Birds, cupcakes

The bird that Boy caught.
Originally uploaded by average lavender

Boy and Girl managed to sneak this bird through the kitchen door when I wasn't looking.  I thought I heard a car door shut, so I went to the office room and even then I didn't notice the bird!  Was it alive when they brought it in?  How long had they been playing with it?  George buried him in the grub-filled compost. 

On a more delicious note: I tried making some Mocha Stout Cupakes this past Wednesday.  I used a recipe for Chocolate Guinness Cake I found over here.  One of the local breweries does a mocha stout, so it seemed a natural, possibly superior, beer for the cake.  In the end I was left feeling, "Meh."  Some changes I made to the reicpe, aside from beer substitution, were using unsweetend cocoa and Dutch process cocoa (which resulted in halving the amount of baking soda called for - check it out: baking science), and using 1/2 cup less sugar than called for.  I was aiming for a less sweet cake that would let the stout shine through.  What I got was a cake that was less sweet but just sort of tasted like it had more sour cream than it actually did.  I think that in addition to reducing the sugar, the cocoa should've also been reduced - it's a mocha stout, duh.  Better luck next time.

scrappins and mitch

last weekend my boss made a big cake that looked like a wine bottle and had tons of cake scraps leftover, so i took them and made scrappins the polar bear cake.



george thought he looked silly without a mouth, so he gave scrappins one. at first the cake was going to be a tower, then a panda, and finally a polar bear, but he looks most like a dog. regardless it's pretty delicious.

yesterday as i went out to do the laundry this little bird started making noise at me and fluttering around and i figured i'd just spooked him. later when i went out to put the laundry in the dryer boy and girl were harassing him in front of our neighbors house. i picked him up with a towel because it looked like they were more toying with him and less eating his flesh at that point.



after calling george and george calling susan we took mitch (i named him mitch) inside and cleaned up his feathers with rubbing alcohol which really woke him up and he started flappin' around. we put him back in the area where i'd first seen him, up in a box that houses electric meters and gave him a little food. i checked on him later and he was up and walking around making noise...and being stalked by the neighbor cat, rusty. i didn't bother to move him or shoo rusty because unless mitch jumped he would be safe. hours later i went to check on him again...and.. he...was face down in the dirt with flies around his head. i blame rusty.

in less morbid news, at the end of the month i'll be going to north carolina! hope and her husband are buying a house in west asheville and she'll be going down to do the closing and some cleaning and invited me along!. i'm looking forward to some time away from here and the adventure of travel and new places.