We made this Portuguese Broa recipe from The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day. It’s a great bread, excellent crumb, very good loaf, good with almost any main course and outstanding by itself, toasted with some butter.
Month: March 2014
Escape artist no more
I had real trouble with Achilles being a roaming dog for the first year-plus I owned him. That’s how I came to own him in 2006, he was picked up as a stray and his people never claimed him from the shelter.
Achilles escaped several times from the house, the backyard. Once I put he and Stella in a neighbour’s backyard because I had to leave while people worked on my house. Over an hour later I got a call from the worker that Achilles was sitting on my front porch. Once he broke through the screen on the storm door without my knowing; I walked into the living room and saw his one-of-a-kind tail disappearing behind a neighbour’s hedge.
Some people would have understandably given up on such a roamer and given him back to the shelter, or done what his previous owners had done – never claimed him. I could not, would not, do that because he was an exceptional dog in so many other ways.
Yesterday morning I scraped frost off the car’s windows and unbeknownst to me the gate had not latched. I turned and there was Achilles watching me. Even while I grabbed the camera and photographed him standing there Achilles didn’t approach the gate let alone dash through.
Achilles is an even more exceptional dog now. Not only is he marvellous on leash, loves meeting people, is great in the car, he no longer is compelled to roam. We are so very blessed for, with, his presence, and that it was seemingly meant to be.
Poignant
This was left in one of the empty houses we examined a couple weeks ago. What is, was, its story? Why is it there? Was it forgotten, deliberately left, cast off as no longer needed or wanted?
We can spend a great deal of time pondering some mysteries, trying to bring reach closure, yet they are destined to always remain so. Sometimes we have to accept mystery as closure.
Kendal, you don’t have a drivers licence
Empty house, Lambton County
Pleasant surprise
When we bought green onions we frequently wound up composting part of the bunch. We buy bags of onions because it’s cost-effective. Often though we don’t use every one in time and have to compost the last few. Faye had an idea.
When these became undesirable to eat she put them in containers with a little water covering just the bottom of the bulb. After several days they sent out green shoots, so Voila! Fresh, homegrown ‘green’ onions and just enough to use before they turn into compost food.
Entangled in a web
We drove into Chatham today on errands. We took the cameras along because 1) one never knows what one might see and 2) we thought we might see Tundra Swans, which are starting to pass through our area. Just inside the north edge of the city a Bald Eagle flew over. Not a place I expected to see one. By the time I careened to a stop, Faye turned the camera on and handed it to me, and I bailed out of the car, the eagle had perched in a tall tree behind a web of twigs and limbs.
Double duty
After last week’s snowfall, these limbs of our Manitoba Maple caught a great deal of the wet, heavy snow, which in turn caught the morning sun. The artistic arrangement also caught my eye,
The couch cushion spontaneously exploded. Honest.
As the time stamp reveals this was taken years ago. Stella was not a year old and I had not yet given her a job so she gave herself one. After a few more similar episodes we embarked on much training – basic and advanced obedience, Canine Good Citizen, agility, lots of power walks, exposure to many different experiences (including going into my credit union) – Stella became a pretty good dog. Not a perfect dog, a good enough dog. She’s remained a good enough dog ever since, one I am happy to own, pleased to have shaped into what she is today.
Abandoned? Perhaps not.
Though humans no longer live here, swallows appear to find an abandoned home quite suitable.
previouslytexan 