You're Doing It Wrong

Last year the NYT had a recipe for Butter Mochi.

“Tender and chewy, this big-batch dessert — as comforting as cake and as fun as bar cookies — is always a hit at parties. ”

I clipped it and finally tried it around the holidays.

The recipe uses sweet rice flour, something I’ve never baked with before, plus tons of sugar and 2 cans coconut milk.

I felt like I followed the directions but the finished product seemed heavy and chewy and not a texture that I was sure about. It tasted good.

I sent a note to a friend to ask for advice since she has a recipe on her website for Banana Mochi Bread. She was reassuring about my results and even used the words “rubbery” and “not cake-like” to describe this dessert.

Here’s the thing: no one ate it except me. It made a giant 9×13 pan. Even my husband, who will eat just about anything sweet wouldn’t touch it.

I can’t bear to be wasteful so I packed it in the freezer and doled it out a piece or two at a time. I just finished the last one.

(And, I plan to try that banana mochi bread recipe one of these days.)

I took a little video of the Klamath, in Orleans, while we were on a walk.

A few weeks ago in the evening, my phone went off and the ID was the retirement home

The retirement home isn’t going to call and tell us we won the lottery so my heart was in my throat

The person on the call identified himself and said he wanted to let me know that Dad fell. He wasn’t injured but he had an abrasion that they treated. They checked him out and he could walk so they were not sending him to the ER.

We breathed a sigh of relief and said we’d follow up.

Two minutes later the phone rang again. It wasn’t Dad, it was his next door neighbor who fell.

This is probably their worst nightmare to get the residents mixed up and call the wrong family but we thought it was hilarious.

Oakie letting me know he’s ready to help by sitting on my laptop.

Damn! The times gets away. This weekend I did a bunch of chores and got out in the yard. I did my first pass on the taxes. I finished a little project for a friend. And I watched NCAA gymnastics conference finals. I’m still watching that. 5 more hours to go.

Morning Tishaniik walk with dogs and elders.

I’m not totally sure how music gets on my phone. Last time I drove to Orleans my podcasts wouldn’t work and I can’t fiddle with the phone while I drive so I asked Siri to play music.

And all these songs I like played. It was a miracle.

So for this trip I added a playlist called “current faves” and listened to that for another part of the drive when my podcasts weren’t working. I did ask Siri to play podcasts but she didn’t do it. I don’t know why.

Apparently I created “current faves” about 15 minutes after Apple invented playlists (the early 00s?) because it was a bunch of old songs from bands I haven’t thought of in ages.

Stroke Nine? Vertical Horizon? Snow Patrol?

I don’t listen to music enough to remedy this situation

On the way home I listened to a big section of Braiding Sweetgrass which I am enjoying but it’s super long and feels long.

Mom and Oakie cleaning up the asparagus patch.

I don’t have any big stories from my trip. The drive down and back went smoothly. We had some rain but nothing terrible which is actually bad because they are hurting for rain/snowpack down there. We went on some nice walks and did some visiting.

I will be back in June.

This post and the next are being scheduled. I am going to Orleans to hang out with Mom for a week. Hopefully I will have some fun photos when I return.

Someday I would like to go through our entire house and get out every towel, washcloth, dish cloth, rag, mop towel, and anything else like a towel and put them all in a pile.

We need to sort through and make a “GET RID OF ALREADY” pile, a mop pile, and then the ones we use for bathing.

Every little cupboard and cranny has some towels stashed in it. Some of them so ancient you can see through them.

But it seems like whenever I’m looking for hand towels, or the bath towels that I like, I can’t find them.

See also: containers for leftovers. We have lids. We have containers. But sometimes none match the others.

Beautiful winter day in Van Wa

This morning, at one of the bus stops downtown, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy holding a gallon milk jug as he waited for the bus. The jug was about half full.

I had a whole flash of thought process wondering if he had a place to keep his milk cold during the day? Was this a health thing and he needed to drink almost a whole gallon of milk? He was dressed for a construction type job. Perhaps he needed milk to keep his energy up. Mostly I was hung up on the refrigeration issue.

What a clever thing to do with found glasses. I hope the owner spotted them.

When I got off at my stop as I walked up the hill to my office building, a guy was crossing the street in front of me carrying two jugs of milk in each hand.

Again, a whole flash thought process: is there some sort of bring your jug of milk to work day? Is there a prank or flash mob thing? Will I be spotting people running around with jugs of milk today?

I bet construction guy was transporting his powershake for breakfast and I’m pretty sure the other guy was carrying them to the local coffee kiosk for the day’s lattes.

What is this picture? I’m guessing I did this somehow while I was carrying the phone. It looks like the area where the big food cart used to be and is now going to be a luxury hotel/condo tower and an awning? I have no idea.

Our office technology is mostly fixed and we are back at it, in the office, full time. January was super busy with all kinds of things that need to happen at the beginning of the year.

Since the pandemic the bus ridership dwindled so much that they combined 4 routes into one and reduced service. More stops, fewer options.

So I’m back to super long days. I don’t hate it but it means I don’t get anything done around the house on work days. It’s a different rhythm to get back to.

This is my Indigenous bookshelf. It’s not complete because I have books stashed all over the place plus digital books. I only pulled out the ones with an Indigenous author and that I could find right away. If you count books with an Indigenous topic, I have at least 3x this many.

I participated in an Indigenous romance author QnA with Erin and Dani of Indigenous reading circle. Here is the URL (When I look on my browser, the URL is crossed out but if you click it, it works fine.) I’m not sure if you can watch it without an Instagram account. Give it a try. It was super fun and I am so impressed with the work these two are doing to promote Indigenous authors.

Here I am represented at the Thai food cart.

Out of time. Pressing publish without proofreading. I love the danger!