The Ugly Biscuit

 This is actually a post I'd intended to write years and years ago.  According to my drafts folder here, I wrote out the title (and didn't type any body) back in the Fall of 2020.  At the time I had made biscuits earlier in the day, was reminded of what my kids always called the last biscuit made in the batch, and thought I'd compose a post in regards to that.

So, life happened, the post didn't get written, and here we are in Spring of 2025.  I made biscuits and gravy for breakfast the other day, ate the Ugly Biscuit, and remembered this intended post of long ago.  

Indulge me in a bit of nostalgia, and I'll include my biscuits and gravy recipe, LOL.

For decades (3+ decades,) I have made biscuits from scratch.  And no matter how many times I've made the same recipe, I can never quite get it to come out with all biscuits the exact same diameter and thickness.  Being that I use a biscuit cutter, they are all uniform size/diameter until I get to the last bit of dough.  

But that last one?  It's typically hand shaped because it's a tad too little dough to roll to the same thickness as the others and be big enough around to use my cutter on. Or, sometimes, that last chunk of dough would roll and make a biscuit, but that would leave some dough around the edges that wasn't enough to make smaller biscuit that's big enough to not burn while cooking but if stuffed into the biscuit cutter with the just cut biscuit would make that biscuit too thick to cook all the way through in the same time as the others on the pan, so I just free form a slightly bigger around biscuit with my hands. Or, sometimes I can take the remaining amount of dough and gently pat it into the biscuit cutter so it is perfectly round and not too thick, but being that it was patted and not rolled, the top isn't smooth like the others.  

Thickness is important, so it cooks evenly and for the same amount of time as the other biscuits on the pan.  Diameter is not as essential. And so, in any pan of biscuits I make, there's always one a little smaller or a little lumpier or a hair larger around than the rest.

That's the Ugly Biscuit.  Probably not a politically correct term, possibly a biscuit body-shaming phrase, but there it is.

Somewhere along the way, one of my kids dubbed that runty or bigger or less-than-smooth (or both!) biscuit as the Ugly Biscuit.  The other kids (and DH) picked up on the moniker, and so forevermore, in every batch of biscuits I make, there is always an Ugly Biscuit.  

It cooks fine.  It has the same yummy texture as the rest of the biscuits.  It tastes just like the other biscuits.  But it's not the other biscuits.  It's the Ugly Biscuit.  And therefore it's special (and we must fight over it, LOL!)

Biscuits and Gravy

For the biscuits:

combine 2 cups all purpose flour with:

1/4 cup lard (or shortening)

1 Tbsp sugar

1 Tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt 

until all the lard/shortening is mixed in.  

Then add 3/4 cup milk and stir until a soft dough forms.  If sticky, add a little more flour.

Knead on a lightly floured surface 20-30 times.  Then roll out 1/2" thick and cut with a biscuit cutter (mine is not quite 3" around; you can also use an inverted glass of same diameter).  Place on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake in 450 degree oven for 10-12 minutes until golden brown.

Meanwhile. . . make the gravy.  I usually get to the part of the biscuit recipe where all ingredients but milk are combined, and stick my pork sausage in a pan to brown while I do the rest of the biscuit recipe.

Sausage gravy:

1 pound pork breakfast sausage, crumbled into a skilled and cooked over medium heat until brown.  DO NOT DRAIN!!!

Then add 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter and heat until butter is melted.

Then stir in 1/2 cup flour, and about 1 cup of milk until the milk and flour are combined. 

Slowly add more milk, lots of milk.  I'd estimate 2-3 more cups of milk. I confess I don't measure it, I just add some, stir in, add some more until it's a certain depth in my pan which I know will cook down to the thickness I want.   

Season with salt and pepper to taste, and stir until it comes to a boil.  Then turn heat to medium-low and let simmer, stirring occasionally until it thickens to the desired texture.  Typically if I pop the biscuits in the oven just before adding the milk to the sausage mixture, the gravy is thickened and ready about the same time the biscuits are done cooking.

Sedona With Grandkids

 DH and I took K3 and Toad (the two oldest grandkids) to Sedona Arizona for a hiking trip over their Spring Break.  It was a trip we'd first thought of after visiting Sedona ourselves in March 2023  and decided, last Fall, to finally make happen.  

There's been lots of changes in their lives in the past two years, and we wanted to give them a rest from it rather than being home (in an again changing family) all the time over Spring Break (where they would most likely spend the majority of their days playing video games or watching movies/shows on TV).  We briefly thought about bringing their little brother Rascal along too, but he's much younger and  with much shorter legs would have had a hard time keeping up on the strenuous hiking trails.  At nearly 13 and 10 3/4, K3 and Toad could handle it; plus it was something that acknowledged them as Big Kids rather than Little Kids like the rest of our grandchildren. (Not to mention that Rascal seems to be handling the changes at home easier.)

Like when DH and I went to Sedona in 2023, this trip we flew into Phoenix and got a hotel for the night.  After a good night's sleep, and a nice breakfast, we took the kids to Camelback Mountain.  They had seen pictures of it from our previous trip, and wanted to try it for themselves.

Unfortunately for all of us, there were a lot of other people wanting to hike Camelback that morning and the parking lots at the Echo Canyon trailhead and at the Cholla trailhead were both full. We drove back and forth between the two for a while, hoping to get a parking spot at either one.  We finally did get one at Echo Canyon, but with the parking delay we didn't get on the trailhead until close to noon. Also not in our favor, the temperature was all ready over 85 degrees, and with the sun directly overhead, it was rapidly getting hotter. Remember, we'd come from Michigan where we'd just had a warm spell in the upper 40's.

All of which to say, we didn't summit Camelback this trip. DH in particular struggled (partly, we think, because the kids were keeping a much zippier pace than we had on our previous trip) and he ended up sitting on the side of the trail in a semi-shady spot while K3, Toad and I went on ahead.  

The three of us started up the rock scramble portion, but about halfway up that, K3 and Toad asked if we could turn around and just go back down.  Since I was rather winded and hot myself (keeping up with the young whippersnappers), and I was a bit concerned that they had all ready drank more than half of their water, and I was really worried about DH,  I agreed we could call it good where we were at.  

In retrospect, I kind of wish I'd told the kids to keep going, as the summit really wasn't much further over the top of that rock scramble.  Oh well.  Better to turn around than to lose a hiker to heat exhaustion.  Next time we'll plan to be at the trailhead by 8 a.m. to beat both the heat and the glut of hikers needing parking.

From there, we headed up to Sedona, where we checked into our resort, took the kids out to an early dinner at the delicious Mexican restaurant we'd discovered on that 2023 trip (Javelina Cantina), hit the grocery store for food supplies, then back to the resort for an evening swim in the pool.

And that kind of set our schedule for the next three days: 

• get up about 6 a.m., have breakfast, 
• hit the hiking trails about 8 a.m., hike for several hours/miles,
• back to the resort and make lunch, 
• swim in the pool/soak in the hot tub (really was great for keeping the hips and knees from stiffening up after using them hard on the trails)
• dinner (usually grilled or otherwise cooked in the kitchenette of our suite)
• K3, Toad, and usually DH had a post-dinner swim while I read either poolside or on our patio depending on how busy/loud the pool area was.

Our first excursion in Sedona was to hike to Devil's Bridge.  This time we parked in the Mezcal trailhead lot and took that trail.  Although the kids did their best to act like they weren't having fun (because, you know, tweens), they were typically exploring up ahead and after several reminders not to get too far in front of us, they did get the idea to stop and wait for us to catch up.  Most times we caught them taking pictures of scenery while they waited.  (What?!?  Taking pictures of somewhere you aren't having fun??)

Other times we found them taking advantage of a raised, shady perch a little to the side of the trail.

Of course we did hear the question "How much longer?" several times.  And after having both DH and I usually respond "we're almost there, just a little bit further", and also hearing other hikers coming back from where we were going often say "Keep going, you're almost there; it's just a little further", by the middle of the second day the kids started to joke that "Just a little further" really was hiker code for "Five more miles".  Which isn't true, as the longest hike we did in a day was 5.5 miles round trip.  The others were only about 4 miles each.

That 5.5 miler was on the Soldier Pass trail, the next day.  It was kind of a long day, partly because the parking lot at the trailhead wasn't open for the season, and we had to park down at a municipal park, then walk up a road and through a residential area to get to the trail.  So, of course, on the way back to the car we were all hot, sweaty, weary, running on the last of our water, out of snacks and about an hour past lunch time.

Extra mileage for parking aside, it was a great hike and one that we will definitely plan on doing again.  We saw three great features on the trail, and didn't even go all the way to the Pass for the vista view (we were tired, had hit the 'used half our water' mark, the kids were playing the "how much longer?" record on repeat. . .)  So next time we'll be all in and make it to the Pass. (And hopefully the trailhead parking lot will be open!)

This time, we marveled at  Devil's Kitchen, 

Saw the Seven Sacred Pools (which the kids were a bit disappointed weren't anything they could swim in)

Hiked/rock scrambled up to a big cave (which I didn't get a good picture of), and nearly to the big cave the kids went and explored a little cave, in which they were told (and took a picture of to show their friends) was a little Jesus statue.  So then the joke was that over Spring Break DH and I had dragged them through the wilderness where they found Jesus.  (Irreverent humor, hopefully no reader is offended.)

The little cave with Jesus.

Our third hiking destination in Sedona this trip was Cathedral Rock.  This was another spectacular, and sometimes physically and mentally brutal, hike.  Definitely a must-do again. 

(Ha ha, while proofreading this I'm rereading my descriptions of the hikes and wondering how many readers think I must be a sadist: "brutal" "strenuous" often followed by "must do again!".)  

The vast majority of the trail was over smooth rock (alternately steep and somewhat terrifying) , and you needed to watch for either the rock cairns or the painted blazes on the rock to know where to go next.

My favorite photo from our trip,

about 2/3 of the way up Cathedral Rock.

You get up a ways, and you think "wow, I must be just about there, I've climbed pretty high all ready", and then you keep following the cairns/blazes around this turn and that turn and another steep & narrow climb or two, and you're sure you must be close to the end of the trail.

The steep way up

Same part of the trail, on our way back down.

And you're going, and hikers coming down tell you how great the view is at the end, and to keep going because you're-almost-there-it's-just-a-little-further (and your grandkids roll their eyes because apparently you're going to insist they hike another five miles to get to the end), and before you know it, you are looking at the back side of the pillars that you took a picture of the front of just about twenty minutes ago.

And that is the end of the trail.  And yes, there was a sign, attached to a rock cairn just before a huge drop-off, that said END OF TRAIL.  And you took a picture of your grandkids by that sign, and they both insisted you text them the picture so they could show it to all their friends when they get home.  And you know it was a great trip and they truly enjoyed all those miles of being dragged through the wilderness.

But that wasn't the end of the trip.  Our flight home from Phoenix wasn't until the following evening, so unknown to K3 and Toad, DH booked the four of us for an 8 a.m. off-road Jeep tour (the 8 a.m. tours were 25% cheaper than the tours from 9:00 on, so really it was like we bought 3 and got one person free!).  The tour took us on a really rocky, winding, rough road where we saw many features of the Mogollon Rim.  The scenery was beautiful, and our driver/guide made it extra fun for the kids by punching the gas pedal hard at every bump that was shaped right to give the Jeep some air between it's tires and the ground.  When they weren't shrieking, they were laughing, or at least sporting giant smiles.

All in all, I think they had a lot of fun.  And you know what?  Not once did they watch TV, or play video games that entire week.  I think it's good to expose them to some fun in nature and let them know they can be happy without screens entertaining them.

Of course now Rascal and Faline want to know when it's their turn to fly away on an airplane and go on a hiking trip with DH and I.  Our tentative plan for that is about three years from now, when they will be about 9 and 8, and have long enough legs and enough stamina to go for miles.

The Crocus Are In Bloom

I'm crazy busy lately, but wanted to pop in quick to share a picture of some of my crocus with you.  They are blooming like crazy right now, and in fact a few of them are all ready done blooming.  This patch I need to remember to mark so that later, when they are done, I can dig them up, thin out the bulbs and use the 'extras' to plant another cheerful splash of early Spring yellow and purple somewhere.

Soggy Morning

The forecast for Wednesday was WET with a good possibility of strong storms in the evening hours depending on if the sun ever came out that day and how much the temperature rose. 

Morning was definitely spot on; with pouring rain and thunder rumbling like the sound of a tractor pulling an empty gravity wagon back and forth on the road in front of my house.  Horses were going to have to stay in the barn, as the air temperature was hovering just above the freezing mark and it was going to be impossible to put the horses outside without them getting drenched to the skin in the rain.  I didn't want anyone to get chilled.

So, rather than turning them out after their breakfast had been eaten, I decided I would stay in the house and do some house chores in the morning, then go to the barn after lunch and (hopefully) turnout horses during the break in the rain we were supposed to get midday.  It's always easier to clean stalls while the horses are outside, so I just flip-flopped my typical stalls-in-the-morning, house-in-the-afternoon schedule.

DH had been hinting on Tuesday about wanting some macadamia nut cookies, and this rainy morning was a perfect time to make some.  Thankfully, Tuesday I had planned ahead and taken a stick of butter out of the fridge to warm up and soften.

The first step in making the cookies was to gather the ingredients.  So, I began by retrieving that stick of butter from the barn-shaped cookie jar on the counter.

"What?!?" you say.  Butter in the cookie jar? Huh?

Yeah, when I want to set out a stick of butter to soften, I've learned to put it in the barn cookie jar (which, as my overflow cookie jar, rarely gets used because I don't often make double batches of cookies since the kids grew up and moved to houses of their own).  Otherwise The Yarn Thief will jump up on the counter, no matter which counter I put the butter on (or try to hide it under a dish towel), and lick/eat it.  She didn't used to jump on counters at all, but in the last handful of years she has developed the bad habit of doing it when I'm outside, or at night when DH and I are sleeping.  Always when there's nobody nearby to discipline her for it.

Getting the container of macadamia nuts out of the pantry, I looked at the level of the contents and suspected I was going to be short on the needed amount of nuts.  Bummer.  What could I sub in for the lacking macadamias?  

Walnuts!  Walnuts I have plenty of on hand, and they sounded like they would go well with macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips.  So I altered my recipe a tad and made Macadamia Walnut Cookies instead.

In the process of making the cookie dough, I used up the last of the vanilla in the little bottle I use for measuring out of when cooking and baking.  And, oops, the cabinet where I keep my steeping jar of vanilla revealed that I forgot to start another batch a month or so ago when I bought the vodka to use to soak vanilla beans in thus making vanilla extract.

Well, while the cookies were baking, I would just make use of that time to get another jar of vanilla beans steeping.  And, heck, while I was at it, and because the bottle of vodka is enough to make two batches of vanilla and I had plenty of vanilla beans on hand, why not just get two jars going?

Which is how I, all by myself, went through an entire bottle of vodka that morning.  I'm practically a teetotaler, so DH of course had to tease me about that empty bottle sitting on the kitchen island. . . 

The sun never did come out on Wednesday, although the rain stopped for a couple of hours.  It resumed again around 8:00 p.m. in the form of thunderstorms and kept up most of the night.  Based on how much fuller the horses' water trough were Thursday morning than on Tuesday evening when horses last had access to them, I'm guessing we got somewhere in the range of 5-6 inches of rain in about 36 hours.

Macadamia Walnut Cookies

(For macadamia nut cookies I use the basic Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip recipe, but instead of chocolate chips I use white chocolate chips and add 1 cup macadamia nuts.)

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened

1/2 cup shortening or lard (I use lard since I'm very sensitive to soy as I get older and soy is now in just about all brands of shortening)

3/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup white (granulated) sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 1/4 cup all purpose flour (I use unbleached)

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 cup white chocolate (vanilla) chips

1/2 cup chopped mac nuts 

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Mix together sugars, butter and shortening/lard until creamy.  Stir in the eggs and vanilla.  Add in the flour, baking soda and salt, then stir until combined.  Next add the nuts and white chocolate chips and stir enough to evenly distribute through dough.  Place on to ungreased cookie sheets by rounded spoonfuls.

Bake at 375 degrees for approx. 9-11 min until edges are browned. (Baking time varies by oven; my old one was 10-11 minutes, the newer one seems to get it done in 9 minutes.)  Remove from cookie sheets and cool on wire racks.

Gotta Love Free Books!

 Two years ago, a friend of mine organized a community book swap.  It was held in the resource room at her local library.  The premise was that people brought books to swap--minimum of one book required for admission, attendees could take home as many books as they wanted, and at the end of the swap all 'homeless' books were donated to the library for their annual used book sale.

I ended up being unable to make it to the swap, because K2's funeral ended up being scheduled for the same day.  My dear, dear friend, when she heard of this conflict, told me that she'd had numerous people give her boxes of books they no longer wanted and wished to donate to the swap without attending, and invited me to her house to check out the donations.  I found about a dozen books in those pre-swap boxes and being able to take them home even though I wouldn't be able to be at the swap itself helped brighten up a really dark time.

Her book swap was such an overwhelming success, and she had so many requests for another book swap in the not too distant future, that she did!  It needed a larger venue, so that had to be obtained before setting a firm event date.  Ended up being in the Fall of that year.

That one I did attend.  It was another, even larger, impressive turnout of people and books.  Such a big turnout that there wasn't enough table space for all the books brought to be swapped.  And thus was born a semi annual event: the community book swap.

Last year, there was a Spring swap (which I attended and stood in line for almost an hour to get into as there was so many people wanting to swap that the room was at maximum human capacity and people had to be let in only as other people left) and a Fall swap.  The Fall swap had some changes made, such as you could buy an early admittance for $5 and get in an hour early for 'private shopping' before the masses were let in.  That helped a bit with shortening the line, but the turnout was still bigger than the event venue.

This year, the Spring swap was at another new, even larger, location.  The 'early bird special $5 admission' was again offered.  Frugal me, I went for the (free) general admission time and had no trouble getting right in.  I went with only six books to donate (apparently I didn't read much at all between October and March), but came home with sixteen.

Some are for the grandkids to read, some are in brand new condition that I will probably give as gifts, but mostly they are for me!  I was especially excited to spot this book:

Back in 2013 & 2014, when I was learning to knit, I learn to how to knit socks on double pointed needles, and also the Magic Loop method using a circular needle.  At that time, I found that I prefer double points.  2015 or so,  I first heard about the Two at a Time (TAAT) method, and it intrigued me but not enough to seek out more information and give it a try.  I even heard of this exact book, but there was so much stuff going on in my life at that point that I was far from trying anything new that I suspected might require my complete attention to learn.

But now, it's 2025 and I'd actually recently been thinking about maybe adding this book to my list of things I wanted to request from the library. To see it sitting there, in front of me, on the "Crafting" table at the book swap surely was a sign from above!  So I grabbed it and stuffed it into my bag.

Imagine my complete and utter delight when I got it home, was showing off my prizes (new books) to DH, opened the book and there, tucked inside by the previous (now unknown) owner were two sizes of needles needed for some of the patterns in the book!  Woo hoo!  A book teaching the method, 17 patterns and two sets of needles for knitting with!  WINNER WINNER!!

Gotta love free books!

Yeehaw, Hang on to Your Hats!

 We had quite a storm blow through yesterday evening.  Not unexpected at all, in fact, it hit just about the exact time the meteorologists had been predicting for two days.  So we were ready for it.

As dinner was cooking in the oven (Husband's Delight, I'll put the recipe at the bottom of this post), I ran out to the barn and put evening feed in the horse's stalls, anticipating that I would need to bring them in a little early.

Ran back to the house as the timer on the oven was just finishing up.  DH and I sat down to salad and Husband's Delight, me keeping an eye on the darkening sky to the south.  

I gulped down the last few bites on my plate, then jumped up and headed out to the barn.  Just as I got there, my phone went off in a tornado warning alert.  Of course it said to seek shelter immediately, to which I replied (yes, out loud) "I will, just as soon as I get horses in." Because that's how it works when you have a farm.  Livestock first, then yourself.

I was to the mares' pasture gate (as the Poetess is always the first horse to come in--alpha mare that she is), where both mares were standing to meet me, when I heard the storm sirens in the village (6+ miles away) go off.  And then the wind kicked up.  Oh boy, here we go!

DH met me part of the way to the barn and took the Poetess from me so I could run back and get the LBM.  By the time I got to the same spot with her, he met me again with both of the geldings' halters.  I went to the their pasture, and quickly haltered one, pulled him through the gate and DH was back again, ready to receive the lead rope.  The last horse was anxious to get in by then, looking worriedly off to the south and waiting practically smashed at the gate for me to come in and grab him.

We got all the horses in their stalls and the barn shut up tight, then speed walked into the wind back to the house.  I had just pulled my muck boots off in the garage and decided (fool that I am for a good storm), to head out onto the front porch in my stocking feet to watch the front roll in, when it hit.

And man, did it hit good!  Straight line winds right out of the south and driving rain coming completely sideways.  Forget going on the front porch, it was like walking into a firehose!  So I went into the house instead, just in time to see (through the kitchen windows) the little side table go scooting across the entire length of the front porch (about 30') driven by the wind.  

Looking out the other windows, you couldn't see hardly anything the rain and wind were coming so hard.  I did notice that we were missing the little plastic toddler sized playset that sits in the backyard closest to the house.  It had been in the yard a few minutes ago, when DH and I entered the garage, but now it was missing.

The electricity blinked off and back on twice, then went off for good.  As of this writing (over 17 hours later), it is still off.  

About fifteen minutes after it hit, the leading edge of the storm had passed and the wind let up enough that we could see through the rain, I located that playset.  In pieces, starting out near the chicken coop and ending towards the field, about 50 yards from where it had originally sat.

playset pieces scattered from the backyard to the shop

Later, once the wind had died off and the rain slowed to a drizzle, DH and I went out to check on the horses and chickens (stubborn chickens had not wanted to go into their coop before the storm), and to assess damages.

Horses, horse barn and fencing: Fine.

Chickens and coop: Fine (all chickens huddled on their roost by then, LOL).

DH's shop: lots of water inside because the south facing door had been damaged by the wind hitting it full force.  South door has a huge dent and was raised about 10" by the force, and the east facing door is bent outward from the pressure inside the building.  We're going to have to put in our first ever claim on our homeowner's insurance.

House: lost a long piece of fascia of  the peak of the South gable.  Also several pieces of soffit partially ripped off on the front porch and the piece of soffit closest the door that goes from the garage to the front porch is all mangled and punched up into the garage attic (again, extreme air pressure).  A window screen ripped off a living room window is bent up and seems to have a piece of the window edging itself still attached.  Add that to the insurance claim.  A wooden chair that lives on the front porch was thrown up against the railing by the wind so hard that the backrest broke off.  All other porch/deck/patio furniture moved around, some flipped, but nothing else damaged.

Shed and garden/grape arbor: Fine

Trees: all the trees around the house and yard look fine, including the dead one leaning towards the utility pole that the electric company was supposed to have their contractor remove last Fall. In the northeast corner of the field, near the entrance to the 'north road' in our woods, a very large, tall, tree has the top completely broken out of it.  We'll have to examine it close up to determine if we need to take the entire tree down or let it be and see if it recovers.

This morning, the temperature is almost 40 degrees cooler than it was yesterday, with winds now coming from the north.  We have the generator on at the house so DH can have internet to work from home, and we have heat, lights, water, and the fridges and freezers can stay cool. We'll run the generator all day (or until the power is restored) then shut it off at bedtime to save fuel and have quiet for sleeping.  

There's no power in the barn though, so I strapped on my handy headlamp and cleaned stalls by its meager light.

selfie with headlamp

not the greatest stall cleaning light, but it does the job

(note shadow from my phone while taking the picture!)

HUSBAND'S DELIGHT

(recipe originally found in a magazine by my aunt in the early 1980's)

1 pound ground beef

6 ounces sour cream

3 ounces cream cheese

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp sugar

15 ounce can tomato sauce

1/2 cup chopped onion

10 ounces wide egg noodles

1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1. Set cream cheese out in a small bowl to soften for an hour (or soften on warm setting of microwave)

2. Cook ground beef and onion until meat is browned.  Meanwhile, cook the egg noodles until tender.

3. To the meat and onion, add seasonings and tomato sauce.

4. Drain noodles.

5. Add sour cream to the softened cream cheese and mix well.

6. In a greased 9" x 13" baking dish, layer half the noodles, then half the meat sauce, then half the cream sauce.  Then layer remaining meat sauce, remaining cream sauce, and remaining noodles.  Top with the shredded mozzarella.

7. Cover dish with foil and bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Fourteen Years?!?

 Today is 14 years since I started this blog.  Wow.  So much has happened, my family has grown, and changed, and life is so different (but yet, also the same) as it was back in 2011.

There have been many times, in the last two years especially, when I've asked myself why I have this blog still.  I feel like I don't do right by it; that I don't post as often as I want, nor do my of my posts in recent years have the tone I'd like them to have.  A lot of them, to me anyway, feel like I'm giving a report rather than chatting with a friend.

What to do? 

Pull the plug and stop blogging?  Am I just done?  Am I out of things to say and share?  Is blogging dead anyway?  (I find it harder as time goes on to find blogs that I'm interested in--real people not selling products or faux lifestyles.)  Does everyone just prefer photos and not much meaty (as in substantial) talk these days?

Or try to find time (and topics I find fun/appealing) to post about much more regularly--like weekly as a minimum?  Set a schedule and do what is necessary to stick with it (even if I'm not feeling it?)

Give myself grace and just let the timing and topics be what they may?  That was my original intent, really, just to share what comes through my life, good and bad, interesting and dull.  Just an everyday average person, not some super hyped-up-always-bright-and-sunny version of womanhood.

I started this blog more as an outlet for myself (I've always loved writing, but hate writing on assigned topics) than anything else.  It's never been a financial thing, it's never been a popularity thing, and for the most part I never talk about politics or current social hot buttons because those just aren't me.  I do still want to write posts.  I do still want to share thoughts and ideas and happenings and creations.  I'm definitely not out of things to share.  If blogging is mostly dead, well, it's not completely buried yet, and I'm fairly sure there are people like me out there who want to read not just look at perfect pictures and witty captions.

So where do I/this little place here go from here?  Well, we shall see what the future holds.  Life is busy, but it's always been busy.  I'm trying to learn to be better at self-care (a totally foreign concept for most of my life) and writing, for me, is a form of self-care.  

I need to sit on my porch swing more and write.  I mean, that's why I always wanted a porch swing--to sit and relax on--and why my kids bought me one a few years ago. 

Would you like to join me?