First of all, tomorrow is my son-in-law's birthday, so I just want to say "Happy Birthday, Isaac"!
Now that I got that out of the way........
I hope you all exercised your right to vote yesterday. Did you get a really cool sticker like mine?
Voting for President in Alaska is almost a joke for a couple reasons. For one thing, our state is only worth 3 electoral votes, so no one ever pays attention to us. Secondly, besides Hawaii, we are the last ones to close our voting booths, and the next President is always already chosen before our votes are even done being counted, so I don't know why we bother. I guess it just makes us feel good with the illusion that we can actually make a difference. Shya, right.......! Is it even mathematically possible for an election to depend on our 3 points? Will there ever be a day when the suspense is hinging on Alaska?
As for me, even though my vote is a "joke", I do it anyway just because it's one of those rare times when I can actually say my 2 cents worth (is it even worth that much?). If nothing else, I get the satisfaction of being a part of a big picture, even if I'm only in the blurred background, and even though the decision has been made before my vote is even counted.
"Your vote matters" they say. Well, not here it don't.
We are just the "johnny come lately's".
I'm just glad the campaign is over, and now I hope that the country can work towards unity once again.
(I will not gloat. I will not gloat. I will not gloat...)
Now that Halloween is over, I can start working on shrinking the size of this pumpkin patch sitting on my table.
One by one, I am using them up. I plan on bringing it down to one or two pumpkins by Christmastime, to use for a holiday pumpkin pie. If there's still any left after Christmas, I will probably cook, puree, and freeze because it will just seem super inappropriate and out of place to have pumpkins as part of my Valentine's holiday.
That just doesn't work.
Speaking of pumpkin pie, I have conducted a recent experiment, just out of curiosity.
I saw this evaporated goat's milk at the commissary and wondered, "can I use that in a pumpkin pie?" Since I am trying to replace dairy products wherever I can, I thought how nice it would be if I could substitute regular evaporated milk for evaporated goat's milk. (Goat's milk came up "red" on my food sensitivity blood test, but the number wasn't near as high as cow's milk). But my biggest question was "will it make the pie taste funky?"
I search all over the internet and couldn't find any satisfactory answers because the opinions going both ways were about 50/50. So I looked up the product on Amazon and entered my question on their website, asking if it can be used in pumpkin pie and will it make the pie taste funky?
I actually got two replies. One person said it's gross - don't do it. The other person said, Yes it makes the pie nice and creamy (but said nothing about the taste).
Since I wasn't getting any satisfying black or white answers, I decided that the only way I'm gonna know is to just try it for myself. So I held my nose and dove in, hoping for the best.
Here are the results of this kitchen lab experiment:
The texture of the pie turned out nice and creamy, but the taste remains questionable. At first, I didn't taste anything weird at all. But the more bites I took, the more "goaty" it tasted. By the time I ate the last bite, there was enough goat taste accumulated that I was starting to make faces. The next morning I had one for breakfast, and it didn't seem as bad, so maybe it just needed to be refrigerator chilled.
My third piece, I only detected it a little bit and might not have noticed it if I didn't know it had goat milk in it. So in all fairness, for me, it could've been mostly psychological, and/or it might just be something to get used to. Chuck said he didn't notice anything at all, and PW ate a couple pieces and never said anything (I never told her what was in it). So I don't know. From a scientific point of view, I would have to say it's "inconclusive". Maybe I will try making a pie using half regular and half goat.
As for making potluck drinks at church, I am getting pretty used to things now the way they are, even without my own sink. But we ran into another problem.
This coffee pot has served us well for several years now, but it went on the fritz. So we had to quickly improvise with making and remaking and remaking a regular 12-cup size coffee pot, which meant that during potluck, I had to stand by the coffee pot so I could refill it when it got empty (which also meant I didn't get to eat until mostly everyone had gone through the line - but that didn't bother me). So Chuck took this coffee pot home to see if he could maybe fix it and get it working again. In the end he said it was toast. So we chucked it.
At the church building, in the back room of the kitchen, there was this other old coffee pot sitting on a shelf that hadn't been used in a long time, so the next Sunday we tried to get that one going.
Did you notice it's sitting on my kitchen counter, and not in the church building? Can you guess why? We couldn't get it work, which meant spending another potluck "babysitting" the 12-cup coffee pot, and refilling it when it got empty (and being the last one to eat). So we took this coffee pot home, too, and Chuck cleaned it out, and we ran some vinegar through it twice. It took several tries, but I think we finally got it to work "good enough". Our plan was to try to use it this Sunday, but last night I got a phone call from a couple at church saying "We bought you a new coffee pot!"
YAY!
I'm thinking I might make a little thank you sign with their names on it and display it by the new coffee pot this Sunday, so everyone who drinks coffee can appreciate them.
Okay, next subject:
After Halloween was over, I put my jack-o-lantern on the back porch right outside the door, intending to throw it out in the weeds for the moose to eat. Well, I never got around to doing that. So last night while we were gone at the commissary, PW was sending us texts and photos of two moose (a mama and a half-grown baby) that got up ONTO OUR PORCH! and starting eating that pumpkin! I wish I was home at the time so I could've gotten pictures of the moose on our porch, but this is what's left of that jack-o-lantern. They ate the WHOLE thing except the stem.
Besides that, the only sign of Halloween left here is my quilt that I'm still working on.
It took me a long time to find some matching fabric for the outer border, but now that I've got it all pinned and ready for quilting, I just need to find the time to do it. But I am still trying to decide how I want to quilt it. I have an idea that involves free-motion quilting, but I'm not sure yet.
In the meantime, I am already trying to figure out my Christmas cards, so this quilt just might end up waiting until January to get worked on.
So that is pretty much all that's been happening here, besides a short little earthquake jolt, but that turned out to be hardly anything to write home about. I hope you all are enjoying your Fall blessings!
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