January 2021 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

I’m going on a Quest… with a day-to-day calendar.

Many months ago – last April, in fact – I supported a Kickstarter campaign for a 2021 day-by-day “Quest” calendar. It was advertised as a single-player role-playing game that takes place over the course of a year. Having thoroughly the random facts in my 2020 calendar, I thought it would be entertaining to have another daily calendar with an entirely different style to it.

The first couple weeks introduced the mechanics, along with a sample character and adventure. The third week introduced several characters to choose from, along with some bonus characters available on the Sundial Games website.

I had pulled out a blank journal to keep track of equipment, health, and what not for the first couple weeks, finding it easier than writing on the calendar page for Godwin, the Great (Half-Elf Wizard), but decided to print the Level 1 character sheet from their website for Faris Leafwind (Half-Elf Druid), which has ample space for tracking damage, equipment and such. Well, shoot, what am I going to do with that journal now? Ah, that’s what….

My adventures began that day in the tavern, when the innkeeper asked for help dealing with the alley rats. Silly me, I thought he was referring to the street urchins, but these were actual rats, larger than me, and quite aggressive. I tried to calm the beast down, but it bit me before scurrying away. Once it was gone, I took a quick look around the alley. There seemed to be a small bit of blood* on the barrel the rat had perched on, but nothing else stood out as odd.

There was a grate though… the rat could have come from there. Who locks a grate anyways? I was a bit rusty, but managed to pick the lock. As I climbed down, I was hit by an overwhelming stench. Sad to say, I lost my lunch on that ladder, and lost my grip as well.**

*I rolled poorly… the text for better rolls said this was definitely not blood.

**Let’s not even talk about that die roll.

I’m not sure where this adventure will go… that’s a mix of the calendar pages, my choices, and my dice rolls. Also, Faris’s background mentions her twin sister; I’ve decided to name her Wiel. Just in case it ever comes up.

Growing pumpkins in winter

Anybody who grows pumpkins knows that you can’t plant them outside until after the last chance of frost. Around here, that’s mid-May. You’re probably wondering why, in that case, I have pumpkins growing inside in January.

This story begins some time after Halloween, when I cleared our decorative (and uncarved) pumpkins from the front yard. Intent on harvesting the seeds – some to roast, and some to dry for planting – I carried the somewhat softened pumpkins to the backyard and shattered them. That is to say I picked them up and dropped them, sometimes forcefully, repeatedly until they were open enough to get to the seeds, then composted the shells.

Normally, I would have just washed the seeds and left them on a tray to dry. But when I tried that, Zuko started eating the seeds. So they ended up in a smaller container, smushed together… and some of them sprouted. When I showed Cassandra, she insisted “we” grow them.

I had small coir pots and seed starting pods left from previous years, so I set up about a dozen of the sprouted seeds in a couple trays. (Some unsprouted ones were saved for outside planting in the spring.) As they outgrew their original containers, I repurposed some of the packaging from NakedWines.com for the next phase and bought a bag of potting soil.

Several young pumpkin plants growing in a container

As they outgrew that packaging, I knew it was time to invest in a larger container that could sit in my bay window. I wanted something raised, so I wouldn’t have to bend down past the sewing desk. I bought this container (and some more dirt) with holiday money; it’s about waist high, and includes a shelf underneath for storing bits and pieces.

There are nine pumpkins plants growing in my bay window now, and all of them are clearly leaning towards the window, grabbing as much sun as they can. I’m hoping they continue growing slowly for the next few months – the window gets good sun, but is a little cooler than the rest of the room – until the entire container can be relocated outside. Pumpkin vines have a tendency to sprawl, and I want to make sure they have space to do that… outside.

Pear and Gorgonzola Waffles

Years ago, when gifted with multiple boxes of Harry & David pears, I went looking for pear recipes to avoid losing the wonderful pears to our slow rate of eating them. I found this recipe on a website called DailyBuzz, and the printout I have linked to Epicurious.

Having received a gift of pears recently, it came up in a Zoom call, and having saved the URL on the printed copy, I went looking… well, the DailyBuzz website is gone, and I can’t find the recipe on Epicurious… good thing I printed it!

Pear and Gorgonzola Waffles

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
2 cups buttermilk
6 tablespoons butter, melted & cooled
2 large eggs
1 ½-2 ripe pears, diced
¾ cup crumbled gorgonzola
Oil for waffle iron

If not being served immediately, preheat your oven to 250 degrees. I prefer to mix all the ingredients and then preheat the waffle iron; that will vary depending on your speed and the waffle iron.

Top half shows the batter, a brush with oil, a measuring cup on a sauced, and the waffle pan. Bottom half shows a pear & gorgonzola waffle with a fork.

Combine dry ingredients – flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt – in a large bowl.
Whisk wet ingredients – buttermilk, butter, and eggs – in a small bowl.
Stir wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.
Fold in diced pears and gorgonzola.

After preheating the waffle iron, brush it lightly with oil and dump an appropriate amount of batter in. For a standard waffle iron, this will probably be ½ cup; a Belgian waffle iron may need a full cup. The Pampered Chef Waffle Puff Pan instructions call for ¾ cup, but does best with a cup of this recipe, probably because of the pear chunks.

Cook waffles according to manufacturer’s instructions until they’re browned and cooked through. For this particular recipe, that may be a couple minutes extra, as the pear chunks make them fall apart.

As you cook them, transfer to a rack in the preheated oven to keep warm and crisp. Continue until batter is gone – makes 6 waffles on the Pampered Chef Waffle Puff Pan, probably about 10 on a standard style waffle iron.

Also, for easy printing, here’s a PDF version of the recipe:

Pear and Gorgonzola Waffles Download

How to lose my business without really trying

The owner of a local dairy business, Jim Oberweis, who was the state senator for our area, ran for Congress against a first term incumbent, Representative Lauren Underwood. He declared victory the night of the election, knowing that a significant number of mail-in votes had not been counted yet. Ultimately, he lost by 5,374 votes.

That’s less than a two percent difference, so it wasn’t surprising when he opted to pay for a recount. Just a “discovery recount,” rather than a full one, but I suppose if he has the money to throw around and wants to waste it instead of using it to help people during a pandemic, it’s his choice. It was certainly within his legal rights as the losing candidate.

What’s beyond his rights as a losing candidate is his demand “seeking to void all 39,647 Kane County mail ballots, claiming they were not properly initialed by election judges.” (From this article: A day after Democrat Rep. Lauren Underwood sworn into second term, her GOP rival, Jim Oberweis seeks to overturn the election he lost – Chicago Sun-Times) The Chicago Tribune article on the subject explains “But Kane County uses electronic poll books to record election judges signatures, so they do not appear on the ballot.”

He wants to disenfranchise almost ten percent of the total votes (401,052 – from this website) in the race, based on a process that isn’t used in this county. You may recall I voted by mail for the first time this year. He wants to disenfranchise my vote, which was sent in and verified almost a month before Election day.

I have no sympathy for poor losers. And I can make my own milkshakes instead of supporting his business.

Thoughts on Queen of None

I am incredibly fortunate to be exposed to so many good books. Rounding out my commentary on books for 2020 is this fresh take on Arthurian legends: Queen of None by Natania Barron. Forget what you think you know about Camelot, she recreates it from an entirely different perspective with new twists on the familiar characters. This review was originally published in the November 1, 2020 issue of Booklist.

In Queen of None, Natania Barron delves into Arthurian legend from the perspective of Anna Pendragon, Arthur’s younger sister. Prophesied by Merlin to be forgotten, Anna was barely a woman when she was married off to an older man to forge an alliance for her brother. Years later, she returns as a widow to Arthur’s court, where her eldest son, Gawain, is already training as a knight. She finds herself a pawn once again, caught between her brother, half-sisters, and Merlin’s plans while searching for her own happiness. Her lingering affection for Bedevere, illicit father to her twin boys, may be ignored again in favor of another alliance that will further her brother’s needs. Surprises come from within as well, as Anna discovers that she too has magical abilities, inherited from her mother’s side of the family, shared to some extent with her half-sisters Morgen, Morgase, and Elaine. Barron’s take on Arthurian legend gets readers exactly where they expect to be in the end, with entirely new insight on how to reach that point.