Engrish

I find that whenever I am feeling a little down or worn out, looking at this T-shirt gives me a rise.

Kelsey's Cream Puffs

Kelsey made cream puffs today. I have never been a big cream puff fan, but she thinks they're wonderful. She wiggled into my bed after breakfast, saying she wanted to make something yummy. I told her to go ahead. When she said she wanted to make cream puffs, I did an internal eye-roll and then told her to get The Joy of Cooking, that book would have the best recipe. She said she'd already bookmarked it in January. Figures.

She looked through the recipe. The ingredients were simple enough. She declared she was not going to sift the flour because she hates sifting and it never makes any difference. Whatevs, chickie. She also decided to make half a recipe since a full recipe was 24 cream puffs, and, for some wild reason, she thought 24 was too many. Of course, halving the recipe brought questions.

"How am I going to add two to two-and-a-half eggs? I'm just going to use two." Fine.

"How much butter is a sixth of a cup?" I took a break from folding laundry and showed her how to measure it.

Her arm got a bit tired stirring, but she did fine. They puffed up wonderfully, and she was quite pleased with the outcome.

We bought a can of whipped cream (because the cans are fun and "they remind me of spray cheese," she says) and vanilla pudding since she's the only one who actually wanted cream in her cream puffs.

Often I don't care much for that kind of pastry. It's always hard and tasteless or so thin that it falls apart in your hand and tasteless. Yuck.

Kelsey is, naturally, spectacular. And her cream puffs were, naturally, spectacular. They were moist and sweet, delicate without being flimsy, firm without being hard. I actually liked them and could definitely have eaten my share of the 24 had she made the full recipe.

It is her goal to open a bakery when she grows up. She wants to put her art on the walls and have poetry nights. My little bohemian. I think she's well on her way.

Easter is for Bunnies

We've spent the last week building a new rabbit cage. Ours was just too small for two big bunnies, and I always felt so guilty stuffing them inside at night. We'd looked around at bigger homes for rabbits, but we weren't impressed. They were horribly expensive (starting at $300) and not very nice, so we just built one ourselves.

We bought three boxes of white wire Organize It cubes from Target for $14.99 each and a couple bags of cable ties from Farm & Fleet (cheap). Kelsey and I started slapping the thing together, figuring out how big to make it and where to put stairs and ramps as we went along. At first we weren't sure what to do for flooring, but in talking it through we decided on a scrubable bathroom panel ($9) laid on a piece of chipboard we already had in the garage. Eric cut them to size and put some cheap casters on the bottom. We put down some carpet we had left over after last year's basement fiasco and a few towels, bought a couple of new litter boxes, a cushy bed and a couple of toys for a total cost of about $100.

It's three stories, 42 inches tall, 56 inches wide and 28 inches deep. There's a door at the bottom and one at the top so we can reach them up there.


And the dudes love it. They were in there nosing around before it was even done. Once it was finished, they didn't even get out with the door gaping open. They have lots of room to stretch, stand, flop and hop. They can stay close if they want to snuggle or they can get out of each other's fur if they so desire.

We feel better about having caged animals. We can't always pay attention to them, so on days they have to stay inside their cage, we're glad they have a nicer place to be. I think they're glad, too.

Back at it

Have you missed me? I didn't think so. But I've been busy on the Web, searching for the latest in awesome goodness. Behold: Squeez Bacon.



Leave it to those crazy Swedes, who also bring us Plopp candy bars, to invent the marvel of bacon-flavored goo in a plastic jug. Now you can add that delicious porcine zing to all your favorite dishes: potato salad, BLT sandwiches, apple slices, ice cream sundaes, trifle. Use it in place of ketchup, A1 steak sauce or Vermont's finest maple syrup.