Mystery mouse and marmalade

Yesterday morning, we were awakened by Maggie doing her "come quickly, there's something in the bathroom!" bark. At her beck and call as always, I climbed out of bed to see what the problem was. Since she was acting so weird about it though, backing away from cabinets and then lunging at them again while barking, I called for Chris. No way was I going to come eyeball to eyeball with whatever creature was lurking in there. Maggie rarely acts like that, usually only when Snicks the cat brings me his gifts in the form of snakes. Acck!! I wasn't going to take any chances. When Chris didn't find anything, and consoled Maggie enough to get her back to bed with us, we pretty much just let it go. Until I went to take a bath, that is. Soaking in a lavendar filled tub, and all was quiet in the bathroom, I heard a noise, every couple of minutes. At first, it made me a little nervous. Then, I remembered I had gone looking for some sort of cream to put on my little Izzie's paws after noticing they were red and a little chafed. I have things organized under the bathroom sink in baskets, and I had my suspicions I knew what the noise was that was unnerving Maggie. It wasn't a mouse (or a snake) after all!!! I had run out of refills for my automatic air freshener, so I stuck the little decorative piece in one of the baskets under the sink. Evidently, when I was rooting around in it for the cream, the magic eye focused on something that kept triggering it to spray. I removed the batteries, and voila!, mystery solved. Gave us a good laugh over our morning coffee!

The mystery mouse

 

We had such a wonderful weekend. Saturday afternoon, we decided to make some kumquat marmalade. Our trees are overflowing, and one can only eat so many of them. We have waited for the last couple of years for the time when we could use those and our oranges in recipes. The trees have matured enough to where they are putting out more fruit than what my family can keep up with now. The prep takes longer than the actual cooking, and because kumquats have a higher acidic content, there is more natural pectin than most fruit in them. I love that part! We began washing those, and the one orange our recipe called for, then slivered the fruit, peel and all. Except for the orange, we peeled it. When you eat fresh kumquats, you eat the skin along with the fruit, as this is where the sweet part of them comes in. We have two orange trees, a navel and a blood orange (Morrow). We chose to use a blood orange, thinking it would give it an interesting flavor and color. We were right, as you can see from the photos! We ended up with four and a half jars (half pints), two of which we took to my daughter. Now that we have the ratio down of the fruit, water, and sugar, I will be making a bigger batch soon! This is THE best marmalade I have ever had!!! Spread on some toast last night was all the dessert we needed!

      

Soaking slivered kumquats overnight 

My helper 

Kumquat Marmalde!

 

Huckleberry, aka Huck, (my grandson), has been waiting very patiently for his knitted cardigan. I'm so happy to say that it will be finished today! I'm not sure buttons will be sewn on yet, as I have yet to go shopping for them. Perhaps that will happen today, but if not, then definitely sometime this week. He picked out a yellow yarn (Plymouth Encore), which in the beginning, I was not fond of at all for a little boy's cardi. I have to tell you now, the color has grown on me, and putting in that little bit of dark teal was the perfect solution. He has tried it on, and loves it, which does this grandma's heart good!!

 

Size 6 for grandma's big boy, Huck!

 

Happy Monday to you and enjoy your week!!