thisendoftheswamp

Saturday evening, I made a lemon-almond cake to take to church for coffee hour. I think somebody didn’t want me to do it.

The recipe was straight forward and not the least bit difficult, but I seemed to hit one snag after another. The biggest problem was that the recipe called for ground almonds rather than almond flour. My Oster has a small, maybe one-cup, container that can be used for small jobs, so I put my 1/2 cup of almonds in there, screwed on the lid and pushed the button. I did not have the lid on tight, and the vibrations unscrewed the entire business, sending almonds everywhere. To make matters even worse, flying bits of machinery knocked an egg on the floor.

What to clean first? We don’t have a dog, so the egg was my job. I picked up the pieces of shell, scraped up what I could, and poured salt on the rest, then grabbed a broom and started cleaning up the nuts. I found almonds all over the counter, behind the mixer and under the fridge. I’ll probably still find more in a week or so.

12 tablespoons unsalted butter

1-1/2 cups sugar

Grated zest of two lemons

3 large eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1-1/2 cups flour

1/3 cups finely ground almonds (from 1/2 cup whole almonds)

1-1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 350. Butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan.

Combine the butter, sugar, and lemon zest in a large bowl. Mix until smooth and well blended. Add the eggs and vanilla, and beat until pale and fluffy – at least 2 minutes.

Add the flour, almonds, baking powder, and salt and add to the butter mixture. Beat for a few seconds and then add the milk. Beat for 30 seconds or so, just until well mixed. Pour into the prepared pan and bake at 350 for 55 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes, the remove the rim from the pan. Invert the cake onto a plate, remove the bottom of the plate, then invert again onto the wire rack.

Lemon Syrup:

1/3 cup lemon juice from those lemons

1/2 cup sugar

Combine the lemon juice and sugar in a small saucepan. Heat, stirring often, just until the syrup is hot and the sugar has dissolved. Using a pastry brush, brush the syrup all over the top and sides of the cake. It seems as if there’s an awful lot of syrup, but the cake will absorb it all. Slide the cake onto an ornamental plate and let it cool completely, at least 2 hours. Just before serving, sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar. It you sprinkle on the sugar too soon it will melt into the lemon glaze, so wait until just before serving the cake or dust it again if necessary.

I stopped at Costco the other day, and one of the stalls was passing out cheese crackers. Gouda cheese, to be exact, but she kept calling it “good-a”. I pointed out that the name is “gow-da”.

“Ou” is pronounced “ow”, and she just looked at me. “Our hound found a pound of gouda.”

The customer standing beside me started to laugh. “I’ll bet you used to be a teacher!”

“Guilty as charged.”

Always a show-off.

A few days ago, we received a very official envelope from Harford County Government. Good Heavens, now what have we done?!

A dear friend from church had sent this in, totally unbeknownst to The Squire and me.

When I asked her what we had done, she said, “Everything! You two did so much – keeping the property looking good, teaching Sunday school, volunteering at Jerusalem Mill, helping with computer glitches. . . Do you remember what the bishop used to call you? We just didn’t know how much you did until you couldn’t do it anymore.”

Ah, yes. Bishop Sutton once called me the “Dean” – Doing Everything As Needed. At one point I was a crucifer/chalicest, lay reader, usher, sang in the choir and taught Sunday school. Not necessarily all at once, but there were some Sundays when I’d have to hurry and get robed because whoever was supposed to be the crucifer didn’t show up.

It was an honor for Carol to nominate us, an honor to even make it through the selection process, narrowing umpteen nominations to a dozen, and now we shall see what happens. I honestly don’t think we’ll win, but we shall see. I’ll let you all know on the 16th,

And we all know how that worked out.

I found this on the church parking lot Sunday afternoon and assumed it was an eagle’s wing. We have a goodly number of Bald Eagles in the area, and I figured I could find a way to work it into my Colonial Life program – using it as a brush or something.

As soon as The Squire saw it, he told me to get rid of it. “That is from a vulture, not an eagle.” Because of their diet, vulture’s meat is toxic, and should never, ever be eaten, even if you are starving, and obviously handling the carcass is dangerous. I didn’t know the poison extended to even handling the “loose” body parts.

So – I took a picture and then trotted it out to the dumpster.

Or maybe not. These were originally $4.99 but are now on sale for 49 cents.

Now, I’ll grant you, these are almost 2 inches, gimme a break! Nobody, and I mean nobody will pay $5 for four ice cubes.

We had a lollapalooza of a thunderstorm last night. Tremendous winds tore down trees and branches all over Joppa. Most of the traffic lights were out when we went to church. Sunday morning is pretty sparce where traffic is concerned, and most people were treating intersections as four-way stops, which kept things moving smoothly.

One tree had fallen across the road to church, and a crew was just finishing cutting it into manageable chunks.

The power had gone out here in the complex around 7:00 last night but came on briefly for a while later. I was “doing my legs” when the power went off for the second time, so I just said “fuhgeddaboudit it” and went to bed a little after 9 PM.

When we got up this morning, we had power in some parts of the unit, but not in others. My bedroom was fine, but The Squire’s bedroom had no power at all. Both bathrooms had lights, but the sockets didn’t work, so I couldn’t do my hair. Thank heavens, the stove and fridge worked and when I pushed the button on the mixer, which is on the opposite side of the kitchen it turned on, but the dishwasher, which is next to the mixer, didn’t work. We had visions of coming home to wash a small mountain of dirty plates and pots. The A/C was also out of commission. Oddly enough, the living room and dining room were fine – lights and outlets all in working order.

We went to IKEA for breakfast, swung by Costco to get gas in his van, and then rode past the old homestead to see how things were going there. Looked pretty good from the road. No large trees were down, so we left them to it. When we got home, all systems were “go”. I turned on the dishwasher and went to bed for a couple of hours. I might have gone to bed early last night, but Boris decided 4 AM was time to get up. I didn’t agree with him, but there’s no point in arguing with a cat.

Did my legs and knitted from 4:30 to 5:30, then tried to get another hour of shut-eye, but no dice, which explains my after-church nap. It is now pushing 7, so I’m going to try this all one more time and then see about some shut eye.