I’m sleeping with the dogs at the farm for the next 10 nights, and keeping the home fires burning for my brother. He has run away to Hawaii, the shit.
After swearing at the coffee maker that I couldn’t get to “coffee” (again – this happened to me this past summer when I “farm-sat”, and this time, Aubrey showed me step-by-step what to do – nothin’. His coffee maker will not make me a single cup of coffee.), and swearing at the wood-pile that didn’t want to give up a few sticks of wood to get the fire going in the the airtight stove (at least I won that battle), I took the dogs out into a Winter Wonderland.
Kaylee was stunned, ecstatic, and overjoyed with the amount of snow at the farm. She plowed non-stop through snow up to her neck in places. Bert and Ernie caught a bit of her joy bug and romped around with her, when normally, they usually all kind of cut away in different directions during morning runs.
Aubrey also showed me how to get Netflix up and running on his bedroom TV yesterday, you know, so I could take my new “No Netflix” lifestyle and just pitch it out a window and get all addicted again on Night 1. “You don’t even need to sign in!” he exclaimed. “See? Just turn it on!”
“Sign in to your account.” Is actually what comes up on that screen when I turn it on.
Thanks, Aub. Either your instructions suck, or I have become Tech Stupid (and that’s very possible).
I did get this glorious photo, though – which is now a Christmas Card at Les Becker Designs (you should buy one to send to your Gramma).
And I got the fire going, Former Girl Guide that I am! The farmhouse had better still be standing when I get back out there tonight.
Terry’s Anthurium has bloomed for the first time since before he died. Kyla gave him this plant when she moved out a few years ago, and he doted on it like it was his child. I had been promising him that I would repot it for months before he got sick again, and I just never got around to it until he’d been gone for about a month.
It holds a place of honour in his old living room, where I can see it, and talk to it every day, and I hope to be able to do so for many years to come.
Kyla Ward at Infinity Wellness is looking to create a community recipe book available for free to the Infinity Wellness community. If you have a favourite healthy meal/snack/recipe, please email it to: kyla.infinity.wellness@gmail.com to have it included.
I’m starting a new afghan. This one pattern is called the Marigold Star Throw and it’s going to be lovely once finished – which of course brings me to the problem of having already run out of the dark navy yarn that makes up the majority of the blocks. I’ve also hit up against my December Money Challenge, which is to NOT spend any “unnecessary” money, so I shall have to put this project on a back burner (along with about 47 other projects) or (GASP…*) redefine the term “unnecessary” as it relates to getting this project finished, and up for sale on The Les Becker Design Site.
Hmmmm…. I may have to go with (GASP…*) on this one.
I’ve been thinking about this as an alternative to baking bread for a few weeks now (mainly because my yeast is out-dated, and I don’t want to find out that it’s dead, nor do I want to go buy more), and I always have the three ingredients required to make it already. There are thousands of Cloud Bread recipes online. Literally thousands. All of them, with the exception of one that I found, are exactly the same.
Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Eggs, Cream Cheese (or, alternatively, Plain Greek Yogurt), and Cream of Tarter
Cloud Bread only requires three ingredients: Eggs, Cream Cheese and Cream of Tarter. Alternatively, you can substitute plain Greek Yogurt for Cream Cheese – for this recipe, I used Cream Cheese.
Separate eggs
Gather your ingredients and separate your eggs – yolks in one mixing bowl, and whites in another (don’t forget to rinse out your egg shells and let them dry. You can add them to compost, or crush them up and spread them around your garden plants to keep the slugs and snails off your tomatoes this summer).
First, they’ll look foamy…
Add 1/8 of a teaspoon of Cream of Tarter to the egg whites, and whip them on high speed with an electric beater until the egg whites form stiff peaks when the beaters are removed.
This takes a while…
First, the mixture will become bubbly and frothy…
Keep whipping. You have a way to go.
Then, it will begin to look creamy…
The mixture will begin to look creamy. You’re not done yet; keep whipping.
Finally!!
Stiff Peaks! There ya go! Took longer than you thought it would, didn’t it?
Mix the cream cheese or yogurt together with the egg yolks.
Next, add 3 tablespoons of either Cream Cheese or plain Greek Yogurt to the egg yolks and beat them together until the mixture is smooth.
Set your mixer to a medium or high speed.
This won’t take nearly as long as it took to make those egg whites stand up…
That was fast!
See? Fast and easy!
Add 1 cup of the egg white mixture to the cream cheese/yogurt mixture.
Next, add 1 cup of the egg white mixture to the cream cheese mixture, and very gently fold it all together until it’s fairly well mixed.
GENTLY stir together!
Don’t whip it all in completely smooth – but also, don’t have any lumps of egg white mix blobbing it all up.
This should be blobby…
Now you can dump in the rest of the egg white mixture and GENTLY stir it all together – but don’t make this very “smooth”; just stir it together enough that you can still identify a few blobs of the egg white mixture.
Drop 6 large spoonsful of the mixture onto a baking sheet.
Use a fairly large spoon or an ice cream scoop to drop blobs of the mixture onto a baking sheet covered with a silicon mat or parchment paper.
This recipe is for 6 pieces of cloud bread, so if you have any mix left over, keep adding to the the six blobs on the baking sheet. When you’ve scooped all the mixture, use the back side of a mixing spoon to gently flatten the blobs to a thickness of around 1/8 to 1/2 an inch, and put it into the oven to bake.
Finished baking!
Bake for approximately 25-30 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when the colour is a golden brown on the top and the sides. As it bakes, the mixture spreads a little bit – the finished rounds are about the size of a hamburger bun, but very thin in comparison.
Cloud Bread cooling on a wire rack.
Move the baked rounds to a wire cooling rack and allow them to cool completely – and then leave them there for at least another hour to “dry”. Yes, they will be kind of damp and soft when they come out of the oven, and you won’t be able to do anything with them at this point – they’ll just fall apart. Let ’em cool and dry for at least 60 minutes.
Sandwiches are SO possible! Don’t listen to them naysayers.
Store in a sealed bag or airtight container in the fridge. Don’t wait too long to eat it – I ate three sandwiches over three days, and on the last day, the final two rounds were beginning to seem a little too moist (these can be frozen for up to a month, according to most recipes I’ve read, but I haven’t tried this myself.).
I was really pleased with how well these turned out! One recipe that I had read insisted that Cloud Bread was not sturdy enough to hold up a sandwich – I have to disagree with this, as it worked well for me.
The taste is nothing like any kind of bread I’ve ever eaten – which does make for an odd sandwich, I must admit. It doesn’t taste bad, certainly, but I can’t quite describe the taste, either. A little “eggy” if you think about it while you’re eating it.
Cloud Bread is a nice change… I can’t say it would be something I would make more often than once a month for that change, but it’s quick to make, so if you’re stuck with no bread, and no way to get any, this recipe is certainly worth making.
Have you made Cloud Bread? Let me know down below in the comments, along with what you thought of it and whether you would make it again!
The products and ingredients I used in this recipe can be found by following the links below:
We said our last goodbye to Ringo today. I will miss him terribly, but feel incredibly lucky to have been his foster mom over this past year. He added a whole lot of happiness – even if he did hog the bed.
R.I.P. Ringo Starr 2010(?)-2017
Likely grabbing Heaven by the balls right this minute…
Separate eggs
Add 1/8 of a teaspoon of Cream of Tarter to the egg whites, and whip them on high speed with an electric beater until the egg whites form stiff peaks when the beaters are removed.
Stiff Peaks! There ya go! Took longer than you thought it would, didn’t it?
