A City On A Hill

Well, I’ve been busy over at my other blog, which I just moved to a new server. My own server. Having been a blogger for so long, I thought it was time to make that move to my own server.

My latest post:

Living Learning Moments Meme: 12-05-12

Ya’ll are welcome to stop by and ‘catch up’ with me over there!

as ever,
-Ra’chel

Mrs. P and her children came by earlier in the afternoon, and stopped by for a few moments. She had brought us a gallon of milk and some bread her oldest daughter had made. They invited us to come over later if we wanted to, and so after awhile, we took a walk and went to their house for the evening. It was jolly fun. I took the camera along so I could snap some photos.

Samo and Lu were ready to go before anyone else, so I amused them by taking their pictures. Aren’t they sweet?!

this is the field at the top of our road. usually, there is a couple cows or a pair of horses in the field. the horses nor the cows were there this time tho. I tried getting a panorama shot but I couldn’t get it to match up. I’ll try again sometime.

beautiful trees. they have cut some of them down, but there is still a good bit left to get some photos of. I need to go during the early hours when the sun is out and I can actually take some nice ones of them.

A little farther down the road, and you’ll see this:

and look to the left, you’ll see this:

and back down towards home is this view:

hidden among the trees were two big white bulls. one was just lazily munching on the grass…

this one wanted to play hide and seek with me. you think he is hidden enough?

then he wandered off to go find some more to eat, in the trail of the other one.

the light was fading, so it made the photo blurry:

when we got to the P’s house, I always linger a moment at the gate. the flowers that overhang are so pretty and welcoming. I love flowers that do that. they make the house seem so much more inviting.

aren’t they pretty?

before I went into the house, I went around the house to get some photos of the natural pretties that grow in their yard. first there were these purple flowers. they always remind me of someone singing if you look at them straight-on. don’t they?

then there were these:

I don’t know what they are, but they sure are interesting.

Mrs. P, of course, wanted us to stay for dinner. Helena had made eggs for egg salad, on homemade bread, of course. Mrs. P also made us something we never had before: spring rolls.

they were interesting… yep.

Samo enjoyed a spoon of peanut butter while we waited for dinner to be done. he greatly enjoyed that.

Hannah and Helena made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for dessert. [ecstatic] perfect way to end an evening.

but not quite, because Mrs. P made us expressos! my very first one… it really just tasted like super strong coffee with a bit of flavoring and milk in it. But I liked it. It was good. she tried to do a pretty design on each of them, but she said she needed to practice again. So I guess I could help with that.

unfortunately, the photo I have won’t upload for me… soooo, sorry.

hope you enjoyed the post and the photos…

as ever,
-Ra’chel

.sheer goodness.

I love English muffins, and without an oven for the past, oh, say month and a half to almost two months, I’ve been making quite a few of them. First it was the sourdough English muffins; I actually have a better liking for those than the regular yeast ones, because I love all things sourdough! I decided to do a little researching on the whole English muffin thing when I took these photos, and found out some interesting things.

nummy nommy nummy nommy

Well, English muffins are really the American version of the English crumpet… altho some sources say that the English muffin is English and some say it isn’t. So, I guess it is a disputable fact. I know crumets are English. Sort of like French toast isn’t really from France I guess. I don’t know. All I know is that I love these little round flatbreads, toasted with butter melting on top, or with mashed avocado and lettuce on tops with potatoes and eggs, that’s all I know.

So here’s the recipe I use for english muffins. Quick, easy and not that difficult at all.

English Muffins
yield – about a dozen muffins
1 package active dry yeast/k2-1/4 tsps – you could instant yeast if you wanted ton
1 cup warm water
3 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup shortening/olive oil/sunflower oil/coconut oil
2 tbsps. honey
1-1/2 tsps. salt
cornmeal/flour

Dissolve yeast in warm water in a medium-large mixing bowl. Stir in flour, shortening, honey and salt until water is absorbed and dough cleans the sides of the bowl.  Turn dough onto lightly floured surface; knead lightly until it is easy to handle, 5 – 10 minutes. yeah! give those arms a workout! Roll out to 1/4 an inch thick, adding a little flour as needed, and then using a floured biscuit cutter or in my way, a mason jar ring, and cut out 3-1/2 inch rounds.

Sprinkle ungreased cookie or baking sheet with the cornmeal. cornmeal here is a little expensive, and we hardly ever have it, so I use flour. just enough to prevent it from sticking while it rises, but not enough to make a big difference in the pan. Place them about an inch apart on the sheet; sprinkle tops with cornmeal. or in my case, a little dusting of flour. Cover and let rise 45 minutes to an hour. It’ll be all puffy looking and you can touch it and leave a mark in it.

Heat an ungreased griddle, or if you’re like me and don’t own one, heat up your 10-inch iron skillet to very hot, then turn it to low. When it’s all heated, put in as many rounds as will fit in comfortable to the pan. Be careful when you put them in, so as not to let much of the air that has accumulated in them out. Cook until they are a deep golden brown and then turn over and brown the other side. Serve them split, with butter or jam, toasted or not. The easiest way to split them is with a fork, so I’ve found.

I really like flatbreads, and these, when split, are more like an actual piece of sandwich bread. You can use them for sandwiches, for egg salad, tuna salad, chickens salad, as hamburger buns, BBQ anything, or a turkey sandwich. Ok, I’m getting hungry now!!!!

As I hinted to above, one of my favourite ways of eating them is this: toast it until it’s crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Mash about 1/4 of an avocado, put it on top of the muffin, salt it, cumin it or add some cayenne if you want. Then, take some potato cubes, fry ‘em up a little bit, then put some eggs in them and scramble them. Then, top it on the avocado muffin. I like to add some lettuce leaves to the top of it, and eat it sort of like a pizza. It is yummy yummy in my tummy tummy.

So you should totally make some of these English muffins, or the sourdough ones. Yeah. Do that. You won’t regret it!

as ever,
-Ra’chel

As promised, the other photos from the other day.

a prong off the barbed wire fencing. all the fences have them, and boy do they hurt!

branches in the sky!

the fence line for the cow pasture.

some natural prettiness.

…write me a poem…

the tops of the trees that are scarcely touched with leaves.

as ever,
-Ra’chel

Well, due to some badgering about some photos of Pearl the Goat [hehe!] I decided to go out to the field and take a few shots of her to satisfy my brother-in-law’s wanting to see some. So, Isaiah, I hope you enjoy these photos.

click on photos for larger view.

She was eating out in the cow pasture [a bigger photo of that a little farther down there!]

Then she wanted to go home… I found out later she wanted water.

But first, a detour down the roads a ways to eat some of the nommy nommy grass.

*munch munch*

*eat eat eat*

She loves to eat that grass!

“Hey… how ya doin’?”

Now that those are out of the way, I’ll show you some of the photos I took.

#1. the beautiful scenic view of the cow pasture. Awesome isn’t it? I was SO proud of myself for taking that photo!

#2. the view on the left hand side of the above photo, of the road.

#3. Some of the wild culantro we glean from the fields and by the pasture:

I hate the smell of the plant; makes me wanna puke! but it’s good for you so I eat it when sick people [i.e. Jocelyn and Mom. ] put it in my food. Ew.

#4. I saw this thistle-like flower and thought it was pretty. We had a tone of thistle plants at home, but they hada purple flower. I can’t remember the name of it.

#5. The ‘shortcut’ that I call the path. I took another panorama view, only using two photos this time, of the little path:

It runs through the field on the side of the house. I like that path.

#6. The sun was in the western sky, and the road was half shadowed.

#7. The guanacaste [gwahn-ah-cahst-ay] tree is getting green again. It was like that when we first got to this house at the end of January last year too. I think it has some more buds on it right now than it had then; maybe it was late in growing its leaves last year.

Samo wanted to go out to the field with me, but I told him he couldn’t. Mainly because he was pantless. O.O So I promised him a photo when I came back.

Ain’t he sweet?! Can’t resist that grin!

*goober*

I have some more photos of different natural things, such as trees, which I will put up sometime later this week. Hope you all enjoyed the photos; I enjoyed getting outside with the camera again. Thanks for the motivation. Photography is awesome.

as ever,
-Ra’chel