Miscellaneous November

The months just fly by, but I think we’re almost caught up again. Here are a couple random pictures of things we did this month.

First Thanksgiving feast – and this is my pecan pie.

I got mountain bike shorts and I love them. Nice and bright.

Dude likes to sleep – and snuggle.

The fire is now always going and Dude has rediscovered the beauty of the heat.

Dude likes to come with – wherever we go.

I made thanksgiving cards for some of my clients. This is one of my favs.

It snowed.

I wrapped presents with Boulder Weekly (newspaper). This was an accident, but pretty funny nonetheless.

Dude snuggles some more – on Erik’s lap.

Building a Snowman

We’ve gotten a little snow, but none had really stuck around. Then we got a bigger fall, and it was perfect snowball or snowman consistency. We took Dude for a hike and Erik decided he wanted to build a snowman on the trail. It ended up being quite fun. Here are a couple photos of our creation.

Erik and Dude playing

Beautiful calm day

Let the rolling begin

Dude was helping find sticks for the arms and such

Mr. Snowman

With a pine branch hat (or hair)

I wouldn’t call him cute, but I like him

Erik liked the pipe

Spot the coyote!

Let’s play a fun game of spot the coyote. This picture is out the bedroom window. Hint: There is a coyote in this picture.

Happy birthday to Erik with a poppyseed cake

For birthdays, my family makes a wonderful poppyseed cake. I didn’t take a liking to it until later in life and now love it. Erik didn’t care much for it at first, but now he’s a believer as well. His birthday was November 11th (31!) and he requested a cake of his own. It was my first attempt at cooking it all by myself. I did have help from my faithful sister (she supervises the kitchen activities) and we had had a practice run with mom and gram in Sept. so I was feeling good about it.

The cake was a success, even though we only had 9 inch pans when 8 inch are preferred. The cake was then bigger and thinner. I cooked them a bit too long, so the edges were a bit hard, but overall I’m happy with the first try – and at altitude for that matter. We made the cake at Mel’s since she lives at a mile high – nearly 3,000 ft lower than our house and altitude does funny stuff with cooking/baking.

The filling was really successful. The thickness was perfect and it was yummy. I didn’t get the layers even, but for a first try, again I was pleased.

Cake assembled

The hardest part about the cake was letting everything cool before putting it together. I get why my grandma often pushes it here, but my mom’s stern warning was that if you do it too soon, the cake will fall apart. I couldn’t have that happen, but we had dinner plans and the cake was coming with us so I had to get moving. We decided a mountain bike ride midday was in order, so the cake got pushed back!

Next came the frosting. The usual frosting is a box mix thing, but apparently it’s hard to find. We didn’t try too hard, but instead went for a traditional cake frosting, but the whipped version since the frosting my mom and gram use is whipped. It ended up tasting very similar to what they use and much easier. I didn’t realize how hard it’d be to frost! Too much pressure and cake crumbs mixed it and getting all sides was a challenge. I think I could’ve gone heavier on the frosting too, but I’ll remember that next time.

Frosting in process.

Ta-da!

Erik liked it and that’s all that matters!

 

Moose Sightings!

Last month we went for a leisurely Saturday morning hike at the top of Caribou Rd. We live along the road, about two miles from town. If you continue, the houses get fewer, the road gets bumpier and 15 minutes or so later, the road ends at a parking lot with lots of trails. We’ve hiked up there a few times but the road is so nasty, we don’t do it very often. I’m sure glad we went on this day though!

We didn’t hike long, maybe 30 mins out and 30 back, but not long into the hike, Dude took off toward the woods and stopped and stared. That’s when we realized there was movement and saw the outline of a moose head in the brush. I called Dude back and he listened (he actually listened when there was a moose in front of him!). He came back, we leashed him and the moose quickly trotted away. It was a momma and baby. We let them go for a bit then walked around a little trail to see where they went. By then they were out a ways in a meadow and we could barely see them. Our moose experiences thus far were limited to two walking in our hard on a raining, dark night (so couldn’t see much) and a baby running across the road in front of us on bikes, but it happened so quickly that we didn’t see much. So, this was pretty cool.

Then, a little further up the trail, there was a clearing of trees near the trail looking out into a meadow. I think it was Erik who noticed the two males starring at us. We were far enough away to be safe, but moose are big and scary so we didn’t want to overstay our welcome. We watched for a bit from the trail and they were watching us back. Luckily dude didn’t see them and trotted back to us wondering why we stopped. We leashed him again, watched for a bit and then moved on (see pics below). Four moose on one short hike was pretty amazing.

Beautiful views.

Erik looking all handsome

More views

Moose!

Moose again!

I love the blue sky.

Cooking a Lamb

We had a meat CSA this summer, meaning we bought into a farm share for meat. Each week we went to the farm and picked up our share of the meat that was processed that week. We had whole chickens, beef, pork and at the end of the season, lamb. They emailed us saying we had 9 pounds of lamb to pick up. Time to find some recipes!

We did lamb chops that were just ok. Then we had a roast, leg I think. Here is what we did with it:

Made some cucumber sauce, bought some pita, feta, spinach and peppers.

 

 

Finished meat – then sliced

Assembled – lamb, spinach, cucumber sauce, feta cheese and diced green peppers.