Paper.

Every so often I have to go through my house and perform paper abatement. This where I gather up all of the random pieces of paper littering every flat surface in the house, and then sort and file them. This is not unlike the weed and brush abatement that property owners are required to perform in fire-prone California.

A specific corner of the kitchen counter collects mail like a barbed wire fence collects tumbleweeds. This is where we tend to open and then abandon our mail for lack of anything else to do with it. Normally I get around to sorting, filing, and recycling the pile before it gets too tall, but occasionally it gets out of hand. Said pile is right next to the gas stove.

Z was cooking during Star Trek Night when the pile fell over and the corner of something slid just close enough to the stove to catch fire. By the time he convinced us that the kitchen was indeed on fire, the paper problem had sort of taken care of itself. The down side to this, aside from the scorch marks on the floor and ceiling, was that we lost pretty much everything we had received in the mail in the year prior. Medical bills, test results, invitations, catalogues, certificates, paycheck stubs, vehicle documentation...

There really isn't a tactful way to say "sorry, I incinerated your wedding invitation. When was it again?"

Fairies.

I recently acquired the book How to Find Flower Fairies by Cicely May Barker. It's a gorgeous pop-up book instructing children on the best ways to find signs of fairies outside.

We also just finished watching three seasons of "River Monsters" with Jeremy Wade.

Bedmaking.

There are few things that can bring together a house full of animals like stripping the sheets off a bed and putting on clean ones.

The cats like to get buttoned inside the duvet cover and they all like to race around in circles on the empty bed, but the most exciting thing is crawling under the fitted sheet and getting made into the bed.

Night Terror Marathon.

Z has the flu. When Z has a fever, he has far more night terrors than usual.

It's a really good thing that I am not at all creeped out by any of this, and also that I can go back to sleep immediately after being screamed awake.

I would love to know what was hanging out on our ceiling and chasing Z around that night, but when he was finally coherent he didn't remember anything.

Counters.

Dogs are very useful animals. They make good alarm systems, theft deterrents, bed warmers, exercise buddies, and dish washers. Awesomedog is particularly good at removing every single molecule of edible substance from any surface. This makes him a very convenient alternative to a mop.

I'm pretty sure this cleaning method cannot be used on other surfaces, but there are those who would disagree.

My Cats are Stupid: Exhibit A

While they are very nice little creatures that are always happy to be petted, the Hellions are really, really dumb. 

It's true, they eat ribbons and fall off furniture and are generally stupid in the ways that all cats are stupid. However, they occasionally do something really epic that reminds me just how much intelligence they lack. The first clue that we might be dealing with impaired animals came the day Z coaxed Grey-Hellion into the shower.

A regular-dumb cat might get coaxed into the watery torrent once, but it takes exceptional-dumb to be coaxed in again moments later.

Cooking with Ned: Candied Citron

Z likes fruitcake. I hate fruitcake but love to cook. I vastly prefer to cook things from scratch, so I decided I would make him a fruitcake. I found this recipe and used it as sort of a guideline. Z loves candied citron from the store, so I didn't want to leave it out of the recipe. I was already drying fruit in my food dehydrator, so I figured I might as well candy a citron.

Step 1: What the Heck is a Citron?
No really. Having shopped primarily in large chain grocery stores my entire life, I had no idea what a citron was. At first I thought "candied citron" was just candied citrus peel, but further investigation  shows that a citron is actually a fruit. A very difficult to find fruit. There are basically two different types of citron found in grocery stores. The etrog citron looks like a large and very lumpy lemon. The Buddha's Hand citron looks like the illegitimate offspring of a lemon and a kraken. I found mine at Whole Foods.

Step 2: Unbrining That Which You Have Brined

Candied fruit is made by boiling the fruit in sugar syrup for all eternity. I used this recipe because it gave candy thermometer temperatures to follow so you know when it's done. Two cups of water, three cups of sugar, a spoonful of corn syrup, boil to 230 degrees F. The Buddha's hand citron doesn't have any fruity bits on the inside, it's basically nothing but rind. No scraping, no peeling, just dice the damned thing up and throw it in the pot.

When I first looked up candied citron, I found a lot of recipes for candied fruit peel that involved soaking or boiling the peels in saltwater first. I neglected to note that none of the handful of candied citron recipes online called for salt, and ended up with weirdly salty candied citron. I'm a terrible but optimistic cook, so I decided to throw it back in plain water and boil it until it wasn't salty anymore, then start over with new syrup.

Join us next time for fruitcake! Or possibly toffee, depending on what I decide to do with that syrup.