December 27
Today felt like Christmas Day for us. We got up and had a large, late breakfast--pancakes on our new, two-burner griddle. We wanted it because with a single large skillet on the small gas burners, we could only cook about four small pancakes at a time. And that time was a long time. On the first attempt, they turned out perfectly but cooking a half recipe took forever--by the time we had one serving of cakes ready, half of them were cold.
On the second attempt I turned up the heat a little and ended up with my historical norm for pancakes--burned on the outsides, raw on the insides. So we decided to see if you could get a griddle that would cover two burners at once, and at the same time distribute the heat better so we could at least cook a single serving all at the same time.
The one Ed found was iron, and while it was heavy as a chunk of lead and almost too large for the stove, it still worked a lot better than the single large skillet did. They weren't the best pancakes I ever made, but they were a whole lot better than my previous attempts.
So, after all that, the guys sat around idly for a while and then I cajoled them into coming for a walk with me. It was about 11:00 and a whole lot of other people had the same idea--the parking lot at the trailhead to Devil's Waterhole was nearly full and the trail pretty much so. (We walked over there, not needing the parking lot, but I happened to notice.)
We used the walk as a training exercise for Molly--every time (and there were a lot of those) we passed another dog, she had to go off the trail and sit at attention until it went on by. She didn't like that, but she enjoyed it.
We stopped short of going on around the trail to the scenic overlook, but that was okay. Ed's back was bothering him and that was more than enough hiking for him--probably about two miles total. At least we all got outside in the sunshine and fresh air--we should sleep well.
After that I sat around outside while they watched Charmed episodes on the DVR. I read a little and watched birds a little. I got a pretty decent look at the black-capped titmouses in the tree nearby. Tufted Titmice have a dark forehead and a gray crest; Black-Capped Titmice have a white forehead and a black crest. I for sure saw the black crest and I think I got a glimpse of the forehead.
I wish I'd gotten a picture of the: the faucet at the nearby campsite was dripping ever so slowly, maybe at the rate of two drops per minute. The titmouse would cling upside-down on the faucet and sip a drop or so--it was very amusing.
And so was Molly--she was tied to the aluminum/wood picnic table and when a squirrel taunted her from a nearby tree, she moved the table several feet over.
Our nearest neighbors had been a little noisy for the last two days but on this day they finally left. Not noisy in a bad way--they were just young. A family with a couple of preteen aged sons, I would have guessed. No reason to use your "inside voices" if you're outdoors at a picnic table.
But they were hardly gone an hour before they were replaced. This new set of neighbors just had a tent and an SUV and they were even quieter than us.
In the morning, we'd gone off and left Zack behind and I'm happy--and surprised--to report that he wasn't yap-yap-yapping when we returned. On other occasions he's barked his annoying little Shi-tzu bark for hours.
It was a lovely afternoon, way too warm for December. The high was probably mid-seventies, or even 77 as the weather forecast predicted. It was clearly "shorts" weather, and guess who'd left all her shorts behind? Yes, me. When I was packing, I pulled out the shorts from my clothes cabinet and replaced them with pants. I was lucky to have left a few short-sleeved teeshirts.
As much as I enjoyed the weather, it worried me. Of course Texas weather is screwy and has been screwy since time began. But still--seventies in December? Not right. I saw several bees out searching for the flowers which were still dormant for winter. I can hope that at least the aluminum can dispensers supplied a diet of sugar rich soda for them.
By the way, here's one of the evil stickers from a previous camping trip. Found in my sock:
After a lonesome lunch at the picnic table, I read a little in my book and tried to take tufted titmouse pictures. After a long, lazy--and a little lonely--while, I went for another hike. This time Molly and I went back to the trails that start by the amphitheater. The parking lot there, which is for both hikers and primitive campers, was pretty full but beginning to empty out at about 3:30. Still, we had a lot of opportunities to practice "off the road" and "sit" while we waited for dogs and groups of people to pass us by.
The plan was to go to the big slope of bare-ish rock and climb all the way to the top. But when we got there, it was already occupied. A couple of young ladies and a handful of children were playing on it. I found a sitting spot and waited while one of t e ladies let her girl go almost halfway up, only calling her back because she was out of eyesight. Way to go, mom! Girl power rules!
It wasn't long before they went on down the trail and Molly and I could ascend. I found myself getting winded several times, heart beating way too fast. It wasn't really a climb, just an uphill walk. Much like stairs, and probably no more than 30 feet of ascent. But it was nice up there.
And back. I don't understand why I was feeling lonesome, exactly, and it was only a little bit. I called my brother and got it out of my system.
Gumbo for supper, and with it we baked one of my two pans of brown-and-serve rolls from the "red checked" cookbook. The history of this is that I wanted to device a method I could make rolls to take camping (for Christmas dinner). the first recipe I found had me do a first rise, then shape the rolls and freeze them. Then, four hours before you wanted to bake the rolls, you set them out and let them rise slowly from the frozen state until time to bake. I tried that recipe too, and while the rolls were nice and fluffy, they weren't great tasting.
Then I tried the recipe from the cookbook, but I accidentally disturbed the dough during the second rise and they ended up flat. They tasted okay on the outsides, but they didn't cook correctly because there was no air inside.
Then I noticed the cookbook had a cooking method that had you do all the steps for making the rolls, two risings and all, and then bake them partially at a low tempraerature before freezing. Once frozen, when ready to cook you thawed them briefly and finished browning them in the oven. So that's what I did. I ended up with three 9-inch pie plates of rolls, the first two fo which I did with the partial baking method. I froze them to bring with, then baked the remaining batch to try at home.
Well, that remaining batch ended up getting 20 extra minutes of rise time, and they were excellent. if only I'd let the first two have that extra time, they'd have been awesome.
Anyway, they were more than adequate and certaiinly better than most supermarket bread. We had one of the two plates today, cooked in the convection oven, and will have the second one when we eat our Christmas ham.
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