Monday, December 23, 2024

Yule log cake

Older Daughter decided she wanted to try making a yule log cake. She got the recipe here.

She mixed the dry ingredients...

...separate from the wet ingredients.

This is for the cake part.

Whipping egg whites.

Folding the egg whites into the mixture.

This is the part she wasn't sure about. She lined a tray with parchment paper, and poured the cake mixture to make a thin cake.

It baked beautifully.

The next tricky part was rolling the hot cake and then letting it cool.

While the cake cooled, she made the icing (ganache) that would go over it, starting with breaking up a bar of baking chocolate.

She added the chocolate to hot cream.

Then she whisked it until it was smooth.

Next was the filling, which consisted of whipped cream, mascarpone cheese, and a bit of powdered sugar for sweetener. (The filling was out-of-this-world delicious.)

When the cake was cool, she very carefully unrolled it...

...and spread it with the filling.

After this, the cake is re-rolled.

Not bad!

But wait, it gets better. The next step is to cut off a chunk of the end, at an angle.

The rough end is then "glued" with the ganache against the main part of the cake to make a "branch." (This is a yule log, after all.)

The ganache was thick and dry, almost crumbly, to resemble bark. It took some work to get it onto the cake roll.


After this, the ganache is kind of "scored," again to resemble tree bark.

She added a snippet of cedar, just to make it festive.

She said the one thing she did wrong was not to relocate the cake onto a platter before frosting it, since once it's frosted, it's almost impossible to move.

But other than that, it was a splendid first attempt. I'm not a huge chocolate fan, but even I thought this project was just delicious.

An excellent Christmas baking project. Next time, she said she might try making an "alder tree" by making a vanilla (instead of chocolate) cake. Yum!

Saturday, December 21, 2024

The orphan party

Younger Daughter is currently at her overseas duty station in Europe. Like many military personnel, she finds herself far away from family during the festive season of Christmas.

Her solution? She's throwing an "Orphan Party" on Christmas Eve, which will continue at least until midnight and probably later. She has a spacious apartment and large terrace, so lots of people who have no other family nearby will join together and make merry. She did this last year as well, and apparently it was a wonderful success.

We talked to her a couple days ago, and she explained the plans. Apparently the guest list is now up to 23 (including some children and, no kidding, two German shepherd puppies). She's offering the space, including a portable fire pit on the terrace, and the guests are bringing everything else

Besides decorating her apartment, she's assembling themed flowers consisting of bundles of pine branches, berries, and white flowers, some of which will be suspended from the ceiling to make fake mistletoe.

Even more fun, it's a pajama party, so everyone will show up in (modest) sleep wear. There will be a prize for the best pajamas.

All food, all beverages (alcoholic and otherwise), all snacks and treats, are being brought by the various guests. (Her words: "I'm not making a damned thing.") Younger Daughter has personalized gifts for everyone – everyone! – and she splurged a bit for these, including stockings for the kids. (The kids' stockings will contain candy, chocolate, small toys, and – just to annoy the parents – harmonicas.) The packages under the Christmas tree shown above are just some of the gifts she's wrapped for her guests.

Someone is bringing a hot chocolate bar, where the beverage can be enjoyed plain or mixed with Kahlua or Irish cream or other modifiers. Someone else is bringing all the necessary ingredients for s'mores, to be toasted over the fire pit. Yet someone else is bringing a karaoke machine so people can sing Christmas carols.

Above all, the guests are cognizant that children will be present, so everyone plans to keep things fairly wholesome. For those choosing to indulge in adult beverages, Younger Daughter is making sure everyone has designated drivers, and in a few instances she's offering spare beds and floor space for those who just want to sleep it off.

Oddly enough, a card game I used to play with the girls when they were young – called King's Corner – has become quite the sensation among Younger Daughter's cohorts. Apparently they're planning a King's Corner playoff during the party, with a Nerf gun prize.

Last year's party had about 20 people and just by chance there were no children present. She said everyone had a blast. Weirdly enough, one of the highlights was the cigars and chestnuts one guest brought. At the time, Younger Daughter was living in a different apartment with a massive patio, so people assembled around the fire pit smoking cigars and playing a game in which they tried to toss chestnuts into others' drinks. Sounds odd, but apparently it was a smashing success.

I simply love the idea of an Orphan Party. If Younger Daughter, like so many of her fellow military personnel, are forced to be far away from loved ones over the holidays, I'm glad they're celebrating together.

Friday, December 20, 2024

Anyone want a free grand piano?

I've seen all kinds of spam emails, but this was a new one. This arrived on Dec. 16 with the subject line of "Grand Piano" and a message as follows: 

Hello,

I am reaching out once more about my late husband Yamaha piano, which i am offering to anyone who would genuinely cherish it. If you or someone you know would be interested in receiving this instrument as a gift, please feel free to get in touch.

Warm regards,
Michelle

If anyone is interested in a free grand piano, let me know and I'll put you in touch with "Michelle." I'm sure her "late husband" would be grateful. I'm guessing all you'll need to do is pay shipping from Nigeria.

/sarc/

Four years ago today

Four years ago today, we stumbled into our new home, exhausted beyond belief. (For a review of that chaotic period of moving from our old place, see here, here, and here.) Honestly, we felt that move took a couple years off our lives. It's one of the reasons we've concluded we're never moving again, barring unforeseen circumstances.

We (mostly Don) have made endless improvements during those years. He graveled the driveway. He built a pantry and built a library. He installed the wood cookstove. In the barn, he's built two shops (the one Older Daughter uses for the woodcraft business, plus his "man cave"); built two storage lofts above those shops; built a storage room; and built a feed box for the cows. He addressed some enormous plumbing woes in the house (at which time he also built an outdoor shower) and we had a 500-gallon propane tank installed. He did some much-needed deck repair work. We had a massive yard sale to offload things we no longer needed. We fenced in a corral for the animals, fenced the pasture, and (obviously) got cows. Don partitioned the house, including a separate entrance and porch, for Older Daughter's quarters when she took over the woodcraft business. We fenced a yard for Darcy, began the installation of a comprehensive garden, and planted blueberries and peaches. He built a woodshed and installed a roof-runoff system for rainwater collection. Currently he's in the process of building what we're calling a "demi room," which is an outdoor storage closet.

And this doesn't count a plethora of smaller projects, most of them accomplished by Don: Building gates, repairing a clothes-drying rack, installing fairy lights on the porch, improving a jar washer, making a shelf for holding cook books, random graveling projects, trimming an overgrown grove of trees, things like that.

This upcoming year we plan to finish building the garden (including high fencing against deer) and construct a chicken coop. If time permits, he may even build a separate dairy kitchen for when I start making butter and cheese after Maggie has her calf.

Never a dull moment!

Thursday, December 19, 2024

Happy birthday, Older Daughter!

Today is Older Daughter's birthday!

We had nothing special planned for the day – we're not big on going overboard for birthdays – but we got her a French silk pie and a gift card to her favorite café, and that was about the extent of it.

But we're all together and all healthy, so that's what matters.

And here's the obligatory newborn photo, just to embarrass her (smile).

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

How frugality can save a marriage

A small bit of backstory which most of my long-time readers already know.

When Don and I got married in 1990, we were living in Sacramento. We both had solid well-paying jobs and were living in a nice rental house. We gave up those jobs in early 1993 and rather impulsively moved to rural southwest Oregon, where we bought a fixer-upper on four acres.

The "excuse" for this drastic move was to send me to grad school (Southern Oregon University, where I earned my master's degree in 1995). At the time we moved, we knew we were at a rare now-or-never junction: No kids, no debt, a modest savings account. We were confident our work history would allow us to find decent-paying jobs in our new location.

We were wrong. Our income went from a combined $70K per year (very decent for the time) to zip, zero, zilch, nada. During our first five months in Oregon, while I was in school full-time and accruing debt via student loans, Don was desperately getting the woodcraft business started, which turned into our primary income for decades. By the end of my schooling, I was pregnant with Older Daughter, and becoming a mom took priority over the career I hoped to enter with my master's degree.

And so we struggled financially. We accrued credit-card debt through sheer desperation. We had student loans to pay. We had hospital bills (for the births of our two babies, plus the time Don cut the tip of a finger off on a power tool). I worked outside the home in tandem with Don's schedule (which usually meant nights) so we could trade off child care and avoid costly daycare.

Money struggles drive some couples apart, but it pulled us closer together. We realized the home woodcraft business was the key to allowing us to live rural (this was before remote work via the internet was an option), and we clung to that dream through thick and thin. We never wanted to move back to the city. Ever ever ever.

So we buckled down to make it work. We learned frugality to the nth degree. We learned to raise our babies on an absolute shoestring. Amy Dacyczyn, author of "The Tightwad Gazette" (picked up frugally at a thrift store), was my guru during these years.

It took a long time – especially on a woodcrafter's income, plus whatever part-time work I managed to pick up – but gradually we dug ourselves out of the debt hole we had dug ourselves into, and breathed the light of day once more. The experience left me with something of a pathological fear of owing money as well as a deep-seated hatred of credit cards, but there you go.

It was partly due to our hatred of credit cards as well as a few sour experiences with data breaches (see here and here) that we adopted an all-cash lifestyle over ten years ago, and never looked back. An all-cash lifestyle means we aren't shocked every month by a huge credit card bill. The only reason we use our credit card (yes, singular; we only have one) is to make occasional online purchases, and we also put our monthly expenses (health care, utilities, etc.) on it. And. Then. We. Pay. It. Off. Completely. Every. Month. Without. Fail.

Even today, when our financial position is blessedly more stable (though still modest), we discuss endlessly what we would need to do to tighten our belts and reduce our expenditures should our income fall. I think a little part of us is always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Anyway, the reason for this little backstory is because of a post I read yesterday, seeking advice. The post read as follows, edited slightly for clarity:

"I (male, 35) have been married to my wife (32) for five years, and we've been struggling financially for the past few months. I lost my job about three months ago, and while I've found part-time work, it doesn't pay nearly as much as before.

"We've had to cut back on a lot of things, but it feels like no matter what we do, we're still living paycheck to paycheck and even pulling from savings.

"Recently, my mom (65) came over to visit, and she noticed how stressed I was about the money situation. She offered some advice on how we could save money – things like cutting down on takeout, meal prepping to avoid buying groceries multiple times a week, and switching to cheaper brands. My mom has always been frugal, especially when she was raising me and my siblings on a tight budget.

"I thought it made sense, especially since we're really trying to save wherever we can. I asked if she was willing to go through our spending and show where we could cut down. My wife agreed with this.

"She made a whole spreadsheet about our spending, and we are spending wayyyyy too much on fun stuff. We don't need Starbucks every day and so on. It also became apparent that most of the fun spending was my wife's.

"To be honest, my wife didn't take the breakdown well and started arguing with my mom that her spreadsheet was wrong. She said that my mom's way of doing things is "outdated" and doesn't work for us. She doesn't want to give up buying organic produce, and she likes having variety in what we eat each week.

"I tried to explain that we need to make some sacrifices if we want to get out of this financial hole, but she kept insisting that things weren't as bad as I was making them out to be and that we just needed to "ride it out."

"My mom left at this point and we were still arguing, and she told me she can't give up her takeout. She also went on about my mom being wrong. That's when I lost my patience and said, "You're f***ing wrong. My mom is right. She managed to raise three kinds on one income, and we can't even cut back on groceries for a few months?"

"My wife got really upset, saying I am being a huge jerk for siding with my mom and that my mom is outdated. She's barely spoken to be since, and now I'm wondering if I went too far. But the way I see it, we need to be realistic about our situation, and my mom's advice could actually help us get back on track."

The poster later added: "She (the wife) works part-time and doesn't wish to go full-time. It's not good for her mental health. I'm still the primary earner even with part-time."

Don and I have discussed this post quite a bit. We remember those days of financial struggle and how we tightened our belts. Restaurant meals, takeout foods, and food delivery were absolutely out of the question during those days. We might splurge and get a pizza maybe once or twice a year; the rest of the time, we cooked at home. Cloth diapers, homemade baby food, second-hand everything – that was just the order of the day.

But here's the thing: We looked upon these frugal habits as a challenge, not deprivation. We raised our girls in a happy, stable home. We never thought of ourselves as "poor."

That's why I can't fathom the wife's attitude in the post above. Couples should work together to overcome difficulties and achieve goals, not continue to spend above one's income. By insisting on not changing her spending habits – especially if she's not willing to work full time (I saw no mention that they had children) – I don't see a happy outcome for this marriage ... which is a shame.

Frugality isn't rocket science. It's mostly a matter of an attitude adjustment ... and that includes ignoring the opinions of others or trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Frugality is such a fun, creative lifestyle that it's a pity the lack of interest in adopting thrift can cause marriages to break up.