Doughnut Distractions

Well, since it was chick week, and the modern schools were taking a break, we decided it a good distraction week. My daughter LOVES homemade doughnuts, and so I finally gave in and bought some stuff to make them. We don't do doughnuts often, probably less than once a year. One reason is my general disdain for the use of shortening. I guess expeller coconut oil would work, but it would cost $20 or so for the right amount of coconut oil to fill the dutch oven to fry a couple batches of doughnuts.



The recipe is one that has been passed down from my grandmother, so is my daughter's great grandmother's. I love using old family recipes. The often don't rely on modern convenience ingredients, and that is wonderful. The old world taste is still all there too, many times lacking the massive quantities of sugar in modern recipes. I don't know how old this recipe is, since I never ask Grammy. She may have just gotten it from one of the cookbooks of her day, wonderful as they were. Here is the recipe with a change I have made - I added 1/2 tsp of baking powder to make the cake donut a little lighter.

¼ C butter ¼ tsp salt

1¼ C sugar 1½ tsp vanilla

2 eggs, beaten well 1½ squares chocolate, melted
1 C sour milk (Note 10) (or use ½ C cocoa) We use cocoa
4 C all purpose flour 1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder

Glaze (below) optional
Coconut (optional)

Cream butter and add sugar gradually while beating constantly. Then add eggs, chocolate, sour milk. Mix thoroughly.

Add flour mixed and sifted with baking soda, powder and salt.

Add vanilla and enough flour to handle mixture. Roll on floured surface to ¾ inch thick. Shape into doughnuts using doughnut cutter or making into twists, wreaths, whatever shape you desire.

Fry in hot oil, about 375°. (Cast iron Dutch oven is good for this). It takes about 6 minutes to fry the doughnuts. We actually roll them a little thinner too, probably 1/2 inch at most.

If desired you can glaze while still warm. Also, you can make chocolate coconut doughnuts by glazing, and before glaze sets rolling in coconut.

Glaze:

Mix 3 cups powdered sugar and ½ cup boiling water until smooth.

I hope the pictures are okay. I'm trying to remember to take pictures and add them, but am not a very good photographer, or very artistic. Bear with me :-)

What Says Spring to You?

Most often I hear answers like: Warmer weather, daffodils blooming, green buds on the trees, the red-breasted robin has returned, etc. Yes, those are all honorable mentions for signs of spring. But in our alternative lifestyle, nothing says spring like the disappearance of our youngest daughter on a school day.

What would make such an upstanding citizen leave her studies and just disappear? Why would her algebra be open on her desk, but her be nowhere to be found? Sure 83 acres of pure fun in the Ozarks is tempting, but that is tempting any day. This day (as on this relative day every spring) something more miraculous, spiritual and captivating happens. This is the day when the chicks start hatching!! The official onset of spring. Oddly enough, this day happened about 5 days too early this year.

It takes 21 days for chicks to incubate and hatch. We marked the calendar when our old barred rock hen started insisting the eggs under her were for her and her alone (brooding started). Well, that was exactly 17 days ago. The first chick started busting out yesterday.


So, now all things must come to a complete halt while we count and recount and investigate hourly or more. As of now, we have 7 chicks. At least 2 are black, one barred rock (black with the yellow dot), one brown, and one yellow. She was really hoping for a brown, as both her brown Sussex were hauled off by hawks. I saw the two black ones sitting in front of mom in the box. So, today is what we call, unschooling. It happens often around here, when her algebra is left behind for the things of real life learning.


More pictures of the babies.

Wireless or Landline, interesting study

Oklahoma Leads in Wireless-Only Households - Wireless-Only Growing On Map

Boy, have I been waiting 10 years for this lovely headline!!! Yes, it is lovely. I tried, as have many Oklahomans, to support the local phone companies. Unfortunately, many in real states don't understand what is happening here. You see, it cost me $25 to have my landline, monthly. Then, if I wanted to use my landline I could either pay another $30 for instate calls, or I could pay by phone call for long distance charges. You wonder what the big deal is? Many people incur long distance charges and don't mind. Well, do you incur long distance charges to call your nearest neighbor? Your child's school? You spouse's workplace? The local hospital? The local WalMart, grocery store, post office, etc? Yes, I am being serious. You can call one exchange for free, and in rural Oklahoma that means absolutely nothing, since the local exchange may or may not contain your emergency services, schools or even post office. I complained. I wrote my representatives, the Corporation Commission, all those people. Their response was always, "Your local telephone company has the lowest base charges in the nation, you should be very proud of them." Oh, yes, I bowed to the phone in worship every time I passed it. I bought a calling card and dialed a zillion numbers every time I made a call, even put the numbers in speed dial, to try to save a few pennies and be able to use that cheap phone.

Finally, one day, when I was more than usually frustrated with having to pay $25 to look at the phone and another $25 a month for internet dial-up because I couldn't call any of the free or cheap internet service numbers for free (long distance charges for any but the local phone company's internet service), it struck me. How about I check into cell service and satellite internet. So, I did. Well, a bit of number crunching led me to realize I could have phones with all of us anywhere for one price, high-speed internet service, and call anyone I want any time, while limiting access to us by those bothersome telemarketers for the SAME price I was paying for slow internet and the right to only look at the phone. YEAH!

So, that is what we did. We became one of the 1 in 4 households in Oklahoma who stopped using a landline, much to the dismay of our local phone company. See, they gave me the idea really. I was just a bit dense. I'd been receiving letters from them for months telling me not to give up my landline for a cell phone and listing all the reasons I shouldn't. You know, all those reasons were from the perspective that the landline was any use at all - that I could use it for that $25 flat fee. I don't know what planet the person writing those letters was from, but they obviously had never had to try to use the local phone service to call anyone or they would have known it cost them per call, just as they said cell phone service would. They talked about not being able to access 911, but our county was one of the first in the state to have cell coverage for 911. They talked about dropped signals, but the company I chose has amazing coverage that never drops a call if you know which phone to buy. They talked about how it would cost me to call long-distance - HUH? Cell phone plans include free long distance. So, they had me convinced. I dropped the landline.

Now, I'm gratified to see all the begging and pleading in the world has not overcome common sense. In our adventure in lifestyle, rural community living, one modern convenience is still heads and shoulders above the old way. So, if I call you from the wood shed, or chicken coop, or while I'm curled up warming myself by the wood cook stove, know that this adventure includes common sense not just hard work.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Wireless Internet

Ah, yes, the three basic tenets of the American faith. No you say? Okay, maybe not, but here in the middle of the woods, with limited access to many of the 21st Century's finer luxuries (like television - digital sucks, and phone service - have to use cells), internet does help keep us connected. And, with a laptop in the house, it is nice to not have to be physically tied to a specific wall. So, I set up a wireless router, and we've been networking for a while. Uh - oh! A new menace has moved into the neighborhood (a term I use lightly)- the unsavory neighbor. He believes that my wireless connection should be his free access to internet - MY internet. He's also a computer geek, because he easily got around my initial security, and my second line of defense. Okay, I admit, I didn't make our connection Fort Knox. No one lives within a quarter mile of us! They would have to have some serious boosting equipment to get our wireless, which barely radiates outside our four walls, and doesn't even make it to all rooms in the house.

So, our knew "Adventure" in lifestyle, is a complete understanding that there is no where to hide from thieves in America. They assume it is their right to steal, even if it means more expense and work than just accessing what they want legally. Whole psych discussion there I won't get into.

So, the week has been an adventure. First, the refrigerator went out on birthday weekend, so lots of leg work to replace that. Then, I found that someone had been using MB on our internet when none of us were online or even plugged into (or wireless on) the network. So, this neighbor who I still haven't identified, was back stealing our internet and threatening to get us throttled. See, the Thief doesn't know that we have limited MB usage. He was doing this 6 months ago, and I shut him down finally. But he's back! Now, I'm trying to figure out how to shut him down again, without having to shut us down also. I've had a few good suggestions from some great guys on tech boards. I've learned about MAC filtering, and started that only to find my neighbor knows how to clone MAC addresses and stole the laptop's. On top of all this, I'd rather be visiting my mom in another state because she isn't feeling well. I just had to give our oldest cat a steroid shot because she has developed allergies and was spasming. Spring is here, and I have seen my crocuses, so would love to be outside.

But, today, I empty the refrigerator so I can move the new one in. Have I ever told you I hate shopping? Well, 2 days this week were spent away from home (remember I live in the middle of nowhere) shopping for a new fridge, only to find most now are too tall! Today, though, that saga is over as the new fridge is on its way.

So, "Adventures in Lifestyle" has been just that this week. Between shipping fiascoes (don't even ask about FedEx. . . grrrrrrrrr) for birthdays, refrigerators, cats, internet and the usual day-to-day keeping up with the fire so we have hot water, feeding the animals, cleaning the house, doing laundry, etc., what a week. It has not been the "Adventure in Lifestyle" I really wanted - unique lifestyle which is more sustainable, peaceful, healthful and economical in a world gone mad. Instead, I feel like I've joined the insane world around me.

Now though, my weekend will start. Ah, the weekend, hubby home 3 days, lots to be done, but a change of pace none-the-less. Maybe next week I can get back to just trying to be different than the world around me. Maybe next week I can find this neighbor and stop them. Maybe next week I will pursue "Life, Liberty and Wireless Internet"

Thanks for reading and caring. I truly appreciate it. Now, my son informs me that though we have been by the feed store at least 3 times this week (just going by, not in) we need feed. Guess what? We are done going by the feed store for this week. . . . . .

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh, time for some tea - or a Bloody Mary.