The color of sunshine

My beverage of choice is unsweetened decaffeinated sun tea.

In winter, I fill a half-gallon jar with hot water, add three tea bags, and let it steep on the kitchen counter, usually overnight. The result is "sun" tea. Kinda weak, but that's winter for you.

When the weather warms up, though – ah, then I can make real sun tea.

My preferred spot to steep sun tea is where the porch rail wraps around the upright. It faces west, and gets a double whammy of warmth – not just from the sun on one side, but by the reflected heat against the upright on the other. (Plus there's no danger of accidentally knocking it down.)

For obvious reasons I try not to make it until the sun is shining on this corner, and I'll let it steep as long as the sun is shining.

It gets darker and darker as the afternoon wanes. After it's chilled and poured over ice, it makes for a good hearty beverage.

To me, it's the color of sunshine.

Coffee guide for the coffee ignorant

Confession time: I don't like coffee.

I mean, I really really really don't like coffee. I love the smell but hate the taste. It's not a simple dislike; it's a revulsion. I jokingly call this my "superpower": I’m able to detect a single molecule of the hated flavor in any food or drink.

It doesn't matter how dolled up the coffee is. It doesn't matter of it's coffee-flavored ice cream or candy or whatever. I hate the taste.

Admitting I don't coffee is like a slap in the face for coffee aficionados. Coffee remains one of the most popular beverages in America, possibly the world. And I can't appreciate a drop of it.

I remember my dear mother telling me she never liked coffee until she went to nursing school, and drank it so she could stay up late studying. I went to college (and grad school) and swallowed caffeine pills if I needed to pull an all-nighter (which, frankly, never did much good – caffeine doesn't seem to affect me). I never learned to drink coffee in college. If anything, my aversion deepened.

Here's one guy who gets it:

"Growing up in the San Francisco area I remember crossing the bay bridge on foggy mornings with the smell of the Coffee Roasting Plant drifting up from under the bridge at the San Francisco end. Rich, full, luxuriant, coffee smells like chocolate tastes. Unfortunately for me the taste of coffee has none of the depth, the subtleties, the scope that the smell has. I only taste one flavor. Bitter.

"It doesn't matter how much milk or sugar I add, it doesn't matter if it has been turned into a rich dessert like tiramisu or a coffee candy, or coffee ice cream. The bitterness is pervasive. Not a light bitterness that can lend an interesting edge to a dish. No, this is a medicinal level of bitterness, like drinking a beverage brewed from aspirin."

Yes!! This guy understands! It has nothing to do with caffeine and everything to do with taste.

I tried looking into whether a coffee aversion has a scientific basis, but bizarrely, studies into coffee aversion seem to focus on one of two things: either a sensitivity toward caffeine, or cultural conditioning (i.e., whether you grow up around coffee drinkers). I have no sensitivity toward caffeine at all – it doesn't seem to affect me one way or the other – and I grew up around plenty of coffee drinkers. I just – plain – hate – the – taste.

But here's an interesting side note: I'm not fond of chocolate either. I don't hate it (like I hate coffee), but it's definitely not my favorite flavor. Apparently there is a connection between coffee aversion and chocolate aversion, something about a genetically predisposed sensitivity to 6-n-propylthiouracil. That sounds nice and weighty, doesn't it? I'll use that as my excuse.

Once in a blue moon, I have the opportunity to get a fancy tea in a coffee shop (my standard is a chai tea latté). When ordering, I know from cruel experience to clarify, "This has NO COFFEE ELEMENTS in it, right?" Heaven forbid a dash of coffee should ever touch my tea.

Anyway, as a result of this coffee aversion, I'm completely ignorant about what makes one kind of coffee different from another (I'd make a lousy barista). Therefore this little sign was surprisingly helpful:

Oh, so that's what a cappuccino is. Who knew? The last two selections listed above are my go-to options in a coffee house, the operative words being "not coffee."

So there you go, my deep dark coffee-colored secret. Who else hates coffee? Is it just me?

(Insert zombie voice) Cofffeeeeeee......

A reader sent this.

I loathe and detest coffee, so I'll insert "tea" instead ... although the zombie voice doesn't sound the same with "teeeeeaaaaaa......"

Building a better mousetrap

It's spring, which means mice in the house. We've been setting traps and getting rid of them before they can explode in population.

Younger Daughter found herself hosting a family of half-grown rodents in her bedroom. Oddly enough, they had apparently not yet developed the instinct to run away, so she's been able to catch them in ... a teacup.

That's all it took. Plop a teacup over the bewildered little beastie sitting in the middle of the floor, slide some cardboard underneath, and the mouse was caught.

She admits mice are cuuuuute -- but not in one's bedroom. Or any room, for that matter.

Using this same teacup, she managed to catch SIX half-grown mice over a period of 24 hours, which she released out by the woodpile (and yes, she washed the cup thoroughly). We caught five more mice in traps, and Lydia killed one more. So far so good: I think we won.

CompuTEA

Older Daughter got a wild hair the other day and set up a lovely tea for herself and our friend GG.

It was a compuTEAing party with both girls online.

This didn't prevent them from sipping their beverages with the obligatory pinky elevation.

They spent their time looking at three-tiered cake stands and other teatime accouterments, and searching recipes for cucumber sandwiches (which later they started making and to which both got addicted).

Silly but cute.

Cold rain, warm cookies, hot tea

Yesterday it was cold and raining and howling wind. Obviously it wasn't quite cold enough to snow, but it was chilly and windy and nasty outside.

Today it's a decidedly brisk 25F, but with high winds that make it feel much colder. It's an excellent day for warm cookies...

...and hot tea.

Power went out for about five hours during the night, which meant that somewhere in all that windy rainy darkness, some poor linemen were working hard. I sure wish I could give them some warm cookies and hot tea.

It's the little things in life

Our microwave is broken.

This is not a huge issue in our house. We have the smallest-sized microwave available, and use it solely for heating things up (rather than cooking). So while it's convenient, it's not essential.

However, there's one exception: heating my tea.

I'm an early riser, and over the course of my early-morning quiet hours before the family gets up (which is when I do a great deal of my writing), I have two mugs of tea. I use a thermal-style mug I bought at a thrift store, which helps keep the tea hot.

This mug holds a nice hearty 17 ounces or so. When I'm about halfway done, it starts to cool off, so I pop the mug in the microwave and heat it up again. About halfway through my second mug is about when it's time to release the chickens and feed the cows, so when I come back inside -- often chilled if the weather is cold -- then I re-heat my tea in the microwave and continue to enjoy my steaming beverage.

In short, I like my tea HOT. And the microwave sure was handy for that. No microwave, no hot tea.

I considered this problem quite awhile ago when thinking through what conveniences we take for granted, and decided the best option was to find carafes in thrift stores. I figured this would be the best way to keep things hot.

Coffee carafes were easy to find. Within a week or two, I found one for Don's coffee.

But I needed to find a carafe dedicated to tea. You see, I loathe coffee in any size, shape, or form. The taste makes me gag, and I can detect even the slightest flavor. I can't have coffee contaminating my tea mug, so I make sure it's never used for coffee. But I encountered a problem while searching for second-hand carafes -- they'd all been used for coffee, and the insides still reeked with the smell.

It took several months of diligent searching before I found a carafe that had never been used for coffee.

I snatched it up for the delicious price of $2.49.

Once purchased, these carafes sat on the shelf for well over a year, unused. This morning, with the microwave out of order, it was my first chance to test how well these carafes work.

The next problem to overcome was how to steep the tea. I use loose tea purchased in bulk from Upton Teas (a lot cheaper this way!)...

...and I use a tea ball.

But my tea ball wouldn't fit inside the mouth of the carafe.

So I cut a square of thin batting...

...and spooned my tea into that.

I secured it with a rubber band...

...then attached a string.

I hooked this over the handle of the carafe, and stuffed the tea bag inside. Once the boiling water was poured in, I just left the tea bag inside to steep since I like STRONG tea.

Rather than using my large mug, I used a small ceramic mug so I could pour smaller amounts. Worked beautifully! The tea in the carafe stayed nice and hot, even after I got in from feeding the critters.

Clearly this is just a temporary solution. If I start using the carafe on a regular basis, I'll sew a proper little bag and use it for a tea ball, but in the meanwhile this worked well.

See? It's the little things in life -- a nice cup of HOT tea -- that can make all the difference in attitude. When considering one's prepping inventory, sometimes it's important to think of small comforts in addition to big survival issues... especially when it's as simple as a carafe of hot tea.

Random pix

Some random pix from the last couple weeks.

It snowed very calmly and prettily all day, the beginning of spring. No wind, no drifts, about five inches total. Really, one of our nicer snowfalls.

Our woodpile.

The view down our driveway.

Needless to say, the dogs thought it was great stuff. Major really stands out in this weather.

Eating snow.

A couple of days ago, we had robins galore in our yard. I don't know what they found so fascinating to eat by this particular tree, but I counted about twenty in the vicinity.

Boy do I love robins.

Goodies for our weekly potluck (it was my turn to bring dessert): lemon meringue pies and survival cookies.

Goodies the next morning: leftover survival cookies and fresh hot bread.

Tea with a friend (who has lots of children).

A squall that came through a few days ago.

Gas prices about March 13...

...March 15...

...and March 20.

Older Daughter is moving from Algebra I into Geometry. I mistakenly thought we had some books in reserve for this subject, but I was wrong. So on Tuesday we went into Spokane to the Homeschool Bookshop to stock up.

This is a super-dooper spiffy place chock-full of extraordinary resources. What a pity it's so durn far away.

These photos don't even scratch the surface of what's in this place. And while we were shopping, the owner's children were giving music lessons in the lower level.

I found this cartoon on the store's website. Cracked me up. I've had days like this.

To Older Daughter's dismay, I was able to find some good resources, so we have no excuse not to dive right in.

Prototype for my e-booklet on canning FAQs, printed out for the first round of editing.

Setting up a photo shoot for canning equipment to illustrate.

A pretty sunset. It looks like these shots are from different evenings, but they were only taken a few minutes apart.