cornbread for a snowy day

Oh, the weather outside is frightful…actually it's lovely but much too cold to go out in, let alone drive! The cardinals and friends have been mobbing the feeder all day.

There were some mentions of cornbread on Facebook, and that made me think of the best recipe, and here it is. If you want traditional southern cornbread, that does not contain so much sugar that it tastes like cake, make it according to the "receipt" of my grandmother Willie Elvie Chumley Miller, born in the hills of northern Alabama in 1881.

You will need:

pre-heated 400° oven

8" cast iron skillet, or equivalent Pyrex dish

three mixing bowls, large, small, and tiny (or a coffee-cup)

2 cups stone-ground cornmeal

1 cup boiling water
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
1-4 tablespoons butter

Put the butter in the skillet in the oven to melt and get sizzling hot.

Put the soda, salt, and sugar in the tiny bowl and mix them. Get all the lumps out of the soda.

Beat the egg and mix with the buttermilk in the small bowl.

Pour the boiling water on the meal and stir till it's all absorbed. There will be some meal still dry. Then rapidly stir the salt mix into the buttermilk, and immediately dump it over the damp cornmeal. Stir briefly. A few lumps are OK. You want to get it into  the oven before the bubbles of the soda and buttermilk have dissipated.

Scoop the thick batter into your sizzling butter and return to the oven for about 45 minutes. When it's done, hold the skillet upside down over a plate, and it will fall out, with the buttery bottom crust uppermost. Cut in wedges and enjoy!

winter, birdfeeder, bees, etc.

Saturday January 22 -- Two nights ago it was in the teens after a bitter, windy day. Today, with almost no wind and no clouds at all it got up to sixty! The bees were out in same force. They continue to show up with frequent loads of the mystery orange pollen, as well as the yellow that I suppose is dandelion, and pale yellow/dirty white -- winter honeysuckle? Perhaps the orange is cedar, though those trees i have looked at are not flowering. Hmm, the Illustrated Flora doesn’t give a bloom season for junipers.

Cats went out today for three or four hours and seem to have tired themselves out. I got home an hour and a half ago, and they didn’t move from their napping spot together on the wicker chair; they’re still there.

Sunday morning -- goldfinches dave discovered the feeder! Must refill today. Also the suet cake, nasty-freezer-tasting as it may be, is mostly gone. Carolina wren has a lot to do with that. I bought a couple of new fresh ones.

Chilly cloudy gray day today, unlike yesterday. 2pm and it is barely up to 47°. (Forty-seven! Degrees! Rah! --Pomona College in-joke) That may be why there is much more activity at the feeder today.

Agate had another run-in with the black-and-white tuxie cat that lives around here somewhere. I felt all over him and couldn’t find any sore places. Sure hope there is no hidden bite that will abscess; I feel we have been there, done that.




I didn't even see this cardinal in my viewfinder -- he showed up in the annoying interval between button-push and shutter-click. I put it up on Facebook captioned
Cardinal one: "Outa my way!" Cardinal two: "I'm gone, man."

great birdfeeder

Here are actual photos of my birds on the new feeder, somewhat fuzzy, and taken through glass with some reflections from within the room. On the upper left and on the bottom tray are goldfinches, upper right is a titmouse, and at the lower right is a confusing superposition of a Harris' sparrow and a cardinal. They eat up the supply pretty rapidly; it looks like I may need to refill weekly or even more often. A 25-lb. sack of sunflower seeds every month won't break me. But it sure will leave a pile of seed-coats on the ground underneath!

The cardinals often pose in the late afternoon sunlight. I may do some thinning of the yaupon, privet, hackberry, plum thicket, but I will certainly leave plenty of perches.



I have heard the s-s-see, s-s-see of waxwings, though I haven't looked the right direction to see them yet. These are the yaupon berries that draw them. (These are last year's, but there is a good crop this year also, somewhat unusually; often a poor crop alternates with a good crop.) A flock of waxwings will descend in a flurry onto the yaupons and stuff themselves madly with berries, then on some signal they will swirl up into the bare oak, where they will sit motionless, all facing the same direction, for 20 minutes, digesting. Any lawn furniture below will be liberally purple-spotted.

just about perfect

Sitting in the Ridge living room, nice fire in the fireplace, Agate purring in my lap (Tut curled asleep with her nose under her paw in another chair, Alabaster on the futon-sofa), watching the birds at the splendid new feeder. Chickadees, titmice, goldfinches, Carolina wren, white-crowned sparrow, Harris' sparrows, brown thrasher, cardinals, blue jay, mockingbird. Down by the tank I saw a great blue heron.

It is a real major pain that, when a flicker of motion draws my attention from the computer to the window, I have to push my reading glasses out of the way to be able to see. And it's hard to type with a lapful of cat noodging the laptop off the lap. And I'm SUPPOSED to be making jewelry. Well, I'm about to, I guess.