Homemade Vanilla Extract

I was greatly inspired by Alycia's friend and awesome blogegr Sara who made her own Homemade Vanilla Extract, and since it seemed so simple, I thought I'd give it a shot as well.  There are really only two ingredients, vodka (a 1.75 liter bottle) and whole vanilla beans (about a quarter pound), easy.  So easy that even I probably couldn't goof it up.

This is about what Alycia and I consume in a week, so we just had these two jugs sitting around.  Just kidding.  The vodka was readily available at the local liquor barn type establishment, but I had to order the vanilla beans online. 

I took a pair of clean kitchen shears and sliced the vanilla pods down their length to about an inch of the end.  The vanilla pods had the consistency of a raisin and the whole process only took about 15 minutes.

The vanilla pods were evenly divided up into each 1.75 liter jug of vodka, with about a quarter pound in each jug.  After only an hour the vanilla had already started to turn the vodka color and begin the extract process.  I'll put the bottles into the downstairs root cellar where it's cool and dark.  The vanilla will be ready to use in about a month, but will be best after it's had about 6 months to percolate.

Marilyn Hagerty Olive Garden Restaurant Review Goes Viral

The Grand Forks Herald and its food writer Marilyn Hagerty have exploded over the Internet over the last few days when her review of the Olive Garden restaurant in Grand Forks went viral and was picked up by snarky sites like BoingBoig, Fark, and Gawker.  These sites initially seemed intent on making fun of this old lady from a hick town in North Dakota and imposing their "big city' ideals of what being a food critic should entail.  But happily some public outcry came to her defense and tried to shout down the multitude of angry Internet trolls.  

Marilyn is 85 years old and has been associated with the Grand Forks Herald for more than 60 years (her late husband was the editor of the newspaper for many years).  She's a local institution and at 85 is a not only a better writer than most current college graduates, but has been churning out journalism pieces since before you were born (probably).  I hope that my brain is working half as well as hers when I'm 85, and can only imagine churning out 5 newspaper columns a week at any age.

Marilyn is very much the charming matron of Grand Forks, North Dakota.  She's the kindly grandmother who never has a bad word to say about anyone, and this is reflected in her restaurant reviews.  She rarely has a negative comment and can always find the good in anything, a quality that's sorely lacking in our world today.  We see Marilyn frequently at every manner of University of North Dakota sporting events, football, men's and women's basketball, women's volleyball, etc.  She's an enthusiastic and knowledgeable sports fan and very much an icon in the community.  Sure Alycia and I cracked a few jokes when she did her "Eat Beats" review of one of the McDonald's in town (I mean it's McDonald's, what can you say?), but that's Marilyn.

I mentioned Marilyn a couple of years ago here on Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes when she wrote an article about a Minnesota High School's ice fishing team.  

You can read about Internet sensation Marilyn Hagerty at the following:

• Yahoo Article 
• The Original Grand Forks Herald Restaurant Review that started it all. 
• The Grand Forks Herald Article detailing all the fanfare and describing the possible appearances on CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, etc. 
• A list from the Grand Forks Herald of all the various mentions across the Internet of Marilyn and her Olive Garden review.

Homemade Ketchup Article On Yahoo Voices

Despite my best efforts to the contrary, Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes continues to garner validation in the Blogo-Interneto-sphere.  The How to Made Homemade Ketchup post (after a few necessary edits and textual massages to make it less "bloggy" and more "article-y") was recently published on the much heralded new site Wisdom of the Gaucho.

You can read the article here - How to Make Homemade Ketchup. 

Deaf Dog Growth Spurt

Want to see how much our little puppy Shadowfax has grown?  Check out this picture from the I'm Watching You post back in mid-August of last year.

Now a picture from the same spot that I took this week.

Isn't crazy how big she's gotten?  She's grown like two feet in under a year!!! At this rate she'll be 10 feet tall in a few years, like a spazzy deaf version of Clifford the Big Red dog.  I sense impending destruction shall be wrought upon the house if this growth trend continues.

OK, so what really happened is we put a trunk underneath that window in the mud room.  Alycia and her Mom covered the trunk with a carpet remnant and it's now a prefect perch for the puppy to watch the back yard happenings.  Did you really think she'd gotten that big?  Hadja going there didn't I???

Through the Blizzard - Remington's Rescue Relay

Ever since our deaf puppy Shadowfax arrived to us from Waco, Texas via a marathon relay of volunteer rescue drivers, Alycia and I have been anxious to try to repay the karmic debt and help others dogs in need.  We volunteered our services as rescue dog transporters with the local Humane Society (the Circle of Friends Humane Society in Grand Forks) and waited for our call to action.

The only problem is that living in North Dakota means that you're fairly well out of the way of well, everyone.  Not many folks are ever going to or from Grand Forks, or passing through your area.  After a couple of transport attempts that fell through, Alycia and I finally got our chance on Sunday to participate in a rescue dog transport.

Snow Pictures and A Cold Puppy

We got a bunch of snow on Monday night and Tuesday morning, not a significant snowfall by any means (only about 4 inches), but it was still the largest snowfall so far this winter.  And I actually remembered my camera so I snapped some pictures as I was out shoveling.

The snow was wet and heavy and clung to even the thinnest branches, turning every tree and bare shrub into a giant frosted mini-wheat.  It was quite lovely.

There's actually a small evergreen shrub under there.  We have more snow on the docket for Saturday night through Sunday evening, details are still uncertain, but it could be a decent storm.  And apparently now the door is open for winter, since there's also a good chance of significant snow early next week. 

After clearing the driveway, sidewalks, and front porch I cleared the "doggy business area" in the backyard.  I probably clear about 500 square feet for the pooches so that they don't have to get their feet cold and wet and have a multitude of location options to perform their outdoor functions.  This is mostly for Shaak Ti and Tito, the Puppy actually prefers to perform all manner of business on as large of a snow pile as she can. Seriously, I've seen on top of a four foot high snow drift happily taking a potty break. 

The other dogs are smart enough to stay inside when there's that much snow on the ground, but not Shadowfax, she thinks that shoveling snow is the single greatest game in the world, running around barking and chomping at the shovel and generally being a huge goof.  I admittedly don't help matters by dumping shovel-fulls of snow on her, which just drives her into a more frenzied barking and racing around fest. 

Since she has so little fur though (and apparently doesn't have a strong enough self preservation instinct to go inside when she's so cold and wet that she's shivering) she can't stay out for very long and play in the snow.  After 20 to 30 minutes, I have to stop shoveling and physically haul her inside for a warm up since she won't go on her own accord.  What a goober. 

Garden Recap - Part 2, The Failures

I delineated some of our garden successes in Part 1 (see Garden Recap - Part 1, The Successes).  Now on to the fun stuff, the mistakes I made and lessons learned during the last year on the urban homestead. 

Failures:
Strawberry Jam.  You can read all about our strawberry jam making in the Strawberry Jam Insanity post.  The jam is delicious, but more like a runny, gooey, jam-esque substance than actual jam.  It's still a great topping for pancakes, waffles, ice cream, and gluten free yellow cake but it doesn't have the consistency of proper jam.  The problem was I got a little too big for my britches and thought I could modify the jam recipe.  The lesson learned?  If you want your jam to set properly you need to follow the recipe precisely.     

Onions.  The one set of onions that we tried to plant in the raised bed of strawberries?  They hung around for a week or so, then they just disappeared, totally overwhelmed by the strawberries.  Since we had no place for the onions, this seemed like a good idea, in retrospect this was an idea that was doomed to fail.  Lesson learned?  We're going to make some space for rows of onions and give them plenty of space to do their thing.

Apple Trees.  We lost a couple of apple trees (one each of two varieties) over the winter out of the eight that we planted.  It's hard to tell if it's because they were still vulnerable in their first full year, if I planted them poorly, or if it was just a super hard/cold winter (which it was). We're going to replace them this year with a couple more hardier "North Dakota approved" varieties that should fare better.

Shaak Ti the Deaf Dog - Photo Montage

Since the recent Deaf Dog of the Year voting debacle where Shaak Ti, the middle child, finished third, I have been thinking of a way to make it up to her.  I've had a chance to say my peace and admonish those responsible for the voting fraud and shenanigans in the 2011 Deaf Dog of the Year Voting Results post.  But I figured it might be nice to dedicate an entire post to Shaak Ti (still despondent from her third place finish) to make her feel loved.  All set?  OK, photo time.

Whoops, your blue eyes are closed.  Lets try that again. 

Yay, that's much better.  Such a regal posing little pooch, well done Shaak Ti.

Now a picture playing with your awesome Triceratops toy. 

Looks like we're all pooped out from our super photo shoot.