Meringue Miracle...in which the Farmer's Wife finds the perfect recipe and saves the world. Or something like that.

I'm going to just say it.

Meringue is a very strange and wonderful substance that I want to just stick my face into and eat until it's gone.  It's like eating clouds, isn't it? 

It's big hair, for pie.

I never have much luck making the stuff....it's always shrink-y, or water-y or just plain ugly.  And there's NEVER enough of it in a recipe to make that mile high poof that one sees in Southern Living magazines. I've tried doubling, to get the effect, and there's no such thing....one really can't double meringue recipes with any success.  Heck, one really can't make ONE meringue recipe with any success, often times!

BUT....I've found THE perfect recipe for meringue.  It's brilliant.  It's astoundingly simple.  It's stunningly foolproof. (I would know...being the fool who tested it and found success.) 

And I'm going to share it with you! 

I tested it on key lime pie...(Hi, Patricia!)
BEHOLD....

*Actual, unretouched photos

It's a little weird, compared to your conventional meringues, but I think that's why it worked for me.  If you already have a great recipe and make lovely confections with it, don't mess around with this.  But if, like me, you have had flops instead of fluffs, this will make you look good. 

Miracle Meringue

1/2 cup cool water
2 T. white sugar
1 T. corn starch

Mix these ingredients in a small saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is thick and clear. (It won't be crystal clear, but it will lose the cloudy corn starchy look.) Remove from heat and set aside.

In a large glass or metal mixing bowl, beat
3 egg whites (handily left over from the pie recipe)
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1 pinch salt (couple shakes from the shaker, I think)
Beat until the mixture is foamy.

Mix in
1/2 tsp vanilla extract and gradually add 6 T. white sugar, beating constantly until soft peaks form.

Add the corn starch mixture to the egg mixture, gradually, beating until stiff.

Spread over the top of a WARM pie, all the way to the edges of the crust to seal it.  (There will be PLENTY!  I promise.  You'll even be a little overwhelmed at the amount at first, then giddy that your meringue is so big!) 

Brown in a 450 degree oven. 

Have your camera ready when it comes out, because you'll have such a case of Pie Love that you won't be able to restrain yourself....you'll have to show everyone.  (Sort of like those crazy *ahem* people who show pictures of their flowers to anyone who will stand still long enough...)

It's in the bucket...

A couple years ago, a movie came out called "The Bucket List"...I'm sure you're all familiar with it.  Basically, a couple guys were dying and one of them was a billionaire who decided they should do all the things they always wanted to, before they died.  He funded the experiences and they didn't worry about the risks, just went ahead and tried everything they could. 

Since the movie, the term "bucket list" has been used to label a list of things one wants to do before they die. I think most people sort of have this mental list....some write it down, even!  I love lists.  Perhaps it's because they organize all the flotsam and jetsam in my head, whether I do them or not.  I have a list that I wrote when I was about 23 years old, of things I wanted to do in my lifetime, and some of them make me laugh, now! (One of the things that makes me laugh is that I was 23, for heaven's sake, and thinking I'd probably die around 40 years of age, so I wanted to get busy with my dreams....)

Anyway, one of my friends said something about "that's on my Bucket List..." the other day and I started thinking about what my current Bucket List is. It's long, so you won't get the whole thing. And some are private, so you don't get those either.  Some are silly, some are on the impossible side...there's a lot of travel involved.

(Incidentally, when I went to Boulder this spring, Chad and Sara unknowingly helped me knock three things off the current list!  1. Go to a big zoo.  2. Eat at a really good restaurant that has tiny servings of incredible food.  3. See Pat Green in concert.)

So here are some of my things:

• Go to the top of a lighthouse.
• Learn to play acoustic guitar.
• France...at this point, it doesn't have to be Paris; I just want to go to France.
• Learn to tango. (That's a silly one, but I think it would be FUN!)
• Have a restored, shiny red 1937 Chevrolet pickup truck to drive...not to park in a garage covered with a tarp. 
• Learn to fly fish and then, do it often.  (This is completely do-able....it's been on my list since age 23.  That drives me nuts.)
• Go to a Broadway play.  I love theatre, and this, too, has been on my list since 23.)
• Go to a professional football game! My standards have slipped, here....now, instead of specifically having to be a 49ers game, I'd go to any professional football game.  Even...and this pains me to say....a Denver Broncos game.  (Okay, so there are no standards, whatsoever, anymore...)
• Downhill ski.  Yes, that's right...I live in Montana and I've never downhill skied! (Ranchers don't ski...they stay home and feed cows in the winter.)
• Go on a sailboat.
• Have a great hat...you know, like a fairly modest Kentucky Derby hat. 
• Go to Donaghadee, Ireland....where my great-grandmother was from.
• High tea...I want to have a proper high tea, with all the little cucumber sandwiches and petit fours, wear a dress and hat and heels, and all the frou-frou stuff that goes with it! 
• There's an island, somewhere in the tropics, with my name on a cabana and miles of sand and sun...

I'll stop there...it's getting longish and rambly 
What's on your list?

*I'm a big fan of writing it down, because when I found my list from my younger days, I was sort of surprised at how many things I was able to check off! It made me realize that even though my life sometimes looks like it's fairly ho-hum, it really has been full of amazing experiences.

I can't buy this....

....and, my friends, neither should you. 

This is a public service announcement, from The Farmer's Wife.

Last week in Walmart, (Yeah, that phrase right there should lend credit to anything I'm about to tell you.) while waiting to check out, I saw a product called Pajama Jeans. 

That's right.

Pajama bottoms styled to look like "designer" jeans!

From the box, it looked like they were from one of those late night infomercials and I assume it was being marketed to insomniac, stay-at-home moms like me.  So we would be ready at a moment's notice to answer the door and the UPS man would have NO IDEA that we are still wearing our pajamas at two in the afternoon!  The packaging indicated that, heck, we could probably even get away with interviewing for a job in them or a nice evening out on the town.  (Sorta takes "casual Fridays" to a new level of laid back-ed-ness, doesn't it?) 

They were ONLY $49.95, predictably, and the only size I could find there was extra large.  It was almost my turn to check out, so I didn't have the opportunity to think of something I'd forgotten and roam the store looking for a People of Walmart model wearing a size small, which presumably had sold out. 

The other thing I found that gave me cause for concern for naive consumers was in Albertsons last night.  I was looking in the deli area for proscuitto and stinky, imported cheeses when I came across a pre-packaged, cellophane wrapped PARTY PACK of sushi. 

That's right.

A loaded gun laying right there beside the Reser's potato salad and chevre cheese.

There are a couple things (besides Pajama Jeans) that you don't want to buy in Eastern Montana....one of them being a tshirt proclaiming that you're a vegetarian and voted for Obama, the other being raw fish with a blurry "Sell by" date to feed to your party guests.  On both counts, I can't guarantee you'll live to regret your choice. 

(I personally think sushi should be eaten within 15 miles of the shore where it was caught.  The further from the shore, the dicier the proposition of eating it.  Likewise, I'd be suspicious of steak tartare in Polynesia.) I suspect this sushi was older than the cheese from Ireland that I bought. 

I don't know how many of you were aware of these products, but I felt compelled to warn you that they are out there and to urge you to guard against *impulsive buys!

*Better to wait and buy the Pajama Jeans through the informercial, because you always want the "But WAIT! If you buy now, you'll also get..." offer, right?

 



Soggy doggies

The accumulation of rain, as of yesterday afternoon around 3 p.m.:

(It went on to rain more, bringing the total, this morning to 3 inches and 1 tenth...inconceivable!)

Everything is wet.

And grumpy.

Twilla, complaining about having to stay in the porch...

 Lily and Willie, unimpressed with this turn of events....if they go out of the shed, they get wet.  If they stay in the shed, it's loud.

Figaro, yelling at me about the wet grass! (Like I can change it or something...)

Note the prissy paws....

The only things that seem to enjoy this relentless moisture are the flowers.

Angus "saved" some worms.  These have been handled and mauled and loved to death...literally. At least they didn't die a lonely death, right?

And neither will this child, who it would appear went out the door, threw himself in a puddle, rolled around until he could stand it no longer and returned to the house requesting a hot bath and some cocoa if it wouldn't be too much trouble...(Those socks WERE white, when he left.)

I think today....because it's STILL rainy....we'll make key lime pie and listen to Kenny Chesney and Jimmy Buffett and wear shorts and put little umbrellas in our orange juice and pretend like we're someplace sunny!

Weed it and weep...

I know.
That title has a distinct Elmer Fudd feel to it. 
And I apologize for all the gardening posts in a row, but it has been raining non-stop here and I've been escaping the madness of the house for the relative solitude of the flowerbeds, so this is what's on my mind.  I have wet dog pictures, too, but I'll save that for later today.  Gives you something to look forward to, right?  (In the top 100 worst blog post teasers, "Stay tuned for wet dog pictures" has got to be in the top 30!)

This is perfect weather to weed in, because like all other living things, weeds lose the will to fight after three days of rain.  And it's SO gratifying to pull a world record dandelion out by the root and hold it up like a trophy from a great and noble battle!  Then, after admiring the 8 inch root on that sucker, to throw it on the pile with the rest of the victims, cackling with satisfaction.

The tricky thing I've found, about weeding, is what to do with the volunteer flowers that are growing where I don't want them.  Starting my flowerbeds from nothing, for the first couple of years I found it charming and encouraging.  "Oh, look!" I'd exclaim to myself. "Flax!  Poppies! and I didn't even have to plant them!" 

Self-sowing annuals are the passive aggressive garden inhabitants.  They take full advantage of their flower-ness and quietly scatter where they will, invading the bed like Huns in China.  They KNOW it kills a gardener to have to yank them out, because they really are lovely little plants that we had to pay good money for seed just a year ago.  And they KNOW we can be beguiled by their lovely blossoms, which turn into gazillions of seeds which turn into a veritable carpet of whatever they are. 

Take flax.
Really.  Take all of it you want; it's engulfing my beds.
I want some  flax, because it's a lovely sky blue that is hard to find in the plant world, and it has an ephemeral feel to it.  I planted some seeds, it came up and charmed me, and then moved in like a homeless relative, sprawling all over insouciently, elbowing out my aquilegia and thumbing its nose at me.  It took me a long time to be able to yank it out with no twinge of "what if I eliminate it and it never grows back" feelings. 

Poppies are the same way.
AND....the worst part is that just as I wade into the bed, sleeves rolled up, mouth pursed, heart full of determination, they have the nerve to bloom.  OH...drats!  How to yank up clouds of sky blue flowers, when nothing else is blooming? (Nothing else is blooming, I reflect later, because the flax has engulfed it!) 

I'm developing a hard heart where some of these plants are concerned.  Here's my list of plants that look like friends but are really bullies in the garden.  Think Moe, in Calvin and Hobbes.

• Flax
• Poppies (The California kind....they invade Montana just like the residents of the state from which they originate.)
• Yarrow (Public enemy #1, here in my yard.)
• Salvia (I'm still wrestling for control, but I think I have it disciplined.)
• Hollyhocks (They are the WORST!  And there's always, always guilt associated with yanking them out because they're such sentimental flowers!  It's like slamming the door in your grandma's face or something.)
• Malva (Hollyhock's close cousin...smaller and less well known.  I think of it as sort of a shirttail cousin twice removed and don't have nearly the guilt eliminating these.)
• Did I mention yarrow?

My mantra, that I say over and over as I wade and weed is, "Just because it wants to grow there, doesn't mean it should be allowed to grow there!"  The other thing I say is, "DIE, yarrow!!! DIE!!!" 

Gardening is a brutal, blood sport and not for the weak of heart. 

Wet dog pictures to follow....ALSO not for the weak of heart.