Ambergris

Yanking is a sign of impatience.

Okay, after watching a minute or two of this, I remembered binge-watching it with a bunch of her other videos. So it's not new information. It's information that got crowded out of my head when I needed it.

I ran across a comment today that an Instant Pot Max (and only the Max) was tested by Rose Red and found safe for canning. Instant Pots of various kinds are available here. I have not specifically looked for the Max. There's a service called Tiendamia that allows Amazon deliveries of a limited nature (as in, they track your lifetime dollar amounts and cut you off when they decide you've had enough) (as in, they allow in less than one percent of Amazon's variety). Tiendamia right now is allowing orders of the Max. I find this tempting, but I would like to see if I could buy it in cash locally (meaning in the city) first. Edit: Has anyone seen canning guidelines or instructions geared to the Instant Pot Max?

Quince has a lot of pectin too. I haven't found quince here yet, but I'm still looking.

We used to make banana bread using persimmon instead of banana. Such a lovely orange color, and nice to alternate slices on a platter. Not something to do unless you have a tree-full of persimmons, of course. I am laid up in bed with ice on my knee and arm from two fun little episodes with Bear this morning. This afternoon we are taking H's itty bitty dog to a vet in Loja, the one she came from, because she was too quiet Sunday and has not eaten since early yesterday afternoon. I also need to pay bills, meaning visiting the ATM in Loja, and buy canned cat food.

Oh, Miki, don't rush through the mourning. I still tear up over my little Kismet, after all these years, and I only had him a few months. Some become part of you. Edit: not suggesting you would rush...just don't let anyone tell you to brush it off

My Merlin gets salmon, canned chicken with mayo for his constipation, and more, so I know what you mean. But when life becomes a burden, you will know what to do. My heart is heavy for you.

Forgot to mention the other day: went to a hardware store and noticed that there was a baby store up the street. Asked if diapers would cost less there than at the department store. We went to see. For $41 got two big packs of the 5X natural care (red bag) Huggies plus a 300-count package of wipies plus a small package of wipies plus powder plus a covered bowl with a baby spoon that snaps into the lid for traveling plus a one-week sample of maternal vitamins. The vitamins might have been free. Not sure why such a little thing is wearing 5x, but that's what her mom wants. Basically, shopping more direct instead of at the more convenient places. And, from her mom's angle, getting godmother to pay for things.

Supper was air-fried plantains, H's version instead of mine, and a thick slice of the local crumbly cheese, with tea. H's version is sliced in slices and cooked a lower temp, so they do not caramelize and stay more starchy, while my way is to cut them in wedges and cook them at a higher temp to maximize caramelization, getting all the sweet taste on that outside and getting a softer interior. Both versions are good, and either way this is my favorite simple meal here. We were going to have avocado too, but the avocado was not quite ripe and I was not real hungry, so that's set aside for breakfast.

You too!

Can't go wrong with deviled eggs.

Black-eyed peas soaked last night, but without baking soda because I couldn't find it. Also, we are making corn bread with corn meal sifted out of the freshly ground chicken feed and some pancake mix, because the box of pancake mix is open, the new bag of flour is not, and it's the rainy season. Don't have an oven, so the cornbread will start in the rice cooker and probably finish as two or three large broken pieces in the air fryer--which makes it wonderfully crunchy. Not sure what else will end up on the menu.

I look forward to having a freezer again. What I have now sits on top of the fridge and has less than two cubic feet before the frost builds up. It needs defrosting on a monthly basis. Sigh. Food would not be good more than a month or so after going in there. Separate freezers are not a thing here, but side by side fridge/freezers can be found in a lot of the appliance stores. That's what PM has and what I'll be looking at when I get my own place. Shouldn't be hard to get plastic boxes to fit each shelf of a side by side to hold the cold in better. Tried that with my stand-up porch freezer in Florida, but needed two boxes per shelf, and with both of us loading the freezer (three or four of us sometimes) it stayed chaotic. I always wanted a side by side.

I suspect he's been waiting for her.

I might have mixed up the yellow and red, but there are jersey types (rich in flavor, low in production) and there are holstein types (huge production, less flavor).

Mmmm.....chocolate. Wild tree with photo of the flower: Fruits from two kinds of chocolate trees. Yellow is from a holstein-cow type tree, red is from a jersey-cow type tree. The fruit is sweet and juicy, around a bitter purplish core. People can eat the fruit, which is kind of banana-y, but that's not real sanitary or economically viable if the point is to sell chocolate. So they just wash and ferment it away to get to the valuable purple part (which also needs to be fermented, dried, ground, etc).

My recipe for possum is to hang it over a likely fishing spot in the summer and come back a couple of weeks later to fish under that spot, where the fish have become used to maggots falling off the corpse. Otherwise, it's too greasy and stringy to enjoy. Knew someone with a pet possum once, nice critter. DX despised them. Done right, barbecued coon is as good as barbecue gets. I haven't had bear in so long I'm not sure I can really remember what it's like. (Wasn't just bear we were having.)

Squirrel is really good with gravy over biscuit. I told my boys I was practicing my recipe for their friend D's father (who characteristically would ask for "fried rat's a** with coffee.") I did serve him squirrel with red-eye gravy before he passed. It was fricasseed, not fried, but close enough. I do eat bugs, or rather grubs. I like them cooked, and preferably in gumbo or stir-fry.

Leftover cheese empanadas today.

Don't feel good today. Not anything identifiable as bad, except tender tummy, just not good. Cancelled shopping trip and exercise class and stayed home to watch the rain. It's raining. This is good.

Big Red Hen made her debut in a soup for lunch, very rich and full-flavored, but I'm under the weather and didn't enjoy it much.

I didn't buy one either. Where I am now, they hand-build them.

Not exactly canning, but we are crystalizing a few pounds of ginger today and tomorrow.

Sigh. The red hen got egg bound yet again. This has been averaging more than once a week, poor thing. She's basically been in a constant state of egg-constipation or recovery from egg constipation for a couple of months now. So today we put her out of her misery. To me, she was verging on a pet, and letting her go was as far as I thought. I was sad to see her go. To H, she is several pounds of good, solid meat. She's been plucked out already. Sigh. Only one of my three baby dinosaurs from a year ago is left now. She's the matriarch and egg-laying queen of the yard, but H's father sent a giant cream-colored beast to be the god-baby's pet a couple of weeks ago, and that one is residing in my yard now too. I don't know if the beast is male or female, but it's not crowing nor laying. I also have three dainty little white silkie retirees (one a rooster) who among them put out an egg every other day or so. and three black creole egg-layers about their size who are half-grown, and five babies who have now entered the looks-like-a-dinosaur stage. Edit: She had some broken ribs that had healed wrong, as it turns out, and was grossly over-fat.

If you keep dehydrating past the leather stage, until it goes glassy, you can make powder. Be careful of busting it up, though, as the glassy shards are sharp.