chocolate mousse guacamole??

some saturdays i leave the radio on a while after "wait wait don't tell me" --  until it just becomes annoying.

a few weeks ago, a cooking show came on with guest cheryl crow. her recipe for chocolate mousse caught my ear, basically thick chocolate pudding, made with 2 avocados, agave nectar, cocoa powder, vanilla, and almond extract!

i got a couple of avocados and gave it a try. since john doesn't like avocados, it seemed like a perfect test!

it was simple to make and he loved it. 

deeeee-licious!  (it's not green either)

i didn't have almond extract, plus one of my friends is allergic to almonds, but i had just made coffee, so i put in that instead.  we ate it like pudding, in little bowls, not being the owners of martini glasses. 

hell i drink wine out of little juice glasses and john likes to drink water or juice from canning jars....martini glass? gimme a break.

here's the link to the recipe....it's great stuff!

  chocolate mousse recipe
oh another thing...i didn't use a food processor, just an old blender i have.  worked fine!

Manta Whispering

see youtube for more details!  my first machinima!

the tea room gets a mysterious teapot

I closed my eyes and reached for a tart...I do a random taste test now and then. 

Usually it's pretty quiet here in my tea room, but there was some rattly racket down in the square, getting louder and closer.
I looked down on that side of the building, and along came a bag lady with a cart!  Never saw that before in Cowell!

click pics to see larger

She had a sign saying Free Kittens. She looked up at the tea room and beckoned to me.
I'm a sucker for kittens. I sure don't need one, but of course I wanted to see them. Then as I approached her, she rummaged around and brought out a pretty teapot that she set on the table. 

It seemed like she couldn't talk, or chose not to ...she pointed to the tea shop and pointed to the teapot and looked expectant. The kittens were cute, much as I knew I'd better not take one, so I gave her some Linden dollars for the pot, which was quite attractive. I wanted to ask her all about it, but she took off like she had somewhere to go with those $Lindens!

 

That's when I noticed the design on the pot was not just abstract, it looked like a moth. 
A moth!  That's one of those pre-erase thingees Sal is always on about. I wondered if this was an actual artifact!

I turned to call to the bag lady, but she was out of range. I wasn't going to run after her!
Curious now, I turned the pot round, and discovered a crack in the bottom. Not only a crack, but ...more moth designs! Very clear this time. 
Wow I will have to ask Sal about this.
Too bad about the crack tho. 

Since it was so pretty, I decided to keep it out for customers to see until I could let Sal have a look at it. He probably knows who the old biddy is, too, and we can ask her where she got it.
Stop by for a look, and some free pastries and tea.  

But come by the tea room before I submit the pot to Sal's ArcheoExpo2011 to see if it came from the ancient Moth People. The expo is June 25. Don't miss it!

Gorey was right they are going bonkers! 

 

Raglan Film Festival

Still raining, raining, raining! fortunately yesterday, as it rained and rained, mudpie was able to attend the tiny machinima festival awards (The Otters).  ten machinima were screened as over 50 tinies cheered, commented, nommed, a few biggies attended too. 

here are links to 2 of the best, one of which has a brief glimpse of mudpie singing wootmas carols, and the other is by my good friend enjah and lucy was playing piano in one scene but i think maybe it ended up on the editing floor :-(  

or is that lucy at the second tavern?
anyway, here you have some of the best of tiny machinima

Silent Film Found in French Village 

and a documentary  Merry Wootmas

to see some more go here Raglan Shire Film Festival 2011

France was punished on Thursday for not taking proper care of its hamsters.

According to a New York Times article :

The Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the European Union’s highest court, ruled Thursday that France had failed to protect the Great Hamster of Alsace, sometimes known as the European hamster, the last wild hamster species in Western Europe. If France does not adjust its agricultural and urbanization policies sufficiently to protect it, the court said, the government will be subject to fines of as much as $24.6 million. 

mudpie is quite worried
lucy cheers her up, helping her build a new house & then they roast marshmallow.

 

good fences

between my back fence and the river is a narrow strip with a house,
a house right close by my fence, and a road.
the road is called Back Street.
that's not its name, it's just what it is called.


the house is ugly -- really. sometimes worse than others.
i've fantasized about buying it to tear down.
but it is a good house, it has sheltered a variety of people,
all related in some way, as people around here are.
you have to be careful what you say.
"who her? she's my cousin!"

when we first moved here, it was occupied by a man
and his high-school age daughter.
nice girl.
he had killed his wife -- caught her in bed with another man
shot her dead.
went to prison.
came out and raised his daughter.
the neighbors told us we were supposed to keep an eye on him
not good if he was drinking.
my hubby talked to him sometimes over the fence
said he seemed like a nice man.
he gave us some horseradish plants.

eventually daughter grew up and they moved out.
some other people lived there, dogs and kids and motorcycles.
then the old woman who owned the house came to live there
once after a big storm she called us to say part of our roof was gone.
we didn't know, but she could see it from her window.
we were very appreciative.
but still, when her visitor (son? grandson?) 's pit bull got into our yard
and chased john into his car
we called the police.

a young woman with 2 young kids,
one was the beautiful one of indeterminate gender,
lived there for awhile.
SJ ran into her when his band was playing at a bowling alley
and during the break he wandered into the next room
where some heavy duty exotic dancing was onstage.
it was our neighbor.
she recognized him and came over to his table after her act
he said they had a nice chat. she was a nice person.

last year m. moved in to care for his mom
who had been failing, as they say.
he was a retired man, happily living in florida,
but had to give it up to care for her.
not enjoying winter, tho he was born and raised here.
the Very Rich Man (see earlier post) has been trying to buy the house for a few years.
it is certainly a blight on the picturesque village he wants us to become.
the old lady and her son m. refused to sell.
it was her home.  who wants to move when you are old sick and dying?

now that she is gone, died in April, m. says they are after him again.
"they just don't know how to talk to new englanders" he says
and becomes more resistant.
i see him now as i sit on my back porch.
whatever he lost those years in florida has come back
with a vengeance.
like a true vermonter, he is digging, planting, making a garden.
he wants to fix the house up to be nice
like it was when he was young and his grandparents lived here.
getting him out is going to take something
that goes deep down into the roots.