Licking Life's Plate
Found this salamandar and its eggs under a brick in my yard. We kept the salamander for about eight weeks and I let him go before I went to visit Tom in the UK. I love that my children enjoy little creatures like this, and help to take care of them. Salamanders like to eat ants. Every time we found ants, Leah would grab the salamander jar and put as many into it as possible, pushing them back in as they tried to scale the walls to escape. “No, you are Salamander food! Get back in there!”
This is one of my favorite egg dishes, which I concocted while living in Northern Japan. I’m thankful for the International food aisle at our local grocery store, so I can still enjoy this while living in Pennsylvania!
Not only is this an amazing, easy, flavorful meal… it’s Atkins friendly :) By individually adding the ingredients into My Fitness Pal, I found this recipe has 312 calories, 21 grams of protein and 4 carbs.
Whisk together:
Pour into a pan, and sauté like ordinary scrambled eggs. Do not overcook.
Top with snips of nori.
*Shiitake mushrooms make this dish taste more authentic, but any kind will do. Brown button mushrooms were used for the batch in the photo.
By writing this post, I am proving to myself that I am coming to terms with the fact that my beloved .com was bought by a domain squatter.
A few months ago, my website disappeared.
After making some phone calls, I was told that Yahoo emailed an old address — not even the one listed the domain, but the original Yahoo email address at the time of purchase several years ago — when the domain was expiring. This email was never recieved by us.
For my domain, Yahoo used a domain registrar was in Melbourne, Australia. The Australian company wanted nearly $300 from me to buy the domain out of remission. They said my other option was to wait until December 9th, when the domain was released to the general public and then I could purchase it for a considerably less amount of money.
On that day, I went to buy my domain back and found that a domain squatting company had beat me to it and was using it for advertisement space.
The owner’s contact information provided through WhoIs is fradulaent.
My old domain is apparently for sale through Sedo, but after several attempts to purchase it, there has been no response from the new owners.
If you have links on your site to my .com URL, kindly update them by simply changing the ending to .net . This will lessen the value of my old URL, and hopefully weaken the deamand and the seller’s undisclosed asking price.
Much love…
Last night, Tom and I went to see the Brandywine Roller Girls’ All Stars in Elkton, MD. While we had wanted to attend, we had a lot of work to do yesterday and actually going was a last minute decision. This meant that I was in a bit of a scramble for dinner… again.
I skimmed through my pantry and fridge, and whooped with delight over my remaining buy-one-get-one-free London Broil.
Utilizing the fast-acting magic of my trusty pressure cooker, below is the recipe I came up with… and it was so yummy, I had to write down for posterity’s sake.
This well-seasoned stew that tastes like it’s been roasting all day long. (Shh! It does! Pressure cookers really are magical!) The thickened stick-to-your-ribs broth is way more enjoyable than plebeian clear pan juices, not to mention much more fun to mop with a crusty piece of bread.
When washed down with some frothy autumn ale, you might even feel a bit rustic while you enjoy this meal and, for a moment at least, forget that your heating bills are about to increase.
(Pressure Cooker – Approx. 30 min total cook time)
10 Servings
Main ingredients:
3 lbs London Broil, cut into 2″ cubes (Beef roast or other stew meat would work, too!)
4 lg celery stalks, cut into 2″ pieces
4 lg carrots, cut into 2″ pieces
10 medium thin-skinned potatoes, halved
1 large onion, thinly sliced
32 oz beef broth
Flavoring ingredients:
2-3 TB brown mustard
2 TB Worcestershire sauce
5 fresh sage leaves
2 bay leaves
1 tsp dried Italian seasoning
Prepare in Ziplock bag and SAVE remainder:
2 cups flour
2 tsp salt
1 TB garlic powder
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Cooking oil
Directions:
In small batches, place cubed beef into Ziplock bag and shake to coat with flour mixture. SAVE the remaining flour mixture!
Pour oil into the pressure cooker pot Рenough to coat the surface. When the oil is hot, saut̩ the onions to al dente. Remove the onions with metal tongs and set them aside in a mixing bowl.
Brown the floured beef in the hot oil in small batches until the meat has a bit of crusty goodness. Place browned meat in the bowl with the onions.
Deglaze the fond with the beef broth. Whisk in mustard, Worcestershire and dried herbs. Add remaining flavoring ingredients and bring to a boil. TASTE and adjust seasoning (salt may be needed if your broth is bland) as needed.
Add to pot in this order: Beef cubes & onions, potatoes, carrots & celery. (The majority of the potatoes should be covered with the broth.)
Bring to a boil.
Secure pressure cooker lid and cook on high heat until the pressure regulator begins to rock. Lower the heat to medium, or enough to keep the regulator rocking gently.
Set the timer for 15 minutes.
Follow the procedures in your pressure cooker’s instruction manual to quickly depressurize your pot.
Using a colander, separate the cooked meat and veggies from the broth. Return the broth to the pot. Scoop out about 1 cup of broth into your mixing bowl and whisk in about 3 Tb of the reserved seasoned flour mixture. Add the flour slurry back into the pot of broth, and bring it to a boil to thicken.
Add the cooked ingredients back to the thickened broth.
Serve steaming hot with crusty bread and your favorite autumn beer.
On going inside to examine the moth, I found a large female Eacles
Imperialis, with not a scale of down misplaced. Even by gas light
I could see that the yellow of the living moth was a warm canary
colour, and the lavender of the mounted specimen closer heliotrope
on the living, for there were pinkish tints that had faded from the
pinned moth.She was heavy with eggs, and made no attempt to fly, so I closed
the box and left her until the lights were out, and then removed the
lid. Every opening was tightly screened, and as she had mated, I did
not think she would fly.
– excerpt from Moths of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter
All the way from the road, as my sister-in-law Liz and I pulled up to my house after a girls’-night-out, we could see this yellow winged creature clinging to my front screened door. This moth, a female, is so enormous, it looks like a bat who narrowly escaped after nearly drowning in a pail of yellow paint.
When I was a little girl, my parents took our family on a homeschool field trip to the homestead of naturalist and pioneer female photographer Gene Stratton-Porter. We walked through the lush green Limberlost trails and climbed the very steep stairs of her Indiana cabin.
The memory of my childhood trip was vividly recalled during the search to identify my incredible catch, when I stumbled upon an e-copy of Moths of the Limberlost, of which Porter devoted an entire chapter to this particular species.
Isn’t it amazing how her description still perfectly details the “Yellow Emperor”, as she fondly called it, almost 100 years later?
This morning, with proud strides, Micah walked into the kitchen and announced that he had taught himself to ride his bicycle.
“Wanna see?” he asked, his cheek-dimple showing from his wide grin.
He didn’t have to ask me twice.
—
Update: The night after this was filmed, Micah set his bike next to the garage, instead of putting the bike inside of the garage. It was stolen. He’s heartbroken. With a new understanding of the importance of caring for bikes, and his promise to do so, we’re looking for a “new” bike for him. If you live nearby and see a decent one for for $20 or less, will you let me know?