition, if you want a large batch of popcorn, I would make several small batches (where this recipe is one small batch) instead of trying to double this recipe - adding any more popcorn to the pot will make it hard to evenly cook the kernels, plus you'll need a larger pot and the bigger the pot the harder it's going to get to pick it up and shake it well enough. With that said, good luck and have fun. It's actually surprisingly easy to make.

Additional note: You can also make this recipe using white popcorn kernels, but I would advise using less than the recipe calls for - maybe only one third cup? - because the white kernels are smaller than the yellow kernels and when I made the recipe with the white popcorn I had more trouble getting the popcorn evenly coated. The extra popcorn makes it harder to mix the pot by shaking it and so you'll end up with some pieces well coated and some with almost nothing on them.

And, as is proper, credit for the recipe goes to: http://pinchmysalt.com/2009/11/24/lets-get-old-fashioned-homemade-kettle-corn-recipe/

Kit Kat

Kit's grave, and the view from it of the ocean.

A few weeks ago I decided to take a mini vacation up along the Puget Sound. I went for a walk on the beach and made something of an unusual discovery. Most of the time when I am at the beach I find seashells or seaweed or the shells of dead crabs (none of which I take home, by the way - I am not a fan of beachy smells) but that day I came across a cat. Or rather, the cat found me. And, as you may have noticed by now, I can not resist an animal, especially an animal in need. So I scooped her up and took her with me into the house. (Was there ever any doubt?) As soon as I picked her up I realized just how much trouble she was in. She was covered in fleas, had enormous mats in her long fur, and she was light as a feather - I'm pretty sure that you could see just about every bone in her little body, and she was extremely dehydrated. She must have been trying to survive on her own out there, without any food - and probably precious little fresh water as well. As I had not planned on finding a cat I neglected to bring with me the basic necessities: litter and a box, as well as food. Every cat - every animal, for that matter - needs a name so I dubbed her KitKat (the inspiration was a KitKat bar that I found in the house sitting on the kitchen counter), secured her in the bathroom so that the dogs wouldn't bother her, and took off in the car for the 12 mile drive to the nearest market to pick up some litter and much needed food. I got back to the house and spent the rest of the day neglecting my homework in order to take care of Kit. I gave her some food - she couldn't eat much though, as her stomach must have shrunken during the weeks she had been without food. The dogs, being fairly accustomed to my habit of bringing home strange creatures, took little notice of Kit after the initial introductions, although they were careful to give her space on the couch or bed and not crowd her. I set up a litter box and showed Kit where it was, although she hardly needed it - she couldn't have let out more than a tablespoon of urine. A couple hours later I decided that Kit needed a bath. This was somewhat of a difficult decision to make - on the one hand, getting her wet might force her to use more energy to stay warm, but on the other hand, she had so many fleas on her that I worried they were sucking out any nutrients she might have and weakening her further. In the end I decided to try the bath - I soaped her up in the kitchen sink, washed her down with warm water and wrapped her in soft towels to try and dry her off. When I noticed her shivering I put her under the covers in the bed and snuggled her next to my chest to keep her warm. I tried to get her to eat something later in the afternoon but she wasn't feeling up for it and her movements became less coordinated. I let her sit on the couch with me when she didn't want to be held, and cuddled with her when she did want to be. Her breathing became a bit labored in the evening and I let her rest against my chest and cuddled her to try and comfort her. Around 10:30 that evening I felt her stretch and was relieved that she was finally feeling better, and that her breathing was finally quieting. I took me a few seconds to realize that I wasn't feeling her breath much at all. I shook her gently and said her name to get her attention. Once. Twice. A third time. But she was gone.

Usually, I am not much of a crier, but when it comes to animals I have a soft spot, so I will admit that I did cry for about an hour after she died. Partly because I felt guilty that maybe the bath had pushed her over the edge, but mostly because I didn't want her last weeks of life to be so miserable. I wanted her to be safe and warm and loved and happy before she died. Full of good memories to take with her. I wanted her to have enough good life that it would make this hard time a distant memory. Instead of being cold, hungry, thirsty, lonely, and looking for help but unable to find it. I can only imagine her going from house to house, looking for someone to help her, but at that time of year there are fewer people at the vacation homes. And even worse - what if she had found someone but they had refused to help her?

I wrapped her in a towel and, because it was beyond dark out, put her on the bed in one of the back bedrooms and shut the door. I couldn't bring myself to put her body outside for the night, all alone, but I also realized that I needed to separate her in some way from the dogs because the fleas would start jumping ship now that she was gone and I had to protect them from the fleas as much as possible. In the morning, I found a spot on the hill above the house, in the sun, with a view of the ocean and dug a hole as best I could in the rocky ground. I laid her inside and covered her back up, feeling guilty that I would be leaving her there on her own when I went back home again.

Had Kit lived, I fully intended to bring her home with us and make her a permanent member of the Unfarm. After what she had to go through, trying to survive out there on her own, looking for help but unable to find any, until me, I wanted to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that she would never have to go through anything like that again. The only comfort I could take in the situation was in knowing that she was, on her last day, warm, and safe, and very, very loved.

And so I have decided to add her, posthumously, as a full fledged member of the Unfarm family. In addition, because I was unable to save Kit, I decided to make a donation in her honor to a local cat shelter. I have recently started drawing pet portraits for friends as gifts and so I decided to give a gift certificate of a pet portrait to the cat shelter, and they would choose one of their less adoptable cats to give the certificate to. The certificate would be an added incentive for someone to adopt the cat, giving that cat a chance at the life that Kit should have had.

Kettle Corn

It has been a while since I've written anything, not so much because I have nothing to report but because I have been too busy with school and homework to find time to sit down and write. I've been short on time, long on stress, and heavy on homework. But tonight I attempted to make kettle corn and I figured I'd pass along the recipe and my thoughts on it. So here you go:

Kettle Corn

yellow popcorn kernels
vegetable oil
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
salt (I used 1/2 teaspoon)

You will need a pot with a lid, a smaller pot, a wooden spoon, and a large bowl. Pour some vegetable oil into the lidded pot, enough to cover the bottom. Add the popcorn kernels - put in enough to make a single layer on the bottom of the pot in the oil. Put the lid on and heat the popcorn over the stove, shaking the pot every five to ten seconds. The popcorn is done when it's no longer popping continuously. Pour the popcorn into the large bowl and set it aside. Combine the water, vegetable oil, and brown sugar in the small pot and heat to boiling. Once it starts boiling, lower the heat to medium and let simmer for 3 minutes. Mix the salt onto the popcorn, and then pour in the sugar mixture and toss with a wooden spoon to coat the popcorn. Let cool a few minutes and then enjoy.

Okay, so that was my first time making popcorn on the stove and it turned out pretty good - much better than the disaster I was expecting. As for the finished recipe, it wasn't exactly as kettle corn-y as I thought it would be. Not that it wasn't good - it was. I mean, how can you go wrong when you put sugar on popcorn. (Or almost anything, for that matter.) But I would describe it as being more like caramel corn than kettle corn, which could be due to a couple of factors. It could be that I didn't put in enough salt. And it would probably have been more like kettle corn if I had a made a LOT more popcorn so that each piece got a light coating as opposed to being drenched in sugar. I should also note that the popcorn was fairly sticky and messy-ish to eat, not as dry as the kettle corn I'm used to. I think that the next time I try out a kettle corn recipe I'll try one of the versions that uses regular sugar instead... I'll keep you posted on how that turns out.

And now, unfortunately, it's back to my microbiology notes - I have a midterm coming up on Tuesday and I am dreading it as the teacher gives us a study guide and then promptly tests us on material not on the study guide.

By the way, I found this kettle corn recipe here: http://www.aliciakachmar.com/blog/life/homemade-kettle-corn-cheap-and-easy/ in case you want to check out the whole thing and see the pictures that go with it for yourself.

Cross that off the list

It's done! Finally! A picture of every single animal that lives with me here on the Unfarm. Getting the pictures added to this site has been on my to do list for a few months now - I needed to add pictures of Minna and Maggie (now that they are full grown and sporting their adult plumage), as well as Maia, Jojo, Clover, and Mynxy cat. But getting the pictures was - as is customary on the Unfarm - easier said than done.

Minna and Maggie were relatively simple as they tend not to run around as much as the other animals. Not that they can't run - don't ever think that just because they have large feet designed more for swimming than mobility on land that they aren't fast - it is at times hard to outrun Maggie when she (I mean he, but it has become habit to refer to Maggie as a "she") is determined to catch up to me.

As for Mynx, I happened to catch her during a rare moment when she was not sleeping. She did, however, decide to investigate the camera and I was eventually able to get a shot of her whole face, rather than just her nose.

When it came time to get a picture of Miss Maia it took considerably longer than I had originally thought that it would as Maia was convinced I was about to deliver some cruel treatment of some kind. As a result, although she did as I asked and sat on the couch, she spent the entire time trying to avoid looking at me while trembling throughout her entire body. It may have had something to do with the fact that I often corner her on the couch or chair when it is time to clip her nails - something she (well, all the dogs actually) abhor. To be fair, I try to be as careful as possible when clipping their nails, but both Kita and Maia have black nails and sometimes accidents happen and I nick the quick.

The most difficult photos to get were the pictures of Clover and Jojo. The rabbits, while they do many, many cute things and strike numerous adorable poses, only hold those poses for approximately 2.3 seconds - not quite enough time to get the camera in position and focused. After about 10 minutes or so of taking pictures of Jojo and Clover, I had 5 decent photos to choose from, and 63 photos depicting only a blur of bunny moving across the screen.

But they're here, they're done - uploaded and titled and off of my to-do list - now all I have to do is tackle the other 374 things on my list.

Unfarm updates, for lack of the writing mood

I have been trying, on and off for the last couple of hours, to come up with some kind of amusing, fascinating, witty couple of paragraphs to post but so far I've come up empty. I've managed to come up with a few sentences on one or two different topics, but I can't seem to complete my thoughts, so rather than wait for perfection and post nothing - yet again - I will instead admit defeat and post a couple random thoughts and observations tied together under the rather vague title of "Unfarm updates, " so here goes.

Updates from the Unfarm:

It's raining. I'll allow you a moment to recover from your shock. All better? Good. As I said, it's raining. And while our garden produced, over the course of the past few months, several very large zucchinis, thirty-one pounds of beans - a mixture of both wax and green beans, a number of delicious ears of white corn (my favorite), dozens and dozens of huge scarlet runner beans (which we didn't eat as they were planted mostly for the flowers to provide food for hummingbirds and bees), a few cucumbers, many delicious basil leaves, and countless flowers; it has not, unfortunately, managed to produce the bumper crop of tomatoes that we were hoping for. I should clarify. We planted several tomato plants - a mix of romas, cherries, and heirlooms - that produced tons of tomatoes, all of which are now... green. We neither eat nor particularly like green tomatoes but it appears that we are going to be stuck with pounds and pounds of them. The rather slow start to the summer and the less than hot temperatures have resulted in a glut of green tomatoes all over the northwest and put a damper on our plans for making bruschetta and margherita pizza using tomatoes from our garden. We may try out a few recipes using the green tomatoes, or we may try to ripen the tomatoes using the technique my great-grandmother used to use: place the tomatoes into boxes in a single layer and store them under our beds. I'm not entirely sure on the reasoning behind storing them under beds, but I think it had something to do with finding a cool, dark place to ripen the tomatoes combined with the lack of storage options that occurs when two families (six people total) live in a small house with only three bedrooms. Our house is considerably larger, but even so, with the amount of tomatoes we have on our plants I suspect that we'll have boxes of tomatoes under all of the beds as well as the living room couch, the computer desk, our grandmother's armchair and anything and everything that we can stuff tomatoes under.

In addition to preventing the tomatoes from ripening, the rainy weather also means that the rabbits are stuck indoors again all day. Last winter, this was hardly worth concerning myself over but the addition of a new rabbit has, predictably, complicated matters. The old routine was for the rabbits to get time out of their cages every evening: TJ would get the first hour and a half out, then he would go back in and Suki and Jojo would be given their 90 minutes of free time. TJ and Jojo remain on less than friendly terms but have at least become accustomed to one another and, for the most part, tend to ignore each other when one or the other of them are hopping around the room. The novelty with Clover, however, has yet to wear off and rather than spend their free time doing binkies they tend to spend it fighting and scrabbling at each other through the cage bars. This is problematic for two reasons: first, it reduces the chance that the rabbits will eventually bond with each other, and secondly, this territorial behavior is often accompanied by territory marking (read peeing or leaving bunny berries on the carpet.) So the addition of one new rabbit has created a huge logistical problem if I am to keep all the rabbits apart from each other while still giving them the much needed chance to stretch their legs. At the moment I have a wire gate separating TJ from Suki and Jojo, while still giving Suki and Jo access to their cage (and, more importantly, their litter box.) TJ, who is the best behaved of all my bunnies, is allowed free access to the room, including under my art table – a privilege not usually given to the rabbits as they have too much opportunity to get into trouble under there – but, because the ducks have their bedtime set-up in front of TJ's cage, he cannot get into his cage, so his litter box has been brought out into the room. Suki and Jojo, meanwhile, are hopping up and down the hall to get their exercise, but they are not allowed into the living room (too many cords attached to expensive objects to give the bunnies free range, especially as they have already demonstrated their willingness to chew through any and every electrical cord they can get their teeth on) so I have put up an old mirror at the end of the hall to block them from accessing the living room. The reason I am using a mirror and not, say, a gate, is because the gate also succumbs to bunny teeth – I have set up the gate a couple of times only to come back five minutes later and discover the bunny where he shouldn't be, and a suspiciously bunny-sized hole in the gate that wasn't there five minutes ago.

Speaking of Clover, after having lived here for over a month now he is proving to clean up quite nicely. He has put on weight and his coat is 100% better than it was when I first found him struggling to survive starvation and coyotes in the small patch of woods at the end of the street. He is becoming quite a handsome rabbit, sleek and healthy. I will have to try to get a good picture of him to add to the blog now that he has become a permanent resident of the Unfarm.

Life has not been as smooth for another Unfarm resident. My brother has come down with a case of digestive upset. It could be giardia from drinking stream water while backpacking, but on the other hand, it could also be a particularly nasty case of Karma. The same brother that is recovering from a bout of explosive ---------- (illness specifics will be withheld to protect some of my brother's dignity, not that he ever actually reads this blog – supportive fellow that he is) promised me that we would go camping this summer but never seemed to be able to find the time to actually go. It is now mid September, mere days away from the official start of Autumn, and I have given up on us going camping this year. The karmic retribution comes in because just last week my brother was able to find the time to go off backpacking with some friends of his. He was to leave on Wednesday and return four days later on Sunday. “But,” he said, “maybe we could go camping next Tuesday and Wednesday, if I don't have too much work to do.” Come Sunday evening I received a text from him stating that he was going to stay out longer with his friends and that he would be home on Wednesday. While my brother never can seem to find time to go camping with me, as soon as his friends want to do something his schedule miraculously clears up. Amazing how that works. Needless to say, I do not feel the least bit sorry for him.

I can, however, sympathize with our chicken, Penny. It rained all day today and the sun never could manage to break through the heavy cloud bank that blanketed the sky from one horizon to the other. And while the ducks can't understand why anyone would ever want any weather than this – I mean, water actually falling from the sky, and it's everywhere! – the chickens are miserable. They spent a large part of their day standing around under the redwood trying to stay dry, hoping that perhaps, if they were lucky and Maggie wasn't around, the squirrels would drop some of their food down on the ground for them to break up the monotony of the day with. But by 6:30 Penny was already settled into the coop for the night, a good hour before dark. I don't blame her. She probably decided that it had been terrible weather all day and it wasn't going to change any time soon so she might as well go to sleep until morning... or May... whenever the weather improves. I'm tempted to follow suit and head off to bed to hibernate until spring. Unfortunately, school begins – for yet another year – for me on Tuesday. Microbiology and Deciduous Plant Materials, so hibernation isn't really an option at this point. Although, with five hours of Deciduous Plant Materials, from 8am to 1pm every Wednesday, it is a very good possibility that there will yet be some napping in my future.

Rain

It is raining out. Scratch that, it's pouring. This is the first time in a few weeks, possibly even a couple of months, that we've had such heavy rains. Normally rain at the very beginning of September would distress me, reminding me that fall, with it's near constant rain and clouds, is just around the corner. Today, however, the rain and gray skies match my mood and so it seems only natural that everything should be getting soaked. I am in a funk. A depression. All I want to do is sleep and sleep and sleep. I tried doing some artwork earlier but in this kind of a mood everything I try to do seems inferior to all the other artist's work out there, and I eventually abandoned my efforts. I know what it is I should do: I should take a shower, I should do my workout, I should ride my bike to work - for that matter I should go to work. And I will - eventually - but for now I'm too busy wallowing in my depression. Unfortunately, a funk also makes for lousy writing - for me anyway - so I don't feel up to posting stories from the Unfarm at the moment, but hopefully I will be able to shake this depression shortly and life will soon return to normal. Well, what passes for normal around here anyway.

Of cats and haircuts

Disclaimer: we would never, ever intentionally hurt any of our animals.

We are torturing our cat. We are drugging him and holding him down and threatening him with sharp implements. And yet, with all of that, we are still no match for an angry cat with flexibility, teeth, and claws on his side.

What we are actually doing is trying to cut the mats out of Aspen's hair, hence the sharp implements (although the razor we are using is actually a pet grooming tool and there is no danger of cutting Aspen with it.) The drugging is a veterinarian prescribed sedative designed to calm him down, and the holding him down is largely ineffectual. We were attempting to save Aspen the stress of traveling in the car and going to the vet's office to be groomed – and us the $150 (minimum) expense – by grooming him ourselves at home. When our vet gave us the sedative, we were told to give Aspen half of a pill and then wait for thirty minutes or so for the drug to take effect. If he was not drowsy enough after that time, we could give him the other half of the pill, but no more than that in one day. After both halves of the pill and one hour, there was no noticeable effect on Aspen. It was only once we called the vet for advice that we learned that the medication does not always have the desired effect on every cat. In fact, some cats actually have the opposite reaction and become more hyper with the medication. Just our luck, Aspen seems to fall into the second category. We tried two different medications and several different times to get rid of Aspen's mats but were eventually forced to give up and take him in to be groomed. (His belly area, where many of the mats were located, was thoroughly protected by eighteen razor sharp claws which he had no qualms about using against the hands that feed him.) We knew that he would not be happy about being groomed but we hoped that he would come to see the necessity of it and at least accept it. Knowing Aspen, we should have known better. The first thing Aspen did when I looked in his carrier at him and told him how cute he looked with his new haircut was to let out a loud noise that was some combination of a growl/hiss/high pitched yowl. Once home he promptly ran downstairs and hid under my brothers bed, refusing to come out for the next five hours. It did not help, I suspect, that when my mom saw him as he slunk out of his carrier she burst out laughing and exclaimed, “he looks so scrawny!” Granted, he did look much smaller than his usual self which is bulked up considerably by his thick coat, but I wouldn't say he looked scrawny, exactly. He was given a lion cut, which means that his body was shaved down but the hair was left on his head, tail, and arms from the elbow down.

He has had a few weeks now to recover from his ordeal and I think that, while he would prefer to have his normal hair, he has gotten used to his new look and it doesn't bother him much anymore. This change in attitude is due partly, I think, to the fact that we have been telling him over and over again how much he looks like a lion. A “big, fearsome, gorgeous lion,” and “aren't we lucky to get to live with such a handsome lion?” The copious amounts of half & half and tuna we gave him didn't hurt either. All the same, I think that everyone involved - humans and cats alike - would rather not have to go through this again any time soon.

Chocolate Chip Cookies Mini Batch

I have decided that it is time I share my absolute most favorite cookie recipe. It is actually a quarter batch of a regular recipe batch, hence the "mini." It makes around 7-9 cookies depending on the size you make the cookies, which is perfect for when you want a few cookies but don't want to make an entire batch because you just know you'll end up eating at least 25 cookies. (Or maybe that's just me - I have disgustingly weak will power when it comes to sweets.) The other reason I love this recipe is because the cookies come out a little bit crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside - yum. I should note that my mom never liked these cookies when I started making them but because she can't resist a cookie any better than I can, she would eat a couple anyway and she says now that they've started to grow on her. I made a batch a couple of weeks ago and Mom asked, as usual, if she could have one. When I mentioned that she sure eats a lot of these cookies she doesn't like she replied that "they're addicting." At any rate, try it for yourself and see if you like it. If you don't like them, at least you only have to throw out 7 or 8 cookies instead of 50. So here you go, but pay attention to the notes at the end:

Mini-batch Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup shortening (I use either Earth Balance vegetable shortening or Crisco sticks)*
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 egg *
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Stir together sugar, brown sugar, butter, egg, and vanilla. Mix well. Stir in flour, salt, and baking soda until everything is well mixed. Add in the chocolate chips at the very end. The dough will be very loose and crumbly. Scoop up a handful of dough and pack it into a ball, then flatten gently between your hands before placing on a greased cookie sheet. Bake in the oven for 5-8 minutes, or until the cookies begin to turn golden and develop cracks. Take them out of the oven and let them sit on the sheet until cooled off. Leaving the cookies on the sheet until cool lets them finish baking.

* The shortening is important in keeping the cookies from spreading out too much and becoming little pancakes. To get the half egg I use EnerG Egg Replacer powder (found in stores like Whole Foods or New Seasons around here, in the vegan food section) and simply cut in half the recipe for the one egg equivalent. It ends up being 3/4 teaspoon powder mixed with 1 tablespoon water, if memory serves. I know that it would be easier to make the cookies if the dough wasn't so crumbly, but these are good enough that I don't mind the little extra time it takes.

Lemon-Lavender Cupcakes

It's been a while since I've tested any recipes but I have finally gotten around to trying out this one, and it was pretty good. I found this recipe in Shape magazine, another one of my favorites that I've been reading for years. So here you go, enjoy - my notes are included in italics and at the bottom of the recipes in the cryptically named "NOTES" section.

Lemon-Lavender Cupcakes
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons dried lavender buds, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed and brought to room temperature (I just used whatever butter I had on hand, I have no clue if it was salted or unsalted, and I was too impatient to wait for it to get to room temperature and it seemed to turn out fine)
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg, beaten
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon lemon zest
1/2 cup lowfat buttermilk (or whatever buttermilk you have on hand)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and place cupcake liners in a 12-cup muffin pan. To make the batter, whisk together flour, lavender, baking powder, and salt; set aside.

In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer on medium speed for 3 minutes or until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, lemon juice, and zest. Beat in one-third of the flour mixture until just combined. Beat in half the buttermilk, followed by another third of the flour, then the remaining buttermilk and flour.

Fill cupcake liners about two-thirds full and bake for 24-26 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then remove and cool completely on a wire rack.

Thanks again to Shape magazine for the recipe, from the August 2009 issue

Lemon Butter Cream Frosting
1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening (I just used Crisco sticks)
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 teaspoon lemon extract
4 cups sifted powdered sugar (approximately a 1 pound bag... and I never bothered with sifting it)
2 tablespoons milk
Few drops yellow food coloring, if desired
1-2 tablespoons of lemon zest, if desired

In a large bowl, cream shortening and butter with an electric mixer. Add lemon extract. Gradually add sugar, 1 cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape the bowl often. When all the sugar has been mixed in the icing will look dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy.

If you have left over frosting after topping your cupcakes, you can store it in the fridge in an airtight container for 2 weeks. Rewhip before using.

NOTES: These cupcakes were pretty good, but if I make it again I think I'll leave out the lavender or else put less in, even though I generally like the smell of lavender. But then maybe I'm just not an eating lavender type of person so use your own judgement. And for the frosting, if you have extra left over you could either use it on some other frosting friendly baked good (cookies or cake or more cupcakes, something like that) or you could try sandwiching it between two graham crackers as a snacky thing - that's one way we typically use up extra frosting.

Another new addition

The Unfarm has another new resident. A rabbit, this time. And, coincidentally, this newcomer arrived while my parents were camping on the coast and thus out of town. Somehow I always seem to get into trouble when left to my own devices, and this time I didn't even set out to get into trouble. Admittedly, most of the trouble I get into is my own fault and, more to the point, planned specifically for a time when I am left unsupervised. This time, however, I had nothing up my sleeve. No painting the kitchen, ripping out the basement carpet, or creating murals on the laundry room walls - just a regular, uneventful weekend. (Besides, I've already done all those things.)

So, how then did I come to acquire another rabbit? It started a few days ago when I was late walking the dogs. I set out too late and ended up at the end of the street after it was dark already, which is when I saw a rabbit bolt across the street in front of us, and while we do have wildlife in the area, we do not have rabbits. Two days later, with a live trap borrowed from the Rabbit Advocates (a great group that rescues domestic rabbits, check them out at: http://www.adoptarabbit.com/) I had caught my very first rabbit in a live trap. It was a boy, as yet unnamed, he's white and orange with a scruffy coat, a bit beat up, thin, and pretty hungry. He was probably abandoned by his previous "owners" and had been fending for himself for a couple of weeks. He's lucky to have survived so long with limited food and more or less unlimited danger from coyotes, cars, and dogs.

Fortunately for him, his luck held out and he ran into me. He is, at the moment, sitting in an extra cage here in the bunny room. (I have found that, given my propensity to attract animals, it is always a good idea to keep extra cages, bowls, leashes, collars, crates and beds for when I find strays following me home.) He's been given fresh hay, food, water and a bath. He was, however, considerably less than enthusiastic about the bath but he tolerated it well and his coat seems much better now that the dirt and gunk has been washed out. He seems to like being held and petted and I have great hope that he will recover from his ordeal and flourish here. If the weeds are anything to judge by, things seem to have a habit of flourishing here on the Unfarm.