Today's wikiHow of the Day

How to Plait a Horse's Tail - wikiHow

Just in case you were wondering...........

Wonderful Wednesday Wrecipes

I came across this recipe in my weekly King Arthur newsletter, and then The Pioneer Woman also featured a similar recipe on her blog the same week. I don’t know how hers came out, but these were great! They were moist, dense, and indeed, tasted like a plain donut! Don’t skimp on the nutmeg- that’s the source of the secret flavor crystals! Also, more than a few of the reviews on the K.A. recipe indicated that by baking these in mini-muffin tins resulted in spot-on donut-hole replicas. I baked mine in a traditional size muffin tin. If you decide on the minis, you’ll have to adjust your baking time/temperature.

Donut MuffinsMakes 14 muffins

Batter

• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1-1/4 teaspoons ground nutmeg
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2-2/3 cups flour
• 1 cup milk

Topping

• 3 tablespoons melted butter
• 3 tablespoons super fine (or granulated) sugar
• ½ tsp cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Lightly grease a standard muffin tin(s). Or line with paper or silicone muffin cups, and grease the cups with non-stick vegetable oil spray; this will ensure that they peel off the muffins nicely.
2. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, cream together the butter, vegetable oil, and sugars till smooth. Add the eggs, beating to combine.
3. In another bowl, stir the baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, salt, and flour with a whisk. In a measuring cup, add milk and vanilla. Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour and making sure everything is thoroughly combined.
4. Spoon the batter evenly into the prepared pan, filling the cups nearly full.
5. Bake the muffins for 15 to 17 minutes, or until they're a pale golden brown and a cake tester inserted into the middle of one of the center muffins comes out clean. Remove them from the oven, and let them cool for a couple of minutes, or until you can handle them.
6. While they're cooling, melt the butter for the topping (this is easily done in the microwave). Mix the 3 TBSP sugar with the cinnamon. Use a pastry brush to paint the top of each muffin with the butter, then sprinkle with the cinnamon-sugar. Or simply dip the tops of muffins into the melted butter, then roll in the cinnamon-sugar. Serve warm, or cool on a rack and wrap airtight. Store for a day or so at room temperature.

The ones on the left were coated with real sugar; on the right with Splenda substitute.

Yum! Perfect for a Sunday breakfast with coffee!

This’ll be me & my grandkid someday….

Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty from Darragh O'Connell on Vimeo.

What I did on my 4-Day Weekend…

besides shovel horse poop and sweat my brains out:

Here’s the start of my July ornament:

“Swirly Snow” by Whispering Winds Designs. And yes, I have to get this done by the end of the week. I’ve already admitted to being a charter member of Procrastinators Anonymous.

Quaker Halloween:

I didn’t work on it all week, just at S & B. Speaking of which: here’s what Joanne cooked up for snacks last week:

Paula Deen’s “Not Your Momma’s Banana Pudding”. It was very tasty!

Last but not least, Garden Grew:

Halfway done! Here’s another shot:

Close up of where I left off on at the start of the second half:

Here’s my floss storage system for this project. A large Darice box to hold all the colors (80-ish I think?), and a small box to hold all the bobbins for each individual page. I swap out the colors I need for each page from the bigger box to the smaller. Some colors stay in the box from page to page. It takes a bit of time, but this system has been working just swimmingly because it cuts down on the rummaging for each particular bobbin.

Back Again....almost...

I;ve been barnsitting for the past 4 days; I have Garden Grew photos and Quaker Halloween and my July ornament and a sweaty Tshirt. I was going to say sweaty armpits, but thought Tshirt sounded more lady-like. 'Cause I'm all about the etiquette.

Yeah....rrriiiighttt!!!

Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom

Still no real cooking for WWW; here’s a link to the next thing I want to try from King Arthur flour:

KA Donut Muffins. The reviews suggest making them in mini-muffin cups so that they really do taste like donut holes.

Back to my post title:

Yesterday I heard a rough scratching noise coming from my kitchen. I went to check it out, because Em’s cat has been doing a lot of scratching lately, and I wanted to deter her from causing damage.  I ended up not catching her in the act, but noticed an empty box, and thought, “well maybe she was scratching that or pulling the tape.” This afternoon, around the same time, from the living room, I heard a noise in the kitchen so I snuck out to see what the cat was up to again. I looked about and saw her lying peacefully in one of my kitchen windows. I heard the noise to her left and saw this little bastard squirrel  clinging to the screen on the outside, having ripped a 1" x 2" hole and a quarter-sized hole below that. I gasped a WTF  and he jumped to the roof. I followed outside, and he was up at the ridge, looking down at me  and laughing. (Didn’t Brendan Fraser & Brooke Shields just do a movie about this???)

I knew from other squirrel-in-the-house-horror stories that I needed to repair the screen ASAP, so I ran right out to the hardware store for some screen patches and rodent deterrent, and in the less than 15 minutes it took to get back home, he has made an "L"-shaped 6" x 2" rip out of the first hole, and made an additional attempt in the second window screen with a 1-1/2" x 3" hole (I have a double window over the sink). Luckily, I had the foresight to close down the sashes before I left, other wise I would have a new roommate. And now my little patch kit is nowhere big enough to fix the holes. I’m going to have to re-screen both panels.  Mother-F-*&%^X*(*!!!-er!!!!!!!!!!!!

Right side (from outside):

Left side:

In 13 years here, I've NEVER had this problem!!!! With all the cooking I do, and we don’t leave  food out on the counters; I have NO idea what has attracted this vermin!

On top of it all, Emily's cat was lying in the second window watching the squirrel's break-in attempt. Useless piece of shit.

Plus I now can’t open my kitchen windows- my largest source of air circulation in the whole downstairs.

I swear I must have tortured babies and kittens in a prior life to have this kind of luck! I really don’t have time for this!!!

Living Large

I finally broke down & installed the window A/C in my bedroom- aaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!! I was even able to dry my hair with a dryer before work yesterday because I was cool and dry, instead of pinning it up wet.

Today’s project was getting the A/C fixed in my car. It was a hole in the condenser, just as I thought. The local garage was able to fix it, parts & installation, for about half of the evil mega-corporation, Toyota. Unfortunately, the shield Toyota designed for the next model year up from mine, will not fit and cannot be altered to fit my car. And thanks to our illustrious, stimulus big spender of a president, EVERY free kin’ highway I have to travel to get to work has been ground up in prep for re-paving (can we say for the 3rd and 4th times respectively for Rt.24 and Rt.495, since I moved down here 20 + years ago????) whether they need it or not. Which is probably where the rock that caused the hole came from, and will probably come from again. *SIGH*

So I’m air conditioned all over the place.

The guacamoles left me a birthday present:

That’s a doggie bed duvet, and a photo book of historical photos from the area. (shout out to Liv ‘N Laf- I think there are some relatives of yours in there! Sue’s been M.I.A. while she moves into a new home). Here’s the card:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s last week’s progress on Quaker Halloween:

Not much to show- it’s too hot to stitch, or it was until I got my A/C.

I think it’ll be a DQ ice cream instead of birthday cake after the dishes tonight. I best get crackin’!