Wednesday, November 02, 2005, 22:58
What? Again?
The raccoon has been down in the barn again, eating kitty food. I haven't seen him. But I know he's been there. The muddy kitty food dish and muddy water dishes and muddy horse water pail give him away every time. He's been down in the barn at least three times in the past week.
I try not to put out more food in the evening than the barn kitties will eat, but sometimes they are not as hungry as at other times. I have a feeling the raccoon checks every night, and if there's food, he eats it and dips it in the water and then washes his muddy paws. I always give the barn kitties more food when I go out to give the horses more hay and water before I go to bed. Sometimes they are extremely hungry when I come out at night. Probably because the raccoon has eaten the food they were saving for later.
I saw the raccoon a couple of weeks ago. We have a wall in the barn to help keep the hay from toppling over. It is just several posts sunk into the ground with boards nailed across it. Of course the wall is covered now that we have added 66 bales to that side of the barn. But at that time, the wall was open. I went into the barn with the flashlight, and there was the raccoon, on the shelf where I put the kitty water, "hiding" behind the post.
At least, he *thought* he was hiding. Actually, he was just hiding his head. The rest of his body, all two feet of it, was on the shelf, not hidden by anything.
"I see you!" I said.
The raccoon poked his head around the post, took one look at me and then flipped around and began squeezing his massive body between the shelf and the wall. There's only about an eight-inch gap, so it was quite a bit of work for him. He finally slipped through the narrow space, dropped to the ground and went under the wall into the lean-to.
It has been so warm this fall that the raccoons apparently are not hibernating yet. I hope they burrow into their dens soon. Then maybe I won't be going through quite as much dry kitty food. Not until next spring, anyway, when the raccoons are once again roaming around the countryside.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Green Tomatoes -- I haven't gotten around to making the green tomato mincemeat -- but I will. And when I make the cream cheese mincemeat pie, I will post the recipe here on my blog. With any luck at all, I will get the first batch of mincemeat done this evening after choir practice.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005, 20:11
Ten Gallons. . .
Seeing as it is November 1 (already?) I decided I had better pick my green tomatoes this morning so I can get started making my green tomato mincemeat. After all, it *is* November.
I ended up with 10 gallons of green tomatoes.
I hope we like green tomato mincemeat. I've never made it before.
What I am really looking forward to is the cream cheese mincemeat pie that I found a recipe for in one of my cookbooks. Seeing as I like sour cream raisin bars, I am thinking this will be somewhat similar.
I don't know how many quarts of mincemeat I will end up with, but maybe I can give some away for Christmas. I am also thinking I can make cream cheese mincemeat pie for Thanksgiving.
Picking tomatoes in November is a cold undertaking. It was cloudy and misty and damp this morning. By the time I was finished, my hands felt like little blocks of ice.
No, wait. I can't say that my hands felt like blocks of ice because I could not *feel* my hands. I just assumed they were still at the end of my wrists. Well, that's not true, either. I relied on my eyes to tell me that my hands were still at the end of my wrists. I was pretty sure that if I could see my hands, then once they warmed up again, I would be able to feel them.
Ten gallons of green tomatoes? What was I thinking? I'm going to have to chop them all by hand because I suspect that my old blender will not put up with chopping 10 gallons of green tomatoes. The recipe calls for 16 cups of chopped green tomatoes. Once they are chopped, they won't make up 10 gallons, but still, if each recipe calls for a gallon of chopped tomatoes, I will have to make many batches.
Yeesh.
All I can say is -- this stuff had better be good!
LeAnn R. Ralph