Pictures of Receding Snow, Two Recipe Reviews, Theme Song HAWMC #11

Today's the "Theme Song" day on HAWMC. Poignant and funny for me given that in my last post I mentioned how big a part of my life music was back in the day and how little part it plays anymore. Doubly poignant because it's been a horrendous and stressful couple days. I've had overloaded semesters before, and as the end approaches they get harder, and my coping mechanisms get more skewed. Our Anchorage trip brought some of that home in scary ways, plus the travel itself is long...

But enough of that! I have some gorgeous pictures of our springtime and our drive to Anchorage to share, and a couple recipe reviews, as well as a happy theme song I managed to find.

So much gorgeous snow still on the Kenai mountains...

But the road is completely clear of snow!

...and on the southfacing mountain slopes lower down, the snow is mostly gone! The alder tips are all red, and the birches are getting ready to bud too.

The night before we left for town, we had a big moose visitor again. This one is a cow, and she looks to be in good shape!

While we were on the road, the snow melted steadily back home. Here's the view from our cabin door--that field of snow is almost gone, running down the bluff toward the ocean as fast as it can go.

And look at this grass--it's found a southfacing rock near the edge of the bluff, warmed by the sun, baked by the rock--tall and green and thriving!

OK--what would my theme song be for this blog, for my health issues, for this space?

While I was lying awake last night, I puzzled over that. I'd love to write my own song, but wasn't in a space to do it last night. I don't listen to many songs much and don't have a very up-to-date internal jukebox. I found myself going back to the nursery rhymes, looking for something happy, but that encapsulated the rollercoaster fact of my life, the cycles, the change.
I ended up with a Hebrew nursery rhyme! I wish I could reproduce the melody as well, because it's so happy! It also involves word-play, which is right up my alley. Here it is:

Uga uga uga, ba ma'agal nachuga
nitztovev kol ha'yom
ad asher nimtza makom
la'shevet la'kum, la'shevet la'kum
la'shevet ve la'kum

And it means--well, "uga" means "cake," but it's also related to the words for "circle" and "twirl around," and it's often sung at kids' birthday parties. So it means,
"Cake, cake cake! We'll twirl around in a circle.
We'll dance around all day long
until we find a place
to sit down, to stand up, to sit down, to stand up,
to sit down and to stand up."

And of course you do the movements as you sing the song!

Speaking of cake, I tried out a couple other bloggers' cakey recipes recently. I'm incapable of following a recipe precisely, and actually I love that when I review other people's recipes, because if it doesn't come out well, I can blame myself, but if it comes out wonderfully, I can credit them for the idea!

First up, I tried out Evan's Lemon cupcakes when Terry was here this weekend--I just had a hunch that she'd really appreciate the lemony coconutty action. I billed them as breakfast muffins, and made them without the frosting, and with less sugar and some erythritol, and used four regular eggs and one small rather than two eggwhites and four eggs.

I swore I took a photo, but apparently I didn't! So my major fail is that I didn't take a picture of these, but they were beautiful! I didn't eat any, but Terry loved them--and Phil did too, which was an unexpected bonus! Thanks so much, Evan!

Second--and this time I did manage to take pics--I tried out Chocolate Covered Katie's Deep Dish Cinnamon Roll Pie. I think I've posted some bean-based cake recipes here before, but hadn't made one for ages, and was excited to try the combination with gf oats--love cinnamon too, of course. My tweaks for this one were: I used great northern beans (which are white beans, I guess). I cut the coconut oil down to just 2 tablespoons (just because); I replaced the sugar with a cup of erythritol and half a teaspoon of stevia, which was sweeter than I needed, but I was making it to share. I baked it in a 9x9, which may not be the prettiest presentation, but it was easier for me to cut into equal pieces so that my calorie-counting math would actually mean something!

The top came out a bit dry and flakey--I've had that happen before with bean-based cakes, and I suspect that my reducing the fat encouraged the tendency, as well as our tiny toaster oven. Otherwise, though, moist, delicious, subtle texture, lovely!
I didn't go to the Easter gathering with all our friends because of my 'flu, but one of my favorite people is on a diet right now and often skipping beloved dessert, so among the various goodies I sent to the party with Phil, I made sure to send some of the cinnamon cake with a note about just how diet-friendly it was!

According to Phil, it was very well received. Thank you, Katie!

Whew! That was a long post! What would your theme song be?

Phil's Stairway To Heaven, Wildlife Sightings, and a Whole Different Approach to Dinner

Phil's Stairway
I hope everyone's having a great weekend. As the photos suggested, we have snow again here. Full moon-swollen tides and icy beaches thereafter: a whole new spin (or skid) on core strength-building.

It's been three and a half weeks since Phil's trabeculectomy...

...and today, his eye looks like this:

He's seeing out of it better too. He's been such a trooper, patiently waiting for things to get better, but for such a visual person, and a person who's been blessed his whole life with a body that does basically whatever extreme stuff he desires, it's been a testing time.

Having been given the all-clear to perform his usual level of physical exertion, he took advantage of the break in the wind and lesser amounts of sea ice yesterday to launch his boat...

...to go load up a staircase he'd seen washed up several miles up the beach. Man, that boat rides low in the water! Are you sure it can hold a staircase??

Well, he came home with it safe and sound, dry enough and quite pleased, and I failed to get a pic until we'd gotten it home and it had been snowed on. It may be just what we need for our storage 'bunker!'

Wildlife
Here is Phil's 'pet:' fire. Our burnables (paper packaging, old mail, etc): he loves tending fires. They're cheap to feed, you don't need a vet and it's easy to start another one.

And fire in snow looks special...

We saw this moose down close to the beach when I picked up Phil and the staircase. They are such incredibly hardy creatures: what a life!

 And earlier in the day, we got pretty close to this eagle. I love watching eagles, and although I'm not much of a photographer, I enjoy photographing them so much that I could probably devote a whole post to it at some point.

A Different Approach to Dinner
We had friends come to dinner last night. Although, as I've mentioned before, I'm loving the encouragement to make 'Ela-friendly' party foods, and that marzipan last week was one of the most wonderful things ever (I'm so sad the leftovers are all finished),

I'm also currently in a funk about food in general. And in addition, most things--like marzipan--that I really love, Phil doesn't care for. It makes me sad to make something that I think is special but that he doesn't appreciate. I'd rather make something he likes! So for last night, I decided that I'd go with salad, which is always my staple and always good...

...roasted veggies (parsnips, yams, brussels sprouts, leeks par-boiled, sprinkled with salt and roasted with a bit of coconut oil). Last summer I couldn't have digested these, and am grateful for the progress that's allowing me to enjoy them. They taste as sweet as dessert to me and as I overcome carbophobia (more on this soon), I can see them becoming a staple.

Sorry about the belated photo after they were almost all gone!

I also served a bear roast, garlic and ginger with a broth reduction with caramelized onions and cranberries (not pictured, but very well-liked), toasted home-made sourdough bread with a dip I made from roasted bell peppers (not for me, obviously!), scallions, kalamata olives, a dash of parsley and cheese (also not pictured, also very well-liked)...

...And, for dessert, I used someone else's recipe!

I made Evan the Wannabe Chef's banana-chocolate chip blondies with peanut butter frosting

Ordinarily, I don't enjoy making 'regular' desserts as much as raw desserts. I don't feel my creativity being in play so much, I hate getting butter anywhere near me, getting flour on me is a bad idea too. But these were fun, quick and easy, and worked just as Evan's recipes promised. And yes, I did pretty much follow the recipe, which I'm almost incapable of doing, normally. Thanks so much, Evan!

Best of all, unbeknownst to me, one of our guests was a huge peanut butter fan. And everyone really liked it. I just love it when I fix something that turns out to be someone's favorite without having known it ahead of time. As a food-preparer, it feels like a special blessing.

It didn't bother me at all not to have dessert: I had another piece of roasted yam. I don't know if I can make that my general m.o., never to have any treats. Much of my life, that's how I've done it, but that marzipan last week may compel me toward a more Dionysian mode...

What's a special blessing to you? And what wildlife do you see as you go around town?
much love