That Time I Spray Painted The Freezer In The Laundry Room -

Dear Loving Husband, who has promised to love and cherish me for all of our lives...

 I know your alarm will go off soon, and you will lay in bed and read facebook for a few minutes before coming downstairs. I wanted to tell you to stay there, relax, rest. You deserve it. You work hard.

 And if you think you smell spray paint fumes, ignore the thought. There's a triple chocolate cake in the oven, I'm sure THAT is what you smell. 

If I did happen to accidentally spray paint the freezer in the laundry room today (because it looked soooooo bad - it was really in sad shape. ) know that I did so only to save you the effort of moving the freezer to the backyard to paint it properly. That would have been so much work, I didn't want you to have to deal with that. Because I love you.

 And, also, remember how many times you have said "whatever makes you happy". I know you meant that from the bottom of your heart... and I know you also know that paintbrushes just do not make me happy. But freshly painted items do. 

AND - because I learn from my mistakes! - I know how to remove all the over spray from the floor, because YOU WERE RIGHT (I know how you love to hear that!) and I may have gotten a little on the floor, even with the plastic I put down first. I promise, I will not do this again (and by that I mean specifically THIS EXACT THING) for at least another 5 years.

 Love,
 the woman who is making chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting for you.

Before & After of yesterday's adventure. This is a 1980s Montgomery ward upright freezer that I refuse to part with, because it has outlived at least 6 new chest freezers, just since my mom gave it to me. 15 years ago. I had painted it with chalkboard paint & that was great for years. . But it's really been looking this sad for about 3 years now.

 It's in the laundry room, so I could ignore it for quite awhile, until I moved my craft area to the laundry room.  The sign is a "reverse canvas" decorated with vinyl cut by cricut, and I glued heavy magnets to the back to hold it on there.  

(My facebook status, February 23 2018 - which means I cannot spray paint that freezer again until 2023.  So far I'm ok with that, the 2018 paint is holding up well!)

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The Grass Is Always Greener... In The Pasture With Nothing In It

Tia & a few of the goats, checking to see if I opened the gate back up yet.

Yesterday, at my suggestion, Dan put a gate between the goat pen and the front pasture. The idea is that in the morning I can open the gate, the goats can go out to the front pasture to eat the abundance of grass there, and then in the afternoon when I feed them they will go back to their pen.

This is because we only have one cow currently. One lonely cow on 10 acres of pasture. And an abundance of goats, and a llama, in a very adequate, but much smaller, area. So we basically have 10 acres of free goat food, just out of reach of the goats.

Lets install a gate, and give the goats access to all of that free grass! What a great idea!

Day One: I open the gate, pet the baby goats, assure Tia the llama that it's safe, and watch them all happily munching on the grass in the front pasture. YAY! Success! This was such a great idea! I go back to the house and sit down with my laptop to work on a writing project.

Day One, 15 minutes later:
Piper, Meg's goat, trots purposefully past the living room window, straight to the feed barrel, and carefully opens the lid to eat straight from the barrel. Our backyard is not part of any pen or pasture. Neither is the driveway she walked in from.

I laugh, and head out to put her back in the pen. Piper's the oldest goat here, and a bit spoiled. She was originally raised in the house with diapers, bottle fed... and we've always left her choose her own pen, fences have never slowed her down much.

First I put the lid back on the grain, then I watched her easily open the lid once again while I was trying to unlatch the back gate.

Ok, so that's a TINY bit annoying. She can open that barrel in seconds, while it takes me no less than five minutes and three broken fingernails.

But she is pretty easy to work with, and I convinced her to go back in the pen, after putting some of the grain in the feeder for her.

A few more goats... and see how short the grass is here?

Day One, 25 minutes later:
Then I thought I had better check on the others, to make sure Piper had escaped through the fence, and not because a pasture gate was open.

As I walk out front, the first thing I see is the big billy goat in the calf feed barrel. This boy has a HUGE rack of horns, so this is physically impossible. The barrel is not that large. His horns have to be at least 4 feet across. He's a large Kiko billy. And yet, somehow he managed. He's also pretty tame (all of our goats are, for the most part) so when I hollered at him he went running... which scared the row of baby goats that were wandering down the lane.

In case it's not obvious, the lane is not inside the fence either.

This upset some of the mom goats, who then came through the pasture fence to the babies. And it got the attention of two more goats, who realized Horton the billy goat was no longer in the feed barrel, leaving it free for them to try.

So now the pasture has approximately 3 goats, one Scottish Highland cow, and, thank God, one llama. I'm not sure what I'd have done if Tia was loose.

I chase the goats out of the feed, lock the lid down tight, and head to the back yard, where I fill the goat feeders. I bang on the feeders and call... no response. I walk out front, and several are gathered around the feed barrel, working together to try to open it. Monsters.

Finally Sandy, who is not the oldest but is definitely Queen Goat, notices me holding a feed scoop and comes running to me. All of the others, including the llama, follow. Several jump on me and wrap around my legs as I walk. I feel like a master goat herder, if goat herders are supposed to look ridiculous and have no control over the goats.

As the goats finally notice the grain in their feeders, I head back to close the gate between the two pens... and Hilda, the very not tame scottish highlander cow meanders into the goat pen.

Day One, an Hour Later:
I could not convince Hilda that the grass truly is greener (SO much greener. Taller. And so much more of it.) on her side of the fence, so for now she's a goat. I did spend the next 20 minutes trying to get her to eat out of my hand... but she wasn't interested in getting that close.

To recap, after Dan spent a great deal of time installing a new gate so that the goats would have more grass to eat, I now have a cow, a llama, and a turkey in the goat pen with the goat, and I have 10 acres of completely empty pasture. (Did I mention the turkey? He didn't get in the way too much today, just followed along wondering what on earth I was doing, and taking advantage of the goat feeders being full with no goats around.)

Well that worked out about as well as most of my farm ideas.

But I got to pet Tia the llama, and I think Hilda the cow got a foot closer to me than ever before. I'm counting these as accomplishments, and hoping Dan still finds me amusing.... I had probably bake something, just to be sure.

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Day One - Lunch Time
I go to make myself lunch, look out the window and Tia is GLARING at the gate, ears back. So I go open it for her. There's still a cow in the goat pen, but now the pasture at least has a llama happily munching on it's abundant grass.

Read More About Our Life On The Farm

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Not A Pinterest Baker Makes Lemon Blueberry Cake

Working from the recipe found here:

http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2014/02/09/lemon-blueberry-layer-cake/

Isn't it beautiful?? And it's lemon and blueberries, two of my favorite things!
 Lets be clear - that's the picture from the original recipe.  Not my photo.
But surely someone with a limited attention span  and complete disregard for exact recipes can make this, right?  Uhm..  kind of.  

Step 1 - Check the Ingredients

1 cup (240ml) buttermilk.  Check.  Well, kind of.  I don't actually have buttermilk, but that's easy to make.  I do have fresh from the dairy milk, and a bag of lemons.  

1 cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature. Who buys unsalted butter?  Not me.  But I pulled the salted butter from the fridge, optomistic that it will be at room temperature by the time I need it.  (No.  Not it will not be.  Do that sooner.)


4 large eggs, at room temperature.  This is when I remember that we just gave away all the eggs.  Go out to the hen house to collect the eggs (by the way, there's 3 inches of snow on the ground.  April 9th, 2016, in Central PA.)  Feed the chickens & peacocks while I'm out there, throw some scratch grain for the ducks and guineas.  So the eggs are "fresh from the henhouse" temperature.  Which since there is 3 inches of snow on the ground, might be slightly colder than "room" temperature...

1 and 1/4 cups (250g) granulated sugar.  I come back inside from collecting the henhouse temperature eggs,  &find that both the sugar and flour canisters are empty.  Refill them from the huge sam's club bags of sugar and flour that I keep in the pantry.  I wonder if I could start buying smaller bags now that the kids are pretty much grown?  How much money am I saving, especially when you calculate how much I spill all over the counter while refilling the canisters from these huge bags?  Thoughts for another day.

The oven was preheating, I set the plastic lid to the flour canister near the back burner of the stove while refilling the canister, and melted the lid. Just a little.

This cake is TIME consuming. And I don' t even have all of the ingredients together yet.

1/2 cup  packed light brown sugar - Yes, I have this!

1 Tablespoon vanilla extract - The good stuff, from Sam's club.  I buy the big bottle, we're all set!

3 cups  sifted all-purpose flour, (spoon & leveled)  - I may have completely ignored the part about "spoon and leveled".  It's possible I'm not completely sure exactly what that means.  But I have a good guess, so it will be fine.

1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons lemon zest I have a bag of lemons! & a pampered chef zester.  This makes me very happy.

1/2 cup lemon juice (3 medium lemons)  - I appreciate the amount of lemons being given. I suspect that I will need 4 minimum, I am probably not doing the "squeeze lemons" thing quite right.

1 and 1/2 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen (do not thaw)

1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour

Check the pan cabinet.  I own a collection of stack able wedding cake pans that I bought for $1.50 at a yard sale.  I have never used them.   None of them are the same size.   I have two wilson cake pans from a cake decorating class my daughter and I took for fun 7 years ago.  I know it was 7 years ago, because facebook just showed me the reminder photo this week.  I didn't need facebook to remind me that we really, really sucked at cake decorating.  And that these pans probably have not been used in the 7 years since we took this class, because I really didn't like them.  And yes, I bought a set of stack able wedding cake pans AFTER learning I suck at cake decorating.  They were $1.50.

It may be time to re-evaluate my idea that I am not a hoarder, and that I'm really good about getting rid of things we do not use.  Another day.  Today I am thankful for the pans, and that my cheesecake pan is roughly the same size.


I wonder if pie pans would work in a pinch? Do normal people have 3 cake pans? 


Step 2 - Mix the ingredients

Zest the lemons.  I like zesting lemons.  I don't like squeezing the juice from lemons.  Especially when I don't think this through, and attempt to squeeze the juice right on top of the zest.  Its harder to find the seeds in the zest.

So I squeeze the rest of the lemons into a second bowl, separate from the zest.  Find cheesecloth, find the scissors that belong in the kitchen drawer, but are not in the kitchen drawer.  Attempt to strain lemon juice, with seeds, into the zest.  The cheesecloth slips, seeds go in the zest.  I kid you not, I'm that bad at this.  I think I got all the seeds out, but there's  possibility my version of this cake will include at least one lemon seed.

I do manage to mix all the rest of the ingredients without any real incident.  Although I should have softened the butter a bit more.

Toss the frozen blueberries in flour. Gently fold into the batter, using a spatula.  Huh.  She's right, my batter isn't blue.  (Don't worry, I'll screw that up later)

Step 3 - Prep the pans, Pour the Batter, Bake.

The instructions say to lightly grease and flour the pans with nonstick baking spray.  Huh?  Grease and flour OR baking spray, I understand..  is there a nonstick spray that comes with the flour in it?  Or do I grease the pans with the nonstick spray, then flour them?  That's the choice I went with.  It is easier, faster, and less messy then greasing them with crisco then flouring them.

Pouring the batter evenly into 3 pans was not fun for me.  It is really thick.  I find it highly unlikely I poured evenly.  And when shaking the pans to cover the bottoms with the batter didn't work, I used the spatula, and turned the batter blue.  (Told you I screwed that up later)

I put the pans in the oven, and then realize I should have taken a photo of the blue batter in the pans.  Take one back out to take a photo.

Spend the 21 Minute baking time typing this post.  How can it take that long to type this?  I haven't even added any photos  yet.

When the oven timer goes off, look for toothpicks. When did I buy these?  Never-mind, just be happy I have them.  They come out clean.  Cake is done.

Pull pans from the oven - this does NOT look right.  Tiny,super thin, dense layers. Read over instructions.  I obviously over mixed.  Apparently it does not take much to over mix.  I should have read this recipe with a little more care before beginning.  Especially the part at the end where she says this cake could be made in a 9x13 pan.  (Of course she's never made it that way - she always makes it in layers. But theoretically, people like me could learn to mix it a LOT less and pour it willy nilly in a 9x13 pan.  If we ever master the lemon juice straining through cheesecloth)

The Icing

8 ounces (224g) full-fat brick style cream cheese, softened to room temperature.  This is when I find that our daughter does not like the super cheap cherry cream cheese I bought for on her bagels, she she used some of the plain cream cheese I bought for the icing.  Eh.  There's close to 8 ounces.  We'll make it work.

1/2 cup (115g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature. Pull another stick of butter from the fridge.  This one also is salted.  And also not really room temperature.

3 and 1/2 cups (420g) confectioners’ sugar

1 – 2 Tablespoons (15-30ml) heavy cream.   1-2 T of heavy cream.  What would you do with the rest of the carton?  Heavy cream is expensive!  We have milk straight from the dairy, it's about 5% fat - and it will have to do. 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract


pinch salt

 Honestly, after seeing how the cake turned out, I wasn't going to stress over the icing.  Had the layers been all nice and fluffy, I may have pulled out the cake decorating supplies and piped the icing and made this pretty..  but today, a spatula was good enough.

The Verdict:
It has a good taste. The icing is a bit much, but that might be because my layers are so thin.  I've made crepes (poorly) that were almost this thick...

 If I make it again, I will not use the kitchenaid at all - and hopefully that will solve the texture issue.  Honestly, I'd be tempted to make this with a boxed cake mix.  And I'd definitely use a 9x13 pan.  


Footnotes:
1. I know it's terribly hard not to confuse us, especially after seeing this cake, but I am NOT the family member who is featured in wedding and cake magazines, and competes  on  (and WINS!) baking shows on tv.  That's my husband's cousins wife.  We don't share the same last name, but we're both married to descendents of the same set of grandparents..  so I don't know why I didn't inherit her cake decorating skills.  Life's just not fair.  :-)

2. My baking process does in no way reflect on the quality of the recipe.  It does however, accurately reflect my attention span and attention to detail.  Unfortunately.

3.  I'm really not completely incompetent in the kitchen.  I cook pretty well. I made things like pasta and pierogies from scratch. I even bake regularly. Really.  But I'm better with things that do not require precise measurements and exact detailed instructions.  See note 2 on my attention span.

4. Yes, I do know how footnotes are supposed to work.  No, I don't particularly care that I used them improperly here.  See Attention To Details under note 2.

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My Day In Pictures

#mydayinpics 9am 6159 steps so far. #fitbit

#farmlife Push mower is broken, so I'm mowing the backyard like the Amish.  Loaded Betsy up to go to auction.   #mydayinpics 10am 8417 #fitbit steps 4th load of laundry

Laundry. Finished the hand mowing. Laundry. Finished the detergent. laundry. Started weed whacking. Laundry. #mydayinpics 11th 9919 #fitbit steps

#mydayinpics 12pm. Cleaned the car. Wow. It was bad. 10808 #fitbit steps

#mydayinpics errands.

#mydayinpics #farmlife livestock auction, bought a goat. Introduced him to the others. Took pics of Maggies babies.

#mydayinpics 9pm.  Fed the boys when they came in from baling hay.  Sorted ALL of those socks.  Ironed the spots out of the table.  Watched the sunset. Folded more laundry.

My Solar Light Obsession.  I like to sit out here at night and read a bit before bed.