The Suet Wars

Naughty Raccoon Raiding Suet Feeder

 

 

 

 

Baby Squirrel on the Suet Feeder

This is getting to be expensive.  Every night the raccoon takes $1.75 worth of suet from the feeder.  Every day, the blackbirds eat a whole cake, amid much chasing by moi.  Another $1.25.  That's three dollars a day times 30--eek!  This is becoming expensive. 

We will try the suet cakes with hot pepper to determine if the mammals don't like it.  For the blackbirds, we may stop using the suet cakes with seed and just use plain old suet.  Last night something took down two suet feeders.  One with suet , one empty.  The poor baby woodpeckers are having a hard time.  A bluejay tried to chase the baby red squirrel, whom I do not really begrudge his portion.  I begrudge the big squirrels, raccoons and blackbirds big time.

Why doesn't one of those damn bigs hawks carry off a squirrel of a jay?  Every year it's a battle.  In the meantime, the American Goldfinches are draining the thistle seed.  That's O.K.  There are territorial battles and the males don't get along at all.  As usual, the women and children do. 

The garden is water-logged from all the rain and the thyme looks sad.  Too much agua. 

I prepared a fine dinner tonight--broccoli quiche, homemade herb bread, grapefruit and avocado salad, and now the guests blew a tire and will be late, late, late.  Yeast bread waits for no man.  Oh yes, there's also fresh blueberry bread and berries for dessert.  We'll eat it whenever.  And enjoy it.  Just like those #*!!*% raccoons. 

Bird Watching 101

Thisbe watching birds.  A cat's most cherished activity.  Annie enjoys the same pursuit.  The birds seem oblivious to the presence of a cat just a few feet away.

I haven't been posting, alas and alack.  I've been writing.  I did yet another rewrite of Promiscuous Mode, and it is now (whole MS) with an agent, but no great hope.  I've done some more on In Flight and am almost 5000 words into a crime short story.  Sent another story into a contest.  So the writing goes apace.

Also cooking up a storm.  Big Valentine's Day menu which we ate on for days.  Then S.O.'s birthday dinner of stuffed cabbage.  Finished it last night.  Mega-yum.

I've also been working on a writing group's web site, dieting, working out, working on finances, yada yada.  The diet is just a calorie count diet, which means I have to enter every bite into this web site which helps figure out the calories.  It took a long time at first, but I'm kind of into the hang of it now.  Total loss:  3.5 pounds, but hey, that's something added to the 3.5 pounds I lost before the formal diet.

The thing about a simple calorie count is that no food is forbidden.  A lot of diets say that but weight watchers will penalize you a gazillion points for a tablespoon of butter, but you can eat a whole can of beans.  The more something is portrayed as forbidden, i.e., foodstuffs, the hungrier I get for it.

So I take my lumps with 1/4 cup peanuts and the St. Andre cheese and  eat less of something else.  I haven't been hungry, by the way, in spite of the fact that I'm trying to stay around 1200 calories on days when I don't work out.  Turns out I wasn't eating THAT MUCH to begin with. 

I made my mother's recipe of lemon squares to take to a friend's house.  They are so good I will post them here soon.  And I also made crepes with a sweetened cream cheese filling and a strawberry sauce to go on top.  This gave us dessert for  4 nights, 2 crepes each.  A lot of bang for the buck and also cheap.

Tomorrow I'm baking a chocolate/walnut pound cake to take to another event.  I would rather take a salad but it has to be something easily transportable.   Doesn't sound like a diet, does it?  Small portions are the key.

Tonight, we're back to chicken breast, and I'm doing the Boston Globe Saturday/Sunday recipe with  one main dish and then another made from the leftovers.  Not high cal and very tasty looking.  First Spanish, then Mexican. Spanish Style Chicken

Then you make the Mexican Recipe with the leftovers:
Chicken Chilaquiles

 Off to work on my short story.  It's a lot of fun, and I'm visiting Mattapoisett today for research.

Ta Ta

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Dove Sta Amore

Some observations about doves.  Both in our old neighborhood and here, we always had 3 doves hanging out together, a little menage a trois.  A week or so ago, when the snow started, they huddled together under the picnic table on the deck, where I have been throwing out bird seed.

A few days ago, there was a thud against the window and some poor sparrow, according to the book a swamp sparrow, who had been hanging out with the chicadees and juncos came to grief.  I watched and watched and finally he flew away.  Whew!  Did not want to bring him in for the night and plop him into the cat carrier.

Driving along I-495, we saw 40 or so doves on a wire, and fifty yards from there a hawk sitting in a tree top.  Didn't seem to freak out the doves, although one of them would have made a tasty meal.  Twice today I saw them swoop, go into formation and then settle on an electrical wire.  There seems to be some method to this, but I don't know what it is.  You can watch and observe your entire life and still not know the answers to practically anything, at least in the natural world.  I can't even figure out whose footprints are along the edge of the yard.  Not deer, bear, coyote, fox, raccoon, rabbit, skunk, squirrel, etc.  Who be it?  No idea. 

There was a disturbing article in the Wall Street Journal (Friday) about the end of the slush pile, just what a scantily published writer doesn't want to see, and another great article today about the popularity of the Scandinavian detective novel.  I am reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and after a slow start, it is now so scary that I can't read it before bedtime.   I loved the Wallendar series on PBS, too.  Good stuff.  I don't know who wrote the detective article, but it was thoughtful and well-researched.

I found the link for you, and the author is Laura Miller.  A good read!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703657604575004961184066300.html

I found a great (so far) calorie counter on the web, googling free calorie counter.  Ye gods, some of them charged.  Since we eat a non-standard diet (no fast food, no takeout, no pizza) but a lot of ethnic dishes and retro faves cooked at home--with few prepared foods, I was dubious about finding the right tool, so I Googled "stuffed pork tenderloin" and "breaded pork tenderlion" and "goulash soup."  Guess what?  They all popped up on the calorie counter I finally picked.

What happened was, after our guests left, I had an unopened jar of peanut butter in the house and while I was debating whether to keep it or send it to the food pantry, I unaccountably found myself removing the lid and taking a knife and digging out a big portion.  That was last Sunday.  There is one helping left, which means I ate 2280 calories of peanut butter (no crackers, no jelly) this week in addition to my usual food, and the scale heralded the bad news this morning.  Hence the calorie counter.

I am not a person who likes any kind of diet, and the more rigid, the more preachy, the more "sincere" the more I want to race out of the house for a double cheeseburger, fries and a half-bottle of wine.  There is indeed something contrary about my personality.  Just like my dad.  Well, we know about the apple and the tree and how far it falls.

 I washed out of weight watchers either three or four times, until I lost count.  I mean, who had time to count points and you could eat a pile of sh__ but no butter, and I don't do butter substitutes.  Never.

South Beach diet was o.k., good recipes, but I didn't really lose much weight, because I don't do weird non-foods like "fat free half and half."  Ever read the ingredients on something like that?  Cripes, it will kill you. 

Dr. Atkins and I saw eye to eye, all that meat, all that fat, yum, and no boring potatoes or bread.  Except I spent the winter on the road and gained it all back.  Motel breakfast bars are just not calibrated for a high protein low carb breakfast. 

So it stood.  Lost the weight I gained last Christmas and kept it off thru January 5th, and then this week there was the incident of the peanut butter.  It is one of my "no control" foods, so I don't keep it in the house.  Fried chicken is another, but of course, you don't run into the kitchen and quick fry up a chicken and we are far enough away fromt the "Colonel" that this isn't a problem. I permit myself  7 Roche Bros. honey stung drummies for lunch ever so often.  About half a pound and it's mostly bones.  The lovely bones.  Everyone is panning the movie.

This post makes up, I hope, and thanks for sticking with me, for all the posts I haven't done lately.  Many tasks, with people and aggravations I don't want to discuss on the web.  Taking an on-line course on "Revision."  Revising Promiscuous Mode. 

Finally I have 3 ideas, one for each day between Denver and Reno for "In flight" and also my new Drug Lord scene.  So that's coming along if I could just write it.  And a terrible, awful idea for the climax. A really good twist.  Fortunately, no unfortunately, I'm not writing to deadline.  Only self-imposed, and I should get my butt planted on chair.  Actually, it has been, but I've been doing other computer stuff.

I'm learning Garage Band, too.  Not bad for an old broad.  Anyhow, onward to the sorting of the pile of paper on my desk, a few quick tasks, and then dinner.  The stuffed pork tenderloin.  I  just used Pepperidge Farm stuffing, a processed food, but it's a good quality brand.  We buy them the tenderloins as BOGOS, buy one, get one,  and it's good quality lean protein.  I like good quality lean protein, just like the flank steak earlier in the week.  The trick is not to eat too much, but enough so that you don't hit the PB at 11:30 p.m.  There's a trick to everything isn't there?

Such is life.

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