As if my updating hadn’t been sporadic enough…I’m now in Costa Rica, with limited internet service.
IM IN COSTA RICA!!!!!!!!
I have to give myself a pat on the back. I’m damn proud of myself and my self actualization. Years ago I wanted to live on a dude ranch. Now I do. Years ago I wanted to travel through Costa Rica. Now I am.
I’m totally on a “I can do anything I set my mind to” high right now.
I’m going to be a millionare.
I’m going to be a millionare.
I’m going to be a millionare.
About to sit down to a breakfast of banana panckaes and tropical fruits.
Life is good.
This is Pup. Her owners left her here for a week while they went on vacation. They don’t know that I’m going to steal her.
In a perfect world this would be made with homemade pumpkin puree from homegrown pumpkins and farm fresh eggs and milk.
Still, the grocery store versions tasted pretty damn good. The taste is lighter than traditional pumpkin pie and the consistency is creamier. It’s like a rich, delicious, pumpkin pudding.
Ingredients:
* Just over 3/4 c pumpki pureee
* 2 large eggs, separated
* 6 tablespoons (lightly packed) brown sugar
* 6 tablespoons granulated sugar
* pinch of salt
* 1 1/3c milk
* 3/4 tsp vanilla extract
* 1 tbsp butter, melted
* 3 tbsp all purpose flour
* 1 pre-baked 9″ pie crust
* 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1) Preheat oven to 425*F.
2)In medium size bowl, whisk together the pumpkin and egg yolk until combined. Whisk in both sugars, and the salt, vanilla, milk, and melted butter. Then whisk flour into the mixture until smooth.
3)In another medium sized bowl, lightly beat egg whites until frothy but not stiff. Whisk them lightly into the pumpkin mixture, then pour in prebaked pie shell. Sprinkle cinnamon on top.
4) Bake pie in the bottom third of the oven for ten minutes. Then reduce the heat to 350*F and continue baking until the pie is nearly set but still moves slightly in the center, 25-35 minutes.
Then you can eat it hot, warm, or cold. I personally thought it tasted best after two days in the fridge after all the flavors had a chance to settle.
Enjoy!
Recipe stolen from: FarmHouse Cookbook by Susan Loomis. Which, by the way, if you don’t own, you should.
My favorite inert object on the ranch has to be the wood stove. As I write, I’m parked in front of it, with A Farmhouse Cookbook in front of me and a pumpkin custard pie in the oven. The world smells like pine sap, firewood, and cinnamon. Life is good.
So far today has been mostly uneventful. The skies are gray enough to discourage outdoor activity but its dry enough to make me feel guilty staying indoors. Times like this I wish I had a dog to walk to give me some motivation to get my butt outside. Times of transitional employment are strange. On one hand, I have the liberty and freedom to do ANYTHING I WANT with my day, but on the other hand, I lack the funds to do it. Funny, whenever I have a super structured schedule, I yearn for free time. I think of all the things I could do if I didn’t have this homework assignment or that job to go to. I tell myself I would take cooking lessons or try yoga or go hiking more.
And then I get free time.
And what do I do? I sit in front of a fire and read all day. Blech.
Now that I have all this free time I’m excited to go back to school and work…anything to give me that structure back and the feeling of actually accomplishing something with my day.
Not that today’s been a total waste. I took a three mile walk, held a cat, pet a puppy, went to the library (which I found out has an online spanish program!!!), got some books and movies, researched surf lessons in Costa Rica, and baked a pie. Not shabby I guess.
Pending taste test, recipe for pumpkin custard pie coming up…
Yesterday and today have been absolutely, mind-numbingly stunning. Beautiful, blue 58* days and visibility that extends to heaven. This sounds really sappy to admit, but I was actually moved to tears by the view that greeted me at the end of my driveway. This is why I stayed. Because there aren’t many places in the world where the natural splendor of your DRIVEWAY is enough to elicit an emotional response. I wasn’t the only one. Others were stopped on the road taking pictures and just…looking.
Oh, by the way, I’m going to Costa Rica in two weeks 
.
Eeeeeee so proud of Baby Baby (named so as to differentiate him from Baby). I braved the rain this morning to ride him and he was great! For as little time he has under saddle, and the lack of professional training, he was fantastic. I rode him with just a halter and he knows how to go, whoa, back up, and turn. None of it is super polished, but it’s there. Yay!
And now its only noon and I have a homemade quiche in the oven and the sun has finally come out after a misty morning. I’m going to try to spend the rest of the day outside. Maybe I can get a garden plot started for next year? I’m going to give the lasagna garden method a try. God knows we have enough leaves and horse manure around here to make fifty lasagna gardens.
That’s Baby Baby’s cute little baby baby butt on the right. Baby is on the left. They are brothers and they looooooooove each other.
A: Pumpkin apple pancakes sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.
…surrounded by all this gold.
Back in California, the dying leaves and grass always looked brown and dingy against the ashy, smoggy sky. Southern California isn’t exactly known for its glorious falls.
Here in the Rockies, it’s a completely different animal. Instead of brown and dust and mud, the world is gold and wheat and azure. It’s beautiful.
I grin like a little kid driving down the highway…the sky dark and dramatic in my rearview mirror and bright and endless in front of me. I’m flanked by yellow fields dotted with red angus and fuzzy calves and horses inspired into galloping by the brisk autumn breeze. The Colorado river is almost black with its newfound depth due to recent snowfall.
Life is beautiful.
Life is good.
Spent the day sleeping in, getting a bunch of cookbooks from the library, going on an amazon shopping spree for gardening books, buying a recipe card holder (so much better than a recipe word doc), riding baby horses, riding bikes, and finally cooking absolutely delicious potato pancakes.
I’m rich.
And….as it turns out….I’m also doing pretty well monetarily. After two years I finally met my savings account goal!
Our little ranching town is becoming downright sophisticated. Metropolitan even.
We gettin a McDonalds AND another traffic light. This brings the number of fast food restaurants up to one and the number of traffic lights up to two.
It’s funny how the long time residents see this as an encroachment of urban development on their rural community. I sympathize. I really do. I’ve seen my own little sub-ural? rurban? hometown turn into a full fledged southern california suburb and I’m sure that that transition also started with a traffic light and a McDonalds. Still, it’s hard to imagine this little town with a winter population of less than 2,000 and cows on the highway as anything more than middle of nowhere rural. And I totally understand why people want to keep it that way. Still, interesting to see people get up in arms about how this place is getting “citified”.
That said, I certainly hope these new developments aren’t a glimpse of things to come. I hope it’s not a slippery slope of McDonalds-AppleBees-strip mall. That would be tragic.
Lazy Sundays with grey clouds are the perfect time for self indulgent daydreams. Among my default daydreams are traveling to exotic countries, choosing a wedding dress, going on a cruise, having a personal chef, getting a makeover, and my most popular day dream…planning a 3 acre homesteading plot. Yes, I’m a very exciting young person.
Since I’m making up for lost time (ahem….entries) and am trying to keep my poor little blog from feeling entirely abandoned, I’ll share some of my homesteading goals. I know that I’ll have MADE IT once I achieve these…
1) Have a garden. This is probably the goal most intrinsic to self sufficiency. I have no excuses to not accomplish this since it can be done entirely in flowerpots. Still, in a perfect word I have a couple of garden beds which bless me with tomatoes, summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, and potatoes.
2) Chickens. I want to start my morning with fresh eggs.
3) Milk a goat.
4) Knit a pair of tube socks.
5) Make honey, goat milk, and lavender/mint soap.
6) Have a meal where the majority of the ingredients come from my backyard.
7) Can. Something. Anything.
8. Play guitar outside on my porch.
9) Make my own cheese.
10) Make my own hard cider.
This is Kinetic. He's my 14 yo TB and a constant teacher of humility. He trots like a dream and canters like a cow. He doesn't know it yet, but I'm going to try to rope of him this summer.
This is Cowboy the hamster. I bought him in Missouri on a road trip. He's a cheap friend and kept me company through twelve states. He's currently the extent of my fiber stock.
This is Uno Mas. Uno is the lone survivor of a bear attack. If she were a human she'd be a pissed off ninja that never slept and instead plotted revenge all night. I respect her more than I do some people.
