a friendly moment of panic

September 21, 2015

A friend of ours is visiting and working on her thesis. Early yesterday evening she​ came downstairs with the look of one martyred and suffering nobly for her cause and handed me her phone so that she couldn’t check Twitter or FB while she was supposed to be working on her thesis. Several hours later, just before bedtime, she retrieved the phone and went into her bedroom. Moments later she came back out saying, “Catie? *CATIE*?!” in increasingly alarmed tones. Ted ran out to see what was wrong and she…

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Sunrise over an old graveyard turns the stones to gold in Athy, Co. Kildare, Ireland

Kitsnaps: Golden Graveyard

September 18, 2015

I love photographing graveyards, especially if there’s some kind of Weather going on. Sunrise turned out to be good Weather at the old graveyard in Athy, Co Kildare, Ireland. Best of all, it was January, so sunrise wasn’t even at, er, the crack of dawn… :)

Kitsnacks: Blackberry Jam

September 18, 2015

I’ve been going out and getting nettle-stung in search of the wild blackberries that are growing in our garden. (Nettles offend me mightily. Plants do not try to kill you in the land of my people, at least, nothing but Devil’s Club, and Devil’s Club looks like it wants to kill you from forty feet away.) Anyway, I’m apparently too easily taunted by blackberries and when I see them I feel obliged to get them immediately instead of preparing myself sufficiently against the nettles, so it’s this kind of adversarial…

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Kitsnacks: Lemon Curd

September 16, 2015

You would think I would know by now not to post “I made this” food stuff without also posting the recipe. :) Someone asked, so here’s my recipe: Lemon Curd 2 egg yolks 2 whole eggs 3 oz (6 tbs) butter, room temperature 1 to 1.5 cups sugar the juice of 3 lemons (1/2 to 3/4ths cups lemon juice, depending on the size of the lemons; adjust sugar accordingly) Cream butter & sugar until fluffy. Add eggs & egg yolks & mix again. Slowly add lemon juice. The mixture will…

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strawberry rhubarb deliciousness

September 15, 2015

Iiiiiii have made an aaaaaaamaaaaaaazing batch of strawberry rhubarb jam. Ted, who likes zingy strawberry/rhubarb jam, thought there wasn’t enough rhubarb in mine generally, so I did half and half instead of favouring the strawberries, and it’s rrrrrrrrrrrrrreeaaaaaaaaaallllly good. I used jam sugar because I didn’t have enough regular sugar, and I thought I might have a little too much s/r for a kilo of jam sugar, which is often soft anyway. So I took what I’ve learned about unripe apples and got one and chopped it up and threw…

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